Christian University? Christian Science? Breakin

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Christian University? Christian
Science? Breakin down the wall
Worldviews of faith and education (10
mins) Your thoughts (5 mins) Application of
worldviews in the science classroom. (15
mins) Leave you aloneor Hear more of your
thoughts
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How big is the wall?Depends on your Christian
worldview.

1. Against/conflict
2. Paradox (dualist)
3. Transformation/conversionist

1919-1962
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Christ against Culture

• For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with
  God. 1 Co. 319
• Because you do not belong to the world, but I
  have chosen you out of the world therefore the
  world hates you. Jn 1519
• My kingdom is not of this world. Jn 1836
• Do not love the world or anything in the world.
  The love of the Father is not in those who love
  the world. 1 Jn 215
• Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean
  not on your own insights. Pr 35

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Against leads to isolation
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or separation
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Quality education in a Christian setting
Spiritual
World
Dualist
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Christ and Culture in paradox

• You are the salt of the earth
• You are the light of the world. Mt. 513,14
• go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing
  themMt. 28 19

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• Work in the world so that our tithe may support
  the missionaries.
• Must do excellent work so that our colleagues
  will respect us when we offer our Christian
  witness.
• Your work place is your mission field.
• Even the most tedious, lousy job, can have
  opportunity to witness during coffee breaks, etc.

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Take it to the limit..

• If all the world were reached with the Christian
  message?
• Then would there be value to work?
• If Adam hadnt sinned?
• Then would we work, study engineering, economics,
  science, and have careers in these fields?
• Else, would we be sitting around singing hymns
  and swinging in our hammock?

At these limits we have the dualists
catastrophe. The model doesnt work.
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R.G. LeTourneau says
Now I ask you, whats the use of having a
religion that wont work? If I had a religion
that limped along during the week, and maybe
worked only on Sunday, or while youre in church,
I dont think Id be very sold on it. I think
Id turn it in on a new model that worked seven
days a week, that would work when I was at
church, at my home, or out at the plant. R.G.
LeTourneau Mover of Men and Mountains, p. 203
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Spiritual
World
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Christ transforms Culture

• For by Him all things were created things in
  heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,
  whether thrones or powers or rulers or
  authorities all things were created by Him and
  for Him. Col 116
• For God so loved the world that He gave His one
  and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall
  not perish but have eternal life. For God did
  not send His son into the world to condemn the
  world but to save the world through Him. John 3
  16-17
• In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
  with God, and the Word was God. He was with God
  in the beginning. Through Him all things were
  made without Him nothing was made that has been
  made. John 11-3
• For since the creation of the world Gods
  invisible qualities-His eternal power and divine
  nature-have been clearly seen, being understood
  from what has been made, so that men are without
  excuse. Romans 1 20

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R.G. agrees.
When He created the world and everything in it,
He didnt mean for us to stop there and say,
God, Youve done it all. Theres nothing left
for us to build. He wanted us to take off from
there and really build for His greater glory.
R.G. LeTourneau Mover of Men and Mountains,
p. 1
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Intermission

• Comments?
• Discussion?

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Our worldviews influence our science. Our
science influences our world views.
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Ptolemaic Solar System Worldview Earth was
at the center of the universe. Planets went
around the earth in perfect circles. Stars were
motionless.
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Copernican Solar System
A sun centered solar system defied the worldview
of an earth centered system. But still held to a
worldview of perfect circles.
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Keplerian Solar System
A sun centered solar system defied the worldview
of an earth centered system. Elliptical orbital
defied the worldview of perfect circles.
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So what?

• This model of the solar system implies that the
  earth is not the center of everything. The earth
  is insignificant compared to the sun, and the sun
  is one insignificant star among billions and
  billions of stars.
• How could we be important to God, if God saw us
  as such an insignificant layer of slime on an
  insignificant hunk of rock going about an
  insignificant star?

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Gaseous Pillars in M 16 Hubble Space Telescope

• When I consider the heavens,
• the work of your fingers,
• the moon and the stars
• that you have set in place,
• what is man that you are mindful of him?
• - David, King of Israel, Psalm 83

The size of the universe does not diminish our
significance to God, but adds wonder to the
knowledge that God is mindful of us.
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Not only are we insignificant in space, we are
also insignificant in time.
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Contrasting Elements of Worldviews

• Science
• support by reason
• consistent physical laws
• process of creation
• of a materialistic universe
• without a purposeful destiny

• Christian
• accept by faith
• divinely inspired
• instantly mature creation
• by an imminent God
• with a purpose and destiny for our lives

