Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Science Experiment?

In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus published Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs, a treatise that put forth his revolutionary idea that the Sun was at the center of the universe and that the Earth--rotating on an axis--orbited around the sun once a year.

Copernicus' theory was a challenge to the accepted notion contained in the natural philosophy of Aristotle, the astronomy of Ptolemy and the teachings of the Church that the sun and all the stars revolved around a stationary Earth.

Sometime in the mid-1590s, a man named Galileo concluded that Copernicus got it right.

The Catholic Church, in the 1600’s, was an important aspect of European life.

It had the ability to prevent anything that threatened it to never do so again.

The Protestant Reformation had caused the Church to become especially fragile in the views that people promoted that may have a negative effect against them.

This prompted them to set up the Holy Office, more commonly know as the Inquisition.

The Holy Office had a branch in all catholic dominated countries to investigate potentially dangerous teaching.

Another reason for the Church's venerability was its struggle with its European budget and influence.

Galileo was not only committing blasphemy but irritating the Church by repeating an idea that had already been put forward by another scientist called Copernicus.

The Catholic Church stated that Galileo could not be a devoted Catholic and a scientist at the same time.

Galileo's theory was that the Earth revolved around the Sun.

He had a reason to believe this was true - he had developed a telescope so that he could look at the stars in more detail, and had conducted experiments to prove his theory.

He was sure he was right, and wanted the whole world to know about it.

But there was a problem: the Church.

The Catholic Church believed that the Earth did not move and was the centre of the universe.

The Church thought of Galileo as a heretic but this did not stop him writing letters to explain his theory.

The Inquisition found these letters and it was very angry.

The Pope summoned Galileo to a court hearing.

Galileo protested against this stating he was too old and ill to travel to Rome but the Church insisted.

The inquisition pledged that they would torture Galileo unless he admitted he was wrong.

So Galileo was forced to ``confess'' that it was a mistake and he had made the theory up.

He did not want to at first but when it was explained to him that he would be saving his life he quickly agreed to confess.

Galileo expected the telescope to quickly make believers in the Copernican system out of all educated persons, but he was disappointed.

It became clear that the Copernican theory had its enemies.

As Galileo was escorted out of the courtroom, he could not resist muttering under his breath, ``but the Earth does move''.

Luckily for him the judge did not hear.

In 1613, just as Galileo published his Letters on the Solar Spots, an openly Copernican writing, the first attack came from a Dominican friar and professor of ecclesiastical history in Florence, Father Lorini.

Preaching on All Soul's Day, Lorini said that Copernican doctrine violated Scripture, which clearly places Earth, and not the Sun at the center of the universe.

What, if Copernicus were right, would be the sense of which says "So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven" or that speaks of "the heavens stretched out as a curtain" above "the circle of the earth"?

Pressured later to apologize for his attack, Lorini later said that he "said a couple of words to the effect that the doctrine of Ipernicus [sic], or whatever his name is, was against Holy Scripture."

As a punishment for the publication of a book named ``Dialogue on the Great World Systems'' which spoke of Galileo's blasphemous theories, Galileo was now guarded at all times and was not allowed to leave the country.

He remained living in his house just outside Florence in this way until he died of ill health in 1642.

Galileo responded to criticism of his Copernican views in a December 1613 Letter to Castelli.

In his letter, Galileo argued that the Scripture--although truth itself--must be understood sometimes in a figurative sense.

A reference, for example, to "the hand of God" is not meant to be interpreted as referring to a five-fingered appendage, but rather to His presence in human lives.

Given that the Bible should not be interpreted literally in every case, Galileo contended, it is senseless to see it as supporting one view of the physical universe over another.

"Who," Galileo asked, "would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?"

Galileo hoped that his Letter to Castelli might foster a reconciliation of faith and science, but it only served to increase the heat.

His enemies accused him of attacking Scripture and meddling in theological affairs.

One among them, Father Lorini, raised the stakes for the battle when, on February 7, 1615, he sent to the Roman Inquisition a modified copy of Galileo's Letter to Castelli.

In fact, Lorini's letter appears more charitable than he in fact was.

He would stop at almost nothing to destroy the "Galileists," as is shown from his alteration--in certain key places--of the text of Galileo's Letter to Castelli.

