Does Science Disprove God?

Good evening, if you happen to be new here let me add my word of welcome to you. You all could have done a lot of things with your Wednesday night but you chose to be here and I count that as no small thing. What we get to be a part of is really, genuinely special. As you look around the room and consider your friends here, you see many different stories, many different backgrounds and upbringings, but throughout this room, as different as we all may be, we are all bound together in the family of God. That is what we are about. We are about being the family of God.

And that is why last week, and for the many weeks to come, you will hear me over and over ask you, “Who’s your one?”

Who is the one person in your life who you know does not know of the hope and joy that is found in Jesus and in Jesus alone? I am going to ask you all, if you claim that you are a Christian, if you claim that Jesus is your savior, then you would pick out one person in your life to pray for, daily, to engage regularly, and to share freely for the purposes of spreading the Gospel wherever it is that God has strategically placed you.

That could look like an invite to church on a Wednesday or a Sunday, but I hope that as you step outside of these doors you wouldn’t just “go back into your routines.” But you would see this vast world in front of you and see many people who need to know that Jesus loves them so much that he died for them. Plain and simple.

Yesterday afternoon I left the office a bit early to head downtown to Baptist Hospital. I think its called “St. Thomas Midtown” now but I was born there, it was called Baptist, so I’m gonna call it Baptist.

By grandfather has been battling some illnesses lately. Nothing necessarily catastrophic, but it has become painfully evident over the past 8 years or so, the same thing that that is true for all of us. These bodies, this flesh, is fallen. We get sick. We break bones. And ultimately it comes true of everyone… No one gets out of this life alive. My Grandfather will turn 88 years old on October 5 if the Lord wills it. My birthday is on the 6th, the day that we head down to Atlanta. My entire life I’ve always celebrated my birthday alongside of my grandaddy.

I bring all of this up to point out someone in my life who has lived so much of his life with unrelenting faithfulness to Jesus. His health is failing. And for many other people in his situation it would be easy to get depressed, to be a grouchy old man lamenting why all these things are happening to him. But you know what my grandfather is doing each and every day he is in the hospital?

A nurse will walk in and ask him how he is doing and he’ll say, “I’m feeling alright, but I know the good Lord’s got me and I’m trusting in the Lord with all my heart and leaning not on my own understanding and in all my ways submitting to him,”

Just as a doctor will take that little hammer and bump your knee and without thought your leg will jolt upward, my grandfather’s genuine instinct, without thought, is to glorify God in his weakness. I think that’s what Paul meant when he said,

[Slide: ]

Therefore, so that I would not exalt myself, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to torment me so that I would not exalt myself. Concerning this, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it would leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.”

Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and in difficulties, for the sake of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

My grandfather is a smart man. He’s done very well for himself in this life, but by no means is he a rocket scientist or a physicist. He cannot explain to you creation science in its finest detail, but what he does know, or better yet who he knows, is the God who hung the stars. All of this world and God’s word testify to an all powerful God who spilled out his majesty on the canvas of creation and it has led him to utter and complete worship.

And that is where we are landing this evening when we consider our next question in this series called, the leap of doubt.

[Slide]

Hasn’t Science disproven God?

Many people in this day and age want to tell you that in order to be educated and reasonable, that you have to give way to naturalistic thought. Meaning that you ascribe to the naturalistic order, that everything must have an evidenced and explained reason. Right? And that has become just embedded into our brains in the circles that we have grown up in. How many have you have had written on your paper at school or a comment made, “prove it,” or “defend your answer.”

Just as a

Many people in this day and age want to tell you that in order to be educated and reasonable, that you have to give way to naturalistic thought. Meaning that you ascribe to the naturalistic order, that everything must have an evidenced and explained reason. Right? And that has become just embedded into our brains in the circles that we have grown up in. How many have you have had written on your paper at school or a comment made, “prove it,” or “defend your answer.”

Next time just do as this kid did.

[slide]

All joking aside, we do not live in a day where many people will bow down to a golden calf like we’ve read in Exodus, but I would argue that many people commit the same fault when we turn to science and worship it as gospel. We turn to the created instead of the creator. We turn to the majesty of the earth and everything going on in it, and we fail to see the author behind it.

That is what Paul says in when he says,

[slide]

(CSB)

18 For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, 19 since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them.

20 For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made. As a result, people are without excuse.

21 For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became worthless, and their senseless hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles.

Like I said, people may not be bowing down to the golden calf anymore, but many people will look at what we call faith and dismiss it as unreasoned, ignorant, and false. And with their hearts they construct a whole new god, a false idol called pride, where if anything cannot pass their own finite brain, it cannot be true.

But with science in mind, let us take a deeper look into how we should approach things like the natural order and the world around us from a Christian perspective.

We won’t open to there but many of us have started a bible reading plan enough times to at least read the first chapter of Genesis enough times to finish the sentence… “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…

He created the expanse between the waters….

He created the dry land and he saw that it was what? Good.

Plants, vegetation, good. Beasts of the field, fish of the sea, birds of the sky and it was what ____?

A greater light to rule the day and a lesser one to rule the night God made it and he saw that it was… good?

(CSB)

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.”

