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I must congratulate you on your grasp of arithmetic and your perception. When you worked out that, uh, four years ago when I was here, I was in, did you say, my early or late teenage years? That is very good arithmetic on your part. I hope you will sustain that impression. It is an honor, ladies and gentlemen, to be asked to address you on these occasions, uh, this week. Let me say at once what it is we shall attempt to be doing. We shall be studying together what the Bible has to say about creation, the world in which we live, and the great universe around us.
We shall be also thinking, of course, not only of creation, but of its great creator, and how the doctrine of creation has implications for us right to this very present time. Our main thrust will be to consider what the Bible has to say about creation. It says, of course, a tremendous lot. Uh, uh, and we may sum it up this evening by four verses from Holy Scripture that read as follows. The first of them, you needn't turn to it unless you choose to. The first of them comes as the very first word of the Bible, the majestic opening statement of Holy Scripture, that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
That verse tells us, among other things, that this universe in which we live had a beginning. Now that, of course, is exceedingly significant. The Bible has been saying it for many a long century. When I was a little bit more than a teenager, and before I came to Ireland, the- there was a growing consensus among scientists of some particular kind that the universe never did have a beginning. It was in what they called a steady state, and somehow from somewhere they manufactured a supply of atoms and basic energy that kept the universe going and would keep it going forever and a day.
And they promised that they then would soon provide us with the evidence for what was called the steady state. The evidence was never forthcoming. Nowadays, as you will know, the present theory about our universe that gains maximum but not complete, uh, consent is that the universe did have a beginning in the so-called Big Bang. I'm not urging you that we should trust the Bible because science says so. I'm asking you to observe how the Bible statement has stood the test of time, and still it is the majority view, even among atheist scientists, that the universe had a beginning.
And why that is important, we shall see in the course of these studies. The first verse, then, of the Bible, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The second verse that helps us to sum up our topic as we begin is found in the Gospel of John, and again in chapter one and verse one. Gospel of John, chapter one and verse one. In the beginning, it says, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This is one of the most remarkable statements on this subject in the whole of scripture, that in the beginning was the Word.
It goes on to say all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. So that the basic thing in the whole universe is the Word. Here, a, a, a description of the second person of the Holy Trinity, a description of our blessed Lord Jesus, of whom this same chapter tells us that eventually, in the course of history, the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. But it is interesting in the light of modern science, because of this last so many years, one of the, uh, uh, progressive science, sciences has come to show us how basic to the universe is information theory.
We needn't worry much about that for tonight. We shall come across that tomorrow night, God willing. But behind the universe, behind the matter of the universe, even the scientists now tell us that there is to be see- to be perceived the information carried by science. So much is that so that one leading scientist of recent, in one of his recent books, has made the suggestion that the basic stuff in the universe is not matter, as people used to think, but is much more probable information.
The Bible has been saying it for centuries, that the basic thing, the basic person, I ought to rephrase it, behind the universe is the Word, that second person of the Godhead, who is the expression of the Godhead. And it is of his, through his Word that the universe has come to be, and it carries in it the information that leads to the effecting of his original design. This verse tells us also another important thing. Not only this universe had a beginning, in the beginning was the word, but when the universe began, the word already was.
You will notice that the Bible does not say, in the beginning the Word became this or that. Does not say in the beginning the Word was made or came to be. No, it says in the beginning the Word already was. All things became through him, all things were made by him, says the verse three of this passage. But whereas they became, there was a time when they didn't exist, and then they came to be, as distinct from the universe that came to be, the Word himself was eternal, independent of the universe.
In other words, it is important for us to grasp it. Many a religion in this world has not yet grasped it. That, uh, God is not part of the stuff of the universe. God is independent. God is holy, to use the biblical term. And he is the author of it. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. A third passage that will sum up the, the territory that, uh, we shall be following in these talks is to be found in the Epistle to the Hebrews and chapter eleven.
Chapter eleven of the Epistle to the Hebrews and verse three. It reads like this. By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen has not been made out of things which do appear. That, of course, is true, I- I nearly said at every schoolboy now knows. This desk at which I stand is compi- composed of largely empty space between atoms. And normally, of course, we cannot see them, though modern devices have brought about the wonder that we can begin to see at least photographs of atoms.
But beyond that, if you say, where did God get the stuff from to make a universe? He didn't get it from anywhere. He created it, a universe made out of nothing that does not appear. And finally, for the moment, it is the claim of the scripture that the universe gives us, by just being there and working the way it was designed to work, it gives us, conveys to us evidence that there is a God.
Its actual words are these, they are to be found in the Epistle to the Romans and chapter one, Verse eighteen following. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold down the truth in unrighteousness. Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of him, since the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity.
So it is the Bible's claim that the universe around us, and our world in particular, and mankind upon it, supplies us with evidence. So when we read in that previous verse, by faith we understand that the worlds have been made by the word of God. Faith is not a leap in the dark, deciding to believe something without any evidence at all to rest your faith on. It's not that way round. Faith in the Bible is our response to evidence. That evidence supplied by God himself that leads us to put our faith in him.