For example, where Galileo had written: "There are in Scripture words which, taken in the strict literal meaning, look as if they differed from the truth," Lorini substituted: "which are false in their literal meaning."

However unscrupulous his methods, Lorini's denunciation succeeded in setting the machinery of the Catholic Church in motion.

And this was the moment in modern history wherein there became a dichotomy between the church and science.

I would suggest that this is a false dichotomy because, after all, it was the church, in an effort to defend political and academic power, that created the divide in the first place.

Today, in our culture, we accept the false premise that science and the Bible ultimately cannot coexist, and if we do believe that science and the Bible are both true, we do not know how to reconcile them because, again, we have accepted the belief that a person cannot ultimately believe that both can be true at the same time.

And this false dichotomy has a continuing tragic legacy because, in an effort to make things make sense, human beings have drawn party lines and taken sides, dismissing one account or the other, and in so doing, abandoning a pursuit of honest truth for the affirmation of their opinions being seen by others as correct, even if they are not.

Teachings like this can tend to become defensive and argumentative instead of probing and seeking truth.

Truth is the ultimate goal in all pursuits.

Truth is the most valuable thing in all the world.

Winston Churchill said that “truth is the most valuable thing in all the world.

It is so valuable that it is often protected by a bodyguard of lies.”

The brilliant apologist, philosopher, and theologian Ravi Zacharias explains very simply what is necessary to ascertain if truth is to be discovered.

He starts with that very goal:

Truth is the ultimate goal in all pursuits

But how do we test the truth?

Truth is determined by its fidelity in two categories:

2 Categories:

a. Correspondence - Does the truth that I am asserting logically correspond with previously determined and/or revealed truth?

b.

Coherence - Is the truth that I am asserting coherent, is it consistent with previously revealed truth?

For example, in court, the attorney making their case are looking for two broad categorical theories: 1; do the answers correspond to what is already known (reality), and 2, when all the answers are seen together, is there a coherence to these answers.

So, we have 1 goal; truth, and 2 categories; correspondence and coherence.

To determine if truth meets those categorical criteria there are 3 tests:

3 Tests:

a. logical consistency b. empirical adequacy c. experiential relevancy

Is it logically consistent?

Is there any way to verify or discredit the assertion, or is it just an imagination?

Does it have any grounding in relational reality?

From this point, there are four questions that must be dealt with:

4 Questions:

Origin - Where did we come from?

Meaning - What is our purpose?

Morality - How do I tell between good and evil

Destiny - What happens to a human being when he or she dies?

Every worldview is made up of the answers to these four questions.

And to know if the answers that we adhere to are accurate, the answers must meet the above and aforementioned criteria in order to be true.

Now to get to these questions, there are 5 research disciplines that must be pulled together, especially for worldview that claims to have all the answers for origin, meaning, morality, and destiny.

God - Theology

Knowledge - Epistemology

Reality - Metaphysics/Sciences - Concerning metaphysics, what is the relationship between mind and matter, and concerning the sciences, how do things work and why are things the way that they are?

Man - Anthropology

Morality - Ethics

Now, today, what I am endeavoring to show you is the Christian worldview, as demonstrated through God’s Word, is a complete worldview, and is coherent and consistent with science, logic, philosophy, reason, and so on.

So there is no reason that science and Scripture, and particularly the book of Genesis, cannot be reconciled.

In fact, I would suggest that science and the Bible are reconciled already, and that we are discovering through the various research disciplines how they are reconciled, not if they are reconciled.

If you are, then, going to counter the claim that the Christian worldview is indeed a sufficient worldview, then you must put your worldview to the same test.

We received a variety of questions concerning science and Genesis.

Most of the questions had to do with the timing of creation, are the days in Genesis literal 24 hour days or not, and the how of the population of the world, did God use evolution in any way as a part of His creating work?

Further question can be summarized as follows:

Why does the earth look so old?

What does the scientific evidence have to say about how life began on this earth?

And finally, what impact does our view of creation vs. evolution have on our everyday lives?

Here are the key teaching themes from God’s Word:

* Jesus was a co-creator with God, Life originated with Him (, John 1:1-5)

* God (the full Trinity) created the heavens and the earth.