CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS (or EVIDENCES)
Introduction
Text: "Be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled (alarmed), but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and (moreover) be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is within you with meekness and fear" (I Pet. 3:15).
This text is a natural starting point for our course, since it contains the very word from which our course derives Its name. It is the word "answer back"- -apologian, translated into the English "Apologetics" -- to "answer back" -- so a defense, not an excuse: Here a verbal defense in logical account of your in ward hope, but in the spirit of godly reverence and human meekness.
It is the mark of any false system of science or religion that it cannot bear the light of research or investigation. It can only survive in the congenial atmosphere of superstition and credulity. It abhors honest criticism and reasonable investigation. But the God of the Bible hasn’t asked us for blind faith and superstitious acceptance of His Word. It is true that in the realm of answered prayer, we must, "believe to see the goodness of the Lord" not "seeing is believing." But when the word "faith" is used of the sum total of "what is most assuredly believed among us" as in Jude, "Earnestly contend for the faith which was once and for all delivered unto the Saints then it refers to our doctrinal tenets. Here God gives us "the many infallible proofs", solid evidences upon which reason may reflect and accept -- not blind faith. Here we have "an apology for the reason of the hope that is within us." The Bible is not afraid of honest, friendly, logical investigation; but contrariwise it invites it. God has based His whole system of religion, and divine revelation upon the firmest of foundations that will stand the test of honest criticism under the rules of evidences. This our whole course shall endeavor to prove. The God who made the human reason, appeals to it, "Come let us reason together, saith the Lord.:" He doesn't outrage it. He wants our faith to rest upon the dictates of intelligence as well as submission of faith.
Christian apologetics, then, approaches the subjects of God, the Bible, the person of Jesus Christ and His work. from the standpoint of philosophy, appealing to reason. It answers primarily the "why" of what we believe. God has placed w1thin the soul of every man an inquiring mind that won't be satisfied with half-answers, camouflage, blind credulity. This innate, God-given attribute of our intellect is seen in the child's irritating oft repeated, "Why?" to every answer you give them. It is also seen in the scientists' research into all natural phenomena. We sant to know the reason for things. As a child it made me tear down the family clock to what made it tick . This demand is no less seen in the realism of the spiritual.
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So as our text says, "To give a reason for the hope that is within you." Not only to believe, but to know why you believe.
2. To remove all honest doubt. Note, we say "honest doubt." There is a dishonest doubt which refuses all light because it wants to. White well says, "The mind of the bigot is like the pupil of the eye, the more light thrown upon it, the smaller it gets." Most dishonest doubt arises from a perversion of the will. The Bible variously describes it. love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil", and "they will not come to the light lest their deeds be reproved." Paul calls it, "An evil heart of unbelief." So Peter calls it, "This they are willingly ignorant of." It arises from a heart opposed to God. So Jesus said of them and evidences, "they would not believe though one arose from the dead." There is no proof, no demonstration, no evidence, to convince such dishonest doubt. The will can so set itself against the light that it hoodwinks the mind into believing a lie, at the expense of reason itself. Jesus said, "If any man will do His will, He shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself" (Jn. 7:17). But there is such a thing as an honest doubt, maybe implanted at school or by other means, honest inquiry, and the evidences will dispel such, or remove the cloak of sinful ignorance.
3. Intelligent faith makes for steadfast believers, with a robust, solid foundation both upon which to build their own experiences and trust, and to win others. God's order is, "facts, faith, then feelings." "Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God."
PART ONE--THE BEING OF GOD
The Christian's viewpoint, from the Bible, is commonly called THEISM. The denial of the existence of a personal God is called, ANTI-THEISM, & theism, infidelity, and some which in fact mean as much, such as agnosticism. Atheists, because they cannot isolate a small particle of God’s essence in a test tube to analyze and synthesize, cannot bring themselves to believe in His existence. They bring the wrong faculties to the test of finding God. There are many realities which cannot be so found. You cannot analyze love, friendship, kindness, hatred, beauty, harmony, truth, justice in a test tube. Psychology has had the same hard time defining all these abstract facts or realities by materialistic concepts and origins such as glandular secretions or nervous. A God who could be analyzed or synthesized would be no God at all. So a God who could even be defined would be no God at all. A definition is to give the dimensions, outlines, borders, limitations. How can you define the infinite God? In this division we shall array the evidences for the existence or character of the personal God, who is presented in the Bible.
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The Bible says of Him, "For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made, even His eternal power and God head" (Rom. 1:20). "So that they are without excuse." And "the heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shewoth His handy work" (Ps. 19:1). His handy work marks the footprints of the great Creator throughout all His great works. It is from these we are logically to deduce His eternal power and Godhead, Christian Apologetics would argue the invisible things of God from the things seen, yea, "clearly seen."
Our faith in the existence and personality of God does not rest upon arguments, but is only confirmed and strengthened by thorn. We do not have to apply the syllogistic method of Aristotle to climb the ladder of logic to find out God, Neither is faith in God's existence a result of a long, complicated chain of inference. It starts as an intuition of the soul, but philosophical reflection may clarify the picture, verifying the truth by two witnesses.
The Bible nowhere argues the existence of God but simply states and assumes the universal belief in God’s reality. See Gen. 1:1, "In the beginning God." So Heb. 1:1; Jn. 1:1. (We develop this into the Ontological argument later.)
We shall develop five principle arguments:
1. The Cosmological argument.
2, The Ontological argument.
3. The Teleological argument.
4. The Moral argument.
5. The argument from Congruity
I. THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT.
The word Cosmological comes from the Greek, equaling world of orderly arrangement, and "Logos,' word, study, science, or discourse. It has been called also
CAUSAL ARGUMENT. Simply states, the Cosmological argument rests upon the universal law of causation. Every event, every effect must have a cause. It is the arguing from effects to causes, until the FIRST CAUSE IS REACHED. EVERY EVENT MUST HAVE A CAUSE. That is the ultimate, simple, intuitive, universal, inexorable fact. It exhausts every phenomena we know. Naught can be excluded in our thinking of all observable phenomena, from the atom to the stellar universe. Each must have a definite, adequate cause. To remove the cause one time or a quintillion times backwards will not take it to causeless existence, except it be the adequate, powerful, First Cause. If He had a cause, what a stupendous cause must it he, itself God.
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The believer has but one mystery, one unexplained cause, the First Cause, one incomprehensible--God. All else is explained. The atheist has everything incomprehensible, everything mysteriously run by some God called science, mother nature, or natural law, inherent forces, etc. The believer has one uncaused cause, the atheist has every effect without a cause.
So the intuitional reasoning demands that every effect must have a cause. By illustration, in the early morning an Arab sees the footprint of a camel at his tent door. It makes but passing impression upon him. Ho knows the cause; he is familiar with the animal that made it. But the stranger sleeping there that night is all excitement and anxious to see the animal that ma de it0 The atheistic scientist, naturalist, philosopher seeing the footprint of the Creator denies any casualty, and if driven to admit one, denies its know ability. The evolutionists, the empirical psychologist, and many philosophers affirm, "The foot print made itself." It evolved from prior conditions of soil and wind by resident forces, but common sense says something made it, and by pattern, uniformity, etc. it must he an animal and not some magmata force.
The law of causation stated.
There are two methods of reasoning in a chain:
1. The "a priori" method, which is the reasoning from cause to effect, from generalizations to particulars, deductive reasoning. In our apologetics this is impossible since the cause is what we seek to deter mine and therefore must be assumed in a priori reasoning.
2. The second method is a posteriori—-which is reasoning from effect to cause, from particular instances to generalization or inductive reasoning. This is the method we use in the cosmological arid succeeding arguments. Hero we start with no assumptions. The effects are facts needing no proof. They are not in dispute. It is the cause that is denied. Here we are reasoning from the particulars to the generalization, all the manifold effects point backward to one first adequate Cause, Webster defines effect - :"That which is produced by a cause," Here is the basic truth, "every effect must have a cause." Given any effect and the mind automatically asks for the cause. There is no such thing as an uncaused effect. This basic intuitive principle is grounded in all rational thinking. Leibnitz considered the causal principle the most important primary law of logical thought.
Given any effect and the mind unerringly asks for the cause. You see it in the persistent "why" of the child.
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You see it in the deepest of scientific exploration into nature's mysteries. Without it, there would be no science or discovery, no advancement.
Furthermore, the law of cause arid effect is universal. If you stay in Tampa some night, and awaken in the morning to the blast of an explosion, you absolutely must ask, "why?" What caused it? But a Chinese, an Indian, an Egyptian must just as naturally ask "why" or "what caused that?" Will any be satisfied with the answer the atheist must give, "Nothing caused it", "It caused itself". "Inherent forces within itself caused it". "it is a causeless effect."
I see an automobile, shining new, symmetrical, intricate parts, runs, etc. I say, made that?’ The evolutionist says, "It had no maker, or some vague thing called natural law made it, or mother nature made", But to deny any cause of its existence is certainly to outrage all logical processes of my mind. Why then should I be satisfied with their answer to all the wonders of the human body, the stars, nature, etc.?
Did you know that it takes as long to make a cow as it does to make a battleship? But man can make a battleship but only God can make a cow. Yet man will allow that the battleship, as an effect, has a cause in man's intelligence and personality, but allow the same of a cow. Yet a cow is a lot more intricately made than a battleship. More plumbing, fueling, locomotion, communication, distribution, reproduction, and useful than a battleship.
3. THE UNIFORMITY OF THE LAW OF CAUSATION (A PROOF of its necessity.)
Mills, Comte, and Hume saw the force of the argument of Cosmology but tried to "explain" it, and as an argument against it, by substituting the so-called law of succession without relation, (Bob Ingersoll with lesser ability tried to use it also.) In other words, any seeming relation between antecedent and sequence is only a coincidence. It is only a coincidence after all between cause and effect, and not a fixed law of relation. Here again it is only a philosopher (foolosopher) who could have every thought up that one. It is but a coincidence that H20 always makes water, only chance. Then why is it invariable?
These philosophers give this illustration to try to prove their point. The ancients in Egypt always noted that the dog star, Sirius, always appeared when the Nile began to rise, and therefore surmised that the star caused the Nile to rise. Here it was but coincidence. See, they say, that is all the so-called cause and effect. But coincidence is but a sham in accident, merely appearance not relation.
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But all true cause end effect has true relation, cause causes the effect, and does so uniformly. Given the same cause and always there is the same effect. What is that but real relation?
If all causation wore but coincidence, there would not be uniformity. Why is there never a break in true causation? Why is all farming based on the fixation of nature? All business, all science, and research, all travel? We expect no change in natural law of cause end effect, no sudden repeal. We are not afraid to mix H20 for fear of getting an explosion Instead of water. The chemist knows the same cause that effected water last year will do so this year and as often as he wished to use it. The stability of the universe depends on the law of cause and effect. This uniformity points to the necessity of believing in the law of cause and effect, and points to it as an intuition of the mind.
BUT THIS LEADS US TO THE ULTIMATE CONCLUSION OF CAUSE AND EFFECT, GOING BACKWARD--
C. THE EFFICIENT OR FIRST CAUSE.
Without going into the deeper logical philosophical chain of inference leading backward from every cause to a FIRST CAUSE, we wish to state the simpler form of argument here.
