What we believe informs so much of our life. What we believe shapes the decisions we make around relationships, career, what we do with our life, the way that we raise our children.
You can look at something one way(perspective) but until you look at it another(perspective), you might not realize actually what it is?
Science is filling the gaps that we used to just fill with God, isn't it? We didn't know how thunder and lightning worked, so we just said God. Now we know how it works, we don't need God. We didn't know how an earthquake happened, it must be God. We won't need God anymore because science will fill all the gaps.
Science isn't trying to find the truth you want to find, it's trying to find the truth.
People say science is fact and Christianity is faith but actually they're both. Science requires faith to trust in theories that are constantly being evolved. Christianity belief isn't just faith, its facts as well. Jesus really did live, he really did rise again.
Science alone cannot disprove God. Science isn't actually set up to disprove God.
We have to reconcile the questions of 3 things
1. Origin and Beginning
If we're going to throw God out of the window, then we've got to somehow embrace the idea that nobody plus nothing created everything.
By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command.
Who made God? God is outside of the realms of what we'd understand, God exists outside of time, he exists outside of matter.
2. Order from Disorder
Our world is fantastically ordered. But ultimately throwing God and the idea of a designer out of the picture, We have to embrace the reality that it was just simply time, matter and chance.
The Bible describing God coding you through DNA. Prescribing who you are?
3. Probability
Do you know the probability of you is being you, the person you are, the way you are? it's 1 to the power of 10 times 2,685,000 you can't put enough zeroes on the page.
If we take God out of the equation, we have to embrace an approach that contends with our every day reason, logic and rational thinking.
Science is incredible. It raises some really challenging questions in how we understand the linguistic descriptions in Scripture. But it would be foolish in my opinion to just throw God out the window.
There is something bigger than you, but there is also a streak within you that wants to deny it. It's your perspective, giving permission for your lifestyle, making way for your preferences, potentially putting pressure on you to make decisions that you don't realize but actually could end up costing you.
The God so loved you that even though you were the one that broke the life in the first place, he loved you so much, in order that you could have a second chance, in order that you could become a new beginning.
What we believe shapes everything of our life.
Our heart in this series is not to try and prove that we're right. Our heart in this series is try and fight for your soul, fight for your life.
Does Science Disprove God? A big reason to believe.
What do you believe?
Now, the end of the day what do you believe is a bit of a controversial one.
We'd like to ignore it, don't we? Don't talk about religion, Don't talk about politics. let's just talk about the weather. But the reality is what we believe informs so much of our life.
I don't know about you, but often I'm a living life at such a pace that I don't stop to actually ask that question and yet what I believe shapes the decisions I make around relationships, career, what I do with my life the way that I raise my children.
Perspective:
The reason it does is because it ultimately forms our perspective. To me, perspective is everything because ultimately you can look at something one way but until you look at it another, you might not realize actually what it is?
For so many of us our perspective is limited.
Something that for many centuries people said of Christians people of faith but I actually think maybe the tables have turned and actually the limited perspective is in not asking the questions of faith, and not asking the questions of God, because maybe you'll discover something that you weren't actually expecting.
Because perspective is really powerful, and it has two powerful fruits you know think about the idea of researching a car that you'd like to buy, only when you turn up it's totally different. Or maybe you decide to go on a date with somebody you've met online and they walk through the restaurant and you think ooh that is not what your profile picture said, you can end up in all kinds of situations all because of perspective.
One of the powerful examples that I think about this is when I was a youth worker I did that for about 12 or 13 years, and I was really passionate about it. Loved working with young people, loved trying to help them through what can be an incredibly complex phase of life.
Sometimes there were great moments of victory, but also great moments of challenge. One of the things that I and my colleagues had to walk through it from time to time with young people is when they made decisions that had caused life-altering things to happen. So things like you know they'd fallen pregnant, or their girlfriend had become pregnant and often you know the conversation of trying to work that through with them and what they were going to do I'd ask them you know why did you end up in this situation? why did you have unprotected sex or something like that?
Do you know what often that answer was well everyone was doing it.