So here scripture is telling us straightly that the universe around us supplies us with evidence that there is a God. Let that suffice for the moment for the kind of territory that we shall be exploring this week. What I propose to do in particular is to take the three accounts of creation that are given us in the book of Genesis. It may sound strange to some of you who are expert in Bible when I talk about the three accounts of creation in Genesis.
Well, I, that's not a slip of the tongue, I mean it as I understand it, there are three accounts of creation in the book of Genesis. Just like there are four accounts of the life of our Lord Jesus in the New Testament, are there not? The gospel by Matthew, one by Mark, one by Luke, and one by John. Four of them, they do not contradict one another, but they give us a, a view of Christ from four different aspects so that we might get what you might call, forgive the number, a three D, a full-blown image of Christ.
So in the Old Testament, in the first book of the Bible, we get three accounts of creation, looking at creation from different points of view, and then drawing out the principles behind it and how they were meant to affect our lives as God's creatures on this planet, and what happened when men chose not to retain the knowledge of God Creator in their minds. So these then are the topics in store for us this week. But tonight there's a prior question in many a mind, is there not?
For it is quite a widespread view, at least as I find it, held by an increasing, ever increasing number of people, that belief in a creator is unscientific. That science, they say, has buried God. It's impossible any longer to believe that there is a creator, and even more impossible, so many people think, to believe the account of creation as given us in the book of Genesis and elsewhere. Science, so many a schoolboy has been taught in his classes.
Science has proved that there's no room for God in this planet. We can explain everything without God. We have looked down our test tubes, we have done our sums. We've come to understand how the universe works. We can give a coherent and a logical account of how it works, and there is no need to suppose there's a God behind it. We can understand how it works without dragging in the idea of God. Science, therefore, has shown us that there is no God.
So let's deal with that, uh, question tonight, shall we? And see what we can see about what science does really say. As for the notion that science has proved there is no God, of course, it is laughable, really, is it not? For science, by definition, could never prove any such thing. To prove there is no God, you would first have to know everything that is in this vast universe, and outside it as well. To prove there is no God. That would be foolish.
Then there are, uh, numbers of things, aren't there, in, uh, uh, our daily experience that, uh, science cannot begin to show us. For instance, they could, uh, put an a machine upon your head, so to speak, and measure your brain waves, and the machine would have a lovely time, would it not, measuring all the tremendous things that are going on side ins- on inside your brain, you see. Science could tell you what part of your brain is particularly working at this moment, you see.
Or as you sit in your armchair, science could, uh, measure your brain and say, yes, it's that part of the brain that's working at this moment. What science couldn't tell you ever, is what you were thinking about. They could measure all the electrical currents in your brain coming off and coming on, and the firing of the neurons and the synapses and all the rest of it. But what you were actually thinking, couldn't possibly tell you, unless you told the scientist. Science has a very limited ability.
John Polkinghorne, fellow of the Royal Society, nuclear mathematician, and also a believer in God and in Christ, pointed out in his many writings how limited science is to explain things. Cannot explain the significance of music to us, why we love music, what we see in it, let alone a host of other things. How has this notion come about, I say to myself, that people have the idea that somehow science has made belief in God unnecessary, if not impossible.
I think it is because the tremendous increase in the things that science has been able to explain. For instance, if you go back in history, you'll find people thinking about thunder. And when they heard the roar of the thunder, they thought it must be God actually speaking some words they didn't understand. Then the scientists got to work, and they can give you an accurate explanation of what thunder is. The, uh, wind velocities, the atmospheric pressures, the electrical currents, and so forth and so on, and explain it, and not only explain it, but reproduce it.
I'm an arts man, if you know what that is, and at one stage in my career, I walked across from my arts department, the Greek department, to the electrical engineers. Very bright men they were, you'll see. And so they conducted me round their, eh, laboratories and then thought they would teach this innocent classicist a little lesson, you'll see. So they took me down into the subterranean parts of caves of their department and stood me in a room, and there were two great cylinders going up with big bulbs at the top. I mean, you know, round things at the top, not lights at all. They said, you look at them. So here I was, an innocent looking at them, when all of a sudden there came such a flash of lightning from pole to pole and an enormous roar, you see.
I was suitably frightened to their great pleasure, you see. They had reproduced the effect of lightning and sundown, you see. So we can explain how it happened. So we don't need God. Now that's a curious, I want to say a fallacious, fallacious deduction. Let me give you a little parable. I made it up myself, so you can trust it to see. I want you to, uh, think a- a- about some pygmies right in the heart of the rainforest of the Congo, or whatever it's called today, it's distinct from yesterday.
Aha. And one day, these pygmies in the forest, they come across a motor car. I can't tell you how it got there. You must believe me it got there, you see. There it is. They'd never seen a thing like this before in all their lives, you see. So they fall to examining this strange contraption. Eventually, one of them goes bold, and he opens the door, turns the ignition key, and to his shock and surprise, the engine starts. Oh, but he's tremendously afraid. Oh, besides, there must be there's a man in there making that noise, or a god or something.
