 Okay. Good morning everyone. And once again, welcome to PC212, a course on Christian apologetics. Let's take a moment to pray and we'll get started. Father, we thank you for another day, another opportunity to come together and learn and listen and open our minds so God open our understanding and may the things we learned today equip us to serve you well and to make a difference in the lives of people. We thank you Father in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright. So in our course so far we are getting into a little bit of the science side of things. So today we'll get into a little bit more on the science side and we'll try to keep it simple. Don't worry too much if you don't understand everything but do your best to understand. Let me go ahead and share the screen, share the PDF. So last week we were talking about faith in science, lesson number three. Just quickly review. We discussed does science contradict faith or are these opposites? Can you be a person of faith and also practice science? Can you practice it? So we were saying, yeah, you can. In fact, science is more of a discovery of the greatness of God. It helps us understand more of God. We talked about questions like, what about discoveries that are made in science that are not explained in the Bible? We say the Bible is not an encyclopedia. So it's not going to have everything. It's not a science book. It's not a physics book. So we don't expect all of those things to be here. And also next question is, should we use science to interpret the Bible? The Bible is final authority. So there may be things that... So we don't use science to interpret the Bible. We use normal interpretation rules to study the scriptures. And if we try to make the Bible accommodate science, then we can go into all kinds of wrong things. So to be careful about that. Can science explain everything? We said there are five big questions of life which science doesn't answer. Five big questions. Origin, where did we come from? Identity, who we are? Meaning, why are we here? Morality, how should we live? And destiny where are we going? These things science doesn't answer. Has science done away with God? We said no. We responded to some of the ideas that people say, oh, we're just using God to fill in the unknowns. God is bigger than that. God is not a material God. And human reason did not create the universe. So our science and our knowledge is only discovering what was created. We are not creating it. We're only discovering it. So we shouldn't elevate our reason as though it is equal to the Creator. There's no match to that. Is science the only way to truth? No, there are a lot of other disciplines and science does not do away with all the other disciplines. Does science inherently include a leap of faith? We say even in the scientific process, there is faith. People believe whatever they believe. They even believe their theories, unproven theories, they believe. That is also faith. And then lastly, there's belief in God, delusion. Alright, let's go to lesson number four today. And let's look at creation from a scientific perspective. So earlier in lesson number two, we talked about creation from a theological perspective. What does the Bible say about God? Now we will try to respond to a Creator and creation from a scientific perspective. Let's just look at it from there. Now, this actually summarized from a nice book called The Case for the Creator by Lee Strobel. If you want, it's in the church office library if you wish to take and read. And I've just given very, very concise comments, not fully, but each of these can be expanded. You can look into depth. And in fact, there are scientists or researchers who would be studying in each of these areas. People who study physics or cosmology or astronomy. Now they specialize in those areas. Obviously, there's a huge body of information. But I'm just pointing to one or two things that you can use in your conversation when you're talking to people. So the first is evidence from cosmology. Cosmology means how did the universe begin and come into existence? The study of that. So people are trying to discover how did this universe come? Cosmology. So for example, one of the reasons why people are exploring deep space. We're sending out all these space cars far, far into space. Why are we doing it? One of the reasons is hopefully we'll get some information that will tell us how did everything begin. That's one of the things. Of course, there are other reasons like can we live and is there life and other planets? Can we go and live on other planets? All those other things are there. But one of the reasons is can we get information? How did this universe begin? Is there any clues outside there? So they're sending the spacecrafts, go explore the space, see what information we can get. So that's cosmology. The study of how did this universe begin? So there was a point in time in the past that the scientific community thought there was no beginning. There was no end. That means everything was the way it is, steady state. They thought like that. That was the thinking because they didn't have any clue of was there a beginning? Is there going to be an end? No evidence, no clue. Okay, we'll just say everything was like this from time past and it will continue like this. That was the thought in the scientific community. Then Einstein came. He was doing some calculations. He said, no, no, no, no. The universe is expanding. So try to imagine a cone is expanding. So if it is expanding, if you go back in time, it had to have a beginning. Then he would have said, ah, okay. That means the universe did have a begin. Because if the universe is expanding, if you go back in time, it'll go all the way to a small point. And that is the beginning. Okay. And mathematically, you have equations that you can say this is it. Ah, okay. If the universe had a beginning, how did it begin? You don't know when Big Bang happened. So the other scientists came up with this theory. Let's assume there was a big explosion. Somehow matter and energy was compressed into something very