Godly Origins: Worldviews Collide: How Evidence-Based Science Supports the Biblical Worldview

By Emerson Thomas McMullen B.S. M.S. M.A. Ph.D.

There is no conflict between the Bible and science that is evidence-based. The conflict is between belief in the Biblical Worldview and belief in a non-biblical worldview. If a claim about nature is not testable or observable and then confirmable, it is not science.

This book shows where evidence-based science supports the Biblical Worldview, and where evidence-based science conflicts with the other so-called “scientific” worldviews of our modern times. For instance, experiments have shown over and over that life does not arise from chemicals, observations show that biological change is limited, chance does not cause anything, and the Big Bang violates the principle of cause and effect, is not testable, and therefore is not scientific.

In his 1859 book, On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin correctly wrote about his “belief in the transmutation of species” (p302), that “The theory of natural selection is grounded on . . . belief” (p320), and that he believed we descended from one common ancestor (p484). Darwin believed in evolution because he had no evidence. Concerning On the Origin of Species, he admitted that “the whole volume is one long argument” (p459). Concerning God, Darwin wrote about “. . . the laws impressed on matter by the Creator” (p488).

Yet, evolutionist Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago wrote that “the bulk of Darwin’s 1859 book, On the Origin of Species (first edition) actually comprises evidence for evolution.” This claim was in a 2014 letter from atheists complaining about the author to his University President. A signer of this letter (from the Freedom From Religion Foundation) was British multi-millionaire, Richard Dawkins. Atheists such as Coyne and Dawkins have no evidence for their claims that life came from chemicals, that we descended from a common ancestor, or that there is no God. They believe these claims.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jun 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9781664218826

Emerson Thomas McMullen B.S. M.S. M.A. Ph.D.

By God’s grace, Dr. McMullen earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering at Washington State University, a Master of Science degree at Southern Methodist University, and a Master of Arts and a Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University with minors in History and Religious Studies. He conducted research at the now Air Force Rocket Laboratory, Edwards Air Force Base, California; the then Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, Livermore, California; and the then Aerospace Research Laboratories, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. He has taught at four different universities, including the Air Force Institute of Technology, Air University; Indiana University, Bloomington campus: and the University of Oklahoma, Norman campus. He and his wife Sharon met at the then Air Force Rocket Propulsion Laboratory in 1964 and married a year and a half later. Their son was born at Edwards AFB, and they adopted a daughter in Dallas. Two grandchildren were born in California, two in Virginia, and one in Pennsylvania. At the moment, they have four great-grandchildren. The author was raised in the church, but in college, went his own way. God called him back to Himself through Jesus Christ in 1969. He has striven to live more biblically since then.

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Copyright © 2021 Emerson Thomas McMullen B.S. M.S. M.A. Ph.D..

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ISBN: 978-1-6642-1881-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-1882-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021900401

WestBow Press rev. date: 06/20/2023

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Figure 1. Heavenly Fireworks hint at God’s Power and Glory. An exploding star formed the Crab Nebula shown here. But where did stars come from? Did God create them by His eternal word? Or did they form according to untestable naturalistic ideas such as the Big Bang? If an idea is not testable, then it is not science. No one has a time machine, so all claims about our origins are not testable. Therefore, assumptions, which are beliefs, come into play. One can either believe in God and His word or believe in a naturalistic origin of the stars. It is belief versus belief. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Dubner (IAFE, CONICET— University of Buenos Aires) et al.; A. Loll et al.; T. Temim et al.; F. Seward et al.; VLA/NRAO/AUI/NSF; Chandra/CXC; Spitzer/JPL-Caltech; XMM-Newton/ESA; and Hubble/STScI.

ALSO BY DR. MC MULLEN:

Published:

William Harvey and the Use of Purpose in the Scientific Revolution;

Cosmos by Chance or Universe by Design?

William Harvey’s De Motu Cordis;

A New English Translation

Unpublished:

Godly Origins:

Attacked by Atheists

Godly Origins:

Heaven and Earth

Solo Deo Gloria

Trinity Presbyterian Church

Statesboro, Georgia

Senior Pastor Roland Barnes, Presiding

The TRINITY TALKS

on FAITH and

SCIENCE

Fall Conference on

SCIENTIFIC ASPECTS

of the

WORLDVIEW CONFLICT

Emerson Thomas

Tom McMullen

B.S. M.S. M.A. Ph.D.