There are two axiomatic laws of nature sot forth by physicists and natural philosophy which have a bearing on our argument:
l. The law of the status quo in nature, "in all the physical change in nature the quantity of matter remains the same." So creation could not be the result of any infinite chain of cause end effect. The amount would never have increased. For change effects no change of substance into a greater amount. Change creates not one iota of matter. Hence all atheists are led into the absurdity of "THE ETERNALITY OF MATTER" ascribing infinitude to the finite. The sum total remains fixed from some "beginning" neither increased or decreased. (Later, in teleology we shall see it is winding down in tension, however, and must have been would up at once,) in the law of Entropy. Nature knows naught of creation or annihilation. The sum total of energy and matter remains fixed. Spencer, the evolutionist said, "The genesis of an atom, is no easier to conceive than the genesis of a planet."
2. The law of inertia. "Any body standing still will stand still forever unless a force outside itself starts it in motion. Any body moving will move on forever unless a force outside itself stops it. Even Plato recognized the need of a MOVER." A motion requires a mover.
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With these two laws in mind, let us state our ultimate conclusion of God as the First and Adequate Cause of all phenomena. As we trace every effect to its cause, we are led back wards to an ultimate CAUSE, and that an efficient cause, adequate to every effect. If there is no First Cause, then we must believe in an infinite chain of finite causes--a palpable absurdity, You cannot have an infinite chain made up of finite links.
The ultimate, or First Cause, must be greater than all the effects eminating from it. It is axiomatic in Geometry, "The whole is greater than any of its parts." Also. the eternality of God is here postulated, since He must antedate every effect to effect it. He is more powerful than all the phenomena of nature from the tiniest atom, to the largest universe, all of it together. He is more eternal since Ho started it. Here the atheistic evolutionists show their illogical thinking. Their "explanations of origins" read-like a fairytale.
For illustration: The atomic dust theory. Life came to this planet riding atomic dust. (Flaming meteor white hot) But where did the dust come from, and where did the lire come from? To push it to another planet, or universe doesn't "explain" its origin, I must press for FIRST CAUSE.
There is the atom theory of Democritus, atheist, who wrote before Christ came to earth. He makes all chance, but fails to explain origins again. "In the ages past only original atoms, which by their own affinities were drawn together by combinations, various and singular, complex and simple, the earth and everything appeared." But hold it a minute, "Where did the atoms come from (be just as many as now), Where did the motion, energy to draw, come from?"
Berkley, from whom Mary Baker Eddy borrowed heavily, would up in a fogbank -- "No real universe at all, no real matter, just appearance, illusion, all in the mind." Hold it Bud, whore did the mind come from, to realize the mere appearance?
Prof. Edwin Conklin, one of America’s greatest biologists, of Princeton University said, "The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probabilities of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing factory."
Even Cicero wrote -- "It is as sensible to suppose the Iliad was written by shaking the letters in a bag as to suppose the universe made itself."
D. SUMMATION OF THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT..
1. An infinite succession of finite changeable objects is a palpable contradiction incapable of logical belief that is An infinite chain of finite links hanging on nothing.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 9
2. If the effects we see are real, and not Berkley's illusion, then they must have had a Maker.
3. All existence as a result of causation, must have an exterior self—existence as a starter, superior to, and ulterior to, all existence.
4. Either all the effects we see are self-existing (contrary to all observation) or they were made.
5. If all effects were made, they must have had a Maker,
6. As there cannot be an infinite progression of cause and effect, there must be an all-powerful, self—existing, sufficient, under rived, First Cause, who started it all.
The argument is simple, conclusive and unanswerable. The greatest of philosophers have stumbled over it, denied it, but admitted it was a logical necessity to believe. Kant called it, "Spacious Sophism", but admitted its logical necessity. Would it be false then?
One must choose Gen. 1:1, "In the beginning God" or chance,
nothing. Either God n nothing is the First Cause.
PART TWO--THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT (Gk. “on” or being)
Strictly speaking, the ontological argument belongs to the realm of metaphysical speculation as in a prior argument. It is to be found first in germ form in the writings of Plato, Anselm, the schoolmen, Des Cartes, then Leibnitz. It is in their form open to serious criticism as any a prior argument. It is a profound argument, apprehended by but a few keen minds. We will give but a few forms of it here for your consideration, without using It ourselves--Kant outlines it thus, "Perfect being contains all reality, and it is admitted that such a being is possible; that is to say, that its existence implies no contradiction. Now all reality supposes existence. There is, therefore, a thing possible in the concept of which is comprised existence. If this thing be denied, the possibility of its existence is also denied, which is contradictory to the proceeding, "Kant’s Criticism of Cousin's Philosophy," pp. 120.
Anselms' in brief -- "This God Who is the Greatest, for that is our concept of God--this Greatest couldn’t live in the intellect alone, for then it would be possible to conceive of a greater, which wouldn’t live in the intellect alone but in external reality. Hence the greatest must exist at the same time, in our thoughts as the Greatest, and also in reality. God therefore is not simply conceived by man, but really exists." (In His "Proslogion.")CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 10
Leibnitz in essence--"God is, if He is possible, because His possibility-—that is to say, His essence itself——carries with it His existence and because it would be contradiction to recognize this essence and refuse it existence.” (Ibid., P. 123)
Kant has raised some insuperable arguments against these forms of the ontological argument. We shall follow a simpler form using the universal intuition within man usually reserved f or the Anthropological argument. Stated simply, our argument is
--"The very idea of God is a proof that there must be a God. If not, where did the idea of God originate Here again the casual argument holds good. It is not enough to say blithely, "It came from tradition." That only explains transmission not origin. Neither will it suffice to say, "The idea of God is a product of universal reason." That doesn't take us to the answer, that is the very question we raise, "How came universal reason to get the idea first?" "If there wasn’t a God out there upon Whom to think, how came man to think about Him in t he first place?” If there is no God to think upon, how could man have ever conceived the idea of God? Man has the idea of God. Every man has it. Why?
The idea of God Is as universal as the human race. Even the atheist arguing, "there is no God" is proving the ontological argument for God’s existence. The atheist who swears using God's name in blasphemy is proving the ontological argument.
A. The belief in God is intuitional, and proves there is a God.
The intuition is that portion of our natures especially of reason which contains elementary knowledge which we do not have to learn, but Is only recognized, classified, and expounded by learning. The truths which are self-evident and innate to us. We do not come to their reality by learning and study, but we are born with them as logical original equipment. Therefore, when we say the belief in the existence of God is intuitional, it is written origin ally upon our very natures at birth, It doesn't mean that the child knows all about God, and recognized God at birth or even in childhood, nor does it mean that the knowledge can not be prostituted into wrong conceptions. But that it is a necessary belief.
There are three unfailing marks of an Intuitional truth.
1. Universality. There are no men anywhere without the Idea of God. Darwin mistakenly thought he had found some among the Patagonians. But it was his ignorance of their language and customs, not their lack of a god. (And a lot of his own wishes.) Religion is prior to civilization.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 11
The Bible brings no new faith in a Supreme Being to the aborigine, but a revelation of the true God and His love. Like Paul at Mars Hill.
2. Necessity. By this we do not mean it cannot denied, but the mind is compelled to accept it. Kant defines it, "Necessity is that of which negation is impossible." The mind must accept it, is compelled to. To deny it is to lead into absurdity and contradiction. As we shall see of the soul and self-existence.
3. Logical independence or priority. By this we mean irreducible minimum. The mind cannot go any further back. So a self-evident truth. Self-authenticating truth. Like the intuition of my self-consciousness. I do not need to prove to myself that I am, that I live, in fact, how can I? To me it is self evident. So with my personal identity. I know I remember what happened to me ten years ago, that it was I, not some one else.
All intuitions fall into these three markings. Such as my own self-consciousness, to the fact of real matter, space, time, cause, and effect, and God. Yet all have been denied by philosophers such as Berkley, the empirical philosophers as the sensationalists. You can only believe what your sensations tell you and they may be in error, and all the materialistic philosophers, who make man but the product of insensible nature. None explains the origin of intuition, especially of God in the soul of all men. CERTAINLY, IF THERE IS NO GOD, THE BIGGEST FARCE IN THE UNIVERSE IS MAN’S BELIEF IN ONE, AND THE BIGGEST LIE IN THE UNIVERSE IS HIS INTUITION, WITHOUT A REALITY. The very universal intuitive idea of God proves there is a God.
There are two basic arguments we can use here to bolster our proofs:
1. It is Impossible for man to conceive absolutely new truth, or ideas. All our knowledge is relative. Men may distort, twist, combine old truth into new grotesque forms, but it is still old known facts. This is a well-known law of psychology and philosophy. In Locke’s words, "The mind can frame unto itself no new simple ideas." William James, "Principles of Psychology," P. 302 -- ”The blind may dream of sights, the deaf of sounds for years after they have lost their sight or hearing; but the man born deaf can never be made to imagine what sound is like, nor the man born blind ever have a mental vision."
So a man may reassemble into all kinds of fantastic shapes known objects but not new simple ideas, outside his experience.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 12
Hence man could never have conceived the idea of God if there wasn't a God who wrote on man's nature His reality. Here is the idea of God, universal, all-compelling, and indelible. How can men say, "There is no God"?
2. The law of correlation in nature. All naturalists recognize it. Every demand in nature demands also a supply. Every hunger, demands some answering supply, every instinct a fulfillment. Appetite implies food; love of truth, the reality of truth; lungs implies oxygen; wings on birds implies air in which to fly; fins on a fish, water in which to swim; but greatest of all the idea of God, the hunger for God, the desire to worship implies a God in reality. Man’s feeling of obligations, we shall see in the moral argument, Implies a Supreme Judge to Whom he is responsible. The only correlation to the universal intuition of God, is a real, living, personal, supreme God, or every intuition is a lie.
This, then, is the Ontological argument. The ideal of God in the mind of man demands there must be a reality externally in correspondence. God is,
PART THREE--THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
The teleological argument is closely linked with the cosmological argument and in fact issues from it. In the latter we inquire into the cause of things we experience, but in the former we look behind cause to design, or the reason behind the cause. Not only do we come to the conclusion that every thing had an adequate cause, but in searching for that cause we see design, and where there is design there must be a Designer. The law of causation proves that there is an all powerful force which is adequate to bring about every effect we see in nature, but teleology, finding design and purpose in nature, shows that this adequate cause must be an intelligent supervision. This argument loads us further into the nature of the First Cause. It opens a whole new line of conception concerning God. Causation just shows the presence of force, infinite force, adequate force, capable of producing the well nigh infinite variety of effects in nature, but from it alone, the personality of that force is undetermined, However, in pursuing the Teleological argument, a broader field of inquiry Is opened to us, to perceive the presence of intellect in the First Cause, and intellect is only the product of personality. cannot conceive of intellect apart from personality. A personality analogous to our own. There, therefore, must be present in the almighty First Cause all the attributes of personality in infinite degree, which are found in our personality in finite degree.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 13
Hero our understanding of the First Cause is increased to include the fact that He is personal, living, possessing memory, conscience, judgment, volition, perception, cognition, emotion, with all the power of reasoning and thought. Here is the road of Teleology.
