There are at least three subject areas that societies around the globe and throughout history have excelled at: mathematics, philosophy and technology. I can think of examples like indigenous Central-South Americans, various Asian populations and the Greco-Roman world. As breathtaking as these may be, each of these subjects are very natural for human achievement and advancement: we count, we think and we make. None are being minimized, but none of these are our crowning achievements. Something much more complex and successful would take that title: Western Civilization.
Without western civilization, you would most likely be a slave or a serf. Without western civilization, you would have less rights and justice. Without western civilization, you would most likely be living in abject poverty. Without western civilization, you would not have free market capitalism nor the industrial revolution. Without western civilization, you would have no university. Without western civilization, superstition would reign. Without western civilization, there would be no science.
We take for granted the progress of western civilization’s unnatural institutions: the promotion of freedom, reason, the free market system and the scientific method. I’m not being bombastic.
But here’s the twist, Western Civilization started only once in history and in only one place in the world: Medieval Christian Europe. Canadian Psychologist Jordan Peterson correctly claims, and I paraphrase, “The Bible is central to western culture and is the central document to western culture.” Simply put, without Jesus, we would never have our Bible and without our Bible, we would never have Western Civilization and without Western Civilization, we would have no science.
kNOw God, kNOw Science
Christian medieval Europe was the perfect utopia for science. Brilliant European Christians led the fight against superstition and irrationality by promoting reason, progress and biblical worldview. Many fields of science must thank Christians as being their progenitors. Here are just a few of them:
- Joseph Lister – Antiseptic Surgery
- Louis Pasteur – Bacteriology
- Isaac Newton – Calculus
- Johann Kepler – Celestial Mechanics
- Robert Boyle – Chemistry
- Georges Cuvier – Comparative Anatomy
- Isaac Newton – Dynamics
- John Ambrose Fleming – Electronics
- James Clerk Maxwell – Electrodynamics
- Michael Faraday – Electro-magnetics
- Lord Kelvin – Energetics
- Henri Fabre – Entomology of Living Insects
- William Herschel – Galactic Astronomy
- Robert Boyle – Gas Dynamics
- Gregor Mendel – Genetics
- Louis Agassiz – Glacial Geology
- James Simpson – Gynecology
- Leonardo Da Vinci – Hydraulics
- Blaise Pascal – Hydrostatics
- Louis Agassiz – Ichthyology
- John Ray – Natural History
- Matthew Maury – Oceanography
- John Woodward – Paleontology
- Rudolph Virchow – Pathology
- Johann Kepler – Physical Astronomy
- Carolus Linnaeus – Systematic Biology
- Lord Kelvin – Thermodynamics
- Georges Cuvier – Vertebrate Paleontology
(These were taken from both the ICR and the Creation websites.)
The “Ten Commandments” of Science
Before scientists can do science, however, they have to believe certain non-scientific ideas. One has to assume such things like order in nature, uniformity in nature, value of hard work, truth, progress, freedom, ethics and a promotion of progress. Some ancient civilizations may have held to some, but not others. However, Judeo-Christian worldview held all.
This is not to say philosophy, technological advancements and mathematical progress of other cultures did not help. Yes, the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese and the Mohammedans contributed too. But they never started the scientific enterprise because their overall beliefs stymied such progress.
Ultimately, the essential factor was Christianity’s assumptions and presuppositions, period. Below are ten foundational Christian worldview beliefs that helped ground science.
1) We assume we have rational and reasonable minds
We need more than just rational minds to study the universe, we must also assume that our minds are rational. The Christian worldview asserts that we were created by a rational God with a rational mind (1 Corinthians 2:16). God is presented as logical, the essence of logic. John uses the Greek word Logos (same root as logic) to describe Jesus (John 1:1). Jesus would point out logical fallacies, such as a false dichotomy (Mark 12:19-27) and would make logical arguments (John 5:19–46). Since it teaches we are created in his image, we too must have rational minds. Thus, we can think God’s thoughts after him, looking at the wonders of his creation.
