Defense of the Faith - Where Did Modern Science Come From?

Last week, Randy wrapped up. We actually kind of made a change in the schedule to have one more week for Randy to take the time to go over some of these. Pardon? I am. So is it not coming through? OK. Well, I don't have control over that. So they'll probably use this to take the recording. At any rate, so Randy had, you know, went over, you know, this logic. And what's this exception? What's this false logic? What's that called here? Pardon? A fallacy. That's the term.

And so I think I was just thinking this last week, Randy accidentally presented You know, maybe a dozen fallacies. I've seen as many as 42 different fallacies. So Randy actually gave you the light version. But the reality is that a lot of the accusations made against Christianity are based on one or more logical fallacies. And what it is, a logical fallacy is a deception. It's a deception. I'm going to have some false basis to make a claim against what you believe. So it's a deception.

It also, and Randy pointed this out, it also at times includes an insult. So it's really insidious. That being said, it also points that Christians ought not to do that, right? Christians ought not to do that. You've got to look for avoiding that and being honest and logical and certainly not insulting. Even if the unbeliever does fall into that.

Okay, so now we have today's topic. Where did modern science come from? Now here is a logical fallacy that frequently comes against Christians. It is often put forth, pardon me, let me get a drink here. It's often put forth that The skeptic or the atheist, the agnostic who's aggressive, it's often put forth that they're basing their view on science and reason and we just have blind faith often just in violation of the facts.

That's the way it's put forth. That's a straw man argument. The reality is that everybody has faith. There is some point at which Everybody has faith. It's only a question of where they put it. Even the atheist has faith, okay? The agnostic has faith. The skeptic has faith. Everybody has faith because we as human beings are not designed to do otherwise.

And one of the things we want to take a look at here is, contrary to the claim that these atheist, agnostic, skeptic folks are the ones who are rational and reasonable and scientific, and us Christians are just brainless, thoughtless faith people, we want to take a look at where did science come from?

Where does science come from? First of all, we're going to briefly address the question, what is modern science? So the systematized collection of knowledge is what we have written down there about nature through using only reason and sense experience. It's those two things. We use reason and logic and sense experience. in order to discover the underlying laws of nature, which explain how nature is organized and allow future accurate predictions about nature's processes or objects be made.

So we have here a flow chart, the scientific method. I'll walk you through the quick summary on that. People make an observation. From that, they make an hypothesis. It's an idea about Here is what I think is going on and what I would, on the basis of that, predict. So people make observations and then those are tested.

If it passes, and especially if it passes a number of times, then the hypothesis will become a theory. And then we continue to test the theory. If the theory continues to hold up, then that becomes law. Not law in the sense of legislature, but it becomes a scientific law. So what it is is degrees of certainty. It's degrees of certainty. The more times we can confirm something, the more certain we say it is scientifically.

So this is the scientific method, and it's applied to everything from biology to geology, and when we send somebody up into space, we don't want to have that on the basis of a hypothesis, right? We want to have everything pretty well demonstrated before we send them up into space. This is the scientific method. The scientific method is the reason our, you know, we can drive cars around. It's the reason we can, you know, call on the phone.

It's because it's science that we can do that. Now, so let's take a look at page two. So how did modern science begin? Modern science was originally established by Christians in Western Europe. Okay. So who's rational? And who's scientific? It started with Christians. Now they weren't admittedly all the same kind of Christians. There was certainly a variety, but it started with Christians and not otherwise. There was a common Christian worldview.

And lacking those aspects, that's why the Greeks didn't invent modern science. Did they make some mathematical and technological advances? Yes. It's why the Chinese didn't invent modern science. It's why the Egyptians didn't invent modern science. It's why the Muslims didn't invent modern science. is they don't have these worldview assumptions.

So let's go through them. We number them as 10 here. One, God created in the world and is independent from himself. So there is something out there that God made that we can investigate. If you believed that, for example, in spiritism, that everything just has a spirit and the spirit that makes decisions and that's why things happen. That's not going to be a basis for developing modern science. Because there's no system to it, the spirits are making everything happen. Spiritism is the native religion in Uganda, for example. Okay, number two.