small. How? We don't know. Assume. And then it exploded. There was so much energy. And then there was this matter that came out. And over huge, we will study a little bit more on Big Bang theory in a separate chapter. But over time, that energy got converted to matter. All these planets came into existence. Stars came into existence, all those things. Again, they're only theorizing. You're saying, maybe it happened like this. Imagine. I will try to make some equations to show some, you know, okay, this, this can happen like this. This can happen. But it's all theory. So we have a theory. It's called Big Bang. And we are saying, well, the universe had a beginning and that beginning must have happened something like this. Can't prove it. But we tried to give an explanation. And then we say, okay, how did life come? How did life come on the planet? Okay, even you're saying, okay, all this came, planets came, and they started in a space and matter was created. Then how did life come? Oh, we need something to tell us how life came on earth. So then over time, another theory came. The theory of evolution. How, you know, after the Big Bang matter was created, matter came into existence and then how these certain carbon molecules, they, you know, eventually they formed small life forms and that evolved, evolved, evolved on. Today, you and I share a theory. It's not proven. Nobody was there to see it. You cannot reproduce it. I forget about reproduction. You can't even do it once. You can't even show it once. So what is a theory? So we say, ah, we've got the answers for life. How the universe came into existence. How life came into existence. But we just have to ask some simple questions. Can chance, and this is the bottom of page 16. So if that is the explanation of cosmology, that means how the universe and life came into existence. We're giving these theories as the explanation. Then let's ask some very simple questions. Can chance produce intelligence? Can accident result in purpose? So meaningful, something like this. Can non-life create? Can something come from nothing? Can chaos produce order? And the common example that we can use is suppose you took a big box. So what we are saying is you take a big box of letters, the alphabets. You shake it nicely and you throw it on the floor and a beautiful book comes. With the title of the book, author's name, all the chapters, page number, everything, meaningful story, 1000 page book. That is what we are saying. When we are saying that it came like that. How many times do you want to try? Keep shaking the letters and throwing on the floor. Will the book come? But we are saying that's how this universe came into existence. There is so much order, so much meaning. It is so amazing and you are saying it all happened by accident. Something happened and it just came. So now, scientists don't want to accept this kind of very basic question. Very simple question. I think it is complicated. Very simple question. No, no, no. That question we don't want to answer. We have a theory. It happened like this. So that belief on page 17, the belief that something can come from nothing, chaos, birth, order, the lifeless matter produced conscious. It is only counterintuitive. It is not reasonable. It is irrational. It is actually against reason. But this is the way. This is the way it happened. So if you look at it from the study of cosmology, it should make us think that, hey, this is too much. It cannot have happened by accident. It's too good. The universe, life on earth, it's just too amazing to say it happened by accident. Then we look at physics. Now, in physics, what we have is, it's called the anthropic principle. Basically, it says there are a lot of constants or precise values for things in this world, in this universe. That's correct value. Gravity on the earth, 9.8 meters per second on the earth. You go, whether you are in Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Sahin, or anywhere. It's precise. Like that we have about, so we say gravity. Now, if you want to think of it, how precise this value is. Suppose we had a scale because this universe is so big. We could have almost billions of, it could be anything in billions. This number could have been anything from zero to some billion. It could have been anything. And this number is precisely this 9.8 on the earth, meters per second. This is precisely this. If you change it even by a little bit, a little bit on the scale, that small change is like a fraction of a billion, which itself is a big number. It's a billion because the possibilities are limitless. It could have been anything. So even if you change it a little bit, it's actually you're changing it by a billion. And even if you change gravity by that amount, it will disrupt everything. Life will be completely disrupted. This whole universe would be disrupted. So we are saying, okay, this is only one like this. There are so many, about 30, at least 30 major constants, speed of light, so on, so forth. They're all very precise values. Another example is energy density of space. So space, the energy density that's in empty space. It is so small, but yet it is so fine tuned that even again, a small change in it will either cause the whole universe to compress and collide. Or if you make it bigger, it will push everything out and explode. So either a small change this way or that can result in complete destruction. So we're saying, okay, we're discovering all this. We're studying all this. We're discovering, hey, there is something here like gravity. There is something here like energy density of space. Something here like speed of light or something here or all these physical parameters, very precise values. How did it happen? Why is it like this? How could this have been designed by accident? How could accident have decided on these precise values? So they call it, we call it the fine tuning of the universe. The universe is so fine tuned. Like you think about guitar or playing person, playing the instrument. He can tell in his ear, fine tuned. It's not out of tune. Sound doesn't come out right. It