The Human Viewpoint World View of Origins

RV91-01

The world view which one holds determines everything that you do, and it determines your whole set of values. Your world view is determined by your concept of where everything came from. How you look at things is determined by your belief of where it all came from. The word for that it is your cosmogony.

There are two basic world views. One begins with the concept of evolution, and the other begins with the concept of creation. Evolution proceeds to a human viewpoint set of understandings, and one of the things that results is a cosmogony that is devoid of God. The other is a divine viewpoint cosmogony which is based upon creation.

The Human Viewpoint World View

The other factor of human viewpoint world view is idolatry. It always goes to idolatry. The true God is rejected as the reference point of the universe, and on which man can build his decisions and experiences. So, some feature of the creation is deified in place of God Himself. Man himself is sometimes deified, as in the god-kings of ancient times, or some feature of the creation itself is viewed as deity. For example, animals are viewed as deity, such as rats and cows are viewed today in India as being gods. But no God of nature is big enough to account for everything that man sees. So, he uses another god called "the god of chance" to explain everything else. Whatever the particular god (that he has made) cannot handle is just the result of chance. The evolution base of the human viewpoint world view is cosmic evolution.

So, it includes not only the upward changes of one species biologically into another by sheer chance over a vast experience of time, but it also includes man's sociological development (man's cultural development) and evolution upward toward world peace and prosperity. This concept of cosmic evolution is the basis of modern economics, psychology, education, philosophy, law, literature, religion, history, and sociology. All of these areas of human study are based upon cosmic evolution – that things are getting better and better, and man is moving upward in every way in all of these areas.

Evidences for the Human Viewpoint World View

So, the question is how objective and scientific is the human viewpoint world view. It is based on evolution, and it declares that it is very scientific and it is very objective. Here are the sources of information out of which you have to build your world view. The reason I want to go through this in some detail, in view of the scientific facts, is because we, in the fundamentalist biblical camp, have been made to look like fools because we don't understand what the scientific world has been talking about. We don't understand what the opponents of the book of Genesis have been talking about. We have simply dismissed what they have said as idiotic, which it is, and have gone on from there. But because we have done that, we have left the field wide open to all those people out there who don't know that what the evolutionist says is idiotic. They are impressed by the claims to being scientific and to being objective. So, you need at least some basic understanding on your own, relative to what the scientist is saying, so that he doesn't bowl you over with his intelligent looks, and his command of the language, and the degrees and experience that he has.

Past Historical Records

Verbal Records

Furthermore, the scientist historian has to interpret the meaning of those records. He has to look at these records, and determine what they mean by some kind of proper principles of interpretation. For example, there are some people who take Genesis and say, "Yes, that claims to be an eyewitness written record, but it is not an historical record. It is a myth. It is a kind of an object lesson. It is an illustrated story. It didn't really happen." So, you have to interpret Genesis so that you can answer the question: Was there ever really a handsome young fellow walking around named Adam, and a beautiful girl named Eve? And did they get together and create their own thing that resulted in a lot of other different things? Is that actually a point in time in history that all that took place? Is it real, or is it just a myth? So, Genesis is one of the primary written records that we have to deal with. If you're going to decide where it all came from, you cannot ignore Genesis,

Nonverbal Records

Again, we have to look at those artifacts, and we have to interpret them. We have to look at the Grand Canyon, and we have to interpret the rock strata. We have to interpret what we see in the Grand Canyon and say, how did this happen? What brought this about? We have to look at all that geology has to say about various kinds of life forms which are found in different strata of rock. We have to answer: how did those things come there? So, there's an interpretation relative to those things, and then there is (concluding in that interpretation) how old are these things? What do these things mean? How old are they? And we reach certain conclusions that are based on certain judgments of reason from these nonverbal records that we have in the earth itself.

The Natural Processes

Scientific Laws

Now, if that's true, suddenly men discover: "You know, we can learn things; we can make these things work; and, we can create things that will make life better for man, because we know how the law works, and it will work every time." So all of modern science and all of modern technology was the result of the Reformers establishing the concept of creation that Genesis portrays – a God who made everything, and made it to work according to certain rules (certain natural laws) that He put into operation.

So, when you're going to look at the origins, you have to consider these basic scientific laws. This is where Christians have been shot out of the water, because they didn't understand some very simple little things which every schoolchild ought to know. So, when the evolutionary scientist hits you with all of the scientific data and all the jargon that he can slap against you, that will pin you to the wall, because you won't know what to say. You should know at least certain basic truths (scientific truths), apart from the Bible, which will answer everything that that evolutionary scientist has to say.

