WHY DO WE NEED A DIVINE REVELATION?

It is not an easy task for scientists to reconstruct the distant past. All the evidence they have is in the present and it doesn’t come along with a description of its history. So they have to assume that certain things happened (which they cannot prove) to use them as a hypothesis of investigation.

This problem is very common in paleontology or in cosmology. The latter, which tries to develop scientific models that describe the origin of the universe, has a peculiar characteristic, as Jeremy Rifkin explains:
“Cosmologies are made up of small snippets of physical reality that have been remodeled by society into vast cosmic deceptions.” (1)

Cosmologists weren’t there when the things they talk about happened; they only invent theories on how they believe things happened.

Paleontologists, in a similar manner, use a few dug bones to paint a three-dimensional ecosystem that with its intricate details gives the public the impression of having been “proved by science.” Such was the case of the infamous television series by the BBC, Walking with Dinosaurs, which despite of its impacting visual effects, was hardly a science documentary faithful to the facts. (2)

A few years ago there was a heated discussion among paleontologists about some characteristics of the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

For years it had been claimed that the Tyrannosaurus could run up to 44 miles per hour. But in 2002 Stanford University engineers John Hutchinson and Mariano García published a paper rebutting this claim. They created a computer model that calculated how much muscle an animal needs in its leg to move fast. Comparing the results with the muscular mass drawn from the analysis of T. Rex fossils, they concluded that its speed limit may have been between 10 and 27 miles per hour.

García, one of the researchers, said: "With extinct animals you can't prove anything. But given what we know about other animals that are good runners, it's unrealistic that Tyrannosaurus could run." (3) [emphasis added]

Besides its exercise routine, the T. rex’s diet has also been a matter of debate. Paleontologist Jack Horner of the Museum of the Rockies (Bozeman, MT) has proposed that T.rex could not have been a predator. His arguments against predation include its small eyes (needed to see prey) and small arms (needed to hold prey) among others. His evidence supporting scavenging include its large olfactory lobes (part of the brain used for smell), and that its legs were built for walking long distances (the thigh was about the size of the calf, as in humans).

There are arguments against scavenging, however. Most large living predators (such as lions and hyenas) do scavenge meat happily when it is available, but most do prefer fresh meat. Dr. Horner argues that its arms were too weak to grab prey, but sharks, wolves, snakes, lizards and even many birds are successful predators without using their forelimbs (if any).

An editorial comment about this discussion at the UC Berkeley’s Web site said:

“What is the public to think of all this? It is suggested that you make up your own mind; the fact is that reconstructing the behavior of extinct animals is difficult, especially when there are no close modern relatives with which to compare them. Tyrannosaurs may have been scavengers, predators or both; Dr. Horner is merely presenting an opposing argument that shows that we are not yet 100% sure what ecological niche the great tyrannosaurs filled.” (4) [emphasis added]

Why aren’t they sure? Why is it so difficult to know the truth? Because science has limitations: it cannot deal with unique events; it cannot deal rigorously with either the past or the future without making some assumptions which are outside of science; it’s not omnipotent, but only deals with what man has observed; it’s not infallible as human beings can make mistakes. (5)

Most people, however, have a different concept of what science is. They believe that science is objective, neutral, that it always goes forward and that it corrects itself; they believe that science always tells the truth. This may be the ideal purpose of scientific knowledge, but it does not work that way in the real world—as shown by the T. Rex discussion.

In the real world, scientists and researchers not only disagree over how to interpret data but also over the limitations of science. This is especially true in the creation versus evolution debate.

Creationists, for example, recognize that science cannot offer all the answers when describing events in the past. For that reason they put their trust on God’s revelation and not on men’s opinions about that which cannot be observed. Evolutionists, on the other hand, reject divine revelation and put their trust in the theories of men (Charles Darwin, for example) as if these men could know the past with absolute certainty. Which position is more reasonable?

Evolutionists say that Creationism is not real science and that to accept revelation is to deny the possibility of scientific knowledge. Is that true? 

Revelation and Science

In Job 38, God asked Job: “Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?” Obviously, Job did not exist back then. God is the only eyewitness of the origin of the universe. Only God can offer a reliable account of how it all began. And he did—in the Bible. (6)

In the Bible, God established certain standards or universals as starting points for morality (right and wrong) and for knowledge (reality and fiction).

Modern science was born thanks to the belief in God’s revelation. Philosopher Alfred North Whitehead noted that the founders of modern science believed that a rational God created the universe; thus, the universe could be understood through reason.(7) They believed in uniform natural causes in a limited system—a system that could be influenced both by God and men.
However, contemporary science has rejected revelation as a valid source of knowledge about the world. Contemporary science sees the world as a machine in a closed system—that is, a world ruled by natural causes that do not change through time; a world without supernatural intervention.

Based on this worldview came the 19th century philosophy known as positivism, which rejected any universal revealed by God. Instead, positivism stated that finite humans—through their finite minds—could gain true knowledge and construct absolute truths from the elements found in the physical world. But if universals do not exist, how can we distinguish reality from falsehood?

Since we do not possess infinite knowledge, neither can we control what other people think, we have two options: (a) blindly believe in our own capacity to distinguish reality from falsehood; or (b) believe that there is an absolute being that is both the cause and motor of the world, and who determines what is real and what is false. As Rev. William O. Einwechtersaid, “Either God is the judge and interpreter of reality, or man is the judge and interpreter of reality.” (8)

In the framework of positivism man lacks certainty that something exists because there are no universals to tell him that what he is gathering are data. A finite man without universals can’t separate reality from fantasy; he can’t know whether something is true or not.

