Science

Fools

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DuncecapThe fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none who does good.
—Psalms 14:1 ESV

The English Standard Version translation shows 202 verses in the Bible that contain some variation of the root word fool. Reading those verses makes it evident that the world is filled with fools and folly.

Indeed, we are all fools in wisdom and knowledge when compared against God.

But some don’t get this. And they don’t comprehend it because they have no humility. If anything, they exult in their foolishness:

Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.
—Proverbs 28:26 ESV

Claiming to be wise, they became fools…
—Romans 1:22 ESV

I’m tired of foolish talk. Sadly, we live in an age when the people babbling on like fools are most likely viewed as wise by most of the world. I see a lot of scientists who get face time in the media prattling on with foolish and desperate theories about this and that, and it’s clear after a while that the one thing you can say most assuredly about their views is that they desperately want God to vanish. Fact is, God doesn’t care what they think because such people are fools, no matter how many letters and titles they stack before and after their names.

The really sad part about that is almost all of Western science is based on the ideas of scientists who were Christians, or at least who ascribed to a Christian worldview. In fact, because the Christian faith is one of the only ones that contends that God is both knowable and understandable and the creator of an ordered world that reflects His knowability and understandability, science is even made possible. What would be the point of examining a capricious world built on the whims of an unknowable God or on the ruthlessness of a random world? No, that science exists at all is because God Is, God Was, and God Will Ever Be.

But then, the fool can’t begin to comprehend that truth. Somehow, the fool thinks that faith and science can’t co-exist or that science alone can answer all the questions of life. Which forces us to ask, in the end, who then is the truly close-minded?

I listen to a lot of discussions between atheists and theists, and the one thing that never fails to strike me is that for all their learning, the atheists never seem to know all that much. Their arguments are remarkably simpleminded, and when people of faith bring up the slightest aspect of what it means to live by faith, the atheist seems baffled by such reasoning.

But then, atheists are just people who are unable to admit they are sinners and that their thoughts are futile and packed with one sinful idea after another, and isn’t it easier to justify all that mental futility and wickedness by erasing God? For intellectual cowards, yes, that may be true, but not for sober people who look at life with any seriousness.

I’m not surprised that people try to erase God as a means to justify their immoral lifestyles, though. A recent scientific study shows that many people are unable to morally reason from the perspective of someone whose beliefs differ from theirs. In most cases it is people who hold more “liberal” attitudes about life who cannot grasp the thinking of more conservative people, though the reverse is demonstrably not the case.  While this is not intended as a political statement, it nonetheless shows that an incapacity to grasp some moral truths does exist in people, especially those who proclaim their “enlightenment.” In that same way, the Bible says that issues of faith are foolishness to many. Things of the Spirit are incomprehensible to them:

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
—1 Corinthians 2:12-14 ESV

We live in an age when spiritual discernment is at an all-time low. Our leaders talk all sorts of lofty ideas, but they cannot bring themselves to talk about God or anything related to Him because they don’t know Him. In the end, their wisdom is actually foolishness, and that foolishness is blasted out for everyone to see and hear and receive as “wisdom” when it is anything but.

Sadly, some who self-identify as faithful are just as foolish. Many people who parade themselves as Christians are peddling fear instead of faith. That’s foolishness, too, and yet those hucksters are able to gather around them a sycophantic horde and sell millions of books that do nothing but stir the pot of fear.

In the midst of all these fools, what does God ask of us? It’s pretty simple actually:

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
—Micah 6:8 ESV

Fools can do none of those things. Only the wise can acknowledge that, without Jesus Christ, we are all fools.

Sins of the Fathers (and Mothers)

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‘The LORD is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’
—Numbers 14:18 ESV

Despite the fact that the vast majority of scientific discoveries that undergird our modern life were made by Christians and that science in Europe outstripped science in the East and Middle East because Christian Europeans believed God is knowable and His Creation understandable, atheists continue to overlook facts and claim Christians are anti-science. They claim that believing the Bible is tantamount to disbelieving science, and they like to insist the Bible, when it talks about science, is “underinformed.”

Lately, I’ve been fascinated with the science of epigenetics, and I am because of the Bible verse that begins this post.

Epigenetics explains some of the presence of supposed “junk” in the human genome and why we can’t trace every genetic outcome to genes alone. While standard genetic theory could account for the sameness of identical twins, even down to shared behaviors, it could not account for the differences. Enter epigenetics.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

When Darwinism hit Victorian sensibilities like a sledgehammer, it also pounded the life out the widely accepted theories of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Lamarckism postulates that a generation could make choices and changes it could then pass on to progeny.  While Lamarck did not originate the idea, he nonetheless championed it and expanded on its principles so well that it gained his name.

Like many Enlightenment scientists in France, Lamarck was not a supporter of Christianity. That said, he continued to believe that chance did not run the cosmos, adhering to the ordered, planned, and meaningful universe concept likewise expressed by Christians.

Today, the field of epigenetics is so hot, it borders on incendiary. It turns out there may be more to the idea of being “born that way,” no matter what type of deviance or godliness “that way” might be.

Epigenetics demonstrates that a good or bad genetic expression may not express unless turned on. Remarkably (or should I write Lamarckably), an organism may have the genetic predilection toward a bad outcome yet that bad outcome never arises. Conversely, it may if switched on by the environment, nurture, or personal choices. The genetic disease possessed by twins may be expressed solely by the twin who decides to eat certain types of food; the gene combo for the disease literally switches on due to epigenetics. And this can also be passed to progeny.

Which is where sins of the fathers kick in. Epigenetics is showing that repeated bad choices by a parent can lead to a tendency in the offspring to manifest the same bad behavior. Lamarck rears his head yet again.

So, the visitation of the iniquities of the fathers (and mothers) to the third and fourth generation has a possible epigenetic link. Some epigeneticists are able to break down certain sinful behaviors into father-spawned or mother-spawned. Contrariwise, a godly parent may pass on a positive epigenetic tendency toward his or her offspring’s faith in God.

We are fearfully and wonderfully made, yet we are also damaged by the Fall of Man. That damage goes deep, even to our genetics, which we are now learning may bend us toward wrongful behavior because of what our moms and dads did. Or in those cases when we overcome, toward faithful living.

Looks like a case of science proving the Bible.

Set in Stone?

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Normally, I don’t touch on a lot of science here, but this recent paleological find is too important to ignore.

Archaeopteryx fossilJust this week, paleontologists (i.e.—”dinosaur scientists”) have announced the finding of soft tissue in the fossilized remains of a T. Rex dated at 70 million years old. This extraordinary discovery may actually slam closed the issue of whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded or not. In a Jurassic Park-like side note, there may actually be genetic material that can be analyzed in the tissue.

But what is important about this—at least to young Earth creationists—is the fact that this find violates common theories used by Darwinists to explain fossilization. Not only that, but it calls into question how soft tissue can survive for 7o million years. Perhaps it’s not truly millions of years old.

The sad part is that this is not being noted. It’s the dirty little secret that the Darwinists don’t want to entertain, even if it is staring them in the face.

So let’s let time reveal how this discovery plays out. It could be fascinating for Bible-believing Christians who ascribe to young Earth creation models.

{Image: Archaeopteryx fossil, possibly the most famous in the world}