Tuesday, November 17, 2009

"Expelled": They just don't get it!

Watching "Expelled" I recall one of the non-believers saying that he and other rationalists don't want to 'abolish religion' as he put it. What he thinks will happen is that science will gradually cause the disappearance of religion. In his words, let people have their religion if it means getting together and having fun. But as time passes there will be more scientific discovery and religion will just fade away. He talked about 'a little bit more science, a little bit less religion, a little bit more science, a little bit less religion' until it simply doesn't have any followers anymore. That speaker, and others like him, just don't get it. They do not understand what faith and belief mean to people. Perhaps he perceives churches as social organizations or old-fashioned cultural things that have outlived their use. In fact if a person has a real faith, a really genuine belief in God, then all science does is reveal more of the genius of God. Or when science tries to prove the non-existence of God it gets caught out breaking its own rules, namely accepting what the evidence shows honestly instead of using it to suit itself. Some of the laws of science, like the Laws of Thermodyamics, are evidence against evolution. One of those laws says that things tend to go from a state of order to a state of disorder. That is the exact opposite of what evolutionary theory suggests, that things become more ordered and complex.
If science was going to stifle interest in faith it would have happened decades ago. It did not because even though scientific investigation can explain HOW things happen, that does not explain WHY things happened. Finding meaning in life is not just a matter of understanding what happens, it also requires us to see a point to it. From a purely rational viewpoint, an atheist viewpoint, humans exist like animals to propogate their own species. All that they do just serves to prolong their existence so that they will have more offspring. A belief in God gives you a reason to go on existing.
Discoveries made seem to give humans more power, so that they can start deluding themselves they've made God unnecessary, or become as powerful. So then people learn the hard way to respect His place. When antibiotics were discovered, some humans thought they had the power to scorn God's rules. They could control disease. Instead, antibiotic resistant strains began to appear. With discoveries enabling contraception, preventing pregnancy and STDs, some arrogant unbelievers thought they could disdain the rules God made. Then they found out the hard way that contraception can leave people sterile when they want to conceive, and STDs became antibiotic resistant. When science learned what was needed to build the Titanic, some FOOL wrote 'Even God can't sink this ship'. History records how clever that comment was. So humans think they can displace God by learning the things they do, and find they are just as helpless before Him as their ancestors thousands of years ago. They just managed to hide the fact with all their technological rinky-tinks. How humiliating!
The longer we go, the more we have to face the fact that there are things we cannot do, and ways in which only a superior intelligence has the answers. But there, one of the atheist speakers in "Expelled" ended up admitting that there must be some intelligent design in the beginning of life - and said it must be from another planet! That's the old von Danniken stuff, "Chariots of the Gods."
Some people will talk about men from Mars before they accept the place of God in this universe. But to those who believe, the reality of God is only shown more and more by human attempts to scorn Him. Religion will not disappear in the face of scientific discovery. The more science finds out and tells us, the less it will have answers to the question "Why are we here?"
Jesus Himself said, some people will hear but not understand, see but not believe, because their wicked hearts are hardened.
Jesus is eternal. So is the Holy Spirit, reaching out to us. Science can't equal that. Scientific discovery will all become redundant when Heaven and Earth pass away, but Jesus' words do not pass away.

3 comments:

jel said...

AWESome Post!!


How are y'all doing?

Andrew Clarke said...

Thanks! Good to hear from you! I'll have to buy a copy of the film and watch it again, it's a masterpiece.

jeleasure said...

Hi Andrew,
interesting and intriguing as always. Come to think of it, you have a big responsibility with that kind of rep.

I did have a thought. What if the guy in the movie is right? What if that theory serves to end the reason God allows for the human race to go on?
It does not have anything to do with you or me. Just a thought.

Another thought I had was (I think you called it) Thermo-dynamics. Putting things in order and they gradually grow to a state of disorder. Is that the one or were you sighting a second theory?
Anyway, yeah, the evolutionist does believe things to become more superior. So, disorder has no place in the theory of evolution.
BTW, My wonderful Australian Blue Lobster died. I think he became afraid to mult due to his size and in ability to mult in his burrough.