God is a God who does not change in his qualities, okay? And he established consistent natural laws that govern the physical universe. The problem with the gods of the Egyptians, the gods of the Romans, the gods of the Greeks, the gods of the Babylonians, the Assyrians, is their gods changed. And they had multiple gods, right? And so their gods changed, they didn't even have gods that would die. So, for example, the Egyptians, 700 gods.

So, you would lack, from any of those perspectives, you would lack the ability to establish science because you wouldn't see everything as explainable by natural laws. So here's number three, a combination of observation, that's called empirical knowledge, just observation, using our senses, and logic, rational knowledge, we reason things out.

Logic discovery of those natural laws allows us to predict how nature will behave in the future. So if I discover a natural law, then because of the consistency of that natural law, then I can predict how things happen in the future. So we use that, for example, to drive our cars. You wouldn't want to drive a car that you had no idea what it would do. If I turn the steering wheel this way, it goes that way sometimes. It's because of the consistency of natural laws that we can even walk around, etc. All right, number four.

God has revealed and is revealing himself, including through nature and the Bible. There's actually five different ways that God has revealed himself, but one of those is through nature. That's talked about in Romans, right? What does Romans say that is revealed about God? in nature. What's revealed in Romans 1? What's revealed about God in nature? The term is His eternal power and deity. It's out of Romans 1. And going to the psalm, Psalm 19, the heavens declare the glory of God. So God is revealing himself in nature in limited ways.

For example, would you know that Jesus Christ died for your sins, was buried, and rose again just from nature? No, you wouldn't know that. So nature is a limited revelation, whereas the Bible is a special revelation, because it gives us much more specifics and details. So now, God has revealed and is revealing himself through nature and the Bible.

Then we have number five, the Bible uses logic, therefore God must have created natural laws which can be understood by use of logic and its numerical corollary, mathematics. Mathematics. How do we know that God reveals himself as logical? Okay, we see that. In other words, that's the assumption that's used in science, isn't it? In other words, God has created a world that has natural laws and consistency, and we can discover those. So that's how it's revealed there. How about in the Bible? Does the Bible reveal that God's a logical being? Yeah, Randy?

It's a pretty compelling argument that if you were to go to Genesis in the second chapter where God tells Adam, I'm going to bring these animals in front of you and you have to name them. And it shows the order, it asks Adam to identify the order and then come up with a name to express the idea of the name. And Adam looked and he did name all the animals. He looked and he says, but there's not a one of them that's like me. Not a one of them that corresponds to me. So he recognized that.

If we go through the book of Romans, one of the things that we see repeatedly is, therefore, because, since. And those are indicating logic. It's my understanding that some time back, and I mean a long way back, that going through law school, they would take them through the Book of Romans as an example for, here's logic. What logic is Paul using? Paul is probably the better example in terms of using a lot of those logical terms, because, since, therefore, that kind of thing.

So we have that, and so it was thought that, okay, here's a God who is a logical God, has revealed Himself through logic, and has put things logically into nature as well. So we can apply logic to nature. God is a God of truth, therefore He created truth external to Himself in the created world, and that truth can be known in pursuit.

What if you thought that just everything around you was just totally deceptive? Everything was suspect. There would be no basis for moving forth in science. Science assumes there's such a thing as truth. Science assumes there's such a thing as truth. And so scientists, no matter what field they're working in, are pursuing truth. Okay, then the next one there, number seven, truth is also required when recording and reporting the results of scientific observation. One of the difficulties that has cropped up in science is a growing number of scientific fraud cases. And part of that is because of our culture, not just American culture, but worldwide, a lot of the deviation from the Christian worldview the ethics required for good science is starting to drift in the wrong direction. And so people will just concoct entire studies. The whole study is concocted, just made up.

Yeah, Randy? The other side of that ethics problem is that sometimes when you have no moral boundaries, you end up saying, because I can do this, I should do this. And that becomes the other side of that moral empathy coin. The cross-species research that's done to treat humans with various other genetic material Yeah, and that's a rather frightening thought that you end up with some human-animal hybrid.

We've had hybrids before and God got rid of them, right? Okay, so then we have number eight. Man is created by God in his image so that we have the capacity to observe what God created and to think God's thoughts after him. God also designed our senses to gather truth.

