Every man wants to protect his loved ones from harm. But in today’s world providing that protection isn’t usually standing at the door of our home with a shotgun to protect our wife and children from being raped or kidnapped by a marauding band of thugs as it is protecting them from false ideas that have the power to take their thoughts captive and destroy their lives. Paul describes this everyday battle and the power of God’s truth to tear down the lies of the culture. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Cor 10:4-5). Today, we begin a new series, “Surrounding Our Loved Ones With the Belt of Truth.” Our goal in this episode is to know how to equip our kids with a confident response to the idea that science has disproved the existence of God.
Have you ever wondered why so many teens who are active in their youth group go off to college and lose their faith? A 2019 study by Barna Research reveals that 64 percent of U.S. 18–29-year-olds who grew up in church have withdrawn from church involvement as an adult after having been active as a child or teen. We have a spiritual enemy who hates us and our children, who plants lies in our hearts about God, who seeks to blind us to the truth about God’s nature and the goodness of his moral law to destroy our faith. Jesus called Satan a liar and the father of lies. His kingdom is called the kingdom of darkness because he darkens human understanding by planting lies in the human heart. Paul calls these lies arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God. That is why we need to encircle our loved ones with the belt of truth.
In today’s world be can expect our kids to encounter the claim, SCIENCE HAS DISPROVED THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. Bestselling books by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris have convinced the academic world (where most of our kids will spend some time) to think that science in general, and evolutionary science in particular has made belief in God part of a mythology that science has outgrown. In The God Delusion, Dawkins goes so far as to say that you cannot be an intelligent scientific thinker and hold religious beliefs. This perspective shapes much of our culture. We need to equip our kids to respond to this thinking with truth and confident faith. Let’s consider what science and logic tell us about:
I. THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE
The question must be asked, Where did this material universe come from? Some might argue that the universe evolved through chance. We’ll look at evolution in a moment, but we must help our kids realize that chance does not CAUSE anything. It is simply a mathematical measure of probability. Flipping a coin may have a fifty percent chance of landing as heads or tails, but scientists will tell you that what caused it to land that way were factors like, which side started out up, the strength of the thumb snap to flip it, the weight of the coin, air currents, etc. To say that chance caused something is a nonsense statement. So, there are only two logical answers to this question Where did this material universe come from? Either this material universe has always existed (i.e. matter is eternal) or this material universe was brought into existence by an eternal being who is outside this finite, material universe. Let’s consider these two possibilities:
A. Is the universe eternal? There are 3 scientific reasons that believing in an eternal universe is no longer acceptable to science.
- Edwin Hubble (for whom the Hubble Telescope) is named, discovered that the universe is uniformly expanding in all directions. This led George Gamow to trace this process back into the past until he reached a point where all matter was compressed into an unimaginably dense and hot primordial atom. He then postulated his Big Bang Theory that this atom exploded resulting in the present expanding universe. All of this is significant because this widely held model says that the universe had a beginning—it is NOT, therefore, eternal.
- Scientists know that throughout the universe hydrogen is being converted into helium through the process of nuclear fusion in the cores of the stars. This process is irreversible and new hydrogen is not being formed in any significant amounts. You may have heard that in billons of years the sun will burn out. The point is that this process reveals that matter is NOT eternal.
- The second law of thermodynamics, which has to do with energy, work, and entropy says that the universe tends towards disorder. In other words, the amount of energy given off by burning logs in a campfire is less than the amount of energy it took to grow the tree. Moving from order to disorder gives off energy. Moving from disorder to order requires adding energy. This points back to a creator who ordered the universe.
So, the scientific evidence indicates that matter is not eternal. The only other logical possibility is B.
B. An eternal being outside of the material universe created it. Logic and science point to this truth, as does the Bible: For (God’s) invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made (Rom 1:20). The universe is not, in itself, eternal; so it has to have been created by a being who is. This logical conclusion provides the answer to one who says, “As a scientist, I can’t believe the miracles of the Bible. Everything that happens in this word is explained by the laws of science.” But if the universe had a beginning, a being outside the universe has to have put it here. Logic tells us that SOMETHING cannot come from NOTHING. There must be an eternal being who started the universe. So why can’t this being who set up the universe to function according to the laws or nature, suspend those laws, to intervene into the natural world in the form of a miracle?