Then they listen to it, and no harm comes to them. They get used to this, and while it's going on nicely, they think this is marvelous, there must be a god in there, and they bring the, the, uh, the man or the god inside this thing to make this noise. Do they bring him some fruits and some vegetables as a sacrifice? And then it backfires all of a sudden. Ooh, they get a tremendous shock. Must be that the god inside there is displeased with them, you see. Well, the shock wears off, and after a while they take up engineering, and eventually they dismantle this thing and take the engine to bits. Little by little, they discover how the thing works. Pistons and cylinders and internal combustion and sparks from plugs and all this kind of thing, and they rejoice in their knowledge.
They can explain everything, and what is more, they discover there's no man inside it, and they do a ho- hula dance. We've now discovered there's no God the man inside the thing, you see. Aha. And so they decide that the name on the front of it, it's FORD. They thought originally that was the name of the man inside the thing, Mr. Ford inside it. Now they've discovered there's no Mr. Ford inside it. And they come to the conclusion that because they can understand how the thing works, there never was a Mr.
Ford. Huh. Well, how did the thing come to be? They say, well, we don't exactly know, but if we go on like we are with our scientific investigation, we shall eventually find how it came to be. But there's no Mr. Ford. Be false, wouldn't it? Just because you understand how the Ford engine works, and there's no Mr. Ford inside it, doesn't mean there's no Mr. Ford, and there never was, who designed the thing. Thank God for the scientists who have shown us so much of how the universe works.
And they say when they look down their microscopes and so forth and so on, they don't see and don't find any God. Well, why do they expect to? But to conclude because they understand how it works, that that there's no God creator who made it in the first place, is like deciding that because you know how the Ford motor car works, there never was a Mr. Ford. Of course, we all have our prejudice, don't we? There are some people who prefer not to believe in God.
And when I say that, I speak, of course, as you have gathered, as a Christian. I have my prejudices, a whole host of them, and uh, Christian prejudices, if I might so describe them. There are other people who have other prejudices, aren't there? And some scientists are like, uh, Hawking. He says many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning. Why not? Well, says Stephen Hawking, probably because it smacks of divine intervention. And some scientists, as well as other people, don't like the idea of a creator who could intervene, who started the whole show going and could intervene any time he chooses.
So Arthur Eddington, and now long course, has said in his time, philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of nature is repugnant. I should like to find a genuine loophole. Yes, I have my, I have my, uh, prejudices. I freely admit that. But you should be aware that many scientists who proclaim to the world there is no God are working also from their prejudice, as you hear Sir Arthur Eddington, big man for daring to confess the truth.
He felt that the whole idea of time having a beginning and a creator who made our universe is repugnant. And look at what, uh, more recently, Sir John Maddox, the former editor of the scientific, uh, journal Nature, the leading scientific, uh, journal perhaps in the British Isles, he pronounced the idea of a beginning thoroughly unacceptable. Why? Because it implied an ultimate origin for our world and gave creationists, as people who believe in creation, ample justification for their beliefs.
So, yes, there's a good deal of prejudice about. We need, as best we can, don't we, to observe our prejudices and constantly review them in the light of the evidence. But now let's look at one other thing before we get down to some of the evidence, and that is some of the practical implications of what we are now talking about. The scientist Futuma, in his book Science on Trial, The Case for Evolution, is forthright in his remarks.
Anyone who believes in Genesis as a literal description of history must hold a worldview that is entirely incompatible with the idea of evolution, not to speak of science itself. Where science insists on material mechanistic causes that can be understood by physics and chemistry, the literal believer in Genesis invokes unknowable supernatural forces. In other words, he believes in God. You'll see. There's the two views. What's the point of, what's the practical point of it? How does it affect you and me, whether we believe there was a God or there isn't a God?
What difference does it make? Well, it will make an eternal difference one of these days, but even now in the present, here through Tuma. Perhaps more importantly, if the world and its creatures developed by purely by material physical forces, it could not have been designed and has no purpose or goal. Ask that. Futuma is recog- uh, recommending to you that you believe there is no God. That the universe around you and you...
are the result of merely mechanical forces. And because that is so according to him, there is no purpose behind your existence. No plan. You weren't designed. You are the result of blind, mindless bits and pieces of stuff, put together without any plan or purpose. Ultimately no purpose at all for your existence. You are ultimately meaningless. Now, there are many people who don't see that logical implication.
They think life is going to be happier, filled with much more pleasure and meaning, if only they could get rid of God. As the opposite is really true. Look what he goes on to say. The fundamentalist, in contrast, believes that everything in the world, every species and every characteristic of every species, was designed by an intelligent, purposeful artificer, and that it was made for a purpose. That's what believers in God believe, of course. They believe that you, madam, were made by an intelligent creator for an eternal purpose.
And whether life has treated you roughly or smoothly, there is meaning in your existence. You are not the prisoner of mindless forces. So he concludes, nowhere does this contrast apply with more force than to the human species. Could we have it up a bit? Now he comes to his great decision, that is the conclusion. Some shrink from the conclusion that the human species was not designed, has no purpose, and is the produce of mere mechanical mechanisms.