Let's take for instance, in Islam, Allah is unknowable. His characteristics are not revealed in any clear, distinct way. We already saw here that God doesn't change in the Bible. But in Islam, God is unknowable. He is wholly other. He hasn't revealed Himself. What He has revealed is what you must do and not do.

You can't know God in Islam. God has also not made man in His image, which we can't know about anyway, right? So, in the Bible, we have a God who made us in His image. There's some correspondence in that God has revealed Himself. He's revealed His nature. In Islam, you don't have that. And so, you don't have the basis for going about looking at the world around you because the God who made it all is unknowable and He can't be approached. There's no correspondence between God and man at all.

So this was unique to Christianity. The next one, here nine, hard work, that's rigor and vigor sometimes the terms that are used, hard work that is required to conduct repeated observations and maintain the scientific method is encouraged in the Bible. Related to this is the Christian concept of humility which does not disdain hard work nor seek to exalt oneself at all costs. One of the things we pointed out is in the Greek and Roman world especially, humility was looked upon as a character defect. And you were supposed to be proud. That was a good character to be very proud.

Therefore, for example, the Greeks would not do repeated experiments because that was beneath them. So the experimentation and the vigor and the ability to repeatedly do things would be set aside. How many different materials did Thomas Edison try before he came across the filament for the light bulb? Thousands, yeah. Lots and lots of different materials.

And this comes from this perspective here. where Jesus, contrary to the pagan world, where you're supposed to be proud, Jesus said, you know, he who is last is first, right? And he talked about humility. The Apostle Paul would have to write to the pagan churches in the pagan lands and talk about humility deliberately. Why? Because the culture wasn't going to do that. The culture was going to encourage them being proud and that was a part, a big part, of the Corinthians problem. They had gotten from the culture this pride instead of the biblical humility. Humility is necessary in order to conduct science. And to say, these natural laws are what's true, and I'm not here to exalt me.

So, a linear conception of time. Now this is important too. That is, that there's a past, I am recording things in the present, whether it's voltage, or whether it's temperature, or whatever, I'm recording in the present, and I'm going to use that record that I've gained in the present that then becomes the past to make a prediction about what happens in the future in the eastern world things are changing but in the eastern world the viewpoint was always everything is cyclical everything is cyclical goes back around and around and around even reincarnation what is it? it's cyclical it doesn't go anywhere And so the concept of past, present, and future was essential to develop modern science. That's why modern science didn't get invented over in India and China. Right? Past, present, and future. Now, how many times are you going to go through this life? Once, eh? Hebrews. It's the point at which a man wants to die, and then the judgment. So time is linear, and it's going somewhere. It's going somewhere.

That perspective was necessary to develop modern science. It was a Christian perspective, and a great many of the people out in the world don't have that perspective. There was a particular Indian tribe where some missionaries went into the tribe and started talking to them about, you know, you need to believe in Jesus in order to have eternal life. And they just puzzled because they said, we're living in eternity. Their time perspective was radically different. So we will assume past, present, and future. We've gotten that as a Christian perspective. But it shouldn't be assumed that everybody has that time perspective.

Because it's not the case Christianity and its past present and future perspective was necessary in order to establish Science so these are the ten things right there on one page. These are the ten things that Describe the Christian perspective the Christian worldview even though there are different kinds of Christians some were Catholics and some were Anglicans and some were Puritans and you know different ones and Different kinds of Christians, but it's basically Christian worldview that you see pointed out in these ten points that allowed Those Christians who were in Europe primarily Western Europe to be able to develop what is today modern science Any thoughts Questions yes Pardon Oh, definitely.

Yeah, and it's one of the problems that conducting science today, having been cut off from the worldview, allows there to be a drift in science. It only works if you maintain aspects of this worldview. As we shift away from it as a global culture, shifting more and more into secularism, we've lost the foundation for conducting science. And that seeing this, and we're not done here, but seeing this to put forth the idea that some atheist or agnostic is being reasonable and rational and scientific and we're just believing nonsense doesn't fit history. Let's take a look at page 3. See, other cultures and religions failed to develop modern science, and this is a key thing.