We can state it syllogistically:
Order, harmony, design are only the products of intelligence.
There is order, harmony, and design in nature.
Conclusion--Nature is a product of intelligence.
We wish to separate the Teleological argument into two of its primary divisions. The first is the Eutaxeological Argument:
the presence of plan, design, geometrical proportions, beauty in nature. Second, the Final Cause, or the presence of purpose, adaptation, or intention in. nature, utility.
A. THE FIRST CONSIDERATION IN TELEOLOGY IS THAT THERE IS DESIGN IN NATURE.
Using the alter-meaning of design, pattern, order of structure, intricate design traceable everywhere. Let us consider the substitute "creator" of the atheistic evolutionists, Law working only by blind chance as an introduction to both of those divisions of pattern and purpose. We won't take the time to quote from them here, but only to give their conclusions. They all maintain no need of a personal Creator, or intelligent supervision in creation. Blind force, "unconscious intelligence" (whatever that is), "natural law" is the God of creation to these atheistic evolutionists, Can law create anything? What arc the laws of nature? They are merely the uniformity of action in the natural world. To speak of them as using intelligent forethought and supervision without an intelligent Lawgiver is as nonsensical as to speak of the laws of the commonwealth of Florida without a cop or judge or legislator. Man has found out that certain forces always work among a given line of action in nature, and ho has called them “laws”. This he does because they always work along a given line of action.
Then he endows with infinite intelligence and power. [power]
Let us name the three laws of motion by Kepler in his Principia"
1. Law of inertia—-"Any body once set in motion, will move forever in a straight line with uniform velocity; provided no force acts upon it. Science knows no energy but from without." Plato before Christ, "No motion without a mover." Yet Heraclitus, B.C., "All nature is in flux, perpetual change is the order of all nature."
2. Any force acting upon a moving body its deviation from a straight line will he in the direction of the force applied and proportionate to that force.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 14
Action and reaction are equal upon every particle of matter in the universe and every particle of matter in the universe attracts all others with a force proportionate to the mass and inversely as the square of the distance between centers. (Law of Gravity) (So the Bible, "God weighed the mountains in a scale")
According to this there is not a "self-acting" particle of matter in the universe. A material substance existing alone in the universe would produce no change of effect, but given one other substance and you can have reaction. It is from without that change takes place and effects are caused. Law, then, is not the producer of the change but the method by which the change is affected. And this change given the same cause is always uniform. But what is uniformity in nature but method? And method id certainly the result of pattern or design, and the last link in the chain of inference is, DESIGN MUST POSTULATE A DESIGNER. Let us illustrate. Where ever on earth I see the particular designs which only human intelligence can produce, even though it be a ruins thou sands of years old, I know man made it, not chance, not natural law, not unconscious intelligence. It bears certain indelible marks of human intelligence. The archeologists, the antiquarian, the geologists proceed on the same supposition, an axe handle, a stone axe head, an hierglyphic, a piece of pottery. Not once do they say, natural law, unconscious intelligence, hut man made it. Would that they could use the same common sense in the marks of intelligence to be found in every work in nature.
Now approaching our first line of argument from the Eutaxeological argument, the presence of method design, pattern, order, harmony, beauty, in nature. I reason, these can only be the product of intelligence; therefore, they must have had an Architect, a Designer. Am I to forsake all the logic and common sense I would use in the explorations of the ruins of a lost civilization, where I postulate a design shows a Designer, a pattern, a Planner, an order, an Organizer? Does the presence of order and design in nature need any proof? The vary fact that we can have science is a proof, "classified knowledge." Nature is not a hodge-podge, disorder, disarrangement, but everything from the minute to the telescopic is intricate design.
But let us see some proofs of design or pattern:
1. THE PRESENCE OF GEOMETRIC PROPORTIONS IN NATURE.
When God made man He put within him the same sense of proportion that exists in perfection within Himself.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 15
It is engrained in man to abhor an unbalanced dwelling, painting, or statue. So the universe is the very embodiment of mathematics. Pythagoras projected his philosophy of numbers as the secret of the universe, claiming that the divine Architect used mathematical proportions and figures as the very basis for the astronomical universe. From the atom, the
building blocks of the whole universe with its fixed solar systems, of just so many electrons, revolving around a neutron to the orbits of the stars, all is geometry crystallized. Whether God makes a germ or an elephant, a molecule, or a planet, a virus or a sequoia tree, intricate pattern, and orderly formations arc strictly adhered to.
(a) In the vegetable world. Every eye can see it, form, pattern, design is apparent, in the geo metric proportions in figures. Look at the leaf of any plant or tree, with the unaided eye, or with a microscope. There are the beautiful angles and figures, and exact duplication in balancing the other side. The law of number is inflexible. In the flower, in the loaf, in the number of leaves to the branch. The whole science of Botany is a proof of order and pattern and is only possible because of it,
There is a law here called phyllotaxy, which did not only show that all trees have some inherent abhorrence of disbalance so that they grow symmetrically and seek to correct any lopsidedness which may occur, but causes symmetry in the very composition of numerical combinations. The leaves on a stern, the flowers about a disc, are usually in the form of a spiral. These spirals vary in the different order of plants, and are classified by the botanist, according to the relative movements of genatrix and pole. There is a definite ratio of the number of leaves to the circuit, and the number of circuits around the stems, This is: one half representing, one circuit and two leaves, one third-one circuit and three leaves, two fifths-two circuits and five leaves, etc. And science has found a relationship hero in geometry and astronomy.
(b) Look at man himself--Geometrically proportioned so that his body is balanced, could chance produce this? Soc it all in man makes, his cars, his house, his paintings, even in his doodling.
(c) In crystallography and the inorganic world. The multitudinous snowflakes that fall in one snow storm.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 16
All follow the law of the octave, perfect eight sided figures of exquisite beauty and geometrical perfection.
In every science of which man is familiar, there is the stamp of proportion, design, pattern, to the nth degree. But proportion, symmetry, can only be by plan, design, and must of force postulate a Designer.
2. THERE IS BEAUTY IN NATURE.
Does this have to be proven? The very arrangement of the verture of the earth, the landscape, the waterfall, the sunset, the sweep of the ocean, the beauty of the flower. Beauty is everywhere. But we ask, "What is beauty?" Since each person has a little different idea of beauty. I believe that beauty is twofold, one a sense of pleasure in color harmony, and second, to conformity of an object to an inner ideal each of us has unconsciously of proportion. Usually, a blending of both. But this could be only the result of design. The great Northern lights, the painted rain bow, the glorious sunset, the grand mountains, and the blending landscape, are all illustrations of color harmony and balanced proportions giving ideas of beauty and pattern. Nor is this beauty confined to masses in nature, but in the minute detail of all God's works these lines can be traced. The beautifully tinted and proportioned flower is just as perfect and beautiful under a microscope as in the field. Multiply your eye sight a thousand fold and the dust on the wing of a butterfly is as carefully constructed and beautiful as the seen parts. Each of the 4000 lens in the eye of a fly as is perfectly constructed as the human lens. You see beauty is something close to the ideal we have in our imagination, some esthetic taste an animal doesn't have. It would seem to be only a product of personality in the realm of taste. Most beauty is not utilitarian, but exists for beauty's sake alone in the mind of its Creator. Such as the adornment of our houses and per sons. Most of the exquisite adornment of the male birds and animals serves no useful purpose of adaptation but is injurious as it makes him conspicuous. Evolutionists would make it serve a natural selection purpose but has no proof of it, and if he did he would be giving Final Cause proof. But beauty and proportion are hand-maidens, and show design as a result of intelligent forethought and of a Designer.
3. THERE IS HARMONY IN NATURE
There is a delicate balance of poising and counter poising in nature of all properties.
CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 17
All bodies from the atom to the planet have the power of uniting in chemical and mechanical combinations, but also of separation. They have their mechanical combinations, but also of separation. They have their magnetic and diamagnetic powers, electric attractions, and repulsions, and all of nature is sustained by the harmonious adaptations of these properties of matter, Faraday in "Lectures on Non-Metallic Elements, pp. 290, 291 -- "The world with its ponder able constituents, dead and living, is made up of natural elements endowed with nicely balanced affections, attractions and forces. Elements the most diverse, of tendencies the most opposed, of powers the most varied; some so inert, that to a casual observer they would almost seem to count for nothing in the grand resultant of forces; some on the other hand, endowed with qualities so violent, that they would seem to threaten the stability of creation; yet, when scrutinized more narrowly, and examined with relation to the parts they are destined to fulfill are found to be accordant with one great scheme of harmonious adaptation. The powers of not one element could be modified without destroying at once the balance of harmonies, and involving in ruin the economy of the world." This is not a teacher of Christian evidences writing, but one of the greatest of scientists, It is impossible to imagine the almost infinite balance and counter balance in nature, making one harmonious whole instead of chaos. It left to chance how much harmony would there be in anything? You may try any experiment with chance and see the resultant chaos. But nature is not a chaos. There might be some storms, tornadoes, etc. But we call them "natural" but who knows, maybe these also are a part of the harmonious whole. (They do clear the atmosphere and prune the forest trees of dead wood,
Let us glean but a few of the multitude of illustrations nature affords. The greatest balance of nature is in the force called gravity. That mysterious, inexplicable cosmic glue which holds all nature together. From the atom to the stellar universes, all is held inexorably by exact mathematic force. According to the law of Kepler--every particle of matter in the universe pulls equally upon every other atom in the universe with a definite proportion balancing the wholes inversely as the square of the distance from the center of the mass. This attraction holds the atom together, the solar system, and the whole universe and system of universe, and all creation from rim to rim. Balanced with the speed of the bodies we have centrifugal force of gravity balancing centrifugal force of speed. What if some morning all this failed? The sun instead of attracting the earth, changed the law of gravity and let go.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 18
Or the earth ceased to be attracted to the sun, and speeded out into space. In short order of but a few hours further distance, and all life would congeal into frozen space temperature. Or if the gravity were greater, it would be pulled into the sun and burned up, like kindling in a furnace. Engineers figure the sun’s gravity pull on the earth as five quintillion tons all the time.
How few stop to realize what a tenuous hold man has on life here on earth. Or to put it better, how wonder fully God provided just the exact environment needful to sustain human life here on earth. It takes but a very small change in the balance of environment to make life untenable. Even a very small change makes it difficult and arduous. We won't go into the full discovery of man's environment--such as that of the earth, and wise provisions made millions of years ago for man now to enjoy. Nor the astronomical niceties of the right distance of the earth from the sun to make the temperature just right, not the tipping on its axis to give the temperate zone supporting life, etc. Let us just consider one--THE ATMOSPHERE.
The moisture in the air necessary to sustain human life is a point to consider. without the 71% of earth’s surface being water, so as to make the right temperature adjustment, the atmosphere wouldn't be of the right density. Earth’s surface would be like the moon's, over 200 degrees In the daytime and 240 degrees below zero at night. God weighed out the waters of the earth just right.
The atmosphere of the earth girdling it like a blanket, making it a thin sheathe for man, consists of in tons:
Nitrogen 3,994.,592,925,000,000 Oxygen 1,233,010,020,000,000 Carbonic Acid 5, 287, 305, 000,000 water 54,459,750,000,000 5, 287 ,350, 000, 000, 000
Total five quadrillion, two-hundred and eighty-seven trillion, three hundred and fifty billion tons, stretching out some 1500 miles into space.
