Science or Religion?
Science: 1. Any department of knowledge in which the results of investigation have been logically arranged and systematized in the form of hypotheses and general laws subject to verification. 2. Knowledge of facts, phenomena, laws and proximate causes, gained and verified by exact observation, organized experiment and ordered thinking.
Religion: 1. The beliefs, attitudes, emotions, behavior, etc., constituting man’s relationship with the powers and principles of the universe, especially with a deity or deities; also any particular system of such beliefs, attitudes, etc.
“O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called.”
As is the case in our day, the apostle Paul dealt in his day with the oppositions of science falsely so called.[1] If there is something which is falsely called science, it seems evident that there is something that is truly science; what would be the difference?
Perhaps the dictionary definitions of “science” would afford us some basis for understanding the great gulf between that which may be called science today, and that which is truly scientific. The description of true science (as copied from the Standard College Dictionary 1969 and appearing at the top of this page), includes such inflexibly rigid words as “laws”, “verification” and “exact observation.” According to the expanded definition, science involves hypotheses and laws: hypotheses being propositions advanced as possibly true, and consistent with known data, but requiring further investigation; a theory is a hypothesis so well substantiated as to be generally accepted. A law, on the other hand, is the manner or order in which a set of natural phenomena consistently occur under certain conditions. Laws, then, are factual, invariable, verified by exact observation and proven consistent.
It is a common practice among those who exercise a bias toward naturalism, to embrace assumptions that have been presented as hypotheses and, over a period of time, dishonestly represented as facts. Those who credit evolution as the cause of all that we see around us are what the Bible calls, “willingly ignorant.” [2].
Think for just a moment about the meaning of “willing” ignorance. Would it not mean that the practitioner is choosing to ignore what would otherwise be recognized as factual?[3] Willing ignorance must be a purposeful act; which would indicate that those who teach contrary to the Bible’s true record of creation are deliberately teaching what they know, or those who taught them knew, to be falsehood because it is not supported by the “science” they claim to espouse.
The claim of the unbelieving “scientist” would be that the Bible reports things that are obviously untrue because they are not normal: things like the opening of the Red Sea; the falling down of Jericho’s walls; the regression of the sun’s shadow on Hezekiah’s sundial; and numerous other incidents of a miraculous nature. These all seem to defy the laws of nature. And, of course, the scientist knows that all things in the universe must comply with natural law. Common sense, as science, is the product of experience and observation of what has been tested and proven by time and circumstance to be invariable.
Are there then things inconsistent with the laws of nature in the Bible? One of the things that has been observable and is consistent from generation to generation is the fact that God confirms his word with signs following, and in every generation has done whatever glorifies himself and demonstrates his power and authority. So yes, there are things that are anomalous. However, they are called “miracles” and are attributed to the creator of heaven and earth. But they do not, and did not, set in motion an on-going course inconsistent with known scientific fact; they are atypical.
Are there things in modern science that are equally inconsistent with the laws of nature? Yes. But they are attributed by “scientists” to nature, and allegedly initiated and determined the course of nature which subsequently established laws in conflict with its alleged origins. These allegations by “science falsely so-called” set in motion an on-going course of historic thought that defies the laws of true science and contradicts observable fact (scientific laws)––such as beneficial mutations which account for the evolution of the human race from lower forms of life and originally from non-living matter––thereby disregarding the laws of thermodynamics. Therefore, according to the dictionary definition, they are religious in nature––unproven assertions based on beliefs, attitudes and emotions that purport to be facts––and guarded, not by intellectual honesty, but by secrecy and rigid academic enforcement.
What do we mean by that? Creationism has been banned from public schools and institutions of higher learning, as has any alternative to evolution. Accredited institutions that do not conform have been stripped of their accreditation to confer post graduate degrees in California and Texas and perhaps other states as well. Academic liberty has been suspended to conceal and preserve the propagation of “willing ignorance.”