But this seems to be the message of evolution. They are stark choices, ladies and gentlemen. And before you decide that you are absolutely meaningless, that your existence was never designed. You are an amalgam of mindless bits and pieces of stuff put together without purpose. And those blind forces that made you will one day destroy you. And that's all life is. Before you decide that, it's worth having a look again, is it not, at the evidence.
So let's turn now to the evidence. As the Bible itself says in the passage we read, the invisible things of God, since the creation of the world, are made visible. We can perceive them. And Paul uses a very interesting word. Suppose, uh, to take an illustration, suppose, uh, you took me out into your garden this springtime, and you have a bed of tulips.
And you say to me, goody, look at those tulips there, goody. What do you think of them? Aren't they beautiful? And suppose I turned around to you and said, prove to me they're beautiful. What would you do? I think you'd ring for a psychiatrist, perhaps. Prove that tulips are beautiful. Don't be so absurd. You can see they're beautiful. What we call intuition. Yes, and so says Paul, as we look around the great creation around us, we can perceive from it the evidence that there is a supreme power, and that that power is not human, but divine.
We're going to think a lot about that evidence in the course of these evening studies, if you consent to come and listen. So I want to point now to three avenues down which modern science goes that seem to me to point very strongly in this direction. Our creation around us points to the fact that it has been designed by an intelligent source, by God, in fact. And here now I'm quoting not Bible, I propose to quote modern science.
And first of all comes what we would call, uh, the intelligibility of the universe. Let me explain what that means. It means that we can understand how the universe Works. The other week, so they tell me there was a full eclipse of the moon. I was, I don't know how engaged, and I didn't see the thing. But many people saw this marvelous sight, uh, at least in Austria it was so, where I was at the time, a full eclipse of the moon.
And I suspect every schoolboy here tonight could tell you what happens, how an eclipse is brought about. That the sun up there in the sky and the moon up there in the sky, and at a certain time, as the earth goes round the sun and the moon goes round the earth, the moon gets between the sun, uh, the the earth gets between the sun and the moon and blocks out the light of the sun on the moon. You have an eclipse of the moon. We can understand it. Now don't, uh, dismiss that too quickly, that and say that's some innocent little thing.
No, it isn't. Your dog doesn't understand it, does he? Huh? The fact that we human beings can understand it is a phenomenon full of the deepest significance. This is a vast universe. Let's have a look at a star cluster. Sorry, it is a bit faint. You'll see. These are millions upon millions of stars.
Two lots of stars, one behind the other, taken by recent photography, you see, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, as they call it. Millions upon millions upon millions of stars. So this universe is vast. The interesting thing is that human beings, as they take their telescopes and all their things for analysis and peer out at these galaxies, can understand how they work. How is that?
The, uh, very learned scientist Paul Davies, not a believer, he says as follows. Uh, if we could have it up a bit. Paul Davies, as far as I know, is not a believer in God, and certainly isn't a Christian. In his earlier days, he was actively atheistic.
In more recent times, compelled, it would seem, by his science, he has modified his views very, very markedly. And we'll see in this book, which he entitles The Mind of God, is that through science, we human beings are able to grasp at least some of nature's secrets. We've cracked part of the cosmic code. Why should this be? Just why Homo sapiens should carry the spark of rationality that provides the key to the universe, how that is, is a deep enigma, he says.
Well, so it is if you're an atheist. Just you imagine what atheists have to believe, that we all started off as a bit of stuff, mindless, brainless, and by series of chance permutations, we actually grew. And this mindless stuff, without any purpose, without any teaching, suddenly developed into your brain, and lo and behold, could understand the way the universe works. Yes, you should have a greater estimate of your brain than that, shouldn't you? And says Paul Davies, it's a, it's an enigma to somebody that doesn't believe in God, who believes of evolution, mindless processes brought us to be.
How, he says, what does it mean, do see? What does it mean, what is man that we might be party to such privilege? I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama. Our involvement is too intimate. The physical species homo, man, may come for nothing, but the existence of mind in some organism on some planet in the universe is surely a fact of fundamental significance. You've got a brain, madam.
You've a brain, sir. You can understand how the universe works, if not the outer one, because you haven't studied it yet, the one in your next door, you know, your next door neighbor's garden, the planets and the sun and the eclipses and things like that. That's a phenomenon, you are a phenomenon in this universe. It's a phenomenon that atheism can't explain. The Bible answer to it, of course, is that man was made in the image of God. Made so that we could begin to understand our creator's thoughts.
As one of the great scientists said as he made his discoveries, we are thinking God's thoughts after him. And look how, uh, the man ends up. Through conscious beings, the universe has generated self-awareness, says he, because the poor man is still an atheist. So somehow the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here. There speaks an atheist. This is a scientist, a world renown, not a Christian.
His science is pushing him to the belief that we are not the byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here. Well, that raises a big question, doesn't it? Who meant us to be here? To say then that science has made belief in God impossible or unscientific is to live somewhat in the past. Modern science is pointing ever more than it is done for centuries, that behind this universe there is an intelligent power, a mind that meant us to be here.
And then we come to another matter, you'll see, in the, uh, universe, and that is what is called, um, fine. We'll see who, if we were meant to be here. Let's have this. We look at the universe, and the more we discover about it and the way it works, the more it becomes apparent that our universe, and then our planet in a planetary system, has been deliberately designed to make human life possible.
