Defense of the Faith - Science, Faith & Knowledge

Last week, and there's still handouts available if you're interested, last week we covered, you know, what is science? And we talked about, you know, here are the ten points that are part of the worldview that brought about modern science. Without those points of worldview, you would not have modern science. Those are some key points. What we're looking at today is science, faith, and knowledge. And when we say science, we're talking about modern science. And so let me go over, there's four particular points that we want to talk about here, and we have them numbered on the top part of the handout.

All scientists, no matter whether they're scientists that are working in some microbiology lab or whether they're astronomers, all scientists hold to at least 10 scientifically unverifiable presuppositions. That is, there's no way to check them out scientifically, but they're absolutely necessary to carry out science. So things that are assumed before collecting any data and before using any logic. One of the things we'll find is that scientists will talk about things as if they had investigated it and checked it out and the evidence has drawn them to this conclusion. The reality is there are many things that are assumed and taken on faith by the scientists before he begins investigating or using logic or drawing any conclusions. Alright, so we'll take a look at that in more detail in the next one.

So all scientists, whether they are aware of it or not, and many are not, whether they even admit to it or not, have faith in at least these ten presuppositions. And those ten presuppositions, those things assumed before beginning any, you know, collecting information or using logic or mathematics, right, they have these ten. Many of them are unaware that they have those ten presuppositions or where they came from. All right, next, number three.

Those scientists who are working in a field outside of the optimal domain of science, And we'll take a look at the second page at what that is. That is something that is in the present that everybody can check and recheck, right? That's also at a scale where people can check things and recheck them. Smaller scale then, right? Everybody who is dealing in that domain of science is in the optimal domain.

Those who are dealing with something that's historical or prehistory, outside of history, or maybe it was while people were around but there's nothing written, they're making even more assumptions beyond the ten, which cannot by their nature be scientifically verified. They're taking on faith.

How can we know something? The technical term for assessing and addressing this question is called epistemology. How do we know something? Science, it is said, is able to bring us to a knowledge of things in the physical realm, but what kind of knowledge is it, and how certain is that knowledge, and what are its limits?

Okay? So those are the four things we're going to cover here. We're doing okay so far? All right. So, the first one, here at the bottom half of page one, here are the ten, I can't hold up ten without dropping the paper, here are the ten things that all scientists assume before they begin investigation, before they begin using mathematics, logic, any instruments, anything. First one, the existence of an external world. There's an external world out there apart from me.

That by itself, where did that come from? The idea that there's an external world out there apart from me. Okay, let's think about that. Suppose I told you nothing exists but me and my ideas. Yeah, and then also the concept that rather than there's an objective external world out there, that somehow my mind encompasses and envelops everything. The idea of an external world is because God created it. That's where it comes from. That there's an external world out there to be investigated that's independent of me and my ideas and thoughts. It also assumes the orderly nature of the external world.

People in a lot of pagan cultures, especially those that believe in animism, that is, where there's the spirit of the rock and the spirit of the tree and the spirit of the mountain and all those, those people will see spirits who are capricious, that is, there's unpredictable, as controlling everything. And then, therefore, they won't seek order, but will instead just assume that the spirits that I can't understand and who knows what makes them tick. The spirits control everything in animism. So you have an external world that has a built-in orderliness to it.

Those are Christian ideas. Next one, the knowability of the external world. The idea that I can know it. The idea that I can know it and understand it. Just that. And where would that come from a Christian viewpoint? Christian viewpoint says, OK, God made this external world. He's a God of order who made a godly external world, world outside of my own mind and self.

And he made me so that I can know it and interact with it. Here is God who comes to Adam and says, I want you to name these animals. He gave them dominion over the earth at first. You need to know it so you can name it. Yes, you need to know it so you can name it. He gave them dominion over it, which meant that there was an external world that God had created and that Adam was to have dominion over these animals and the physical universe, right?

