SR4: Evolution and Creation

In the last blog, we talked about PROCESS vs PURPOSE. This is the crux to understanding the conflict between evolution and creation.

There are actually two questions regarding the origin of life: How is there life on earth? Why is there life on earth? For the first question, either life appeared instantly (instantaneous creation), or it become more advanced over time (evolution). For the second question, either the process occurred by chance, or it was purposed by God. So there are four possible theories:

Random Instantaneous Creation	Random Evolution
Purposed Instantaneous Creation	Purposed Evolution

Logically, "Random Instantaneous Creation" makes no sense. So before Darwin, people who reject the God hypothesis had no explanation for the existence of life. To them, the theory of evolution freed them from their predicament, popularizing atheism. As a result, many religious groups saw Darwin's theory as an attack on their beliefs. This need not be the case.

The church has often been seen as science's greatest opponent. This is true to a large extent, but two facts are usually overlooked. First, the failure of the church does not represent the failure of God. Many people reject God because they reject the church, and this is unfortunate. Remember that Jesus himself was persecuted by the leading religious people of his time. The greatest enemy to revelation is the religious spirit. Second, many great thinkers have furthered science in their quest to understand God's creation. Thomas Aquinas challenged the widely accepted steady state theory by insisting the universe had a beginning. Francis Bacon formalized the scientific method. What about Kepler, Pascal, Boyle, Newton, Faraday, Stokes, Thomson and Maxwell? Or more recently, Charles Townes and Francis Collins?

For the record, I am a PURPOSED EVOLUTIONIST. My belief in God inspires my belief in evolution. Why? Because God created me, yet I grew up from a baby to an adult. The same happens in my spiritual growth, with Him guiding me. Thus, I believe that the universe also went through a guided growth process. I do not see any conflict between the biblical account of creation and the process of evolution. God created the world step-by-step in six stages. Is it not possible that each stage also occurred in steps?

Coming next, miracles and how to observe God.

[To be continued...]

SR3: Process vs Purpose

Suppose you're a detective for a homocide case. What are some of the questions you would ask? First, you would want to know HOW the killing happened. Was the victim wounded by a gun or a knife? What happened before and after the incident? This is the question of PROCESS. Second, you would be interested in WHY the killing happened. Was there a conflict between the victim and the killer? Was it murder? Or was it an act of self-defence? This is the question of PURPOSE. Knowing the process helps us to uncover the purpose, but the two questions should never be confused with each other.

Science is the art of discovering HOW things happen. For such questions, we never use the God hypothesis. It would be silly if a physicist, who was investigating how magnets create currents in metal, concluded, ''It's God!'' A philosopher might be interested in such answers though. He may ponder over the discoveries of science and ask: Are the events of this universe governed completely by chance? How did the laws of physics come about? Were the laws set in place by a God? Does God interrupt these laws? Some of these questions do not make sense without a God hypothesis.

A conflict occurs when we take the assumptions of science, and turn it into a worldview. We take ideas which made science successful, and used them to set up fences around our beliefs. This is why I used to believe that questions of how the laws of physics came about are meaningless. As such, the God hypothesis is meaningless too. What I did not realize is that I merely replaced the God hypothesis with another one: the Chance hypothesis. It assumes that the universe is governed, not by God, but by chance, and only by chance.

How can we know which hypothesis is correct? Some point out correctly that science can never prove 100% that God exists. Yet, the same is true about Chance. How can we look at a string of digits

28318530717958647692528676655900576839433879875021

and say they are random? What if they are the first fifty digits of two times Pi? In fact, science can never prove 100% that you and I exist either. There is always a minuscule probability that our measuring instruments are wrong. It is a common misunderstanding that discoveries in science are black and white. Science is statistical, and our discoveries are at best probabilistic. Furthermore, if you are Bayesian, science allows us to update our probabilistic beliefs through observations. More on this later when we discuss how to observe God.

Next, I will continue this thread of PROCESS vs PURPOSE, and talk about evolution and creation.

[To be continued...]

Higher

"I owe you my life, I will worship you forever."

I am where I am now by your grace;
where I am going, I have nothing to fear.



Higher (Hillsong)

For unto us a Saviour came
Amazing grace that takes the weight
His name is hope for all the earth
His name now and beyond this life
God with us

And You shall be called Almighty God
And we shall declare

Your name is higher higher
Jesus Christ Your name is glorious

Now unto me the Christ redeemed
For you so loved and love me still

And You shall be called Almighty God
And we shall declare

Your name is higher higher
Jesus Christ Your name is glorious
Your name is greater sweeter
In all the earth

Higher, higher, higher, He's higher (2x)

So great and greatly to be praised are You
So great and greatly to be praised (2x)

And you shall be called Almighty God, and we shall declare

He's higher, higher, higher, higher(2x)

I owe you my life, I will worship you forever
I owe you my life, I will live to bring you praise (4x)

SR2: Meeting God

On 31 July 2000, God spoke to me (Why I am a Christian). It changed my life powerfully. I have no doubt that it was God. It is as sure to me as meeting Einstein in person, and realizing he is not a figment of pop culture or a conspiracy theory. God is real!