There's lots of other cultures that were, in one way or another, they developed technology or mathematics, but modern science in the sense of continually pursuing truth and having a method to discern and decipher, you know, what's truth versus non-truth and developing scientific models, that's uniquely founded by Christianity. Here's an example. The Babylonians contributed our system of angular measurements. That is, 90 degrees is a right angle, 360 degrees is a full circle.

They contributed that, but they didn't believe in most of the other points that we saw on that previous page, on page 2. They had a pantheon of gods whom they viewed as influencing nature in many ways, and therefore Because they lacked so much, and they attributed so much to the Pantheon, there was no basis for scientific pursuit. Next one, the ancient Greeks developed mathematics and logic, philosophy, and some technology, but saw repeated observation and experimentation as beneath them. So they weren't able to scientifically experiment and verify things.

So what you would have frequently is speculation. Speculation. The Apostle Paul writes against those speculations. So the Greeks would speculate about something, or they would develop a hypothesis, but never test it. So occasionally that allowed them to do something with mathematics or physics or geometry or something like that. But because everything stopped at the hypothesis level with no testing, because they thought testing was for slaves and idiots, right? So because it never got tested, everything stayed at the hypothesis level and never got checked out.

The gods of the Greeks were changeable and capable of deception and worse. So therefore, deception, since the gods do it, must be okay for us too, right? And so the idea that there is truth, the idea that you must speak the truth about what you've observed, was not there, not present. The Roman culture and Pantheon could be summarized similarly. So the Greeks didn't really do it, and the Romans didn't either. The Romans admired the Greeks' philosophy, which was speculative.

Our numbering system is derived from the one in use by those in India, Persia, and the Arab world. Sometimes we'll have it called Arabic numerals. Ever hear that? Arabic numerals, when in reality it's not just Arabic. It's Indo-Arabic, because it was used from India through Persia into the Arab world. And so our numbering system is adapted from that. I went into Europe by Leonardo Bonacci, sometimes called Fibonacci, and he also has several other names. But he made a visit to North Africa. Noticed that this was a whole lot better than trying to do math with Roman numerals. And it was really, whoo! Roman numerals, I'm really glad we're not stuck with that. Yeah, Tom?

Yeah, I I can't comprehend what they're trying to accomplish but yeah, you're right I So at any rate, Islam did not develop modern science because it was and is taught that Allah is unknowable and Allah did not reveal himself. All the whole worldview items that are necessary to develop modern science were lacking in Islam. Muhammad, the founder and prophet of Islam, in the Quran emphasized Allah's will and power but not Allah's rationality or consistency. So will and power, in other words, what he can do was emphasize not God's character because God is unknowable, right? And it's that consistency that's not portrayed. So God comes across in Islam as capricious. He just does what he does. He wills certain things and he has power, but his consistency is not portrayed.

So then, another influence is Aristotle's speculative book, On the Heavens, got into Islam, and ended up just stopping scientific advance. Just stopped it dead cold, because Aristotle speculated, right? Aristotle speculated, wrote down his speculations, because he was a Greek. He was the tutor, if you will, of Alexander the Great, but he based everything on speculation, and he wrote several different books, On the Heavens is one of them, and it's based on speculation, not observation, and because the Greeks, again, didn't have the concept of going and repeatedly testing a hypothesis. They would put forth a hypothesis and just leave it there, everything untested.

So this On the Heavens completely hindered Islamic development of science and it hindered Christian development of science until some began to reject it. They had to reject Greek thought in order to make any advance into science. Yes. So it was hindering science development. as, you know, a honcho in the science world? Remember the logical fallacy, appeal to authority? It's like Aristotle is the authority, right? So here's a logical fallacy, appeal to authority, and here's Aristotle is considered the authority, and so you couldn't go anywhere.

Oh, because they were listening to his book. They were reading his book in both Islamic and Christian circles and saying, boy, this guy is, you know, the last word yeah and and so it was it was a problem it stunted both Islam and Christianity for a while from developing because here's Aristotle he speculated everybody regarded Aristotle as the last word but the reality is is he the last word right and whatever was wrong with the Greek Approach to the things that kept them from developing modern science kept anyone who believed the Greeks From developing modern science.