The existence of truth, okay? The existence of truth. Imagine a scientist that was not pursuing the truth, that didn't believe there was such a thing as truth. Can you do that in practice science? No, because a scientist is looking for what's true, whether it's the freezing temperature of water. Why is it I can breathe and exhale? And what am I breathing and what am I exhaling? What's the truth? So scientists assume truth, that there is a truth to pursue. In what? In the masses. Okay. Because most people, I don't think, really accept the fact that they're in the masses. Well, and the reality is that whole area of truth, people have gotten real confused on.

What's true? How do I know what's true? It gets to the last question we've got, and that's knowability. How do we know something? Okay, the next one, the laws of logic. And here's the amazing thing. If I ask you, why do we use logic, what are you going to do? You're going to try to use logic to tell me why we use logic. Therefore, that's why we say it is an assumption. All you can do is use circular reasoning to use logic to try to prove logic, right? So logic is an assumption.

If someone comes and starts asking you questions, well, why do you believe there's a God? And then you say, well, wait a minute, why are you asking me why? Right? Why are you asking? You're assuming that there is logic, right? To even ask me a question. Okay. Because any justification for that answer is assuming logic. Okay. Yes, yes.

The reliability of our memory, thinking, and sensory faculties to serve as truth gatherers and a source of justified, true belief. By justified, we mean checked out. Is it possible, for example, that I can believe something and then find out that that's not the case? Yeah, can happen. And I'd say all of us have probably had some kind of experience like that, maybe multiple ones, where you say, I thought this was going on, and no, this is actually the case. Essentially, what is a magician doing? A magician is presenting something that appears to be other than it is. Then we call that magic. It's really an illusion, isn't it?

Okay, the next one. The adequacy of language to describe the world. And what am I doing talking to you and putting something on the page, right? I'm using language. As a matter of fact, if somebody were to object to your using language to describe the world, what would they have to do? Use language. Oh, no, no, no, you can't use language. Well, guess what? You just use language to object here. The next one, the existence of values in science. For example, test theories fairly and report results honestly. What does test fairly, test theories fairly? And we could say test hypotheses, test theories, test laws. What does it mean to test them fairly?

Yeah, in other words, instead of going and saying, I'm going to write down what I think is the observation that ought to come out of this. That's not good, is it? Right? I think that studies can find correlations and then they state it as a fact, or they write their report in such a way that states that it's truth. Right. Where they don't say, there's a correlation, they don't say, They don't fully explain that. Right. What's cause and effect? Yeah. Yeah. What's cause and effect?

Now, the uniformity of nature and the continuity of laws inherent in nature into the future. Can you prove to me beyond any doubt that 24 hours from now, the sun will rise above the horizon? You can't. But it is the assumption that those kinds of things, that we've seen them in the past, can be then projected in the future. It relates to what we expressed last week in the Christian viewpoint of past, present, and future is critical to carrying out science. Critical to carrying out science.

We mentioned that the Eastern view of time is circular. Buddhism, Hinduism, both have a circular view of time rather than primarily a linear view. Okay, and then the uniformity of nature. Suppose I say, well, you know, the water in Colorado freezes at 35 degrees, but the water in California, it freezes at, you know,

92. I mean, obviously that's crazy, but the uniformity of nature is the part we're looking at. There's very slight variations in the Earth's gravity from one place to another, having to do with masses of mountains and density of soil and things like that. But in general, the gravity around the Earth has a uniformity, and we can look at it and study that.

Yeah? Okay. All right. Now, the last one, the existence of numbers corresponding to nature in order to measure and model using mathematics. that our mathematics corresponds to things in nature and therefore we can measure, we can analyze using that, and then we can model using mathematics to, related to number nine, make projections into the future. So this is why we can send satellites out into space, right, because we're taking the past and assuming uniformity, right, and then projecting into the future.

So these are the 10 assumptions that all scientists have. It doesn't matter what field of science they're operating in, they all have this. I would say the great majority of them don't understand this. Because what happens, even if you get a PhD in some field of science, you still haven't gone through and looked at what are these assumptions. And so the average scientist, if you were to ask them, do you have faith?

