Children’s Ministry Leadership

1. Ministry Resources Bible
2. Spiritual Formation
3. Individual Characteristics & Personalities
4. How Memory Works
5. Bible Teaching for Mixed Ages and Abilities
6. Multi-sensory Teaching
7. Bible Teaching Ideas
8 Intro to Chronological Bible Storying
9. Bible Storytelling Techniques
10. Ministry Master planning & Program Planning

View/Download the Children's Ministry Leadership Institute PDF HERE

A. What is Truth?

Is there such a thing as absolute truth, or is truth relative? How do we choose between all the options?

We mentioned this last time, but it’s worth reviewing so that the terms like modernism and postmodernism become second nature to you.….

During the modern era (1500-1960’s) it was believed that there was an objective, absolute truth that could be known through scientific method. People observed the evidence, used their reason and came up with facts. The scientist (a man in the white lab coat) was very respected. That’s why so many commercials had guys in white lab coats talking about how well a certain detergent cleaned, or extolling the virtues of various products. The underlying message was, this is not just the manufacturer's opinion, it is a scientifically provable fact.

In our postmodern society the predominant view is that truth is relative. What’s true for you is true for you, and what’s true for me is true for me. Evidence doesn’t matter any more. We go by our feelings. We are tired of cold, hard facts. If you are frustrated by our political system and news media where it seems that nobody pays any attention to the facts, and they just say whatever they want, welcome to postmodernism. And as we said last week, postmodernists want experience and relationships, so now commercials consist of beautiful and or rugged looking individuals using this or that product and having a good time in exotic locations. Now sponsors pay TV and movie producers to get good shots of the jeep logo the hero is riding in or the Dell laptop that Jack Bauer is using.

It’s not that we don’t believe in scientific facts anymore. It’s that science is bankrupt in its ability to answer the meaningful questions in life. However, since naturalism marginalized religion by dividing the world into a fact/value, science/ethics, public/private dichotomy, and then said that values and ethics are only based on personal opinion, we are left with a society that is searching for meaning in life in this private, relativistic sphere.

So, when someone says, “What’s true for you is true for you, and what’s true for me is true for me,” they are not usually speaking of scientific/public things. They are speaking of private/ethics/morality issues.

So, how do we know what is true? One way to try to explain how we know what we know is by looking at the sources of our knowledge.

B. Sources of Knowledge

Question: What are our sources of knowledge? How do you know what you know?

Tradition: things that were taught to you by your parents, school, church. As it relates to our topic, this would mean that, if you were raised in a Christian family, you’ll most likely believe that way. If you are raised in a Hindu family, you’ll most likely be a Hindu. If you are Catholic, it’s the official doctrines of the church.

Reason: We are logical creatures. Things make sense or they don’t. When we hear contradictory statements, we recognize them and should reject them, but we don’t always do that. We are all hypocrites in certain areas.

Experience: If someone tells you that there is no such thing as evil, but in the past, you’ve been the victim of some crime, your experience tells you that there is something wrong with his statement. If someone tells you the gift of tongues is no longer in effect, but when you go to your church, folks all around you are speaking in some ecstatic speech. What are you going to believe?

Emotion: How do you feel about Stalin, Hitler, suicide-bombers? Does it cause you to accept their world view or reject it? How do you feel when you hear that there is no point to life? There is no life after death. I heard a Palestinian interviewed a while back who said that he thought Hitler was a great man. Why would he say that? Because he hated Jews so much and thought Hitler did the world a great service.

General Revelation: what we observe in nature. Psalm 19 and Romans 1 claim that the natural world proclaims the glory of God and should prove to men that God exists. Is that how everyone responds to the wonders of nature? Why not?

Special Revelation: specific information that God has revealed in the Bible. 2 Tim 3:16 says that “All scripture is inspired by God…” God has communicated to us what He thinks we need to know and it is accurate.

Now, go back through the list. Which ones are subjective and which ones are objective? The first five are subjective sources. The last one is objective.

Question: What are your sources of knowledge/truth? Are they all subjective?

If you deny special revelation, then all your sources are subjective. And truth becomes relative.

Question: If truth is relative to you, then what causes you to change your opinions?

You change your opinions because there is in fact an absolute truth that you are adapting to. That doesn’t mean that every time you change your mind you are making a move in the right direction. But if truth is relative, then you wouldn’t need to change your mind at all.

The bottom line is this: If you deny special revelation – the Bible – then truth is relative. When you examine the logical and practical consequences of truth being relative, one has to recognize that it’s not possible for truth to be relative. Therefore, there is an absolute truth. And that brings us back to the only objective source of knowledge – the Word of God. I realize that’s sort of circular logic, but if our list of sources of knowledge is exhaustive and we don’t like relative truth, then we are faced with no other option.

