Questioning Darwin

Stephen Meyer relates the following story (starting at about the 23:15 mark in this video) about a Chinese professor of paleontology giving a lecture in which Meyer was in attendance. Meyer recounts:

[The Chinese professor is speaking:] "The strange thing about these Cambrian fossil finds is that they turn Darwin's tree upside down. Instead of having the simple forms at the bottom and gradually morphing and then the complex forms arising and then branching out, we have the disparity between form at the very beginning of the [Cambrian] explosion, with nothing underneath."

So there was some uncomfortable shuffling. And then we went to the Q&A time. And one of the geologists from the University of Washington raised his hand and he said, almost as if in warning, "Professor, aren't you a little bit uneasy about expressing scepticism about Darwinian evolution coming as you do from such an authoritarian country?"

And suddenly you could cut the tension with a knife, to use the old metaphor. But this Chinese professor - no one's fool - got a wry smile on his face, and he said, "In our country we can question Darwin, just not the government." And then he said, "In your country, you can question the government, but you can't question Darwinism."

Meyer also relates the same story in his book Darwin's Doubt (see chapter 3, "Soft Bodies and Hard Facts"):

So there was little doubt about the significance of the discoveries that [J.Y.] Chen came to report that day. What was soon in doubt, however, was Chen's scientific orthodoxy. In his presentation, he highlighted the apparent contradiction between the Chinese fossil evidence and Darwinian orthodoxy. As a result, one professor in the audience asked Chen, almost as if in warning, if he wasn't nervous about expressing his doubts about Darwinism so freely - especially given China's reputation for suppressing dissenting opinion. I remember Chen's wry smile as he answered. "In China," he said, "we can criticize Darwin, but not the government. In America, you can criticize the government, but not Darwin."

Clean power

From Dr. David Martyn Lloyd-Jones:

I remember a woman who was a spiritist, and even a medium, a paid medium employed by a spiritist society. She used to go every Sunday evening to a spiritist meeting and was paid three guineas for acting as a medium. This was during the thirties, and that was quite a large sum of money for a lower-middle-class woman.

She was ill one Sunday and could not go to keep her appointment. She was sitting in her house, and she saw people passing by on their way to the church where I happened to be ministering in South Wales. Something made her feel a desire to know what those people had, and so she decided to go to the service, and did so. She came ever afterward until she died and had become a very fine Christian.

One day I asked her what she had felt on that first visit, and this is what she said to me. She said, “The moment I entered your chapel and sat down on a seat among the people, I was conscious of a power. I was conscious of the same sort of power as I was accustomed to in our spiritist meetings, but there was one big difference. I had a feeling that the power in your chapel was a clean power.”

--Elizabeth Catherwood and Christopher Catherwood, eds., The Christ-Centered Preaching of Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Classic Sermons for the Church Today (Crossway, 2014), 34

HT: Dane Ortlund.

P-branes dropping apples from the shoulders of giants

Who said what? Each of the following quotations is from a different renowned scientist. Answers below.

1. Science is powerless to answer questions such as "Why did the universe come into being?" "What is the meaning of human existence?" "What happens after we die?"

2. I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today, and even professional scientists, seem to me like someone who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is, in my opinion, the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth.

3. Is the world divided into mind and matter, and, if so, what is mind, what is matter? Is mind subject to matter, or is it possessed of independent powers? Has the universe any unity or purpose? Is it evolving towards some goal? Are there really laws of nature, or do we believe in them only because of our innate love of order? Is man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of impure carbon and water impotently crawling on a small and unimportant planet? Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? Is there a way of living that is noble and another that is base, or are all ways of living merely futile? . . . To such questions no answers can be found in the laboratory.

4. There is no quicker way for a scientist to bring discredit upon himself and upon his profession than roundly to declare – particularly when no declaration of any kind is called for – that science knows, or soon will know, the answers to all questions worth asking, and that questions which do not admit a scientific answer are in some way non-questions or "pseudo-questions" that only simpletons ask and only the gullible profess to be able to answer. . . . The existence of a limit to science is, however, made clear by its inability to answer childlike elementary questions having to do with first and last things – questions such as: "How did everything begin?" "What are we all here for?" "What is the point of living?"

5. Science puts everything in a consistent order but is ghastly silent about everything that really matters to us: beauty, color, taste, pain or delight, origins, God and eternity.

6. How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a Creator? . . . Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. It has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly in physics. As a result scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.

Draw nigh to God

The following is from Adolph Saphir:

Remember that man's life does not consist in what he has, but in what he is. Serve Jesus and the church. Oh, let not the best years of your life be years in which you have little communion with God, and in which you do little for Christ! 'Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.' Let not your biography be summed up: 'He turned to God in his youth, he then became lukewarm, being engrossed in the cares and the business and the social demands of the world, and a short time before his death he saw his mistake, and felt that one thing was needful. For years his spiritual life was barely sustained by the prayers of friends and the weekly services of the sanctuary. He might have been a pillar in the church, but he was only a weight.' This be far from you. Oh, serve the Lord with gladness, be strong, quit yourselves like men, and abound in the work of the Lord. ‘Draw nigh to God.'

HT: Malcolm Maclean.