Oh no, not me. Oh yes you do. You have faith in at least these ten. So that's the position. Let's turn over to page two. So all these ten are derived from a Christian worldview. And again, most scientists don't know that either. They don't know that these are derived from a Christian worldview. You know, why do I have to report the results honestly? You know, why do I have to test things fairly? Well, that's from a Christian, you know, what's honesty? And why be honest, right? That's from a Christian worldview. All right, now the next one on page two, we have more faith beyond the 10 presuppositions of all scientists. Okay, so this is this is number three at the top part of Page one.

We have in science, and there's a kind of a grayed out area, there's the present processes and events at the top, and then smaller in scope, scale, and total access, and we note four things. One, it's presently observable, it's repeatable, it's controlled inputs, and it's measured outputs, okay? Those are the kinds of things that are the best domain of science. And your cars that you probably drove with to get here and the cell phones that you use daily are all based on that kind of science. It's repeatable. Your car hopefully works because of all the different aspects of science. And these days there's more electronics in it, in your car, than there was at one point in time. You can no longer fix the gap with a matchbook cover. The gap in the distributor, right?

The points. But things are presently observable, repeatable, controlled inputs, and measured outputs. Let's take a look. Let's just make a statement. I believe that Christ rose from the dead on the third day. Is that presently observable? No, it's not. Is it repeatable? I say, Jesus, do it again. Do it for us. No, it's not repeatable.

Can I control the inputs? I've got certain things going in, certain things... No, because it's not in the present. And then the measured outputs. and go and measure and, okay, the tombstone was rolled away and it weighed this much and, you know, had this diameter and, you know, all those things. I can't do that. So once I step into history, I step out of the optimal domain of science.

I could do the same thing. Let's think of, for example, we had some guys who wrote the Constitution and signed it, right? Can we talk to those guys? Can we repeat it? No. What we can do is go back and look at the documents again and again, but we can't repeat the process. And we can't do little tweaks. Hey guys, why'd you write that? Would you rather put that in an email? We just can't do that, because that's the past.

Now let's go to, here are a great mass of fossils. I went to Hagerman, Idaho, where there is a location there where there are hundreds of horse fossils in one spot. Hundreds and hundreds of horses were buried there and fossilized. Okay, what can I tell about those horses now? They're dead, okay? Do any of them come with a date stamp? None of them come with a date stamp, okay? I can't go back and see, you know, is this one this color or this one that color? I can't do any DNA tests on it.

A lot of the things I might want to do, I can't. In fact, there's no opportunity for me or anyone else to go back in time and watch how this happened. I was going to say, it's kind of like you could say that they were there, which is one of the answers, but you really can't. All you can really say is that the bones are there. The bones are there now, and here's the key thing. When I'm dealing with the past, since it's not repeatable, I can't go back in time to check it out.

What I do is I examine things from the present and then project back into the past based on Scientifically unverifiable presuppositions. Assumptions I make before I even start investigating. So someone uses the word science and all science is not created equal. If someone says, I am a scientist and I deal with electric circuits.

Well, that's repeatable. That's something where I can control the inputs and the outputs. It's presently observable and, you know, for example, the science that goes into wiring a building. Okay? I can go and say, well, this and this and this and this, you know, is how we did this and somebody else can check it and, no, that's not how you did it, Vern, right? And so, that's presently observable and I can go back and have other people check it and turn the circuits, you know, on and turn them off and check things out. But I can't do that about the past. All right.

So any scientist who deals with past historical processes and events, at least one person present to record observations of the past processes and or events, and or who deals with past non-historical events, nobody present to record them, right, must make additional presuppositions. Those are made prior to gathering the data, okay?

So what happens is scientists will oftentimes make statements as if this or that is a fact, and they may even be quite unaware of all the assumptions that are made that are not scientifically verifiable. And that's not the same science as, you know, allowed you to drive cars, to church and allows you to use your cell phone. Not the same realm of science at all. Okay, so let's look at the last paragraph.

