This is the Ask Pastor Alex podcast with your host, Pastor Alex.
All right, welcome back to the podcast, everyone. We’re here with another episode and another
question. And the question for today’s episode is, has science disproven God? And that’s
an interesting question. And let me just say at the beginning, I really do appreciate the
fact that it was posed as a question, because typically when I have encountered this issue,
it has just been asserted as a claim, right? So I’ve been in context before I was a pastor,
when I would work in secular jobs, where I would be talking with someone and they’d find
out I was a believer and they’d say, how can you be a believer? How can you believe in
God? Don’t you know that science has disproven God? And it’s meant to be a derogatory and
condescending comment, basically saying that we’re unintelligent, that we’re foolish for
believing in God in an age in which most people believe that science has eliminated the need
for God. And listen to me, Christians, you are going to encounter this topic at some
point in your walk. You’re going to engage with someone. It could be at work or in some
other kind of context. You’re going to engage with someone who’s going to bring up this
topic. And so we need to know how to handle this topic when it comes our way. And so let
me just give you a little tactic that I like to use. If you ever encounter someone who
says to you, science has disproven God, my favorite response, and my church even knows
what I’m about to say, my favorite response is to say, what do you mean by that? And the
reason that it’s my favorite response is because most people in our world today make assertions
with no backing. And we, for whatever reason, have learned to just accept whatever assertions
a person makes without questioning them. So someone will say to us, science has disproven
God. And we typically just accept that as a fact. And we move on and we might say, well,
that’s your opinion, but I still believe the Bible, this or that. But we’re just accepting
something that they have offered no proof or backing for whatsoever. That statement,
science has disproven God is an unproven assertion. And so one reason I like to respond with,
what do you mean by that? Is because now that person actually has to defend their position.
The other reason that this is such a fun response is because most people who make assertions
haven’t actually thought through the assertions they make. They just know that science has
disproven God is a talking point, is something that many atheists say today, is something
that most of the world accepts today, but they haven’t even given it the thought necessary
to defend that kind of an assertion. But most people have not thought through their own
positions and they don’t know how to defend their positions. And so that’s why another
reason why this question is so fun to just pose back to someone and say, well, what do
you mean by that? So I want to encourage you first and foremost, learn to recognize undefended
assertions and then secondly, make people defend their own assertions. If someone’s
going to make a claim and they don’t offer any backing for it whatsoever, they just state
it as a bold assertion, make them defend their position, see what they can do. But as I said,
if you’re a believer, you’re going to encounter this topic at some point and the question,
what do you mean by that? Can only get you so far. So we need to learn how to engage
in this conversation. And so I think one thing that’s really helpful at the start is when
you do have someone who’s making that claim, science has disproven God, it’s always good
to try to figure out in what ways they imagine science has disproven God. In other words,
in what particular ways has science disproven God? What in our modern scientific understanding
has eliminated the possibility or the necessity of God’s existence? Because science is a broad
umbrella, right? It’s a very broad range of fields. And so it’s really helpful to try
to figure out in what ways a person might think that science has eliminated the need
for God. And for most people who make this kind of a claim, it’s going to come down to
one issue and one issue only, the dreaded E word, right? Evolution. Many will say that
evolution disproves God. And we’re going to address that more thoroughly in just a few
minutes. But for now, we need to understand that the theory of evolution is just that
it’s a theory. And more than that, evolution can only explain how life has arrived at the
point it’s at now. In other words, evolution can say nothing and does say nothing about
how life began. In order for you to have a theory of evolution and to even have that
conversation, you already have to have life existing. And then evolution seeks to explain
how something got from point A to point B over a long period of time and through a lot
of random processes. So that leaves people with a huge problem, right? We can have the
evolution discussion, but before that, we have to determine, well, where did life begin
in the first place? And there’s no scientific consensus today about how everything came
into being or even why everything came into being. You have to answer that question and
deal with that problem before you can even discuss evolution or anything else. And in
order to deal with this problem, scientists for many years have posited that the universe
must be eternal. It has no beginning and no end, right? So if you’re trying to explain