Man USES about one thousand million pounds of oxygen per day, and animals decay combustion, and fermentation take about five thousand million more. What is to keep this supply steady, to return to the air usable oxygen? Every school boy knows--God has balanced this with the green living organisms which use for their energy not oxygen but carbon dioxide.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 19
Just what all oxygen users discard as waste material, plants use for their energy, end just what plants throw off as waste, we use for our energy.
Is this chance, or harmony of design? But the balance must be just right of oxygen with nitrogen in the air. Nitrogen is the inert diluter of air. Given more oxygen and we would literally burn ourselves out. Given less and increase nitrogen end we would smother, and require lungs so big as to fill all the space in our bodies.
Let me give one illustration to show this balance in the atmosphere to show balance and harmony. It is comparable to the ionosphere, that bounces the radio waves off. It filters out the harmful cosmic rays. But within it is an hitherto unsuspected layer of oxygen. Let me quote from a report of the Smithsonian Institute, Wash., D.C., as road by its secretary, Dr. C. G. Abbot on Solar Radiation: "High up at an altitude of nearly 40 miles, there exists a small quantity of ozone, which is a form of oxygen whose molecules contain three atoms instead of the usual two. Ozone is a complete absorber of all the rays in the extreme ultra-violet from wave length 2900-- onward for a considerable range. This is very fortunate, otherwise our skin would be blistered and our eyes blinded, for these short-wave rays which are totally absorbed by the ozone are highly destructive to animal tissue. On the other hand, it is not less fortunate (sic) that ozone allows some rays on the border of absorption bend to pass, for these rays between wave lengths 2900-- and 3900-- are indispensable to prevent rickets. The total thickness of gas for this ozone layer if brought down to sea level would be loss than one-eighth of an inch. (Though in that rare atmosphere it is several miles.) It is astonishing and oven terrifying (this doctor goes on to say) to contemplate the narrow margin of safety on which life depends. Were this trifling quantity of atmospheric ozone removed, we would all perish. If it were ten times greater we could not live. Rickets would prevail universal.
Is this an accident? A happenstance, one of those once in-a-lifetime or universe time, chance occurrences? Here is harmony. Balance in nature pointing to a Balancer. Who planned it so? There are too many to be coincidence.
4. THERE IS UNIFORMITY IN NATURE.
We have already considered this uniformity in nature throughout our treatment of law, order, plan, design, but we put it here also to complete our fourfold argument. State briefly, it may thus be put.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 20
Given a certain effect, if it isn"t too wonderful too complicated, though I know it was caused by something or someone, I still might concede coincidence, or chance in the arrangement, without a definite plan, or any necessary design, but if it happens again, I should as a logical thinking person begin to suspect some controlling intelligent designer, and if it happens again, and again, and as often as the same cause produces the same effect, I know there is a definite law at work, and not chance, but intelligent supervision.
B. THE SECOND CONSIDERATION OF THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT 13 THAT THERE IS PURPOSE IN NATURE.
This is true teleology (Gr. teleos-"end"; so directed toward definite end or purpose). Here also is the other er meaning of the word design, which not only means pattern or blueprint, but intention. Hence there is intelligent supervision in nature toward a desired intended ed end. Things in nature are not haphazard, but for a definite purpose, serving a desired end, and doing it to an amazing degree. This is called in teleology, "Final Cause. Cosmology is a First Cause, Teleology is of Final Cause."
Stated briefly, the principle of final cause is, nature exhibits everywhere, to the finest degree, the evidences of purpose or end in all its forms, functions, and adaptations; and, these evidences form an infallible proof of intelligent origin, and supervision by an intelligence over nature toward a desired end. There is internationality in nature from the largest to the smallest details, The Final Cause of any object is the Purpose for which it was made. A watch is made to tell time. Its intricate mechanism of wheels meshing, and symmetrical design, its dial, and hands, and beautiful case are products of design and pattern, but the Final Cause is for time telling. The beautiful house, for all its decorations, is for habitation. The automobile, for all its chrome, is for locomotion, even for its shining decorations and patterns. So the eye is for seeing, the car for hearing, the legs for locomotion, vocal cords for speaking, WHAT ELSE?
Here we are further removed from chance, than in the idea of pattern. We can conceive of the wind, by caprice, swirling particles of sand into an intricate pattern. (Yet here definite laws prevail) but without an intention or purpose toward a desired end. (Though it would never do it the second time exactly as the first in a million years and a billion times.) but the idea that chance could serve Final Cause, and actually combine the many parts as of the eye, to serve the complicated purpose of sight is to believe a manifest absurdity, Logic has to dismiss such an idea, so the evolutionist brings in his "Mother Nature" and endows her with intelligence and infinite ability.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 21
BUT CHANCE IS EXCLUDED HERE. So they bring in "unconscious" But this is no better as an explanation of the well-nigh infinite adaptations in nature. Chance can never foresee, or plan an end in view, nor continue to apply the same to all succeeding generations. Illustration: Mathematicians have figured out a law of permutations on chance. In seven figures --The possible permutations equal 5,000. (Though of course the chance that the seven would come out exactly in a row can be infinite.) But the possible arrangement of the seven into different combinations is 5,000. But in is figures the possible permutations would approximate the incomprehensible figure of one trillion, 307 billion, 674 million, 368 thousand. (l,3O7,674,368,OOO) The chance of the 26 letters of the alphabet falling into their respective places by chance would be five hundred million, million, million times, an astrological figure. Yet the parts and functions of the eye alone constitute a figure a thousand times more complicated than the alphabet. There are ten-million rods and cones in the retina, and about 137 million separate seeing elements. Illustration: Darwin, the evolutionist, warned against "the danger of ascribing intentions nature", but he himself had to constantly affirm that there was intentions in nature. Like all the evolutionists and atheists, ho despised the very thought of super natural intelligent forethought and supervision in nature. But in his various treatise on evolution, such as "Origin of the Species", he fund himself compelled to use over and over a gain hundreds of times such expressions of teleology as, ""The adaptations of this organ or that organ," "wise provisions of nature," and "the purpose of this or that". What is that but intelligent supervision? How can nature, inanimate objects have "wise forethought" or make intelligent provision, or adapt something for a. purpose? ADAPTATION AND WISE PRO VISION SHOWS INTENTION AND INTENTION IS ONLY A PRODUCT OF INTELLIGENCE AND INTELLIGENCE IN NATURE SHOWS A FINAL CAUSE OR GOD.
If an organ shows utility or wonderful adaptation C or some usage, then it was so intended. "UTILITY IS THE YARDSTICK OF INTENTION: Illustration." Can the very fact that respiration is carried out in such a varied way, by such diverse organs, be only an accident in nature? In one thing It is carried out by a lump, in another by gills. In another by the skin, In another by lungs, and in yet another by the leaves. Here is a great variety to get a. common function, each suited to perfection for its own environment and function.
Here, then, is our final argument in Teleology, which we shall bolster with evidences drawn from several of the sciences.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 22
Here we do not have to do like the evolutionist, search with a microscope and archeological spade for a missing link, and hail each new-found bone as a valuable find. Every science witnesses to intelligent purpose in nature. It taxes one's mental faculties to understand the blind ness and willful perversion of truth of those who pass over all the abundant facts of teleology in nature to blithely say, "There is no God." No wonder the Psalmist says, "He is a fool," We hardly know how to confine ourselves, or what material to use of the impossibly large field of evidences before us. Mon have spent a lifetime exploring one organ of the human body alone, and failed to exhaust the field. We shall only take a broad sweep across many fields.
Evidences of Teleology in Particular:
1. Botany.
Here we call our first witness to the stand to testify to intention in nature, The Science of Botany. Here as in every other science, in the vegetable world there is not chaos, but order and arrangement pointing to purpose.
First, is the mystery of FRUCTIFICATION, in which is wrapped the whole purpose of the continuation of living things. Since the life span for every living thing is fixed, some provision must be made for reproduction, or the species will die out. Here, as in the animal world, lies the mystery of the whole life span tied up in the seed, carrying all the inherited characteristics of the parent stock, and prophecy of all its future life. Like the watermelon seed, to germinate, sprout, grow Into a vine, flower and in a few short months to lift from the soil through its roots, and vine the material to build one or more 4O to 75 lb. watermelons. To paint It with the beautiful colors gathered from the same black dirt, black seeds, sunset rod meat, white and green rind, and from the same black dirt to gather the flavoring and sugar to make it edible, so that its seeds will be carried elsewhere. Yet the whole force resides in the seed. Here again see the wonderful diversity of purpose in nature to see the propagation of itself by getting its seed spread abroad. The fruit bearing trees arid shrubs, with its desirable tasting fruits, eaten by animals and humans and the seed scattered. There is no other reason for the sweetness around the seeds. Did the plant plan it that way?CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 23
There are the burs, as on the famous Florida sand sour, and the cocklebur, etc., sticking to the fur of animals and carried a bout. There is he wind driven seed, such as the conifer trees, with the winged seed, the thistledown, and the tumbleweed seed. Is all this accidental? Is it a self-acting principle of foresight and sagacity in ho plant? To ask it is to get the negative answer. It must be some wise, intelligent outside Cause, a Creator Supervisor.
Then there is the law, LIKE PRODUCES ONLY LIKES which through the millenniums keeps alive any particular plant form, as also animal. Genesis puts it, several times, "After his kind." The greatest of the zoologists, and botanists, after the life time effort, have not boon able to break down the barrier, placed by God at creation. They may cultivate end. develop a plant and animal within any given species and even cross some within a species, but have yet to cross a species line. And so fixed is the law of "after his kind" that any development is lost in one generation if loft to itself. It reverts to the original parent stock. Here I wish we had time to take up the whole field of pollenization, and the manifold methods used in nature to bring the whole fertilization of life. Pollen is the male coils in plant life. Without pollen there would be no fructification, no vegetable life.
Some are windblown for inches or hundreds of miles to find the like female flower. A lot is insect carried. By one simple illustration. let us sac this. The Yucca plant can only be pollinated by a certain kind of moth. This moth can only lay its larvae in the Yucca plant. Without the moth, the Yucca would perish; without the Yucca, the moth would perish. This moth lays its eggs only in the ovary of the Yucca plant. The larvae eats some of the seed and escapes. But no seeds :Till ripen with out the pollen from the male flower. The moth does this job deliberately, rolling the pollen into balls, collecting it from the anthers, cramming it into the stigma. She does this as though she had studied under Luther Burbank himself in cross-pollenization at college. Since the beginning of time this particular moth has only and can only live by the Yucca plant, and the Yucca plant can only live by this particular moth. Who told them this? where is the guiding intelligence in nature for-this? Leave God out, and you have to give a college degree to this moth. Why is it the flowers which must be pollinated by insects are beautiful in hue and fragrance?CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 24
While those pollinated by wind (like the obnoxious rag-weed) either has no fragrance at all or plain stinks. Is it a freak of nature, an accident, that the flower depending upon the insect to carry its pollen, is fragrant arid as a by-product puts out nectar and attracts the insect, and the one who doesn't need the insect at all, stinks? What other principle but intelligent forethought and purpose could make such an arrangement?
