The Backdrop

Science is wonderful. Science has helped us understand the laws of nature, the elements, our solar system, and the known universe.

Through the pursuit of scientific discovery we have enjoyed many benefits through inventions and processes that have helped us grow food more efficiently, mechanize repetitive tasks, enjoy better health; explore farther into space, deeper into the oceans, and into infinitesimally small particles of matter.

Our lives are easier than the lives of our parents and grandparents. We have harnessed the power of water and electricity and the atom, although we have not explained all their mysteries. We continue to advance new discoveries, amassing libraries of knowledge in every aspect of our existence, all because of science. Yet, even with such advancement and tremendous progress, we are still mesmerized by science and scientists.

We are beholden to the latest scientific report that has advanced a medical treatment, probed the human mind, explained a societal trend, or explained a mystery from our past. We are still learning and we accept these reports as factual information. Science.

Science is not at fault for our idolatry; we are. Only a few centuries ago mankind moved from thinking dominated by superstition. We moved into a rational way of thinking about our world and have been conditioned to accept the results of scientific inquiry for quite some time. After all, science does not allow an individual’s personality, whims, preferences, or mood swings to influence it. Science boasts the removal of emotion, subjective impressions, and anything bordering on fantasy. Science is neutral. Science is honest. Science is true.

Scientific discovery is based on the scientific method that demands the unbiased observation and analysis of measurable things. For many years our society has worshipped this presumed objectivity to the point of believing almost every declaration made by modern science.

In this way, for generations, science has been the backdrop against which man understands himself and his universe.

However, since science is not equipped with instruments with which it can observe, measure, and analyze beyond the material universe, a tension exists between science and religion. Many, perhaps, most scientists have concluded that God is a myth conjured up by ancient man to explain things not understood. Spirituality, some say, is little more than a psychological phenomenon to explain or pacify one’s anxiety.

Science is wonderful, and yet, it leaves an emptiness within every person. Science cannot answer basic questions about reality found in the heart of man, questions such as...

• Who am I?
• Why am I here?
• How/where can I find meaning?
• What is good? Is evil really evil?
• Does anything exist after death?

In truth, it is God who stands as the backdrop against which man finds understanding of himself, the universe, and his place in the universe. It is not man who explains God, but God who gives meaning and understanding to man. It was not man who created God, but God who created man And revealed himself to man….

In the beginning . . . God!

Mark Stinnett

February 2, 2025

"The End Is Near!"...Again

A respected medical journal reported...
A respected scientific publication claimed...
A team of respected psychologists discovered...

There are many claims made by many people with well-deserved credentials. Yet, sometimes their reports, claims, and discoveries contradict.

Some modern-day ‘seers’ claim to know the future, claiming their source to be the dead. (Do the dead really know the future??)

We read about astounding claims, miracle cures, health scares, economic disaster, our nation’s future, cataclysmic world events, and even the end of the world or the universe.

Does anyone know anything for sure!?

Questions about the future have interested mankind for centuries? Old Testament prophets relayed God’s message to man, but there were also posers, those who claimed to be prophets but had received no revelation from God. The false prophets often spoke of peace while the prophets of God warned of His impending judgment due to sin and unfaithfulness. People wondered who was telling the truth.

God gave the Israelites a simple way to determine whether a prophet spoke from God or from his own mind: If the prophesy occurred as the prophet predicted, then he could be trusted. If the prophesy failed, the prophet was a false prophet. (Deuteronomy 18:15-22)

Our society has, in general, followed God’s strategy as an intuitive way of dealing with seemingly unbelievable claims. Many doom and gloom prognosticators have been revealed as false prophets by the passage of time. Yet, many in our society still line up neatly and follow any 'pied piper’ who plays the music of scientific research.

Science and research are excellent resources. Yet, not all science/research has revealed truth. One study predicts another economic depression; another predicts a catastrophic earthquake; yet another, a pandemic disease. Time passes and life goes on as it always has. New research sometimes reveals the flaws of earlier predictions.

Although the Bible is not a science book or a guide for economic planning, it often reveals truths that apply to the many claims made in our world. The key is to begin with God and allow him to reveal truths about mankind and his world. (Our human tendency is to begin with man’s thinking and then see if God’s word fits what we think we already know.)

As an example, consider ‘climate change.’ One theory concludes that the earth will become uninhabitable due to excessive heat. Another theory predicts a global freeze brought on by a change in ocean currents due to the melting of polar icecaps. These and other theories fly in the face of God’s promise to Noah:

While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter and day and night, shall not cease. 

—Genesis 8:22

So, it’s great to be responsible by putting out the trash, recycling, conserving energy and even hugging a tree if you wish. But don’t be upset by “the end is near” environmental alarmists.

Not every claim made by people will have a clear and direct answer in Scripture. However the Bible will guide us so that we do not have live in fear of modern-day false prophets...even if research seems to be on their side.

Mark Stinnett

September 1, 2024

Ignorance by Choice

Faith is a tricky thing. For many people, perhaps for most of us, there are areas of life in which we simply choose to believe. Evidence is ignored for various reasons, or for no reason at all and a faith stance is chosen.

