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[0:00] Good afternoon, PCBC English, and thank you for joining us. Thank you for making the effort this afternoon. I know it's hard to stop your long weekend and to pause and to hear from a talk, but I hope that God will speak to you today.

[0:16] I just want to also flag, you know, just for our regulars, that we are, yeah, you know, the government's announcement yesterday about the coming issue of vaccine certificates and meeting and gathering.

[0:32] That's something that I guess as a church we'll have to wrestle with. So do be in prayer for us. We'd love to be able to meet together again. We long for it, but we want to do it in a way that protects the vulnerable, that really honors God and our witness to the world, and to do it in a way that really balances all the different things that God tells us to do.

[0:54] So please do pray for us as we make these decisions. We would love your prayers. And if you wouldn't mind, why don't you join me, and we're going to pray before we hear from God's Word.

[1:11] Oh, yes, Father, we thank you. Thank you even just for that testimony from Venus before, that you do work in our lives. You do point us to ways we can serve you with the gifts and skills that you've given us.

[1:27] Thank you for revealing yourself to us through your creation. And thank you for revealing yourself to us through your son, Jesus. Would you help us now as we listen to your word, as we consider some difficult questions about science and faith?

[1:45] Father, would you be with us? In Jesus' name. Amen. One of the biggest objections many people have today to the Christian faith is the idea that science and faith don't mix.

[2:04] It's kind of like a chemical reaction. You put two elements together and it would explode, right? For example, in 2018, three years ago, when 352 Kiwis were asked why they weren't religious or spiritual, nearly half said that they would prefer a scientific and evidence-based approach.

[2:27] So I wonder if you would agree. For some people, religion is for the Taliban, for the COVID deniers, for the intellectually dishonest, right?

[2:38] Most of us will laugh and sing with Maui in the Disney film Oana, right? You're welcome. But none of us seriously believe that he fished up the islands or lassoed the sun or sprouted coconut trees because we have science to explain how the world around us came to be.

[2:55] And so what do we do as men and women who love the Lord, who respect and honor his teachings to us in the Bible? What do we do when the Bible begins, right?

[3:06] Genesis 1.1. Within the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. God creates everything from nothing. Isn't that the opposite of what science teaches?

[3:19] In fact, aren't Christians anti-science? Hasn't science disproved Christianity or removed the need for it? Those of you who are tuning in and I haven't introduced myself, my name is William.

[3:32] I'm one of the pastors here. Before becoming a pastor, I was a medical writer. And before that, I was a sport and exercise science major at Auckland Uni. That certainly doesn't qualify me to explain to you carbon nanotubes or computational physics.

[3:49] It does mean I have been where some of you perhaps are now, right? Caught between the world of science and the world of faith. Sitting in a lecture theater where maybe the lecturer asked, who here believes in evolution?

[4:04] Last week, we explored some reasons we could believe what the Bible says about Jesus and about itself. And today, I want us to unpack a different but related topic, science and faith.

[4:16] Or as some might put it, science versus faith. Maybe for most of you who have been part of church, maybe you experienced this tension growing up, right?

[4:27] Your parents made it sound so easy. You know, do those sciences, do the maths, get the uni degree, bring honour to us all. But little did they know, right? By sending you down this road, it meant not just cramming for exams and stuff, but entering a world where you were taught time and time again, a view of the world that just seemed to conflict with the Bible, right?

[4:49] And then whenever you asked an auntie or an uncle from church about the Cambrian explosion, or where do dinosaurs fit into the creation story, they either said, I don't know, go ask someone else, or maybe they were bold enough to sit you in front on some DVD and told you to watch it.

[5:05] So I don't know what your experience is, but for many of us, science seems to be at odds of Christianity. So has science disproved Christianity? Do science and faith mix?

[5:17] Can I be someone who studies science and be a follower of Jesus? I want to share three points, right, as we wrestle with these questions. I want to share three thoughts from the Bible.

[5:28] And then the first thought is this, at the heart of Christianity is a God who makes science possible. I'll say that again. At the heart of the Christian faith is a God who actually makes science possible.

[5:45] Last week, if you remember, we looked at a portion of Psalm 19. And I want us to hear, actually, we read the second half about God's word, but I want us to hear the first half of David's song.

[5:57] The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day, they pour forth speech. Night after night, they display knowledge.

[6:09] There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth. Their words are the ends of the world. In the heavens, he, God, has pitched a tent for the sun.

