Did Science Kill God?

"In the beginning God Created . . . "

Then came Charles Darwin who, in 1859, published his book "On the Origin of Species". In it he proposed his theory of evolution based on survival of the fittest and natural selection. Organisms evolve by undergoing spontaneous mutations, a very small number of which may be beneficial to their survival. Because those lucky few organisms now have a selective advantage, they pass on their genes while the others die off and the species then "evolves". Cool! Woolly mammoths become less woolly as "global warming" causes the ice age to end and wallah, we have the circus elephant. Animals can adapt to their environment as it changes but supposedly thay can even change from one species to the next. Darwin didn't know how life began in the first place and expected future investigation to find a plethora of examples of transitional species in the fossil record (Like an elephant with the tail of a whale or a lizard with little wing buds). Neither has been found.

Regardless, a few years later, Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher declared, "God is dead."

Well? Is he? Is God effectively "dead" because science and philosophy have made him obsolete? Is it possible for any rational human being in 2009 to believe in an all knowing, all powerful, creator God? Is faith in God more of a leap than faith in the spontaneous, random development of "life" and its subsequent evolution to its present state? I'd like you to be open to the truth regardless of where it leads. If God didn't create (or design) and we are truly random molecules that have gotten significantly more organized by time and chance then it changes everything. If those that have used Darwin's theory to kill God are right then we are no more valuable, no more important, and no more significant that an ice cube. If God did create and the Bible is true then we are accountable (but loved) by him and the world better look up.

Like I said in my previous post, I am a scientist. There was a time when I believed that life began in the "primordial soup" of the cooling earth and a few chemicals gathered into a little genetic material which began to self replicate and then a little bacteria popped out. A billion or more years later humans are flying to the moon and have developed weapons that could destroy the earth from which we evolved. I lived like I wanted to live and God couldn't tell me what to do or how to live because he either didn't exist or at a minimum wasn't really involved. I wasn't accountable to anyone greater than myself. I certainly didn't take a critical look at what I was being told by science but what is WAY more important is that I didn't take a critical look at myself. It was much safer for me to be content being a more evolved monkey in a society of evolved monkeys. I was thus a product of my instincts and environment. If I did wrong, it wasn't really my fault. It was instinct. We are survivors and my goal was to be one of the fittest then pass on my highly advanced genes to the next generation. Actually, if we are just chemicals without a creator then there really is no absolute right or wrong anyway. We can decide for ourselves what is "good" and what is "bad". Sorry, this is a topic for another day. Back to creation.

Do I, as a Christian, need to open my skull and drop my brain into a large box outside the church as I walk in on Sunday or can I reconcile my biblical worldview with the scientific evidence. I think I can do the later and I am not alone.

Doctor Ben Carson is one of the world's best pediatric neurosurgeons. He graduated from Yale and then the University of Michigan Medical School. He gained national attention for leading the team that separated conjoined twins that were joined at the back of the head. He has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and is now the director of pediatric neurosurgery are Johns Hopkins University. Ben Carson believes in the creation story.

In the 1970's Dr. Francis Collins was a scientist and an atheist. In medical school he was faced with life and death every day and a patient once asked him, "What do you believe doctor?". He began to search for answers. He said, "I had to admit that the science I loved so much was powerless to answer questions such as 'What is the meaning of life?' 'Why am I here?' 'Why does mathematics work, anyway?' 'If the universe had a beginning, who created it?' 'Why are the physical constants in the universe so finely tuned to allow the possibility of complex life forms?' 'Why do humans have a moral sense?' 'What happens after we die?' (Watch Francis Collins discuss how he came to believe in God ). Francis Collins is now the director of the Human Genome Project whose task has been to map out the 3.1 billion letter code of the human DNA code. Francis Collins believes in a creator God.

Look, I have come to the place where I realize that I can't convince you of the existence of God by intellectual might. I can't wrestle you to the ground with my copy of Genesis. That is not my intent today. But, I do realize one thing that the bible tells me to be true, "The Gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing." It was foolishness to me when I was drowning in my own sin. But I also know that the Holy Spirit of God can make the most ardent atheist the most faithful believer. My intent is to give you a moment of pause. To ask you to stop for a second and think. To look at life around you and inside of you. To set aside what you'd like to be true or what you believe to be true and say, "I want to know what IS true." If you need to follow the scientific evidence then by all means do so but do it to its logical end. Chicago tribune journalist Lee Strobel did that in an attempt to disprove the Bible and the historical Jesus and he is now Christian and an passionate sharer of the Gospel. Be careful because you may end up the same. If you already are a believer I pray that your faith was nudged just a bit higher today. I don't have the space here to put forth an argument against Evolution and for Creation or "Intelligent Design" but PLEASE feel free to ask me in the comments section of this post and I will give you plenty to keep you busy.

One last quote, from Werner Heisenberg (a Nobel Laureate in Physics for the creation of quantum mechanics):

"The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you."

Drink up!

Peace,

David