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“You Believe What?”

Allen Dvorak
11/24/24 - Sun AM

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Turn your baubles to John 22025 215 through 220.

John 22025 to 21.

I'll be reading from the new King James version.

Now Thomas called the twin.

One of the 203 was not with them when Jesus came and other disciples therefore said to him, we have seen the Lord.

So he said to them, unless I see his hands, the print of the of the nails and put my finger into the print of the nails and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.

And after eight days, his disciples were again inside and Thomas with them, Jesus came the doors being shut and stood in the midst and said peace to you.

Then he said to Thomas reach your finger here and look at my hands and reach your hand here and put it in my side.

Do not be unbelieving but believing.

And Thomas answered and said to him, my Lord and my God, Jesus said to him, Thomas because you have seen, seen me, you have believed, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

And truly Jesus did other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.

But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

And that believing you may have life in his name.

As Tim noted this morning in the announcements at the beginning, we are here to worship God and to be edified, built up by one another and it is good to be together.

I think sometimes we don't recognize the value of being with other Christians until we're in a place where we're not among other Christians.

And then suddenly we realize how precious the occasions like this really are.

If we were going to try to identify defining characteristics of a Christian, we would probably talk about faith that certainly has to be one of the defining characteristics of a Christian.

But what do we mean by faith?

There are several false ideas about the nature of religious faith that you probably are familiar with in the movie of the last century miracle on 220th street.

The comment was made, faith is believing when common sense tells you not to.

So faith is contrary to common sense, Mark Twain in his book, Tom Sawyer, put these words in the mouth of Huck Finn.

One of the characters in the book.

Faith is believing things, you know, ain't true.

Unfortunately, those are not just the ideas of a few folks, many religious people hold similar ideas about the nature or the meaning of faith, their faith is based on emotion based on feelings or maybe just wishful thinking.

I want such and such a thing.

So I believe in it.

They talk about faith being a leap into the dark where you don't know what's going to be on the other side.

You just take that leap, you leave reason and intellect behind in order to believe Richard Dawkins, a noted voice in the evolutionary community says faith is the belief in spite of even perhaps because of the lack of evidence.

So faith is when you believe, because you don't have any evidence.

Christopher Hitchens also in the same line of thinking, said faith is the surrender of the mind.

It's the surrender of reason.

So faith is contrary to reason, it's contrary or lacks evidence according to these kinds of statements.

And all of these statements describe a blind faith, but not the biblical meaning of faith.

Those who do not believe in God, those who do not believe in the Bible tend to characterize the faith of all those who do believe in God as being essentially a blind faith.

When individuals like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hicken Hitchens, when they define faith, they're not talking about just some.

That's how they perceive your faith and my faith and the faith of all those who would argue that there is a God and the Bible is his book.

If you believe in the eyes of such individuals, if you believe that God created the universe and all life that is in it.

You are perceived as some sort of delusion, delusionary wacko who believes in ancient uh mystic fables and myths that have no foundation.

In fact, atheists who accept macroevolution or essentially the general theory of evolution, they claim that they base their belief, their viewpoint on things that they can observe in the natural world.

And so their belief is scientific would be the claim that they would make.

But on the other hand, since the existence of God is not something that we can prove by our empirical senses, by touch or sight or sound or taste or smell, then creationism is viewed as unscientific and it is that dissonance that I want to talk about this morning and I apologize.

I'm going to dig into some things that are a little bit technical and I choose typically not to do that on a Sunday morning.

But you'll understand as we go along, why I'm choosing to do it today.

And I haven't overestimated the opinion or exaggerated the opinion of those who do not believe in God about your faith and my faith.

I mentioned Richard Dawkins already.

And he in a review a number of years ago of a book that was printed, a review that was printed in the New York Times.

He said it's absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane or wicked.

He says, but I'd rather not consider that.

So if you don't believe in the general theory of evolution according to this individual, and there are many others probably like Him, you are either ignorant, stupid or insane, maybe even wicked.

That's their view of those of us who believe that God created this world, that there is a God and that He created all that is in this world.

Is it true that atheistic evolution is scientific and creation is unscientific.

Is it true that we are in fact guilty of a blind faith?

A faith that's not based on evidence that has really nothing to support it other than our emotions and our wishful thinking.