tunes it. It has to be at this, you know, I don't know music or anything, but they know it has to be at this sound, fine tuned. So like that, the universe is so precise, so well tuned. Even small change, disaster gone. Life is gone. So question we have to ask. We are studying physics. You're saying all these physical constants are there. But how did it come to be? How did those constants come into existence so precise values? And it is fixed. It is fine tuned, we are saying. Again, good chance have produced this. Or can we say God who's so great, he designed and put all of this in place. Then number three, astronomy. So astronomy, again, it's all kind of related. Astronomy is the study of the planets and the bodies and the stars. And here again, there are lots and lots of things that we have discovered and are discovering. But just point to a couple of things, you know, that the Earth's location from the sun is so precise that life can happen here. So now we're going to the moon, close neighbor. Maybe can we find some life there? As of now, no life so cold. The frozen, one side is frozen. So anyway, you think about this. The Earth is in such a place where life is possible. Any little closer to the sun, God. Little closer to the sun, too hot. We can't survive. Little away from the sun, too cold. Cannot survive. We are here and we're rotating around the sun and we're happy. Life is happening. So this is one example, just one example. How come there's so many planets, so many stars, everything? How come on this planet life is possible? Life has been old, like you and I, but it's not possible anywhere else. So again, you talk about the sun from the side, the other side. How come the sun has just the right amount of heat, radiation, light coming from the sun to reach the Earth? Just the right amount. If the sun was any bigger, again, we'll be gone. It'd be too much for us. So the sun itself is very powerful. Everything is so great and yet it is just right. So you look at it both ways. So I just want to just one example in astronomy studying about the planets that we can say, okay, see you're studying about planets. Think about the so many planets, so many stars, so many things are there. And yet only on one planet, as we know of all that we have seen, that is life. And it is just in the right look. Just a simple question. They say there are billions of stars. We don't even know how many stars are there. We don't know everything that's out there. We don't know what life is on this planet. So even through the study of astronomy, we begin to think, could this have happened by chance? Or is this something very, very precise? Very intentional. Then number four. So we looked out into the outer space. We looked into, you know, what's way out there. But then now you come look at into the cell. Again, we can study, you know, by chemistry and look at a lot of different things, but consider a single human cell, one cell of the bodies made up of thousands and thousands of cells, different kinds. But in one cell, think about one part of the cell. And all these are to see under the microscope. Can't even see with our natural eye. So small. The cell has hair-like structures. Small, very thin. That enable the cell to move. Hair-like structures. But that hair-like structure, which is called cilia. Each cell has about 200 cilia. They serve a function, you know, they can have the cell move. They can have expelled things from the cell. Each cilia, that single small strand, it has 200 protein pieces, protein molecules. 200. One strand. And for that cilia to be able to do what it is doing, move, these protein pieces or protein parts had to be assembled in a certain way, like rods, motors, to for it to move. Think about this finger. If this finger was one single bone, you can't bend it. But see, it has three parts. Very nice. And it has three, I can move it here. I can bend here. I can bend here. Very nice. But it has to be assembled like this for me to do that. Now start with the single cell, one cell, you start. There's a hair-like structure. Simple. The molecules are assembled in such a way that it can move. Hair. You're saying this, even for this small piece, it is a miracle that these protein molecules would come and assemble in such a way that it can move. It's a miracle. Meaning it's impossible to say it just happened by accident. It just happened. We're talking about only one cell. If you think about the rest of the body, too much. You come higher, you know, every organ, everything in the body is so amazing. Even if one human person by happened by chance like that, that is a miracle. It's just impossible. How did these protein molecules, first of all, how did these protein molecules, how did they come into existence? We'll talk a little bit in another chapter on the theory of evolution. What reason, how they say it happened. But anyway, how did these molecules come together to form protein molecules? First of all, then how did these protein molecules assemble like this to form one hair-like structure that can move? How did it happen? Like from how, where did it all come together? Today you can put the protein molecules in a test tube, shake, shake, shake, however long you want it won't form a cell here. It's, you can't cause it to happen however long you want. It won't happen by chance, right? So now if you think of all the other things, you know, talk about the human body, the systems in the body, then look at all the other things, you know, study the plants, the animals, all of everywhere. There is so much of intelligence in biochemistry. So how can all this happen by chance? Then number five, you go even lower and this is something I would say like, you know, we would say it's a more recent discovery. That means around 1953, we're talking about evidence of biological information. So it was not discovered during Darwin's time when, you know, during that time when they came out with a theory of evolution, so on. He didn't know all these things, but it was more than 1950s. But what happened as we were studying the cell and we started studying every little