The Wall
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Conflict

• In life, Sue must have cast an imposing figure.
  She stood some 13 feet high at the hip, and
  measured 42 feet from head to tail. Her
  five-foot-long skull contained 58 vicious teeth.
  There were some features, however, which suggest
  she was as much prey as predator, for Sue bore
  wicked battle scars. During some past encounter,
  Sue had broken several ribs. In time they had
  healed over, leaving visible abnormalities. But a
  subsequent encounter had broken them a second
  time.
• But according to a straight-forward reading of
  Scripture there was no death in the beginning, no
  carnivorous activity, no burial, no
  fossilization. There was no pain, no suffering.
  No animal attacks, no infectious diseases, no
  broken bones.
• So that's the question. Did Sue live and kill and
  suffer and die in a world deemed "very good" by
  the gracious, loving God of Scripture? Or, did
  these gruesome aspects and activities follow the
  ruination of the "very good" creation by Adam's
  sin and the resultant curse?
• Which type of world could God call "very good"?
• Surely some things just can't be. (emphasis
  added)
• by John D. Morris, Ph.D.
• Institute for Creation Research

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• Conflict
• Independence
• Science gets the ages of rocks, religion the
  rock of ages.
• Science studies how the heavens go, religion
  determines how to go to heaven.
• Dialogue
• When I consider
• Psalm 8
• Integration

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For he knows how we are formed, he remembers that
we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass,
he flourishes like a flower of the field the
wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place
remembers it no more. But from everlasting to
everlasting the Lords love is with those who
fear him Psalm 10314-17
Dialogue
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With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years,
and a thousand years are like a day. 2 Peter 38
box
dot
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The Illusion of Time
3-D cube seen instantaneously in time
3-D cube seen in all time
What we see as a choice in time from our
perspective might be seen by God as having been.
Maybe the Arminians and the Calvinists were both
right?
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• Does God allow choice and randomness?
• Would you have been blessed if you had gone to a
  different college?
• Can bad things happen to good people?
• Might there be multiple paths that a person may
  take in life and still have Gods destiny before
  him?
• He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the
  good, and sends rain on the righteous and the
  unrighteous. Matt 545
• Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this
  happened so that the work of God might be
  displayed in his life John 93
• And we know that in all things God works for the
  good of those who love him, who have been called
  according to His purpose. For those God foreknew
  he also predestined to be conformed to the
  likeness of his Son. Romans 828-29

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What of the universe? Is ours the only universe
that might have been? Does God allow us and the
universe different choices? Might the universe
have chosen a different path leading to different
planets and different solar systems?
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(Y(x))2 gives the probability of finding the
particle at any location, x.
If the Y(x) collapses to a single value, then we
know 100 the position, but nothing of the
momentum, as the wave is lost.
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
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What of life forms? Is ours the only soulful
life form that might have been? Would it matter
if we had six fingers on each hand? Are the
natural process involved in the evolution of
stars, planets, and galaxies paralleled in
natural processes involving the evolution of life
forms? Is the universe expressing itself through
natural processes that God enabled?
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Contrasting Elements of Worldviews

• Science
• support by reason
• consistent physical laws
• process of creation
• materialistic universe
• without a purposeful destiny

• Christian
• accept by faith
• divinely inspired
• instantantly mature creation
• by an imminent God
• with a purpose and destiny for our lives

The Wall
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Process of making and filling

1. Day and night
2. Sky above, waters below
3. Land and sea

• Sun, moon, and stars
• Birds and sea creatures
• Land animals and man

Notice the inclusion of all time, space, and
things contained within
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A world containing significantly free persons
making choices between moral good and evil and
choosing a significant amount of moral good is
superior to a world lacking significantly free
persons and moral good and evil. Al Plantinga,
The Free Will Defense
What of Pain and Suffering before the fall?
If the free will defense works in explaining why
God might permit the existence of moral evil,
then it also provides an explanation of why God
might bring about the existence of much natural
evil. A universe in which we could entertain a
free-process defense, would be one in which there
could be people to whom the free-will defense
could be applied. Reichenbach and Polkinghorne,
The Free-Process Defense
Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which
the order of nature and the existence of
free-wills involve, and you will find that you
will have excluded life itself. C.S. The Problem
of Pain
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Christian Science accept by faith and support by
reason, a divinely inspired process of creation,
consistent with physical laws, by an imminent God
with a purpose and destiny for our lives
World
Spiritual
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Christian University? Is this what R.G. had in
mind?
Thousands of students will go out to witness to
the fact that every vocation is sacred when
Christ lives in the life of the worker. (or
scientist) -parenthetic added Nels E.
Stjernstrom R.G. LeTourneau Mover of Men and
Mountains, In Memorium, p. 285
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LeTourneau Students! Tear down this Wall!
Remove barriers that prevent Gods love from
embracing all of us in all that we do. Find a
calling in any activity of this God-given
life. Read the writings of Gods special and
cultural revelations. Revelations that point to a
need for Gods redeeming love in all of our
created world by breakin down the wall..
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Bibliography

• Holy Bible, NIV
• H.R. Niebuhr, Christ and Culture
• R.G. LeTourneau, Mover of Men and Mountains
• R. DeWitt, Worldviews, An introduction to the
  History and Philosophy of Science
• S. Weinberg, The First Three Minutes, A modern
  view of the Origin of the Universe
• Simon Singh, Big Bang, The Origin of the Universe
• I.G. Barbour, When Science Meets Religion
• Pink Floyd, Another Brick in the Wall
• Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven
• Beethoven, Tvoreniva Prometeya, soch 43, Adiago