Episode Transcript
Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Dr. John Ashton.
The other day I listened to a talk by a high school teacher in a christian school, and she mentioned that many students are questioning about God. And one of the questions that one of the students had asked this particular teacher was, how can we know that God is real? There's a couple of issues here with that question, but it's really a very important question. How can we know that God is real? Now, there's a whole area of knowing and limitations on what we can know, but we can know what we believe, and that's a different particular situation or particular case, and we believe on the base of evidence.
But to know something is something that is quite definite. So we can know, for example, that two plus two equals four. Mathematically, that's something that we can know.
But whether it is raining outside at the moment is something that we can't necessarily know. Now, we may hear, for example, what sounds like rain on the roof. We may be in a building with a tin roof and we can hear this pitter patter echoing off the iron roof.
But of course, I'm reminded of an ad that was on television for corn. And this older couple are sitting on the veranda of this house in a really dry, outback Australian environment. And the older gentleman races inside to his wife and know, whatever her name is, Emily. Emily. The rains have come because upstairs his grandchildren have just bitten into this juicy corn and the corn is dripping down on the roof and it sounds like rain.
So we can look at these limitations. And I guess this was also recognised when Richard Dawkins, a well known atheist and proponent of evolution, together with some other funding that he got, put ads on buses a number of years ago, which said, and the ad read something like this, I'm just going from memory, there probably is no God. So don't worry and enjoy yourself.
But notice he used the term there probably is no God because science faces the same issue. Scientists can't say that there is no God. People can't say, I know that there is no God because we can't know that in the sense of knowing we can either believe that there is no God or that we can believe that there is a God.
And the basis of our belief then comes back to evidence. Now, one of the problems and the issues that we have in our current education system, and it runs right through from early education through to university, is that there's this trend now, particularly in western countries, to keep God out of education. And I think one of the reasons this has occurred is there's been a confusion in between God and religion.
So religion, of course, is how we practise worship of God, or how we practise our relationship with God can be termed as a religion. And of course there would be a lot of variation in thoughts about how we should relate to God and what we should do there. And of course, we have the different religions of the world, but the main monotheistic religions of the world, of course, are Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
And of course, as a Christian, the christian basis is the Bible. Now, I can remember when I first thought about the issues of whether or not there is a God and how we can get to know God. I remember clearly asking my mother about that, how do we find out about God? And her reply was, well, you go to church, and there was a little Methodist church near where we lived.
And I remember going to that church one Sunday evening, I think it was, and for the service, and the minister there preached on the need for us to accept Jesus as our saviour, that we were lost because of the evil things that we had done, that we were going to miss out on eternal life, on being in heaven with God, and that we needed to accept Jesus, our saviour, who died in our place on the cross so God could forgive us, we could come to God and be sorry for the things that we'd done wrong. And if that was genuine, God forgave us and we were right. We were made right with God through Jesus’ sacrifice.
And of course, that was the christian message at that time. And he made a call for those who would like to accept Jesus as their saviour to come forward. And I thought, well, that's me.
I'm certainly not a perfect person, but when I die, I didn't want to face eternity in some unknown. I wanted to face eternity in unknown. That was described as a beautiful, known, a beautiful place to be and to be with God, the creator of the universe.
And so I realised that in life we have to make this choice. Where do we spend eternity? And of course, that was the big sign that was written in 2000 when the fireworks were celebrated on New Year's Eve at Sydney Harbour Bridge. The main close of the programme came the words eternity appeared in flaming lights on the harbour bridge.
And it really is an important question. When we die, what happens? Do we just rot away? And that's the end of us altogether, totally. But I think there's an intuition, though, hang on, that is not the end.
And of course, the Bible describes how God is going to destroy this earth, that God will come again, the earth will be destroyed and made completely new again. So just like God originally destroyed the earth with a flood because of the evil in the time of Noah and saved people to start again, this time the evil has got so bad, the earth will be totally destroyed by fire and remade, beautiful, and God will resurrect those who have died, who have chosen him, who have made the decision. I want to do the right thing.