Plus, not only was Jesus rational, but Paul was a first rate philosopher, being trained by the best Pharisaical philosophers. Paul’s writings contain many logical arguments. For example, his argument in 1 Corinthians 15 concerning the Resurrection and the truth of Christianity.
Contrast this to Islam, Allah is unknowable and capricious. If true, why would we expect rationality in Islam? Materialists also fail, while they now claim to be the rational ones, they have no grounding. Undirected and naturalistic process in a tooth and claw world don’t seem to create rational beings.
2) We assume the universe is knowable, rational and accessible
What a historically novel idea, a knowable and accessible nature! The early fathers of science not only assumed they could study and understand God’s creation, but that nature was rationally created.
However, if your “god” is unknowable, why would its creation be knowable? If you did not believe that there was definite understandable order in nature, as some of the Chinese seemed to have thought, why study it?
3) We assume ethics and morality
Truth, ethics and morality are foundational in the Christian worldview, thus you need to be honest and follow truth. Science is designed to force the researcher to follow the truth wherever it leads, even though it may not always be successful. Thus, honesty, credit, peer review, critique and experiment replication are essential in the scientific world.
Contrariwise, within a materialistic framework, ethics and morality are subjective. Darwinian ethics can’t explain intent and motive in morality, only actions in a subjective way. Nor can it tell us that we are supposed to do right in the future. Sure, doing right may help us survive and pass on our genes here and now, but nothing constrains us to do this in the future. There is no grounding for morality and truthfulness.
4) We assume a cause and effect world
We don’t think our world is arbitrary, rather we think we live in a cause and effect world. Nor do we think that events in the natural world have some sort of metaphysical causes, such as sound making “sound spirits” when trees fall, rather the trees themselves somehow caused the sound. Creation is also not pantheistic nor filled with “nature spirits” or “gods” that will cause things to randomly happen. Also, since “god”, “the gods” or “spirits” are not part of nature, it’s not “taboo” to study nature.
Some Native Americans, however, thought nature was embedded with spirits. For example, survivalist Tom Brown Jr., raised by a Native American grandfather, still teaches you should ask the plant forgiveness before harvesting. Why would you study nature if you had to “destroy” your plant or animal “brother” or “sister?”
5) We assume both naturalistic and mental causes
Science only advances when we follow the evidence. What if the evidence leads to a supernatural cause? Modern science rejects such answer because it assumes naturalism. However, the first scientist did not have this problem. They set out with the scientific method to understand nature’s laws and follow the evidence. They were theists who robustly eschewed “metaphysical naturalism.” Their openness to agent causative events, however, did not stymie their findings. Rather, it more than likely helped pave the way for other study that assume agent causation like SETI, anthropology, archaeology, information science and forensics.
Actually, artificially mandating naturalism slows scientific progress. Outlawing the answer of number 4 may sound intellectual, but if this is done 2 + 2 will always yield wrong answers. The twentieth century’s failure to provide a naturalistic explanation of the origin of life is a prime example: researchers hit the proverbial “brick wall.” Same with the origin of the universe. Assuming things pop into existence without a cause is irrational. Some supernatural, outside our universe cause, seems to be the most rational answer. The evidence loudly points to the Creator, not naturalism.
6) We assume a linear view of time
Science is based off the assumption that time is linear, the universe had a beginning and will have an end. Biblical ideas assume progression from Creation to Judgment day, Genesis to Revelation. One can’t but help think of passages like, “Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.” (Isaiah 44:6) and “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” (Rev 22:13).
However, cyclical view of time or an endless repeating cyclical universe gives no help to science. Consider ancient cultures such as many Native Americans and eastern societies. They assumed a wheel of time, time was cyclical consisting of repeating ages that happen to every being.
