Logic declares that God and science go together and logic and the Bible proves it!
Thanks to John McVay of Creation Nation X and the linked Classical Conversations article farther down from Jonathan Bartlett, we will be looking at logic and evidence for the belief in a Creator God and therefore His rightful place in the world of science. Belief in a Creator God was the basis for the Christians and Theists (who invented modern empirical scientific research) to devise the scientific method and thereby went beyond the axiomatic methodology of the Greeks. The scientific method has no requirement for naturalism, that is an artificial religious requirement for Darwinists.
I say that the Bible is a reliable book of history of all mankind and, when it speaks to science, it is correct and has been far ahead of mankind in terms of demonstrating a knowledge of the physical world. This is not surprising if you accept that God is the necessary First Cause of a Universe created ex nihilo.
We lead off with John Morris writing briefly about the legacy of his father, written in 2007 after the death of his father, about whom one obituary in a District of Columbia-area secular paper was described in part thusly:
He began to publish religious tracts as early as 1946, even as he pursued graduate studies at the University of Minnesota. He received a master's degree and a doctorate in hydraulic engineering in 1948 and 1950.
He taught civil engineering at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and at Southern Illinois University before joining the faculty of Virginia Tech in 1957. He was a respected teacher and department head at Virginia Tech, and his 1963 textbook, "Applied Hydraulics in Engineering," remains a cornerstone of the field.
By then, Dr. Morris was increasingly consumed with his interest in creationism. He had founded a Baptist church in Blacksburg, Va., and "The Genesis Flood" was creating a stir among conservative Christians, even though mainstream scientists viewed it with contempt..."
Yes, mainstream science viewed with contempt the very pillars upon which science was built! By 1961 the scientific community had completely brainwashed the world of academia and various news and entertainment media. Haeckels fake embryo chart was in virtually every textbook, along with the fake Horse Evolution Chart and the warped description of a geological column that cannot be found in even 1% of exposed rock layers. Dinosaurs were depicted with less accuracy that the Acambaro figurines demonstrated, as later fossil finds have proven. We were all brainwashed and there were no dissenting voices.
The lack of dissent in science means one of two things:
- Years of reproducible tests and 100% agreement with a theory has caused it to be declared a Law. This is why the Law of Biogenesis is a Law (and why Darwinists might as well believe in Leprechauns and the Easter Bunny as in abiogenesis).
- There is a concerted effort to stifle dissent. This is the kind of anti-science that the ruling paradigm of yesteryear presented mankind, a determination to hold fast to axiomatic and doctrinal icons with no concern or regard for actual evidence.
I obtained and read "The Genesis Flood" after hearing Dr. Morris speak and I was fascinated with the idea that a world-wide flood had not only happened but was the prime cause of all those sedimentary rock layers. Henry Morris opened my eyes to Truth and helped me Thanks, Dr. Morris!!!!!!!!!! The author of more than 60 books, he formed the Institute for Creation Research and now there are hundreds of Creation Science organizations in the Western World, studying the evidence to seek answers to old questions and improvements to our daily lives.
The Legacy of Henry Morris
by John D. Morris, Ph.D.
It's been a year now since
my father, ICR's Founder and long time President, Dr. Henry Morris,
passed into glory. I thought you might like to know how things are going
without him, and how we intend to achieve his long-term goals for ICR.
ICR will continue to make his books and videos available, although the scientific sections may be revised as discoveries are made. Most of his writings were worldview based and will need little updating. His insightful articles in Days of Praise will be used again, also. He wrote more than ten years worth, so you won't see any one of them too often. To make certain his contributions are extended, we have launched the special Henry M. Morris Center for Christian Leadership in Dallas under the direction of my older brother, with a firm mandate that dad's thinking will be the core of all products and teaching. As best as we can promise, we will not deviate.
Scientifically, he laid the foundation for the new wave of technical research which dominates much of ICR today. His main strength was creation theory and worldview application. Biblically, he set the course for ICR's way of doing science, in submission to God's inerrant Word. ICR today enjoys an excitement with possible breakthroughs in science just ahead. Details regarding the Flood are beginning to unfold, and the new field of genomics bears great promise. In many ways, ICR is stronger than ever. All faculty and staff fully embrace the Founder's vision regarding the necessity of following the Dominion Mandate of Genesis 1:28 and 9:1-7, as well as the Evangelical Mandate of Matthew 28:19-20. The first establishes science, technology, and every honorable profession, and the second stresses Biblical teaching and the guarding of the truth. Following in his footsteps will be difficult and a lifelong effort, but those of us coming along behind pledge to continue his legacy.
