Greetings friends, brothers & sisters on this Sabbath day… a day set aside by God as a remembrance of His act of creation, establishing the heavens, renewing the face of the earth, and breathing life into us, his children.

I am not a scientist but I would like to talk to you about science. I will try limit myself to things that can be clearly understood by anyone. Mostly by asking questions like why and how.

The Establishment of the Heavens and Earth

We cannot exist without an incredible array of features to operate properly… and not just properly but nearly perfectly in order for us to survive for the next 4 minutes. Elements that we consider so simple, oxygen, temperature, gravity to name a few. Take a longer view like 4 days and you might want to thro in water or solar energy. Simple… yet each of these is highly complex and moreover interact in ways that compound the complexity in a manner that can dazzle even the most jaded materialist.

Where did all these elements, physical laws, atmospheric and biological systems come from? Why do they work so beautifully together to support life? With all our amazing tools: microscopes, particle colliders, and space stations, our great minds of materialist science provide us the profound answer… “well, they just do”

What about the phenomenon we call life?

If we were to accept the premise that the physical universe is just a lucky accident of atoms that have luckily arranged themselves into a universe of galaxies, solar systems, planets and so on… a question remains that is just a big as the origin and organization of the universe.

Why would such a universe of atoms and molecules, photons and energy waves… generate living things? From simple self-replicating virus, to the more genetically complex plants, to animal life and finally sentient, self-aware humans with the capacity to love or hate, cry or laugh, to create beautiful music or deadly concentration camps…

The Will to Live…

All life forms from the lowly virus, plants, animals, humans share something in common, something that cannot be explained by anything that can be measured or observed in the material universe. That something is the desire to survive. A will to continue living and a goal to pass that life on to a new generation that will carry on and repeat the pattern. To anyone who has not hardened his heart and darkened his mind… this desire to live and survive found in all living creatures demonstrate will and purpose in the universe.

Teachers of evolution end up explaining all the various facet of life, animal or human, good or evil, as some form of survival mechanism. Giraffes were lucky enough to be mutant antelopes with extra long necks allowing them to access new sources of food in the treetops. Even your belief in God is seen by such people as a quirk of the human mind that helps humans to survive in a hostile environment (social cohesion, grouping together for mutual benefit and protection etc).

Clever explanations like this are still built upon the assumed existence of will in the universe but don’t even attempt to explain how this will came to be. Because it’s simply not measurable… like the Spirit, we can see the effects of it but we cannot see the power or force I am calling will.

A fish develops a fin that allows it to crawl out of the ooze to seek new sources of food… a better chance for survival… what drives it… what moves it forward to preserve and pass on its life… why does it desire to continue living, and where does it come from?

The only answer you are going to get from science is… “they just do”

How Would Life Emerge From Non-Life?

Prebiotic Soup theory – the idea that the earth was covered with warm lakes filled with enzymes and proteins simmering away at just the right temperature until SURPRISE they are struck by lightning! This random spark triggers freak combinations of enzymes, proteins etc that build and snowball, combine and recombine until they produce… XXXXX

The statistical probability of such a sequence of events… are astronomical. The mathematical improbability of that happening it so huge that some credible scientists ave turned to alternate theories such as the idea that life came from out-space… mars, asteroids whatever. However, the soup theory remains the most popular and still finds itself in school text books.

The soup theory has problems:

For one, it cannot be reproduced in a laboratory setting. If you remember from high school, scientific theories and hypotheses are supposed to be proven by demonstrable and repeatable experiments. Generating the supposed building blocks of life by electrocuting hot soup has been tried and tried but… nope, it doesn’t happen.

Perhaps this is because a theory such as this one flies in the face of another scientific observation that has been tested and proven. That life does not spontaneously develop from non-living stuff.

• Mice from dirty shirts?
• Bacteria in covered and uncovered petre dishes etc

In face of scientific contradiction and the monumental mathematical improbability of it all, when asked the question: How or Why life could or would emerge from non-life the answer once again is… Well somehow it just did!

Science prides itself on supposedly being based on observation, proof, evidence… a hypothesis leads to experiments that provide proof… where is the proof for life coming from non-life?