Debunking the parascientific

From Marilynne Robinson:

What I wish to question are not the methods of science, but the methods of a kind of argument that claims the authority of science or highly specialized knowledge, that assumes a protective coloration that allows it to pass for science yet does not practice the self-discipline or self-criticism for which science is distinguished.

HT: Kris Lundgaard.

That wondrous book

From Charles Spurgeon:

And, oh, you will get a thousand helps out of that wondrous book [the Bible] if you do but read it; for, understanding the words more, you will prize it more, and, as you get older, the book will grow with your growth, and turn out to be a greybeard's manual of devotion just as it was aforetime a child's sweet story book. Yes, it will always be a new book — just as new a Bible as it was printed yesterday, and nobody had ever seen a word of it till now; and yet it will be a deal more precious for all the memories which cluster round it. As we turn over its pages how sweetly do we recollect passages in our history which will never be forgotten to all eternity, but will stand for ever intertwined with gracious promises. Beloved, the Lord teach us to read his book of life which he has opened before us here below, so that we may read our titles clear in that other book of love which we have not seen as yet, but which will be opened at the last great day. The Lord be with you, and bless you.

Whitefield's woes

From Arnold Dallimore:

[W]hile [George] Whitefield was at Charleston, Commissary Garden confronted him with a copy of Wesley's sermon "Against Predestination." This was Whitefield's first realization that, contrary to his expressed desire, Wesley was circulating this divisive document, and he could see that the day was approaching when it would be necessary for him to write a reply.

And further disappointment awaiting him: he received an answer to his proposal of marriage. He merely tells us, "I find from Blendon letters that Miss E[lizabeth] D[elamotte] is in a seeking state only." Apparently either the parents or Elizabeth had written to say that she was not a sufficiently mature Christian to undergo all the trials he had listed. But the Delamottes, with the rest of the Fetter Lane Society, had become Moravians and were now opposed to the Wesleys, and we must suppose to some degree to Whitefield too. Moreover, Elizabeth was now keeping company with another young man, William Holland, the one spoken of as reading from Luther on the evening John Wesley was converted, and within five months Elizabeth and Holland were married. Our hearts go out to Whitefield in this further disappointment, and we feel for him as following his mention of the "Blendon letters" he says, "Just now I have been weeping, and much carried out before the Lord."

In this sense of deep disappointment he returned to Bethesda.

After a few days spent in superintending the work of the Orphan House, Whitefield set out on his Fall Tour -- that of New England. He had been invited by the governor and the secretary of Massachusetts, by a number of laymen, and by several ministers.

And now, as always, Boston people thronged to hear him. Civic officials of today would not allow such crowding as was practiced under Whitefield's ministry in the churches. Time after time humanity pressed into the pews, filled the aisles and the stairways, and covered the pulpit area. But in a congregation that had gathered ahead of time at the New South Church and was waiting for Whitefield to arrive, someone broke a board to form a makeshift seat, and a cry went up that the gallery was falling. Immediately the place was in a panic as people rushed to get to the doors, and many fell and were trampled upon. Some even threw themselves out of the windows. Five were killed and several seriously injured.

Whitefield was disturbed by the tragedy . . .

And:

My Dear, Dear Brethren,

. . . Why did you throw out that bone of contention? Why did you print that sermon against predestination? . . .

Do you not think, my dear brethren, that I must be as much concerned for truth, or what I think truth, as you? God is my judge. I always was, and I hope I always shall be, desirous that you may be preferred before me. But I must preach the Gospel of Christ, and this I cannot now do without speaking about election. . . .

O my dear brethren, my heart almost bleeds within me! Methinks I would be willing to tarry here on the waters forever, rather than come to England to oppose you.

Whitefield to John and Charles Wesley, from aboard ship, as it approached England March 1741

Has it cost you to follow Christ?

From D.A. Carson:

In one church I know, a medical doctor, formerly a missionary, was appointed to the board of elders. Some time later he had an affair, divorced his wife, abandoned his children, and separated himself from any form of biblical Christianity. Countless attempts were made to rehabilitate him; doubtless some of these attempts were wise, and some were unwise.

But the most thoughtful assessment of the mess came three years later, from one of the leaders in the church. He suggested that this doctor, who came from a Christian home and had done all the "right" things, had never had to make a decision that cost him anything. Everything was too easy; at every point he had been supported and praised. Even his missionary career was bound up with his own specialty interests in medicine. Then, when some troubles opened up in his marriage (as they open up in most marriages at one time or another), and an attractive alternative presented herself, this doctor had no moral center on which to depend. He had never, for the sake of Christ, made a decision that cost him something; and he wasn't about to start now. In hindsight, it is not even clear that his profession of faith was real, for real professions of faith manifest themselves in a principal death to self-interest, in a principal commitment to the cause of Christ and his gospel.

I am far from suggesting that every divorce proves a person is a non-Christian. Christians sin; those who claim they do not are self-deceived, and make God out to be a liar (1 John 1:4ff.). But in this case (and it is not unique), it is hard to find even one area of this man's life, one major incident in his life (so far as his life is known), where professed allegiance cost him anything.

That is not normal. It may be common (as spurious believers are regrettably common); but it is not normal. What is normal is taking up one's cross and following Jesus; it is recognizing that in this fallen world, "everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." That is inevitable; decisions are made; the cost is cheerfully borne; and iron is bred into the soul.