For example, the scientists who attempt to use radioactive decay dating methods must use a set of assumptions about how much material was present originally. And by the way, can they go back to check how much material was present originally of whatever source or data? No. Nobody can go back at any time and verify that, right? They must assume that the recently measured rate of decay can be confidently extrapolated back in time for thousands and millions and in some cases billions of years. Confidently extrapolating, here is the rate, it's never been changed, has the process been stopped and then restarted?

The other thing that's interesting is that given the concept of an evolutionary scope, environmental changes would change, in certain cases, various ways that things would be processed by an organism. So your numbers may change, but you don't know that because you're not there to observe and do the research at the time. Speaking kind of hypothetically, the thing is that a fluctuating context makes it very hard to mathematically just articulate some... you assume very powerfully with great consequence. Here's one of the things that has happened.

We've gotten ages based on standard science, ages for dinosaur bones that extend from a couple hundred million years ago up until about 65 million years ago, the end of the Cretaceous period. That's the dating system. Just this last month, I mean a few less than a month ago, it was announced that they've discovered four different kinds of fossil snakes, some of them extending the history of fossil snakes back almost 70 million years. Now, do any of those fossils come with a date stamp? The fossils start talking and say, I'm 170 million years old.

No. None of them do that. And I can't go back in time, so all I can do is look at the fossil in the present and make various assumptions and extend those assumptions into the past. But I can never go back and check whether my assumptions were correct or not. So bold pronouncements will be made based on assumptions that can't be verified. And the person will say, I'm a scientist, right? You have to trust me. But the assumptions can't be verified by anyone, not even the scientists.

Nobody. Now, so confidently we project back in time that the radioactive decay rate has been the same, unchanged for millions, in some cases billions of years. The only problem is we don't really know Why radioactive materials decay at the rate that they do?

Hmm. So is that a really good assumption? Especially since variations have been observed. Sometimes with causes we don't understand yet. Okay. We also cannot be sure that none has been added or taken away from the sample being tested. The scientist must have faith in all of his assumptions, the 10 plus some more, which can never be objectively verified. Yeah, and you're assuming some perfect world and the reality is, you know, which world is perfect, right? Yes. Yeah, something frozen in ice is assumed to have been, you know, preserved better, right? Alright, top of page three.

So let's take it for example, if a paleontologist finds a fossil in the ground, let's say a giraffe, he can make as many observations as he wishes, and you get a picture of a giraffe fossil there, and I've excavated them. But let's say he finds a giraffe, he'll make as many observations as he likes, and then extend back in time based on assumptions. based on assumptions.

The problem with, say for example, a dinosaur fossil that's 65 million years old or older, scientists will very, very, very rarely do a carbon-14 test on dinosaur bones. Why? Well, here's why. In other words, this fossil is obviously tens of millions of years old. 63 million or 65 or something, or older.

Carbon-14 can only test back in time, practically speaking, to about 40 to 50,000 years. Therefore, there should be no carbon-14 left in this dinosaur fossil, since by theory anyway, the carbon-14 stops being renewed and generated once the animal dies. Okay, so carbon-14 has a fairly short half-life, about 5,730 years, which means every 5,730 years, half of it goes away. And so in about 40,000 to 50,000 years, you get to kind of the end of our ability to measure. So what happens then, what happens if I do a carbon-14 date, which can only test 40,000 to 50,000 years max on a dinosaur bone, where the dinosaur supposedly died off tens of millions of years ago, maybe even more than a hundred million years ago. Their assumption is there's no sense in doing this because it's way older than carbon-14 can find, right? Oddly enough, the rule is, not the exception, the rule is most of them have measurable carbon-14 in them and they don't want to hear that but it's not tested because of course there's no carbon-14 in it because it's too old but the results are that most of those dinosaur bones have carbon-14 left which means that assuming the carbon-14 formula and method and all that is correct that you've got nowhere near even a million years old, much less 65 or more. 65 or more million years old. Okay.