The First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics

Every ninth grade science class teaches its students that energy has the capacity to do work. Work is energy exerting a force through a distance. For example, I have energy in my body, as a result of food capacity, that is stored energy. I can push against this pulpit with that energy, and I am exerting energy. I'm not doing any work. Until I move the pulpit, no work has been done. But energy is capable of performing the processes of work. It is capable of changing things. Matter itself is one form of energy. When Einstein buttoned that down, the scientific breakthrough was made for the atomic age. It had been established that matter itself is energy, and that if you can take matter apart, you will release enormous amounts of energy. Once that was established, the atomic age was born. Matter itself is one form of energy, so everything in the real world is one form of energy or another. All the processes that take place are simply transformations of energy from one kind into another.

Now then, we have two laws that deal with energy – these first and second laws of thermodynamics. These are recognized as the most universal and fundamental of all scientific laws. If ever there were two laws of science that have been established that there's no debate about, they're the first and second laws of thermodynamics. If Christians had known these two rules, then they would not have been so bowled over by the evolutionists, and would not have been so shattered. The two laws of thermodynamics deal with energy. Everything that happens in the physical universe is some form of energy conversion. So, the laws which govern energy and energy conversion are of primary importance to understand the world that we live in.

The First Law of Thermodynamics

This scientific law is considered the most powerful and the most fundamental generalization about the universe which scientists have ever been able to make. Science cannot explain why the energy is conserved. They cannot explain why energy is neither created nor destroyed. But the reason is clear for the Christian. The reason that no more energy can be created in the universe is because the Bible has explained it to us. The living, personal, supernatural God, who alone can create energy, has ceased from His work of creation. Genesis 2:3 tells us explicitly that – that God quit making energy. When He quit making matter, matter is energy, so He quit making energy. God has stopped creating new power – new forces of energy in the universe.

So, that explains why you can't create energy. But why can't you destroy energy? The reason that no energy can be destroyed is because God is also upholding all of His creation by the Word of His power. Hebrews 1:3 tells us that. God is holding it all together and maintaining it by the Word of His power. So, He is not creating more energy and He's not destroying any of it. In Ecclesiastes 3:14, this principle is stated this way: "I know that whatsoever God does, it will be forever. Nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it." That's beautiful. That's exactly the point. Nothing can be taken from it, and nothing can be put to it. Ecclesiastes 3:14 is an annunciation of the first law of thermodynamics. It is buttoned down right there in the pages of Scripture.

So, today nothing is being created, nor has it been since the first law of thermodynamics has gone into effect in the universe. Nothing today is being created.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

I'm sorry to say that includes all of you. You go uphill until about 16 years of age. When you hit 16, you're a member of the Over-the-Hill gang, and you are deteriorating all the time. Some of you are doing so, obviously, before our very eyes. You are just coming apart and deteriorating. It becomes more visible from week to week. Some of you do your best to cover it up. You paint over it. You cover it up. You hide it with a lot of stuff. But we know what's happening under that cosmetic and that false front you're putting on. You try to do it in the way you dress, and by your personality, but you're breaking down. This is that miserable, terrible second law of thermodynamics. It says that everything is going to disorder. It's all coming apart. It's all breaking down. For every naturally occurring transformation of energy, there is a loss of available energy to maintain the system. In a closed box, for every action, you lose some available energy. That is, in the process of doing work, some of the energy performs the work, but some of it is transformed into some form of energy that can never be used again.

For example, this is true for heat. If you move a box across the floor, you have used up some energy, and some of it is dissipated in heat, and it's gone, and you can never use it again. You haven't lost any energy. It has just been converted from one form to another form. The first law tells us that the total amount of energy always stays the same. But the second law tells us that the amount of usable energy is becoming less and less. That's what happens to you in your physical body. The capacity of energy that you can maintain to keep the body going becomes less and less until it dies. The system is constantly breaking down. The top is losing more and more of its power to keep spinning.

Energy has to flow from a higher level to a lower level. That is, energy will go from a hot body to a cold body, but it won't go from a cold body to a hot body. It always goes down, and it's dissipated. It is always energy that's being lost in terms of being usable again. You can never recover it to use again. Therefore no process can be 100% efficient where all the energy is being converted into work. You lose some through heat that radiates out into space. It's no longer available.

That's why a perpetual motion machine is an impossibility. You cannot build a machine that keeps creating as much energy as it uses up. They had a program on television a few months ago where they had a man who said he had done it. He had made a machine that created as much energy as it used up. He had everybody stumped. He had all the experts analyzing what he had put together, and they couldn't figure it out. He kept that light bulb burning, and the thing kept creating its own energy, and it kept burning. But he had a little hidden wire that was kicking in a new supply of energy to keep the thing running. You cannot make a machine that creates as much energy as it uses up. You're always converting some of it into some form where it can no longer be used.