I want to live in harmony with my fellow man and with nature and with God. And of course God offers to perform that miracle to change us, that we will be changed if that's the choice that we make. And to me that was an important and sensible thing to do because we don't know when we're going to die, we can have some sort of terrible accident, something can happen and that's it, that's our time on earth here is over.
But there's a couple of things. We know that our thoughts are non material. Evolution, we know, deals with the material atoms and molecules that make up, but our thoughts are non material.
Who we are is non material. People say well, your brain's material, that's true, but it's our thoughts that control what we do. Our thinking and our thoughts are non material.
We can't weigh our thoughts, we can't measure their volume, we can detect different voltage activity in our brain that our thoughts cause. But I can make a decision now as to what I'm going to say next. I choose that. I can choose to. Somebody says, do you move your little finger? I can make the choice to move my little finger or not move my little finger. I'm not programmed.
I can have this free will of choice and this is again something that science can't explain. But again I was faced with how do I know God is real? And how can I find out more about this? What's the evidence? And as I spoke to my Mum about this, she suggested that I go up to the local Seventh-day Adventist church because they had a Bible study there every morning. And that's when I started going to church and I found it quite interesting and, I may have mentioned in an earlier episode, that I prayed my first prayer.
A top scholarship was being advertised at the time, the toxide research fellowship, the highest paying postgraduate research scholarship in chemistry in Australia. It paid about 25% or 30% more than the standard Commonwealth Government postgraduate scholarship. And I topped chemistry at Newcastle University.
At the time we had a very large chemical school because the largest heavy industry in Australia was located in Newcastle at that time. And anyway, I prayed my first prayer that if I won that scholarship, I'd buy a Bible and keep the Sabbath, start keeping the Sabbath day, which was part of the Ten Commandments. Well, I won that scholarship, and that's what I did.
I went out straight away and bought a Bible and began reading it and began going to church. And it's interesting, as I was doing some Bible studies after I'd started uni with a Bible worker, he said to me, because I had questions like this, how can we know that God is real? And what his suggestion was that he gave an example. He said, look, if you had a friend came up to you and said, look, on the race on Saturday night, horse blue Joe is going to win, right? And you think, oh, yeah, okay, the horse blue Joe wins on Saturday night.
So next Saturday night, he comes along and know the horse green gamble is going to fine. And anyway, that's a Saturday night. In the main race, the horse green gamble wins.
And this goes on and on, week after week. The guy comes along and he tells you, this is going to happen. So after a while, your confidence builds up and you probably, I choose not to gamble, but if you're in a situation like that, you'd say, wow, this guy somehow knows the future.
It's working. The evidence is there. Well, this guy pointed out that there are hundreds of prophecies in the Bible that were given that were accurately fulfilled and on time.
There are a few that still remain to be fulfilled, and they apply to the second coming of Jesus, mainly the conditions when Jesus will return. And what happens when Jesus returns, the resurrection of the dead, the translation of the living and creation in the new earth. So there's a handful of prophecies, but all the other hundreds have been fulfilled.
Matter of fact, Princeton University Press published an encyclopaedia of Bible prophecy, and I have a copy of that home, and I think was published in the 1950s, my edition, something like that. And of course, since then, even more evidence has accumulated on the historical accuracy of the Bible. And so I think when we look at prophecy and fulfil prophecy, and of course, the prophecy in Daniel chapter 2 that relates to King Nebuchadnezzar's dream.
So we know Nebuchadnezzar built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and we have an account there of a dream that he had, but he couldn't remember the dream, but he knew it was a really unusual dream. And he asked his wise men, he want them to tell him the dream and what it meant. And of course, they were claiming to be able to do magic to see the future and all this sort of thing.
But of course, this was a real test. And they said, well, nobody knows that. Only the Gods know the future and only the Gods know what you dreamed. So Nebuchadnezzar said, well, you guys are earning your keep under false pretences. You can't really do what you claim to do. So he threatened to put them all to death.
And Daniel, who was a Hebrew captive who had been selected to join the elite school, was to be included in those executed. And he and his friends prayed to God that God would reveal to him the dream. And God did reveal the dream, and he was able to tell it to Nebuchadnezzar.
