INTRODUCTION 1 9/24/2019 Why Are We Here? Why did you sign up for - - PDF document

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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2019

INTRODUCTION

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Why Are We Here?

Why did you sign up for this class?

Goals of This Class

• Knowing:
• Why science and faith seem conflicted
• The feasibility of alignment between science and the faith (Bible)
• Growing:
• Recognizing similarities and differences of science and faith
• Recognizing interpretations of science and faith (Bible)
• Enjoying the glory of creation and worshiping its Creator
• Out-Going:
• Recognizing positive and negative expressions of science and faith
• Not fearful of science; not ashamed of faith
• Removing barriers others have against following Jesus
• Have reasons for your faith

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You Will Not Learn (too much):

• Physics
• Cosmology
• Chemistry
• (Micro)Biology
• Mathematics
• Nanotechnology
• Philosophy
• Theology
• History
• Vocabulary
• NO COLLEGE CREDIT
• BUT YOU WILL BE EXPOSED TO A LOT OF IDEAS FROM THESE FIELDS…

Homework

Just kidding!

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Scope Narrowing

• This class is an experiment – if successful, more can follow
• Focus is primarily on scientific results regarding “origins”
• The kind of things most often misinterpreted in the news, PBS, or YouTube
• Not (too much) general apologetics
• Assumption of a diverse group, so minimal “deep diving”

Outline of the 3 Weeks

• Week 1
• Introduction
• Session A – What’s the Problem
• Session B – Aligning: Creation of the Universe?
• Q&A
• Week 2
• Session A – Aligning: Formation of the Earth?
• Session B – Aligning: Origin of Life
• Q&A
• Week 3
• Session A – Aligning: Creation of Man
• Session B – Aligning: Destiny of Man
• Q&A

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Incidentals

• Who is Randy Goodall?
• How the class will work
• Resources:

Reasons.org (Reasons to Believe) LukeNixBlog.blogspot.com (Faithful Thinkers) STR.org (Stand to Reason) ReasonableFaith.org (Reasonable Faith) GodAndScience.org (God and Science)

FOR TONIGHT’S TOPIC: Google search “amazing astronomy pictures” and click on “Images”

Nanochannel Physics in Drug Delivery

Massively Parallel Array of “Molecular Hourglasses”

10 6 mm 6 mm

NanoChan anne nel S l Silicon con Chip ip

3.5nm 3.5nm

Speaker: Randy Goodall, PhD – Cofounder and CTO of NanoMedical Systems, Inc.

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SESSION 1A “What’s the Problem?”

M81 galaxy – similar to Milky Way ~100,000 light years across About 250 billion stars Hubble telescope image of deep space In this tiny spot in the sky (~1/16”) there are 10,000 galaxies  Universe has 1 billion+ galaxies

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 Cross-section of a single human hair (120 µm)

100 nm

Phage  Virus that infects bacteria 10 billion billion trillion

• n Earth (billions in you).

“Barely alive” Proton (3 Quarks)  40 million billion trillion in you  Red/White blood cells ~25 trillion in you (6 µm) Molecules  Linkages of atoms (1 ~ 10 nm)

What’s the Problem?

• Science: 200 million man-years
• Scientists & engineers have made a huge impact on people’s lives
• We know and have access to more scientific information than at any time in man’s history
• Almost all in the last 150 years
• Bible: 100,000’s man-years
• Archeologists, linguists, and theologians have made a huge impact on people’s faith
• We have the most ancient, most accurate, most translated Bible in man’s history
• Significant improvements in the last 50 years

You want to accept all this as good (even “from God”), but what do you hear? Science is good and right; faith is bad and wrong! Faith is good and right; science is bad and wrong!

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Why This Course?

Exposure to Ideas that Can Bring Peace

100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 STARS IN VAST UNIVERSE 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ATOMS IN THIMBLE OF SAND

Nearly every observational technology used in science is represented in a smart phone, including time warping (GPS). If we believe and trust that they actually work, how do we deny other scientific observations?