[6:21] It's like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises up one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other. Nothing is hidden from its heat.

[6:34] Here is an early follower of God, praising God for his creation, and particularly the sun here, right? When God's people first sang the song, what we want to know is that, what is worth knowing, is that they were surrounded by ancient cultures, like the Babylonians, right?

[6:54] With their own way of explaining the world. In some of their creation stories, the world came about through a fight, a conflict between different gods. Other stories, they claimed humans were crafted to be slaves, okay?

[7:06] So the gods didn't have to work. But the psalmist here declares a very different truth. All right? Verse one, And that's how the Bible starts, isn't it?

[7:24] In the beginning, Genesis 1.1, God created the heavens and the earth. That's the context, right? Of why this shows up.

[7:34] Rather than one god versus other gods, okay? Or many competing gods. I don't know if you've seen the movie Hercules, right? In the beginning, God. That's the way the Bible lays it out.

[7:46] We read on in chapter one that God creates with words. And it culminates in him creating human beings in his own image. As Rebecca McLaughlin says, to rule, to relate, and to create.

[8:02] And now when we come to this point, we kind of often assume, all right, you've just said a whole bunch of stuff that makes science impossible. But have we? Believe it or not, it is this view of God that science as we know it today comes from.

[8:21] Actually, modern science was birthed out of this biblical truth. Because there is one creator and designer who's totally in charge, who makes the rules, who makes actually humans image or reflect him, therefore able to think thoughts after him.

[8:38] As humans, we can observe and discover his laws of nature in it. You see, that's what modern science was based on. Francis Bacon, right?

[8:50] A devout Christian. I don't know how much bacon he ate, but certainly one of the pioneers of the scientific method. He put it this way. He said it this way. Knowledge is the rich storehouse for the glory of the creator and the relief of man's estate.

[9:05] A little philosophy, i.e. natural knowledge of science. It inclines a man's mind to atheism. But depth and philosophy bringeth man's mind about to religion.

[9:15] He's saying the more you discover and observe science, the more we should actually go to religion. And actually, Francis Bacon's method of doing science is exactly what we still use today, right?

[9:28] Everyone is familiar, I'm sure, of the scientific method, what you studied at school, observe something, suggest a theory why it works, and then test it with experiments. Well, Francis Bacon invented this method.

[9:41] And we're so used to this, right? But actually, think about it. What if there wasn't a consistent law-giving God? I mean, imagine, what if the speed of gravity, for example, would vary from 9.81 meters per second to something else, right?

[9:57] What if it was as fickle as the Wi-Fi signal at Macca's? Professor Hans Halverson, he points this out. If you don't think there's a God who made the laws of the universe, if everything is by chance, then actually there's no final reason why we can do science.

[10:14] You actually just have to say, aren't we lucky that we got the same result again and again? Most of us assume that science is against Christianity, right?

[10:24] They're at war, but that is actually not how it started. And I could list other names as well. Many other scientists. I said Isaac Newton, Sir Michael Faraday, James Clark Maxwell.

[10:36] They were actually all passionate believers in a creator God. And that's on the basis of how they did science. And actually, if you think modern science and faith in Christ can't mix, well, tell it to Christians like Dr. Francis Collins, right?

[10:51] He's the director of the Human Genome Project, and he calls his discoveries opportunities to worship. Or maybe have a chat with Professor Jing Kong at MIT, not in Manukau, but actually in Massachusetts, right?

[11:05] My research, she says, is only a platform for me to do God's work. His creation, the way he made this world is very interesting. It is amazing, really. But we shouldn't be surprised that there are lots of devout Christians in science who love to do science.

[11:23] After all, what did Jesus say when someone asked him what the greatest command was, right? The first of the greatest commandments was to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

[11:39] God is not anti-reason. He loves it when we use our minds to examine his shells, to count his stars. And far from, I think, disproving Christianity, if we realize modern science came out of a Christian worldview, we can celebrate and pursue science to the glory of God.

[12:00] And even in those science versus Christianity stories that we hear, right, what you actually find in a lot of church history is Christians on either side trying to read their Bibles more faithfully as they do science.

[12:13] So I want to encourage you, if you're a Christian, whether you're doing lab work, whether you're trying to design a manufacturing process, whether you're just struggling with your science exams, be encouraged.