And Nebuchadnezzar knew then that he could interpret the dream and God gave him the interpretation of the dream. And you can read it for yourself there in Daniel chapter 2. We need to remember that Nebuchadnezzar lived sort of 600 BC thereabouts.
And these prophecies relate to what happened right up until the present time, relate to the structure of Europe and the empires that would follow the Babylonian Empire. That's pretty impressive stuff. And these are prophecies, again, that we have clear evidence that the prophecies were written down well and truly before they happened.
And this is different to the lot of claims that we have. People can tell the fortune and all this sort of thing and often think to myself, why aren't these people multimillionaires? Surely, they can tell which horse was going to win and this sort of thing. But this is different.
God makes the claim in the book of Isaiah around about chapter 43, 44, somewhere like that, that what sets me apart as God, he said, is that I know the future and I can tell the future to you. And when I heard that, and I began literally looking up the history of those prophecies. So I was studying for my PhD in chemistry at the time, so I was well into science and of course, had the resources of the university library there to look up and really delved into the history of the Bible.
And after a year, I chose to be baptised and accept Jesus, my saviour. And I think that that's the evidence. We have a whole amount of evidence now that the Bible is true and that these prophecies are true.
And we have a lot of evidence for the existence of God, that God is real. Now, this evidence comes from personal experience of people that have prayed to God, have seen answers to prayer, have seen miracles performed in terms of answers to prayer and know the changes that praying has made in their own lives and in the lives of their families. They've actually experienced it.
They've seen it happen. And as one American mathematician, his name just escapes me at the moment. I might think of it at a moment when he was explaining his belief in God was in terms of answers to prayer and miracles, as he's experienced.
And of course, the naysayers, other fellow scientists, sort of commented, well, how do you know it's a miracle? How do you know it wasn't just a chance event? And this guy reply was, I was there and I saw the circumstances and the environment and the setting in which this happened. Robert Herriman was his name. I knew it had come back to me.
He was one of the professors of mathematics at the US Naval Academy. And, of course, there are many great scientists who believed the Bible. So, as I said, we can't know, but we can believe.
And there's a lot of evidence that our belief is correct. And there was a book that was put out by Anne Lambert a few years ago called 21 great scientists who believe the Bible. And, of course, they include Joanne Kepler, who was an outstanding astronomer and a committed Christian.
Robert Boyle, one of the pioneers of modern chemistry, who was actually a leader in Bible distribution. Of course, there's Isaac Newton, who was a scientific genius and a very committed creationist. And, of course, it's interesting the attempts that they have to try and discredit Newton and try and make him out a bit insane or something like that.
I've seen articles like that that have been published in some scientific journals. How? Because he was such a powerful Christian. He wrote commentaries on the books of the Bible, including commentaries on the prophecies in the book of Daniel and Revelation, and I have copies of those.
And, of course, he was such a brilliant mind. And so, of course, the naysayers and the atheists want to try and discredit him however they can, but of course, he stands up to that.
There's Carl Linnaeus, the eminent botanist who believed the Bible.
Leonhard Euler, the great mathematician and faithful Christian. Took them a long time. I think Euler's theorem has now been proved from memory. He was a famous mathematician.
And George Cuvier, who was an outstanding biologist who opposed evolutionary thinking.
Michael Faraday, the pioneer of electric power, who, again, was a very humble Christian.
There was Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, who was a very active Christian.
Charles Babbage, one of the originators of computing. He was a very committed Christian.
As well of course, Matthew Maury, and I've given a talk on him in the past. The pioneer of oceanography and of know, he got his ideas of ocean currents from the Bible, descriptions of the pathways in the sea.
James Joule, the great experimenter, who again, was guided by God. And of course, we have the units of heat in joules.
Louis Pasteur, another outstanding scientist who was strongly opposed to evolution.
Gregor Mendel, who was the father of genetics. He was a Christian as well, believed in God.
Lord Kelvin, or William Thompson was his name. He was an eminent physicist who, again, opposed evolution.
Joseph Lister, one of the originators of modern surgery, again, a man of God, a Christian.
And, of course, James Clerk Maxwell, one of my scientific heroes, who developed field theory, proposed that light was a combination of electric and magnetic fields. Absolutely brilliant scientist. Einstein built on his work, and of course, he's the pioneer of electronics and a very, very strong opponent of evolution.