So the paleontologist puts faith in his assumptions that were made, but the assumptions will remain a matter of faith and not science. Okay? Faith and not science. The paleontologist will very likely report the observed facts and will report his conclusions as scientific findings, but will very likely never disclose the assumptions that were made, that were all taken on faith, and will never be scientifically verifiable by anybody. Yes?

Carbon-14 is one for things, like I say, it has to be 40,000 to 50,000 years old or less for carbon-14 to have any material to work with. They will use other radioactive dating methods like, for example, I worked on one project in the San Francisco Bay Area. There's a layer of ash that covers the whole Bay Area. It's recorded and preserved in the Bay mud. out in the San Francisco Bay, that was potassium argon dated to a million years, plus or minus a half a million years. So that gives you another age range, and there's uranium, thorium, and different ones. There's over a dozen different radioactive dating methods depending on what material you're sampling.

Now, We have the second paragraph here that starts off with Richard Dawkins. Richard Dawkins wrote about the evolution of giraffes in at least six of his books, because I have a few dozen of his books, and I have them in PDF format so I can search the things and cut and paste. And he wrote that giraffes evolved from an okapi-like animal. Now you can go to the Denver Zoo and see an okapi, and you can see a giraffe, living now.

Slowly over millions of years. What he won't tell you is that there is no fossil evidence for such an evolution. None. Zip. Doesn't exist. So slowly evolving over millions of years is what he will write. He will write. But there's no fossils to support that at all. Not one. Not a one.

So the millions of years and the evolution and the fossils that ought to be there are all a matter of faith in scientifically unverifiable presuppositions. He'll make the bold pronouncement that these animals evolved and evolved over evolutionary time and talk about millions of years and there's zero fossil evidence to support it. It's all on faith. All on faith.

And similar things could be said about snakes, could be said about bats, could be said about turtles, and it could go on and on. The transitional forms are missing. No fossil evidence. There are four different theories as to how bats came about, and the reasoning of four different theories is there's no fossil evidence to work with. None.

And imagine going from a mouse, which walks on the ground likes to hide itself and whatnot, to a bat, which tends to hang upside down, and a mouse orients itself using its legs, right? And the bat, there are about 1,050 species that use echolocation for orienting themselves, and many of them for finding their prey. They will fly and within one second, they go from first detection of a moth to eating it. One second. It has to do with echolocation and by the way, all these other bats, all the other bats are making these echolocation sounds too and they can tell their own. Down in New Braunfels, Texas, There's a cave down there that has tens of millions of bats. All those bats when they're going out of the cave are all making echolocation sounds and they continue to do so as they're hunting and they can tell their own amidst the din of other bats making these echolocation noises.

That's not a mouse. That's not a mouse. So what I would say, since there's zero fossil evidence between the mouse and the bat, and by the way, imagine what a half-evolved mouse-bat looks like, right? Is that survivable? To develop this echolocation system that goes from first detection to eating the moth in one second, I would say that what that is, is fate, because there's no evidence, That's faith, and I would even say it's miracles without a God. It's miracles without a God.

Okay, let's take a look here. So now, in The Greatest Show on Earth, Richard Dawkins wrote, this book is my personal summary, so he's taking this personally, right? Of the evidence that the theory of evolution is actually a fact. What does he mean by that? Is it a fact like water freezes at 32 degrees? What kind of a fact is this?

It is an assumption made before investigating the evidence. It is not a fact in the realm of current repeatable science. It's an assumption made before examining the evidence. So that statement, I say, is a logical fallacy. Randy introduced the idea of logical fallacies. That statement is a logical fallacy because there is no way to support it. He makes an assertion, and if you bought that one, then he can sell you the rest.

