Tagged: science

Are religion and science closer than we think?

ScienceA Missouri pastor recently sent me a Huffington Post article in which MIT Astrophysicist Max Tegmark assures us that religion and science are much closer than one might suspect, as evidenced by the results of a new MIT Survey on Science, Religion and Origins.

You can read the results and view the survey questions on MIT’s website.

Tegmark and his colleagues present a detailed survey of how different U.S. faith communities view the science of origins, particularly evolution and Big Bang cosmology.

Their conclusion: “We find a striking gap between people’s personal beliefs and the official views of the faiths to which they belong. Whereas Gallup reports that 46% of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form less than 10,000 years ago, we find that only 11% belong to religions openly rejecting evolution.”

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Sound reasons to trust the scriptures: Download free resource

Download free resource: Nine reasons you can know the Bible is true

 

Did you know:

  • The Bible demonstrates advanced scientific knowledge — that is, God revealed through human scribes information that only He knew long before scientists discovered these truths.
  • No other book from the ancient world has more, earlier, or better copied manuscripts than the Bible. 
  • Every one of the nearly 300 prophecies of the Messiah was fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth, except for those that speak of His glorious personal, physical, and visible return one day.
  • No archaeological find has ever refuted a Biblical claim.
  • Jesus personally affirmed many things Bible critics deny, including a real Adam and Eve, a worldwide flood in the days of Noah, and a large fish that swallowed the prophet Jonah.

As Dr. Norman Geisler states, “The Bible is the only known book in the world that both claims to be and proves to be the Word of God…. The testimony of science that demonstrates it, of the scrolls that transmit it, the scribes who wrote it, the supernatural that confirms it, the structure that manifests it, the stones that support it, the Savior who verified it, the Spirit that witnesses to it, and the saved who have been transformed by it. These combined testimonies confirm that the Bible is what it claims to be – the divinely inspired, infallible, and inerrant Word of God” (Systematic Theology, Vol. I, p. 561).

Sound reasons to trust the Scriptures (part 1)

This is the first in a nine-part series of articles offering sound reasons to believe the Bible is the Word of God.

 

In Systematic Theology (Vol. I), Dr. Norman Geisler presents many lines of evidence supporting claims for the Bible as the Word of God. In unique fashion, he labels each line of evidence with a word beginning with the letter “S,” making his arguments relatively easy to follow and remember. This article borrows his headings and then incorporates some of Geisler’s research with other sources, all of which are cited.

 

Reason 1: The testimony of science

 

Much in the Bible demonstrates advanced scientific knowledge – that is, God revealed through human scribes information that only He knew long before scientists discovered these truths. For example:

  • The exact order of events in the origin of all things. “In a day when the ancient polytheistic myths of origin prevailed, the author of Genesis declared that the universe came into being out of nothing by the act of a theistic God in the exact order that modern science discovered a millennium and a half later,” writes Geisler. “The universe came first (Gen. 1:1a), then the earth (1:1b), then the land and sea (1:10). After this came life in the sea (1:21), then land animals (1:24-25), and finally … human beings (1:27). This too supports the view that the author of Genesis had access to some intelligence as to how the Creator made the universe” (p. 545).
  • Reproduction after each creature’s own kind. This scientific fact runs contrary to many ancient and even early modern views. Observation and the fossil record demonstrate that each type of life produces its own kind.
  • The earth as the raw material of human bodies. Many ancient polytheistic beliefs claim that people cam from the gods; the Koran teaches that human beings were made from a blood clot (Sura 23:14); but the Bible explains that God made Adam from the earth (Gen. 2:7).
  • Rain water returning to its source (Eccl.. 1:7). Perhaps without even understanding it, the writer recorded the process of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation long before scientists figured it out.
  • The shape of the world as it hangs in space. Job (26:7) and Isaiah (40:22) make remarkable statements contrary to the ancient belief that the earth was flat, or square. Some myths held that the earth rested on the back of Hercules or on pillars, but the Bible states otherwise.
  • Life is in the blood (Lev. 17:11), a fact declared in scripture more than 3,000 years ago and only fairly recently attested to in science.
  • The sea’s paths and boundaries (Ps. 8:8; Prov. 8:29). The continental shelf that makes this possible is a fairly recent scientific discovery.
  • The laws of sanitation (Lev. 12-15). Long before there was scientific knowledge of bacteria and germs, God instructed His people through laws of sanitation to protect themselves from diseases spread by unseen organisms.

Next – Reason 2: The testimony of the scrolls