People choose to doubt, or disbelieve, God exists often citing the absence of any proof that He does. But isn’t it amazing what other things humans choose to believe with even less evidence or proof to go on.

What About The Theory Of Evolution

Evolution is not really a theory of origins but it is treated as such by many and has been heavily promoted in schools and popular entertainment. So we need to include it here.

Evolution is the idea that creatures gradually developed out of other creatures through advantageous genetic mutation. So, wouldn’t we expect to find an abundant fossil record of all the intermediate varieties of creatures? The answer is NO. Darwin did not base his theory on proof or evidence from the fossil record…

The Origin of Species, 1859, Masterpieces of Science, 1958,pp. 136-137) – Why [he asked] if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? … Why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?

Continuing… pp 260-261 The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed, [must] be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely gradated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory. The explanation lies, I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record” 

Niles Eldredge, curator in the department of invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History (Reinventing Darwin: The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory, 1995, p. 95)

 “No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long,” [he wrote.] “It seems never to happen. Assiduous collecting up cliff faces yields zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of change—over millions of years, at a rate too slow to really account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history. “When we do see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang, and often with no firm evidence that the organisms did not evolve elsewhere! Evolution cannot forever be going on someplace else. Yet that’s how the fossil record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution”.

 

Steven Jay Gould (the late Harvard Paleontologist), “the history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: [1] Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking pretty much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless. “[2] Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors: it appears all at once and ‘fully formed’” (“Evolution’s Erratic Pace,” Natural History, May 1977, pp. 13-14).

 

With no real hard evidence why do evolutionists consider the theory to be fact?

Darwin was a member of the clergy and like many of his clerical contemporaries collected and studied plants, animals, insects and rocks. Ironically the naturalist movement that spawned Darwin and his theories on evolution theory has its roots in a faith driven inquiry into the wonders of God’s creation by churchmen with a lot of time on their hands.

 

Darwin (and those who follow in his ideas) sought to explain the obvious relationship linking all living creatures. USE EXAMPLE OF A HORSES SKELETON BEING VERY SIMILAR TO HUMANS. They reasoned that the relationship was because they shared a common ancestor. The real and more obvious answer is that they are similar  because they are the work of the same creator. God. Romans 1:18-25

The theories that life spontaneously generated out of non-life and gradually developed into more complex creatures are simply not true. Far from being proven fact their basic assumptions contradict what is proven and known and observed.

1. The idea that the random interaction of matter results in increasingly complex systems violates the law of entropy – one of the basic things you should have learned in high school
2. Based on all observable criteria life only comes from pre-existing life – another basic fact you learned in high school (remember the petrie dish experiments)
3. Based on the actual fossil record living creatures appear as a distinct species and stay within the basic parameters of their species or kind with no evidence that they migrate gradually into a different kind

Organization & Complexity in the Universe

Colossians 1:15-18 the interaction of matter in the universe is not based on random collisions. The observable organization of matter, classification of both matter and life forms and will in the universe (as seen in the drive to live and reproduce) are evidence of God’s power, plan, purpose… and existence.

God is the Pre-Existing Life Giver

Where did God come from? Aren’t we just pushing back the question of the origins of life like the guys who try to explain that life came from outer space?

John 5:26… I Am That I Am

1 Timothy 1:17; 6:16 – God has no beginning… that’s hard for us to grasp (because we are finite)

Hebrews 11:3 –for things beyond our grasp we must trust God’s revealed truth

Life is Classified According to Kind

The fossil record takes us back to a time on earth prior to the time recorded in Genesis 1 (refere to previous sermon). But as we read earlier the actual fossil record shows that living creatures appear or are created according to their kind and pretty much stay within their kind.

Genesis 1:20-26 –God’s renewal of life on earth follows the same pattern of Kind. Which has tremendous implications for what read in verse 26! You are created or more accurately in the process of being created according to the God Kind.

1 John 3:1-3 we will children of God, made in his image, after His Kind in his image. But not according to the body you now have but something else… filled with holy righteous character and eternal life

1 John 5:11-13