There is the very color of green, painted every where in nature with only the glorious hues of flowers, autumn-tinted loaves, etc., for variety. That certainly speaks for intention. Psychologists tell us it is the most restful color, while yellow is the most arresting. They say, for a normal sane person to stay in the room painted a brilliant red for any length of time, would drive him insane. The air force using this, has used a soft green for the colored glasses. Lot a rent occur in nature and it soon festoons it with green.
Let us use one more out of the many which could be used. Under the microscope the very composition of the leaves shows intentionality and utility. That is the process of photosynthesis going on in all green matter in nature from the algae to the giant ferns. It is well known to scientists that the animal body can assimilate no inorganic matter except for a microscopic amount of trace minerals. All inorganic matter must go through a process of transformation Into usable food, there is but one place this process is carried out--In the green leaf. By photosynthesis, using the energy of light, the leaf converts inorganic to organic matter, and nowhere else except in the chlorophyll is this done, supporting all of life upon our planet.
2. Zoology.
The Duke of Argyll in "The Reign of Law", P. 76-"Nothing is more certain than that the whole order of nature is one vast system of contrivance." And he supported his whole argument from the provision of the animal kingdom by which flight is secured. The machinery by which the navigation of the air is accomplished is certainly a striking evidence of purpose in nature. The bird used three adverse laws of nature to enable it to fly. One, the law of gravity, two, the resistance of air to a body passing through it, and three, the elasticity of air, as it reacts to compression, and rebounds.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 25
All of those would seem to counteract the flight of a bird, but in fact are utilized by it. Most of the birds stroke between 125 to 200 times a minute. The downward stroke of the wing, compressing air, making it react, offsets gravity while the set of the feathers pushed forward. The feathers are the strongest and lightest of animal tools. If the upward stroke Is not to exactly counteract the down ward stroke and nullify it, there must be some provision made. The upper part of the wing is convex, and the feathers underlap each other, the downward stroke compresses thorn, while air can pass through on the upward stroke, and being stretched backwards from the wings, making the air to escape backwards. So no bird can fly backwards. The humming bird and swift seem to, but in reality are falling backwards by gravity pull, not flying. Much more could be said. The hollowness of the bones of a bird, unlike that of any other animal, the smallness of head., yet largeness of eyes, the multifarious kinds of feathers, according to the kind of flight, from the soaring of the small swift and swallow, to the mighty flight of the albatross and condor, and the flight of insects.
One aerodynamic school, after all kinds of tests and mathematical calculations said, "By all the laws of aerodynamics the bumble bee cannot fly." There is much more we could use here. Let me name a C few, just before we take our own prime example, that of instincts and habits. There are all kinds of eyes in nature--the stalk-mounted eye of the land crab, the multi-lens eye of the house fly, with 4ooo different indivual lens in each eye, making 8ooo eyes s in each fly, There is the bulging curved eye of the rabbit, so ho can see behind his back, that large light-gathering eye of the night flyers such as the owl, the telescopic eye of the bird. One of the rarest is the tropical fish called the anableps. As it swims along, half the eye is above water and half underneath, with two distinct pupils, with different refractive powers, one to see in the air, and another below the water. Look at the variety of tongues all serving best their individual purposes. There is the frog's tongues, rooted at the front of the mouth to give it length for grabbing insects. There is the gecko lizard's tongue, so long and agile, it uses it to wash out its eyes. The biggest is the ant eater's lingual appendage. The ant eater's head, as long as it is, Is not long enough, so his tongue goes all the way down and is fastened to its breastbone. This enables it to lick out the ants from the largest anthill. In many creatures, nature has combined teeth and tongue.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 26
A penguin's whole tongue is spiny, lest its slippery fish and shrimp diet escape it. A flamingo.s tongue is spine-fringed to act as strainer. It grabs a beak full of mud and strains it out to leave the seafood. But the ultimate in toothed-tongue combination is the common garden snail. Its tongue bears 135 rows of teeth, with 105 teeth in each row, so as it chomps its way through your flower bad, it is using 14,l75 teeth. In the realm of the senses, man is a dullard. L honey boo can tell time accurately. If sweetened water is set out for it at a certain time daily, it will start to arrive on the dot each day. Yet If I told you to tell me when five minutes have elapsed you couldn't do it within a minute or two. Even more wonderful keeping time is the grunion fish, which only visits and lays eggs in California beaches and nowhere else on earth. Only seven inches long, it spawns but once a year. Somewhere out at sea, the millions of grunion fish fool the striking of an eternal clock, they head for the clean sand beaches all at once. It is the first spring high tides, to the exact minute, continues four nights an hour later each night. There is just one wave higher than the rest. Mrs. grunion must make that wave, not another. Fishermen know which one it is, and do not need to waste hours fishing. They can find out from the tide bureau exactly the minute. enough, in they come, Mrs. Grunion takes that high wave, washes ashore high and dry, she digs into the sand, deposits her eggs, and must be ready by the next and last wave to go back out, or she will perish there high and dry. If the wave is not high enough7next ones will wash away her eggs. But not for two weeks will a wave be that high again, then it washes back into the sea the little hatched grunion. Total time of the little drama of mating, egg laying, and washing take thirty seconds out of the whole year. How does the grunion know the exact tide, which is but a few seconds in a year? Is there no controlling intelligence? We could speak of hundreds of other super senses, but have you ever watched a robin dash across the lawn, then suddenly stop and listen. It can hear a worm under the ground disturb the earth as it moves. So a mole can hear an insect walk in its labyrinth anywhere under the ground.
Let us consider our final evidence from Zoology --that of instincts and habits in nature. They could not be the product of the intelligence of the animal or instinct, but something with which they are born . Every insect and animal comes into this life, with a complete system of instincts built in ready to fulfill its life work without learning.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 27
The human infant must go through a complete learning cycle or perish. Here again our field is too broad; we must confine ourselves to but a very few illustrations. Among the insects there is the mud dauber. I have watched her sting a large spider in just the right place to paralyze it, and cram it into her mud tube, and lay the egg there. The baby couldn't live on a dead spider; it must have a live one, yet harmless one; dead meat would be fatal for it. She then dies, having never seen her offspring. Surely she must do this right the first time, and all for something she had no way of knowing. The first mud-dauber must have done it rightly and every other one since then, or there would be no mud-daubers, no evolutionary adaptation, nor acquired characteristics can explain that one. You students can look up the instincts of the honey bee, and the ant.
Let us consider one more set in conclusion--The migratory instincts, and direction finders, of animals and birds and even insects. One of the most baffling mysteries of migration instinct is that of the eels from Europe and North America, At maturity the eels start from the rivers and ponds and lakes of Europe and North America and head for the open Atlantic, thousands of miles unerringly to the abysmal deep off Bermuda. There they sink to the depths and breed and die. Later there is an eruption of transparent threadlike creatures with bulging black eyes that come swelling to the surface in ever larger mushrooming streams, they break off into two separate streams, one heading east toward Europe, the other to North America, Both shoals arrive as full-grown eels to live out their adult life in the place from which their parents came some three years before, and then to complete the cycle to head for Bermuda depths. How could these unborn little eels know from whence came their parents over thousands of miles of ocean? To the very same point or stream? No American eel is ever caught in Europe, or vice versa. Furthermore, the maturity of the European eel is one year later than the American to make up for the greater distance they must travel. This is a great mystery, like the path finding of salmon through the trackless ocean. The salmon lays its eggs far inland up a river in freshwater. During the second year, the young salmon move downstream to the sea, ranging far for two years or more, 1’Then they reach sexual maturity, in their fifth year, they head back for their birthplace to spawn, and will do it no other place. Hence the ladders around the great dams on the various western rivers like the Columbia.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 28
The salmon will bypass wrong forks, until they get back to the very place where they themselves were spawned. How? Some naturalists believe they arc sensitive to a microscopic amount of the water from "their" river even far at sea, Who knows? Eggs can be taken to another river, and that becomes their future spawning home.
But birds are the most remarkable of the migrating species. Some winter in the Antarctic and summer in the Arctic. Why? Many fly four to seven thousand miles in migrations. why does the whole species suddenly know it is fall, those born in a place, never been away from there, yet they get some weather report, or have a built in almanac, head south or north. It is estimated in North America alone 10 million birds are on the wing each spring and fall in migrations. Some naturalists say, "Birds are sensitive to the changing amount of light end length of days in the fall and spring." Who knows? But how and where did they got the instincts? Could they develop them themselves, and how can a new born bird "learn" where to go. The ter, which winters on Bird Key in the Tortuga Islands of Florida, are an example. Twelve were taken to Galveston, Texas and banded and released. Five of them returned to Bird-Key -- 800 miles away in a different direction from their unusual migration (maybe AAA mapped their course). Five were taken to Cape Hatteras, 1000 miles away. Two were back on Bird Key in five days. Does the earth's magnetic field play a part, earth's rotation, all fail in tests. Revolve a bird on a turn table until its inner ear is hopelessly mixed up, and it still knows directions. Homing pigeons with magnets on each wing to confuse their magnetic fields, have home in perfectly. Night, day, directions, any confusing thing scorns to have no effect. They seem to have a built-in almanac, road map, auto gyro, rangefinder, weather map, compass, and in some, radar (like the bat )
Certainly this is enough to perplex the atheist, who denies any intelligent purpose in this. No other explanation will suffice. When these insects and animals were made, with all their mating habits, nesting habits, feeding and migratory habits, the Creator must have outfitted them to perfection. with all the instincts needed for their life-time and reproduction.
3. Physiology (or Anatomy).
George Gallup of the famous Gallup Poll, said, "I could prove God statistically.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 29
Take the human body alone- -the chance that all the functions of the individual would just happen is a statistical monstrosity." He meant the vast number of evidences, the complex interdependableness of all the organs and nicely balanced functioning of all the parts, with their perfect adaptability to all their various duties in an over-whelming proof of the existence of God. It amazes the physiologist, when he sees that every bone, every muscle, every nerve, and their interplay, serves perfectly their intended purpose, so that the slightest disease or malfunction of one, throws the whole organ ism out of health and tune. A cut of the finger, and lockjaw results from the tetanus germ. A small blood clot in a heart artery and heart failure results. A small clot on the brain and a stroke occurs. A small derangement of a nerve in the brain and insanity results; the whole man is dependent upon every part as each serves its intended end. To consider only a small part of these wonderful parts of the body would occupy us for the whole year and not exhaust them. THE BIBLE DECLARES, "I AM FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE."
(1) Skeleton.