Well, those are some of the questions that I'd like to address this morning.

Now I would freely admit and I think you would probably also that there are certainly religious people who do have what we would call a blind faith.

Their faith is based on emotions and feelings instead of truth.

They have kind of a feel good religion.

I get this warm feeling.

And so that's why I think I'm more spiritual, many believe in whatever allows them to do what they want to do.

That's essentially the motivation for their belief or their faith.

But that's not biblical faith.

When we talk about biblical faith, I know frequently we'll go to Hebrews the 220th chapter and verse one.

And while that may essentially be a definition.

It may more properly be the function of faith that's described here by the Hebrews author.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen for by it.

The elders obtained a good testimony.

I want to suggest to you this morning that the Bible claims that true faith is in fact based on evidence, that evidence is often testimony, which is a form of indirect evidence, but it is evidence.

And it is the basis for faith, for instance, the Apostle Paul in Romans 23031 and verse 17 indicates that faith is not something that arises from within us.

But that in fact, faith comes from hearing and hearing of the word of God.

The word of God is what produces faith believe.

That is, it provides the foundation for that belief.

Jesus himself.

In John, the eighth chapter verse 32 said, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

You will know the truth.

It's possible for us to understand, to know, to recognize what the truth is about the origin of this world and life on it.

Eric read for us just a few moments ago, the comments of John in the toward the end of his gospel.

And he says, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book, but these signs are written so that you may believe John says these signs and typically they are numbered as seven in the gospel of John.

These signs are intended to be a foundation for our belief in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, that we might have a life in his name.

When the Apostle Paul on his second missionary journey went to the city of Berea.

He found people there who were more willing to accept his preaching, his teaching than in a previous city.

These Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica.

They received the word with all eagerness examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were.

So they didn't accept Paul's word just because, well, it sounds pretty good or that's something I would like to believe.

But rather they checked to see if there was some foundation for what he was saying.

They went back to the Old Testament Scriptures to confirm that what Paul was saying about the Christ about Jesus was in fact true.

And so the beans were people whose faith was based on evidence, the indirect testimony of the Old Testament.

But the Bible also claims, I believe that God has provided evidence for his existence.

Paul would preach and acts the 14th chapter and verses 16 and 17 in past generations.

He that is God allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways yet he did not leave himself without witness.

Well, what kind of witness Paul for?

He did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.

I believe Paul is really talking about some of what we call the laws of nature.

We'll say more about that a little bit later on this morning and a good bit more as we pursue our subject.

But God left evidence of his existence in these laws because God is the lawmaker, a law has to have a maker, a lawmaker and God is that lawmaker, the psalmist would say in the 19th psalm and verse one, that the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

You can look into the heavens and see the power, the majesty of God.

And of course, a passage that's frequently cited in Romans chapter one where Paul is talking about gentiles who had rejected or failed to acknowledge God, they uh pushed him out of their thinking.

And he says, for what can be known about God is plain to them, these folks because God has shown it to them.

Well, how did he do that, Paul 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.

Paul says there was evidence there of God's nature, his power so that if they choose to reject God, they are without excuse the witness.

Was there, the evidence was there for them to believe there was a foundation for faith in God.

I think the Bible really warns us also about blind faith.

I know there's a different context here.

But in first Thessalonians five and verse 203 the Apostle Paul, just in that kind of pithy chapter there, he says, but test everything, hold fast that which is good, test everything, don't just accept whatever but test things and hold to that which is genuine or good.

I think that's a kind of an abbreviated description of the scientific method.

Is it not that you test everything and you come to good conclusions about those things, our emotions, our feelings are not a good guy.

Jeremiah said that the heart can deceive us in Jeremiah 17 and verse nine in the field of psychology.

And actually, this principle can be found in other scientific fields or areas of study in the field of psychology.

There's a principle known as the law of rationality.

I'm not a big A I guy but I dove in and I let a a I define the law of rationality for me.

I I want to read what it, what it came up with.

The law of rationality generally refers to the concept that decisions and actions should be based on reason and logic.

That's a pretty fair definition, implying a systematic evaluation of available information to make the most optimal choice in a website called Philosophy terms.com.

The law of rationality is a key rule that tells us to base our beliefs and conclusions on solid reasons.