In He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer says that in the 20th century positivism was replaced by linguistic analysis, where words could only express with certainty what natural science—mathematics, for example—said. It was then accepted that humanity’s true knowledge came only from science. But philosophers realized that while they could speak freely about the knowledge provided by science, there was no equivalent authority for morality and ethics. Philosophers Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein, for example, wondered whether there was someone in the universe with the authority to talk about morality.

Schaeffer asks, is there someone who speaks or should we, as finite beings, limit ourselves to gather enough facts and details to create our own universals? (9) There is indeed someone who speaks, Schaeffer says, in Christianity: He talks about himself and about the history of the universe; not exhaustively but with truth—such is the content of Christianity’s divine revelation.

Is it irrational to accept a divine revelation as contemporary science says? It is if we assume that the universe is a closed system, where no knowledge can come form the outside (i.e. from God). But if we accept the assumptions of Christianity, divine revelation is not irrational: An ever present, infinite and personal God created man in His image so he could communicate with others.  If God made us to communicate between ourselves through language and has given us the ability to tell the truth, why would we think that God is incapable of communicating with us through a verbal/written language?

Divine revelation is rational or irrational depending on your assumption. Now, which assumption reflects best the facts in our world?

Revelation and Epistemology (10)

God created the universe for humans to live in it and gave them the Bible to tell them what they needed to know. Christians do not have the problem of epistemology (“is knowledge possible?”) (11) because the same rational God created both the knower and what is known—the subject and the object—and put them together. A rational correlation between subject and object exists because a rational God created them. An epistemology without this basic assumption will never be certain of the possibility of knowledge or morality.
Is interesting to see that humans experience the assumptions of Christianity every day. No matter how inconsequent a person is in her philosophy, she lives as if there was a real correlation between subject and object. She cannot live in a different way. David Hume said that you could only be an excessive skeptic while philosophizing, but in daily life, you had to be a believer (in causality). (12)

No system outside Christianity can tell us why there is a correlation between subject and object. All men and women act constantly and consequently as if Christianity were true. Some people, for instance, may say that love does not exist but nevertheless fall in love.

Revelation teaches that we can know truly even if we don’t know exhaustively. As long as the object exists and I exist in correlation to that object, I do not need to know it in its entirety, since only God has that kind of knowledge.

Schaeffer points out that the East never produced its own science because Eastern thought and culture were never certain of an objective existence of reality. Without an external world, science is void of research material—no experiments or deductions can be made. But Christians, certain about the reality of the external world, possess a foundation for true knowledge.

Schaeffer concludes that science must align itself with the existing world—instead of isolating from it. If this world is made in the way that the Jewish-Christian system describes, it should be no surprise that humans have thought categories to align themselves to the world they live in.

C.S. Lewis sums up the predicament faced by evolutionary science and all materialistic philosophies:

“If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents — the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts — i.e. of materialism and astronomy — are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It’s like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milkjug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.” (13)

Conclusion

We have seen that contemporary science’s pretensions of knowing the past are far from perfect—that is why we need a divine revelation to tell us how it all began. Furthermore, we saw that a philosophical rejection of divine revelation robs science of any rational foundation. (14) Science does not have all the answers. We need then, someone to speak with full knowledge about the causes and laws that operate in the world. Only Christianity reveals such a being—someone who not only reveals himself but who also speaks about history and morality. If we accept the assumptions of Christianity, divine revelation is not only rational but but absolutely necessary for the development of scientific knowledge.

References and Notes

1. Rifkin, Jeremy, "Reinventing Nature," The Humanist (vol. 58, March/April 1998), p. 24. Cited in Morris, Henry, Evolution is Religion-Not Science. Impact #332, Acts & Facts: Vol. 30 No. 2 Feb. 2001 Online Issue No. 6. Institute for Creation Research.
2. See 'Walking with... untruths!'
3. Whitfield, John. Tyrannosaurus couldn't run. Nature, February  28, 2002.
4. Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley.
5. Malcolm, David. "A Philosophical Attempt to Define Science". CEN Technical Journal, vol. 11, no. 2, 1997.
6. See The Authority of Scripture, CMI.
7.  Whitehead, A. N., 1985. Science and the Modern World, Free Association Books, London, Cited in Ref, 5, p. 178.
8. Rev. William O. Einwechter, How Do We Know God Is Real and the Bible Is True? Chalcedon Report, November 2001.
9. Schaeffer, Francis. He Is There and He Is Not Silent. 1974.
10. Schaeffer, Ibid. Chapters 3 and 4.
11. Epistemology inquires about the method of scientific knowledge: Is it possible to know? How do we obtain knowledge? What is the relationship between the subject that knows and the object that is known?
12. Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. 1748.
13. C.S. Lewis, The Business of Heaven, Fount Paperbacks, U.K., p. 97, 1984.
14. David Hume supposedly demonstrated that the belief in causality and induction (on which science is based) is a faith statement with no rational foundation. That is why Bertrand Russell said that science seemed to be irrational (philosophically speaking), although he hoped someone would find proof to validate causality and induction. Hume’s challenge remains in today’s philosophy. According to Schaeffer, the only way to prove the validity of these two concepts is with the Christian tenet that God created a cause-and-effect universe.