Wrap up of chapters 1 & 2 of The Case for a Creator

I apologize for taking so long to post this follow-up. I should be posting

chapters 3 & 4 today. However, I've had a long, hard week with some medical
problems and to top it off, I am writing this from the courthouse steps. I was
summoned to jury duty but was just granted a postponement for the aforementioned
medical reasons. Now I am waiting for my husband to pick me up.  See?  Even I
have to seize the odd opportunities to do Bible study.

I received no replies to the first questionnaire. My mother-in-law tells me she
tried but it would not submit for her. If you also had this problem, would you
please post a reply to this post so that I can investigate further?  If you have
not yet signed up for email notifications, you can do yo at the right of the
screen.  Or, contact me or post a reply with your email address and I can
manually add you to an email notification list, so you won't miss a study.  As
there were no submissions, I suppose that you will have to put up with only my
own thoughts on these chapters.

The first question referred to whether we had ever run into anyone as volatile
and skeptical towards Christianity as the author. Yes, I have met people like
this. I think what motivates them is varied. Sometimes I think they are like the
author and want facts, not theory.  I think they want something that they can
see and feel and prove.  Sometimes I think it is a case where they have had a
bad experience with a church or a "Christian" and they judge it all to be as
fake and hypocritical. Sometimes I think people are honestly misled. It's the
same as what we Christians are accused of: blindly swallowing what we are fed.
They hear how old and archaic the Bible is or how this or that person or thing
disproves this or that or contradicts this or that and they just fall in without
ever really seeking out the truth for themselves. I always find it funny when
Christians are accused of being close-minded when the very people who say this
don't seem to be open to exploring Christianity as a serious viable option.

The next question asked if there was any part of the author's attitude that we
can personally relate to.  I confess the only real part I can relate to is that
I am often frustrated with what I perceive as ignorance. But then I have to stop
and think that I must also be frustrating someone more intelligent than I!

My attitude towards Christianity has changed considerably over the years.  You
may find that odd since I was raised in church, but it is true!  When I was in
junior high, I learned that I could talk to God as a friend, that He wasn't just
off in some corner of the universe, too busy to be bothered with my puny life. 
That changed my whole outlook on God.  Another major spiritual event was when my
dad died.  I had known people that had died, but never anyone that close to me
before.  For the first time, I was confronted with the question, "Do I really
believe what I say I believe?  Do I really believe that my dad still exists
somewhere else?"  I had to search my heart and soul and ask a lot of hard,
uncomfortable questions that I thought I had already figured out.  But, in the
end, my faith was stronger and I KNOW that I know that I know that I will see my
dad again in heaven!  On the scale the author gave, I would say Christianity is
rated a 10 on my credibility scale.  That's because I have seen God prove
Himself to me over and over again.  Time and space and my memory would fail me
to list all of the examples, but allow me to relay one.  In a very dark time in
my life, I was staying at my mother's house with my three children.  My
then-husband had kicked us out.  We had no money and I would not be receiving a
paycheck for a week and a half.  Even when I did get it, it would be small and
had to be used for necessities.  I ran out of conditioner and foundation
makeup.  Not a big deal.  In the grand scheme of things, the least of my
worries.  So, I would have blotchy skin and tangled hair?  Considering I was
homeless, broke, had no car, and was heading for divorce court, who really
cared?  The next thing I knew, there was a knock at my mom's door.  On the
porch, there were some women from a church that I used to attend and they were
inviting people to a charity event.  Before they left, they handed me a bag. 
When I opened it, I found cosmetics, including foundation makeup in my shade,
and a bottle of conditioner.  It was as though God was saying, "I am concerned
with your details and if I can take care of your details, what do you think I
will do for your needs?"  And that's just what He did.  After all the things
that I have seen Him do for me, you cannot convince me that there is no God.  I
know better.

The next question asked if Christianity is being eclipsed or enhanced by modern
science.  I am probably not the person to answer that.  I have never been
inclined toward science, which makes my study of this book a little puzzling, I
must admit.  I am a right-brainer and therefore am not drawn toward math or
sciences, but towards language arts and creative pursuits.  So, really, I have
no opinion whatsoever on the correlation between science and Christianity.

