Science versus
the Bible - My Search for TRUTH.
Truth is
an absolute thing. The Bible speaks of truth in the
singular - the truth. The truth is
absolutely untainted by error. Why then does error so often subvert
truth? When you mix error
and truth, you no longer have truth. Truth plus error equals error -
not an approach to truth. The standard for truth is
in I John 2:21. “. . . no lie is of the truth.” The original
Greek has an emphatic negative. Absolutely
NO falsehood is of the truth.
Jesus claimed to be the truth. Yet we do not have
every
truth because the scripture
says in Christ are hidden
all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. For many years I sought to
understand the world and the universe. Yet the evidence from
astronomy and geology did not fit the genealogies of our
ancestors. I read theories from creation scientists
and
conventional academics. One
group
claimed that science authenticates
the Bible and the other that it contradicts it.
One thing seemed clear to me. The
simplest evidence
supported creation. A caterpillar dissolves every
cell in its body, even
modifies its own genetic makeup, to metamorphose into a
butterfly. I noticed that some Christians saw the evidence simply
and were
not disturbed by scientific conflicts. They were not concerned with
reconciling science and the
Bible. They were impressed with the simplest evidence and did not
attempt to mathematically
understand the cosmos.
I spent years struggling with scientific evidence. Finally one
day,
I read “But if any of you lacks
wisdom, let him ask of God, who
gives to all men generously
and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in
faith without any doubting,
for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by
the wind. For let not that
man expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a
double-minded man, unstable in
all his ways.” I suddenly realized that I had been asking God
for
wisdom while trying to
reconcile the world’s wisdom with the Bible. I used a literal,
grammatical approach to interpret salvation. However, I
always tried to understand verses about earth-history from a scientific
perspective. I was double minded because I had two methods for
interpreting the Bible. This made me unstable
in all my ways. If I would
stop this and ask Him for wisdom, He promised to provide it
generously. Lord,
I prayed, I am willing
to give up the world's wisdom to see the answers from your
word alone. Please give
me wisdom, as you have promised.
From that day on, I sought to understand biblical
earth-history as a contemporary of the author would have, in their
culture and language. I
no longer required that the meaning must be
scientific. For example, Solomon stated that "the sun
rises and the sun sets and hastens to its place it rises there
{again}." Some claim that this verse teaches the false
notion that the sun
rotates around a stationary earth. In
Solomon's time,
the star on the eastern horizon that faded just before sunrise marked
the position of the sun that day. They observed that the sun
moved eastward (not westward) through the circuit of the ecliptic
stars to rise
next to the same star after one year. Ordinary people in
Solomon's
day would have understood the text that way. The supposed
conflict dissolved when I interpreted the text as a contemporary would
understand it. When I
interpreted biblical earth-history in the culture and language of the
writer, I discovered passages that conflicted with our science.
The passages were consistent with each other but inconsistent
with scientific
reasoning.
This
is my testimony of how this approach opened my eyes to how the Bible
vanquishes the scientific system.
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Commons License by Victor McAllister.
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Last revision 10/23/2008