“Tastes Great … Less Filling!”

Challenge may be resolved by looking from above

General Revelation  Special Revelation Nature Bible

 These two “Books” are created by God 

A Christian should expect they can be consistently read and interpreted together

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Reason

• Imago Dei – “Image of God” (more in week 3)
• Interpretive views: Resemblance, Relational, Representative
• Special attributes of humans:
• Bible: moral, spiritual, relational, rational
• Science: symbolism, open-ended generative capacity,

theory of mind, complex social networks

• All humans have this gift from God
• But… “Perfect logic propagates assumptions”

RATIONAL THOUGHTS ASSUMPTIONS NEW INSIGHTS

Who Picked This Fight?

• Utilitarianism & Materialistic Determinism
• Evolved from 1500’s through late 1800’s – early 1900’s
• Renaissance philosophers  beginnings of modern science
• “We can do amazing things without invoking God or the miraculous” (leave Him out of it)
• Darwinism (evolution) + Geology & Astronomy (long times)
• Rise of Scientism
• Disregard special revelation  Interpret science antagonistically to Bible
• Shift of power within society
• Christian Backlash
• Bunker mentality within various segments of the Church
• Disregard general revelation  Interpret Bible antagonistically to science
• Shift of power within the Church

Pride Fear  Fallen Mankind  Satan

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Couple of Historical Examples

• Science right (Bible improperly interpreted)
• Bible “says” the Earth is fixed and the sun, moon, and stars go around it
• Galileo (b. 1564) showed that the Earth is in orbit around the sun
• Condemned by the Catholic Church (but he was acquitted in 1992)
• Bible right (Science improperly interpreted)
• For 1000’s of years science assumed that universe was static, infinite, and eternal
• Bible has always asserted that the universe had a beginning (by God)
• Hubble showed (1929) that the universe was expanding  beginning

Scientific Interpretation

• General (or Natural) Revelation (can be learned by observation)
• Science is an epistemological (knowledge) system
• Must be continuously revised / improved
• Discovers, describes, catalogs, models, predicts behavior of natural world
• Science is ultimately observational and therefore constrained
• Establishing the “raw data” of science is a rational (logical) process
• Data is accumulated and validated
• Should be generated using best technology and math available
• Should be rationally interpreted in accordance with itself
• Generally does not admit supernatural assumptions
• Interpretation of science facts (data) is fallible

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Biblical Interpretation

• Special (or Supernatural) Revelation (cannot be learned by observation*)
• Bible is a set of God-inspired books written by many authors over millennia
• We believe it is inerrant in its original manuscripts (which we do not have)
• We believe it has been protected / preserved by God as His Word
• Establishing the “raw data” of the Bible is a rational (logical) process
• Copies of ancient manuscripts must be accumulated, assembled, and validated
• Should be translated from best original texts
• Should be rationally interpreted in accordance with itself
• Generally admits supernatural assumptions
• Interpretation of Bible facts (words) is fallible

* Where it can be, it will be consistent with observation

Considerations on Interpretation

Science

• Interpretation of science outside of its boundaries and data is not a scientific process
• Requires not-necessarily scientific assumptions (test with reason and faith)
• Not inerrant  demands continuous update and re-interpretation with new data
• Truth of science is based on its explanatory/predictive power in nature (utilitarian value proposition)

Bible

• Interpretation of the Bible outside its boundaries and motifs is not a spiritual process
• Requires not-necessarily Biblical assumptions (test with faith and reason)
• Inerrancy
• International Council on Biblical Inerrancy – “The Chicago Statements”
• Truth of the Bible is not an issue of tradition or culture
• Must consider motif (ex: poetic or apocryphal language, metaphors, etc.)
• Multiple “literal” readings; not limited to solely what the author understood
• Bible facts and natural facts will not conflict
• Inerrancy is not a salvation condition
• Interpreters should be led by the Spirit of God (humble and loving heart)
• Truth of the Bible is established on internal/external consistency, its explanatory power in people’s lives, and our

faith in its claims (spiritual value proposition)