So, logic and science do not undermine the biblical truth that the origin of the universe is a creator, but confirm it.
II. THE ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE
If you were walking on a beach and came upon a complex sand castle with walls, mote, draw bridge, and towers, which is more logical—to believe that a castle was built by an intelligent human being—or that it came about because of billions of years of ocean water washing up on the sandy shore? If you see a new Jaguar SJ sitting in the parking lot, is it more logical to believe that it was intelligently designed or that a wind blowing through a junk yard for billions of years made it? Scripture tells us that the creation proves God’s existence; but humans suppress that truth. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse (Rom 1:18-20).
Darwin’s theory of Evolution is still undermining our kids’ faith, partly because Christians have spent so much time fighting over whether “day” in the creation account is 24 hours, instead of pressing the biblical argument that the world clearly was created through Intelligent Design. Here are four reasons to share with our kids why continued belief in Darwinism to explain the origin of life is foolish:
1. Darwin’s research failure: In 1831, on a voyage to the Galapagos Islands, Darwin observed that the beak shapes of the finches he was studying varied among finch species. He postulated that the beak of an ancestral species had adapted over time to equip the finches to acquire different food sources when they had migrated to the islands. His discovery does seem to substantiate evolution at the micro level—that these finches did vary from other finches—those with the best shaped beak for the food sources in the Galapagos favored by natural selection. But they are still finches. They did not become crabs. Without any justification or evidence, Darwin extrapolated from his research on adaptation of a species to explain how you get finches in the first place, how you get birds, how you get animals. Darwinism was and is a WILD EXTRAPOLATION. If you ask, “How does a bacterium become a butterfly,” the answer is “Go look at those finches on the Galapagos.” But there is no evidence to show evolution of one species to another, just adaptation within species.
2. There is no evidence in the fossil record to suggest the evolution of one species to another. In 1859, Darwin admitted that there was no evidence in the fossil record to support his theory and paleontologists have failed to find this fossil evidence in the last 150 years (thought seeking it fervently). There is no fossil indication of a step by step development of species from previous life forms.
3. The impossible odds of natural selection producing human beings. Think of the odds of a blind man, by himself inventing and producing a cell phone? Darwinism believes the random purposelessness of mutation—essentially DNA copying errors—generated the creative changes that are sifted and preserved according to natural selection leading to an organism (a human being) that is estimated to have 37.2 trillion cells working in unison.
4. The complexity of the human body. The theory of evolution postulates that an organism that has a mutation that benefits the organism will cause it to survive and reproduce more than other organisms that lack that advantage. The favored organism will then have a mutation that benefits that organism even more, leading it to have an additional advantage, survive longer and reproduce itself more. But consider the human eye. Being able to see would enable the organism to have an advantage in its environment and pass on this trait. But for the eye to work, all the parts of the eye need to be working at the same time—the pupil, iris, cornea, conjunctiva, retina, etc. But each of those individual parts never could have evolved on its own because by itself each part had no advantage over other organisms. The irreducible complexity of the human eye disproves evolution.
Darwinism actually makes no sense. It is completely irrational to observe the complexity of the created world without concluding that there had to be an Intelligent Designer behind it. Paul would say the reason Darwinism is believed is that human beings suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
III. THE PRECISION OF THE UNIVERSE FOR HUMAN EXISTENCE
Our earth looks like a cosmic welcome mat. One scholar points out, When you look from the perspective of a scientist at the universe, it looks as if it knew we were coming. There are 15 constants—the gravitational constant, various constants about the strong and weak nuclear force, etc.—that have precise values. If any one of these constants was off by even one part in a million…there would have been no galaxy, stars, planets or people (Tim Keller, Reason for God). Which is more logical, that there may be trillions of universes out there and that we just happen to be in one of them that is fined-tuned to sustain life, or that this world was designed and created for us?
IV. THE HUMAN SENSE OF MORAL OBLIGATION
If all that exists is the material universe, how do we explain spiritual qualities like beauty, love, meaning, and justice? The social sciences confirm such aspirations as universal in humans. If we are a material universe that is just evolving on the basis of natural selection, what is wrong with white genes beating up black genes. How can we argue that there is something morally wrong with a stronger male germ raping a weaker female germ?