We are indeed meant to be here, and the universe has been prepared to make it possible for us to be here. So I take some details from a certain doc, and he's pointing out some of the arrangements made in our near vicinity in the universe, our sun and, uh, the planets and our Earth. Do you see? Our first necessity, perhaps, for life on Earth is that we should have a source of light and a source of heat.
Without those, life would be impossible, you see. So, what is the arrangement? How do we get this source of light and the source of heat? Well, you say the sun up in the sky is our source of light. Of course it is. Yes, so. Then what a marvel that is, the sun up in the sky. Do you see? To take this second thing first. The sun up in the sky is one colossal atomic furnace, isn't it? A vast affair. Do you see? Let's have a picture of the sun for a moment, uh, and then go back to the other one.
Yes. Do you see this thing at the bottom? Lift it up, if you will. Flares coming out of the sun for thousands upon thousands of miles, erupting from the sun under the powers within working within the sun and so forth. A vast atomic furnace. We've all become aware that if you expose yourself to the sun too much in the summer, you stand in danger of getting skin cancer. What does that all show us? Well, it shows us that with this position of distance from the sun to make human life possible. If we were too near the sun, we'd fry like sausages in your frying pan.
It wouldn't last long. If you were too far from the sun, you'd freeze to death. Life would be impossible. We have to be at the critical point of distance and nearness to the sun to make life possible. How is it we come to be precisely at that distance? But then you say, sun, there's nothing unusual about that. Ah, but wait a minute. There are thousands of millions upon billions of suns in the universe. Every star is a sun, or put it the other way around, our sun is a star, you see.
Only not just any old star would do for us planet. To be suitable for us, called a middle-aged bachelor star. Perhaps you've never thought about a middle-aged bachelor star, have you? Well, some stars, uh, when, uh, they get a bit older, explode. We have photographs of them exploding, and what happens when they explode. It wouldn't do if our star, our sun was a star like that, that could, uh, explode. It wouldn't do for it to be what they call a binary, would it? In you look, if you look out into the sky with a telescope, you'll see that a lot of stars come in pairs.
They are rotating one around the other. Binaries, they call them. Well, it's a good job our star isn't a binary, because with the other star we're going around it like this, we should be knocked off course, uh, you see, i- in a trice. It has to be a very special kind of star that is the source of our light and the source of our heat. Then take the matter of rotation speed. When we look at the planets that go round our sun, they all go at different speeds round the sun, and then they all twizzle round, but they don't all twizzle round at the same speed, do they?
Our Earth twizzles round, as we do, as we know from light and day, yes? But what is exceedingly important is the speed at which our planet turns round. Why is that? Because if it went more slowly, on the daytime side, if you were out in the sun for a long, long while, the Earth on that side would get so baking hot as to make life impossible, and the other side would freeze to death, if you were going too slowly. And then there's the great planet Jupiter, you see, that goes round at a colossal rate, and the, uh, result of that is that the planet Jupiter, uh, develops such storms, absolute torments of storms on its surface, that of course life would be absolutely impossible.
So even within our little, uh, sun and its planetary system, there is mounting evidence the more it is studied, that the whole thing has been engineered to make human life possible. Let me give you a quote on this same topic, if I can find him. Here we have it. This is, uh, Sir Roger Penrose, mathematician of Oxford.
He did a lot of the work along with Hawking on the, uh, Big Bang theory and the black, sorry, on the black hole theory. But that's by the by. I don't know what his religious beliefs are, of any in philosophy, he's a Platonist, but as a mathematician, he comments. He explains that in order to have a universe compatible with the second law of thermodynamics and with what we now observe, the creator's aim must have been accurate to one part in ten to the power of ten to the hundred and twenty three. That is one followed by ten hundred and twenty three successive noughts.
This is an extraordinary figure. One could not possibly even write the number down in full in the ordinary denary notation. Even if we were to write a nought on each separate proton, on each separate neutron in the entire universe, and we could throw in all the other particles as well for good measure, we should fall far short of writing down the figure needed, the precision needed to set the universe on its course. The notion that the universe has come about by sheer accident of mindless forces looks nonsensical in the light of that, doesn't it?
This is not some, uh, uh, a man expressing his Christian view. This is a world famous mathematician. Understanding the laws, more than most of us, of how the universe moves and what ticks and how it works. And he is saying, yes, this universe has been fine-tuned in its making to its remotest bound to make possible human life on this planet. That's a marvelous thing, that is, isn't it? And again, I say, all we're looking at tonight is what science is saying.
Not all scientists, of course. But if you find your teacher at school, my young friend, telling you that science makes belief in a creator impossible, then I think you'd have to conclude that the sci- the teacher is way behind the times in his actual science. The Bible is true after all. The invisible things of God are clearly seen from looking at the universe around us. So clearly seen, says the Bible, that God will hold men and women responsible.