Perspective - Permission - Pressure:
Here they answered me with a perspective, but it wasn't actually reality. They answered me with a perspective that had given them permission. Their perspective had said well If everyone is then it's okay for me but it also had created a pressure.
If everyone is then I need to, but some of these teenagers I was working with 13, 14, 15, 16 less than 25% of their peers actually had lost the virginity. So they had a perspective that was completely out of whack with reality.
But that perspective have given them permission and also created pressure that had ended up them in a situation that actually impacted the rest of their life, and not just impacted their life but impacted their child's life.
Honestly some they rose to it and it was incredible and it was the moment of maturity in life but for most it went on to be a life defining chapter that actually cost them and others.
Why? All because of a perspective. All because of what they believed.
Just humor me for a moment and put your hands either side of your eyes. Suddenly your perspective keep them there, is totally changed. Why? because you put a barrier in the way of your vision. Just drop your left hand, your perspective just by removing one barrier totally changed. Drop your right hand, different again and yes you looked as stupid as you thought you might.
The thing is our perspective is created by placing barriers and so often those barriers are things that we assume and often we just accept at the immediate sense of legitimacy that statement may have.
One of the things that I hear often is Well, I don't believe in God, and I'm not even interested, because science disproves the existence of God.
I've had that sentence said back to me in pubs, in cafes and over the dinner table when I've been trying to share my faith with friends and family and colleagues that perhaps don't share that same faith.
But the reality is that this broad statement that's made there's actually so much detail in it. that may mean we have a very narrow perspective that actually could end up impacting our lives.
So there's three things that we're going to journey through with around this whole statement today. There's no way that we're going to be able to condense hundreds of years worth of debate and argument into one, so we're gonna zoom out and come up to a big-picture level.
We're gonna start to ask the right questions, not just the detailed questions. Because there are so many times in these questions and debates of whether I can believe in God, we get sucked into the detail when actually we need to zoom out first and then come back to the detail through the lens of the big pictures.
You see the reality is the first barrier that we've got to put down is I'm not sure that science ever can disprove the existence of God.
Brian Cox is a very famous British scientist. He's not a man of faith. He doesn't have a particular religion that he had adheres to but he's an avid scientist. In fact he's very popular, recently breaking the record for the most number of tickets sold to a particular science talk. He's very influential.
He said that "there is a naivety in saying that there's no God..." the statement goes dot dot dot, because he actually uses some quite colorful language just to express quite how much he feels this is reality.
If we go onto the next slide, he says that because "science is not actually about asking the grand questions in fact it's actually asking the very simple ones..."
Science is not about asking the who and why? it's about asking the when? and the how? He goes on to actually say that if we were to ever answer the questions of the universe and God and existence of morality through science, it would only ever happen almost accidentally.
So here we have a scientist by his own admission saying science isn't actually set up to disprove God.
If we go on to the next one, this is Ravi Zacharias. He's very famous oh there you go Ravi Zacharias, and he's a very famous Christian speaker. He practices something called apologetics which is basically giving an intellectual philosophical and thought through defense of the Christian faith.
Ravi was recently asked, he said "well, surely science is filling the gaps that we used to just fill with God, isn't it?" We didn't know how thunder and lightning worked, so we just said God. Now we know how it works, we don't need God.
We didn't know how an earthquake happened, it must be God. We won't need God anymore because science will fill all the gaps.
Ravi a bit like Brian Cox said well no that's not really the case, because science isn't asking all the questions that must be answered in the god debate.
We've got to ask the question of origin: where do we come from?
We've got to ask the question of meaning: why am I here?
We've got to reconcile the questions of morality: what is right? what is wrong?
How do we know that and ultimately we've got to answer the question of destiny: where am I going?
Science alone is not actually even trying to answer those subjects.
Antony Flew is known as the most notorious atheist in history. He was born into a family of faith. His father was a Methodist preacher but by the 15 he decided that God did not exist.
He went on for the next 65 plus years to become one of the most prolific atheistic philosophers the world has ever seen.
He was a professor in Oxford and debated with CS Lewis. Sometimes he would win, and sometimes CS would win.