7) We assume uniformity in nature
Science only works if there is regularity and uniformity in nature. But we can only seek for it if we assume that’s how nature works. The fathers of science assumed God’s nature was orderly and regular, not capricious, thus his creation would have regularity and order. They read things like “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever.” (Hebrews 13:8) and “Thus says the LORD: If I have not established my covenant with day and night and the fixed order of heaven and earth….” (Jeremiah 33:25).
If this was true, they should be able to find laws that could be counted upon and they could discover regular patterns in nature. In other words, God was the creator and lawgiver and man can discover these laws. They assumed that forces of nature were usually reliable and will not change much from year to year, day to day and minute to minute. This is why the laws of gravity and light are the same wherever you are in the world. It also explains why there is structural and genetic homology in biology. Without uniformity in nature, and the assumption of its existence, we could not make hypothesis and predictions, and then test them.
In a naturalistic worldview, there is no reason to think that uniformity in nature even exists. Why would a universe that came about through chance, random natural process, explosions, mutations, etc., have uniformity?
In addition, philosopher David Hume pointed out the problem of induction. Scientists assume uniformity in nature because the past shows uniformity. But that is circular, thus it can never be proven. This means that the conclusions of science must be taken on faith. So there are no adequate grounds to assume uniformity in nature, unless you assume God grounds order, as I do.
Islam struggles too, teaching Allah is capricious. If so, his creation must also be capricious because “Allah wills” this or that to happen, randomly! Why assume uniformity in nature? Polytheistic religions don’t help either, many gods fight over how the universe should be made, thus you get a mixed up disaster with no uniformity.
8) We assume the need for experimentation
Intuition is good and useful, but not powerful enough to understand our complex world. It needs to be augmented with observation and experimentation to more accurately understand the world. The reason why is that the Christian God is assumed to be a free agent to create as he wills. In addition, his ways and thoughts are above ours. As fallen humans, we also have a limited understanding, and our thinking may not totally understand how God’s creation works. Because of this, we need investigation to confirm or falsify our ideas.
This is why the ancient Greeks never started science: they assumed intelligence, thought and their first principles would be sufficient to understand and explain the workings of the world. While this may be true at one level, examination and experimentation is also required for many concepts. Chinese also had some aborted attempts at science, but their philosophy of tranquility stagnated the enterprise.
9) We assume nature is real
Strange as it may sound, the belief that nature is real and not just abstract is essential. If you don’t think nature is real or that you can really interact with it, why study it? In Christianity, God is real and he really created a real universe. On the other hand, some eastern thought viewed nature as being more or less an illusion and unreal. This stagnated the scientific advancements.
10) We assume nature has value and worthy of study
As a whole, our contemporary culture assumes that nature has value and we should study it. We want to know the truth about it so we can live better and take better care of nature. Christians thought that nature had value and worth since its God’s creation. Thus, our time is well spent understanding the works of God’s hands. It was viewed as a good gift from God and science would bring him glory. We were also given the dominion mandate from God, “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” (Gen 1:31a) “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” (Gen 1:28).
In eastern thought, however, if nature is unreality and inferior to us, it was not worthy of our time to study. Native Americans thought nature contained spirits, thus a taboo to study. The Roman elite thought hard work was for the slaves, thus study of the world would be beneath one’s dignity.
Conclusion
Science, as noted above, along with freedom from slavery, free market capitalism, advanced technology, the industrial revolution and the university system were all born out of western civilization, grounded on the Christian worldview. This was not arbitrary, nor was it just a natural flow of human endeavors. Rather, these progressive ideas were really grounded upon Christian assumptions. Christians assumed things, such as an orderly universe, uniformity in nature, the value of hard work, the promotion of truth, progress was good, freedom was essential and ethics were important. While some ancient civilizations may have believed some of these, it was only the Judeo-Christian worldview that held to all of these, propagating the scientific revolution.
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Great layout for Western Civilization
Great Synopsis.
Thank you for the great post.
Is God the author of confusion?
Genesis 11:9
Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
1 Corinithians 1:27
God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.