They could have seen the evidence for his existence, for his deity, for his almighty power. And if they shut their eyes to it, they will be held by God responsible. One other th- uh, uh, kind of evidence, uh, you'll see, uh, uh, for tonight, and that will be enough evidence. And that is what is called irreducible complexity. Large phrase, it means something very simple. It comes, uh, particularly used by Professor Behe, and I believe there's one of his books on the stand out there, and the illustration I shall use is from him.
He is a biochemist. He's an expert in studying the cell in the human body and how it works. You'll see. And he points out that in our human bodies, there are exceedingly complicated systems that could not possibly have evolved one at a time by chance over millions of years. The systems are necessary for life, yet being complicated, every bit had to be there right from the start, else it wouldn't work.
And the illustration he uses for simple folks like me is the famous, is now famous illustration of a, of a mousetrap. You see, they're not so complicated as the galaxies exactly, you see, or the human cell, but he uses it, you see, as a, as a illustration. He would say that this mouse trap is irreducibly complex. So if somebody asks you, what do you mean by irreducible complexity, say mouse traps. You see, there's an example of them anyway. You see, it's made up of a bit of wood at the bottom here, do you see? And then this is hammer thing, you see, that comes down and smites the unwary mouse.
Oops, do you see? And then it has to have a spring that makes the hammer come down, do you see? And then it has to have a thing to hold the thing up, do you see, for a time, and then at the precise moment it, uh, uh, when the mouse stands upon the thing, it, it releases the spring. And then there's the thing to put the cheese upon. Delightful gourmet stuff for the mouse, do you see? How do you think that came together, that mousetrap? Would you agree with me that once upon a time, billions of years ago, there was a bit of wood, and a mouse came on it, and a few mouse, mice got caught on it, just the wood, nothing else.
And then some millions of years later, a bit of iron somewhere from nowhere in particular happened to fall on it, but without a spring, of course, and it caught a few more mice. And then millions of years later, by an accidental, uh, thing in the genes or something, a spring was added. Out of grandfather's clock, fell on it, and it worked together, and it made a spring, and you caught a lot more mu- mice. And then because it was good at catching mice, then eventually this other thing was put here and and the, well, you say, don't go on, that's absolutely absurd. Of course it didn't.
For that mousetrap to work, every part of the thing must have been there right from the very start. And the length of the bit of wood, and the length of the old hammer, so it should come down and smite the mouse in the appropriate part, you see? And the bait and everything had to be there right from the very start. I have many saying amen, you see, seen that. I see irreducibly complex. You ask him afterwards what irreducible complexity means, you'll see. Ha, you'll see. And says Behe, if that's true of most traps, how much more true is that of the systems we find in the human body.
He uses one of those systems. I wish I I'd put it up for you, but I'm afraid you won't see it from there, but you can come and look at it afterwards, uh, if you put it up. This is a chart of all the processes that have to take place if, for instance, you cut your finger. You see, if you cut your finger and you feel the pain, you draw your hand away, don't you? And then, of course, if the wound is deepish, the blood starts to come.
And that's very good, you see, because that helps to wash away any germs that are there, or some of them at any rate. Wouldn't do, would it, for the blood to keep on coming and never stop coming, because you'd be dead by next Friday or something. So the blood has got to come, and then it has to plug the old gap to stop any more blood coming. It's got to coagulate. So it does that, and then the body produces other kinds of things, uh, to come and eat any germs that remain, and, uh, when all the germs have been gobbled up, then they've got to supply the tissue to remake the flesh and plug the hole with flesh, and uh, when that's done, the old scab falls off and the blood goes back where it was before.
Ah yes, but these are the processes. You see, the blood in the body, so they tell me, uh, as it's going around your veins, is not meant to clot. If the blood clotted every now and again, you would be dead before you were alive, wouldn't you? I mean, you, you can't have it keep clotting, clotting. So the blood has got to be there, but not in a form where it clots. But when you cut your finger, now we want some blood that clots. Well, how do you get the blood from being blood that doesn't clot to blood that does clot? You see, that's problem number one. And so all sorts of chemical result and things happen in the body to adapt these chemicals and adapt those chemicals and to, uh, this, that, and other.
There are, I should think, about, uh, twenty, twenty five different processes that have to go on, all of them coordinated and in their proper order, if your life is to be saved when you cut your finger seriously. And when the blood is clotted, then eventually it's got to go back, hasn't it? Says Behe, it's like the mouse trap, only more complicated. If any of those, or two or three of those processes weren't there, not only would the system not work, but you'd be very ill, if not dead.
You couldn't start with a half a du- uh, five of them for a few million years, and then add a few more. They've all got to be there at once, because they were there at once, designed by God. This, ladies and gentlemen, is is is, as I say, this is not, uh, uh, uh, uh, me, uh, just, uh, expressing my Christian opinion. This is what science is showing. For the more we study the human cell, or any cell for that matter, the more it is discovered that the thing is a veritable world of engineering, divisions and subdivisions of labors, and remarkable systems.
It is impossible to think that they have evolved accidentally without any design. My contention, therefore, this evening, and I quote you only a few examples of what modern science is beginning to point to, is to give you an illustration of what Romans chapter one means when it says the invisible things of him, the things we can't see about God, yet become visible, we can see them as we look at the creation around us.