C. Faith versus Reason

Secularists claim that their views are unbiased and rational, they are scientific and value-free. They claim that they have no religious or philosophical axe to grind and that their views are neutral. Then they turn around and claim that religious views are prejudiced and based on blind faith. These claims have been so widely accepted that a secular/sacred division dominates our culture. We hear the phrase “Separation of Church and State” almost daily on the news. We hear politicians and judges claim that their faith has no bearing on their political decisions.

People usually have the idea that the issue is Faith versus Reason. Either you believe science or you have “blind faith” in some religion. What you must recognize is that even science is not based solely on observation. None of us were there when the universe and life began. So, scientists speculate and come up with theories—like the theory of evolution, or the big bang theory. There are basic assumptions that science rests on. The Naturalist’s basic assumption is that there is no God. There is only matter. That is not a scientific assumption. That is a religious assumption.

So, is the secular person really neutral with no philosophical axe to grind? No. Their philosophical axe is that there is no God, and they try to silence anyone that disagrees. So the real question is not, “Do you believe in faith or reason.” The proper question is, “How reasonable is your faith?”

The Bible mentions in several places the role of reason in trusting in God.

Matt 4:17 says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The word repent means to “change your mind.”

2 Cor 4:4 “…the god of this age has blinded the minds of those who do not believe…” So we see that the mind is involved in believing.

2 Cor 10:4-5 We tear down arguments (5) and every arrogant obstacle that is raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to make it obey Christ.

Act 17:23 – Paul reasoned with the philosophers.

So, since we’ve concluded that reason is involved in the process. How do we evaluate things to see if they are true? There are several tests we can make on the claims of the various world views:⁴

1. The test of reason

Is the explanation consistent and coherent? Is it comprehensive in scope? Does it really explain the world around us?

When talking about a world view system, the whole system should hang together logically and not be full of contradictions. The law of non-contradiction is one of the main ways we know things. When we are trying to figure something out, much of the process involves eliminating the options that contradict other things we already know. When we hear a contradiction, our logical minds naturally recognize and reject it.

Let’s take the philosophy of skepticism. The skeptic says that it is impossible to know anything. What is wrong with that statement? What is the contradiction? Somehow, he knows that it is impossible to know anything. His claim that there is no universal truth is based on a universal truth.

The solipsist believes that he is the only one who exists. If that is really true, then why does he bother trying to convince you – someone who doesn’t exist – that you don’t exist? Why is he even imagining that you exist in the first place? Maybe he’s lonely.

I know you think I’m making this up. You don’t think anyone could actually believe that. Here’s a quote from Shirley MacLaine to her guests at a dinner party:

I begin by saying that since I realized I created my own reality in every way, I must therefore admit that, in essence, I was the only person alive in my universe. I could feel the instant shock waves undulate around the table. I went on to express my feeling of total responsibility and power for all events that occur in the world because the world is happening only in my reality. And human beings feeling pain, terror, depression, panic, and so forth, were really only aspects of pain, terror, depression, panic, and so on, in me!. If they were all characters in my reality, my dream, then of course they were only reflections of myself.

I was beginning to understand what the great masters had meant when they said ‘you are the universe.’ If we each create our own reality, then of course we are everything that exists within it.⁵

Questions: Why would Shirley MacLaine go to the trouble of explaining to her dinner guests that they didn’t exist? Or bother writing a book to explain her enlightenment to a bunch of people that don’t exist? Here’s another thought: She said she realized that the terror, depression, etc. in others was a reflection of her own terror, depression, etc. Why is it that the confusion of all those unenlightened people wasn’t a reflection of her own confusion?

Take our earlier statement, “What’s true for you is true for you , and what’s true for me is true for me.” On a logical level, what is wrong with that statement? The person who says that is trying to push his view on others. He’s making an absolute/universal statement that there are no absolutes.

The above are self-defeating contradictory statements. They are also guilty of the self-excepting fallacy.

So, we see that it is helpful to be reasonable – to have good reasoning capabilities because it can help you recognize error. I’d highly recommend The Fallacy Detective by Nathaniel and Hans Bluedorn. It was written by a couple of high school boys for kids. We read a chapter or two after dinner each night with our kids and not only did they understand it, I learned a great deal.

You need to recognize that the law of non-contradiction is only a negative test. If something is inconsistent, then it must be wrong. However, if something is consistent, then that doesn’t prove that it is right. We’ll come back to this later.

2. The test of experience

Does the explanation match the facts of our experience? Does it match what we know about our world and ourselves? Ronald Nash says, “No world view deserves respect if it ignores or is inconsistent with human experience.”⁶ He talks about an outer world and inner world.

a) Outer World

Not too many people belong to the flat earth society these days. Why? Maybe it’s because most people have been in an airplane and seen the curvature of the earth, or seen pictures of earth from space. But some people do belong to the flat earth society. What does that tell you?

Christian Scientists believe that the physical world doesn’t exist. If someone is sick, it’s all in their mind. So, they don’t go to doctors. Christian Science doesn’t have a very big following. Why? Because it contradicts our experience. But there are people who believe that. How do you explain that?

