Updated: 1/4/02
Man looks with awe at the achievements of science. Scientific knowledge, now doubling every decade, has radically changed mankind's way of life and beliefs.
We expect science to provide our needs and to solve our problems. Science (man's knowledge) has become a veritable modern "messiah." But why has man's research and knowledge been unable to eliminate hunger, poverty and disease and not bring peace to our war-torn world?
We all have a little scientific curiosity in us, but most scientific research is not known for its moral wisdom. The fruits of science have been both good and bad, bestowing upon mankind ingenious labor-saving technologies that extend our capabilities -- as well as weapons of mass destruction that now threaten to erase all life from this planet! Now, in this age of high tech computer technology and the pooling of scientific knowledge, it appears we are at a time when "nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do" (Genesis 11:6).
But are we being duped by "science"? According to the Bible, Satan, the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4), has deceived all, including scientists, and would deceive the very elect, if that were possible (Revelation 12:9, Matthew 24:24)!
How? One way is through "science falsely so called."
Paul warned Timothy, "O Timothy, keep that which is committed to your trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so called: Which some professing have erred concerning the faith" (1 Timothy 6:20-21).
An alarming number of people today consider the Bible nothing more than a book of fables and mythology, unproven and unprovable by science. Consequently, the Bible has been virtually banned from all public schools in the United States. The major controversy is the conflict between the biblical account of creation and the "scientific" doctrine of evolution (see "10 Questions to Ask Scientists About Evolution").
Recently, supporters of the Bible account (and even creationists disagree among themselves, not understanding the Bible correctly) have engaged in an all-out drive in courtrooms, classrooms and state legislatures across the nation to gain equal time for teaching creation as an explanation for the origin of human life.
To counter this drive, the National Association of Biology Teachers created a Fund for Freedom in Science Teaching to combat legal challenges to classroom activities. According to Wayne A. Moyer, executive director of the organization, "No one is saying that religion and scientific views are incompatible. We just don't think students should be taught information that can't be supported by a shred of scientific proof" ("New Battle Over Teaching of Evolution," U.S. News & World Report, June 9, 1980, p. 81).
Science has had a clear influence on our society as far as biblical knowledge is concerned. But has scientific bias mixed truth, theory and error into education? Can you discern between scientific truth and the oppositions of science falsely so called? Very few, including most scientists, can. Few scientists accept the biblical narrative (some of which is grossly mistranslated), though some profess belief in a god. Einstein, for example, did believe, "the existence of God was proved by the laws of nature, that is the fact that there was order in the universe, and that man could discover it" (Have Astronomer's found God, by Robert Jastrow, Readers Digest, July 1980).
The Bible admonishes all to, "Prove all things and hold fast to that which is good" (1 Thes 5:21). And to "Study to show yourselves approved unto God" (2 Tim 2:15), avoiding error and deception, whether it be scientific or religious.
The word "science" (from Latin scientia -- to know) means knowledge of facts, phenomena, laws and proximate causes, gained and verified by exact observation, organized experiment, and ordered thinking.
At the heart of science is the "scientific method." What is the scientific method?
According to the authors of The Scientists, published by Time, Inc., in 1964: "To begin with, it should be noted that the term 'scientific method' is itself somewhat of a misnomer. It furnishes no detailed map for exploring the unknown, no surefire prescription for discovery. It is rather, an attitude and a philosophy..." (p 51).
Is it only coincidence that Paul warned, "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments [elements] of the world, and not after Christ" (Colossians 2:8)?
The "attitude and philosophy" of science is probably best summed up by E. Bright Wilson in his book, An introduction to Scientific Research: "He [the scientist] rejects authority as an ultimate basis for truth...Each generation of scientists has to decide for itself what it will believe" (p 21).
But Jesus said, "Full well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your own tradition" (Mark 7:9).
According to Robert Jastrow, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a professed agnostic in religious matters: "There is a kind of religion in science; it is the religion of a person who believes that every event in the universe can be explained in a rational way as the product of some previous event. This faith is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces we cannot discover" (Have Astronomer's Found God).
The scientific method for discovering knowledge begins with observations of nature. Observations are grouped together in some hypothetical manner to explain cause and effect relationships. Inductive reasoning is used to formulate hypotheses, which when verified may become scientific fact or law.