And why pick on Islam, what about Jainism or Ruism, of course these teach about enquiry and learning, more than your Christianity does.
Any religion that answers questions with Faith, is one that is unscientific and illogical. I think the Carl Sagan quote works will here.
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”
Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Your quote reveals how little Mr. Sagan knew of biblical Christianity. The God of the Bible is infinitely more than we can ever conceive. Scientific exploration confirms what the believer has always known in this regard. Small-minded men may have used the power-structure of organized religion to obstruct the truth, but the God of the Bible has always been declared glorious by the things that He created (Psalm 8, Psalm 19, Romans 1, etc.). It is a sad thing that Prof. Sagan did not respond to the wonders of creation in the way that God intended us to respond. Sadly, in the words of the Apostle Paul, he has been found “without excuse” (Romans 1).
The Bible made many specific claims about the universe between (3000 BC-100 AD) that revealed it was far grander and more immense than any other intellectuals in history realized, exactly as Sagan asked. Biblical and historical faith is btw, based entirely on evidence, facts and proof. Countless scholars show this.
VERY briefly the Bible speaks of a created universe with subsequent expansion and a round/spherical earth hanging on nothing.
Biblical cosmology speaks of God creating the universe (Hebrews 1:2) the movement of the stars after that beginning (Job 38:31), ~15 verses speak of an expansion stretching from that beginning (Isaiah 44:24, Isaiah 42:5; Isaiah 45:12; Isaiah 51:13, etc.) and a number of stars comparable to the grains of sand, but finite (Psalms 147:4, Genesis 22:17) and a round/spherical earth resting/hanging on nothing (Isaiah 40:22, Job 26:7) and more.
OVERVIEW OF THE BIBLICAL MODEL OF COSMOLOGY
1) TIME BEGAN: The Bible makes a testable/falsifiable claim that time had a beginning.
“We speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 1 Corinthians 2:7 (see also 2 Timothy 1:9, Titus 1:2, Jude 1:25)
2) EX NIHILO CREATION: There is either a Creator or an infinite regress. Logically, a Creator who made the entire universe would have to make at least some aspects of creation come into being out of nothing (ex nihilo). The Bible makes a testable/falsifiable claim that God created many things ex nihilo (through the power of His word).
“…for he (God) issued his command, and they came into being.” Psalm 148:5
“The Lord merely spoke, and the heavens were created. He breathed the word,and all the stars were born.” Psalm 33:6
3) GOD CREATED THE UNIVERSE: The Bible makes a testable/falsifiable claim that the universe was created and so had a beginning. At this time space and time began as well.
“Through the Son He (God) created the universe. By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command…” Hebrews 1:2-3 (Colossians 1:15-17)
4) GOD, THE “I AM” EXISTS: A universe with a beginning refutes infinite regress and requires a Prime Mover who always existed.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega—the beginning and the end,”[a] says the Lord God. “I am the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come—the Almighty One.”Revelation 1:8-9 (Exodus 3:14)
5) GOD CREATED EVERYTHING IN THE UNIVERSE: The Bible makes a testable/falsifiable claim that God created everything in the universe.
“God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him.” John 1:3(Colossians 1:15-17)
6) GOD CREATED THE VISIBLE & INVISIBLE: The Bible makes a testable/falsifiable claim that the universe was created from the invisible and that God created both the visible and the invisible.
“The universe was formed at God’s command, so that what was seen was not made out of what was visible. (Hebrews 11:3, Colossians 1:15-17)
7) GOD CREATED THE WORLD FOR LIFE–FINE TUNING: The Bible makes a testable/falsifiable claim that God created a world for life, with fixed constants/natural laws in the universe and on this world which hold it together. Thus we would expect tofind fine tuning in the universe.