why there is something rather than nothing and how there is something rather than nothing,
well, the easiest way around that is to say that the universe has always existed. It is
eternal and so nothing brought it into existence or specifically in our case, no one brought
it into existence because they say it’s always existed. However, science itself has proven
this false in many different ways. So for instance, the second law of thermodynamics,
you think about this law and it states that in a closed system, the amount of usable energy
decreases over time. And so if the universe were eternal, all of the usable energy in
the universe would have already been expended, resulting in a state of maximum entropy where
nothing could happen. And since things are still happening in the universe, this implies
to us that the universe has not always existed. It has not existed forever. Another key way
that we know that the universe is not eternal is the expansion of the universe. Observations
of distant galaxies show us that they are moving away from us at a rate proportional
to their distance. And so that suggests to us that the universe is expanding. And if
the universe had existed forever, it would have already expanded infinitely, making the
universe infinite in size. However, observations show that the universe has a finite size,
suggesting that it has not always existed forever. Another way to think about this is
that things expand outward from a point of origin, which means that the universe would
have a starting point, right? A great way to think about this is if you throw a rock
into like a lake or something, you can see the ripples expanding outward from the point
where you threw the rock. And so the fact that the universe is expanding outward means
that it had a starting point from which it began to expand. Another key observation that
lets us know the universe is not eternal is the cosmic microwave background radiation.
The cosmic microwave background radiation is the afterglow of the Big Bang and is the
oldest light in the universe. And it provides strong evidence that the universe had a beginning.
If the universe were eternal, there would be no cosmic microwave background radiation.
And so this comes back to the idea of the Big Bang. And when the idea of the Big Bang
was first posited in 1931, many people thought it was going to be the death knell for religious
believers. But it’s done just the opposite. You see, if the universe is eternal and has
always existed, it would be a death knell to religion. It would even contradict the
Bible because the very first verse in the Bible is, in the beginning, God created the
heavens and the earth. Well, that’s false if the universe has always existed. And so
if the universe is eternal, it would undermine our faith entirely. But if the universe did
begin to exist, as we know it did, well, it causes a lot more problems for scientists
than it does for Christians. Because now scientists have to explain why there is something rather
than nothing and how there is something rather than nothing. And let me just tell you, there
are no scientific theories today that adequately answered those two questions of why there
is something rather than nothing and how there is something rather than nothing. And that’s
not to say that scientists have not tried to explain it. Many have. For instance, the
great biologist and Darwinian evolutionist and fervent atheist Richard Dawkins proposed
that aliens are the solution for life on earth. I kid you not, he actually said this in an
interview when he was asked how life began on earth. He said that it was possible that
another life form more intelligent and further along than us seeded life on this planet.
And when asked about that alien species, he said that they too must have evolved by some
Darwinian means. But that doesn’t answer the question of where that life form came from
to begin with, right? You could say that they were seeded by even another life form, but
eventually you have to account for the origin of the first life form, the first intelligent
life. And so his solution fails. He might explain our existence by aliens and those
aliens existence by other aliens, but eventually you have to explain how are the first life
forms created? How did they come into being? What is their origin? And he didn’t offer
a solution to that. Another suggestion by the renowned chemist and atheist Peter Atkins,
who is also a very fervent atheist, all the people I’m going to mention are atheists.
He’s written about his theory for why and how we have something rather than nothing.
And this is his solution. I want you to pay attention to this. He says that nothing rolled
over into something. Yeah, that’s right. You heard me right. And if you’re wanting clarification,
you’re not going to find much from him. He tried to explain this theory. He’s written
about it. He talked about it in an interview. He said that there was nothing. And then at
some point, nothing rolled over into something. And that is his scientific explanation for
why and how there is something rather than nothing. The idea is so fantastical and unscientific
that it too can be easily dismissed. Then there’s the suggestion from Lawrence Krauss,
a famous physicist and atheist. And he proposed a much more likely theory, a very strong contender.
Lawrence Krauss, he wrote a book called a universe from nothing, because he knows that the data says
that there was nothing and then there was something. And so he seeks to answer that question.