And so the law of rationality suggests that rational beliefs are based on evidence that supports them.

That's a quote from Wikipedia.

So, you know, you can trust it.

I like the quotation, the summary that Jeff Miller uh gave.

He's a preacher member of the church.

He said that the law of rationality says that we should only draw those conclusions that are warranted by the evidence.

So the law of rationality says, we look at the evidence and we draw conclusions, but only those conclusions that are legitimate for that evidence.

Sometimes people draw conclusions that the evidence doesn't support, that's not rational according to this principle in the study of psychology.

In fact, anyone who draws conclusions or who embraces ideas that are not warranted by the available evidence or facts is being irrational.

That's the conclusion of the law of rationality.

If you go beyond what the evidence actually warrants, now, you've become irrational instead of rational.

The fact that faith, our faith in God and Christ is based on indirect evidence or testimony doesn't mean that it's irrational.

It doesn't violate the law of rationality.

If the evidence supports our belief, that's a rational belief.

Now, atheistic evolutionists don't believe that they believe that we're irrational in our belief.

But I want to suggest to you that that's not really any different than the process that a number of the sciences use as they come to various conclusions.

How many of you like the crime shows where, uh they show you how people uh begin to look at the evidence and they try to figure out what happened and maybe who did it.

And even sometimes in those shows that the, the forensic scientists will even tell you why they did it.

But what they're doing, they didn't observe the crime, they didn't observe the event, but they're looking at evidence and they're drawing conclusions, hopefully that are warranted from the evidence.

They do that all the time in forensics and they do it in geology, they do it in paleontology, they do it in astronomy, they do it in archaeology, the historical sciences, often their conclusions, those who study those things in those fields, their conclusions are based on indirect evidence.

Listen to me carefully about the next statement.

The general theory of evolution relies on indirect evidence and the reason is the general theory is essentially macro evolution and nobody has ever observed that it's not something you can look at and say, well, see here, I, I I've got the evidence.

I'm, I'm watching it happen because of the nature of macro evolution.

It's deep time that we're talking about.

And so what the evolutionist does is he takes evidence from here and their facts and he draws conclusions from those pieces of evidence as to what they mean.

Is it true that belief in creation is unscientific.

That's the opinion of probably a large number of percentage of scientists.

Is it the case that the Bible and science are contradictory?

You don't have to spend much time on the internet or read in, uh, popular, uh, written books to hear that kind of view that.

Oh, well, the Bible is not a scientific book.

It's contrary to science, if you really want to know what's going on or what has gone on in the world, you need to listen to the scientists because the Bible is kind of a collection of myths and fables and that sort of thing.

If you begin to talk about creation, the beginning of life on this planet, somebody may pop up and say, well, what about all the scientific evidence that proves evolution and disproves the Bible?

That's the premise that many people begin with.

What about all the evidence, the scientific evidence that proves evolution and disproves the Bible, specifically creation or maybe it's not a question, maybe it's an affirmation.

Evolution is the scientific choice for an explanation of origins of the universe and life in this universe.

I'm gonna kind of move off to the side a little bit.

We'll come back to some of these things, these questions in just a few moments.

But I want to say to you that sometimes these discussions, these ideas are prejudiced by definition.

I'll give you an example.

Science is often des described or defined that is science.

What is science?

It's often described or defined in a way that suggests that a belief in creation is by definition unscientific.

For instance, the National Academy of Sciences is very influential in the way that science is taught in our schools and in universities, that sort of thing.

Here's the definition that they give for science or at least the description of what science does.

One goal of science is to understand nature.

The statements of science must invoke only natural things and processes.

The statements of science are those that emerge from the application of human intelligence to data obtained from observation and experience progress in science consists of the development of better explanations for the causes of natural phenomena.

Did you see a theme kind of running through this description of what science is and does?

Well, let me help you.

Science has nothing to do with the supernatural.

In fact, the supernatural is excluded from science, which is why so many people uh begin to have a meltdown when we talk about teaching creation in public schools in science class.

Well, that's not science because they define science as study that only deals with natural phenomena, natural processes, only the natural world.

There's nothing said about the supernatural.

But let me ask you a question since science is the idea of discovering information and understanding the implications, the conclusions that can be drawn from that information.