“For the Lord is God,and he created the heavens and earth and put everything in place.He made the world to be lived in,not to be a place of empty chaos.” Isaiah 45:18 (Jeremiah 31:35-36, Genesis 1:14-18, Colossians 1:17, Isaiah 42:5)
8) GOD CREATED ALL THE STARS /LARGE, BUT FINITE #: The Bible makes a testable/falsifiable claim that God created all stars & their of stars is incredibly large (like sand), but, finite since they are named.
“The Lord merely spoke…and all the stars were born.” Psalm 33:6 (Isaiah 40:26)
“I will multiply your descendants[a] beyond number, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore.”Genesis 22:17
“He counts the stars and calls them all by name. Psalm 147:4
“The sun has one kind of glory, while the moon and stars each have another kind. And even the stars differ from each other in their glory.”1 Corinthians 15:4
9) STAR MOVEMENT/GRAVITATION/SEASONS: The Bible makes a testable/falsifiable claim that the stars move and implies that there are gravitationally bound star groups. The sun moon and stars help determine seasons.
“Can you direct the movement of the stars— binding the cluster of the Pleiades or loosening the cords of Orion?” Job 38:31
Then God said, “Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them be signs to mark the seasons, days, and years.” Genesis 1:14-18
10) OLD UNIVERSE: There are no verses in the Bible that speak of the age of the universe. Jesus however does say, ” My Father is always working, and so am I.” (John 5:17) Since it doesn’t seem likely that God was living in an empty universe for all of eternity in the past, we can make a logical scientific inference that God was creating different parts of the universe all throughout eternity. Scientific evidence shows that the universe could be 250 billion or even a trillion years old or more. http://journalofcosmology.com/BigBang101.html
NOTE: Some people think the Bible claims the universe is 6,000 years old. This IS possible. But, there is no specific claim in the Bible about that. Genesis 1 is about the creation of the earth, its solar system and maybe a few more surrounding stars. But, Genesis 1 makes no definite claim about the age or creation of the universe at all. It is earth-centric, not universe-centric.
11) EXPANDING UNIVERSE: The Bible makes a testable/falsifiable claim in ~15 verses that the universe has been stretched/expanded from the time it began, in limited earthly terms, sort of like spreading out a tent.
“This is what the LORD says—your Redeemer and Creator: “I am the LORD, who made all things. I alone stretched out the heavens. Who was with me when I made the earth?” Isaiah 44:24 (see also: Job 9:8, Psalm 104:2, Isaiah 40:22, Isaiah 42:5; Isaiah 45:12; Isaiah 51:13, Isaiah 48:13, Jeremiah 10:12, Jeremiah 51:15, Zechariah 12:1, etc.).
In regard to how these support an expansion of the universe, consider:
a) The term stretching is linguistically about the same as expanding, considering translation from a different language/culture, the ancient minds and simplified language God had to use to make it understandable for them.
b) The term heavens, shamayim (שָׁמַיִם), is used to refer to both the earthly sky and the universe.
c) To get from a universe with a beginning to what human beings have been able to see, an expansion is required. This is simple logic and this concept was not at all foreign to the Hebrew mind.
We have a beginning to the universe and movement of stars and stretching concepts as above and observations of a very large number of stars and constellations and more. These all together require that the biblical cosmology believes in a universe with a beginning and an expansion from that.
Hey Bryan, great summary:) Have you ever heard the late RC Sproul argue that God does NOT exist? I think you’d like and agree with the “why” behind his argument. Cheers.
https://www.ligonier.org/blog/rc-sproul-proves-god-does-not-exist/
The vast majority of scientists on all sides agree that the universe had a beginning. And since a person cannot create himself, and a world cannot create itself, a universe also cannot create itself. It must have someone or something else that brought it into being. If something does not exist, it of course cannot do anything at all, let alone bring itself or anything else into existence. Thus a Designer of some kind is required once we are sure that there was a beginning to anything.