27 So God created man in his own image;

he created him in the image of God;

he created them male and female.

28 God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.” 29 God also said, “Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the surface of the entire earth and every tree whose fruit contains seed. This will be food for you, 30 for all the wildlife of the earth, for every bird of the sky, and for every creature that crawls on the earth—everything having the breath of life in it—I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good indeed.

God designed this world to reflect his nature, his character, his holiness. And it was good. And please take note that he created this world and all of its wonder and it was only after he created man and woman in his own image that the declaration was very good. You read it here that God gives man special dominion over creation. Not as the creators, but as caretakers.

You read Genesis and it falls out yes to inform us of this creator speaking into existence all that is around us but you cannot help but notice that there is a constant build up. For those of you who are musically inclined, there is a crescendo meaning that God ramps things up and boom, he gives man and woman his own image to bear and reflect.

It's musical. It’s poetic. Yes it is informative but it speaks to the beauty of our creator God as well. So many of us turn to Genesis and criticize it that it is not like our biology textbook. The intent of Genesis was not to give us the answers to some test that we will be quizzed on at some point in life but the point of Genesis was to cause our hearts to fall down in worship.

It was never meant to teach us the ins and outs of subatomic biology or physics though you can see through those things that there has been some sort of order placed around this earth and that in and of itself clues us into the thought, surely all of this couldn’t have just been accident.

Evidence of a divine creator is all around us. Since the 1930s we have a growing body of data that shows that this universe is constantly expanding, and if that is so that means there was an origin point. You can’t expand from no substance right? So you have a single origin point and a boom of energy that spews out all that we know around us and something that caused it to happen, yes? It seems mighty audacious to me to imply that all of that was merely because of shear dumb luck.

If I could have you take one thing away tonight I want you to know in your heart of hearts that all of this, this world and all of its beauty testifies to a beautiful creator.

And from that we see the observable world around us. The universe as we know just happens to be the right size, right density, right chemical composition and balance of forces to make life possible? Or how about this earth? Our planet just happens to have the right atmospheric composition, proximity to the sun for warmth and the mass amounts of water to enable life? This sounds a lot more like provision and a lot less like probability, chance, or luck.

That would be an incredibly luck roll of the dice. At some point, chance just seems to give way to design.

Was anyone a huge Lego enthusiast growing up? Or models? Or puzzles? I was absolutely awful at Legos, it always turned out that all my pieces from different sets just got jumbled together from different sets and I would just see how big of a tower I could construct.

But did any of you go in for the big sets like the Death Star from Star Wars, or Hogwartz? What is more likely that I would be able to bag up all those pieces from a set and shake them together and they would eventually fall in line and poof, there’s the death star. Or if I was to construct that set by design that in the end eventually I’d come out with something that looked orderly and put together.

If I could have you take one thing away tonight I want you to know in your heart of hearts that all of this, this world and all of its beauty testifies to a beautiful creator.

The more and more we peel it apart the more and more we see the handiwork of a masterful creator. From the telescope to the microscope, God’s creation declares His glory.

Now there is a lot that I am leaving out tonight, partially because there is no way I could cover every aspect of creationism in 20-25 minutes, and the other part of it is that I am not a physicist, biologist, or an expert in any of those fields where I can super intelligently speak to such things. But what I do know, what my grandfather knows, and what I am asking you to understand here tonight is this one thing… I want you to know in your heart of hearts that all of this, this world and all of its beauty testifies to a beautiful creator.

says that God is not a God of disorder, but of peace and so too has he reigned in what otherwise would be chaos and brought it to order; so too does he take the chaos in our little worlds and he leverages even those moments to testify to his goodness.

What I am asking you to do is to merely let the data speak for itself.

20 For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made.

The Bible will often speak to many difficult things to understand. Things that perplex us, confuse us, and even disturb us. It reveals the capacities of our intellect.

The more and more we peel back into the nature of God and who He is, he is good to reveal himself; but eventually we all arrive at mystery, eventually we all are left in awe.

(CSB)

33 Oh, the depth of the riches

both of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God!

How unsearchable his judgments

and untraceable his ways!

Just as Paul says here, I hope that as we go to the Lord and eventually are left at the limits of our understandings, we would respond in praise that he is above all.

36 For from him and through him

and to him are all things.

To him be the glory forever. Amen.

Would you please pray?

Holy, holy, holy are you oh lord. The whole earth is filled with your glory. Father in Heaven we pray that you would open our eyes to behold what it is that you have revealed, but God as we wade into mystery, turn our hearts to worship you without ceasing, realizing that for those who are in you, there will come a day where there is no more mystery and we will be before your very face.

Father God I pray that if there is anyone in this room who has not seen this world as revealing of your glory and your goodness, God that you would bring them to that point tonight of turning from their own understanding of how this world works, and turn towards you and how you designed all these things to testify about your holiness, your majesty, your glory. And all of this is given to us and made possible through your Son Jesus and his work on the cross.

If you need to speak to anyone tonight, pull a leader aside and lets speak. And I beg of you, if there are any of you who are in doubt or have yet to surrender your life to Jesus as your Savior, let’s take care of that tonight.

Hear now Lord, your people cry out to you. And its in your Son’s name we pray.

Amen.