This next question was quite disturbing to me.  It related to the quote from
William Provine about the five implications if Darwinism is correct.  I think he
is right.  If evolution is true, then where does a God fit into that and it
makes Genesis a lie.  And if Genesis is a lie, how can you trust anything else
that the Bible says?  Truthfully all the implications were disturbing to me.  If
there is no God, there is no hope, no order, no love, everything I know is gone
from my world.  No life after death is a hopeless, meaningless prospect.  It
means funerals are the absolute end, it means are lives are pointless, it means
there is nothing but darkness after this life.  If there is no God, how can you
make a foundation for right and wrong?  Who's version of right and wrong do we
adopt?  Why would your right and wrong be any more valid than mine?  This sounds
like total anarchy.  I touched on this before when I said if there is no life
after death, there is no meaning to life.  If we all are creations of a cosmic
accident, then what is our purpose?  There is none.  We are here by random.  We
are just a jumble of random cells, no more special than a plant, a rock, an
animal.  I had a harder time following his implication that people don't have a
free will.  Maybe that is a throwback to "survival of the fittest".  However, if
we don't have a freewill, that is a disturbing thought, to think that we have no
choices, that we are just mindless, numb apes or robots, wandering this earth
until we die, making no impact on it whatsoever.  All are disturbing, but I
think the one that disturbs me the most is the idea that there is no God.  The
others hinge on that truth.  If there is a God, then there is life after death,
there is a foundation for right and wrong, we have a purpose and free will, and
there IS meaning to life.

The next question that was asked was about how you were first exposed to
Darwin's theories.  I think the first time that I remember being exposed to them
was in high school science class (as I attended a public high school).  I
remember scoffing at it.  I did my assignments and tests as expected, but given
any opportunity, I voiced my opposition.  I don't recall seeing any of the
images that were vital to the author's beliefs in evolution, but I'm sure they
must have been in a textbook I studied.  I'm guessing that they didn't make that
big of an impression on me.

The next two questions were probably the hardest for me to answer.  I am not
sure what to say in response to the quote about science being the only begetter
of the truth.  I believe that God and His Word are the only begetters of the
truth, but I am not quite sure how to qualify that statement or if I even need
to.  For someone that doesn't come from a background of faith, what WOULD be the
begetter of the truth?  I do know that God's Word says that even nature itself
shows God, so wouldn't that speak to science itself proving God's existence? 
Guess we will see as we continue this study.  I don't know how much confidence I
place in science or what its limits are.  I believe God can break the natural
laws that He created when and if He wants to.

Well, I hope that these first two chapters have whet your appetite for this
book.  I look forward to hearing from you for chapters 3 and 4!

Sent from my iPhone

Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel Chapters One and Two

Before we begin, I should lay out two disclaimers. First, this study was primarily geared towards moms, but women without children and even men are welcome here! No discrimination! Also, for this first study, I suppose that our title of “Bible study” is a bit of a misnomer. We are, in fact, studying a book this time. I am sure during the course of this book study, we will do some Bible study as well, but our main text at this time will be The Case For a Creator by Lee Strobel.

My 8-year-old daughter Kimberly is joining me in this study. She is a smart, inquisitive girl. She wants to be a zookeeper and loves animals, which naturally translates to an interest in science. She has been in church all of her life and prayed to begin her relationship with Jesus Christ when she was five, of her own accord and as a direct result of her own questions about faith. Recently, she began asking me questions such as how we know that God is real or how we can be sure that our God is THE God, as opposed to Buddha or other gods. I bought her a copy of Lee Strobel’s “The Case for a Creator for Kids.” I asked her if she would like to help me in this Bible study and she enthusiastically agreed.

Our study of this book begins with a controversy in West Virginia in 1974. The first chapter sets us up with a look into a news story that the author covered in his early days as a journalist. In Kanawha County, West Virginia, folks were upset at the textbooks that their children were being taught from. Violence had even erupted and parents were boycotting the schools by keeping their children at home. The author, Lee Strobel, has to come face to face with what he considers an archaic belief. He considers Christianity a “dinosaur.” He cannot understand how these people can possibly still believe these fairy tales, in the face of all the scientific evidence to the contrary. From his personal perspective, he longs to debate them, but as a journalist, he strives to remain impartial and just write the facts of the story.

He goes on, in chapter two, to describe how he came to have these beliefs, beginning in a 9th grade science class. He says, “I already liked this introductory biology class. It fit well with my logical way of looking at the world, an approach that was already tugging me toward the evidence-oriented fields of journalism and law. I was incurably curious, always after answers, constantly trying to figure out how things worked….That’s why I liked science. Here the teacher actually encouraged me to cut open a frog to find out how it functioned. Science gave me an excuse to ask all the ‘why’ questions that plagued me….To me, science represented the empirical, the trustworthy, the hard facts, the experimentally proven. I tended to dismiss everything else as being mere opinion, conjecture, superstition--and mindless faith.” He talked about watching the changes in the 60s, when ethics and morality and philosophies and social conventions were being overturned by the culture, science appeared rock-steady and unchangeable to him. With his inquisitive mind, his eagerness for answers to his “why” questions, he found that Sunday school teachers and authorities in faith matters were not open to providing answers. He felt that his classmates were mindlessly swallowing what was taught and he also was supposed to accept and regurgitate what he could not understand or find proof for.