Evolutionary biologists answer that altruistic people, those who act unselfishly, and sacrificially survived in greater numbers than those who were selfish and cruel. Therefore, altruistic genes were passed down to us and now the great majority of us feel that unselfish behavior is “right.” But let’s think, carefully, about this logic. If there is no spiritual world beyond this physical, material world, how to we even know what altruistic behavior is. Hostility towards all people outside one’s group should be just as rightly considered “moral” and “just behavior” as loving them. There is no objective basis for saying love is better than hostility. Yet the vast majority of humans believe that sacrificing time, money, energy, and even our lives, especially for someone NOT of our tribe is right. If we see a total stranger fall down on a busy street, unable to arise, all of us would slam on our brakes, jump out of our car, and to help him get off the road, or feel guilty for not doing so. What is the origin of this compulsion? Atheism provides no answer. A materialistic universe only, has no answer. In contrast, the biblical answer makes great sense. We feel moral obligation because we are made in the image of God.
There is no doubt that our kids will run into the argument that science has disproved Christianity. They need to realize that to the contrary, science is Christianity’s best friend. Scientific discoveries about the origin of the universe, the order of the universe, the precision of the universe for human life, and social sciences studies that show the human sense of moral obligation provide overwhelming evidence for believing in a God who created humans in his moral image. The sceptic might say—strong evidence but not PROOF. I would say, “You are right.” But consider this illustration: Suppose a man in a poker game dealt himself twenty straight hands of four aces in the same game. As the other poker players grab their six shooters he says, “I know it looks suspicious but if there are an infinite number of universes, then there might be one where I got these cards without cheating.” Though you could not prove he was cheating, it would be unreasonable to conclude that he hadn’t. Faith is much more reasonable and logical than unbelief.
I want to close this short lesson in apologetics with this truth from Scripture: The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him (Prov 18:17). As protectors of our loved ones, we need to remember that we are sending them out into a world where the father of lies constantly states his case that science disproves the god-thesis. It will SEEM RIGHT TO THEM if we have not equipped them with the logical, scientific, and biblical response to those lies. The goal of these “Equipping” episodes is not to load our kids’ guns with bullets to shoot down non-believers. It is the opposite; to give them confidence, so they can relax, listen to, and love those around them who don’t know Christ.
For Further Prayerful Thought:
- Which of the four arguments for the existence of God do you find most compelling?
- Which do you think has the power to be the most persuasive?
- What do you think of this idea: The reason for knowing the evidence for our faith is not give us the amo to fire a non-believers, but rather to fill us with confidence, so we can listen well to lost folks, asking good questions, and planting some wise seeds.
Questions to Discuss With Your Kids
Introduction
- Does anyone ever make fun of you for believing in God?
- How would you answer someone who said that science proves there is no God?
The Origin of the Universe
- The word, logic and logical have to do with the way God made us to think. If God didn't make the world, how else could it have gotten here? One logical possibility is that the universe has always been here, but let’s look at what science says about that.
- What does the Bible say about how we know He exists?
Order of the Universe
- Read the two questions for them to answer about the sandcastle and Jaguar
- Charles Darwin was a scientist who formed a theory that humans evolved from lower forms of life instead of being created. The Bible says that the sinful human heart sometimes make us want to believe things that aren't true (Read Rom 1:18-20). Those who believe false things like Darwinism aren' our enemies, they've had their minds clouded by Satan
- Explain Darwin's mistakes.
The Precision of the Universe
- What season of the year do you like the most? That happens because the earth's tilt is perfect for us to have those four seasons
- You might give more detail from this article from Institute for Creation Research The Earth Was Created for Life
The Human Sense of Moral Obligation
- The Bible teaches that God has written his moral law on our hearts in our conscience. Do you think most people would stop and help someone who is hurt in the middle of the road? Would a dog do that. That about a lizard. Humans can tell right from wrong and evolution can't explain where that comes from, but we know it is because God created us in God's image
- After this lesson, do you think that science, and logic point to God and point towards disbelieving in God? Why?
