John 3:16, Romans 3:12, 2 Corinthians 5:19-21, Ephesians 2:7, Ephesians 2:1-10, Proverbs 8, Ephesians 3:20-21
Every year my family and I get together on my birthday at a local pub. Every year we shut the pub down. Every year, we get into a discussion about Jesus somehow, and I love it, because I care about my family’s souls, and so does God.
A couple of years ago, during my birthday pub celebration, one of my siblings made the comment, “there is no scientific evidence or scientific proof that God exists”.
I am not the quickest thinker, and I did not address this comment as I should have.
If I would have stopped and actually thought about the comment instead of allowing my emotions to take over, I would have responded much more accurately than I did.
I would have responded like this:
Even if there were no scientific evidence for the existence of God, that doesn’t show that God doesn’t exist. It would just mean that there would be no way to prove that He exists scientifically. I do believe there is scientific evidence that proves that God exists, but the statement, “There is no scientific evidence that such a being called God exists”, is fallacious and here is why. It is fallacious, because it assumes, we ought to believe only things we can prove by science.
However, if this is true, it calls into question many things which cannot and need not be scientifically proven, yet are nonetheless rationale for us to believe to be true. let me give a number of examples:
Aesthetic judgments – I ride a ferry to work every morning, and there are some cold and frosty mornings that bring a beautiful dawn full of color and brilliant light. They capture me. I am in awe of them. In response to them, I utter the words, “that is just beautiful”. Or at night, while I am out walking with my children, I look up at the vast, star-filled sky and I am struck by its beauty and I utter the words, “God that is just so glorious and beautiful”. These are not scientific judgements, yet they are perfectly rationale to be said and to be trusted. They cannot be proven by scientific reason because science does not give us beauty and has no medium to define it, even less to quantify it.
Moral values and duties (subjective or objective) – Moral values have to do with what is objectively wrong and right or good and bad, Moral duties have to do with what we ought or ought not to do. Whether you believe morality to be subjective or objective, neither of these can be derived from science. Science gives us what “is”, but it does and indeed cannot give us what we “ought” to believe or what we “ought” to think or what we “ought” to do. There is not an “ought” dimension in science and definitely not a moral one (if you would like to see how lacking biology is in establishing a moral landscape for humanity, then read Sam Harris’s “The Moral Landscape“, and then, read the reviews of the book by his own colleagues). One cannot derive an “ought” from an “is”.
***********Warning************
I am going to give some examples of how fallacious this idea is, however, I want to warn you that some of these examples will be rather grotesque, please do not let young children read or hear these. I am using these examples to push the statement that, “science can explain morality” to its natural and logical end.
Science can tell us the decibel level of the screams of young African children as they were torn away from their mothers at the slave auction block during the horrific trans-atlantic slave trade.
As young black boys and girls were torn from their mother’s hands (and father’s hands), the volume of their screams could be measured scientifically by a decibel meter (if they had had them back then), but science can cannot tell us whether or not something morally wrong had taken place at the slave auction block.
Medical science can tell us the amount of damage that is done to the young wombs of young 4-8 year old girls who are kidnapped and forced into the sex trade around the world.
As grown men pay small amounts of money and lead up to a small room where a small child is waiting to be abused by them, science can tell us how these small children’s wombs are crushed and destroyed. However, it cannot tell us whether or not something moral has happened (by the way, this is happening while you are reading this, here is how you can stop it (worldvision.org).
Science can tell us the respiratory capacity of slave men and women who ran for their lives, as they were chased by southern slave owners by using a peak flow meter.
As first generation slaves tried to escape the brutality and humiliation of southern slave owners, they would run for their lives, attempting to escape. Science can tell us, their lung capacity, but it cannot tell us whether or not something morally reprehensible took place.
Science can tell us, the weight and mass of the bodies stacked on top of each other in the Treblinka concentration camps in WWII, as millions of Jewish men, women and small children gasped for air and clawed at each other trying to get to a small window at the top of the gas chamber, as they were suffocated to death.
After all of them had died, their bodies would be piled up in a mountain-like heap of flesh and bone, pointing up toward a small window. Young mothers holding their children and fathers holding their wives and mothers, stacked on top of each other.
Physics could give us the mass of the bodies in their mountain like shape, but science cannot tell us if something morally wrong has taken place in these gas chambers.
Science can tell us the heat temperature that Jeffery Dahmer cooked his victims before he ate them, and the temperature at which he would refrigerate them with a thermometer, but it cannot tell us whether or not Jeffery Dahmer is morally culpable for his actions.
Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious congregation that had over 4,500 nuns and was active in 133 countries in 2012. The congregation manages homes for people who are dying of HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis.
It also runs soup kitchens, dispensaries, mobile clinics, children’s and family counseling programs as well as orphanages and schools.
Members of the charity take vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and also profess a fourth vow – to give “wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor” (This is the same women that famed physics professor Lawrence M. Krauss called “horrible and despicable” in a debate with apologist William Lane Craig).
It was Lawrence’s materialistic worldview, that lead him to call Mother Teresa “horrible and despicable” (which are moral judgements, not scientific ones).
However, science cannot give Dr. Krauss any objective or subjective reasons to make these moral claims against her.
Science, also cannot tell us whether or not Mother Teresa has done something morally praise worthy or morally reprehensible.