But he will never tell you that the giraffe evolving from an okapi has zero fossil evidence to support it. He talks about bats and bats and bats for several different books. He's got a book called The Blind Watchmaker and he talks about bats, you know. And I've read his stuff, sometimes multiple times. But, he won't tell you that there's no fossils going between the mouse and the bat, okay? He won't tell you that. He'll talk about the bats and how they do their echolocation and all that. He won't tell you that. Why won't he tell you that? It will disclose his faith. That's what he doesn't want to do is to disclose his faith.

As a scientist, he has to make the basic ten assumptions. In order to go back into time, he has to have other multiple faith propositions that he believes. And he believes them without any evidence, and he believes them when that evolution requires a miraculous transition.

A miraculous transition. What's very interesting is that the whales use a very similar echolocation system to the bats. Do you think they're related? Yeah. Yes, yeah, yeah. That's a great demonstration there. Yeah, I recommend it, except for the dates. Okay, the truth.

The evolution Dawkins wrote about is not a scientific fact. It is the set of assumptions he made before even starting anything called science. Additionally, science is not flat and uniform. He will use the word science, but what he's dealing with is not the same science as the guys used to put a satellite up in the sky. It's not the same. Why?

They start with the same basic ten presuppositions, but the ones that allow you to extend back in time are not scientifically verifiable. When you try to put a man up in space or a man on the moon, and they're even talking about sending people to Mars, when you do that, you don't do it with scientifically unverifiable presuppositions about the past. So Dawkins' statement about evolution being a fact is a statement about the worldview-based assumptions, scientifically unverifiable presuppositions, that Richard Dawkins personally has faith in. It's talking about Richard Dawkins' faith. That's what it's talking about.

But he doesn't tell you when the fossils are entirely missing because that would expose his faith. And he doesn't want to do that. He doesn't want to do that. Dawkins, it turns out, has great faith, but that is probably why he won't tell his readers that the transitional fossils that ought to be there simply don't exist. That would reveal his great faith and his unverifiable assumptions, even when there is no actual evidence to support his faith. I have great faith that those rodents evolved into all those bats that echolocate and fly and can detect the echolocation sound that came from them and filter out all the others. Yes?

You said simply don't exist. I've discussed that with various atheists and agnostics over time. And their general attitude is we haven't found them yet. Just give us time. Yes. And I think that's an interesting problem because if your position There's hope in the optimistic potential. That sounds a lot like what they try to accuse Christianity of. Well, they haven't found them yet. That's faith. That's faith.

In other words, they have faith that this actually did happen, but we have no evidence for it, no physical evidence, but I have faith that it actually did occur regardless of the lack of evidence. And what happens is the lack of evidence is rather persistent.

See, we recently, up in Wyoming, fairly recently found an older, by the dating system, an older bat fossil in the Green River Formation. An older bat fossil by about a couple million years older, okay? And you look at it and it's a bat. It's the oldest bat fossil we've got, it's a bat, right? We just this last month had announced We've now got an older, by about 65, 70 million years, an older snake fossil than we have ever had before. It's a snake. It's the oldest one we've got. It's a snake, right?

So, you know, again, what you have is you have, they find older and older and older, assuming the dating system, It's still what it is. Yes. The primary presupposition that should be made, and isn't, is that all man desire to find and accept the truth they discover. See, that's what Dawkins does not do. And that's what you have to have before you ever go into science. And that's also what you have to have You have to accept that you're going to accept the data that you find. That's right.

Imagine somebody who is planning on sending somebody to the moon. Imagine them making some assumptions and then finding data that's contrary. But they still insist, no, it ought to be like this. And so therefore, I'm going to design the rocket ship this way and design the suit this way. And because that's what I think it ought to be, regardless of the data, regardless of missing data. That's just crazy, right? We would say in the present tense, that's crazy.