27-29 September 2019

Great Are the Works of The Lord,

Studied By All Who Delight in Them

Psalm 111:2 (ESV)

Contents

Introduction

ATHEISTS ATTACK: WORLDVIEWS COLLIDE

Overview of the Four Talks

THE HEAVENS DECLARE THE GLORY OF GOD

Talk #1

DAWKINS, COYNE, and OTHERS ATTACK OVER CHEMICAL EVOLUTION

Talk #2

GOD, DARWIN, & BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION

Talk #3

GOD, COSMIC EVOLUTION, & RADIOMETRIC AGES

Talk #4

EXTINCTIONS as DRIVE-BY SHOOTINGS, and the GEOLOGICAL AGE of the EARTH

Epitome

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS FOR THE BOOK

Bottom Line Questions

SELF-TEST QUIZ

Appendix

THE FIRST SEVEN DAYS OF GENESIS

Epilogue

A BRIEF COMMENTARY ON GOD, GENESIS, TIME, AND ETERNITY

GLOSSARY/DEFINITIONS

About the Author:

EMERSON THOMAS MCMULLEN

Endnotes

Note: This book is an expansion of the texts of four talks at the author’s church but has fewer visuals. (In the talks, there were a total of 233 slides along with a static display of fossils, pictures, books, articles, photographs, and other supporting information.) The book’s Introduction is a summary of the subject matter.

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Figure 1a. A Rocky Mountain Ram on the Move to Higher Ground. The detailed and comprehensive genetic information in this magnificent Bighorn Sheep did not come about by the accumulation of chance mutations. Neither could it have come from chemicals, which contain no genetic data. Rather, the DNA information came from a Superior Intelligence, God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth.

Introduction

ATHEISTS ATTACK: WORLDVIEWS COLLIDE

And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for the one who comes to God must believe that He exists, and that He proves to be One who rewards those who seek Him.

Hebrews 11:6, NASB

DAWKINS CALLS OUT GEORGIA PROFESSOR. This was the headline of a blog that a colleague had printed out and handed to me. She had seen it on a Facebook post over the weekend and gave it to me as I arrived at work that Monday morning, 3 November 2014. I was not on Facebook at the time, but this news explained why I was suddenly receiving some unusual communications. I was under attack by atheists!¹

Come into my lab and prove that there is a God. So challenged an atheist in an email to me, implying that he was a scientist. His challenge, like that of other atheists, boiled down to my faith that God created us according to the Bible, versus his faith that all happened by chance. It was a collision of worldviews. This book is written to better equip those with a Biblical Worldview in answering those who hold to a different worldview.²

God’s existence needs no scientific proof. His creativity, craftsmanship, power, and wisdom are behind the scientific laws, the incredible details in the genetic information carried by the DNA in living beings, and the design and the engineered aspects of those living things. Even Charles Darwin, not a Christian and into materialism, understood these things. In the first edition of his On the Origin of Species and all subsequent ones, he handled the origin of natural laws by appealing to the Creator.³ Further, in his second edition and all subsequent ones, Darwin added that the grandeur of life was originally breathed into a few forms or into one by the Creator. ⁴

While the existence of God is apparent in nature, the steps God took in creating and then redeeming everything are spelled out in the Bible. Here are the real stumbling blocks, and where biblical faith comes into play. One has to believe Jesus’ claims in the Bible: For instance, Jews at the Temple in Jerusalem asked Jesus If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered that " I and the Father are one." Thinking this to be blasphemy, "The Jews picked up stones again to stone him." (John 10:24, 30 - 31, ESV). Obviously, Jesus claimed to be God and His listeners understood that claim but rejected it.

Biblically, God became a man, Jesus, in order to save humankind from their sins, the penalty for sin being death. Belief in Jesus is the only way to God. About this Jesus said I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me (John 14:6, NKJV). Paul believed this. He told his jailer in Philippi that there is no other name under heaven that has been given among mankind by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12, NASB). The biblical Jesus is the answer to everything. But at one time in my life, I thought that possibly science had the answers.

Paradigm-Driven Subjectivity in Science

Thomas Kuhn describes a scientific paradigm as the conceptual box with which a researcher interprets his/her data. This paradigm is often supplied by professional education. ⁵ Kuhn pointed out that we have paradigm-driven, subjective interpretations in science. I prefer to call this theory-driven subjectivity.