Some people misinterpret or ignore their senses. That takes us back to the point that experience is a subjective source of truth.

b) Inner World

Our world view also needs to explain why it is that we are beings who think, hope, feel, believe, desire, are conscious of right and wrong, feel guilt, etc. Rather than just responding to stimuli, we can will to do something and do it.⁷

C.S. Lewis points out that naturalism doesn’t have a good explanation for “ought” – as in you ought to be brave. How do you explain noble acts in a survival of the fittest world view? You can’t because ought is evidence of transcendent moral values.

Think about the guy who goes through college, gets married, gets a job, has kids, is very successful in his job and makes a lot of money. Then somewhere in his 40’s or so, he has a mid-life crisis. He wonders, “Is this all there is to life?” In a naturalists view of the world, where survival of the fittest is the guiding principle, one would think that this guy is one of the fittest. He has survived. He has even excelled. So, why is he dissatisfied with life? Does the naturalists world view explain why? Does Pantheism explain why? He’s obviously got good karma and should be well on the way to becoming god. Does the Christian world view explain why? What does the Christian world say is the problem? Answer: Man was created to worship God. When he worships money, power, prestige, family, or anything other than God, it doesn’t satisfy.

We mentioned earlier that the Bible is God’s special revelation to us. What does it primarily deal with? The outer world or the inner world? What is more important to us as humans?

3. The test of practice

Does it work? Can the person who professes that world view live it? Or does he have to borrow pieces of other world views in certain situations?

Example: If someone’s stereo or ipod or car is stolen…

What would the pluralist do? Since he believes that truth and morality are relative and up to each individual, he can’t complain that what you did is wrong. If he does, then he is borrowing from the theist world view.

What would the pantheist or New Age person like Shirley MacLaine do? If the pantheist were consistent with his world view, he would just let you have it, and imagine that he had another stereo, car, etc. Actually, if nobody else exists, it seems that having something stolen would be problem all by itself?

What would the naturalist do? The naturalist would recognize that you are obviously more “fit” in a survival of the fittest system and deserve the stereo or car. And he would go out and steal one from someone else.

If any of these folks call the police, then they are borrowing from the Theist’s world view that says stealing is wrong because God says stealing is wrong.

D. Why Are There So Many Philosophies?

Someone said to me the other day that there are so many different philosophical systems because either there is no absolute truth or at least it is unknowable. How would you answer that?

If relativism is so obviously not possible, why do so many people believe it? One reason is because nobody can agree on anything. But just because people don’t agree, that doesn’t mean there is no right answer. Some folks may not have enough knowledge of the issue. Or they may have different world views/assumptions that cause them to come to different conclusions. Or they just may not like the correct answer and refuse to accept it. But none of these reasons means there is no correct answer or that there is no absolute Truth.

Let’s put it another way… if the truth - the “correct answer” - is that God created the universe, and man is responsible to him in the end – and you don’t like that answer – because you don’t want to be responsible to God, then you have to come up with another explanation. Since your answer isn’t the correct one, although it may contain some truth, it’s going to have some holes. Others are going to spot those inconsistencies (because of their reason or experience) and try to come up with a new answer that fixes the problems with your philosophical system. Their new answer is not THE right answer either, so they will have problems, and so others will come up with new explanations, and on and on we go. And that is why there are “so many” philosophical systems. People suppress the truth, but they can’t live with believing nothing, so they make something up.

I ran across the following quote from Aldus Huxley (the guy who wrote A Brave New World):

I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves… For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.⁸

What is the attraction to relativism? It removes responsibility. If there is no absolute truth, then you can’t be wrong.

How do we know who is right? Who decides? If right and wrong is decided by the culture, then might makes right. Therefore, slavery is ok and Hitler was right in what he did.

Question: If you believe in evolution and the survival of the fittest, then is it consistent to believe that Hitler was a bad guy? Hitler actually was consistent – he believed that Darwin was right and that Arians were superior, and according to the principle of “survival of the fittest” it was ok to kill Jews, Christians, etc. You can’t say that all truth is relative, and then expect people to live by certain moral guidelines.

Remember when we said, “If a world view is inconsistent, then it cannot be true. However, if a world view is consistent, it may be true or it may not.” Hitler was consistent, but that doesn’t make what he believed true.

Some have tried recently to rewrite history and say that the Holocaust never happened. Why would they do that? Could it be that it is a huge problem for their world view?

Ps 111:10 says “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; (NIV)

Prov 1:7; Fearing the Lord is the beginning of moral knowledge,
but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Prov 9:10; The beginning of wisdom is to fear the Lord,
and acknowledging the Holy One is understanding.

Prov 15:33 The fear of the Lord provides wise instruction,
and before honor comes humility.

These verses say that the fear of the Lord is the beginning or foundation of wisdom. We’ve seen that all world views are based on some underlying faith/belief. There is no god, everything is god, or there is only one God. Or as these passages say, “the fear of God.” Now that you know all knowledge is based on your assumptions, do these passages make a bit more sense? What does it mean to fear the Lord? It means to recognize that God created everything and as his creatures, we are responsible to Him and will answer to Him after we die.