The hypothesis may be verified through deduction and experimentation. But how does the theory or hypothesis finally become an accepted scientific fact or law?
According to Wilson, "The collective judgment of scientists, insofar as there is substantial agreement, constitutes the body of science. The fact that there are very large areas of agreement, in spite of the individualistic antiauthoritarian nature of science, is partial evidence for the validity of scientific methods. However, there are cases where universal agreement has been attained for an untruth...Unfortunately, in many fields, especially on the borderlines of science, hypotheses are often accepted without adequate tests..." (An Intro. to Sci. Res., pp. 26-27, 21).
Wilson goes on to explain that, "The inductive method of reasoning is difficult to justify philosophically, but every human being uses it continually in his daily life. It often fails, but there appears to be no substitute" (Ibid).
Contrast this with the Word of Almighty God, who says, "Come now, and let us reason together" (Isaiah 1:18). God expects men to think and reason, but how? "If you be willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land: But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it (vs. 19-20). This is not inductive reasoning to formulate our own laws of conduct, it is deductive reasoning to apply God's laws. Deductive reasoning begins with a known law and predicts the consequences that will arise as a result of various actions relating to the law.
God speaks with authority -- He is the Lawgiver (James 4:12). He formulated and upholds all the natural laws that scientists have been able to discover. Yet men, in their vanity, reject the authority of the Great Creator God and the knowledge He has revealed for man's benefit in favor of discovering and deciding for themselves, through inductive reasoning, what they will believe and do.
But that serpent, Satan, appearing to them in the garden, began to discredit God's instruction and authority. He urged our first parents to decide for themselves what to believe -- to use their physical senses and own reason to decide what was truth and how they would live. (Genesis 3:1-5).
Satan appealed to man's vanity -- his pride of intellect. Vanity wants to be in authority and resents authority over it. They began to resent God's authority and his command. God had said the result of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil would produce death. But now they were determined to find out and decide for themselves. They decided the way to know was to put it to the test -- by experiment.
So Adam and Eve became the first humans to conduct a "scientific experiment." They observed and saw that the tree appeared to be good for food. They reasoned, with Satan's encouragement, that the fruit would make them wise as God. They refused to believe their Maker. They experimented! They tried the fruit to see if their hypothesis was correct. Result? A change occurred in their minds when they allowed disobedience and vanity to enter. Their once innocent minds became corrupted (Genesis 3:6-13). They were cut off from the tree of life -- the source of eternal life (verses 22-24 (See "Choices of Life"). They died spiritually (Ephesians 2:1; James 2:26), however physically they lived many hundreds of years (a tribute to the perfection of God's creation).
Because our first parents rejected God's instruction and chose to discover for themselves the knowledge of good and evil, "sin entered into the world, and death by sin, so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Romans 5:12). And all mankind was cut off from free access to God's Spirit represented by the tree of life. If they had taken of the tree of life their eyes would have been opened to truly understand the knowledge and things of God (1 Corinthians 2:10-11). But without God's Spirit, "...the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned (verse 14).
This failure to accept God's Word and live by it has been the cause of every evil this world has suffered for the last 6000 years!
The prophet Daniel was told that knowledge would greatly increase at the time of the end (Daniel 12:4). Today in this "age of computers," the "information age," knowledge is increasing at an astonishing rate. But God inspired Hosea to write: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge..." (Hosea 4:6).
How could that be true today with our libraries filled with a vast array of books, journals, papers and knowledge of every sort? What kind of knowledge was he referring to? He wrote, "...there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land...Therefore shall the land mourn...Because you have rejected knowledge...seeing you have forgotten the law of your God..." (verses 1,3,6).
The same is true of evolution, cosmology and geological history. "Most events with which geologists deal were not directly witnessed or recorded by anyone [except the Biblical record of Noah's flood, which scientists do not accept] and cannot be repeated at our convenience like a chemical experiment. For this reason, the usual methods of scientific proof involving experiments that can be repeated and mathematically analyzed are not applicable" (Essentials of Earth History, by William Stokes, 1960, p 5).
