Welcome to Season Two:
Tim Keller said that "When evolution is turned into an All-Encompassing Theory explaining absolutely everything we believe, feel, and do as the product of natural selection, then we are not in the arena of science, but of philosophy." On todays episode of the WEPC Discipleship Podcast Pastor Joe talks about whether or not Science and Religion are compatible from his 2018 series on Common Objections To Christianity.
Evidences (?) for an Intelligent Design
William Paley argued that if we found a watch on the ground, its complexity would convince us that the watch did not occur naturally but was designed. Since both we and our universe are infinitely more complex than the watch, logic demands an eternal “Watchmaker” who could have designed both us and our world.
Macrophages in the lungs
DNA with its frontloaded carefully coded information
The Coagulation Cascade and Irreducible Complexity
In 1981 Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe wrote Evolution from Space. In an oft-quoted section of the book they calculated the odds that the required set of enzymes for even the simplest living cell could come together by chance alone. Their final number was one in 1040,000 (i.e., 10 followed by 40,000 zeroes). To put this mind-boggling number into perspective, the number of atoms in the entire universe is estimated to be 1080 (or 10 followed by 80 zeroes). Hoyle made an even more colorful illustration of these odds. He compared the likelihood of the random emergence of even the simplest cell to the likelihood that “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.” Hoyle was an atheist but believed that some impersonal life force had planted Earth with the seeds of life from space—a form of New Age panspermia. In short, some kind of an impersonal intelligent designer was involved in the creation of life on Earth.
Christians' take on evolution
One end of spectrum: Evolution is WRONG in every way – even natural selection.
On other end: "God is the primary cause in beginning the world and after that natural causes took over – God creates life and then guided natural selection to develop all complex life-forms from simpler ones." – Keller
Or somewhere in between: BB Warfield, (biblical inerrancy founding father) "believed that God may have used something like evolution to bring about life-forms." (Keller)
LEARN MORE:
Your Speaker:
Joe Brown; Associate Pastor
Learn more about West End Presbyterian Church at https://www.wepc.org/