Lee writes, “By the time I was halfway through college, my atheistic attitudes were so entrenched that I was becoming more and more impatient with people of mindless faith. I felt smugly arrogant toward them. Let them remain slaves to their wishful thinking about a heavenly home and to the straitjacket morality of their imaginary God. As for me, I would follow the conclusions of the scientists.”

As a visual person, Lee tells about the images that are seared into his mind’s eye that he learned at an early age that influenced his journey into atheism:

1. The tubes, flasks, and electrodes of the Stanley Miller Experiment, wherein the scientist, by passing electric sparks through reproduced “primitive earth atmosphere”, created a “red goo containing amino acids.”

2. Darwin’s tree of life, the only illustration in Darwin’s book “The Origin of Species,” showing the basest living things at the bottom and branching upwards into more complex living things.

3. Ernst Haeckel’s drawings of embryos, showing various animal embryos that were hardly different in any way, concluding that they must have common descent.

4. The missing link, a fossil of a half-bird, half-reptile named archaeopteryx, where theory seemed to be validated by paleontology.

Evolutionary biologist and historian William Provine or Cornell University said if Darwinism is true, then there are “five inescapable conclusions: there’s no evidence for God, there’s no life after death, there’s no absolute foundations for right and wrong, there’s no ultimate meaning for life, people don’t really have free will.” Sounds pretty bleak. No life after death and no meaning for life sounds hopeless and sad. No foundation for right and wrong would mean that we can do anything with no consequences. Who dictates what is right? What is the basis for saying something is “wrong”? That would leave a lot up to individual interpretation. And it sounds like chaos and anarchy. If we don’t have a free will, what point is there to our lives? Are we just mindless zombies, doomed to wander aimlessly until we are gone?

British atheist Bertrand Russell “wrote about how science had presented us with a world that was ‘purposeless’ and ‘void of meaning.’” “That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of the human genius are destined to extinction…that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried--all these things, of not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the cageling of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.” So, it would seem that all humankind has a choice: believe in a God that has strict rules and morals, yet have eternal life or follow science which allows you to live free of consequences, yet leaves you cold in a grave when your life is over. The problem is that even though some wish to deny it, there IS absolute truth and whether you choose to believe something or not does not change its existence. I may choose to believe that there is no car in front of me on the road, but it won’t keep me from crashing into it.

Linus Pauling was an American chemist, who won Nobel Prizes in both chemistry and peace. He said, “Science is the search for the truth.” Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin said, “The problem is to get [people] to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth.” And so, our author decides to investigate what he considers the “soft issues of faith” and the “hard facts of science.” But why would he investigate? Because five years after his investigative reporting in West Virginia, his wife announced that she had become a Christian and her transformation was hard to ignore.

The next question is how he would investigate. “You can’t put an omnipotent deity in a test tube,” said Eugenie Scott from the National Center for Science Education. “My approach would be to cross-examine authorities in various scientific disciplines about the most current findings in their fields. In selecting these experts, I sought doctorate level professors who have unquestioned expertise, are able to communicate in accessible language, and who refuse to limit themselves only to the politically correct world of naturalism or materialism. After all, it wouldn’t make sense to rule out any hypothesis at the outset. I wanted the freedom to pursue all possibilities. I would stand in the shoes of the skeptic, reading all sides of each topic and posing the toughest objections that have been raised. More importantly, I would ask the experts the kind of questions that personally plagued me when I was an atheist. In fact, perhaps these are the very same issues that have proven to be sticking points in your own spiritual journey. Maybe you too have wondered whether belief in a supernatural God is consistent with what science has uncovered about the natural world.” From a legal and journalistic perspective, Lee Strobel was heading in the right direction to learn the truth.

Some of the questions that he wanted answered were:

* Are science and faith compatible? Am I right to think that a science-minded person must reject religious beliefs? Or is there a different way to view the relationship between the spiritual and the scientific?
* Does the latest scientific evidence tend to point toward or away from God?
* Are the teachings about evolution that spurred me to atheism all those years ago still valid in the light of the most recent discoveries in science?