But of course, perhaps tonight you'll have a very big question. I have a friend in the University of Queens, a mathematical physicist, now retired as I am, and he and I used to talk from time to time, and he would say, all right, David, I admit there must be an intelligence behind the universe, but not a personal intelligence. And I would say, Bernie, why not a, why not a personal intelligence?
Well, he said, because look at all the natural disasters around the world. He says, I'm not talking about man's cruelty to fellow man, that's man's fault. But what about the earthquakes and the floods and the landslides and the volcanoes and the hurricanes? How can I think, says he, that these things are arranged or designed by a personal God? Isn't your God supposed to be all powerful, can do what he likes?
Isn't he supposed to be all loving? So he's all loving and all powerful. Why does he, why has he allowed our world to be like it is, with volcanoes and earthquakes and things? And in this last two or three weeks, we've had examples of what my friend is talking about, have we not? Look at the earthquakes in India, in El Salvador, and other places. And sometimes it's not a desire to be atheistic that makes people question whether there is a God or not.
It is the sufferings and disasters in life. How can you still go on believing that there is a loving God in heaven when these disasters happen? I want to face that question in the coming evening, so I leave it hanging in the air. There is answer. But let me just say this as we close our study. In reply to that question, I want to say what I said to the professor of psychiat- psychiatry in Moscow a year or two ago, when we had dinner together, he i- was in those days in charge of the enormous psychiatric hospital in Moscow.
A man, therefore, that had seen much human suffering. I tried to talk to him about the evidence for design as distinct from evolution. He smiled graciously. He was a scientist and I was not, was he? He told me that they perfectly understood how, how, uh, biology works without God. I says, that's so. He said, but, uh, you, how can you still believe in a God of love who designed our world and designed mankind, when there is so much pain and suffering in the world.
We had a long conversation, but I began it this way. All right, I have a problem. I'll admit to you, I have a problem. I don't have a hundred percent answer to it either. But I can tell you this. We could get rid of the problem, couldn't we? If against all the evidence that creation around us puts before us that there is a God who designed us, if against all that evidence we decided to believe there was no God. All right, now we don't have a problem, do we? Get rid of the idea of God. You don't have any problem accounting for pain, because in that case, evolution would be true.
And since it all happens by undesigned errors and mistakes and this, that, and other, what would you expect but a universe full of s- pain? So get rid of God, you don't have a problem anymore. Then I said, but you still have the pain, don't you? You get rid of, you don't get rid of the pain by getting rid of God. I said, I want to suggest to you, sir, that by getting rid of God in your mind, not only have you still got pain, but you've made the pain ten thousand times worse.
Because if there's no God, then there is no hope. Whereas, if there is a God as there is, however desperate our pain, there is hope that the God who made us will be loyal to us, his creature. As the Bible himself says, so loyal to his creatures. That to redeem us from our sin and our guilt and our wandering, God himself sent his son to suffer in our place.
There is hope. But I've already kept you too long. I should apologize for keeping you over the time, but I've given permission to do it, you see. Oh, thank you, sir. And if the organizers of these lectures complain, uh, you'll stand up for me, will you not? Thank you very much. Thank Dr. Gooding very, very much for his talk to us. I have had three questions put to me, and the first of them goes like this.
Please expand on the thought in John chapter one, regarding the concept of the Word creating. I mentioned the verse, as you may remember, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God, all things were made by him, and without anything, uh, without him was nothing made that was made. So I'm asked to expand on the idea of the word creating. Well, first of all, it refers to, uh, the second person of the gracious triunity, who became flesh, and we know him as Jesus the Christ, the Son of God.
He is called the Word of God because he is the expression of God, of the mind and heart and character of God. So the universe created by him is an expression of the mind and character of God. You see. So he, he who made it, uh, is called the Word because he, in his creatorial activities, tells out the mind of God. First reason. Second reason. The Bible says of Jesus Christ our Lord that in him were all things made, through him and unto him.
Now the first of those, in him were all things created, is exceedingly significant. If, for instance, you looked at some great building going up on the skyline, and you asked, where did it have its beginning? It wouldn't be exact to say it had its beginning when the builders arrived, pegged out the ground, and dug the foundations. That would be the beginning of the actual process of building, but the building itself began in the mind of somebody who decided that there should be a hospital built in this area, okay?
So having decided that, they gave it to some architect who designed the thing, and it took shape in his mind, first of all. And then he committed his designs to paper, and so forth and so on, long before the builders ever got anywhere near it to start building it. It began in the mind of its author and its designer. So all things were created in Christ. Began in his mind. And I'm tempted to say, as I look at you, you are his idea.
You know, we come across something funny in life and we say, whose idea was that? And sometimes people look at me and they say, whose idea was he? And I return the question to you, whose idea are you? The answer to that question, of course, is you're Christ's idea. He thought you up as an expression of God's will and purpose. And thirdly, God willing, tomorrow I shall comment on the other two things. The Bible says he created all things by his word. He commanded, and it stood fast.