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An Approach – Just for 3 Weeks

GOD Integrated Reality Raw Data

⇐ CONSISTENT 

Raw Data

⇐ CONSISTENT 

Bible Universe Bible Interpretation

⇐ CONSISTENT 

Science Interpretation

⇐ CONSISTENT 

ARE CONSISTENT? MUST BE CONSISTENT FALLIBLE INFALLIBLE YES NO

Thanks: Luke Nix @ Faithful Thinkers

SHOULD BE CONSISTENT

God does not lie or change: 1 Sam 15:29; Titus 1:2; James 1:17 God created everything  Creation is trustworthy: Gen 1:1; Ps 19:1; Rom 1:20 Bible is God-breathed: 2 Tim 3:16; 2 Peter 1:20 God speaks Truth: Ps 119, 12:6, 19:7; Prov 30:5; John 10:35, 17:17

A Proposal

For 3 sessions…

• Listen to the scientific explanations of several “big” origin topics
• Ask questions
• Consider Bible interpretations that you might not be familiar with
• Ask questions
• Ask God to help you to see the harmony of His actions and His truth
• As revealed in the universe He made for you and others to live in
• As revealed in the words of the Bible and through the His Spirit

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SESSION 1B Aligning: Creation of the Universe

Origins

Almost all of the apparent conflict between science and faith has to do with the origins of

• things. Why?

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History of Universe

BIBLE

• Genesis 1:1

“In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth”

• Genesis 1:2a

“And the earth was formless and void…”

SCIENCE

• Big Bang

Universe came into existence 13.787 ± 0.020 billion years ago Constant natural laws Expanding and cooling since then

• Earth’s initial formation around Sun

4.54 ± 0.05 billion years ago

History of Universe: Theological Details 1 (Bible)

• Creation from nothing (ex nihilo)
• Gen 1:1 “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth.”
• Uses “bara” the ancient Hebrew word for “(God) create from nothing”
• Heb 11:3 “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things

that are visible.”

• Ps 148:3-5 “Let them praise the name of the Lord! For he commanded and they were created.”
• “them” = angels, heavenly host, sun, moon, stars, highest heavens, waters above the heavens = “everything”
• Is 40:26 [God speaking] “Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these?”
• Is 45:18 “For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it.”
• Jn 1:1-3 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All

things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. “

• Unchanging laws
• Heb 13:8 “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
• Ps 102:25-26 “But You are the same, And Your years will not come to an end.”
• Continued expansion
• Is 40:22 “It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a

curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in.”

• Is 42:5a “This is what God the LORD says — the Creator of the heavens, who stretches them out”
• Continual decay
• Rom 8:21a “…the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay.”
• Ps 102:25-26 “In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish,

but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded.

• Rev 21: 4b-5a “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was

seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’ “

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History of Universe: Theological Details 2 (Saints)

Christian Theologians

• Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons (120–202): “God, according to His pleasure, in the

exercise of His own will and power, formed all things (so that those things which now are should have an existence) out of what did not previously exist.”

• Augustine of Hippo (354–430): In The City of God, reasoning from the scriptures,

states that the universe (including time and space) was created from nothing a finite time ago, and that there is no time or space outside the universe.

• Moses Nachmanides (1194-1270) wrote about the expansion of the universe:

“There is only one physical creation, and that creation was a tiny speck…. As this speck expanded out, this substance—so thin it has no essence—turned into matter as we know it.”