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I was a new Christian who did not even doubt the idea that evolution was an established fact when I heard Henry Morris speak. He was witty, charming and he was also a wonderful speaker. He was able to take his very advanced knowledge in the field of hydrology and engineering to teach lay people to understand the science behind the concept of Flood Geology. Once I got the idea, all those years of climbing around the fossil rock layers suddenly brought me to an epiphany. Of course!!! This is why so many anomalies in the rocks were puzzling to me, I had the wrong idea about the fossil rocks and the fossils. Understanding that there was a Flood opened my eyes.
During the past few days, I have had several conversations with people regarding whether or not God has a place in science. To my dismay, many strong, Christian believers with a scientific bent are appalled at the idea of bringing God into science. They believe that if you include God in science, it will stop science from moving forward. Though this may sound far-fetched, this view is not entirely unwarranted. Unfortunately, many people do, in fact, use God to put a stop to science. My goal today, then, is to show how knowledge of God can be both used and abused within science.
One of the areas in which I do research is Intelligent Design, which includes the examination of signs of design within biology. While the technical limits of Intelligent Design theory do not demand that the designer be God, the idea of the intelligent design of life and God as the creator are philosophically connected. The first part of the process of showing that something signifies design is to show that it could not have arisen by purely natural means.
It is precisely at this point that many scientists object. As soon as they hear that, I get a litany of complaints:
“You can`t assign God to solve a gap in knowledge.”
“If we propose God every time we can’t figure something out, science will simply stop.”
“If we don’t let people pursue their scientific goals because we think God did something, we’ll be living in a theocracy.”
“Don’t you remember what happened to Galileo? Are you starting another inquisition?”
Now, all of these objections, if they were used at a legitimate target, would be true. No, we cannot just throw God in as an explanation every time we cannot figure something out. No, we should not prevent scientists from pursuing the ideas they believe to be true (though paying for them is a different question). Finally, inquisitions are bad and we should not have them.
I am sure there are misguided people in the world for whom these would be valid objections. The problem is that these complaints have become a knee-jerk reaction rather than a well-thought-out critique. So, before getting to my main point, let me first explain why Intelligent Design does not fall to these objections.
First of all, establishing that something could not have arisen by natural means is not the same thing as saying that we do not know how it came about. There must be positive evidence shown that something did not arise by natural means. It is always possible that such evidence turns out to be wrong—as with everything else in science, further evidence might overturn previous ideas. This is not unique to exclude design ideas. If it is possible that future evidence might cause us to think something is not designed that we used to think was designed, the reverse is also true. What this tells us is not that we should not use design in science, but rather any attempt to baptize science as equivalent with God’s truth is misguided. Science changes every day, and, whether our science is theistic or not, our understandings of the present, past, and future will be continually changing and even overturning.
So, it is not just that we do not know how something arose naturally, it is that we have evidence that it could not have. Second, we also must establish positive evidence that the cause was a designing cause. In other words, not only must it not have arisen naturally, it should have a logical pattern to it. For instance, if you come across a series of stones laid out to form the letters of a word, you would have evidence of design. First of all, it is highly unlikely for there to have been a physical cause to establish the shapes of letters. Secondly, a word is a logical pattern. So, the configuration is not physical but it is logical. Therefore, you are warranted in inferring design.
Now, examining signs of design in life is certainly a worthy goal in and of itself. However, there is an objection to it which is worth hearing. That is, let us say that the inference of design is correct in some particular case. Of what benefit is that to knowledge as a whole?
Think of it this way. When you learn math, you later apply it to balancing your checkbook. When you learn to balance your checkbook, you can apply that skill to running a business. Running a business might help you learn to run a school. Then, you might use your knowledge of running a school to help someone else learn math. So you see, any one piece of knowledge does not exist by itself, but is part of a larger web of knowledge. Any one piece of knowledge will lead you to so many others.
So, going back to the question of design—where can that take you, or is it just a point of termination? If the search for knowledge ends with the knowledge that something is designed, then in what way is it knowledge? Useful knowledge should fully participate in the web of knowledge and not exist merely as an item of trivia. So how can such ideas usefully contribute to the web of knowledge?