George Washington Carver, the agricultural chemist who was guided by God.
The Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright, were also strong christians.
Werner von Braun, one of the pioneers of space exploration, was an active Christian.
And, of course, there are so many today, and there are many other.
Louis Agassiz, who was a glacial geologist.
Francis Bacon was into scientific method.
David Brewster, yes, I remember him, who's a professor of physics at Oxford and very strong Christian. Matter of fact, the angle of the rainbow is called Brewster's angle, the angle of diffraction in water.
And there are so many other christians that we could look at that were Bible believing christians. Humphry Davey, John Herschel, Joseph Henry, who developed a galvanometer, William Herschel, who discovered Uranus and so forth. William Huggins, of course, they're again related to physics. Blaise Pascal, the theory of probability and so forth. Again, a very, very strong Christian, then. Yeah, we could go on.
There are so many scientists in the past. James Young Simpson, who used choroform and was a leading gynaecologist.
Nicolas Steno, that developed stratigraphy in geology.
George Stokes in fluid mechanics. All these guys were Christians that believed the Bible.
And one of the textbooks that I used at school was by university, rather implied mathematics, was a textbook by C. A. Coulson.
And, of course, C. A. Coulson was an eminent Methodist, a professor of applied mathematics at Oxford University. And in his book, and it's a really brilliant book, Science and Christian Belief, and again, he deals with this topic. The book is described as one of the most profound studies of the relationship between science and religion that have been published to that date.
And what Coulson points out is that the order of physical nature is one aspect of God showing himself to his children. And so we see this powerful order in nature. And of course, that's what we associate with design, the overwhelming evidence of design.
When we get into the biochemistry of the human body and our immune system, digestive system, we eat food, we just take it for granted. But the way our system takes the nutrients out of that food, they're all complex chemicals, all mixed up, all bound together, breaks them down into individual components, then sorts them in our body, sends them to the different places, the different organs in our body, where they're used to keep us alive. The design is just huge, the design of the reproduction system.
I mean, they're still studying the birth process in human reproduction and the amazing switches that occur and hormone change overs and mechanisms that are all triggered. There's so much there.
And C. A. Coulson goes on to point — no — Max Planck. One of the developments of quantum theory ends his scientific autobiography with these words, “Religion and natural science are fighting a joint battle in an incessant, never relaxing crusade against scepticism and against dogmatism, against unbelief and superstition”.
And the rallying cry in this crusade has always been and always will be on to God. So here we see some of the important statements there that the top scientists in the world had faith, and many of these guys got their ideas through the impressions, I'm sure, of the Holy Spirit.
There's another really good book that sets out, see, so many people don't understand what science is. Science has become like a de facto God in a way. But when we delve down into science, science cannot produce the answers that tell us whether or not God exists.
That's the bottom line. There's a very good book that was written by A. F. Chalmers, and it's called, “What is This Thing Called Science?” It was published by University of Queensland Press a number of years ago. Now I've got the second edition that was published in 1987 as a reprint.
And he really sets out the major problems that people have when they claim, for example, try to claim that as the defenders of science typically do, they judge it to be superior to other forms of knowledge without adequately investigating those other forms. And so that's what Chalmer's right, a matter of fact, Feyerabend said essentially that. And he points out that Feyerabend complains with justification that defenders of science typically judge it to be superior of other forms of knowledge without adequately investigating those other forms.
And Feyerabend, of course, was not prepared to accept the necessity of the superiority of science over other forms of knowledge. And that's, of course, where I said before, the evidence that we have in terms of answered prayer, fulfilled prophecy, the change in people's lives, plus we have the overwhelming evidence of intelligent design. All these point to the existence of God, and in particular, the God of the Christian Bible.
You've been listening to Faith and Science. And, of course, if you want to relisten to this programme or listen to some of the other programmes, just Google 3abnaustralia.org.au that's all one word, and click on the radio button and you can listen to these programmes. And remember, there are many other programmes as you scroll down on the different topics that support faith in the Bible.
I'm Dr. John Ashton. Have a great day. You've been listening to a production of 3ABN Australia radio.