[12:27] You are thinking God's thoughts after him. You can enjoy and do your science because God exists and he has made this world in a way that is discoverable. Christianity and science are at war with each other.

[12:40] I want to suggest no, because at the heart of Christianity, we worship a God who actually makes science possible. But what about Darwin, you might ask, right?

[12:53] If you've read Darwin's On the Origin of Species, you'll be familiar with his main argument. All living beings are related to each other. Human beings gradually evolve from other animals over millions of years.

[13:08] Surely, many would say, the theory of evolution disproves the account that God created the heavens and the earth. And I want to say from the outset, this is a huge and complicated barrier, I think, for many Christians and also for many of our friends and family.

[13:28] I can't answer all of Darwin's questions today, but perhaps this is where maybe our second point I want to share today might be helpful. And it's this, at the heart of the creation story is a God who makes worship possible.

[13:44] I'll say it again. At the heart of creation is a God who makes worship possible. We've all heard kind of the fights around the first two chapters of the Bible.

[13:57] I've been reading a book with my son, and it's got lots of conflicts in history, major battles. And I was thinking about the Battle of Stalingrad. You had two forces, and they were just fighting each other for months and months.

[14:12] That kind of is a picture often of what we see Christians do, sadly. Maybe some would argue that what we have in Genesis 1 to 2 is a literal day-by-day account of God creating the heavens and the earth, an exact chronological 24-hour order.

[14:29] And then others on the other side, they dismiss them as anti-science. No, you can't read it word for word literally. And then they turn to evolution to fill the gaps.

[14:42] And then others, they hold different views in between. And sometimes it's quite an ugly fight when you talk to different Christians. So which is it?

[14:55] What is it? Well, the question isn't how do we understand Genesis 1 to 2? Maybe we can talk about it in the Q&A. And I want to speak carefully here because I think we have Christians on either side or through the spectrum of debate.

[15:10] I think we need to affirm that every detail in Genesis 1 to 2 is God-breathed, right? Inspired by God. True.

[15:22] Sets up the foundation for our deepest questions about life. It tells us about a God who creates and wants to relate with his people.

[15:33] And yet one thing I think we need to realize is that what we have recorded in Genesis 1, when you read it, certainly does not read like a science textbook, but perhaps more like the opening of a film.

[15:52] I wonder if you've seen the movie Dunkirk. Dunkirk is a movie told from the point of view of soldiers on land, of sailors at sea, and of pilots in the air.

[16:05] And the way that they tell the story, okay, Christopher Nolan tells the story, is that the stories weave together, right, poetically and persuasively. I think there's something similar going on here between Genesis 1 and 2, right?

[16:19] In Genesis 1, we have a wide-angle shot. And then in Genesis 2, we have a close-up. And when we read Genesis, okay, as a narrative account that is full of poetic elements, then when one day starts and ends is not as important as how they convey time passing, how the story is progressing.

[16:44] Just like we don't pull apart Dunkirk for not telling things in 24-hour chronological fashion, we want to ask, what is it trying to tell us? What's the director trying to help us to see?

[16:56] Genesis 1 and 2 paints a picture of a great designer and artist, a creator at work. He is shaping our universe. He's setting humanity apart.

[17:08] He's setting humanity apart. Not just to be slaves, not just to be an animal, but as men and women in his image, to do his work, to steward his will.

[17:20] You see, actually, the main aim of Genesis 1 and 2, I want to submit to you, is to tell God's people why God made the world. And as for how God made the world, yes, God reveals many true details of his craftsmanship in Genesis 1 and 2.

[17:36] And he also gives us minds to do science, to observe, to reason, to hypothesize and test what we can see around us. And now for the record, I think there are some things Darwinism claims that I think as Christians we have to reject.

[17:56] For the record, I think the Bible calls us to be firm on some truth, some creation. We have to say God was uncreated. There was nothing before God.

[18:06] We must hold to the fact that God makes everything we see and can't see. The heavens, the earth, the stars and seas, the animals and trees. And he does this by his powerful word.

[18:19] That's what the text says. And it says that he makes human beings, male and female, in his image. And I would go as far as to say that I think we need to read the Bible and say that Adam and Eve are taken to be real people and our first parents.

[18:40] That's how Jesus reads the Bible. That's how Paul reads the Bible. That's how I think we should too. And that shouldn't scare us. So I think we believe in a God who can raise Jesus from the dead, who can turn hearts that rebel against him into worshipers of him.