"If the facts are not sufficient to justify immediate and positive answers, the investigator may have to substitute a theory or "educated guess" until additional information is discovered" (Ibid, p 3). Unfortunately many of these theories and "educated guesses" become accepted as fact and are even taught as such in schools even though they "can't be supported by a shred of scientific proof."
The fact is, according to Stokes: "They [scientists] had to decide whether the physical world had originated in its entirety within the very short time span suggested by Genesis [a misinterpretation of Genesis 1:1-2] or had required a much larger period...The idea...[of uniformitarianism - that natural forces presently working can explain the past] emerged as a reaction against the time-honored and almost universal belief that the earth and its physical features are products of mysterious and supernatural events [creation and Noah's flood]...
"Since an infinite variety of things could [presumably] have happened in an infinity of time, some thinkers were led [not by scientific fact or proofs] to believe that man and his world are merely chance occurrences among all manner of other possible occurrences. If, however, the period of time involved was short or limited, the problems of explaining the development of the universe becomes more difficult and factors other than chance must be considered" (ibid., pp. 30-31).
Scientists and philosophers concede that with the existing laws, it would be impossible for life to begin without a creator or greater power or intelligence. However, they propose an alternative "materialism hypothesis" which assumes that the natural laws did not come into existence until after matter became organized, by chance processes, to higher levels in some unknown stepwise fashion. But without law, everything would be chaos -- with no organized development possible. If just one law, the law of gravity were suspended for just an instant, the whole universe would become chaos. And according to the law of entropy, the heavens and the earth are running down -- or as the Bible puts it, "and all of them shall wax old like a garment" (Psalm 102:25-27; Isaiah 51:6; Hebrews 1:10-12).
Theories are sometimes based on assumptions that are unprovable. For example, the carbon 14 method of dating the age of fossils is based on the assumption that C-14 levels in the atmosphere have been constant. Stokes says, "If the rate of production, which depends on cosmic ray intensity, has varied in the last 50,000 years, then the method is open to question" (Essentials of Earth History, p 25). The fact that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have varied considerably and are now on the rise as it is released from deposits protected from cosmic radiation is proof that it has not been constant.
The biased attitude of some scientists is reflected by the statement of Norman Newell, a paleobiologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York: "Creationists views are filled with naivety, falsehood and pseudoscience...". And that of John W. Patterson, an engineering professor at Iowa State University, "Committed religious believers in general and creationists in particular, are the enemies of higher education because they cannot seek an honest critical inquiry into nature. They must be drawn into open and highly visible confrontation with capable scientists who will candidly expose them and their views for what they really are" (USNWR, June 9, 1980, pp. 80-81).
Stokes also states, "Every educated person should weigh and evaluate these modern [scientific] ideas. He must compare the assertions of science [not just the facts] with the traditional beliefs that man held in earlier periods and which are still deeply ingrained in the thinking of many intelligent people" (Essentials of Earth History, p 5).
The apostle Peter warned that there would be scoffers in the last days who, because of vanity, would be willingly ignorant of or deny the record of Noah's flood in geologic history. "Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying,'Where is the promise of His coming?' for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. For this they are willingly ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, preserved unto fire against the day of judgment and [destruction] of ungodly men." (2 Peter 3:3-7).
God warns those who would trust in human wisdom: "Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seems wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He takes the wise in their own craftiness. And again, the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain. Therefore let no man glory in men" (1 Corinthians 3:18-21). God says He has chosen the foolish and weak of the world to put to shame the wise and the mighty (1 Corinthians 1:27).
"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them; for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse, because although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools...And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting [or what ought not to be done]" (Romans 1:18-22, 28).
This colossal experiment has profoundly affected every man, woman and child who ever lived, yet few have ever heard about it. Countless wars have been waged and multiple millions mutilated or killed for the purpose of testing the basic hypothesis of this experiment. Millions more have died and are dying by famine, disease and pestilence for the same reason, not to mention the crimes, upset lives, broken homes and other untold miseries resulting from it. The results have always been the same, yet plans are now being set in motion for the grand finale of this -- the epitome of all experiments -- in the final attempt to prove the validity of the original hypothesis.
Mankind's greatest experiment has been the attempt to prove that God is wrong -- that His Laws and Word are not valid. The same lie that Satan foisted off on Eve. But 6000 years of research and experimentation have proven the opposite -- the results have always been just as God said they would be (See Leviticus chapter 26 and Deuteronomy chapter 28 for a start).