So, this law indicates that since the functioning of the universe uses energy, and some of that energy is made unusable, in time, all the energy in the universe will be unavailable for use. All of it's going to be dissipated into heat energy, and everything's going to be at one low temperature, and there'll be no more energy in the universe.

The first law tells us that the supply of energy cannot be created. It couldn't create itself. It can't go from no energy to energy. The total supply of usable energy in the universe has to have a beginning. We had to begin with a box full of energy. From some source, the energy had to be put there. The first law says you cannot create energy and you cannot destroy. The second law proves that the total quantity of usable energy is decreasing. It's never increasing.

Radioactive material is an evidence of that. Radioactive material is always being dissipated into inert forms, like into lead. Lead never goes back to being radioactive. Radioactive always goes down to where it's not radioactive. Everything is always spinning down slower and slower. So, the point is that this law tells us that if we go back far enough in time, we'll come to the point where the total energy in the universe was all usable energy. At some point in time, the second law tells us that all the energy that was there was all usable. Since that time, the energy has been gradually decreasing. It's there in another form, but the form that it's in is no longer usable. It has been dissipated in heat out into space. It is out there. It is no longer usable. So, the earth's capacity is getting less and less. When we come to the point where there is absolute total energy at maximum use, then you come to where the book of Genesis begins. There was a God who was capable of making that energy, and putting it in there.

So, the second law of thermodynamics declares that the universe is constantly getting more disordered. The human body breaks down.

Now, there is a temporary inflow of energy. Somebody here is going to come up and say, "What about a baby?" A baby gets more complex all the time. It begins with two cells, and that very simple thing becomes a very complex thing. That is true, but it is because there is an infusion by an act of God, again, of special energy that brings that about. And the infusion of energy to bring that baby from simplicity to complexity is a special infusion of energy. And at a certain point, it reaches its maximum, and then that baby's body, when it grows to a certain age, begins to go downhill. Crystals form from nothing to complex forms, but they also, in time, break down. It takes a special infusion of energy to do all those things. So, that exactly proves the case that if you leave it to itself, it goes through a disordered condition. Everything collapses and wears out. This law is true of all the processes, including biological, geological, chemical, and physical.

So, do you see the problem? Evolution calls for a gigantic increase in order and complexity from a single life cell. The second law of thermodynamics says that cannot be. It never goes from simple to complex. It always goes the other way – breaking down.

So, analyzing of the basic laws of science (the two most fundamental being the first and second law of thermodynamics) is something that you have to consider. You can ask, "Where did it all come from?" But you cannot ignore these two basic laws.

Secondary Systems

I don't care whether you're a Christian or a non-Christian – that is what you have to consider. That's all the evidence there is. There's nothing more if you're going to answer where it all came from. What are you going to do when the historical records are contradicted by your present understanding of observable scientific processes? That's what the evolutionist says. He says that the scientific processes that he sees today contradict what the book of Genesis says.

When that happens, you have to decide the trustworthiness of each of the evidences: the written record; and, the scientific processes. You must decide if a present scientific process is the same when you apply it to the distant past. There is the secret: We don't know. We don't know that the processes (the basic laws) always operated in the past without interruption. As a matter of fact, we do know from the Bible that God periodically walks in and He interrupts the process. We call that a miracle. He periodically reverses a natural law. So, we don't know that the basic laws always acted the same way in the past. You have to decide if it is the same. You must determine the reliability of the historical record. Did the observers accurately report? If the book of Genesis is an accurate observation, then our scientific understanding has to be guided by that. No one can take a time machine and go back there to observe so that you can speak from your own knowledge.

However, how are you going to interpret this evidence? Well, you're going to interpret it on the basis of certain personal presuppositions (religious presuppositions) that you introduce? The interpretation that people reach is different on the same evidence because of their religious presuppositions. A person's human viewpoint world view mentality is governed by his decision to be independent from God (his autonomy), and his idolatry (his self-deification). He deifies organic growth and chance in his human viewpoint evolutionary world view. So, everything is interpreted by a supposed process of upward development. That seems natural to the human viewpoint world view – that everything is going upward in the process.