[18:58] He can certainly create everything in our world in half a sentence, in a day or whatever time he chooses. And so we hold on to these truths.

[19:11] And yet we need to be honest. If we read Genesis 1-2 fairly, we have to be open to saying that actually the Bible is true and trustworthy. And yet perhaps, perhaps God could have created a universe that looks grown up, as it were.

[19:28] Even if it takes seven days, it could have the appearance of age. Or when we read our passage, it's possible that there is some kind of break in time.

[19:42] Perhaps between Genesis 1-1 and 2 or 1-2 and 1-3. These first couple of verses, which read like a prologue before the story gets going. And the way the word day is used, not just in Genesis 1-2, but in other parts of the Bible, I think it's possible that when it says day, it sometimes means 24 literal hours.

[20:08] But sometimes, for example, the Sabbath day, which continues, it doesn't. We need to be honest and say that that's what we see in the passage. And so faithful Christians who love Jesus, they do come to different conclusions on the exact age of the earth, where dinosaurs fit in, the geological record, right?

[20:28] Or the Big Bang Theory. Or questions about macro or micro evolution. But to say that my view on the age of rocks or how the flood worked is the one true Christian position on creation, I think is to go beyond how a lot of Christians have read these chapters.

[20:47] And it certainly should not be a reason for us to be argumentative or bitter or just stir up a fight with brothers and sisters who love Jesus and take him seriously.

[21:02] A guy called Francis Schaeffer, he points out, once the facts are rightly understood, there will be no final conflict between creation and science. But if the point of this passage is not just how, but why, then the more important question is this.

[21:21] Does your view of the Bible and creation move you to thank him and to worship him? Does it? That's the posture of the psalmist, right?

[21:32] In Psalm chapter 8. When he does science, when he observes the heavens, what does he say? All right, verse 3. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place.

[21:44] Wow. Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. Can you say that is your view of science and creation?

[21:56] Can you say that is your posture when you submit a lab report or watch a nature documentary or solve a quadratic equation? Worship. Because it should be. It should be.

[22:08] At the heart of the creation story, right, is a creator who is persuading his people who read it to stop turning away to foreign gods, to turn back to their creator, their maker and rescuer, who is asking us to trust and obey him.

[22:27] And so, friends, we do well to read even Genesis 1-2 with that same intent. It's helpful to ask how we were made. But I think it's more important to wonder why we were made and how you and I can trust and worship our maker.

[22:45] The Bible's account on creation, it doesn't explain everything, but it does tell us what matters most. Who made me? What else did he make? How should I respond to him? Finally, before we pause and take questions, I think a third point we want to consider is this.

[23:03] At the heart of the universe is a God who makes salvation possible. Okay, I've just mentioned that the Bible doesn't and can't explain everything about the world.

[23:16] But let's flip it around and ask, can science claim to explain everything about the world? Certainly, many scientists actually believe that to be true.

[23:29] They believe what they discover explains everything about our world without a need for God. For example, the cosmologist Carl Sagan said this, the cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.

[23:46] Or you may have heard Stephen Hawking's quote. He says this, philosophy is dead. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery and our quest for knowledge. But what these men and others have offered, though, suggests John Lennox, are not statements of science.

[24:05] But these are faith claims of scientism. Scientism. Scientism is the belief, and maybe you share it, that science is the only way to all truth. But even if you ask a history professor who's trying to search for truth, they'll tell you that's not quite right.

[24:21] Or an archaeologist, or someone who studies linguistics or literature, or an engineer. They're all using their minds and reason to discover more about the world and its people.

[24:33] Yet scientism takes the natural sciences and claims it answers all of our life's questions. It gives all truth. Even if we can actually test and verify it.

[24:47] Look, if I'm a biochemistry major, I'm not going to claim it qualifies me to teach ballroom dancing. If I'm a theoretical physicist, why should I say that qualifies me to make TikTok videos? If we're reasonable, we don't claim that our area of expertise gives all the answers, right?

[25:03] Yet sadly, that's not how all scientists think and write. Now, Stephen Hawkins says this, because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.

[25:18] God's word says, in Hebrews 11, 3, by faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. But one of these statements may have been written by a world-class scientist.

[25:33] But can I suggest, I think both are statements of faith, not science. Some of our deepest life questions simply can't be answered by science alone.

