Straight Talk: 1 of 4

How Can I Know God Exists?

Scripture

Gen 1.1

Psalm 19.1-4

Rom 1.19-20

Job 38.1-11

Col 1.15-16

Quotes

-Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers

“Theologians generally are delighted with the proof that the Universe had a beginning, but astronomers are curiously upset. Their reactions provide an interesting demonstration of the response of the scientific mind—supposedly a very objective mind—when evidence uncovered by science itself leads to a conflict with the articles of faith in our profession. It turns out the scientist behaves the way the rest of us do when our beliefs are in conflict with the evidence. We become irritated, we pretend the conflict does not exist, or we paper over it with meaningless phrases.”

“Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.”

“Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every start, every planet, every living thing in the cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover….That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.”

“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; his is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

Arthur Eddington

“The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural.”

Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker

“Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”

Francis Crick

“Biologist must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.”

Richard Lewontin

“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover that materialism is absolute for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door.”

Resources

Reading

Geisler, Normal & Frank Turek: I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist

Keller, Tim: The Reason for God

Jastrow, Robert: God and the Astronomers (Note: I have not read this entire book and am not giving a full endorsement)

For more information on various apologetic-related topics, including Cambrian Explosion, abiogenesis, homochirality, and Christian documents, go to: http://www.billmesaeh.com/Xnty%20&%20Xn%20Living.htm#Christianity_101

Sites

www.bethinking.org (general apologetics)

www.answersingenesis.org (strengths of creationism)

www.podcast.billmesaeh.com (download or hear the series again)