But he had three major issues, He didn't believe that God existed. He didn't believe that there could be an objective framework for morality. and He also didn't necessarily believe in the concept of free will.
He went on to be like The Godfather for modern atheism to the extent that in 2003, he was a signatory on the humanist manifesto.
There's three world beliefs you can have, Theism: the belief that there is outside independent God, outside of time and space a creative or powerful being. Pantheism: that if there's a God it exists in the world and Atheism: that we are solely a naturalistic existence and that all works itself ultimately in humanism.
So for him to be a signatory on that, he really believed it until in 2004, the year later he turned around and said he was wrong. And in 2004, he said my life commitment is to mean to go where evidence leads me. and now I must admit that there definitely is the existence of a higher deity purpose and God.
In his book "There is a God" he spent the last six to seven years of his life passionately trying to point out that, in fact it was on account of scientific thinking that he now could not deny God's existence.
There's another eighth agnostic philosopher called David Berlinski who wrote a book in response to Richard Dawkins book God Delusion called the devil's delusion. and It wasn't about faith, it was about his frustration toward the lack of real science behind certain things in scientific atheism.
In fact controversially he said "Is scientific atheism of frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? dead on."
Now if you like me to understand what the heck that meant. I'll explain it, He basically was saying that he feels that in the movements that are trying to push this there is just a dogged determination not to want to believe in God. He said that's not scientific.
Science isn't trying to find the truth you want to find, it's trying to find the truth.
So the reality is science alone cannot disprove God, let's take that barrier on our perspective down.
But the second thing that science is often billed as is, "Well, science is about facts and religions about faith, and I can feel better about trusting facts than I can trusting faith.
But the reality is that science like religion requires faith. It requires faith to trust in theories that are constantly being evolved. It requires faith to trusting processes and learning that is always being improved that sometimes even proves that what we thought 50 years ago was fact isn't actually fact.
So it requires faith. It requires faith to believe in things that we can't go back to.
I'm not saying that's a problem but I'm just wanting to dispel the way that people say well science is fact and Christianity is faith when actually they're both.
Because here's the other thing for you as a Christian, your belief isn't just faith, its facts as well. Jesus really did live, he really did rise again, let's deal with that reality.
If you're a believer in here today, you have many reasons to believe. I hope that your head is starting to be lifted a little bit higher today even as I'm talking because what you believe isn't as irrational, isn't as ridiculous as you may have been told it is in fact it's actually far stronger.
You see science requires faith so does faith in God. let's just level the playing field. So it can't disprove God and we're in the same realms of needing faith and facts in both.
Let's zoom up to what I think is probably the biggest issue we've got to reconcile if we're going to throw God out of the picture. If we have to throw God out of the picture in order to understand the world around us, the way we are, where we're coming from, our morality, our meaning, I think we have to embrace thinking that totally cuts against everyday rational, reasonable and logical approaches.
Let me explain it like this imagine that you are walking down a street, it's a very familiar Road the commute to work, the way to school or college, it's where you always know, you know the surroundings all the different people but on this particular journey, you see something that you've never seen before. Just for the example of this, I want you to imagine you exist in a world where phones don't exist not just that they're the old they've never existed. you see mobile phone on the floor. I think you'd be freaked out, it's like an alien bit of Technology. Maybe you'd be waiting for a man in black to pounce on you to take hold of it.
But the inquisitive part of you would pick it up and you'd soon start to realize this thing is incredible it's designed its me to interact with the world around it, it can listen, it can speak, it can process information perhaps you'd start to take it apart.
As you start to take it apart you'd start to understand the finite balance, the beauty, the purpose. If you came round to my house and I'd made that discovery of this particular unknown thing, you'd be asking me how's it made? you'd be asking me what does it do? but more importantly you'd be asking me where is it from?
Because it would be irrational to think it hasn't come from anywhere, it would be illogical to think it hadn't come from anywhere, but most importantly you would be consumed by this question who does it come from?
and so if we're gonna throw God out of the picture in the way that we understand the world we have to abandon that thinking that we employ in many areas of life.
There's three key ways that this what works itself.