The reason that Lee was looking for up-to-date scientific data, rather than trusting the science of Charles Darwin or other “fathers” of scientific discovery can be summed up by the National Academy of Sciences: “All scientific knowledge is, in principle, subject to change as new evidence becomes available.”

And what about his question about whether science and faith are mutually exclusive? My high school science teacher believed that God created the “Big Bang.” He subscribed to the theory that God “got the ball rolling”, so to speak, and that evolution went from there. Many people believe this way. However, Lee Strobel quotes many in his book who cannot fathom science and faith coexisting:

Lee Strobel: “I was told that the evolutionary process was by definition undirected--and to me, that automatically ruled out a supernatural deity who was pulling the strings behind the scenes.”

William Provine (Cornell University): “A widespread theological view now exists saying that God started off the world, props it up and works through the laws of nature, very subtly, so subtly that its action is undetectable. But that kind of God is effectively no different to my mind than atheism.”

Stephen C. Meyer (Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute): “Many evolutionary biologists admit that science cannot categorically exclude the possibility that some kind of deity still might exist. Nor can they deny the possibility of a divine designer who so masks his creative activity in apparently natural processes as to escape scientific detection. Yet for most scientific materialists such an undetectable entity hardly seems worthy of consideration.”

Nancy Pearcey (science and faith author): “If we admit God into the process, Darwin argued, then God would ensure that only ‘the right variations occurred…and natural selection would be superfluous.’”

Stephen C. Meyer: “To say that God guides an inherently unguided natural process, or that God designed a natural mechanism as a substitute for his design, is clearly contradictory.”

Time Magazine: “Charles Darwin didn’t want to murder God, as he once put it. But he did.”

“When an attorney asked the outspoken Provine whether there is ‘an intellectually honest Christian evolutionist position…or do we simply have to check our brains at the church house door,’ Provine’s answer was straightforward: ‘You indeed have to check your brains.’ Apparently to him, the term ‘Christian evolutionist’ is oxymoronic.”

They don’t even leave any room for fence-straddlers as Richard Dawkins from Oxford said, “The more you understand the significance of evolution, the more you are pushed away from an agnostic position and towards atheism.”

As I wrap up these first two chapters, I feel somewhat dreary. We see all the atheistic positions and evidence. That position seems depressingly empty and void. But, don't lose hope yet because we have merely set the stage to seek the truth. Those of us that believe that the world was created by God, don’t necessarily need proof. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) But what about those who are seeking truth? What about those that are compelled by the same evidence and images that Lee Strobel was? Does faith prove anything to those with doubts or opposite beliefs? Our study here probes truth and facts to see if our faith stacks up.

Our questions for this week:

Case for a Creator chapters 1 and 2

Name: Are you willing for me to share your answers here on this blog, as it may apply to the study and help clarify questions and answers for others?YesNoYes, but anonymously Have you ever met someone who was as hostile toward Christianity as the author was? What are the various factors that may be driving that person's skepticism? Is there any part of the author's attitude that you can personally relate to? How so? What's your current viewpoint concerning Christianity? How would you rank its credibility on a scale of one to ten, with one being none and ten being absolute? Specifically, what are your opinions based on? Have your attitudes changed over the years? If so, how? What prompted those changes? Do you believe that Christianity is being eclipsed or enhanced by modern science? Why? On what do you base your answer? William Provine, professor or history and biological sciences at Cornell University, listed five implications if Darwinism is true: there's no evidence for God, there's no life after death, there's no absolute foundations for right and wrong, there's no ultimate meaning for life, people don't really have free will. Why do you think he's right or wrong? Which one of these implications concerns you the most and why? Can you recall when you first were exposed to Darwin's theory of evolution? What was the setting? What was your reaction at the time? Have your attitudes toward Darwinism changed since then? Why or why not? To what degree do you consider yourself to be open-minded on the issue? Were any of the images of evolution described in the chapter and shown here instrumental in shaping your opinions? How so? The author said that his belief in Darwinism was pivotal in his decision to become an atheist. In what way has your opinion about evolution affected your spiritual outlook? How do you respond to Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin's opinion that science should be seen as the only begetter of truth? Is that a scientific or philosophical statement? How much confidence do you put in science? What do you believe are the limits of science? What ways are there to know about something apart from the scientific method? What preconceptions or prejudices might inhibit your investigation of the scientific evidence for a Creator? What can you do to set them aside and keep an open mind? What do you hope this investigation of the case for a Creator will personally accomplish for you?

Next week, we will follow up this lesson with a wrap-up. I will share answers submitted by those who are participating in this study, along with thoughts of my own. Stay tuned!…