God, being God, by his creative power, spoke, and it was done. But more than that, as I shall suggest tomorrow, when we examine nature, we find, particularly in biology, that the cell and the DNA within the cell is carrying information. Now, that might be a difficult topic to go to bed on. I should try and explain it tomorrow. But the, uh, marvelous double helix of the DNA within the cell carries information through its chemicals.
The chemicals are not themselves the information. They carry the information. Uh, that, uh, helps to design the human body, control the materials and the timing of the development of the fetus in the womb, time of birth, ti- uh, and the development of the born infant right through adulthood to the end of its days. The remarkable thing is that the information is then carried on by the next generation, though the original chemicals that carried the information from the parents is long since gone, the information carries on.
And therefore, in the opinion of many scientists, the DNA is a code, like a language, carrying information. And that is a very interesting thing, because it's not just matter in the universe, but matter that is carrying information, or if you will, purpose and mind of God and his design implanted on nature, so that, uh, like letters on a page carry the information of the author who was sending the message to somebody. So, uh, in biology, matter is carrying information necessary for the development of the particular life and necessary as the expression of God's intention.
But more of that tomorrow, when we're all a little bit perhaps more awake than I am now. Why do men and women fail to see the evidence of a creator. Well, that's a, a, a big question, isn't it? There are all sorts of reasons. Some is because they just have been taught the opposite by teachers whom they regard as authoritative, and therefore children in school told by the teacher, the chemistry master or the physics mistress or something, that science proves there's no God, don't even start looking for the evidence, you see. It's the fault of other folks.
But then, of course, uh, the, the Bible says, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all men who hold down the truth in unrighteousness. There is, alas, a deliberate action in s- on the part of some people who, uh, do not wish to see the evidence of deity, uh, in the, uh, uh, universe around us. I have here, show it to anybody that wishes to see it, a quotation from Lewontin, a Harvard, Harvard biologist, I think the man is. He's a Jew, a Marxist, and of course an atheist.
And he wrote in a review of the book written by his friend Carl Sagan, now deceased, to explain why, as a scientist, he organizes his experiments in certain ways, and what his basic belief is, his starting point. His starting point, he explains, is materialism, not consumerism, materialism in the philosophical sense, that there is nothing but matter in the universe. There is no God, there is no spirit, there's no soul, there's nothing but matter, and human beings are nothing but matter.
That's his starting point. And then he explains how he devises his experiments so that they come up sometimes with very funny results. He says, but we do it that way because we cannot allow a divine foot in the door. In other words, he's telling the public just straight that he is not prepared to, uh, uh, envisage the possibility that there should be a God. And of course, there is another reason why some people don't like to face the fact that there is a God. I'm not saying it's just true of everybody.
But as you know, the early Greeks invented the atomic theory, three hundred or four hundred years BC. And this atomic theory was taken over by a Roman poet called Lucretius, and he wrote five books of poetry on the atomic theory. They were different men from what we are nowadays, of course, you see. And what is more, people read it. I had to read it as a student and lecture on it from time to time, you see. And this Roman poet Lucretius was delighted by this atomic theory. Why was he delighted? Well, he explains in the preface to his work, because, you see, this atomic theory shows us that when we die, the atoms of our body come adrift, the atoms of our soul come adrift, and there's nothing left.
And it shows that there is no God out there waiting to punish us, so that we can be delivered from all fear of what happens after death, nothing happens after death. There is no God, there is no final judgment, and we are delivered from the fear of the wrath of the gods. And sometimes in people's hearts, there is that sneaking feeling, isn't there? For if there's a God, then conscience tells us that that God is concerned with the way we behave, and one day we shall have to meet him to give account of what we have done, and upon that, and our attitude to him and to the Savior will depend our eternal destiny.
It is understandable that some people prefer to think that there is no God. And then there are the others, aren't there? I briefly mentioned them at the end of the lecture. We shall have to try and deal with it on another occasion more fully. Life has hurt them. They say, look at that mosquito, beautifully engineered, with the drilling equipment to pierce my skin and infect me with malaria, and maybe kill me. Was it designed by God, your God, to do that? And therefore, faced with life's pains and sorrows, they find it difficult to believe that there's a God in heaven who loves them.
I thank God myself that I was brought up as a Christian and came to know the good shepherd of the sheep before I faced many of life's sufferings. Knowing the shepherd makes it easier for a sheep to trust the shepherd when things get difficult. My heart goes out to those that come across suffering in life and don't yet know the shepherd. For whom suffering, therefore, in the end, is nothing but destructive and absolutely meaningless. They too have their reasons for feeling that there's no God.
We'll try to deal with the question in some of the other lectures. Finally, does the word created involve merely matter or design? Well, both things, of course. He created the stuff, you'll see, and then he created the design. It's a thing to be remembered, that when God made man, he made man of pre-existent material, didn't he? Man was formed of the dust of the ground, and then God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.
But that dust of the ground evidently existed before Adam existed. Where did the dust come from? That, from a scientific point of view, is a very interesting question. Where did all the heavy elements that are necessary for human life, that are not normally producible on this planet, where did they come from? Anyway, my short answer tonight is, in answer to this question, God created both, he made the matter, and then he designed it, both things are true. Thank you for those interesting questions.