part of the cell, what's inside, because now we had the microscope, we could go into the, you know, greater depth, study, observe things. So we realized that inside the cell, that is what is known as a DNA. And that DNA is not there not doing anything, but it's that DNA that has now we call it genetic information. It has the information that actually determines the characteristics of the person. You mean way down in that small minute strand inside that cell, the DNA. There is information and that information is determining the characteristics of the physical person. Oh, so very secret in the DNA. There is huge amounts of information. So it is very, very amazing. So what we know is that there are 100 trillion cells and all kinds of proteins were needed to construct this 30,000 genes that produce these kinds of proteins. And the DNA basically it needs the right kind of amino acids and the right kind of proteins. Again, you're breaking it down. Okay, what is the composition? There are these molecules that have to come together in the right sequence. So again, for that protein molecule to be formed, you know, you need to have these bonds between the amino acid and they have to come in a certain sequence. And for something to like that to happen, it's like the probability is one in 10 to the power of 25. In other words, the chance of that happening by accident is more than, I mean, it's just impossible one out of 10 to the power of 25. When we are speaking about all these things, like faster from the starting, we got to know everything because of science. There are some cells, there is some distance from moon to sun. When we are building everything from this, I mean, everything is happening because of science like the Vento Moon, this Chandraya Andhra. So if they ask us a question, if you are believing everything what is happening now, everything is running by science, how you can't believe this thing what we are telling about this evolution or everything about this? Yeah, so our response to that is twofold. First, what we said earlier, science is not the cause for these things. Science can create these things. Science is only a study or a discovery of these things. That's the first response. So while we are saying, science is good because it's helping us discover. Science didn't create it. It's discovering what was created. Second, the second response is science is good. But based on that, we are trying to answer bigger questions, the five big questions. That is where we disagree. Science is good. We agree. We enjoy it. But the conclusions you're drawing based on the discovery of science, we disagree with that. Because they are saying science is so good, therefore we don't need God. We are saying science is so good, therefore it confirms God is there. So that is where we disagree. So the conclusion you're drawing out of that, the conclusion the atheist is drawing is science is so good, we don't need God. We are saying science is so good, we need God. We went to the moon. Why? Because there are certain laws that you can use to go there. Science can create the laws. Science only understood the laws and said, okay, because this law is there and it will work even after so many years, it will still be there. I can build a spacecraft and I can go. I can leverage what is there and get there and come back. The question is who put the law and who made it so wonderful that you can count on it. You believe in it so much, you build a spacecraft, you're sending it into space because you know it's going to be there. You can leverage that. So I think this is where we see it differently. One is science is teaching us so much, but we realize science didn't create these things. It's only a discovery of these things. Whereas the atheist elevates science to the place where it says, oh, it is so good, we created everything. No, you didn't create everything. And the second way we disagree is the conclusions we draw from it. The atheist is saying, look, look, look, we know all these things. Therefore we don't need God. We know all these things. Therefore it's telling us that God is so great. Because actually it's very logical conclusion, very logical thing that hey, if there is just going back to this biological information, if there is so much of information in that small cell, one cell, so much of design, and you're saying it all happened by accident. It just happened. It all is assembled together like that. And we can use science itself to say that the probability of something like that, you count the probability, the probability of so many molecules coming together like this, you count it. So 1 and 2, 10 to the power 25, can it actually happen? No. We can quantify it by giving it some big number, saying that the probability of this is 1 and 10 to raise 25. But it just tells us it can never happen. It's the amount of information that's there. And we are still discovering, still learning, still studying about the single cell, studying about for almost 100 years. One cell keeps studying, but you're discovering, discovering, learning, learning. So just looking at how this DNA is formed and the protein molecules that need to come together in such intricate order, it just makes us say that hey, it's just impossible for this thing to happen by itself. And the number 6 is something we have mentioned earlier, which is consciousness, right? Even if you have a physical organ like the brain, how does... And we can explain the function of the brain physically or physiologically. Oh, we know there are chemicals here that are moving. They're causing signals to go on the brain nerve cells, neurons. We can say, yeah, we can see it happening here. Very good. We all have the same brain, physical organ. But we're all different people. We have the same physical structure. But there is something we call as temperaments. Why we all have different temperaments? Like why we all have different interests? We have the same physical brain. We have different interests, different temperaments. So we are all different people. But the structure is basically we are... So imagine if Samsung made