What greater scientific proof of God's word could there be than 6000 years of human experience? Yet man refuses to believe the results of his own experiment. He has been writing the cruel lesson for 6000 years, but he has never learned the lesson, even as the apostle Paul warned: "...in the last days perilous times shall come... men shall be...ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" (2 Timothy 3:1,7).
Why has God allowed man to go his own way -- to produce his own knowledge, set up his own laws and govern himself? It is not God's desire that men suffer, but to produce righteous godly character requires freedom of choice. So He is allowing man to taste for himself the fruits of obedience or disobedience (Jer 17:10).
God wants men to choose obedience! He says, "O that there were such an heart in them that they would fear me and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!" (Deuteronomy 5:29).
"I have set before you this day life and good, and death and evil...therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live" (Deuteronomy 30:15, 20).
Jesus said, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10:10).
God is patient, but "not willing that any should perish, but that all should [learn the lesson and] come to repentance," turning to Him for forgiveness and help (2 Peter 3:9).
Jesus gives the answer! The Word of God is truth (John 17:17). The Word of God is the foundation of all True Knowledge (science)!
How can we discern true science from science falsely so called? Or for that matter, true religion from false religion?
Isaiah wrote, "To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them" (Isaiah 8:20). The principle is -- if they speak contrary to known and proven laws, there is no truth in what they say.
There are two ways to test the validity of God's Word. Isaiah wrote, "If you are willing and obedient, You shall eat the good of the land" (Isaiah 1:19). A wise man will believe and obey and enjoy the proofs - promised blessings. God said, "prove me now herewith, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it..." (Malachi 3:10).
David wrote, "You through your commandments have made me wiser than my enemies... I have more understanding than all my teachers: for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients, because I keep your precepts...Through your precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way" (Psalm 119:98-100,104). And in Psalm 111:10, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: A good understanding have all they that do his commandments."
Jesus said, "IF you abide in My word...you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:31-32).
"But if you refuse and rebel, You shall be devoured by the sword, For the mouth of the LORD has spoken" (Isaiah 1:20). That is the other way -- the foolish way -- reject and disobey God's Word and suffer the predicted consequences. Sadly, mankind, deceived by Satan (Revelation 12:9), has chosen to discover and decide for himself what is good and evil. Man, as a result has become a slave to sin (John 8:34; Romans 6:16), when accepting and obeying God's laws would have brought all of the good things that science is unsuccessfully trying to bestow on this world.
Mankind could have avoided a lot of useless toil and suffering by building on the right foundation of God's revealed truth.
"Science begins with the observation of selected parts of nature [God's creation]" (An intro. to Sci. Res., p 21). Scientists merely discover and describe what God made, and define the physical laws He set in motion. A botanists observes and describes plants. Chemists and physicists search out knowledge concerning energy and matter. Sir Isaac Newton described the law of gravity in 1687 by testing and measuring its constant predictable effects. But it is God who established and upholds the laws and "all things by the Word of His power" (Hebrew 1:3).
David, king of ancient Israel observed, "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork" (Psalm 19:1).
Paul explained, "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear" (Hebrews 11:3).
Moses wrote, "The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law" (Deuteronomy 29:29).
Scientists can describe what God has created, but not exactly how, when or what the universe was created from. Stokes admits, "Geologists cannot conclusively verify by experiment or prove by observation their conclusions regarding the age of the earth" (Essentials of Earth History, p 11).
Jastrow concurs, "The scientists pursuit of the past ends in the moment of creation. Who or what put the matter and energy into the universe? Was the universe created out of nothing, or was it gathered together out of pre-existing materials? ...science cannot answer these questions. Now we would like to pursue that inquiry further back in time, but the barrier seems insurmountable. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is able to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries" (Have Astronomer's Found God?).
King Solomon, one of the wisest men who ever lived, applied himself to search for understanding about everything in the universe (Eclesiastes 1:13 Paraphrased). He saw that God has given this to the sons of man as a grievous exercise. In Proverbs he noted, "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter" (Proverbs 25:2).
But his conclusion, after all of his diligent searching and experimentation, was, "Fear God; and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil" (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).
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