How can something come from nothing? And his solution was dark matter. He proposed that the
existence of dark matter could theoretically bring about the existence of our universe. However,
I hope you can recognize the difference between a universe from nothing and a universe from the
invisible, because that’s what dark matter is. It’s invisible. We can’t see it, but that doesn’t
make it nothing. It makes it unseen. If we really want an answer to how something comes from
nothing, we have to truly start with nothing, including the existence of dark matter. That’s
what nothing is. It means there is nothing there. One other suggestion to consider is the theory of
the late Stephen Hawking, arguably the most famous and important scientists the last 100 years.
In his solution to the problem of the origins of the universe was gravity. He wrote, because there
is such a law as the law of gravity, a universe can and will create itself. But again, I want you
to notice how that commits the same error as Krauss’s theory. If there was truly nothing at
some point, then not even gravity existed. And if gravity didn’t exist, then there was no law of
gravity. So something, in this case, gravity, cannot be the cause of bringing into existence
the very thing needed to cause its own existence. You can’t say that because we have a law of
gravity, a universe can and will create itself when we’re talking about a place in time when
there was nothing. If there was nothing, there was no gravity, there was no law of gravity,
the universe cannot create itself in that way. And listen, these are the major theories in science
today as to how the universe began to exist, and they all fail miserably. Science has not and cannot
explain how and why there is something rather than nothing. And you begin to look at the problem
scientifically, and you begin to realize that the solution of the Christians, being that there is a
God in heaven who brought the universe into existence, seems to be a better fit and more
plausible than any of this major scientific theories that we have today. So I encourage you,
when someone’s trying to have this conversation about science disproving God, go back to the very
beginning. Go back to the problem of origins and try to have them explain why and how there is
something rather than nothing. They won’t be able to do it, and what they’re going to do is they’re
going to transition into a conversation about evolution. So let’s begin to think about life
in the universe after it began to exist. We’re confronted now with the problem of evolution,
and many people today think that the theory of evolution definitely disproves God, so we need to
address it. And as I said earlier, it’s important to remember that evolution is just a theory,
which means it hasn’t been proven. As much as people act like it has been, as much as
teachers and education systems want to act as though it has been proven, it is still just a
theory. And many mainstream scientists are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the current
Darwinian model of evolution, because there are a number of problems with the theory of evolution
as it’s presented today that people just tend to look over, or people aren’t familiar with. They
just know what they are told, and they regurgitate that back to us. So the first problem with
Darwinian evolution is the astronomical improbability of life being able to form according to the
Darwinian model of evolution. In order to have life, you need the basic building blocks of life,
which are things like proteins, amino acids, enzymes. Without these things, you cannot have
life. Well, if you listen to most evolutionists talk, they believe that our world in the beginning
consisted primarily of a primordial soup. The whole world was just a wasteland of this primordial
soup. And from that soup, life emerged. The problem, however, is that liquid is a terrible
environment to form enzymes. I mean, I kid you not, the National Academy of Sciences acknowledges
that two amino acids do not spontaneously join in water. Rather, the opposite reaction is
thermodynamically favored. Essentially, water breaks protein chains back down into amino acids
or other constituents, making it very difficult to produce proteins or other polymers in the
primordial soup. So it is highly unlikely that these things began to form, given the environment
in which evolutionists say our world consisted of in the beginning of this primordial soup. And
listen, you can even give them the most ideal conditions, right? Even in the most ideal
conditions, it’s still nearly impossible. In fact, there was an evolutionary scientist who
formulated a model to calculate the probability for the formation, not just of one enzyme molecule,
but the smallest likely living organism by random processes. And he found the probability, given the
most ideal environment, he found the probability to be one chance in 10 to the 340 millionth power,
in case you’re wondering, that’s 10 with 340 million zeros behind it. An analogy to help us
understand this, it would be like putting a one inch target on Pluto and then standing on Earth
and shooting a rifle into space and hitting that one inch target on Pluto. It is so improbable that
it is essentially impossible. And yet, this is the very model that is being touted as undeniable
certainty. This is the very model that’s being taught in schools and the very model that we’re
not supposed to question and that we get made fun of for questioning it. But there’s another big
problem with the theory of evolution, and that’s the lack of transitional fossils. The theory of
evolution claims that members of one species slowly evolve over time to become a new species. I mean,
the famous example of this is of chimps slowly evolving into humans. And so given that this
theory states that everything in the world today has evolved like this over time, you would think
that there would be an abundance of transitional fossils. Basically, the fossils of the various
species in between what they were to what they eventually become. However, we don’t have those
transitional fossils. In fact, a zoology textbook observed that many species remain virtually
unchanged for millions of years, then suddenly disappear to be replaced by quite different,
but related form. Moreover, most major groups of animals appear abruptly in the fossil record,
fully formed and with no fossils yet discovered that form a transition from their parent group.