Okay. Yes perspective starting at Socrates was that he actually didn't want anybody to write anything down. He wanted everybody to learn everything fresh. It was Plato and Aristotle that wrote down what Socrates had taught. But had they actually followed through with what he taught, then that on the Heavens book would have been written, then things might have actually been different. But the perspective of don't write it down because everybody needs to learn fresh, and needs to explore things on their own, really has some interesting consequences.

Yes, yeah. It significantly contributed to the Dark Ages, right? Yes. Isn't that similar to Darwinism? Because he kind of starts out by being the authority on the order of species and progression without ever doing any kind of scientific study. Yeah, what happens easily, and people fall into this, is this appeal to authority thing kind of gets entrenched. In people's thinking well if this guy said it well, that's the last word right and the reality is It's far better To check everything out check everything out It's one of the problems that that the Apostle Paul addressed and early in first Corinthians He says you know I'm of this guy.

I'm of that one. Yes appeal to authority right and It's a fallacy, logical fallacy, that the Corinthians were using. I'm with this guy, I'm with that guy. No, not going to work. The reality is, everything has to be checked out. Here's the Bereans, what were they more noble for? They even checked out Paul. They checked out Paul. So checking everything out and not doing the appeal to authority thing, is far wiser and liable to make progress and arrive at the truth.

So then we have the Chinese culture, all sorts of clever things, and they developed, and we'll make a note of this on the next page, the Chinese developed a movable type print, several centuries before it happened in Europe. Bi Sheng is the name of the inventor. His movable type print was made, guess what, out of China. Ceramic. He had ceramic typefaces. So he developed it several centuries, but it didn't get into Europe. It had to be independently developed in Europe.

Developed based on type that was made from metal instead of the ceramic like the Chinese did but that's very clever China like Hinduism had this cyclical perspective remember we talked about and even the idea of you know Hey, look, I'm gonna go through all kinds of reincarnations again and again and again Buddhism and Hinduism have no problem with a really old universe and Because you've just got to go through millions and millions of reincarnations.

So, you know, no problem with that. So it also makes sort of a fatalism. Well, you know, why should I, you know, go and do the scientific endeavor and seek to advance knowledge and understanding? That's not useful because I'm just going to go through all these reincarnations, right? So what you pursue and your time perspective is radically different. It didn't support the idea of scientific endeavor.

The idea of science, you go into India and China and Japan and places like that, they do have science there now, but it's an import from something that was started in Christian Europe. Ancient Egypt, though it had an advanced civilization for his time, did have a level of technology and had about 700 gods. And the gods were looked upon as influencing everything. There was a number of aspects missing from the necessary perspective for developing a sustainable modern science. Rather than looking at natural laws put there by a god, They looked at everything that was influenced by these 700 gods, and so you weren't looking for natural laws in the universe. You were trying to please all these 700 gods. Alright, page 4.

So now the founders of modern science. These are some of the scientists who began working from a Christian worldview. Actually, whole books have been put together cataloging the lives and times of these founders. They are of varying kinds of Christianity, but nonetheless operating from a Christian worldview.

So one of them is Copernicus, who maintained that the sun was at the center of the solar system and not the earth. Next, Francis Bacon announced his intention to replace the doctrines of Aristotle. Here's another one of Aristotle's writings. Organon in his new organ on so he had rejected Aristotle and was going to re-establish a new one He had a Puritan mother who as mothers tend to do influenced him His emphasis on the utility of scientific discoveries as opposed to gaining knowledge for its own sake Which was Aristotle's tendency has a Puritan ring to it, okay? next Galileo Galilei usually people just say the first name right and He's a Roman Catholic, wrote a book about two new sciences. He was a math professor, developed also the fundamentals of physics.

Johannes Kepler, who had earlier noted that the Paracelsians had invented a new medicine and that the Copernicians had invented a new astronomy presented a book on his own discoveries, which he also saw as a new astronomy So so things were being established on a Christian basis now and you had backing that the invention of in Europe of the printing press and Now, instead of having all this stuff hand-copied and trying to spread it out that way, you could actually have things printed out at some hundreds or thousands at a time, and be able to disseminate information in these publications much more quickly. You had then Isaac Newton, who developed Newton's laws of motion and contributed significantly to the understanding of the orbital mechanics of the solar system. The planets and their paths. And so he developed the formula that is used for the motions of the planets. After these scientific accomplishments, Newton wrote commentaries on Romans and Daniel.

