By: Dr. Jerry Bergman
Montpelier, Ohio
One of the requirements of a professor is to review new curriculum material for its appropriateness for classroom use. Part of this requirement involved watching films on science and current event topics that may be appropriate.
I soon got into the habit of watching hundreds of DVDs. After I retired, I continued to watch DVDs of interest.
I now have watched several thousand of the DVD’s in my library, mostly on science and history. I have noted one word that, with one exception, was never mentioned, namely ‘God’.
The one mention was in a Neil deGrasse Tyson DVD, which was very negative about theism and persons who believe in God.
Even in a context that would seem to require the mention of God, the word and concept was ignored.
For example, cosmologist Professor Bran Green produced a video about the origin of our universe in which he mentioned that one cosmology difficulty was, “why is our Earth the right size, the proper location from the Sun, not too close or too far away, to support life?”
He added our moon was the right size and distance from the Earth, which is also necessary to support life. Other requirements for life included the Earth’s surface being 70 percent water.
After mentioning several other life-friendly coincidences, Professor Greene noted that no other planet in our solar system, nor any one of the over 500 planets discovered in other solar systems, can brag about being able to support life.
This fact is one of the most well-known means of supporting the existence of an intelligent Creator God.
God made the Earth specifically to support life and no other planet can support life (Isaiah 45:18). Greene never mentioned this option, but rather noted that the only explanation for the existence of our privileged planet was there must be millions of other universes, and we happen to live in the one that has a solar system which contains a planet that can support life.
The problem with this explanation, which he ignored, is absolutely no evidence exists for universes other than our own.
This belief, called the multiverse, has been bandied about for some time, and as of yet no one has been able to even postulate how it even could be documented.
Another DVD, produced by Professor Brian Cox, asks, “Why are we here? Where did we come from? What is our future?”
The Judeo-Christian-Muslin faiths answer these questions by noting God created us and we are here to carry out God’s purpose for life on Earth.
And, lastly, God has a plan for us in the future, including everlasting life in paradise. Cox related the evolutionary view, namely that we evolved due to time, chance, the accumulation of genetic mutations (genetic errors), and natural selection (that fitter life-forms are more likely to survive).
Our sun will eventually burn out, the Solar System will be destroyed, and all life everywhere will cease to exist.
The 100 billion galaxies that contain many hundreds of billions of stars will all burn out and, eventually, the entire universe will deteriorate due to entropy. In the end, all atoms and molecules will decay, and all that will exist in the entire universe will be photons.
And for all eternity, no life will ever exist anywhere. The empty universe will be empty for all eternity.
Frankly, this end, which Professor Cox eloquently described, is depressing. He never mentioned the belief of billions of Christians, Muslims, and Jews, that God teaches an outcome quite different than the morose prediction of secular atheistic scientists.
Likewise, this same atheistic theme was presented in the thousands of science films I have watched, although more tactfully and less blunt.
This includes in films that eloquently presented the wonders of our physical world in glorious detail backed by enchanting music.
They all display in color our enchanting world which is why I watch one of these enlightening science DVDs most every evening.
———————–
Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,800 publications in 12 languages and 60 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,500 college libraries in 27 countries.