Similarly, Norwood Russell Hanson has shown that there is theory-driven subjectivity in observations as well. ⁶ Finally, we also have theory-driven deceit in science, examples of which are in my next book. In sum, we have theory-driven subjectivity at many levels in science: Observation, interpretation, and reporting.

The solution to subjectivity in science is to rely on evidence-based information and data. This entails testable ideas or observable claims about nature. As Sir Karl Popper has taught, if a claim about nature is not capable of being tested, it is not scientific.

The Core of a Worldview is Belief

The core of one’s worldview is the set of beliefs one holds. This book underscores faith in the biblical God versus faith in chance happenings regarding the history of our origins. The belief that we happened by chance, or that the material universe is all that there is, may have complex calculations, logical reasoning, and scientific wording added to it, but that does not make it scientific. Something is scientific if it is testable and repeatable, or observable and confirmable.

No one has a time machine, so ideas about our origins and their history are not testable and therefore, not scientific. Further, if an idea is shown to be wrong, it is not scientific either. Thus, statements about the origins of the universe, the earth, life, and humans are not science, either being not testable or just wrong. Science’s testable strength is dealing with the present, not with the past. The study of the past is more the purview of history than science. Speculations concerning our origins are beliefs and not science.

Examples of beliefs about our origins are 1) that life came from chemicals, 2) that we descended from a common ancestor, and 3) that the present is key to the past. I call these popularized myths about our origins Pop Sci since they are passed off as scientific in our popular culture. The Apostle Peter refers to these as cunningly devised fables (2 Peter 1:16). They constitute a worldview. The correct worldview is that God created as spelled out in the Bible.

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Figure 1b. The Flame Nebula. "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge." Psalm 19:1 (NIV). ⁷ Image credit: NASA JPL-Caltech.

Worldviews and Origins

The Book of Genesis in the Bible presents a history of our origins. Genesis is written as an historical narrative, and not as poetry or allegory. There is poetry and allegory in the Bible, but Genesis is history. That Genesis is a history of our origins was confirmed by Jesus and others in the New Testament. For example, Jesus, speaking to the Pharisees, quoted from Genesis 1 and Genesis 2: He answered, Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? (Matthew 19:4-5, ESV.) ⁸ That biblical origins are history ultimately involves belief in biblical claims. As shown above, in my exchange with the atheist, origins come down to faith in a basic belief about the world in which we live. For example, some major worldviews start with belief in:

1) The infinite/personal God of the Bible (Elohim/Jesus), Creator and Redeemer.

2) The gods of Chance, (Big Bang, Ebisu, Evolution, Fortuna, Gad, Tyche, etc.).

3) The personified gods (Dagon, Jupiter, Mother Nature, P’an Ku, Odin, Vishnu, etc.).

4) The gods of Destiny (Ananke, Determinism, Fate, Natural Law, Necessitas, etc.).

5) The indefinite, mystical gods, (Brahman, Life Force, The Great Spirit, etc.).

My worldview starts with the God Who reveals Himself in the Bible, which consists of the Old and New Testaments. The Bible presupposes an infinite/personal God, Elohim/Jesus. It reveals God’s character, describes His creative power, and interactions with His creation, especially with mankind. From this start, the Biblical Worldview makes historical and universal claims. For instance, one outworking of the Biblical Worldview is that God made mankind separate from the animals, and He commands that we should love God and love our neighbors as ourselves, as Jesus states in Mark 12:29-31. All other worldviews, with their own historical and universal claims, oppose the Biblical Worldview in whole or in part. Hence, we have collisions of worldviews, often involving science.

The Biblical Worldview (The Wisdom of God)

1) God created heaven and the earth from nothing. He made the sun, moon, and stars. This requires faith in God and His Word, the Bible.

2) God created from nothing, DNA information, energy, and the laws of nature.

3) God made plants, fish, fowl, and animals separately, each after its own kind. God engineered flexibility into the genome of each of His created kinds so that they could expand into different environmental niches and eventually fill the earth.

4) God created mankind, male and female, in His own image, and separate from the animals. He is responsible for the various languages among mankind.

5) God made everything in six rotations of our earth. He did this in order, day by day. Setting the example for architects, engineers, and others, He laid the foundation, or base, on one day, which He then built upon the next day. Each commandment demonstrated cause and effect. This set the pattern for 1) understanding nature and 2) mankind’s six-day work week as commanded in Exodus 20:8-11. This work week is part of the Ten Commandments, which also include a moral code.