What if just spitballing here?

What if the data that's gathered would suggest supernatural activity No, we don't even consider that.

That's not science.

See, we've excluded that by definition.

If you believe in creation, you're abandoning science, you've moved into, uh fables and myths and that kind of thing.

Does true science support the biblical account of creation?

I believe that it does.

And I intend to show that in our studies, does the general theory of evolution really harmonize with true science.

And the fact of the matter is it doesn't, it is contrary to two s true science.

And I intend to try to show that as well.

Not all of that this morning, some of you are beginning to look a little worried.

I don't intend to deal with all of that this morning, but I want to affirm those things because that, that's the foundation of some studies that I want to present to you.

When we talk about science, we usually think of the laws of science, those regularities in our uh in our uh universe, the mcgraw Hill Dictionary of scientific and technical terms, which is only slightly more erudite than Wikipedia says scientific law is a regularity which applies to all members of a broad class of phenomena.

OK. That didn't help me a whole lot.

I see some of you going. What?

So let me uh let me just describe it this way.

The laws of science were discovered through extensive scientific investigation, gathering evidence about how things work in our universe, in our world.

Evidence that points to some conclusion.

Stephen Hawking said it this way in a presentation on the Discovery Channel in which he bashed uh eu uh creation.

He says the universe is a machine governed by principles or laws, laws that can be understood by the human mind.

I believe he writes that the discovery of these laws has been humankind's greatest achievement.

Unlike laws made by humans, the laws of nature cannot ever be broken.

That is important.

Scientific laws are not good on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

But Tuesday and Thursday sometimes, sometimes not, they're not broken.

This is the regularity of how things work in the world, in the universe.

That's why they're so powerful, the laws of nature are fixed.

He says, and so as an evolutionist, he makes an important point for us.

The laws of science are by definition rational, they fit the law rationality because they're drawn from information evidence and the conclusions are warranted conclusions to hold to any belief which is against the scientific laws is essentially irrational.

Let me say that again differently.

If the laws are rational, then if I hold some belief that's contrary to those laws, then I hold a belief that's irrational.

That that's just, I mean, that that's a logical conclusion.

If creation is against the laws of science as they've been discovered by mankind, then creation would be an irrational belief.

But if evolution, the general theory of evolution is against the laws of science violates those laws in the sense that uh it's contrary to the laws, then the general theory of evolution is irrational.

And that's what I intend to prove in our studies together.

Because the general theory of evolution contradicts several known, accepted scientific laws that makes it an irrational belief.

I've been using the word or the phrase general theory of evolution.

And maybe you're well familiar with very familiar with what that theory is.

But I want to spend just a moment or two talking about what that theory says.

I want to present to you the evolutionary model.

That is what uh evolutionists think is true according to their understanding of origins.

It's unfortunate that a lot of evolutionists use and, and others as well.

They use the word evolution, just evolution to talk about the general theory of evolution.

I read an article uh just this week, uh a rather scientific article and they talked about evolution is a fact and also a theory because what they're doing is they're combining two types of evolution in the term evolution microevolution, which and I'm a little behind on my chart.

Sorry about that microevolution, which involves small changes that are observable, the, the uh development of new species uh changes in individual big size and that sort of colors and that sort of thing and that's observable in the world.

No, we don't need to deny that because there's evidence of it, but that's not the general theory of evolution.

The general theory of evolution really is better described by macro evolution.

That word which refers to macro large changes and those changes are not observable have never been observ observed by mankind because of the nature of the changes they take long periods of time.

Methuselah lived 969 years and he wouldn't have seen macro evolution and that leaves the rest of us out in the cold because most of us aren't gonna make it nearly to 900 years, right?

So macro evolution is really what the general theory of evolution is all about.

The general theory of evolution suggests large change across taxonomic borders.

So that everything basically comes from the same single cell origin.

Now I'm gonna use the word evolution.

But when I use it, I mean, the general theory of evolution, I'm not talking about microevolution.

I'm talking about the theory that Darwin began with.

So, what's the evolution model?

Well, I'm gonna give you seven points.

We're not gonna discuss them.

I just want to present them to you this morning.

These are things that all need to be true.

In order for the general theory of evolution to be true, the universe spontaneously generated either that or it's eternal life spontaneously generated from non life at some point.

