In today’s society, Christianity, God and even other religions are often considered “myths”. The term “the imaginary guy in the sky” is used as a description of God. In looking at this topic, we must consider the meaning of a few words.
- Myth: This word carries the meaning of a story that is fictitious and may involve supernatural events or beings. Often the story describes the history of people or customs. Myths are generally considered to be false.
- History: This is an account of what actually happened. In today’s society, people try and change history by re-writing what actually happened. True history is the account of the events that actually happened, regardless of how people may try to change or twist it.
- Reality: This is what actually is, rather than something that is just imagined. One of the illogical ideas that circulate today is that everyone can have their own reality or belief system; and that this belief system can be true. Logically, when you have mutually exclusive beliefs, they cannot be true at the same time. For example, atheism (there is no god) cannot be true at the same time as there is a God or gods. They are mutually exclusive. There being only one God and there being many gods is also a mutually exclusive situation.
- Truth: Truth is the opposite of false. Much like reality, mutually exclusive ideas or situations cannot be true at the same time. For example, red and not red cannot be true at the same time. God and no God cannot be true at the same time. A statement like "there is no absolute truth" contradicts itself, since it is an absolute statement.
- Science: In this dictionary definition we see that science is restricted to the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world. We also see that science is a “systematically organized body of knowledge on any subject.” This qualifies the study of the part of reality that is not “physical” or “natural” as scientific.
- 1 the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
- 2 a systematically organized body of knowledge on any subject.
“Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson, eds., Concise Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).”
The study of the “supernatural” cannot be done using the scientific method since it falls outside the ability of being able to observe, test and falsify hypothesis. The study of the supernatural can be “scientific” by studying what has been revealed by the supernatural. The supernatural realm is not restricted to the laws of the natural world.
The question then becomes, “how do we know what is true and what is false”? Obviously, since regular scientific methods that are restricted to the physical realm cannot be used to observe or test the supernatural realm, we must rely on something else for this information. By definition, science cannot prove anything, since we are observing and testing. We never know if we have tested all possibilities. The history of science is such that it is always changing. There are some “scientific” laws that are accepted to be highly reliable, such as the laws of thermodynamics. Others, especially in the social sciences frequently change. True science will always be open to all possibilities. Once some possibilities are removed, it is no longer science but is now philosophy. Since there is no way of “proving” that God does not exist, it must always exist as a possibility.
Based on all this, the best way forward may be to eliminate those ideas that have been shown to be highly improbable.
- The laws of thermodynamics do not allow for the appearance of all the matter and energy from nothing.
- The same laws would also dictate that if the universe was eternal, it would have run out of energy by now and would therefore be dead.
- Based on this, the universe had to be created by something apart from the “natural” world.
- Non-life has never been observed to produce life, even with intelligent intervention in a lab.
- Information has never been observed to come from non-information.
- The supposed “transitional” forms of life are not in the fossil record. If this hypothesis were true, then we should be able to see transitional forms going from one kind to another today - yet there are none.
- As we consider how the evolutionary process could, or could not have worked consider the following. In order for natural selection to work, a creature has to be able to live, sustain itself and reproduce, otherwise there is nothing to select from. So, which came first, the lungs, the heart, the brain with all its information, the eyes, the limbs, the digestive system or the reproductive system? How many generations of non-viable creatures that could not survive or reproduce would this have taken? As we can see, no creature can live without everything present and working.
This and other items render the idea of atheism (no god) as untenable and therefore a myth. A good video on this is The Atheist Delusion Video from Living Waters
So, how do we know what is the actual history of the universe and all life. As we have seen above, there has to be a supernatural creator. Logic requires that only one account of history can be true. The challenge then would be to see which account is the most likely to be true based on observation, logic and historical records. While this type of study can be quite extensive, we can summarize the main points here.
- In order for us to know about the supernatural, it would need to be revealed to us by the supernatural.
- Since there are so many different “religions”, how do we know which one is true?
- Again, we would need to see if the religion is self consistent.
- Is it logically coherent?
- Does it have a “personal” God that can reveal himself?
- What signs or miracles attest to the revelation of God?
- Is the account given in the revelation consistent with what we observe? (a note on this point, everything that we can observe is in the present. Assumptions must be made about what happened in the past and then interpretations are made. For example, with the Grand Canyon, the assumption is made that the layers were deposited slowly over a long time period. Mount St. Helens shows us that that is not necessarily the case. Other data shows that a rapid formation of the canyon was far more likely).
- The Biblical text is quite consistent with what is observed in nature when properly interpreted.
- When God does something outside the natural laws that He has instituted, it is called a sign or miracle. It cannot be explained through natural processes and serves to validate His Word.
When all of this is considered, Christianity comes out as the most logical candidate for the truth of reality and history. It is attested by signs and miracles as recorded in the Bible.
The Atheist Delusion Video from Living Waters
Evolution vs God Video from Living Waters