Weekly Sermons

God and Biology

The Bible is true and is the authority for my beliefs and behaviors; I won’t compartmentalize my faith.

Modernists Two Level Dichotomy (Francis Schaffer)

Values (Private, subjective, relative)	Metaphysical (Beyond physical world) Supernatural (Above natural)
Facts (Public, objective, universal)	Physical/ Natural

 

The Christian with a Biblical Wordview enquires into __________ levels and has a holistic view based on Bible truth. 

Genesis 1:1, 3-5, 11, 26-28                Psalm 139:13-18

Men and women are created by God for a purpose; I will value human life and dignity.

Christians are Pro-Life: we believe life is a gift from God that should be protected and valued from conception to natural death.  We have _____________________ any claim to so called “human autonomy” to our sense of accountability to God.

How do you answer someone who says we can’t talk about these things because they belong in the upper room?

Say “I ______________ your dichotomy of so called facts and values, and you do also when it suits your relativistic ends. I’m bringing the whole house to the discussion, as our founding fathers envisioned!”

 “May not the habit of scientific pursuits, of believing nothing till it is proved, influence your mind in other things which cannot be proved in the same way, and which, if true, are likely to be above our comprehension.”                                     -Mrs. Charles Darwin

 

The idea that morality is nothing more than personal preference arose in the West in the aftermath of the scientific revolution. Many thinkers were so impressed with its achievements that they elevated empirical science to the sole source of truth. Empiricism is the doctrine that all knowledge is derived from the senses – what we see, hear, hold, weigh, and measure. Obviously moral truths cannot be stuffed into test tubes or studied under a microscope. As a result, moral statements were no longer considered truths at all, but merely expressions of emotion. In reducing morality to personal taste, Hume took a step that altered the course of Western thought, He split traditional philosophy into two opposing categories. Traditionally, truth had been conceived as a comprehensive whole, covering both the natural order and the moral order. But Hume tore those two things apart. The natural order is something we perceive through the senses, so according to empiricism that qualified as genuine knowledge. But the moral order is not perceived through the senses, so that was reduced to subjective feelings…For centuries people had thought of religion as an explanatory system like any other philosophical system. They might not be certain that their own views were completely correct. But they were certain that there was a correct answer and that continued inquiry was worthwhile. God’s existence was held to be an objective question – something you could be right or wrong about, based on rational reasons. With the rise of empiricism, however, religion was reduced to private feelings…The concept of truth as unified, coherent worldview was shattered. –Nancy Pearcy, Saving Leonardo, 24

I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it was not; and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning for this world is not concerned exclusively with the problem of pure metaphysics; he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to…for myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.                                             -Aldous Huxley, End and Means, 1938

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –Declaration of Independence

We know from embryology that a new life begins with the formation of the zygote, the cell formed from the union of egg and sperm in fertilization – this is scientific fact, not religious doctrine.                                                                                            -Micheline M. Matthew-Roth, Professor at Harvard Medical School