So this Christian perspective was key. The next one, John Flamsteed, trained for the church but made fame as First Astronomer Royal. He was the one that established the Greenwich Observatory. Greenwich, as you may be aware, is the time basis for the whole world. He's the guy that started it. and providing Newton with essential data for his calculations. He gave Newton, here's the basic information about the planets, and then Newton said, okay, here's the formula that describes the behavior that John Slavensteed had passed along. Poorly paid, he nonetheless poured his own money into new tools for the observatory. It was he who brought Greenwich to worldwide fame.

Charles Boyle. I remember going through engineering school and Boyle's Law. The divisor of the namesake law concerning the compression of gases, the English chemist and physicist wrote in his last will and testament, wished the Royal Society, that is a group of scientists, a happy success in their laudable attempts to discover the nature of the works of God.

By the way, those capitalizations are in the original. And prayer that they and all other searchers into physical truths may cordially refer Their attainments to the glory of the great author of nature and to the comfort of mankind So so again these these guys are writing from a Christian worldview not all of the same brand of Christianity but nonetheless a Christian worldview was the basis for their being able to establish these things and and adapting and adopting a Christian worldview instead of holding on as earlier Christians did and as the Muslims did to Aristotle's writings. There's another one. John Ray, the great biologist, told a friend that sparing time to investigate nature was good. What time you have to spare you will do well to spend, as you're doing, in the inquisition and contemplation of the works of God and nature.

So this Christian perspective, and I could go on and people have compiled accounts that fill a whole book, but these are examples of the kinds of people who founded the various disciplines within science. And so we say that's early modern science, right? Yes. So this is a good example of how This stands in opposition to the current theory that religion is for the ignorant. domain of science and say that these you know Christians are promoting ignorance when the reality is it's only Christianity and not all these other worldviews only Christianity that developed modern science any place else it is in the world got it secondhand okay it was originated in Christian and from the Christian worldview that was in Western Europe. Morgan?

So, when talking to people that are like, well, I believe in science, and then I would come back and say, well, if you said that science was coming out of Christian belief, how can that be as maybe an argument if science is not going off of Christian belief?

Yeah, I think what you have is there are aspects of the worldview that they are typically unaware. I mean, an awful lot of people who are skeptics or agnostic are unaware of what we just talked about here this morning. They're just quite unaware of it. And what we'll cover next week is what are the assumptions of modern science. They're all derived from this.

What are the assumptions of modern science? The reality is that it was a Christian worldview that allowed the development of modern science And we stand at risk of losing science as we drift away from a Christian worldview. If I don't believe there's such a thing as truth, what am I pursuing? If I don't think that it is morally and ethically necessary to report truth as I report scientific findings, that's a problem. That's a problem. Yeah, Tom? Yeah, that's the hazard. Yeah, Randy?

One of the things that I think is interesting, I saw a brief video of a lecture that Mr. Lewis was giving and he said that we've explored 3% of the ocean. But we speak with this utter confidence about evolution going between the ocean and then land and then back into the ocean. We've got whales now. We've explored 3% of the floor of the ocean. Now? Yet. That doesn't mean we've explored 3% in the past, right? We've explored 3% now. Now. And what can we say with confidence in those situations, but yet? We know that we evolved and that the evolution series ran through this sequence between N and C. It is very presumptuous in its reflection.

Yeah. I was reading one of Richard Dawkins' books. I read a lot of his stuff. He starts off with, evolution is a fact. Wait a minute. Alright. So if you have observed this, you know, amoeba to man, you know, From the goo to the zoo to you? Have you observed this? Well, no. Okay.

So what kind of a fact is this? And as we'll see next week, it's not a fact. A great deal of what people think is some sort of scientific conclusion is actually the assumption that they made before they began investigating and using logic. And so they're reporting that as fact. It's not based on observations. It's based on assumptions that have yet to be tested. It doesn't matter what the particular process that was used to develop from the amoeba to man.