When your philosophical system does not have God as the starting point, then your philosophical system will fail to explain reality.

E. Conclusion

Well, we’ve had another lesson that’s heavy on the theoretical. But these principles of where we get our knowledge and how we validate whether something is true or not are foundational to the rest of our discussion. As we look at each of the world view questions and how each world view answers them, hopefully we will be better prepared to determine if it meets the test of logic, experience and practice.

I said this before, but since our lesson was heavy on logic principles, I think it’s worth repeating. I don’t think that we can reason someone into believing in God and the Bible. Even if you answer all of their arguments and show their world view to be flawed, and the Christian world view to be more reasonable, it still comes down to the issue of faith. There is a built-in resistance to submitting to God. Rom 3:11 says that “there is no one who seeks God.” John 3:20 says, “everyone who does evil deeds hates the light…” and in Acts 17:17-34 some scoffed, some wanted to hear more, some believed.

So, while reason is extremely important, it is not enough. There is a supernatural and spiritual element to adopting a world view. But let’s not conclude that it is a waste of time to study all this. We need to know what we believe and why we believe because it will strengthen our own faith and it will help us to defend our beliefs to others.

Since one of our conclusions today was that without special revelation from God, truth is relative. I think we need to spend some time on how we know we have special revelation from God. So, next week we’ll talk about how we know the Bible is inspired.

⁴ Nash, p. 55. Probe “Mind Games” seminar.

⁵ Shirley MacLaine, It’s All in the Playing (New York, NY: Bantam, 1987) pp. 173-174. Quoted out of The Deadliest Monster, by Jeff Baldwin. P. 51.

⁶ Nash, p. 59.

⁷ Nash p. 59-60.

⁸ Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands A Verdict, p. 11.

What is the starting point? What is the ultimate reality? There are three major views:

- Theism = God

- Naturalism = Evolution

- Pantheism = There is nothing

Whatever it is, it is above man and cannot be observed. It has to be taken by faith.

A. Pantheism

Pantheism teaches that nothing is real. It’s all an illusion. The ultimate reality is a spiritual force. It’s very difficult to explain something that doesn’t make any sense (I guess that would mean I’m not enlightened), so I opted for a long quote which explains it better than I can:

The oldest and simplest form is Pantheism, which asserts that God is, and unfolds himself in, everything there is. In other words all that there is God. God is not a Creator from outside, but the sum total of all the reality of which we are a part. That being the case, the ‘way of salvation’ for man is to become one, or feel one, with nature. He must avoid artificiality, ignore man-made rules of right and wrong, and be as true to nature as he can.

At the other extreme from Absolute Pantheism the Hindu philosophers placed a view which might be called Illusionism, but we will stick to the terminology of Vedanta philosophy and call it Absolute Monism or Non-Dualism. It is fully argued by the philosopher Shankara (7th or 8th century AD) though this type of thinking goes back a thousand years before that. Shankara held that the only reality is God, and all this world is imagination (Maya). Indian philosophy professors delight in confusing their students by asking them to prove that they are not dreaming. Since dreams appear so real, it is logically impossible to prove that our own existence is not a dream. The way of salvation in Absolute Monism is to realize the dream nature of all we think we know and get through to perceiving God or the Absolute, which is identical with one’s deepest self. This way is called the way of knowledge, and Yoga meditation is prescribed to attain this realization and unity.

In its strict form Shankara’s philosophy is logically unanswerable, but practically unreal. Man cannot live his daily life happily in the assumption that nothing of what he does or reads or sees, or the friends around him, is real. … Modern man wants to live his life existentially in a real world with his own responsible decisions. The nearest present-day equivalent is Christian Science, whose disciples may not doubt their own existence but are expected to doubt the existence of their pain and disease.

At least 2,000 years before Darwin the Sankhya-Yoga philosophers of India set out their view of the universe in evolutionary terms. They visualized the evolution of our present cosmos as a rope opening out its strands to all the variety of nature and life as we know it. Since they were Monists the rope had to be eternal, and it kept opening out in the process of creation, and then retwisting its strands in the process of dissolution. Thus we are part of an eternal pulsating universe. Just now the universe seems to be in its expanding and creative stage, but it will eventually start folding up again, and so on ad infinitum.¹⁸

So, for the pantheist, the answer to the question, “Where does everything come from?” the answer is, “It doesn’t.” It doesn’t exist.

Remember our discussion about tests of reason, experience, practice? Does this fail any of those tests?

This guy says that pantheism is logically unanswerable, but here’s a logic question: Why would the pantheist need to come up with a theory for the evolution of the universe when it doesn’t really exist.

Does it match your Experience?

How does it fail the Practice test? Can you live with the idea that everything is “one”? We’ll get into this in more detail when we discuss good and evil, but for the pantheist, if everything is one, then you can’t have opposites like good and evil. So, what do you do if something evil happens to you? Deny it?