Microevolution is true.

Ma excuse me, microevolution is true and it accounts for the existence of different kinds of animal, different kinds kind in the sense of Genesis.

Chapter one, Neo Darwinism is the mechanism for the evolution of complex kinds.

From a simple primordial organization.

Macroevolution says it all came from one source, one simple primordial organi organism.

Neo Darwinism says here's the mechanism how that happened.

That's, that's the difference between those two planks, humans and apes have a common ancestor.

Uniform aarian is, is true.

The processes that we observe in our world today.

That's the way things have always worked in our world.

And so you can calculate things that way.

And the earth and life are very old on the on the scale of billions of years.

Well, as you probably would guess, there's a creation model also.

And it basically is kind of the opposite of many of these things.

The universe was created suddenly by a non-physical entity.

Life was created suddenly not over long period of time.

All present kinds have remained constant sense creation within kinds.

There have been microevolution changes, small changes, but macroevolution hasn't occurred, the kinds have been fixed from the beginning.

I said I wasn't going to explain all this and I made myself a liar.

Neo Darwinism is insufficient to account for the emergence of present day kinds from simple primordial organism.

That's uh the part of the creation model.

Humans and apes have separate ancestry.

We didn't descend from the apes or common ancestor.

Catastrophes is true as opposed to uniform itar is catastrophes.

Do I need to explain that?

That's the flood that stuff happening in ways that are not uniform or normal.

Regular, the earth and life are relatively young on the order of a few 1000 years, not billions of years.

Well, this morning, uh I think some of you were probably not even thinking that we're even near the conclusion.

But here we are this morning, all I wanted to do was introduce what I intend to use as kind of a theme for the year 2025.

I want to talk about an examination of the evidence for atheistic evolution.

This is the point at which I probably should spend about 15 or 20 minutes talking about why we should do that.

But I don't know that that's really necessary.

Does anybody here know someone who has lost their faith because they couldn't answer some of the things that were being said about evolution and creation.

Do you know anybody who has been challenged in uh a high school biology class or natural sciences class or in college?

They've been humiliated by some professor who ridiculed them because they believed in creation.

Do you know it or did it happen to you?

You know how many young people have lost their faith because we didn't spend enough time talking about whether the evidence for evolution is really evidence for evolution or whether it is in fact an irrational belief, we need to talk about this, the challenge to our faith and the faith of particularly young people as they build, the foundation of their faith is very serious.

And so what I'm going to do is over the year of 2025 Lord willing, I'm going to try to hit some points about evolution.

I want to talk about some of the evidences for evolution.

I want you to see that evolution is not supported by the scientific laws.

In fact, it is an unscientific theory.

I intend to show that evolution is both an irrational belief and a blind faith.

I'm going to show that the laws of science, such things as the law of causality, the law of biogenesis, the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics, the law of probability genetics, they do not provide evidence for evolution.

They are in fact insurmountable barriers to that theory.

But folks, we've been gas lighted for a long time now by people who just affirm something that's not necessarily true.

But if you just keep saying it often enough after a while, someone pops up and says, well, I guess evolution is a fact.

It's been proven you can read that in biology textbooks and I'm going to show you that that's not true.

I want to go back to a passage that we began with early on in John chapter 20 in John chapter 20 verses 3031 John wrote that in his gospel, he was providing evidence in the recording of the signs that Jesus did the miracles that Jesus did miracles that pointed to some truth about Jesus or his ministry.

And John says these signs are essentially the foundation for your faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God.

Do you believe that this morning?

I know that most of us do.

We're Christians, we're here because we do believe maybe you're someone who's thinking about that and perhaps you are convinced that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

But you've never done anything with that faith.

You need to obey the Gospel.

You need to respond in obedience to the truth of the gospel.

Jesus is not just the Son of God.

He's the only way to heaven and he offers to you and to me forgiveness of sins to the non-christian who obeys the Gospel and is baptized for the remission of sins, comes up out of the water free from the guilt of past sins.

And for those of us who are Christians, the blood of Jesus Christ continues as John writes and for sha one to cleanse us from our sins as we repent and confess those things to God.

If you need to respond to the Gospel this morning, we want to invite you to act on the faith that you have.

We stand and sing to encourage you this morning.