6) God brought about a worldwide cataclysmic flood to check the rampant evil of a fallen world. The Flood covered the earth higher than the highest peak that existed in the pre-Flood world. This cataclysmic flood is the cause of many present geological features from petrified forests to caught-in-the-act fossils.

7) God is eternal, all-powerful, has total free will, is unchanging, and sustains everything by the word of His power (this includes natural laws, electromagnetism, nuclear forces, and gravity).

Fig1c%20Grand%20Canyon%20Author.jpg

Figure 1c. A Helicopter view of the Indian Lands of the Grand Canyon. Almost all cultures around our world have legends and traditions of a great flood. For instance, the Hualapai Indians, whose lands include part of the Grand Canyon, have a story of a destructive, global flood that is further supported by petroglyphs. The best explanations for both the Grand Canyon’s formation and its stratigraphy are that they are the result of a worldwide catastrophic flood as described in the Book of Genesis.

The Pop Sci Worldview¹ (Wisdom of the World without God)

1) Without God, and from nothing, high-temperature energy suddenly appeared by chance. Some of that energy, over very long periods of time and by chance, made the stars, the earth, and everything else, humans included. This is cosmic evolution.

2) By chance (a philosophical notion), and over long periods of time, non-living matter made life. This is chemical evolution.

3) The first life had unlimited variability and, over long periods of time, was the common ancestor to all plants, fish, fowl, animals, and humans. Every living thing, from eggplants to elephants, is descended by chance mutations from that one common ancestor. This is biological evolution.

4) Mankind descended from the animals over long periods of time by chance mutations. Called human evolution, its invoking of chance implies that there are no moral laws, meaning, or purpose in life.

5) There was no worldwide flood such as Noah’s. Past geological processes occurred slowly, over long periods of time, according to the same processes observed today. Generally, this worldview is called uniformitarianism as opposed to catastrophism. Catastrophism allows for geological events to happen quickly and to be larger, with bigger effects than observed today.

6) The origins of natural laws, genetic information, and languages are not agreed upon, except that somehow, God did not do it. Similarly, scientists do not know how natural laws sustain themselves, but they somehow know that God does not sustain them. This exclusion of God is the case with all Pop Sci/naturalistic worldviews concerning origins. Secularists and humanists do not know when or how something came about, but somehow, they do know that God did not do it.

Some Major Themes of this Book

A major theme of this book is that there is no conflict between the Bible and evidence-based science. Related themes are 1) to identify where evidence-based science supports the Bible, 2) to show where evidence-based science conflicts with other worldviews of our modern times, and 3) to use evidence-based science to "demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, . . ." (2 Corinthians 10:5, NIV).

Theistic evolutionists have a halfway position with biological evolutionists who believe man evolved by chance from animals over millions of years. Theistic evolutionists ignore biblical genealogies and believe in long, non-biblical ages for the emergence of humans. However, Jesus said, But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female (Mark 10:6, KJV). Also, concerning human evolution, part of the broad genealogy of Jesus in The Gospel of Luke says Seth is the son of Adam and that Adam is the son of God (Luke 3:38). Adam did not descend from animals. A worldview on origins is either biblical, or it is not. Theistic evolution is not biblical, and we will see the details of why it is not scientific either.

This book covers the Biblical Worldview about our origins, especially from the book of Genesis, Chapters 1 through 11. As just mentioned, it shows evidence-based science that supports the Bible and evidence-based science that conflicts with modern worldviews. My goal is to challenge speculations, arguments, imaginations, presumptions, and arrogance raised against God. This is in keeping with 2 Corinthians 10:5.

Scientists are not neutral. Their core worldview biases them one way or another. When a materialistic philosophy causes scientists’ beliefs to be biased, and unfortunately it frequently does, usually the results are incorrect. When scientists do test their naturalistic conjectures, the evidence-based results reveal that these assumptions often could be not just wrong, but terribly wrong.

More About the Book

This book expands on four successive talks at my church in 2019. In the time allotted, I showed where evidence-based science supports the Biblical Worldview on origins, and where evidence-based science conflicts with, and sometimes falsifies (disproves), secular, naturalistic worldviews.

Generally, the talks covered four major areas. The first three concerned the origins and history of the universe, life, and mankind. The fourth presented a catastrophic worldview of geology, in which change can be very rapid. This is opposed to the belief in a uniformitarian worldview in which change happens slowly over long periods of time.