The Biblical basics of the creation of the universe have been considered long before modern science

Big and Little Sizes

• Kg = 2.2 pounds
• 1 meter (m) ≈ 1.1 yards
• 1 mile (mi) = 1,609 meters
• Speed of light (c) = 186,000 miles / second

= 300,000,000 meters / second BIG

• 1 light year (Ly) ≈ 9,461,000,000,000,000 meters (~6 trillion miles)
• 1 solar mass (M☉) ≈ 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg = 333,000 M⊕

SMALL

• 1 millimeter (mm) = 1/1000th of 1 meter = 1/25th of inch = 10 sheets of paper
• 1 micrometer (µm) = 0.000001 m (“human hair” ~100 µm)
• 1 nanometer (nm) = 0.000000001 m (size of molecule)
• 1 angström (Å) = 1/10 nm (size of an atom)
• 1 proton mass (mp) ≈ 0.00000000000000000000000000017 kg

NOTE: This slide is indicative of the problem! Lay people usually don’t know what scientists are talking about

1 billion 1 cm dice = 33 ft cube = 1,037 ft square = 6,214 miles in line

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How Does Science Know? - BIG

• We can measure stars moving over many years using telescopes
• We can see how much stars shift during the earth’s orbit around the sun
• By study many well defined stars, we can know how far away they are by their

type and brightness

• We can tell star types by the mix of colors of light from atoms in them
• We can tell if they are moving toward/away from us by the Doppler shift of their

color mix

• Today there is a growing catalog of 1.7 billion stars (mostly in MW)
• 10,000’s of galaxies
• The scientific model of BIG: Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity (gravity)
• The 2nd most tested and accurate model of anything in basic physics

General Relativity

• There is universal maximum speed of any information-bearing field/particle
• Speed of light (or other massless particles) in a vacuum
• Time slows down for observations between objects close to speed of light
• Object close to the speed of light become increasingly shorter and more massive
• Energy and mass are equivalent (E = mc2)
• Gravity and acceleration of mass are equivalent
• This means that mass and massless particles mutually interact via gravity
• 4-dimensional space-time is warped by the presence of mass OR energy
• Space can be warped (so distances are longer); Time can be warped (so durations are longer)

 Light from stars passing the Sun is curved by the Sun’s gravity  Your cell phone corrects for Earth gravity slowing time when talking to satellites in orbit  Black holes exist  The universe must expand from a beginning

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How Does Science Know? - TINY

• Objects we can see must be made of smaller parts (since the Greeks: atomos = “not cut”)
• Arrival of technology (microscopes) allowed observations of parts that couldn’t be seen
• Jiggle atoms/molecules with various colors of light and see how they respond (spectroscopy)
• Can use light with wavelengths that our eyes can’t see, but instruments can
• Electron beam or atomic force microscopes can show structures of things down to atoms
• To see further can only be done by banging particles into stuff or each other and see what

comes out the other side (parts of particles)

• 13TEV = energy of a water drop falling 1m
• Quantum Mechanics is the physics of tiny particles (compared to “classical mechanics”)
• The scientific model of TINY: Quantum Field Theory and the Standard Model
• The most tested and accurate model of anything in basic physics

Quantum Mechanics

• For “normal” sized objects, we can have any amount of momentum, position,

magnetism, charge, …

• For the really tiny  laws of nature demand “quantization”
• There is a point where you can’t divide something into smaller pieces
• The smallest particles are “quanta”; some quantum objects are made of other particles
• Can’t have less than 1 quanta  1 photon with some energy must transfer all or none of that

energy

• In bound up systems like atoms, only certain energies are allowed for the particles
• In the universe there are fields for the different particle types
• A particle is just an excited wave in the field
• There are related properties of particles and fields that you can never simultaneously know
• “Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle”
• Generally can only predict the probability of where fields/particles are and what they’ll do
• Antimatter particles exists, but approximately zero in our universe
• It is speculated that gravity (space and time) quantize at a certain (very small!) size

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LARGE HADRON COLLIDER CERN, SWITZERLAND

Higgs Boson discovered in 2012

PARTICLES OF THE “STANDARD MODEL”

MAN

Design of Atoms

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Spectra of Kinds of Stars Doppler “Red Shift”