Remember that the New Age Movement is really just Hinduism/Pantheism repackaged in western terminology. Also, remember our quote from Shirley MacLaine? That’s a good example of becoming enlightened and realizing that she was god and the entire universe was just a product of her imagination.

B. Naturalism

Everything evolved… from goo to the zoo to you.

1. It’s Not Science

I think the best way to approach the argument is to emphasize the limitation of science. Science is based on empiricism – what you can observe and measure. If you can’t repeat it, measure it, falsify it, it’s not science. It’s speculation. It’s philosophy. It’s religion.

So, when scientists make statements about the reason for the extinction of the dinosaurs, they are guessing. When they make claims about the origin of the universe, they are guessing. They can’t repeat it, they can’t observe it, etc.

The Naturalist’s assumption is that there is no God. Matter is all there is. For example, in Physics Today, someone wrote, “The first criterion is that any scientific theory must be naturalistic.”¹⁹ In other words, if your belief is that God created everything, that’s not “scientific.” But somehow assuming that a supernatural being did not create everything is scientific. Do you see how they’ve stacked the deck and set the rules so that a Christian scientist can’t play in the game because he breaks the first rule. But their first rule is an assumption. It’s not scientific. It is philosophical, it is religious, and taken on faith. But because for years we’ve been beat over the head with the idea that there is a religion-versus-science dichotomy, people believe that if a scientist says it, it must be a scientific fact.

We could say the first rule of science is that God created everything, and created an orderly universe and then use science to figure out how God made it all work. And the more we learn, the more we can marvel at His ingenuity, His greatness, etc. Our first rule would be just as scientific as theirs. In fact, that was the assumption of most scientists for the first 300 years after the Renaissance.

When Darwin came up with evolution as a hypothesis to answer the big question without any need for God, those that wanted to do away with God welcomed his theory with open arms, and they assumed it was true even without proof. They assumed the proof would follow. They wanted it to be true.

Richard Dawkins, author of The Blind Watchmaker, said “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”²⁰

Here are a couple of quotes from scientists/evolutionists that show that evolution really is a religion and not science.

Richard Lewontin, an American evolutionary biologist says,

"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."²¹

Michael Ruse, professor of history and philosophy and author of The Darwinian Revolution (1979), Darwinism Defended (1982), and Taking Darwin Seriously (1986), acknowledges that evolution is religious:

Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion--a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit in this one complaint. . . the literalists [i.e., creationists] are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.²²

So, at least some well known scientists are being honest about the fact that their views on origins are not scientific.

The test of reason is probably the most important one to apply here, especially since “reason” or science is what naturalism holds out as most important.

So, what are some logical problems with evolution?

2. No supporting evidence²³

In Oct 2005 there were some articles on evolution in the religion section of the Dallas Morning News, Jacob Weinberg said:

But the acceptance of evolution diminishes religious belief in aggregate for a simple reason: It provides a better answer to the question of how we got here than religion does. Not a different answer, a better answer: more plausible, more logical and supported by an enormous body of evidence. Post-Darwinian evolutionary theory, which can explain the emergence of the first bacteria, doesn't even leave much room for a deist God whose minimal role might have been to flick the first switch.²⁴

How do you deal with statements like this? You must remember that we live in a postmodern society where it doesn’t matter if what you say is true. In fact on Friday (2/9/2007) on the Michael Medved show, Michael was interviewing Dr. Frank Luntz discussing his new book Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear. Their topic was focused on politics, but it applies to our subject as well. It doesn’t matter if what you say is true, it’s just how you say it. And Jacob Weinberg said what he said above with great authority and conviction. Most people read that and assume it must be true since it’s said with such conviction and in print in a major newspaper.

But the truth is that evolution is not supported by an enormous body of evidence. In 1980 at the Macroevolution conference held in Chicago, the paleontologists told the biologists that there was zero support for evolution in the fossil record. Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard called this the “trade secret of paleontology.”²⁵ So, the fossil record doesn’t support evolution — they never found the missing links. So scientists came up with punctuated equilibrium as new model. Since they couldn’t find any transitional forms, the conclusion was that the changes happened all at once. But again, they have no explanation of how that would happen.

Let’s look at some of the evidence that has been used over the past 100 years:

Finches — during the dry season, the finches’ beaks grew longer to enable them to dig deeper into the seeds to get at the food. This was heralded as proof of evolution. What’s not usually reported in biology textbooks is that the change in beak was only thickness of fingernail, and the beaks changed back when it started raining again. When it was all over, they were still finches.

Moths — It’s probably true that the light colored moths got eaten by birds and so the dark ones had dark offspring. When the pollution went away, the light colored ones came back. But when it was all over, they were still moths. Both of these are illustrations of micro-evolution – which no one denies. But there are no examples of macro-evolution, so they keep using these examples.