1. Origin and Beginning
The first is we've got to ask the question about origin and beginning.
See we believe that if something began, it was begun by something or some one. It is irrational to think the opposite. We believe that if something has an origin in a beginning, it was begun for a purpose and on purpose.
But if we're going to throw God out of the window then we've got to somehow embrace the idea that nobody plus nothing created everything.
You're laughing because you know that in any other scenario, in situation you wouldn't accept that kind of thinking. Listen if you are well-read, I know that is an incredibly simplistic way of thinking about it, let's zoom out to a simplistic way because ultimately this is what we've got to reconcile first.
Imagine being in the court of law and the defense lawyer stands up and says Your Honor, it wasn't my client, if nobody did it, nothing contributed to it, it just happened. You know we all think those unsolved crimes 20,30,40,50 years ago and not one of us is accepting of the idea that somebody didn't do it.
If we're gonna throw the idea of there being a bigger power, a greater creative power beyond our understanding then we've got to somehow embrace this idea that cuts against everyday rational thinking, everyday reasonable thinking, everyday logical thinking.
If that's what you want to do that's fine, but we've got to interrogate unbelief just as much as we interrogate faith.
You see the Bible, I believe offers a far more rational option. Not one that I can unequivocally show you take you back to that's where the faith comes in. But you see in the Bible in Hebrews 11:3 it says by faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command so that what is seen was not made out of what is visible.
The Bible thousands of years before, the theories of the Big Bang understanding that our world came out of nothing. that at his command it was spoken out of emptiness he created it goes on and it says through him all things were made, without him nothing was made that has been made in him was life and that light of all mankind.
I'm not telling you that I can take you back to that moment, but I am asking you what's more reasonable? what lines up with your everyday thinking? your everyday understanding?
Some people would then say well who made God? but the brilliant bit about that is that science also proves that time and matter started at the Big Bang.
So God is outside of the realms of what we'd understand, God exists outside of time, he exists outside of matter.
I want to ask you what's more reasonable? what's more rational? Is it a blind Christian just hoping there's something more? or does faith in God actually reflect what we see every day is reasonable, rational, logical?
2. Order from Disorder
We've also got a reconcile the idea of how can order come from disorder?
You know our world is fantastically ordered. But ultimately throwing God and the idea of a designer out of the picture, we throw out an option for order to come from order.
We have to embrace the reality that it was just simply time, matter and chance.
Now imagine, I'm going to start a business you come to me, you say I am thinking of investing in your business Dave. I say great and they say, tell me your plan I'm gonna make the most sophisticated, balanced, intricate, conscience owning being that's ever created. Dave I'm in, I've got a million pounds, where do I sign? just tell me the plan. do you know I'm gonna do it, I take all the ingredients put them in a bucket blow them up and wait.
Now I can't prove to you that in 400 billion years those things won't evolve or adapt or change but let me ask you what's more reasonable? let me ask you what's more rational? is it really that illogical to think that God would set you apart when there is still so much to show that we are set apart?
Just think about DNA this incredible thing called DNA you may not know this because I didn't but DNA actually makes up four key letters A C T and G and from then becomes a code for all life it's called a semantic language. In other words it's a coding descriptive language much like a computer system that where you code a game or an app or something like that.
To date, we find no originating source of semantic language other than intelligence.
To date, there is zero evidence to show us right now, maybe I'll be wrong tomorrow they'll make a discovery. May be in 50 years, may be in a thousand years, if you want to lean your faith on that, fine. But right now what's more reasonable?
To think that intelligent design may have actually come from intelligent being?
The Bible describing God coding you through DNA. Prescribing who you are?
3. Probability
But here's the other one we've got to reconcile the question of probability.
Because if I came to you and I said here's a lottery ticket fifty million is on the line fifty million pounds, fifty million dollars and this lottery ticket, you've got a 50/50 chance of winning, it's just gonna cost you a pound, a dollar.
Who's gonna take that ticket? no come on seriously who's gonna take that ticket? but those of you who aren't, you silly. You're gonna take it why? because in life you know you take good odds. Yeah probably you take it at 1 in 10. May be 1 in hundres/thousand. Maybe you'd start to debate it at one in a million because you know that at the end of the day if something's really not that probable why would I back it?