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History of Universe: Science Details 1

• Big Bang @ T= 0 (this moment is not really a part of science)
• Predicted by Friedmann in 1922, Lamaitre in 1927, Discovered by Hubble in 1929
• By T=0.000000000000000000000000000000000000001 (10-39) seconds
• Sudden permanent existence of space-time, energy & matter, natural laws
• By T=0.000000000000000000000000000000001 (10-32) seconds rapid expansion ended
• Gave us the just right fluctuations in the universe
• NOTE: We can only make particles in labs with energy of T=0.0000000001 secs
• Cooling and condensing
• T=0.0001 to 100 seconds: Most particles and small atoms form
• Almost entirely hydrogen (H)and helium (He); laws for quarks lead to most antimatter removed quickly
• Entire (small) universe is a plasma (dense charged particles)
• T=380,000 years: Light finally escapes from matter  Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
• Accidently discovered in 1964 by Penzius and Wilson; 2nd major proof of Big Bang
• Non-uniformities  predict galaxies
• T=400,000,000 years: Star formation/destruction cycles begin
• T=1 billion years: Galaxies and galaxy clusters form
• Galaxies stop expanding but distance between galaxies (and clusters of galaxies) keeps growing
• Heavy atoms form in stars and are sprayed around galaxies by star explosions (“super nova”)

Scientific History of the Universe

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History of Universe: Science Details 2

• T=500,000,000 years: Milky Way is an early forming galaxy  Just Right galaxy

and cluster

• Very safe (no other big galaxies near-by; sweeper clouds)
• Medium temp stars; “small” black hole core
• 2nd generation stars form from dust of first gen  heavy elements for solar system
• T=9.3 billion years: Solar system (Sun and planets) begins to form (4.5 BYA)
• Our baby solar system started closer to galaxy center
• Bad for life (then) but good for collecting heavy atoms that would be needed for life and ultimately

advanced civilization

• Moved outward to the safest place from radiation; bonus: “open window” to the universe
• Orbit around the MW every 230 MY; up and down period 70MY
• Affects Earth development processes to prepare Earth for life and Man
• Sun formed as the exact kind of star needed for life on Earth
• Earth-Moon system is unique and unusual; created by a “perfect” collision
• All the planets in solar systems (large and small) needed to protect Earth
• Universe Fine-Tuned for advanced life on Earth  chance of random: 1 in 101023

But What Does Scientism Say?

• Generally admit universe seems to have been Intelligently Designed and

Fine-Tuned, even to the point of intentionally enabling human life on Earth

• Universe is a quantum fluctuation – “it’s a net nothing”
• Response: Quantum laws are part of the fabric of space-time – not nothing
• Response: It may have net gravitational energy of zero, but it is not nothing
• There are infinitely many universes (“Multi-verse”), so the fine-tuning we

see is just because we can be here to see it

• Response: Recent appeal to unprovable, non-scientific speculation
• Response: This kicks the Fine-Tuning question back up the road
• Response: Massive evidence of fine-tuning is evidence against this being just one of

myriad random universes

• Universe just shrinks back and has a “Big Bounce” (a new Big Bang)
• Response: Universe is fine tuned to be “flat” – it will never bounce back
• Response: Even if that weren’t true, each bounce would be growing  beginning

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Placing Your Faith

Quote from cosmologist Lawrence Krauss:

• You are insignificant and the future is dark and miserable
• “Why?” questions don’t matter, only “How?” questions
• But be excited:
• You are endowed with consciousness
• Enjoy your brief moment in the sun

– OR –

• “For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only

Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

Putting It All Together

• No unresolvable “interpretation conflict” between science and Bible
• The universe had a beginning
• The universe was “stretched” and continues to be “spread”
• Fine-Tuning over time to balance the universe is precise to 1 part in 10100

 Consistent with a Creator Designer outside the universe  Aligned with the Bible



This we we’ll put Faith & Science in “green check” alignment

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Q&A