Haeckel’s Embryo chart — One of the early theories was that the embryo goes through the steps of evolution as it develops. In 1876 a German scientist named Haeckel drew a chart that showed how a fish, salamander, tortoise, chick, hog, calf, rabbit and man all looked the same in the early stages of development. His drawing showed how they all had gills and other similarities. A couple years later it was discovered that he made it all up. But even though it was known to be a fraud, it was still used in high school and college biology textbooks for the next hundred years.

And in 1990 Carl Sagan wrote an article for Parade magazine justifying abortion based on this false information that a human fetus was not human until the very last stages of development. I seriously doubt that Sagan was unaware of the Haeckel Hoax and that the whole theory of “Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny,” (literally: Development is a replay of Ancestry) had been discarded long ago.²⁶

All the examples we’ve grown up with in high school text books are either of micro-evolution or have been proven to be fakes, but they continue to use them. Why? Because they don’t have anything else. Because they really aren’t concerned with the truth. They have their agenda and will do anything to promote it.

If they don’t have any proof, and they still believe it, then one needs to recognize that their belief in evolution is really just faith. And it takes just as much faith, and one could argue that it takes more faith, to believe in evolution with all of its problems than to believe in the supernatural.

3. Cause Effect

Scientists have discovered that the universe/galaxy hasn’t always just been there. It is expanding – like the ripples in a pond when you throw a rock in it. This means it started at one point. What caused it to start?

When you press a scientist about where Z came from, they say it was from Y. When you ask where Y came from it was X. Where did X come from? From W. Eventually you get back to a point where there was nothing. And you can’t have something come from nothing.

Charles Hodge said,

A cause is something. It has real existence. It is not merely a name for a certain relation. It is a real entity, a substance. This is plain because a non entity cannot act. If that which does not exist can be a cause, then nothing can produce something, which is a contradiction.²⁷

Now, if there is a God who is eternal, above space and time, and was the first cause – who created everything out of nothing. Then that would explain it.

4. Intelligent Design

As science advances technologically and is able to see smaller and smaller cells, it discovers that even the smallest cells are extremely complex. This doesn’t fit with the theory that things evolve from simple to complex because they haven’t found anything that is simple. Even when you get down to single cell organism you find that they have a flagellum for moving about that is more complex than the motor on my bass boat. They have DNA that contains millions of pieces of information. Darwin had no idea how complex a single cell was. If he had, he would never have come up with the theory of evolution.

Intelligent Design is a phrase coined by creationists to argue against evolution. It states that since even the supposedly simple organisms are still complex, or that since organs like the eyeball have to have all their pieces working together before you have sight, these things indicate that they were designed by some intelligent being. It is an argument from empirical observation and logic that says design means there has to be a designer. If you had a million tornadoes blow through a million forests, you wouldn’t end up with a house.

There are numerous examples from nature that can’t be explained by evolution. Take the bombardier beetle. It produces two chemicals inside its body in separate chambers. For defense it shoots those two chemicals out at the same time. When those chemicals are combined upon exit, they react with each other and create an explosion. One must wonder how something like that could evolve. If the beetle ever mixed the two before the two chambers were formed in its body, it would explode. And how would it know to evolve two separate chambers for the production of some “future” chemicals it would manufacture? It would seem that some being with a great imagination created the beetle like that from the beginning.

There were a series of articles in the Dallas Morning News (Oct 2005) about intelligent design. One of the evolution supporters made the statement that Intelligent Design as a system fails to answer the questions of origins and had no scientific validity. That is kind of a silly accusation. This guy was either very confused or more likely is just trying to misdirect people. Intelligent Design is not a system with the answer, it is really the question which points us to the only logical conclusion. It is a scientific inference based on empirical evidence – complex molecular structures in a single celled organism are best explained as the product of an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process like natural selection. Of course the scientist is going to say ID has no answers since it points us to God as the answer.

5. Uniqueness of Man

We’ll take a whole class to discuss this, but in short, man’s conscience, intelligence, and love separate him from the animals. In every culture there is a belief in some higher being. Naturalism can’t explain the that. It can’t explain the inner world because it can’t see it, can’t measure it, etc.

6. Conclusion

I find it interesting that the scientific assumption is that there is no supernatural creator because there is no supernatural. But at the same time, if you look at our society it seems that there is an infatuation with the supernatural. If you look at the TV lineup – there are shows like Heroes, Supernatural, The Dresden Files, Charmed, etc. I believe most of the shows are about demons and not about God which is probably significant. But it’s sort of amazing to me that everyone goes with the non-supernatural explanation for the origin of the universe, but is obsessed with supernatural phenomenon.

The logical answer leads us to the existence of a Supernatural being who created everything. That is why there have been several books released lately by scientists who were taught the “system,” bought into the system, but once they started studying biology, astronomy, etc. they realized that the system didn’t explain things. Some of those books are Reason in Balance, Darwin on Trial, Darwin’s Black Box, The Evolution of a Creationist.