[25:49] Think about it this way. Science can tell us how much fat and protein is in your favourite saoyok fan. Or formulate an equation to describe the interaction between that steam rice and the crispy skin.

[26:03] Science could do that. But science cannot tell you why your grandma made that dish for you. Science can measure how fast my heart is pumping. It can't measure how much I love my boyfriend or girlfriend, my wife or my kids.

[26:18] Science can't measure why it's wrong to abuse someone or to enslave them or to murder them. Science can't tell us why we should protect the weak.

[26:32] Science cannot ultimately tell us what God is like, whether he even cares for us. You see, on the how questions, science is a wonderful tool.

[26:42] It's a wonderful gift from God. But on the why questions, science isn't just limited. If you lean on it exclusively, you will get some terrible answers.

[26:54] You think of how Richard Dawkins phrases it. He says, the universe has precisely the properties we expect when there's no design, no purpose, no evil, no good.

[27:05] Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. Can you see the hopelessness in that statement? That is what science and atheism gives us. Perhaps if science is the right hand on the piano playing a melody we can hear, maybe faith is the left hand sounding the key we're in.

[27:26] Why the melody works, where it's headed, and who we should thank. Who we should thank for butterflies and beetles and brownies. Look, on this point, the Bible is clear.

[27:38] There is a God. He created the heavens and the earth. He made us to worship and glorify him by caring for his creation under his rule.

[27:50] And yet, when our first parents disobeyed, rebelled, went their own way, and we followed suit, what did our maker do?

[28:00] He loved us still. At great cost, he makes a way for his creation to become new creations. How? He enters creation himself.

[28:14] As a savior. To free us from the sin and selfishness and death that science alone cannot solve. He comes in Jesus.

[28:25] So be encouraged. At the heart of the Bible is a God who makes salvation possible. Two guys were catching up at a high school reunion.

[28:39] One was a Christian pastor. And the other was actually a scientist who traveled away to Switzerland to work on the Hadron Collider. And as they were catching up at this reunion, they were sharing about their jobs.

[28:51] And the guy who was in Switzerland, he explained in detail their pursuit of the Higgs boson particle. His friend, the Christian, then asked, So once you find it, is there an end to it?

[29:04] The search. When do you stop? And the scientist friend paused and stopped and said, I think we'll stop when we find the meaning of the universe.

[29:18] All of us here is on a quest for the meaning of the universe. You may not even be chasing it through science. Maybe it's through a zeal for some other knowledge. Think of the apostle Paul.

[29:29] Or maybe you're pursuing the meaning of the universe through money and career. Think of Zacchaeus. Or from sex and intimacy. Think of the woman at the well.

[29:42] If we have only science to trust, then you and I are nothing more than atoms and molecules, lipids and proteins. Your hopes and dreams don't matter, right?

[29:53] As House MD would put it, you're just a bag of cells and waste with an expiration date. But if in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, then to find the meaning of the universe, the Bible invites us not to just turn to creation, but to our creator.

[30:10] And he tells us, in the beginning was the word. And the word was with God. And the word was God who became flesh and dwelled among us, who died on the cross for our sins, who was raised to life.

[30:23] And look, some worshipped and some doubted. Jesus himself has asked us to test out his claims. And yet, even today, he invites us, turn to him, for the things science alone can't give us.

[30:38] Forgiveness, hope, the true meaning of this universe. Has science disproved Christianity? Not for many of us.

[30:50] And I hope it doesn't for you, too. Let's pray. Father, we thank you. You were the word in the beginning.

[31:00] And thank you so much that in Jesus, you have made yourself known to us. To solve many of the deepest questions we have in life.

[31:15] How can we find meaning, purpose, joy, well beyond what we can observe and test and hypothesize? So would you help us, those of us who are listening and thinking about deeper questions, help us to see that you are not just our maker, you're our lover.

[31:39] And in Christ, we can have a relationship with you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right.

[31:52] Cool. So we've reached our question and answers part of the service. So I'll give everyone just a couple more minutes to jump onto the jam board, chuck in some questions that you might have.

[32:10] And yeah, we'll get to the answers very quickly, very soon. All right. So yeah, can be as simple, as lengthy, as complicated as you guys want.

[32:21] but yeah, let's kick off. And remember, if you guys still have more questions, just chuck them up. Alternatively, we, just a quick reminder that we will have a Discord chat after service tonight.