Arno Penzias, co-discoverer of the microwave background radiation and 1978 Nobel Prize recipient in physics, stated
“The best data we have (concerning the big bang) are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.” New York Times, March 12, 1978. http://www.newcollege.unsw.edu.au/lecture_pdf/1099874611879bb_hawk.NCL.pdf:
Atheists of course were deeply troubled by the idea that our universe came into existence from nothing in finite time and propose all sorts of hypotheses to get out of this difficulty (static universe, cyclical universe, multiple big bangs, a multiverse (which actually just multiplies the problems), steady state and others. The scientific fact though is that all these eternal universe models have failed. Isham exposes why atheists resisted the evidence for the Big Bang for so long:
“Perhaps the best argument…that the Big Bang supports theism is the obvious unease with which it is greeted by some atheist physicists. At times this has led to scientific ideas…being advanced with a tenacity which so exceeds their intrinsic worth that one can only suspect the operation of psychological forces lying very much deeper than the usual academic desire of a theorist to support his or her theory.” –Imperial College of London astrophysicist C.J. Isham.
Matter, energy, the universe and its natural laws were created by God and since that initial creation have been expanding. At least the initial aspects of this must have been ex nihilo. The main alternatives to ex nihilo are steady state or a dozen other ancient cosmologies (debunked and abandoned by science) and infinite regression (untestable and unanswerable scientifically or logically). Creation at present has beaten all other ancient competitors in this area and current cosmology is building on this foundation(even if they want to sweep that fact under the rug due to bias against creation science). Keep in mind that Even ONE claim or prediction that is confirmed is evidence. This is just a basic understanding of science. The weight of evidence overall determines what is true to the best of our ability and is considered proof of a theory.
Dr. Jastrow, director of the Mount Wilson observatory once led by Edwin Hubble, was personally agnostic about ‘religious matters,”. But, he reviewed some of the cosmological evidence (such as the SURGE evidence listed below) and concluded,
“Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world…the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.” God and the Astronomers, p. 14 http://www.amazon.com/God-Astronomers-Robert-Jastrow/dp/0393850056/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379220679&sr=1-2&keywords=God+and+the+Astronomers#reader_0393850056
In an interview with Christianity Today, Jastrow said
“Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth…That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.”[2] “A Scientist Caught Between Two Faiths: Interview With Robert Jastrow,” Christianity Today, August 6, 1982
There are major 5 lines of scientific evidence, denoted by the acronym SURGE, that point to the definite beginning of the space-time continuum They are:
S–The Second Law of Thermodynamics,
U–The Expanding Universe,
R–The Radiation Afterglow from the Big Bang Explosion,
G–The Great galaxy seeds in the Radiation Afterglow, and
E–Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.”
The scientific fact though is that all eternal universe models have failed which falsifies the claims of atheism in history in that regard. Some of the more objective/honest elite cosmologists like Vilenkin have demonstrated that the universe must have a beginning conclusively. Vilenkin is an atheist and as such is making conclusions of vast evidence which are AGAINST his bias. Why would he lie and talk about facts which conflict with atheism and support theism? There’s no reason for it except that he’s trying to be honest.
The highly respected secular cosmologist Vilenkin writes:
“We discuss three candidate scenarios which seem to allow the possibility that the universe could have existed forever with no initial singularity: eternal inflation, cyclic evolution, and the emergent universe. The first two of these scenarios are geodesically incomplete to the past, and thus cannot describe a universe without a beginning. The third, although it is stable with respect to classical perturbations, can collapse quantum mechanically, and therefore cannot have an eternal past.”
http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.4658
Vilenkin puts his conclusions about the scientific evidence regarding a beginning to the universe bluntly:
“It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.” (Many Worlds in One [New York: Hill and Wang, 2006], p.176).
There IS NO evidence based secular theory of origins. PERIOD. The sole and only scientific theory at present is creation science theory. So in this area of the origins of the universe (and quite a few others as well) you can either
1) objective choose science and biblical theism or
2) fallacies and atheism, agnosticism, certain other religions (such as ones that taught steady state, spontaneous generation, etc.)