According to Proverbs 9:10, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom...” (NIV 1984) I want to highlight the word beginning. In other words, if we find evidence for God and then we stop, we have stopped at the beginning rather than at the end.
So, when we find that something is the result of God’s design, it is inappropriate to use that fact as a stopping point. Instead, it should be used as a starting point for further investigation. However, since we live in a culture based on materialism, we often get stuck here. How do you investigate God’s works? We know how to investigate nature, but we are pretty stumped when it comes to God. We are used to treating knowledge of God as so subjective that it is beyond investigation—and it is precisely the idea that the knowledge of God is considered subjective rather than objective which has caused Christianity to no longer be taken seriously in the public square.
As Christians, we must learn again to treat knowledge of God as real, objective, knowable truth. But in doing so, we must learn to ask different questions. It is true that when design is inferred, the old questions we were asking may not make sense anymore. But it should open up a new set of questions. For instance, instead of asking, “What was the sequence of physical events that led to the development of this structure?” you can ask, “What are the logical relationships which make this structure work? How do its purpose and its functionality interact? How does it fit functionally within the larger plan of the organism? How does it fit aesthetically within the larger plan of the organism? How does the structure interact morally with the plan of creation?”
We are not used to dealing with aesthetics, morality, or even logical plans as objective reality, but merely as byproducts of other “natural” causes. What we must do, instead, is to truly treat the fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom, and ask a whole new set of questions which the secular world no longer has the vocabulary or the imagination to even ask, much less answer.
Then, as the rest of the verse says, “…knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”
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Applause to both gentlemen for presenting actual evidence that a true scientist should appreciate...unless they are religious zealots for naturalism and allow their religion to ruin their science. Sadly, that applies to a large number of men and women in science today. Funny thing is that there are also large numbers of scientists who give lip service to Darwinism in order to have a job but in fact do not use it in their work and find it to be irrelevant to operational science.
ICR Addendum:
Who We Are
After
more than four decades of ministry, the Institute for Creation Research
remains a leader in scientific research within the context of biblical
creation. Founded by Dr. Henry Morris in 1970, ICR exists to conduct
scientific research within the realms of origins and earth history, and
then to educate the public both formally and informally through graduate
and professional training programs, through conferences and seminars
around the country, and through books, magazines, and media
presentations.ICR was established for three main purposes:
Research. As a research organization, ICR conducts laboratory, field, theoretical, and library research on projects that seek to understand the science of origins and earth history. ICR scientists have conducted multi-year research projects at key locations such as Grand Canyon, Mount St. Helens, Yosemite Valley, Santa Cruz River Valley in Argentina, and on vital issues like Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth (RATE), Flood-activated Sedimentation and Tectonics (FAST), and other topics related to geology, genetics, astro/geophysics, paleoclimatology, and much more.
Education. As an educational institution, ICR offers formal courses of instruction, conducts seminars and workshops, and presents radio and television lectures, as well as other means of instruction. With 30 years experience in graduate education, first through our California-based science education program (1981-2010), and now through the M.C.Ed. degree program at the School of Biblical Apologetics, ICR trains men and women to do real-world apologetics with a foundation of biblical authority and creation science. ICR also offers a one-year, non-degree training program for professionals called the Creationist Worldview. Additionally, ICR scientists and staff speak to over 200 groups each year through seminars and conferences. And many of the faculty are contributing authors to ICR’s new Science Education Essentials curriculum products for Christian K-12 teachers.
Communication. ICR produces and/or publishes books, films, periodicals, and other media for communicating the evidence and information related to its research and education to its constituents and to the public in general. ICR’s central publication is Acts & Facts, a full-color monthly magazine with a readership of over 200,000, providing articles relevant to science, apologetics, education, and worldview issues. ICR also publishes the daily devotional Days of Praise with over 300,000 readers worldwide. Additionally, the scientists and staff at ICR publish various books and videos on medicine, history, apologetics, theology, and science. The three radio programs produced by ICR can be heard on some 1,500 outlets around the world.
Today, situated on its new Dallas campus, the Institute for Creation Research continues to expand its work and influence in each of these three areas of ministry, endeavoring to impact the lives and ministries of pastors, teachers, students, and families with the wonders of God’s creation.