Do you know the probability of you is you being you the person you are the way you are? it's 1 to the power of 10 times 2 million 6 hundred eighty-five thousand you can't put enough zeroes on the page.
This is before we take into account the probability of a world existing in a way that could support intelligent life.
So again I'm not saying that I'm an equivocally right, but I'm provoking you'd ask the question what's more reasonable? what's more rational? what's more logical?
Christian lift your head. You're not a fool
You see if we take God out of the equation we have to embrace an approach that contends with our every day reason, logic and rational thinking.
And here's the thing, I might be wrong but with what I have in front of me my belief in God a higher being the supernaturally created everything around me is far more rational to me than to throw his existence out of the window and say there's absolutely no way that he could exist.
See the bible also says that for since the creation of the world God's invisible the Bible seriously the Bible is making its own issues clear.
In other words, what it's saying is that the created world around us is like a masterpiece of art pointing us towards the artist.
You know we're not just obsessed with created things, we're obsessed with their creators.
We don't just want to see the painting, we want to know about the artist. We don't just want to listen to the song, we want to hear about the musician.
Science is incredible. Science, yeah and I'm not also not going to be falsely saying, it raises some really challenging questions in how we understand the linguistic descriptions in Scripture. But it would be foolish in my opinion to just throw God out the window.
So next time we put the barrier up, next time you're met with the narrow perspective, you can start to open up a conversation and you can start to open up a conversation, you can start to go through life with questions, there's no problem with that. The problem is life when we go through life with doubts.
But I guess the most important question is "Well why not then?" if Christianity really is that rational, that reasonable, that logical or why don't more people believe? that's a good question, isn't it? Surely that's proof that you're wrong. Proof that I'm wrong.
But the reality is that in each and every single one of us there is a strand of thinking the desires to have what I want, the way I want it, when I want it.
Now I love you but there is not one person in this room, there's not one person listening this, not one person on the face of the planet that that is not true off.
Sometimes we manage to resist those urges, sometimes we give in to them dramatically. You don't have to look at a young child that's never been taught to disobey his parents or her parents and yet what do they do? they want, what they want, when they want, the way they want it.
There's this human thing and we don't graduate from that, do we?. I've met some of the worst toddlers in their 65 years of age. I know a very bad toddler his name is Dave Thomas, I see him in the mirror every day because there's this strand within us and the Bible calls that sin.
Now before you switch off, think about the definition I'm talking about, wanting things the way I want them, when I want them.
But the problem with that strand is that's why it's convenient for us for God not to exist. Because if there's a designer, if there's a creator if there's a best made way then there's going to be a way that he prescribes for us to live. And ultimately that strand within us kicks against that, doesn't it?
Parents you ever told your child to do something and then they somehow find a way around it? Because we want what we want, the way we want it, when we want it.
Just think about it like this this is Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn owns one of the most modern smartphones on the market today. But the reality is, Kaitlyn like me doesn't really know how to use it. She's never read the instruction manual, She certainly didn't read the terms and conditions, scroll up, agree, sign your life away. you never know what's in those things, do you?
She's just going on instinct, she's never actually done any research. Most of the time it's okay, but she uses her phone in ways that it wasn't designed to be.
She leaves it out in the Sun it overheats, she doesn't charge it probably, but most importantly she downloads apps that she doesn't realize they're actually corrupted and actually they infect the phone with viruses and so she starts to not be able to use the phone the way that she instinctively knows she should be able to, she's no expert but she just knows something's not quite right. sound like you and me? Anyway what does any reasonable rational person will do with that phone, they take it back to its creator, its maker, it's designer or at least someone that knows how it's made and knows how its created.
She hands it in to the expert he takes it and starts doing some lytx on it and soon finds out there isn't the problem with the product, there's a problem with the practice.