Brian Jones says in a review article on Darwin’s Black Box:

As a recent creationist committed to presuppositional apologetics, I can recommend Darwin’s Black Box as a potentially powerful agent for disequilibrium. That is, if one is convinced that Darwinian evolution is a proven fact, Behe’s work can be used to show the fallacious nature of a materialistic worldview. What one cannot do is prove the existence of God using Behe. This book fits into a presuppositional approach in that it may be able to move the debate from Darwinism to the philosophical worldview behind it, namely a chance universe. If the believer is able to show the unbelieving Darwinist that his worldview cannot account for reality in the realm of science (or logic, morality, human freedom, or human dignity) but that the Christian-theistic worldview can account for such reality, then the believer can silence objections of unbelief and demonstrate biblically to the unbeliever the truth of the gospel and his need to repent.²⁸

C. The Bible Says:

Gen 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

Rev 4:11 “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, since you created all things, and because of your will they existed and were created!

Col 1:16 for all things in heaven and on earth were created by him - all things, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions, whether principalities or powers - all things were created through him and for him.

Ps 33:8-9 8 Let the whole earth fear the Lord! Let all who live in the world stand in awe of him! 9 For he spoke, and it came into existence, he issued the decree, and it stood firm.

Acts 17:24-34 Paul’s discussion with the Greek philosophers…

John 1:1-3, 14-15 – Jesus was in the beginning with God. He is fully God. He created all things.

D. Conclusion

Why does evolution continue to be promoted when it has been disproven? Why do high school and college textbooks still use finches, moths, embryo chart to teach evolution when scientists have known for years that they are fakes?

Answer: Because the only alternative is to recognize that God created everything. And if there is a God, then man is accountable to Him. Rom 1:18f

Once people have made the philosophical commitment that there is no God, they can be persuaded by relatively minor evidence to believe in evolution.

¹⁸ Religion: Origins and Ideas. Robert Brow. http://www.brow.on.ca/Books/Religion/Religion9.html

¹⁹ Total Truth, p. 169.

²⁰ Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, p. 6.

²¹ Richard Lewontin, Professor. "The New York Review", January 9, 1997, p. 31 (Emphasis in original.)

²² Michael Ruse, "Saving Darwinism from the Darwinians," National Post (May 13, 2000), B3. Taken from http://www.americanvision.org/articlearchive/religion_of_evolution.asp

²³ This section is a summary of Nancy Pearcey’s Total Truth pp 158ff.

²⁴ Jacob Weinberg, Dallas Morning News, Oct 2005.

²⁵ Pearcey, Total Truth, p. 166.

²⁶ Excellent explanation of Haeckel hoax at http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2049

²⁷ Lewis Sperry Chafer, Bibliotheca Sacra Volume 95, p. 269).

²⁸ Brian Jones. “A Review Article: Darwin’s Black Box.” Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal Volume 5 p. 134.

A. The Problem

Non-Christians almost always raise the question: If God is good and God is great (all-powerful) then how can there be evil in the world? Since there is evil, there must be no God. Or if there is a God, he must not be good or he must not be all-powerful.

I think we need to deal with a couple of issues:

Is this a good argument against the existence of God?

How do the other world views deal with the problem of evil?

What is the answer to the problem?

B. The Logical Answer

For many years, the problem of evil was seen as a way to show that Christianity was logically inconsistent. If Christianity could be seen to be logically contradictory, then it had to be false. The atheist is using the same approach that we’ve been using as we discuss the answers the various world views have to our world views questions.

There is no logical fallacy in that statement of the problem of evil…

• · God is good.
• · God is all-powerful.
• · God created the world.
• · The world contains evil.

Where is the contradiction? What they really mean is this:

• · God is good.
• · God is all-powerful.
• · God created the world.
• · The world shouldn’t contain evil.
• · The world contains evil.

There is only an assumption on our part that there shouldn’t be any evil in the world. People assume that God must want to eliminate all evil. One would have to be omniscient (i.e. God) to know that there was actually evil that occurred that had no ultimate good purpose.

Christianity doesn’t teach that there shouldn’t be evil. So there really is no logical problem. All we can really conclude from the argument is that God must have had a good reason for allowing evil and suffering.

C. Pantheism says:

If everything is God and God is everything, then you can’t have opposites like good and evil. Therefore evil is an illusion.

So, when pantheists try to use the “problem of evil” argument against Christians, they are being inconsistent with their world view.

D. Naturalism says:

Since a naturalist doesn’t believe that there is anything that transcends the natural world. They really can’t believe in an objective “Good.” And therefore in a naturalist’s world view there really is no “good and evil.” Evil is relative and just a matter of subjective preference.

The naturalist/atheist is also being inconsistent when he uses the problem of evil as an argument against the existence of God. But few, if any, recognize that they are disqualified from asking the question.

This is a very important point. We’ve talked about how one’s world view must be logical, practical, etc. At every turn in the discussion we need to be able to recognize and point out where they are bailing out of their system and appealing to the Christian system to make their arguments. This the same thing we talked about when we said that if a pantheist calls the police when their car is stolen, they are borrowing from the Christian world view.