[32:35] So that's around nine to ten-ish. Ask leaders for more details, but we'll also chuck up a link right after this. So let's, yeah, let's kick off.

[32:46] William, I think you briefly touched on this as well in this sermon, but yeah, just a quite basic, see if you can give us an overview. Has science disproved Christianity?

[33:01] Yeah, again, I think my main point, which I tried to share in the talk, was that I don't think it's science versus Christianity. I think actually modern science came out of and was developed by people who loved God and actually wanted to understand how his world worked better.

[33:18] Yeah, and so, yeah, I don't think science necessarily means that Christianity can't exist. Yeah, I think they can coexist together and yeah, even to today, there are many scientists who see no conflict with, you know, what they're studying in the world and who they worship, you know, who created this world.

[33:40] Yeah, but that's my argument. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Anything to add, Venus? No, I think, yeah, I just really like the point that, yeah, Pastor William made about, you know, we believe in a God of laws, so without these laws, there is nothing to study.

[33:59] I think that, and also the other thing is just the complexity of everything that you see around you in creation and our bodies. It's hard to believe that these are all just spontaneous coincidences.

[34:10] So, yeah, moving on, this might be a bit of a, more of a history sort of lesson, but William, maybe you can help with this question.

[34:21] Hasn't the church historically been anti-science, e.g., Galileo was in prison for saying that the earth went around the sun? So, yeah, well, I guess, to put that into a clearer question is what is the stance of the church maybe nowadays compared to previous times and how does the church as a whole view religion?

[34:49] I don't know how the church views religion, but I think in terms of how it views science, yeah, I think we actually forget that actually, you know, a lot of the, like Oxford, Harvard, like a lot of the universities, they were started by Christians or started by monasteries, people who wanted to study God's word, but also his world and so, yeah, I think we forget that history and so the church, I would say the church hasn't always been anti-science.

[35:17] In fact, part of, I think, loving God was, yeah, to use your, all your mind to study his world, yeah. I think we can maybe talk about Galileo's story.

[35:29] The way that some historians paint it is that, you know, Galileo was like standing up for scientific truth and then the church was, you know, trying to quash him down. It sounds really black and white, but again, all right, there's a few problems with this version of the story.

[35:46] Actually, Galileo was a Christian himself, yeah, and actually, when you study his, what happened in that history, he was actually not just opposed by the church, but also by other, you know, secular professors and philosophers.

[36:00] What was at fault or what was the tension there wasn't, so some of you know the story, like before Galileo, the consensus was that they would just take, you know, what Psalm 19 said word for word, right?

[36:13] It looks like the sun travels from, you know, east to west, therefore, the earth is in the center and the sun goes around it. Yeah, and so that's actually Aristotle's view, right, all the way back from BC's time of the planets and the sun, and that was kind of, there were people defending that view, not just in the church, but also in the secular academy as well, so it's actually more Christians, right, on both sides trying to better understand their Bible, right, yeah, and I think, you know, on that point, you know, we don't believe that today because we understand that when Psalm 19 describes the sunrise in the east and sets in the west, we know that that's not a literal description of the sun, right, it's a description of what it looks like from our perspective, yeah, and so again, last week we talked about how we read the Bible literally, but not just literally, but literarily, okay, here's poetry that describes, ah, this is amazing, what a beautiful view of the sun moving, okay, it's not a scientific statement of how the sun moves in relation to the earth, yeah, so yeah, we do well to read it that way, yeah, have you heard the

[37:23] Galileo story before as well, Venus? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, and I think, yeah, it just made me really actually reflect on how I read the Bible as well, I think it's so easy to place what we want to believe and then like kind of impose that meaning on scripture, yeah.

[37:50] Here's one for you, Venus, this is quite interesting, if Adam and Eve are proven to have never existed, does this disprove the Christian God? That is a tricky one, I think, I guess like, yeah, first the kind of big picture, like regardless what we think of it, we still, like there still has to be a creator because something was created from nothing, so in a way, I don't think that disproves that there is a God.