“Scientists”, in refuting creationism, point out that if there is a God that created all things, he himself must have been created; otherwise, where did he come from? The fact is that the origin of all things had to be something or someone that existed without cause, whether that were a person or a lifeless entity. So whatever side of the argument one may take, one must concede that the origin of all things had to be an eternal entity, something or someone without a beginning. Joseph Stalin, in his book Historical and Dialectical Materialism indicated that that eternal entity was energy. From this lifeless, designless energy emerged life and design. But science as well as common sense has observed that only life begets life. There is no observable incidence in which life sprang spontaneously from inanimate matter. It is equally true that no book has been written without an author; no clock has been assembled without a clock-maker; no automobiles have existed without a car-maker. Why then would it seem plausible that there could be a creation without a creator? Or, put another way, why would any thinking person deem it irrational to believe that the existence of a creation is evidence of a creator?
Would it not seem that those who would embrace such a theory are willingly ignorant? Does it not appear that those who study geology, astronomy and biology having seen the results of hundreds of years of research have had to willingly ignore the evidence that has been discovered? Peter, by divine inspiration, as we have already noted, declared that to be the case.
Many books and articles have been written by both believers and unbelievers alike to refute the claims of evolutionism. Not all scientists are in accord with this highly questionable theory with its many fanciful precepts. But it is a concept that has served well the atheistic political rhetoric of socialist movements that have swept the world over the past two hundred years. How better to explain the obvious existence of a creation without a creator to whom mankind must give account. It is by its nature a rebellion against God.
Darwin’s theory was a device made to order for their purpose. V. Lenin (1870-1924) Russian Communist Politician and revolutionary said, “Á lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
Apparently Adolph Hitler’s minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels concurred with Lenin. He ostensibly said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
William James (1842-1910) Father of modern psychology agreed. “There is nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.”
Following is an excerpt from the aforementioned book by Joseph Stalin:
c) Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard the process of development as a simple process of growth, where quantitative changes do not lead to qualitative changes, but as a development which passes from insignificant and imperceptible quantitative changes to open, fundamental changes, to qualitative changes; a development in which the qualitative changes occur not gradually, but rapidly and abruptly, taking the form of a leap from one state to another; they occur not accidentally but as the natural result of an accumulation of imperceptible and gradual quantitative changes.
The dialectical method therefore holds that the process of development should be understood not as movement in a circle, not as a simple repetition of what has already occurred, but as an onward and upward movement, as a transition from an old qualitative state to a new qualitative state, as a development from the simple to the complex, from the lower to the higher:
"Nature," says Engels, "is the test of dialectics, and it must be said for modern natural science that it has furnished extremely rich and daily increasing materials for this test, and has thus proved that in the last analysis nature's process is dialectical and not metaphysical, that it does not move in an eternally uniform and constantly repeated circle, but passes through a real history. Here prime mention should be made of Darwin, who dealt a severe blow to the metaphysical conception of nature by proving that the organic world of today, plants and animals, and consequently man too, is all a product of a process of development that has been in progress for millions of years." (Ibid., p. 23.)[1]
[1] "Socialism Utopian and Scientific," 1880.
This article does not purport to add a stronger argument for creation and against evolution to the works of many more knowledgeable writers than I and learned scientists who reject Darwinian evolution; the point here is to emphasize that the message of the evolutionist is religious in nature, not scientific, and it serves a political agenda. The findings of true scientific research in no way contradict The Bible’s message of creation. Although the Bible is not a text book about science, no proven scientific fact is contradicted by it, but at the same time, no scientific hypothesis that is in contradiction of what the Bible has to say about a matter has ever been established as fact. All such hypotheses remain theories including the theory of evolution.
We do not have to prove the validity of the Bible; it has proven itself beyond honest contradiction many times over, and continues to withstand the severest criticism by its adversaries. Although many “Christians”, such as the Catholic Church and others, have tried to accommodate the religious (humanist) doctrine of evolution by apologizing for Genesis, such accommodation is irreconcilable to Bible truth. Any such effort is confusion, which undermines the authority of scripture while doing nothing to diminish the fallacy of “science falsely so-called.” In some cases, even “Christian” education in Christian institutions makes room for things “scientific” which call in question the accuracy of the biblical account because of their seeming logic. Don’t go there: it is the threshold of skepticism and apostasy. Let us take our stand on unshakably solid ground: “I esteem all of thy precepts concerning all things to be right; and I hate every false way.” [4] If it calls itself science, but is in contradiction to these precepts, it is “falsely so-called.” It is in fact religion not science.
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