E. A Legitimate Question

However, once we’ve pointed out that they don’t have the right to ask that question, it is a valid question for a someone to ask because everyone has a built in conscience and a concept of good and evil, even if they deny it. So, what are some possible answers/reasons for the existence of evil and natural disasters?

1. Necessary for free-will to work –

If it was impossible to disobey God, then we’d never have to choose to obey. We would be like robots and that wouldn’t bring glory to God.

And related to this …

2. Necessary for human growth and virtue –

If there are no dangers, difficulties or disappointments in life, how can we gain character traits such as patience? If everyone is nice to you, then you never have to display selfless love. If life is easy, you don’t have to learn patience, or endurance. Being honest wouldn’t be a virtue if it was impossible to steal.

• · Matrix – Morpheus explained to Neo that when life was perfect, mankind rejected that make-believe world, so the computers had to create a world with crime, problems at work, etc.
• · The Island – when they tried to grow human clones, they didn’t survive until they gave them a world with conflict and hope (the lottery).

3. Necessary to promote the greater good

Could God allow a tidal wave or earthquake to kill thousands of people because the disaster will give Christians an opportunity to minister to the victims and as a result many come to faith in Christ? If spending eternity in hell is the “ultimate evil,” then allowing a lesser evil to occur to reduce the ultimate evil is in fact a good thing. But it might appear to some as senseless evil.

4. It is too complicated for humans to understand.

Even if we can see some possible purpose in some evil/suffering, there are events which we can’t understand and we just have to recognize we are finite creatures who can’t know God’s purpose in allowing those things. As we said before, one would have to be omniscient to know for certain that an “evil” event was so evil that no good could come from it.

F. The Bible Says:

1. God created the world and it was “good.”

2. Satan Fell

Satan was created as a good being but with free will to follow God or not. He chose not to. Angels and people were not created as robots. They were created with free will because if they chose to worship and obey God, that would bring Him glory.

John 14:30; 1Thes 3:5 and the story of Job all teach that Satan is the ruler of this world. He causes pain and suffering and tempts man to sin. In Job’s case, Satan caused physical illness, natural disaster, financial ruin, etc.

But we can’t blame all natural disasters on Satan. Our biblical example is of Satan causing disasters on a godly man (Job). I don’t think Satan would cause natural disasters on ungodly people. Why would Satan destroy an group of people who are totally opposed to Jesus Christ?

3. Man Sinned

4. Man’s Nature was corrupted

Man’s corrupted nature is the cause of much evil.

James 1:13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one. ^1:14 But each one is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desires. ^1:15 Then when desire conceives, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is full grown, it gives birth to death.

5. Creation was cursed

Gen 3:17-18 shows that there was a curse placed on creation because of the fall. God removed man from the protective garden of Eden and forced him to live in the world where animals now ate people.

Romans 8:22 says, “For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers together until now.”

6. God is in Control

How do we deal with passages like this: Isa 45:7?

45:7 I am the one who forms light
and creates darkness;
the one who brings about peace
and creates calamity.

Amos 3:6

3:6 If an alarm sounds in a city, do people not fear?
If disaster overtakes a city, is the Lord not responsible?

Does this mean God causes it? Or just uses it. The word “creates” and “responsible” in those two verses is a generic word for do, make, act, create, fashion or shape. I think it means that God uses the evil in this world to work out His purposes. God is in control, but He is not controlling. He is in control of events and shapes them to His purpose. We have to reconcile statements like these with the rest of scripture. For example, if God was the cause of evil, then He could not be the judge (Rom 3:5-6).

Examples:

Hardening of Pharaoh’s heart

God predicted that He would harden Pharaoh’s heart (4:21; 7:3). Then during the first five plagues, Pharaoh hardened his own heart (Ex 7:13, 14, 22; 8:15, 19, 32; 9:7). Then God hardens Pharaoh’s heart (9:12), then Pharaoh and his officials harden their hearts (9:34-35), then God does the rest.

I think the principle here is that just like in Rom 1:18-32, which we’ve read several times in this series. God gives people over to what they want.

Gen 50:20 – God used the evil act of Joseph’s brothers to preserve the family and nation of Israel. He used the Egyptians’ disgust towards shepherds to keep Egyptians from inter-marrying with Israelites to keep the Jewish nation pure.

Rom 8:28-29 – God causes all things to work together for good for those who love Him. It doesn’t say that causes all things to work together for good for everyone. So, those people killed in the earthquake that never got around to believing in Jesus don’t qualify. But it would include those that came to faith as a result of the disaster.

So, the Biblical explanation of evil is this:

God created everything good but man rebelled. Nature, Satan, Men were cursed. There was no death before the fall – even in the animal kingdom. God does not cause the evil, but He does control the outcome when evil happens. How He can do this is beyond our understanding, but that doesn’t make it untrue.

G. Summary

All other philosophies can’t explain the problem of evil in the world. If you don’t have a good creator, and a fall – then what’s running the universe is random chance or an evil being. People in rebellion against a good God explains the evil acts of men. And a fallen creation explains disasters.