The human skeleton both in its construction and use speaks volumes for design and purpose. It forms a steel-like framework to give with in the required radius, perfect mobility. Upon its framework is built the shape and pattern of the body, instead of being a mass of flesh, a blob of ever-changing protoplasma, there is a fixness of form and identity. But bones serve a lot more purpose than a hidden frame work, or reinforcement. They give the mobility b the body. With their marvelous system of joints and hinges of the right kind in the right places for the best motion, they give the ability to move. Where a hinge is needed, as in the elbow and knee, where a ball joint is needed as in the hip and shoulder, where complete flexibility is needed, we have the universal joint of the wrists, each serves best its own particular motion, Is this accident? Or is this the highest kind of purpose? But how wonderful a built-in cushioning and greasing system is provided. The ends of the bones are smooth for loss friction, the cartledge between the bones, resists wear, and glands lubricate with a mucilaginous oil from nearby glands. (See the marvelous provision when something goes wrong with this lubricating system, as in arthritis.CHRISTIAN AP0L0GETICS I Page 30
But this is not all of the wonderful provision supplied by the bones of the body. They are all thriving manufacturing plants in their marrow. Every minute 150 million red blood cells or corpuscles die, and must be replaced throughout life, or anemic death results. It takes six to eight weeks for the bones to replace one pint of blood removed. They also produce the white warrior coils of the blood stream. And wonder of wonders they are self-repairing, reaching out by some mysterious force unknown to science across the gap of a break to build up a bridge across, until a stronger bond is made than the original. Is it purely accidental that the three most sensitive and precious of organs arc the best protected by bone cavities: the brain by the skull, and the heart by the ribs, and other bones of the thorax, and the spinal cord lies within the long backbone? All kinds of shapes, lengths, and kinds of bones are utilized in the more than 200 bones of the body, varying as the need or purpose varies. One but needs to watch a skillful surgeon, or piano virtuoso, to understand the wonderful flexibility afforded by the whole arm, hand and finger design.
(2) The Muscles.
More than half the human body is muscles, called by one eminent scientist "the most remarkable stuff in nature's curiosity shop" (quoted from “Today's Health", Jan. '56). They provide nearly all of our internal heat; they propel us into the world, they provide all for digestion in the energy needed, they suck air into the lungs, and oven squeeze the tears from our eyes. The method by which this jelly-like substance contracts baffles the scientist.
Every step requires 300 muscles, to balance the head, 20, and to balance the spine erect, 144 The body has over 600, finely balanced with 300 on each side of the body. More ban 100 million tiny thread-like muscle coils go into action when we take one step. There are three kinds of muscle cells: the striated muscles, sheaf-like, for motion; the smooth muscle cells for involuntary actions of the internal organs, or motions like the dialation of the pupils,; and third, the muscles found in the heart a cross between the two others.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 31
All not only give motion and activity, but are the most efficient machines in all nature for turning chemical energy (food) into mechanical energy (work)--potential to kenetic energy.
One of the nicest arrangements in the workings of the muscles is seen in the fact that the voluntary muscles control locomotion, etc., while the smooth involuntary muscles control all of the internal affairs, such as respiration, digestion, circulation. what a terror our lives would be to us if we had to consciously breathe, digest, etc. But they are maintained while we sleep, etc. The relation of tendon to muscle, the acting and reacting sets of muscles balancing each other to give, action, and reaction, the overlapping even piercing muscles, sliding through other muscles, all show an intricate plan, all adopted for the utmost action within any given sphere, all show the wonderful presence of purpose, evidencing an all-wise superintending hand of God.
(3) The Nervous System.
There is located in your skull a central switch board and control tower which receives all incoming messages, evaluates them, decides upon their Importance, what action is needed because of them, and sends forth appropriate impulses. Every function of the body, voluntary and involuntary, receives instructions from the brain, and Is connected with this central station by an intricate network of living telephone wires. Sensation or "feeling" is the message carried dawn the sensory nerves to headquarters in the brain from every particle of the body, through the various "trunk" lines, the main one being the spinal cord. Man has never built a comparable telephone line. Yet when he talks over the telephone, ho "ah" his admiration for the ingenuity, skill, planning, forethought, of the skilled artisans who contrived and built it, yet looks at the greater nervous system in man, and blindly says, "Chance built it, since there is no God."
The brain itself comprises the most mysterious and marvelous machine in all the world. The scientists and psychologists have never boon able to fathom the workings of the human mind.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 32
They cannot tell how the white and gray matter combines in the brain to manufacture thought. Is the action chemical or electrical? (lately proven that it is probably electrical) How does reasoning work, what stores memory, imagination, etc? Can you study the human brain and not see design and purpose? Was it made for thinking or did it take it up as an after thought? If so, what after "thoughted?"
Did the whole nervous system evolve from some thing else, if so, what? Can there be no forethought or plan and purpose in it? There are two nerve sets in every nerve system, one centripetal or sensory, only carrying messages to the brain, the other centrifugal, or motor only carrying messages from the brain. Can this system be improved upon? Does it perfectly fulfill its mission? Then it must have boon made for that alone and is a product of forethought.
(4) Digestion and Assimilation.
Christopher Morley called man, "A human being is an ingenious assembly of portable plumbing." Since the body is made up of living matter, every one of the 26,000 billion cells must carry on its own complete life function of feeding or assimilation, secretion, reproduction, and death, therefore, must be supplied with the two essentials of life, food and energy, and must be relieved of the waste matter produced by its life functions. Hero enters the most remarkable interworking complex process of digestion, assimilation, respiration, and distribution, and elimination. From two centers of production, from the lungs, the energy or oxygen must be supplied, and from the digestive system the food must be prepared, both in acceptable forms, then the distributive system must take over and carry it to every cell of the body. That all these functions could happen only by a some blind force or chance is a manifest absurdity. The work of digestion starts in the mouth where mastication by the teeth and mixture with certain alkali juices starts the conversion of food into fuel for the body machine. The food is voluntarily swallowed, and involuntarily propelled rapidly into the stomach. It takes but a few seconds here since there is no digestion in the esophagus, it is but a shuttle shute.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 33
It enters the stomach which holds about five pints, and it is suspended vertically to allow the churning action, here for a few hours, the food is violently jerked from side to side by involuntary muscular contractions. Four gastric juices arc mixed with the food, hydrochloric acid, pepsin, rennin, and lipase, each tearing down and converting different kinds of foods. Hare some of the most powerful acids known to man are at work. When finished, a message is sent to the involuntary center of the brain, that the work is finished here and ready for sending further, back comes the message and the pyloric valve is opened, sending the food into the duodenum, about twelve inches long, and the first part of the small intestine. Hero a message flashed to the pancreas for a hurry supply of pancreatic juices, and 1 1/2 pints flow in with bile from the liver and intestinal juices. Daily 4 1/2 quarts of digestive juices flow into the food and most is recovered and used over again. Now the process of digestion is completed. The food is transformed into usable fuel for the body cells. But how to get them to each cell? Fuel in the storage tank won't heat or produce. It must be transported to the furnace. In this case, the 26,000 billion customers called "cells". Here enters the liquid conveyor system called the blood and its central pumping station, the heart, and 60,000 miles of the living pipes. After 6ooo years of human history, man finally came to the knowledge that the pipe or tube is the most economical method of distribution.
The small intestines have about million small villi its 25 ft. length and spread out surface of 106 sq. ft. The food takes another three to four hours here, going slowly so the villi can take out of the mass of digested foods all the nutriments needed to the blood can transport it where needed. Glycerin and the fatty acids pass directly into the lymphatic system and distributed over the body. Glucose and amino acids are carried by the blood. Without unduly enlarging the notes, let us say something briefly about this conveyor system (the world's most wonderful transportation system). Something like five to six quarts of blood (pint to every 20 lbs.) courses through the miles of arteries, capillaries and veins to flick up the food from the intestines.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 34
Oxygen from the lungs, pumped through the heart. It completes the circle every 23 seconds, bringing back from the cells, wastes and ashes, to be purified.
The heart of this vast system Is the heart, the world’s most delicate, and yet the world’s strongest and most perfect pump. But the size of the fist, yet in 24 hours, it expends enough energy to lift you higher than the Empire State Building, pumping 10,000 qts. of blood a day. It beats 40 million times a year, seeming tirelessly for the whole lifetime.
If stilled but a few minutes, death results. Yet like all muscles, it must rest, so it rests between beats, and unwearied carries out its life function. Dr. Henry Morton Robinson, writing for HYGIA, dares to say, after writing of "The Heart, Wondrous and Courageous Organ" "The heart, then, is a kind of electromuscular pump, contrived by millions of years of evolution." How? And what did the animal or human live on before the heart was "contrived by evolution after millions of years?" Why isn't there some vessels being developed now like It? Put God in there as the Contriver and lop off the millions of roars and I will say "Amen."
(5) The Senses (especially of hearing, smelling, and seeing).
(a) Smelling.
We speak of something as "tasting good," when really we should say, "It smells good." Since the real distinctive "tasting" is in reality "smelling." You can only taste four tastes with their variations of degree, namely--sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. You are in reality smelling the other tastes. Pinch shut the nose and the highly flavored dish is only salty. So if you have a bad cold. We used to take bad tasting medicine by holding our nose, but usually lot go too soon and got the bad taste anyhow. All flavors reach the nose through the back door. They first travel down the throat, then up again by the air passage into the nasal cavities. You smell when you inhale, taste as you exhale.CHRISTIAN APOL0GETICS I Page 35
Here is why those high-up olfactory patches miss much of moderate smells, unless you catch a whiff, and want o sample it closer, you "sniff" the air and this carries the odor-laden air upward to the olfactory areas. But sniffing won't help to taste, since it is the exhales air which carries the so-called "taste." So warm foods taste better. Here is the advantage of "piping hot" dishes. The odorous mercaptan of the skunk is detectable though deluted to one molecule to billions of molecules of air. In Science News Letter, May 2, 1953, R. H. Hainer of the Arthur D. Little Company, reveals this flows of the nose: "In each nostril, there is a lobe made up of some 1,900 'telephone exchanges' called glomecruli. These lobes are about the size of the end of the thumb. Each glomeoruli sends 24 neurons to the brain. Those neuron bundles can be compared to a board with 24 lights. So when an odor is detected, certain ones of these 24 neurons (light up) to form a code for that particular odor end no other. So with only 2L. neurons, it is possible to got 16 million patterns, corresponding to as many odors." How intricate and diversified. The same God who made this olfactory area, provided the many odors of different hues in nature for enjoyment. How it enriches life. Couples with the memory tract, each odor brings Identity, and favorable or unfavorable memories. It warns, as the smell of smoke, or cooking burning. It enriches with fragrance, it make eating doubly enjoyable, it makes life just that much more pleasant. Can it be an accident, the external odor and the olfactory glands attune to it?
b. Hearing.
Until one has lost the ability to hear, there is but a small appreciation of the world of sound we take for granted. We carry within our heads two of the most remarkable musical instruments over used. But it is far more intricate and responsive than any musical instrument.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 36
The Grand Piano has but 220 wires, and a compass of but 7 1/2 octaves, and requires several men to carry it, It is so large. The ear is less than one cubic Inch across, yet has 24,000 cords of varying length, and responds to 12 octaves of sound, responding 12 to 60,000 vibrations per second.c . Seeing
Modern evolutionary science has been quick to call anything made by God as crude. They should take a lesson from the past. Helmholtz was very sarcastic about it, maligning it as a "crude instrument," but science has not been able to make any thing to compare to millionth degree with it. Here is an intricate camera, combining a photometer, colorimeter, kaleidoscope, stereoscope, and rangefinder, self cleaning, self-protecting, and self repairing, with automatic shutter, with an adjustment from a few inches to as Car as light will travel to it. Sir Charles Scott Sherrington, who was President of the Royal Society and British Association for the Advancement of Science, Nobel Prize winner, says of the eye, "To picture the complexity and the precision of this performance beggars any imagery I have. It suggests purposive behavior, not only by individual cells but by colonies of cells. And the Impression of the concerted endeavor comes, it is no exaggeration to say, with the force of self-evident truth." Then ho goes on to show the various cells working with mathematical and seeming prescience make all the various parts of the eye, with a bout 137 million separate parts. How do you explain the building and shaping of the eyeball, and the establishment of its nerve connections with the right point of the brain? And how to explain, not the eye, but the "seeing" by the brain behind the eye? This is the wonder of wonders in his book, "Man and His Nature". Yes, how do you explain? How is one to explain the waves of energy falling upon the retina, transformed in energy to chemical electrical currents, in turn transformed into a mental image in the brain?