Objectively, objectively, all scientists have faith. Those who are dealing with the recorded past, and particularly the unrecorded past, have more faith, but they do their assuming their faith and their assumptions before they begin their science. It is not the conclusion of all this investigation and bringing data and using the math and using the logic. It's what they assume before they even begin carrying out science. And the ten assumptions that they have, that all scientists have, came from Christianity. The ten assumptions that we have there at the bottom of page one came from Christianity. The other assumptions frequently do not. So they mix worldviews in their assumptions. They mix worldviews in their assumptions. Okay, let's take a look at the bottom here. Epistemology.

How do we know something? How is it that we can say we know something? We've been talking about science and the basic presuppositions of science, the things that you assume before you begin investigating and using logic and gathering data, are the ten listed on page one. Using logic and thinking and mathematics leads us to rational knowledge. That's rational knowledge, that is, I use my thinking to arrive at conclusions, right? I use my thinking to arrive at conclusions. So that's rational knowledge, okay?

And then making observations using our senses or extensions of our senses. What do I mean by that? A microscope is an extension of your senses, right? Seeing at a scale that we otherwise couldn't see. A telescope is at the other end, using an extension of our senses to gather information. So we can use various extensions of our senses to gather information. If I use a voltmeter, that's an extension of my senses to get some accuracy, instead of going, yeah, high voltage, right?

Okay. So making observations, then, is called empirical knowledge. That's the term that's used. In science, what do I have? I have a marriage, a combination of rational thinking, knowledge, and empirical knowledge, observations. That's what science is. Science puts together thinking, observation, thinking, and then observations, and that's rational and empirical knowledge. It puts those together.

Is that the only way to know something? What other ways could people know something aside from thinking and using logic and mathematics and making observations with our five senses or extensions of those five senses? Is there any other way to have knowledge?

Okay, somebody tells you something, okay, and as a matter of fact, a lot of that happens in science, right? Somebody tells you something. So what happens is a scientist will report, this is what I observed, this is what I thought, this is my thought process. They frankly will rarely talk about what they assumed. However, but yes, somebody tells you something and frequently what we're hoping is that they're telling us something reliable, right? Have you ever been told something you found out wasn't true?

Yeah. And it happens. And it isn't necessarily because somebody is trying to be deceptive, but somebody might have been mistaken in their observations. And then one of the things we would say as Christians, another way of knowing something is by God revealing. God revealing. Now, so let's take a look, flip side there. So the question answer would be yes. Now, if we say God revealing, and how would we say He reveals Himself? How does God reveal Himself?

Sam? First of all, by order. By order? Through order. And what do you mean by that? Consistency. Okay. Observable consistency. Okay, you're thinking in the physical world, okay? So one of the things is we would say, and this is from Psalm 19 and Romans 1, by nature.

Can we tell everything from nature? We can't tell everything, okay? You don't know from nature that Christ died for your sins, was buried, and rose again. Nature won't tell you everything, but it does tell you something. And scripture acknowledges that nature does declare the glory of God as eternal power and deity, but there's a lot that nature doesn't say.

But you're right, nature is one means of revelation. Page 4, we have that there. Providence, that is God's guidance and provision, are also ways that God reveals Himself. Another one is conscience, Romans 2. has that revelation. Those are called general revelation. The special revelations are scripture and Jesus Christ himself. So those five means are the kinds of revelation that we can know things from, from scripture. So, let's take a look at some of the things right below that. But how do we know we can trust the Bible to be God's revelation?

That's one reason why we're offering this elective. The reality is, the answer to that is substantial enough that it's going to take us some months to cover. So there are a lot of things to look at, and that's part of what we're doing here. How can we know that we're interpreting it correctly? So that's why we offer How to Study the Bible, to look at a consistent method of interpretation.

In quick summary, we use the grammatical-historical method of interpretation. That is, we look at grammar and historical context. It's elements of language, elements of history, and elements of culture. Those three things. Language, history, and culture. are things we look at. And so we look at the key principles of how do we go about studying the Bible. The last thing I want to cover here in our overtime is the four truth questions. So one question is, is there absolute truth?