Science can tell us, the decomposition rate of the bodies found in the killing fields of Cambodia, at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.
Science gave us a detailed “analysis of 20,000 mass grave sites of the Khmer Rouge by the DC-Cam Mapping Program” done by Yale University. Their analysis, “indicates at least 1,386,734 victims of execution”.
Science can give us a whole host of information from the Cambodian killing fields, but it cannot tell us whether or not the Khmer Rouge did anything morally reprehensible.
Science can tell us the velocity of the bodies of the four young black girls who were blown apart due the bomb placed at the 16th street Church in Alabama.
Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., Robert Edwin Chambliss, Bobby Cherry and (allegedly )Herman Frank Cash were the perpetrators of this horrendous crime.
Science can give us insight into the force of the blast which blew them apart, forever taking them from their parents, but it cannot tell us whether or not these men were morally culpable for this stomach-turning and heart-wrenching crime.
If morality is a subjective creation of mankind, then what Richard Dawkins has written below in his book, “River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life“, is correct.
He writes in His book,
“In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
I guess science isn’t the place to look for morality after all.
Hell is the fitting place for mankind.
For, it is in mankind we find a depth of evil and capability to do evil things, and a capability to love evil, which is incomprehensible.
The cross of Christ tells us how evil and sick we all really are and how Holy, Righteous and loving God is.
Christ suffers in the place of sin-loving racists, sin-craving murderous human beings like you and me. All the sinful examples that I gave you, are long term residents in our hearts, for that is where evil comes from: the heart of mankind.
It is dangerous and damning hubris to think otherwise.
If we are looking to compare ourselves with the examples above, in order to justify ourselves, this is the root of the problem and proof that we do not love or care about God.
For it is not OUR standard of righteous that needs to be upheld, rather it is God’s standard of righteousness that needs to be redeemed and upheld.
We are much worse off than we think in front of God, and science is woefully insufficient to do anything about this inescapable fact.
This is the world that God sent His Son to save.
“For God so loved the world…” (John 3:16).
From the examples above, it is clear that God did not love the world because it was lovable, rather in spite of its lovability and in-spite of the evil and sin that it loves.
There was noting lovely about the world for God to love, but He loved it in the deepest way possible, He gave himself for a world which in no way deserved anything other than eternal Judgement.
This is called mercy and grace.
We all have “have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” (Romans 3:12)
It should be clear to us that the issue is not a scientific one.
The problem with mankind (from God’s perspective, which is the only one that matters), is its devaluing of its Creator and its naturally-sinful desire to be autonomous from God.
This desire to be autonomous from God, is rooted in the desire to become God. This is the root of all mankind’s problems.
Mankind was made to worship, love and enjoy Yahweh, for who He is and how glorious He is. The very desire to love God and want to please Him has been lost due to our sin in Adam.
The only way for Mankind to be reconciled to God, is for God’s righteousness to be exalted, His glory to be upheld, His law to be fulfilled and mankind’s atrocious sins to be judged and forgiven.
All of this has been accomplished in the historical life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
In the coming of Christ, His life, death and resurrection we find the entire reason why the world exists.
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, “God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
The point of the coming of Christ was to reconcile this sinful world world back to God.
God does this by sending His Son the cross to die in the place of sinner, in order that through His death and resurrection, sin might be done away with.
“Reconciliation assumes a broken relationship. Something has happened that has caused two parties to become estranged.
God is estranged from us and we are estranged from Him.
What is between us and God is or depravity and His Holy righteous wrath at our sinful treason.
Our natural state as human beings, both the acts of sin and the desire to sin (one comes out of the other) is to love what God hates, and is to hate God.
Therefore, you cannot please God, you cannot want God or move toward God in your natural state.
You must be redeemed from how you naturally are.
You must die and be born again
God, in His infinite mercy, has laid all our God-devaluing, God-hating sin upon Christ.
In Christ, our sins have been judged, and therefore, they are forgiven and forgotten by God.
Thank you, God, for all your mercy and grace to us in Christ. God’s grace to us in Christ is a gloriously surprising symphony to the glory of God forever and ever, and ever!
The aim of the cross of Christ is the glory of God, and rest assured, God will have His glory.
The reason for the person, work and resurrection of Christ is, “ so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7).
Christ upholds the glory and righteousness of God while dying in the place of God’s sinful enemies, and His sinful enemy was you and I.
The reason why God’s grace is so strong and able to save us, is because Christ’s life death and resurrection is God’s grace to us.
Science is a wonderful study of the world that God created.
It helps us understand the world through the reason and rationale, that we have been graciously endowed with from our heavenly father.
Reason (which is immaterial), was given to us in order that we might seek and understand and ultimately admire the God who created all things, and to know Christ the aim of all things.
For He Himself is the wisdom of God which has been built into the very fabric of the world and the universe (proverbs 8).
We ought to seek Christ while we can, for He is not someone we ought to take lightly.
Ephesians 3:20-21
“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
Prayer: Jesus Christ we love you so very much. We are grateful to know you and to be a part of your righteous life. Righteous loving father, thank you for giving us sin-filled people your most treasured Son. We repent from our autonomy from you and we submit to your absolute authority, purposes, love and eternal kingship. Grant us grace, second by second to love you as we ought to, as you so richly deserve.
FaithisfoundinChrist 
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