[38:25] If Adam and Eve are proven to have never, I guess we, one, I don't think you could ever prove that they haven't existed because that is looking back, we can't, we don't have a time machine, we can't travel back, we're just kind of interpreting, so we have little pieces of evidence from fossils and things like that and then science tries to connect the dots and then make up a theory and there might be a lot of dots and that kind of makes us believe a theory a bit more but I don't think we'll ever be able to prove or disprove something and I think for me reading Genesis, I think the most important thing is to know that at some stage God created what we call man as a creature with morality and I think that's the point of difference between humans and other animals and however he did that at whatever point morality came in, I don't know and I don't think we'll ever know but at one point there was a species which is us that you're created with morality with an opportunity to have a spiritual connection with God with an ability to know between right and wrong and I think

[39:36] Adam and Eve are kind of, you know, it's what they call the ancestors of the first people who had that kind of morality and spirituality so, you know, whatever it's called yet there's a point where that would have happened.

[39:51] Okay. I don't know if there's anything else to add I mean, yeah, if you go to the Bible, the Genesis account, God clearly sets apart and makes it quite special, right, the narrator makes it, you know, so God created man in his own image so there's something about Adam and Eve or the first humans that is distinctly different from his creation, yeah, and so I think without that we actually lose a lot of even the reasons why we would actually treat people with worth and kindness in our world today.

[40:22] I think actually, you know, some of the things we take for granted like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights comes from just this background understanding that humans are different from dogs and cats as much as I love them.

[40:37] They are distinct and special, a special creation of God, yeah. I think from there we do the rest of our theology, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so that's really looking at the past and things that happened before but looking forward into the future, where do you think that science without, I guess, God-centered ethics might lead humanity?

[41:01] So this is more very future thinking and very interesting I think in the age that we live in as well. So, yeah, either one of you, any thoughts? Yeah, I think, yeah, just what William was saying just about, you know, what we believe about morality and what we believe in terms of the intrinsic value of a human, you know, regardless if we've got any illnesses or disabilities or whatever, like, do we have intrinsic value?

[41:29] And I think that makes a huge difference to how, you know, with bits of science and I think it's not even looking at the future, it's looking at now, like, you know, thinking like, abortion and things like that, do we have, do humans have intrinsic value and that kind of changes your thoughts about those kind of things?

[41:49] And I think even things like, sorry, this is medical because I'm medical, but like, for example, like pre-implantation genetics, which is like, some people can, you know, check the genetics of a embryo or a fetus before they're born and then, you know, from that, decide if they want the baby or not and then, or even maybe choosing which embryo to implant in a uterus, like, there are those kind of technologies.

[42:18] I think if you, yeah, depending on what your worldview is about the intrinsic value of humans that you can sometimes cross the line and be like playing God.

[42:29] I think that's just one example. I guess there are a lot of movies and stuff where you get or, you know, a lot of that selective sort of breeding of humans and I guess that you run into a lot of morality issues there as well.

[42:42] Yeah. William, you were saying? Yeah, I think without a firm view that, you know, we are created, you know, and there is a distinction. We can't play God. I think we go into a lot of, we run into a lot of issues about not just how we treat people, why we treat them the way we do.

[43:00] I think even upcoming with COVID, like I think I read recently in Melbourne, a doctor was saying, oh, look at all these unvaccinated people. Look, they should just not accept hospital treatment.

[43:11] In fact, maybe as a doctor, maybe we shouldn't treat them if they get COVID, right? As, you know, you know, personally, I think, you know, I think it's a great gift from God to get a vaccine and I, you know, I've been double-vaxxed myself, but if someone made in God's image hasn't been vaccinated, all right, and gets sick, they're an image bearer of God.

[43:32] They're, they're not just, you know, they're not just an other. I think science actually, you know, alone can't give us the resources to go, I'm going to treat them even though I disagree or I can't explain their choice.

[43:45] You know, I think, otherwise, yeah, we start playing God with who lives and who dies and yeah, that's a dangerous place to be. So, yeah. Cool. Yeah, well, one of the passions of mine would be where, you know, where humanity is being led is with AI as well.

[44:04] So, how that'll change, I guess, the world that we live in, how it's already changing the world that we live in, but we can discuss more discord if we want. So, there's a, there's a really good quote by Francis Collins there that you guys can read.

[44:16] So, he was their leader of the Human Genome Project. Here's a one, we'll just run through the last two, I think one, this is interesting, how would it affect your faith if aliens came to Earth next week?

[44:30] We'll park that for a little bit, but we'll run through the last two here. One of the, maybe Venus, you want to address evolution as one of the most reliably established of all facts and theories of science.

[44:46] Assuming God is real, why does God use such a long and wasteful process to create animals and plants? That's a big question, I think it makes a lot of assumptions, if you like.