That theory has changed radically over the decades. But the fundamental assumption of evolution remains. When I was in college, there was a professor who taught physical anthropology, and interestingly enough, his name was Dr. Cave. He taught physical anthropology and he had a bunch of model skulls of early man. in his collection.

Now, the ones that they use now in the lineup are radically different, including we talked about the Denisovans. There were no Denisovans, you know, even 15 years ago. Nobody knew about them, not even 10 years ago. Yes. That's another form of supposed, you know, early man, like Neanderthal. The Denisovans. So that's just another form, it was unknown. So what Dr. Cave presented as the sequence of evolution, that's been all radically altered, even in the last ten years. Radically altered in terms of how they line up the different skulls and skeletons and whatnot.

So science can change, supposedly, right? The evolutionary path can change, but the fundamental assumption of evolution, and that's what it is, it's an assumption, the fundamental assumption remains unchanged. Because it's a worldview assumption, right? It's a worldview assumption, it's not the output from science. It's the assumption you make before you start investigating. Okay, other thoughts, questions? Yeah, Sam?

There are That's a big subject you have to answer in about two minutes But but we'll try that essentially what you have is 99% of all species that have ever existed in are now extinct. So we only have 1% now, even with all the variety that we have, only 1% of the species that ever existed are now living. You had all kinds of variety in nature back in earlier times, and most of that variety has died off.

What you would have also is variation within the human species. As you've looked around, you probably notice there's all kinds of different people. You've got people that are short and small-boned, and you've got people that are large-boned. Some people you look at, and the guy is walking around, he must be a human being, but he kind of looks ape-like. There's lots of variety within the human species.

Russian wrestler, I think he's now retired He He actually claims to be a Christian, but anyway this Russian wrestler, and he's got a sloped forehead Okay, he's got the sloped forehead and real heavy Features, but here is a modern human being there's variation within the human species and so what they try to do is to take all these earlier species of primates and Remember, because we only have 1% out of what used to be 100%, they take all these earlier species of primates and line up the shapes, and then they take human beings and and fossil human beings, and there's a variety within them, and try to draw a line together between them.

Yes? I think it's interesting that with the principle of epigenetics, you can actually, by diet and environmental conditions, actually have a pretty radical expression of genetics. Even though it's human DNA, and human DNA with certain environmental conditions, that will actually express itself to where you can have something that looks like a different Yep. Yes. But it's environmentally influenced.

One of the odd things, there was a cave in Spain. I'm not sure if it isn't still being excavated. Cave in Spain where they had found a number of Neanderthal kind of species with lots of variation in all the physical features. And yet they're still all clearly Neanderthal.

Both Neanderthal and Denisovans have been found with DNA that's still testable and it found that you know human beings living now have Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA about two or three percent So You know they're us. They're just a variety of us, right? They're not you know some ape-like primate. Yeah, Tom?

Yeah, but yeah careful about that though we're on recording here Now next week what we're going to look at is is I covered ten worldview issues you know, points about the Christian faith that allowed modern science to develop. What we're going to gravitate to is here are the assumptions of our era's modern science, and you'll find that they correspond in great part to this, that scientists are using now. And it doesn't matter whether you're talking about a physicist, a biologist, you know, rocket scientists. Scientists now, and engineers now, are making these assumptions So we'll take a look at those ten assumptions, and we'll take a look at their Christian roots.

Essentially, someone who claims to be an atheist now has been put this way. They sit in God's lap while telling him he doesn't exist. The Christian worldview was necessary for the development of modern science, and we see by comparison with other cultures and other religions, why it didn't happen anywhere else. And so for Christians to be, as a straw man argument, put into a position of just being mindless faith, that's not historically correct. It is a fallacy. It's a fallacy. So we'll take a look at that some more this next week.

Lord, thank you. As we look at this, we see that what you've revealed, revealed in nature, what you have revealed in your word, has brought about the understanding that has developed modern science. And we're just thankful as we look at this, you did in fact reveal yourself, and you as a consistent God, not a capricious one, You, as a consistent God, have given us the basis to explore the world around us and make progress in our understanding of things. I just thank you for that. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.