So, all the evidence for origins from past historical records and the present natural processes are interpreted from that religious viewpoint – the twin gods: that everything is moving upward; and, that it's controlled by chance. The human viewpoint mind rejects the accuracy, therefore, of the Genesis record of origins because it comes from an infinite personal God who tells us what happened before man existed. The Genesis eyewitness report is viewed as absurd because it conflicts with the religious presuppositions of the upward development and chance of the evolutionist. The book of Genesis gives a report that says man has gone downward (devolution). The presupposition of human viewpoint scientists says, "I know that's wrong. I know from the fact that evolution is the truth, that the Genesis record is telling us that man is going downward, and that's wrong. Man is going upward. Things are getting better."

So, he rejects the Genesis record on the basis of his religious presuppositions. The biblical view of a Creator God is seen as just a past age in the evolution of religion. The evolutionist says that the biblical writers were simply imagining a non-existent God, and furthermore imagining that that God was speaking to them. The biblical writers exaggerated natural events as if they were miracles so they could exalt their imaginary tribal God.

The Law of Uniformity

These two laws would indeed be reasonable if you didn't have the contrary evidence of Genesis. The evolutionist has interpreted (according to his human viewpoint) religious presuppositions. He has not interpreted from scientific objective grounds. The human viewpoint priority of evidence is based on the presupposition of upward development and change.

So, here's the way the human viewpoint evolutionist looks at things. He puts the secondary systems as number one. These present natural processes for him are placed as number one. The basic scientific laws are placed with him as the first guideline to determining origins, and everything is applied to the past as if it was working in the past as it is today. Secondly, he comes to the secondary systems, and he looks to those. He says, "I know how those operate, and so those are the same." Then he comes over here in terms of the past historical record, and he puts the non-verbal third in line. And last down the line, he puts the verbal records. He says the non-verbal records are to be interpreted by the presuppositions of evolution; and, he says that the verbal records are just unreliable reports of superstitious observers.

So, I want you to know that the evolutionist has arrived at his explanation of origins on the basis of his assumptions that things are always moving upward, and that it is all controlled by chance. He has no other records and no other evidence to work on than you do as a Christian. But it's the way you approach that. You start with the laws that you see working today, and you say that those laws are always uniform. They're never interrupted. You look at these secondary systems that arrive from that – the chemical and the mechanical, and you say that that's always the same. That's uniform. There's never any change. Then you come to what you see in the fossil record, and you say that that indicates that life is progressing from simple forms to more complex forms. You don't say, "Those things were distributed as the result of the dynamic movement of a huge flood. The waters of the Noahic flood distributed various densities of materials of life forms in one way or another." You don't believe that. You reject that. You say that this is showing you how it progressed from simple forms to complex form. And you interpret the fossil record accordingly.

So, the evolutionists thinks that he's being scientific and objective, but he has made several decisions on the basis of his human viewpoint mentality – not the least of which is to reject all of the verbal records, especially Genesis. So, he hypothesizes, therefore, that there is some natural law that prevailed constantly to bring all this about.

You might ask, "Doesn't he know the first and second laws of thermodynamics? These two laws certainly are going to be a problem. What does he do with them? The first one tells us that you can't make or destroy energy. The second one tells us that there's less usable energy in the world all the time. So, the result is that things always break down. Things never get more complex. They get less complex." The evolutionist would say, "Yes, that's true. I can't deny that you can't create or destroy energy, and I can't deny that things go from complex to simple forms." But he says, "I've got a hypothesis for that. I have an answer. I believe that some place back in time there was another law that canceled these laws. There was another law that canceled the second law of thermodynamics. So, for a time, simple things could develop into the complex forms that evolved into the various life forms." So, he suggests that there's some kind of natural law that operated out in space in the past.

Or he says, "That law is out there operating today, and it's causing the second law of thermodynamics to be overridden." However, that assumption knocks the props out from his own viewpoint, because he is, in effect, denying that all things can be explained in terms of presently observable laws and processes. Remember that that's what the evolutionist says. When he says, "No, John is just making up that that God up there is the Creator sitting on the throne," he is saying, "I believe that John is not telling the truth, because all natural processes that are functioning today have always functioned uninterrupted in the past. And that's how we know how things came to be." Yet, when he says something overrode the second law of thermodynamics, he's undermining and denying that very claim. He's really resorting to creationism as the answer, but without a Creator to be subject to. He's trying to explain overcoming the second law of thermodynamics by some other force out there.