the same phone, but every phone worked differently. So I ask you, go to them, hey, why is every phone... I don't know, I'm making the same phone, but it's functioning differently. That shall be full chaos. But yeah, physiologically we are very same, but we're all unique, different. That itself is a wonder. We're all physically the same thing. But as people, we're all different. That means there is something more than just the physical. There's what we refer to as the mind, which, you know, it gives us more of our thoughts, beliefs, passions, emotions. Physically we're the same, but our mind, who we are, our personality, each person is very different. And so, you know, we can use the word consciousness. And our intelligence, our mind is all very different. So how come this is there? We're all physically the same, but there is something beyond the matter. There is the mind. There is a spiritual dimension in each of us. It's an intangible part for each of us that we cannot fully understand. We can't fully explain. So we just use the word consciousness, something beyond the physical. We try to study it little by little, you know, different, we say different temperament, this, like this, you know, okay. But there's something beyond just the matter, the physical part of us. Where did that come from? You know, why is it there is that morality? There's rationality. There is this, this mind in every person, and it's all different. So from a scientific perspective, if break down into, you can break it down into at least the six areas. You can talk about cosmology, physics, astronomy, biochemistry, go down to the molecular level, the DNA level, genetic information level. Then you can also come to the consciousness level. All these are fields of study. People are trying to study and understand, but each field of study, if you just logically think through, it makes us conclude that God is there. God is the one who gave all this intelligence, gave all this order, gave all this design, yeah. So let's conclude this part. So Sam 14 months says, the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. So to conclude there is no God is actually a foolish thing. The logical thing is, hey, somebody had to do this. And we have referred to Romans 1, 18 and 22 quite often, that the invisible attributes of God are clearly seen in the things that have been made. So as we are studying the creation, we're actually coming to see the attributes of God, how amazing he is, how intelligent, how wise we are seeing the glory of God. And the world through wisdom did not know God. That is a sad part. The world through wisdom did not know God. And as much as we are learning all this, discovering all this, we're ending up with the wrong conclusion. The more we discover, the more knowledge we get, we are saying there is no God. It's the wrong conclusion. The world through wisdom did not know God. It's a sad part. So it takes that personal decision to come into a relationship with God and understand God. And there are some websites that you can go to, the book Case for Creators, what we've used here. The Apolitics website, that's also a useful resource. So any questions on lesson number four? We'll start lesson five after the break. Any questions on lesson four? Let me check the chat. Any questions from online students? So like how you're saying, like obviously science proves so much that there is an existence of God. So would you say like the scientists are actually living in denial like those who say that there is no God. They are living in denial, right? I mean, that would be, you know, what we would like to point out, but they would not accept it. You know, like the scientists who say there is no God. They think that we who say there is a God are deluded. They call us, you're just making us. But we say, hey, you're not looking, you're looking at the facts. You're looking at all the information, but you're not accepting. So that we call it as denial. So that's what we would say, but they wouldn't want to accept that. They say, no, no, no, we have so much of knowledge. We can do so many things. So it's almost like the knowledge has made us so proud. Maybe say we don't need God. But thank God for scientists who do believe. So there are people who are very, very good scientists. Like John Lennox is a good person. You can listen to his videos online on YouTube. And he's a scientist. I think he's at Oxford and he believes in God. He's written many good books. We'll be referring summarizing some of his content later on. So he debates. Funny thing at Oxford, you have scientists who say there is no God and there are scientists who say there is a God and they will debate and write books and answer questions. In one way it's nice that you can see that how they are responding to each other's ideas. And thank God for such people. If we are telling like according to Bible, God created this world. So Hindus people, they can also tell like a Brahma created this world. So how can we tell? So we will come to that a little later. So now we're establishing the existence of God that there is a Creator who created everything. So we are going through that now and we are responding to science which tries to tell us there is no God and so on. So we'll do that first. Then we will have to get into the uniqueness of Jesus. Why? Jesus is the only way. When there are so many, like you're saying, so many other religions and so many other ideas. Why do we say Jesus is the only way? So we'll come to that part. So we'll take the step by step. Okay, there's a question on the chat. Romans 121 says, although they knew God, what does it refer to? Knowing God, meaning recognizing but not acknowledging. Yeah. So that's what it says. Although they are seeing evidence for God, they are choosing to say there is no God. Although even their own conscience might be telling them initially, at one point, God is, but they suppress that and reject it and eventually come to this place where they just deny God. Yeah. Okay. So let's take our 10 minute break. We'll come back and we'll get into our next lesson. Okay. Thank you.