He comes back to Kaitlyn and says something like "it's not really an issue with the phone that's okay but it's more how you been using it". and she like any other rational person would respond much like this "Wow thank you so much, I didn't even think about it, I'll improve on that, thanks man" high five done and dusted after all she spent a lot of money on that phone. Maybe she wants to use it that way but probably for the value of how much it cost her she might just change a little bit.
But the problem is is that when it comes to God we actually respond like this. "What do you mean? I'm using my phone wrong? this is my phone, who do you think you are to tell me that how I'm using it is wrong? I don't need to change, what I'm doing is right".
You see just because there's a designer, just because there's a creator, just because our world screams it doesn't mean that we automatically get it.
You see there is something bigger than you, but there is also a streak within you that wants to deny it. It's your perspective, giving permission for your lifestyle, making way for your preferences potentially putting pressure on you to make decisions that you don't realize but actually could end up costing you.
Any reasonable rational logical person would not say that Kaitlyn's second response is the right one, would they? and yet with God we accept it. I don't want to believe in God even if he exists.
You see the reality is that we all have broken phones, if you don't get it yet that represents your life.
We've made decisions that have corrupted it, we've made decisions that have broken it. The reality is that sometimes we're so far away from the original design, we find it hard to think that there could have been a better way when actually there was.
You see every other world religion offers you one option, bring your phone back and receive a long list of things that you have to do in your strength and your power and maybe you'll be okay.
Christianity offers something different, Christianity says that for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in Him would have life and not perish.
It's an exchange system, Christianity is when we bring our broken phones, we bring our broken lives and instead of being given a list of to do's, we get an exchange option, we get a second chance, we get a brand new beginning, the Bible talking about being a new creation.
And that doesn't mean that we can carry on living the lives we that we've been living before, we must change, we must come back to the designers way even though that might cut against everything we think we know, everything we think we feel, everything the society is telling us, everything that we want but ultimately if there is a designer, a maker, a creator than his way is gonna be best.
You see God has been billed as this man in the sky, wagging his finger, wanting to take from you. This scripture says the exact opposite.
The God so loved you that even though you were the one that broke the life in the first place, he loved you so much, that he would give the most valuable thing to him, in order that you could have a second chance, in order that you could become a new beginning.
And here's the thing. if you're in one of our churches right now, you sat around people who've made that exchange and you'll know that they're not perfect, just like I am NOT but you'll be able to see in their lives the trace and the shadow of where they're following the one that is.
The day-by-day improvements in their depression, the day-by-day transformations in their marriage, the day-by-day transformation in their identity, the day-by-day transformation in their hope, in their joy why? because they've exchanged, their old life for a new one. And bit by bit by bit getting realigned once again with their maker.
You see, it's the most profound choice. Because what we believe shapes everything of our life.
But if there is a God, if he has authored the world around us and if that God is the Christian one which by the way Christianity stands up so strongly against, it comes head and shoulders above everything, we're going to show you how that is over these next couple weeks is incredible.
Then we also have to listen to the claims that God makes, because at the end of the day Kaitlyn could have kept hold of a broken life and just about made it through. But there is more to life. But there's also more to life after death.
Our heart in this series is not to try and prove that we're right. Our heart in this series is try and fight for your soul, fight for your life.
18 years ago I met Jesus. 18 years ago he pierced the questions that I had so ignorantly put up around my eyes and I met the most loving, most life-changing, most incredible person that I'll ever meet.
Over these 18 years he's been transforming me step by step, and moment by moment. It has not been easy and there will be days where it is incredibly challenging in the future, there will be days of challenge, days of loss, days where it doesn't make sense, but ultimately I walk through every one of them knowing the one that made me.
Here today you're gonna have a chance to respond to him. Perhaps you're in here today and you'd made that decision God is out of the options. I ask you today open your heart, open your mind, open that part of you that, I prophesy right now is moving the undeniable God bit of you perhaps you're on the fence.
I want to say to you no decision is not a decision. We can't just pick from the buffet of options because therefore we're then god. I'll have a bit of that, I'll have a bit of this, I'll have a bit of that.
Perhaps you lost your way, perhaps you lost your path, today is a chance to come back to him again.
Thank you for joining us in every location. May God bless you and move where you are right now in Jesus name.
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