Evolution says, "It developed over millions of years from a glazed-over If you can believe that, you may be dismissed from my classes, as I fear I can't be of help to you anymore."CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 37
Here is an instrument good for not another thing on earth except that f or which it was made, for seeing. Hero is teleology.
4. Astronomy.
Laplace remarked that he had searched the heavens with his telescope but had not found God. So the farmer remarked, 'I have searched the sack of flour, but have not found the miller." You cannot confuse God with His works, nor find Him confined within His works, but you may see His footprints and handiwork everywhere. I can search the watch with out finding the watchmaker, but I know from it, that there must have boon one, and get some idea of his skill and personality from his works. The Bible declares, "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork." So we shall consider them for teleological evidences.
For thousands of years, man wondered about the stars and had many explanations of them. The most common and was the heavens was a glass dome, and the stars, holes in It letting the light through. Some of the best astronomy was only astrology, still a growing concern in this so-called enlightened day. In 134 B.C. Hipparchus numbered but 1080 stars. In the second century A.D., Ptolemy could count but 1028 with the naked eye. Astronomers say with perfect vision you could count but 2500 at any one time. With a seven-power sot of binoculars you could count 120,000. (This is two times the crude telescope of Galileo, 1609 A.D.) The 100-inch Mt. Wilson telescope has taken pictures of l,S00 million. Our own milky way is said to have 100 billion or more, and there are 100 million to a billion universes like our own Milky Way. Each star in it is probably a separate solar system like our own around our sun.
Men used to think that the sun got its energy by being stoked like a furnace with planets and asteroids, but that would supply not nearly enough. More than 1,300,000 of our earths could be poured into the sun. If the sun were a shell and the earth in the center, the moon could revolve around in it without touching the shell. The discovery of the secrets of nuclear fission, and hydrogen fission, the secret of the sun’s energy Is seen to be the breaking down of the composition of its atoms Into more solid form, and more Inert.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 38
With a surface heat of 10,000 to 12,000 degrees and internal heat of 40 to 70 millions degrees, F. All metals would vaporize as in the atom blast, 4 to 5 million degrees. Dr. Tyndal said, "If I could heat a piece of iron the size of a 25 cents piece in New York to the same degree of heat as the center of sun, it would blast off all life as far away as Chicago."
with the hundreds of millions of stars in our own family of stars, the Milky Way, and hundreds of millions of universes with their hundreds of millions of stars, you would think the space would be crowded with stars. But you have no idea of abysmal space. One astronomer put it this way, three wasps flying over Europe all by themselves, and the skies of Europe would be more crowded with wasps, than space with stars."
Lot us carry our idea a little further. The sun is our nearest star, 93 million miles away. Light travels 8 minutes and 20 seconds from the sun to us. The very nearest star to us is Alpha Centauri in the constellation of Proxima Centauri, in the third magnitude. Light takes 4.3 light years to get here from there, or 25 trillion miles. Sirius is twice as far away, or 53 trillion miles. 9.1 light years, 6 times brighter than our own sun. Our Milky Way is 125,000 to 200,000 light years across. rcturus, 40 light years away, 38 times bigger than our sun, 33 millions miles in diameter, first star out from the Big Dipper.
Rigel in the constellation of Orion is 460 light years away. Light left then when Columbus was sailing for America, just getting here tonight. It is 17,000 times brighter than our sun. But after you leave our Milky Way, there is abysmal space; then universes out there bigger than our own. Like Andromeda, "the chained maiden,' faintly visible on a dark clear night as spiral of gas. It has over a billion stars in it. Our sun would have to be a billion times brighter than It is to be seen at all in it. The light I saw coming from Andromeda left there over one million years ago. Light from Nebula 87, left there 8 million years ago.
Here is another impenetrable mystery. Light, that frail thin thread of oscillation, no man has yet boon able to define, traverses the tractless course of all space at the incredible speed of 186,282 miles per second (over 7 1/2 times per second around the earth) for over a million years from Andromeda, and finally tonight the very same light gets hero and falls upon my eyesight.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 39
Stop over an inch or a foot or a mile, etc., and it gets there too, to all points of space in all directions. Only 1.2 billionth part of the sun's heat and light reach the earth.1 The rest radiates into all space, I guess to the rim of space itself. The thread of light left the incondescent heart of that blazing star in Andromeda, millions of degrees hot, it traveled through absolute zero in space, 461 degrees below zero, for one million years, and arrives here with some heat in it if it could be measured, as the sun's heat for 93 million miles through the same absolute zero. Science calls this star light, "Fossil Light" for such it is. We do not see the universe as to what it is, but what it was. The sun 8 minutes ago, Sirius 8 years ago, the Pleades, Job wrote about as it was 500 years ago, Andromeda, if it ceased to exist it would take us a million years to find it out. See why it is called "Fossil Light", it antedates the fossils by millenniums.
Here is unimaginable space. Someone asked Dr. Hubble what he expected to see with the 200-Inch, the "big eye" on Polomar. He said, "I don't know what we will see, but I know what we won't see, over the edge"
Consider the speed of the heavenly bodies. Here the mind soon stumbles and gropes for the hand of the constraining omnipotence. The earth spins like a top from East to West at 1,000 miles per hour. It rotates around the sun in its 180 million miles orbit at 65,000 miles per hour. Our whole solar system is traveling toward the star Vega, In a great rotation of the whole system around the center of the universe at a speed of 45,000 miles per hour. And If our universe looks to other universes like theirs does to ours, then our whole universe, the Milky Way, is speeding at some fantastic speed in a spiral around some super center of universes, and who knows but God, maybe the; whole system of universes around some other system of universes, etc. Our sun dragging its great load of planets and asteroids and other lesser bodies, like a trailer 4 billion miles long with a speed 18 times faster than a rifle shot, yet it would take 3 to t! billion years for our solar system to complete one orbit. Where is the controlling, guiding hand, if there be no God, for the swirling twisting, speeding, gyrating mass of bodies? How come the accident, then for their exact time tables? As the aerephysist, note the mathematical niceties needed to fix a Sputnik Into orbit for a few years, and think of the awful complexities needed for a moon, an earth, a sun, etc. to stay in orbit for millions of years.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 40
Let us close this section with the words of Sir James Jeans, one of the greats of Astronomy. "What, it will be asked, is the ultimate significance of the vast processes being worked out by the stars? Is there an Intelligence operating behind the colossal panorama of which we can see only an infinitesimal part. The universe is a magnificent and orderly system. The heat of the stars is being 'stepped down' by radiation, from the higher to lower levels of energy, and that process must eventually end when all energy is reduced to its final low-tensioned forms. The stars came into existence only to burn themselves out. The laws of thermodynamics boar this out." (Quoted from Reader's Digest, January, 1948).
The Bible is correct, "Thou Lord, in the beginner hath laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens arc the works of thine hands; they shall perish; but thou romain3st; and they shall wax old like a garment."
All science knows the universe is running down. We must ask, "What or Who wound it up?" Is there no purpose or pattern in this ?"
5. The World Below Us (The Revelations of the Microscope).
As far as man can determine, there is as much down below us as there is above us. There are abysmal depths in the microscopic as there is in the telescopic, which man cannot fathom, but can only see the effects. Dr. Selman A. Waksman of Rutgers University said, "The living organisms in a thimbleful of average soil outnumber the human population of the United States." Dr. Waksman is the leading authority on micro-biology of the soil, the discoverer of streptomycin, and coiner of the word "antibiotics," He says "Through the aperture of the microscropc we peek into a universe as wide or wider than the one we see through a telescope." (Reader’s Digest, June, 1950).
Anton Von Leeuwenhock, the delft lens-maker, was the first to discover the principle of making a microscope. He was the first to see germ. Fashioning a hand lens, he looked into the depths of a drop of water and exclaimed in harrow, See wretched little beasties." From this start the visual microscope has developed until it magnifies 2500 times.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 41
This was the limit of "seeing small" until a new principle of capturing ultra short—wave lengths by microphotography was developed. Using ultra-violet light waves on sensitive paper, a new world of microscopic proportions was opened up. New worlds of life in the viruses and organisms was opened. But man knew below that there was fantastically smaller life organisms, where effects came trouping out, such as the virus of polio. From all his experiments, he knew it was caused by an infinitesimal life organism which could be filtered out by a porcelain filter. Yet shorter wave-lengths were needed. During the last great world war, the Germans experimented with a super-microscope, but it wouldn’t stay focused long enough. to capture the picture. In 1937 Jim 11111cr and Prof. Eli Franklin and Al Probus completed the first electronic microscope made on this side of the ocean In McLennon Lab. U. of Toronto, Using electronic waves and 30,000 volts of electricity. 11111cr was the guiding genius to build the super microscope which magnifies 100,000 times. They saw the flu virus for the first time. Imagine, if you please, they con firmed the scientific hypothesis, "Germs have germs which destroy them, called bacteriophages." They could actually see these super-infinitesimal germs enter and destroy other bacteria
But with all this magnification, man see a molecule. We look through the telescope and marvel and are impressed with the greatness of space. Yet the best of nuclear physicists tell us that the proportion of space, vast empty space, to the particles of matter in an atom, is far greater than the proportion of empty space to the planets in our solar system.
Let me quote some fantastic figures from the book written by Dr. O’Brien, "Truths Men Live By," confirmed by Dr. Robert A. Millikan, of the Calif. Inst. of Tech. If you s m~ a travel or with a package the size of a cigarette pack, and five redcaps trying to move it and couldn’t, you would think they were only fooling until you looked inside and sec only a speck of dust, putting the: speck of dust on the scales and finding it weighed several tons, you would be dumbfounded. Science affirms that a speck of dust would weigh several tons if a large body of that weight had all the weightless space removed and only the solid matter left.