Those are your only choices. Dr. DeYoung, Ph.D. in Physics from Iowa State University says it simply regarding the origins of the universe.
“Astronomers sometimes speak of origin from a “quantum mechanical fluctuation within a vacuum.” However, an energy source is still needed. Actually, there is no secular origin theory, since every idea is based on preexisting matter or energy.” creation.com/astronomy-and-the-bible
If we have a beginning to a universe, then that universe by all laws of logic, science and common sense must have a cause that brings it in to existence. A Cause that could bring a universe into existence would certainly meet every rational definition of God.
Starting with the universe, creation is the only science based explanation for its existence. Why? You can’t be your own mother. The universe can’t create itself. If it had a beginning, by all laws and inferences of science on the topic, it had to have a Creator. Cosmology and biology have just not shown any ability to create the other things mentioned without any intelligence guiding them. Once these things EXIST and major processes are functioning, then mutation and natural selection can have some limited influence. But, to say they are responsible for origins is ludicrous, similar to saying the picking the best players for a sports team is the method responsible for those athletes being born.
There is simply no evidence of any kind for a universe from truly nothing without a God involved. None.
Science has always been the product of intelligence and enquiring minds and had very little to do with Christianity and, were it not for Galileo Galilei who narrowly escaped death for his theory, Christianity would still be insisting that the sun revolved around the earth.
Science started thousands of years ago when primitive people began to grasp lunar cycles and seasons and figured out how to count, with the concept of zero being a huge advance. The knowledge that the earth was round and its dimensions long pre-dated Christianity. The reality is that every worthwhile invention and discovery in the last thousand years was the product of European (white) minds with contributions from Egypt, the fertile crescent and Asia in the previous four thousand or so years. The Mohammedans believed that “if it was in the Quran they had it and if it was not in the Quran they did not need it” and so contributed nothing to science. Over the past 105 years, 14 million Jews have won 15-dozen Nobel Prizes while only three Nobel Prizes for science have been won by 1.4 billion Muslims.
The list of scientists has been padded by the duplication of several names but I would point out that when Isaac Newton first published his ideas he contradicted a belief that comets were a signal from an angry god that he would strike sinners and bring disaster. Some believer!
An excellent book is “Freemasonry and the Birth of Modern Science” by Lomas, Robert. In 1660, within a few months of the restoration of Charles II, a group of 12 men, including Robert Boyle and Christopher Wren, met in London to set up a society to study the mechanisms of nature. At a time when superstition and magic governed reason, the repressive dogma of Christian belief silenced many, and where post-war loyalties ruined careers, these men forbade the discussion of religion and politics at their meetings.
I’m not saying you’re necessarily wrong, (and you definitely know more about this topic than me) but there are 2 things I would like to point out.
Firstly, the idea that the universe was geocentric came from Ancient Greece. It was seen as a stable idea because well there were no telescopes at the time. After all if you look up at the sky, it looks like the sun moon and stars are going in a cycle around the earth, so the Greeks just assumed that that was happening. Christians would later adopt this A: because they also saw all the celestial objects revolve around the world and B: they thought if fairly smart Greek philosophers accepted it they should too.
Secondly Galileo was a Christian as well. He even quoted that “God is known by nature in his works and by doctrine in his revealed word.” I know that doesn’t necessarily refute your point since at the end of your comment you said that certain scientists wouldn’t talk about God because of dogmatic Christians, but it still matters in the context of the article. Also, to be fair you’ll find a dogmatic group of people in every worldview/religion, that’s not always the product of the doctrine itself.
That’s all I wanted to say. Also thank you for recommending an interesting read. I’ll check it out if I have the time.
Science recognizes five things. Time, force, motion, space and matter. Gen. 1:1, In the beginning(time), God (force), created( motion), the heavens(space), and earth ( matter). The Bible proves science not science proves the Bible.
I AGREE! Science actually agrees with Christianity tho… they don’t recognize it…