I mean, even that zoology textbook is admitting that when you look at the fossil record, you find
these species that are appearing abruptly and there are no transitional species that lead to
the species that we find. However, if Darwinian evolution is true, you would expect there to be
an abundance of transitional fossils. And this perplexed Darwin himself. He thought that when we
searched the oldest layers of the fossil record, we would find single-celled organisms and would be
able to track their evolution throughout the fossil layers. However, what we actually discovered in
the oldest layers of the fossil record was an explosion of fully formed multi-celled organisms
with no biological ancestors. This undermines Darwin’s theory completely. He proposed that we
would find this single-celled organism, we’d be able to track it throughout its evolutionary process
to become what it eventually would become. And yet when we look at the oldest layers of the fossil
record today, we have an abundance of multi-cell organisms with no ancestors in the fossil layers.
But maybe the biggest problem with Darwinian evolution is that of what is called irreducible
complexity. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that before, so let me explain. Irreducible
complexity is the concept that some biological systems are so complex that they cannot be
explained by gradual step-by-step evolution. Another way to think about it is that certain
biological systems require all of their components in order to function, so they could not evolve
step-by-step as the theory of evolution claims. One of the most famous examples of this is the
bacterial flagellum, a microcellular rotary engine functioning like an outboard motor on bacteria.
To propel it through liquid medium to find food. The flagellum is irreducibly complex.
Genetic knockout experience has shown that it fails to assemble or function properly if
any one of its approximately 35 genes are missing. So in this all-or-nothing game, mutations cannot
produce the complexity needed to provide a functional flagellular rotary engine one incremental
step at a time. And the odds are too daunting for it to assemble in one great leap. So this is
essentially saying, I’m just going to try to put it in the simplest terms I can, this is essentially
saying that this flagellum cannot function without all of its components being present at one time
and functioning at one time. However, evolution, especially the Darwinian model of evolution,
says that it would gradually get these components over time, but it would not be able to function
or continue to evolve without having them all. This is the problem of irreducible complexity.
And let me tell you, it is such a big problem that Darwin himself was actually worried about
this possibility. You see in his famous work, The Origin of the Species, which most people that
you’re going to talk to at work in places that you encounter unbelievers and they say that they’re
evolutionists, most of them have never even read The Origin of the Species. But this is what Darwin
said in his work. He said, if it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed,
which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications,
listen to me, this is a direct quote from Darwin, my theory would absolutely break down. I don’t know
why we’re ignoring that today. I don’t know why people are acting like we’re crazy when we deny
Darwinian evolution. I don’t know why people today are acting like we’re the foolish ones when we
say that we doubt Darwinian evolution, because Darwin himself said that if you could find this
thing, his theory would absolutely break down and we have found it. There are a number of examples,
but the bacterial flagellum proves that it is irreducibly complex and cannot evolve in the
Darwinian model. So his theory does break down. Darwin himself admitted that and yet most people
today ignore his concerns entirely. The fact that we have discovered multiple irreducibly complex
organisms undermines the theory of evolution completely. So we could say much more about
this issue and we probably will in an upcoming episode, but suffice it to say that science
has not disproven God. I know that that’s a common claim made today, but remember we need to challenge
claims. We need to challenge undefended assertions, make people defend their positions,
make others explain why and how there is something rather than nothing, and then take notes on this
podcast. You can download the transcript, you can go and research all the things that I’ve talked
about here, but you should point out all the numerous problems with the theory of evolution
today and question why we’re still teaching it as an absolute fact when there are so many problems
with it. So thanks for the question. I really appreciate the question and I’ll look forward to
answering more in the future.