And scripture would answer yes to that. We give a couple passages in Proverbs and Hebrews. So is there absolute truth? And of course, The scientists must believe there is truth that isn't necessarily a statement that there's absolute truth just based on science, modern science alone. So absolute truth is something that scripture itself proclaims. Next, is that truth singular? Is there a singular truth or does each person have their own?

And of course, Scripture, again, in the Gospel of John, a couple places, has that answer. Has that truth been given? Because let's say that there was absolute truth and it was singular, but it hadn't been given to us. We wouldn't have it, so it's almost an irrelevant question, right, after that. And Scripture would answer yes. We have Psalms, John, and the book of Revelation that say, yes, it's been given.

And then the fourth one is the absolute, singular, given, truth, knowable. And remember that knowability? That's true of one of the assumptions of science too, isn't it? The knowability of the external world, we say the knowability of that absolute, singular, given truth. Yes, we can know it, right? So these are the four truth questions that gets us down to looking at the revelation that God has given us specifically in His Word and in the person of Christ. Those are the special revelations.

Alright, so if you look at the big picture here, we've gone through the four points, talked about each of them briefly. Could we spend more time on them? Sure, we could spend the whole you know, year, the rest of the year going over those things. We won't.

But I think what you can look at is when a scientist goes and talks in such a way that he says, boy, we know this, but you guys just believe stuff. No, reality is all scientists have faith. They have to have at least faith in those 10 things that we listed on the bottom of page one. And depending on their field of science and their worldview, They must have also additional faith on top of that. Scientists are very faithful people, right? They're very faithful people. And depending on the branch of science, having even more faith.

Say Richard Dawkins to tell you evolution is a fact, that takes a lot of faith. Well, he believes a whole bunch of things. He just won't acknowledge it, right? In truth, he has a great deal of faith, even when there's no evidence, and even when it requires a miracle, multiple miracles. All right, thoughts, questions? Yes? Now, is there such a thing as the Young Earth Theory? And doesn't it say the Earth is like 6,000 years old? Yeah, we'll be taking a look at that. And here's part of the problem is, how far back can any of us go? We have within our lifetimes, right?

So before that, we're stepping into historical documents, things that are not repeatable, etc. And nothing out there comes with a date stamp. Nothing. The only way we can go back in time, and sometimes that gets to be theoretical, the only way we can go back in time is look at the present and make assumptions about the past.

And so what I look at is we'll have old earth theory, young earth theory. All we can do in the present is observe the present and make assumptions about the past. That's it. And so what you'll have is someone who believes in an old earth will make old earth assumptions and then continue to work out everything based on those assumptions. Someone who believes in a young Earth, typically that's based on the Bible and saying, okay, God created in six days and let's add up the genealogies, you end up with about 6,000 years as the date. That's radically different from the about 4.6 billion years old that the long-age theory would arrive at. But again, both of them are based on assumptions that can never be verified directly.

So yes. Yeah. So you made mention of, regarding scientists, the great faith, the degree of faith they have. How does that compare to our faith, the size of the mushrooms? Yeah, think of it. Essentially, everybody has faith. Everybody has faith. It's only a question of where you put it. So everybody has faith. And to look at and say, okay, Christians have faith, right?

But these scientists, they actually know things. That's not an objective statement. That's a, you know, it's a problem. It's a logical fallacy. Because it isn't a matter of here's science, and they know something, and they know it certainly. And then here's Christians, and they have faith. No. Everybody has faith. It's just a question of where you put it. It's only a question of where you put it. The person who doesn't even believe in science or doesn't even know what it is has faith. The person who is a PhD scientist and maybe he's got several PhDs, several doctorates, He still has faith, right? You can't educate faith away, right? It's only a question of where you put it.

Okay, let's call it good and let's pray. Lord, we thank you as we look at this, we get an understanding of what's really the case, what's really true, and we thank you that you have in fact revealed truth to us. And that we can investigate that truth and check it out, just like we're doing here in this class and in the other electives in the main service. We can investigate that truth and check it out and test it out. And we just thank you that you revealed these things because you love us and care for us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.