Introduction: Unbelievable
● Everyone has questions –worldview helps you understand life, gives direction
● The predominate mainstream view in our culture – macro evolution –materialism
Genesis 1:1 (NIV) In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…
● Everyone believes in miracles – an event that the normal laws of science do not apply.
● Materialism (a closed system) relies on miracles too – you cannot show how what they believe is possible –setting aside the normal laws of nature
● What is the source of this miracle?
● For believers, how does this help? Why do we worship?
● For unbelievers, how does this help?
What is the best explanation for what we see? I believe God is the best explanation?
Miracle 1: The Physical universe comes into existence
The universe had a beginning (space, time, matter) – Hubble telescope –big bang
● There used to be two options – the universe is eternal (time, space, matter) or God
● The law of causality (or the principle of causation) is commonly stated as: “Everything that comes into existence must have a cause.”
● This means that if something begins to exist—i.e., it has not always existed—there must be something else that brought it into existence.
● There must be an uncaused cause – infi nite regression is impossible
Robert Jastrow – Astronomer and Physicist—Nasa Scientist “Astronomers now fi nd they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation… That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifi cally proven fact.” — From an interview with Christianity Today, 1982
William Lane Craig – Philosopher and Theologian William Lane Craig is renowned for his defense of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which asserts that the universe must have a beginning and, therefore, a cause. He argues that an actual infi nite regress of events is metaphysically impossible: “The idea of an infi nite past seems absurd. If the universe never had a beginning, then the present moment could never have arrived, as it would require traversing an actual infi nite number of events.”
Miracle 2: The universe becomes potentially habitable for life –cosmology
● The dials are set for life and the dials are not moving –they became static
● The number of anthropic constants or parameters required for a habitable planet is not fi xed, but depending on how precisely and broadly you defi ne them, estimates typically range from dozens to over a hundred. These constants span cosmological, physical, chemical, and planetary parameters—all of which must fall within specifi c, narrow ranges for life (as we know it) to exist.
● The 2nd Law of thermodynamics –entropy- left to itself (a closed system) energy goes from a higher level of utility to a lower level of utility
● Eventually, it may reach maximum entropy, known as the “heat death”—no usable energy remains for work.
● This underpins arguments about the beginning of the universe, and is part of why many think the universe can’t be eternal in the past (it would already be at maximum entropy).
Roger Penrose (Mathematical Physicist) “The odds of the initial conditions of the universe being suitable for life are 1 in 10^10^123.”

Fred Hoyle (Astrophysicist), initially a skeptic of the Big Bang theory, was struck by the precise conditions required for carbon formation in stars. He remarked: “The probability of life originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make the random concept absurd.”

Miracle 3: Biological complex life emerges from non-living matter

● Example – the eye

● Our best robots today

Anthony Flew (The World’s Most Notorious Atheist), There is a God “I now believe there is a God…I now think it [the evidence] does point to a creative Intelligence almost entirely because of the DNA investigations. What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce life, that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together.”

Geneticist Michael Denton, each cell “is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms.”

Sir Francis Crick Co-discoverer of DNA: An honest man, armed with all the knowledge—available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life—appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have—been satisfied to get it going.

Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (1986) “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”

Miracle 4: Life becomes conscious of itself

● The fact that we can contemplate these kinds of questions is a miracle

● The robot research

Thomas Nagel –Atheist Professor, NYU 2012 book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False

So….Does the Bible fit what we have learned?

1. It implies that there is something before creation (time, space, and matter)

a. Another realm

b. The creator is powerful, intelligent, non-material, space-less, timeless

2. It tells us how the world became so amazingly designed, where plant and animal life came from, and where humans

came from – intelligence

Supporting Scripture: Genesis 1:11, Genesis 1:20, Genesis 1:27, Colossians 1:16–17

Robert Jastrow, from his book God and the Astronomers (1978) “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

God has been speaking all along – in the language of miracles

● What kind of consciousness – What kind of a God is He for believers?

Supporting Scripture: Psalm 19:1–4, Isaiah 55:8–9, Romans 1:18–21

What do you do with this?

1. Remember and Worship! Don’t give into the culture

2. Share it with unbelievers

3. Teach it to your kids/others