Excitedly, I shared my experience with many people, and met painfully with a lot of skepticism. I have come to understand that people have a right to decide what they want to believe. They have every reason to think that I was superstitious, misguided or naive, because my experience challenges their fundamental beliefs. But I also realized that their doubts do not lessen my experience in any way. I feel like the blind man who was healed by Jesus (John 9). The pharisees came to question him. The blind man replied that he does not know the answers, but said, "One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!"

Over the next two years, many more miracles occurred in my life. God continued to speak to me. I learnt a lot from Him. But in the back of my mind, I wondered how I could reconcile God with my scientific beliefs. I thought I had to give up being a mathematician.

A WRITING PROJECT

In 2002, I went to Stanford. In our writing class, we were given the chance to do a research project in any topic we want. It was the perfect opportunity for me to confront my philosophical dilemma. But I was afraid of what I would find. I didn't want to lose God because He was the best thing that happened to me. He told me to be strong and courageous. He told me to be honest in my search. He said that believing halfway or believing falsely is worse than not believing at all.

After much research (Science and Religion essay), I learnt where my old worldviews came from. I had taken the technical boundaries of Science, and made them the fundamental boundaries of the Universe. The scientific method is:

1. making hypotheses
2. making observations through experiments to test these hypotheses
3. making predictions about the past or the future using proven hypotheses

About the third point, predictions about the past include discovering the origins of life or the origins of the universe. Predictions about the future include knowing what will happen when we put certain mechanical, electronic, chemical and biological parts together, giving us inventions such as rockets, computers, plastics and medicine.

Meanwhile, in a parallel way, the main scientific arguments against God are:

1. There is no need for a God hypothesis.
2. God cannot be observed, so He cannot be real.
3. The Bible contradicts the laws of science: its miracles, and its accounts of the origin of life and of the universe.

I will summarize my thoughts about the above three arguments. Stay tuned.

[To be continued...]

SR1: Science and Religion

I'm writing a short series on Science and Religion, but it isn't about the supposed conflict between them. It is more about my mind wrestling with my experience of God through my life. It is about the way my worldviews have changed over time. And I want to write about the process, because that is more important than describing the final product.

Everyone who has a mind has a worldview, whether they like to admit it or not. Our worldview can empower us, or it can imprison us.

I used to be an atheist. Yups, not an agnostic (unsure or indifferent about the existence of God), but an atheist (believing that God does not exist).

MY OLD WORLDVIEW

1. that there is objective truth, i.e. not everything is meaningless, and our opinions are not all correct.

2. that the world is logical, i.e. that there are axioms we cannot prove or disprove, and logic allows us to deduce everything else.

3. that the world is scientific, i.e. observations of our world allows us to figure out what these axioms are, and our deductions allow us to control our environment in a way beneficial to us.

4. that as finite beings with limitations, we may never discover all of these axioms or be correct about the ones we know. But that should not deter us from trying, nor does it lessen the truth of this worldview.

5. that ultimately, our logic will teach us good morals, which we aim to live by, to enjoy life and to prevent the degradation of society.

6. that by "God", I do not mean the impersonal "Laws of Physics" or "Mother Nature", but a Person who exists outside the framework of this universe (someone who lives inside this framework is called an Alien).

7. that God can be a good thing: it helps some people live psychologically healthier lives and enables some societies to flourish, but there really is no need for this concept. It is a figment of man's imagination, invented to explain the things we do not understand and cannot control. Especially pain and suffering, which are results of randomness (natural disasters and accidents) and the limitations of Man.

Science and logic explains the world around us. That society (economics, politics, history, etc.) and the arts can be explained by human psychology, and psychology by biology, and biology by chemistry, and chemistry by physics, and physics by mathematics, and mathematics by logic and the axioms. So logic and the axioms are the foundation of the universe.

Some religious people will argue: where does the logic come from? I would have said it is a meaningless question, because it cannot be answered scientifically. We accept it like we accept the laws of physics.

How could I be sure that God does not exist? Because if He does, He would have made himself known. If He can't be known, what is the point of believing in Him? And if He can be known, science would have had irrefutable proof that He exists.

[To be continued...]

Praise and Thanksgiving

A friend sent me a devotional from Mary Southerland. Liked the story in it. Haha! :)

* * *

Philippians 4:4-7 "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Ephesians 5:20 "Always give thanks for everything to our God and Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."

When our hearts and lives are filled with praise and thanksgiving, worry is a weed that will die from lack of attention. Praise and thanksgiving are powerful weapons against worry, freeing God to work in our lives because when we praise Him, we trust Him blindly.

The story is told of a young hippie who was sitting on a park bench reading his Bible. Suddenly he began to shout! "Praise the Lord! What a miracle!" An older, very distinguished man walking by stopped and asked why he was so excited. The young man replied, "I was just reading how God parted the Red Sea and the whole nation of Israel walked on dry ground!" The older man sneered, "Don't you know? That wasn't a real sea at all. It was just a few inches of water." The unbeliever turned to walk away, leaving the young man confused and discouraged - for a moment - until his shouts once again filled the air. The angry cynic returned asking, "What are you shouting about now?" "Well, sir, I just read how God drowned the whole Egyptian army in just a few inches of water." Don't let anyone keep you from praising God. Don't let any circumstance deny you the joy of praise. If you want to win over worry, praise Him!