Various Summaries and a Commentary

The Overview of the Four Talks summarizes the collision of worldviews concerning science. The Figures and their captions are, in their own way, a summary of the teaching in the book. Summary and Conclusions is after Talk #4, which is toward the end of the book. Also a summary is the 30-point list, Bottom Lines Questions, which is in the form of a quiz.

The material in this book is a scientific commentary on God’s creation and actions from Chapters 1 and 11 of Genesis and a somewhat autobiographical critique of scientism. It is summarized from two unpublished manuscripts, Origins: Attacked by Atheists, and Origins Heaven and Earth

Acknowledgments

I thank Jim Zarrello for reading and commenting on earlier drafts. I thank Senior Pastor Roland Barnes for his prayers, introductions, and role as moderator during the question-and-answer portion of the talks I gave at his church. I give thanks to all those involved in the modern biblical creation movement including Answers In Genesis, Creation Ministries International, the Creation Research Society, and the Institute for Creation Research.

Most of all, I thank the Lord Jesus Christ, Creator of the universe, for His redeeming sacrifice on the cross and for His Holy Word.

Fig1d%20Flower%20Romans%20Cptr%201%20vs20%20author.jpg

Figure 1d. The Wisdom of God in the Works of Creation. God’s craftsmanship, creativity, intelligence, power, and wisdom are behind the design, the engineered details, the scientific laws, and the breathtaking beauty we see throughout the entire Universe. "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, being understood by what has been made" . . . Romans 1:20, NASB.

Overview of the Four Talks

THE HEAVENS DECLARE THE GLORY OF GOD

The skies declare the glory of his hands. ⁹

Psalms 19:1, NIV

THE HEAVENS

The Wisdom of God and the Wisdom of the World ¹⁰

Stars blazed so beautifully in the deep night sky of the Mojave Desert. These skies were stunningly clear in the 1960s at my first duty station at the then Air Force Rocket Propulsion Laboratory (now the Rocket Laboratory) at Edwards Air Force Base, California. A part-time heavenly hobby emerged. I soon purchased a pair of 7x50 binoculars and a field guide to the stars and subscribed to both Astronomy and Sky and Telescope magazines. ¹¹ The heavens were declaring the glory of God even though He did not have anywhere near first place in my heart at that time.

Fig2%20The%20Orion%20Nebula%20nasa.jpg

Figure 2. Stars Inside the Great Nebula in Orion, M42. Also known as the Orion Nebula and the Great Orion Nebula, it is a real beauty. Its interior view is imaged here in infrared light. The heavens declare the glory of God and not the meaninglessness of naturalistic cosmological ideas, such as the Big Bang or other origins stories in which things happen by chance. Image credit: NASA, R. Villaverde, HLA.

Stars as constellations constituted my very earliest acquaintance with astronomy. Also, there were other naked-eye observations such as comets, eclipses, the aurora borealis (the Northern Lights), planets, and shooting stars. Because of that assignment to the desert, astronomy developed into a long-term interest. However, there were conflicting worldviews concerning the history of those stars, namely belief in some ideas about origins such as the Big Bang, as opposed to faith in creation by God.*² In time, a related interest would emerge, which was the wisdom of God versus the wisdom of the world.

Stars in the open spaces and far reaches of the desert sky show the universe’s depth and expansiveness. What does that say about God, who created the universe, and all things in it?¹² God is greater than all that we see, either when we are scanning the sky from horizon to horizon with our eyes or viewing through telescopes deeper into the vast voids of space.

Stars’ abundant and expansive dispersion across the sky signals that God has this awesome and cosmic greatness. However, there are, and were, those who claim there is no God. They think the material world is all there is, and that the universe somehow started by chance, such as with the Big Bang, which is not scientific and so requires a lot of belief.

Stars magically formed, at least according to Big Bang belief, millions of years after the miraculous and very sudden appearance of energy that then expanded. (In the early 1900s, work by astronomers, including Edwin Hubble, had revealed an expanding universe.) Besides stars, some of that energy marvelously became matter that combined to eventually make everything, including us, in about 13.8 billion years. (In this book I treat the Big Bang separately from the later idea of Inflation, which today often is combined with the Big Bang.)

Stars supposedly forming from the Big Bang, or similar origins ideas, are faith-based Pop Sci creation stories. The Big Bang and related stories involve a mystical miracle at the beginning or else rely on something being eternal besides God. Also, the abrupt