We now know that what constitutes all matter is empty space, relatively speaking. Relatively enormous voids in which revolve with lightening velocity small infinitesimal particles so utterly fantastically small no microscope can see thorn.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 42
Their presence, though, has been scientifically demonstrated. The old world of our fathers consisted of solid matter, hard, inert. Now we know all matter consists of mostly vacant space, through which moves at enormous speeds, tiny particles of electrically charged matter. Each atom is a miniature solar system. In fact they tell us there are more particles of matter in a grain of sand than stars in the heavens (with the old telescopes). In one drop of water, there is said to be more atoms than there are tons in the weight of the earth (6 sextillion, 6 quintillion tons). Dr. Tyndall told us, "There are more atoms in one centimeter of steel than all the grains of sand on all the sea shores of the earth (3OL~. sextillion, 127 quintillion grains, He counted Them, (by estimation)
It was not until 1911, Sir Ernest Rutherford following Einstein’s first theory of the atom in 190S, was bombarding the atoms with particles from a radio-a~t1ve substance. Mc was surprised to observe the bullets go through as if the atom didn't exist. "It was like shooting at a ghost," ho said. But finally some bullets hit something solid, maybe one out of 10,000. He knew not all the atom was ghost. In that vast void there were infinitesimal specks of matter or solids. He was followed in his discovery by Mosoly, Fermi, Millikan, Compton, etc., and the science of Nuclear Physics was developed something like this:
Matter is composed of molecules about 1/125 millionth of an inch across. And these are composed of atoms (at first thought to be the smallest speck of matter). And these atoms arc composed of a proton, the positively charged part of the atom, the central nucleus; and revolving around this proton arc neutrons or electrons, with a negative of electricity, and those vary In number according to the element. These particles of the atom are but a hundredth of a millionth of the size of the molecule. They estimate the proton to be l8L~0 times heavier than the neutrons, but only 1/1000 the diameter of the neutron. This small solar system of rotating neutrons around the proton, in the oxygen atom, at a distance of 1/12 quadrillionth of an inch, is the world of the infinitesimal. Hero the most startling aspect of all is the abysmal empty space in the atom, Dr. Arthur S. Eddington of U. of Cambridge, in “The Nature of the Physical World”, “The revelation by modern physics of the void within the atom is more disturbing than the revelation by astronomy of the immense void of interstellar space. The atom is as porous as the solar system. If we eliminate all the unfilled space in a man’s body and collect all the protons and electrons in one man, he would be a speck just visible to the magnifying glass.”CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 43
Dr. O’Brien (Ibid.) asked a football player, "How much do you weigh?" He answered, '220 lbs." much if all the space eliminated?" "Same, since space is weightless, but how big?" Here’s the answer, “the same" is wrong. The right answer is "about the size of an Invisible speck of dust." If all the empty space in the atoms of our earth could be eliminated, the weight would be the same, the size but 1 mile through. Borthoud said, "If we could fill a thimble with the neuclie (protons) only, if would weight 3 million tons (of gold atoms, next to platinum in specific gravity). The speed also in this tine world of the atom is also astounding. As the electrons move around the proton in their Infinitesimal orbits, so small the 100,000power microscope still but sees a solid, the speed is about one thousand million, million times per second (one quadrillion). Far faster than any planetary body, close to the speed of light. Yet held so securely in their tiny orbits, it takes upward of 5 million volts of electricity in the cyletrons to bast them apart (split the atom), Dr. Lee Chestnut of G. E,, a Bible believing shysicist, in talking on "nuclear glue"~ (as the scientist calls this adhesive attraction which keeps these small planets in orbit contrary to all laws of electricity which make positive and negative electricity repel instead of adhering), says, “The binding force is about 10 to 50 pounds tremendous adhesion in such infinitesimal parts about 12 quadrillionth of an inch apart, All matter is held together with a tremendous internal adhesive cohering force, Science, for a lack of knowledge of what to call it, calls it "nuclear glue." What is it? It works in the infinitesimal as gravity in the universe, only stronger. Col. 1:16, 17 tolls us what it is, “By Him all things consist” (hold together is the Greek).
Even Dr. Millikan said, "Everyone who reflects at all believes, in one way or another, in God." How else can all these things be explained. As with the telescope so now with the microscope and below. In days gone by, the telescope was the primary Christian evidence of the Christian scientist, the star-studded skies was the supreme cosmological and teleological evidence of the creating hand of God. But greater than the galaxies of the heavens is the microscopic. There are more galaxies, solar systems, island universes in the whirling depths of a grain of sand than in the heavens. What kind of intelligence built the universe out of 105 elementary building blocks from hydrogen to uranium,~ to build an almost infinitely complex variety of substance out of 105 simple elements, from helium to lead, as well as the complex life on our planet?CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 44
PART FOUR- -TUE MORAL ARGUMENT
From the proceeding arguments, the rational mind is forced along to concede the existence of an all-powerful God, a majestic Force, ever present, accounting for every effect. From the presence of design, pattern, intention, and purpose in nature everywhere, we learn that this Almighty Force, is an intelligent Cruse; and since He has intelligence, He must possess personality. Our thinking has been led down a pathway in ever clearer revelations of the character of God, From our arguments so far, we have deduced that God is Almighty, All wise, Eternal, Infinite, Personal, with intelligence, revealing that He thinks, remembers, reflects, wills, and carries all the other attributes of personality. But this Being is not revealed so far, in His moral attributes. Is He good? Holy? Benevolent? Just? The moral argument we shall consider is a part of the Anthropological Argument. The moral nature of man, the law of right and wrong written broad across his very nature, the moral arbitrator, called conscience, the innate respect, for truthfulness, the sense of moral indignation over injustice and the fear of punishment over wrongdoing, all evidence a moral nature in man, and postulate the holiness and justice of God. From the light of nature we can see the footprints of God, evidencing God’s omnipotence and omniscience; but by introspection, turning the focus of his attention inward into his bosom, he may see the evidence of the greatest attribute of God, His holiness and moral character. Satan's promise to the pair in the Garden of Eden, "Ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil", is true in one respect only, it is one in it vestiges of the image of God, man carries around in his own soul. The God-like power of free will, or self-determination, and his knowledge of good and evil, point to the moral nature in the Creator.
Man is a moral being, with a conscience distinguishing between good and evil, with a moral law written upon his nature giving him an innate concept of right and wrong. He has a strong compulsion in his soul to do the right and shun the wrong under a sense of demerit for the wrong. The God who put this in man must Himself be righteous.
Now the question must arise, "Where did these ideals of moral rectitude and obligation come from in man?" The law of cause and affect holds good here. They must be explained. Man has a judge upon the bench of his soul which approves the right and condemns the wrong. "Where did they come from?" The evolutionists say, "From nature, from his animal ancestry." How can nature give that which she doesn't herself possess? Nature nowhere displays righteousness. Nature displays law, order, purpose, but not righteousness. The law of gravity is not righteous or unrighteous. You might just as appropriately speak of the morality of a mowing machine, or the ethics of a blizzard, as to speak of nature bestowing man with the moral law. Animals have no ethics, no conscience, no moral law. It is never wrong, intrinsicly, for an animal to steal, to lie, to steal another’s mate.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 45
There arc those who mistakenly say, "Nature will catch up with and punish immorality." That just isn't so. Nature will punish only the violation of her own laws. If a person seems to be punished by natural law for some riotous living, remember it isn't punishment for the immorality but for the incautious way in which it was committed. There are many who live lives of sin, who break every moral principle of their own souls, but they do it so discretely as to not break nature's law, and nature meets out no retribution. They remain healthy. I'm not questioning their inward conflict, unhappiness, etc. which is spiritual, that is not nature but the law of God, the very thing we are trying to explain. No any retribution must await a final reckoning at a higher court than nature possesses, with nature's God. Nature never says, "Thou shalt do no wrong," but rather "Thou shalt not break my laws; if you do, you shall have to pay for it." And so these principles within all men, of right end wrong, the sense of moral obligations to do the right and shun the wrong, the voice of conscience thundering out its anathemas of condemnation for every sin, and the sense of demerit warning the soul of coming judgment, couldn't come of natural mechanical forces. (A thunderstorm or whirlwind is not ethical, and it rains on the unjust as well as the just.) Nor could it come from animal ancestry. They must be the stamp of their Creator They must be a part of the image of God in man. They point to a God who is the fit object of man's moral worship, and a Holy Judge to whom man must give an account,
l. The Moral Law Compared to the Conscience.
We must be careful not to confuse the moral law of God written indelibly across our moral natures with the conscience Ho has set as Judge to administer it. The moral law is an intuition of moral rectitude, an obligation written throughout God's spiritual kingdom, in the Word, in angels, in man, and owes its authority to no other standard than God's own holiness of nature. It is a cognition of the soul of the right. It is an infallible standard of righteousness existing in every spiritual creature, and must be sinned against in everyone when wrong is done
Conscience is a judge sitting on the bench of the soul to administer this moral law. Conscience has been called, "the voice of God in the soul." Conscience can be perverted, The moral law of God never. Conscience can be seared, hushed, but the moral law of God within cannot be altered, cajoled, blinded, bridled, or bullied into giving a false voice. The conscience, according to the New Testament, can under the Holy Spirit ho improved to give a bettor voice, but not the moral law. It is indelible, infallible, unchanging, as constant as the law of gravity. You a sic, "What of the heathen?" Paul says they arc inexcusable, and distinguishes, as we do here, the difference in the two, conscience and law.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 46
"For when the Gentiles, which have not the law (that is, of Moses) do by nature (truly, certainly) the things contained in the law, these having not the law, are a law unto themselves which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness" (Rom. 2:l4, 15). Does the Hindu woman, doing what conscience says she must (since it is her religious training) when she casts her baby to the crocodiles, not feel in her heart the wrongness of it, by the moral law of God? Surely. A man cannot sink so low in degradation, even though conscience is seared to give no contrary voice, hut that the moral law of God tells him he is doing wrong. It is only this which makes him redeemable. Otherwise, there would be nothing in him to which we might appeal. A man may try to stifle this inner voice of God, eradicate the inner record God has written of His own nature, but must cry out at last, "I am undone."
Erskine wrote well-"When I attentively consider what is going on in my own conscience, the chief thing forced upon my notice is that I find myself face to face with a purpose not m~ own, for I am often conscious of resisting it, but which dominates me and strives to make me a good man."
No matter the set course of life against every moral principle of right, there still clamors in the soul a solitary voice of disapproval, a judge condemning, administering the moral law of God, bringing fear of punishment, though no human law demands it. Here is why murder will come out. How often is it that this is the only court of accounting some law breakers ever meet here on earth?
2. The way in which the moral law and conscience evidences a righteous God.
Our moral cognitions are without any meaning or intelligence whatsoever upon any other explanation than that of a personal righteous God to whom I am accountable. The right comes to us not as suggestion nor expedience but as commands and solemn duty and obligation. It Is always felt in the form, of merits and demerits, deserts and ill-deserts, rewards and punishment, commendation, and condemnation, It comes not as a pleasure or displeasure within, nor only of a sense of looking out for others' welfare, neither as inconsequential action, but obligation. There is an inexorable "ought to", and "ought not to." The question must inevitable arise, "From whence do these arise, if there is no standard of conduct exterior to, and superior to my own desires and pleasures?"
There are three ways in which these moral principles of the soul evidence, and point to, a personal God who is perfect in holiness and righteousness.CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS I Page 47
(1) Coming to us, as they do, in the form of commands, they imply an author from whom they came, and who has the right to prescribe laws, and demand obedience. A law of any kind without a 1awgiver is both impossible and nonsensical. The voice of conscience in the soul always comes to us with the force of outside authority, not our own, and superior to our own. This is clearly seen from the fact that it is altogether too independent, and most of the time too contrary to our own wills, to originate with us,
(2) Considering that these commands come in the form of duty, solemn obligation, then they indelibly point to a Judge to whom we are responsible and to whom we must give an accounting. There can never be a sense of duty where there is no supe