Mutations

Sometimes they claim that the excessive energy comes from the sun, and that's what provides what evolution needs to keep going. So, you've got to have more energy in the system because the top is running down. So, the sun is the answer to that. But what they're saying then is that evolution is taking place as a result of the infusion of the sun's energy throughout the whole universe, and throughout the whole galaxy. So, why aren't there lifeforms everywhere? This is the concept that the sun is giving energy to override the second law of thermodynamics, and that is the reason for the space exploration, with the concept of finding life out on other planets. They're not just saying, "I wonder if there's life out there." They're saying, "There surely must be life out there." Why? Because there's a big bolt of energy being put into the system to override the second law of thermodynamics that is forcing everything to break down with less energy working. It is a bolt to put into the system so that all of the universe should have created life forms of one kind or another, and forms of life should be evolving everywhere. That's where the idea comes from. It isn't just some wild guess.

So, here's the conclusion. The first law of thermodynamics tells us either that the world has always existed in its present form, or else that it was specially created at some time in the past. The first law says that you cannot create or destroy energy. Therefore, it tells us that the world, at some time, always existed in its present form, or else it was specially created in the past with the energy forms that it has. The evolutionary scientist says that matter is eternal. Incidentally, all of the ancient stories about the origins of ancient cultures all begin with the universe in existence, just like the evolutionist does. They never begin like the Genesis record does, with a God who is there, and nothing else. So, what comes then is as the result of the act of that God independent from that God. That's interesting that all the ancient myths always begin with a universe that's already there. That's what the evolutionist does. But the first law of thermodynamics has to tell us that it always existed because you can't create energy, so it had to always be there; or, else somebody did create it at some point in time, and provided the basic supply of energy.

The second law of thermodynamics tells us that it cannot always have existed in its present form or else it would already have been completely disintegrated and have died. The universe could not have existed in its present form always because it would have been gradually coming down, and it would have been long since disintegrated. So, it does tell us that, at some point, it started with energy that was totally usable – a huge amount of totally usable energy. So, the universe must have had a beginning, and that beginning must have been by special creation – the power to have brought it all into existence, and set it in motion.

While this is scientific, this is what keeps Christians from looking like fools. If you can anchor your understanding to the first law of thermodynamics, the scientist has to respect that. You can't make or destroy energy, so where in the world did it come from? It can't make itself. Where did it come from? Secondly, every process of life uses up energy. As energy is used, and as processes of life go on, and all of the natural forces go on, it causes things to decay. There is the second law of thermodynamics – the law of decay is there, and you cannot escape that law. Therefore, evolution is just the opposite of decay. Evolution required that, at some form, what happens in a mother's womb is taking place all over the universe – that there was something (an infusion of energy) that was making things get better and better.

Of course, the evolutionist says, "Yes, out there something overrode that law and made that possible." But that is a sheer, unadulterated guess. That is not scientific, and that is not objective. So, when somebody says that to you, you can say, "OK, you can go ahead and believe that that's the way it happened. But please don't call that science. You can't prove that in the lab. Therefore, it's not science. And don't call that objective. That's your personal opinion." But as we shall see, when we look at the divine viewpoint foundation of the world view, and what a Christian, from a divine viewpoint world view, bases his conclusions on in terms of the natural scientific laws and the record of Genesis, you suddenly come up with a picture that all fits together. The part that we don't know, because we haven't got a time machine to go back there, God provides for us in Genesis.

When you put that together with these two laws, it dovetails perfectly, and you see that this is exactly the way the thing works. A Creator God put together a universe that had the capacity of energy. Then Satan came along and sinned, and man followed him in sin. And into motion came the second law of thermodynamics – everything degenerating, and everything moving toward decay and death. The Bible confirms that that's exactly the way it happened.

So, if you understand that, you're not going to be bowled over by all the technical data and information and other concepts that can be thrown against you as a Christian, so that you hunker over, and you just slither away (you just slink away), because the evolutionist has been able to make you look bad. Our children are taught these scientific facts in school, and they match them up to the records of Genesis, and then to the other position. They take these same evidences (and we both have to deal with these same verbal and nonverbal and scientific evidences). Then any kid in school, when presented with these two, who thinks it through, will almost inevitably say, "The evolution is impossible scientifically. It can't have come about that way."

That is the reason for this battle of trying to keep scientific creationism out of the public schools, because the public school administrators know that the evolutionary concepts will be made to look ridiculous when you match it up against the first and second law of thermodynamics, and the Genesis record. When you put those three together, you come to a world view that places a living, powerful, separate, personal God at the head of everything. And man's autonomy is crushed, and man's idolatry is made to look like the foolish stupid thing that it is.

Christians should know the ground of science sufficiently such that they are not intimidated by the brilliant men of our age who do not enter into spiritual understanding. The reasons for their problem (their incapacity to enter into it), we will look at in more detail next time.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1982

Back to the Revelation index