[45:05] Yeah, so I guess, I don't, I don't think we know evolution is definitely real, it's definitely a theory that is out there and a hypothesis. I don't think it would, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, if it's a mechanism that exists, God orchestrates it.

[45:26] Why, why would he use such a long and wasteful process? I think, one, long in whose terms, like long in our terms, we think, you know, if it was, you know, millions, billions of years, you know, we think it's long, but, you know, God doesn't see things as a chronological timeline, it's all like a snapshot to him, so actually, that's only just in our opinion, and again, wasteful in whose opinion?

[45:50] We might think it's wasteful, but, you know, God might not think it's wasteful, you know, we, you know, we're mortal on this earth, we come and we go, but are we wasteful?

[46:03] So I think, yeah, I don't think, you know, we can be the judge of that. I guess there's a point there that says 99% of species that have evolved on earth have gone extinct, so, yeah, would you like to address that at all?

[46:22] Would you? Never put it down as like making it bigger for you. Dun, dun, dun. Yeah. Maybe I can jump in, like, the quote there says, you know, it's most reliably established of all facts and theories.

[46:35] They don't, you know, you can't have both, but it's either a fact or it's still a theory that has to be, you know, go back to the scientific method. We have a hypothesis. We're trying to collect as much data as possible, whether it's the fossil record, whether it's, yeah, studying the genome and similarities between DNA of different species.

[46:55] People are still doing that research and until you actually get to the end of that study, which I don't think we're there yet. I think it's still, you know, I think we still need to treat it as this is a theory.

[47:08] Even, I think the most honest scientists, evolutionary biologists will say this is still something that is a work in progress. Yeah. Yeah. And there are other issues like that, that people, you know, you can do a lot more digging into it.

[47:23] People talk about the reduced spill complexity, wasteful advantage or adaptive advantage. There's other, you know, there are lots of things that really smart people have put their time and effort into trying to work out together.

[47:34] So, yeah. And, yeah, I think, you know, we let scientists do what scientists do best, but at the same time, we, we continue to recognize that it doesn't provide every single answer, you know, it doesn't, yeah, that to, to say that evolution fixes all our problems, that's to go from science to scientism, like I was saying earlier.

[47:57] Yeah, I think. Yeah. Yeah. So, Josh has said that I think I was thinking more in terms of the 99% of species going extinct. It seems certainly more wasteful than intelligent design.

[48:12] Yeah. I want to jump in a little bit here. I think, oh, cool. I guess my question, Josh. Yeah, that's great. It's a really good question, actually, because, but, but I guess when I think about it as well, it's how would I have done it?

[48:30] What would I do differently if I were this intelligent designer as well? I guess the why of God's methods are very, yeah, I guess if we have to go back to the Bible, his ways are above our ways and his thoughts are above our thoughts as well.

[48:46] And I guess there's a lot of things that we can look into the past and feel like, yeah, are wasteful or because things have lived and died and it hasn't really served our purposes that it's certainly redundant.

[49:01] But I guess when we look outside of ourselves as well and what it has meant for the, for the world, even for 99% of species to have died and to have created oil that drives our cars from, you know, dead dinosaurs millions of years ago, maybe, you know, there are, there are purposes for some things that we just can't explain right now.

[49:20] Yeah, so I think that's definitely something that we can discuss more and I think Charlotte has jumped in as well and talked about a little bit about adaptive advantage, but we can discuss more in Discord.

[49:35] Lastly, just a quick one. Are there any examples in the Bible where people that have been pro-science or anti-science, anti-faith and what's actually happened to them?

[49:52] William, maybe you can just quickly touch on that. There's actually lots of, you know, examples of people in the Bible who observe nature. They wouldn't call it a scientific method, but like I was mentioning the psalmist, yeah, so there's, there's plenty of examples.

[50:11] I don't think they would categorize themselves as pro-science or anti-science, you know, there's always this kind of harmony between, you know, I'm looking at the world around me and I'm worshipping a creator who made me, yeah.

[50:25] Really, the kind of the fight between pro and anti has really come about actually since the Western Enlightenment in the last 200 years, so that's where I think a lot of the fight has been, yeah.

[50:36]  So, yeah, certainly in the Bible, not as big a deal, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so let's leave it there for now. We'll get ready to carry on and and and and so I'll and and and and and I