Let me give you a few examples. There are people who truly believe that the moon landing was a hoax. There were, and perhaps still are, people who truly believed in a flat earth. Some people simply do not believe that dinosaurs existed. You may laugh because there is ample evidence to consider. But some people have what you might call a ‘Thomas Complex.’ Thomas was the apostle who rejected the eye-witness testimony of the other apostles and boasted that he would not believe that Jesus was raised from the dead unless he could see and touch the scars on the living body of Jesus.

Today, there are no resurrection eye-witnesses. Yet we would be foolish to ignore the evidence.

Science:

Some scientists are guilty of ignore-ance, that is, a conscious choice to ignore existing evidence. Pick up a high school science textbook and you will find that modern science is based on the ‘Thomas Complex’: Only those things that can be examined with the human senses yield truth. So, things like God and angels and the biblical creation account are intentionally ignored. (How can you examine someone that exists outside the boundaries of the physical universe???) So, things that are not subject to scientific inquiry are dismissed by many scientists.

Of course, without God there is no Creator and no divine revelation. By extension, there is no divine standard of morality. There is no hope. Love becomes an arbitrary concept. Mankind is reduced to nothing more than a highly developed animal that defines morality himself. Religion becomes a system for weak-minded people who need something greater than man.

Biblical Scholarship:

Some biblical scholars are also guilty of ignore-ance by consciously choosing to ignore the internal evidence in the Bible. They assume that the Bible was a product of humans and therefore treat it with no greater regard than other ancient religious writings, ancient mythologies or cave scribblings.

Their willful ignorance generally results in their denial of miracles, denial of the fulfillment of prophecy, denial of the existence of non-physical entities and the afterlife. In their examination of the Scriptures they are quick to correct the inspired writers by suggesting words that should have been used, and by tossing aside questionable verses and debated passages. Some even pride themselves in being able to correct the thinking of the biblical writers.

To these, the Bible is little different than a book that might lay next to it on a coffee table. Yet...

All Scripture is inspired by God…. 

—2 Timothy 3:16 (NASB95)

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 

—Romans 1:18–19 (NASB95)

Whenever you are overwhelmed by the truth of God’s word or you hear yourself think, “How can a person not believe?” remember, some people choose ignore-ance. We, on the other hand, embrace divine revelation, something more absolute than human research.

Mark Stinnett

October 24, 2021

A False Truth???

Man and Truth

1. No amount of rationalization, human reasoning or logic makes truth. Truth exists independent of human thought.

2. Accusations do not establish truth; especially false accusations.

3. Truth is not subject to human courts of law or any other tribunal or gathering of thinking heads (reasonable or not).

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The scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees attempted to discredit Jesus. Their attempts failed because of the superior wisdom of Jesus. Even then, it was not the wisdom of Jesus that made truth true. Truth already existed independent of all the thinking and reasoning and testing and trapping; and even Jesus’ wisdom. It was with depth of wisdom that Jesus appealed to truth and confounded the ones testing him.

When the Sadducees tested Jesus (Matthew 22), they were actually mocking Jesus and those who believed in the resurrection. They had constructed a hypothetical situation based on the Law of Moses that would stump the ‘resurrectionists.’ How mockingly brilliant they thought they were. After all, they didn’t even believe in the resurrection.

Jesus used scripture to show the reality of the resurrection and it shamed the Sadducees for such a silly question. Such is human reasoning when pitted against the truth...Silly.

When Jesus was ultimately accused of blasphemy and sentenced to death, the charge against him was not true. In fact, the reason the accusers of Jesus believed he was guilty of blaspheming God was because they had already rejected the truth about Jesus, that He truly was the Son of God. So, they believed the very thing they 'assumed' to be true.

So, about the only thing the Sadducees accomplished was to show that a false assumption is sure to yield a false truth. (Think about that one.)

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The flaw with science when it dabbles in questions about the origin of the universe or the origin of man is that it starts with things that already exist in the natural world. Read any introductory science book that explains the scientific method: Science investigates things that are visible, audible, touchable; things that can be tasted or smelled; things that are measurable. Science is completely dependent upon human senses and human instrumentation for detecting and measuring and evaluating.

Science tests and measures. Past accomplishments have given man the ability to peer farther and farther into space; deeper and deeper into the ocean, and even into the earth’s core. Science has detected and measured infinitesimally minute particles as well as distant giants in the vastness of space. Yet, in all of this, science merely probes, tests, measures and observes existing matter.

It is no fault of science that it cannot probe beyond things that exist as matter. Science is ill equipped to explain truths involving intangibles: God, love, hope, conscience, morality, eternal life. It is the wrong tool.

It is the fault of man to try and use science for something it is not equipped to do. So, anyone who ‘assumes’ that science can reveal truth in the area of intangibles and reality beyond measurement is more like the Sadducees and Pharisees. Begin with a faulty assumption, and who knows what you’ll be able to come up with???