Reflections of a Mathematician
by John N. Johnson
My math career started as a mediocre student who eventually got a
Ph.D. in applied mathematics at Cal Berkeley by persistence, and who
developed the most sophisticated navigation, guidance and control
systems at Boeing on the NASA space program. Ultimately, I became a
creationist when I realized that a small warbler has the genes coded
to navigate at night from Europe to Africa by star patterns, which
must have been recently encoded, since these patterns change
completely over thousands years (Scientific American, Aug. 1954.)
Their ability helped me realize that someone more intelligent than
an earthly being must be in control - we do not just exist.
I think that the infinitely large or small does not exist in the
real world, but is merely a mathematical limit in the mind. I
illustrate what really large numbers are and at what point events of
that frequency are never going to occur, not just unlikely. It is
rarer than winning a lottery, but occasionally bridge games generate
all 13 cards of one suit, but never will all four players have just
one suit. Why is this? Some events are impossibly rare. A computer
filling the universe (let alone the mythical myriad of monkeys at
typewriters) could not even generate the first few sentences English
characters of Hamlet's "To be or not to be..." You see, the universe
cannot generate just anything by random events, but it is
necessarily limited by the number of elementary particle-events in
the universe. This is a very small number compared with the number
of combinations of sequential events that are possible, which grows
exponentially.
In music, there are enormous variations on merely 13 notes, plus
their octaves and overtones. Our brain is designed to uniquely
correlate subtle variants on the duration of past notes and
combinations. I can sometimes recognize a piano piece that I have
never heard, that was probably composed by Chopin, or in that style.
Scientists are befuddled as to how our ears can convert a series of
musical notes into something pleasurable in our brain, let alone
have a Darwinian explanation in terms of survival value. These
musical combinations are not infinite, but so immense that we will
continue to hear completely new music for as long as mankind exists.
I never in my life doubted God's existence or that Jesus was the Son
and incarnation of God who lived a sinless life, and died on the
cross as a payment for man's sins. For most of my life, it just
didn't make much difference in how I lived, since as a token liberal
church-going supposedly Christian person, it was merely a
philosophical exercise. I was essentially an agnostic, blinded to my
faults, especially after being indoctrinated by the
Christian-bashing film "Elmer Gantry", and a high-school play
"Inherit the Wind." In anthropology classes at the University of
California at Berkeley, I was indoctrinated that we were just higher
apes, and we were free to act like them. I was told there was no
absolute right or wrong, just as in the animal kingdom. They
neglected to mention that animals have no justice court. In
anthropology class, I was erroneously told in 1960 that Ramapithicus
was a known human ancestor, but now (after finding an intact skull)
it is known to be definitely not an ancestor! I regret that I was so
naïve as to believe them, which caused me to stumble in my faith.
My life’s direction was gradually re-directed toward God’s will for
my life, by the changed lives of Bible-believing Christians like my
joy-filled parents, who changed completely after going to Bible
Study Fellowship, and my Uncle Joe who was paralyzed by polio, but
handed out Gideon Bibles and counsel for weary souls at every motel.
I realized I was missing something essential for my life, let alone
eternity. In 1980, I recognized that I was lost and in need of a
Savior to help me, for now as well as for eternity, to have him take
control of my life, instead of allowing the nether world to destroy
it. I was blessed that my life was not shattered by my negligence
before that.
I then turned to the question of Bible reliability, and was
astonished to find out that many pastors and Bible scholars
dismissed it as just containing guidelines or good suggestions for
living, but nevertheless full of allegories and mistakes. I saw this
in the religion columns by Pastor Dale Turner in the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer. They presumed the Bible is mostly man’s fallible
words, but concede it is perhaps "God inspired". It occurred to me
that God should be able to preserve his word, and that
mathematically it could be determined if it (as originally composed)
was the work of either man or God. Logically, there was no third
alternative.
In analyzing the prophecies, in the book Science Speaks by
mathematician Peter Stoner, and the Moody Science film "The
Professor and the Prophets," I found so many precisely fulfilled
prophecies, that it was absurd not to acknowledge that these
prophecies were not an accident. They are very specific: Tyre was
razed to bedrock, and even the dust cast into the sea. It was later
a place for casting of nets and never rebuilt (Ezekiel 26, written
c. 593-571 BC.) This was fulfilled by Alexander the Great in 332 BC,
who built a causeway to the island where they retreated. However,
the surprising accuracy is inversely used by skeptical scholars to
date the writing of the book after that!
But the most compelling feature about the prophecies is the
surprising lack of clearly erroneous ones. Skeptics have to really
strain to find an apparent discrepancy, like in Isaiah's prophecy
(Isaiah 7:14) that Immanuel (literally: God is with us), the
Messiah, is to be born of a "Virgin" (as quoted by Matthew 1:23).
Bible critics say the word in Hebrew is merely a "young maiden."
They overlook the fact that the Hebrew word for maiden is synonymous
with virgin, as with Rebekah described with both words in Genesis
24:16, 43. Moreover, the Hebrew scholars who translated the Old
Testament into the Greek Septuagint used the Greek word for virgin
(parthenos.)
Invariably, skeptics point to semantic translation "errors" that
have an easy answer. In a radio debate with me in 1994, a noted
anti-Bible skeptic (J. Farrell Till) naively charged a Bible error
to Luke, in that Saul (later called Paul) on the road to Damascus
heard a voice (Acts 9:4), but the others did not hear it (Acts
22:9.) Till was negligent of the Greek cases that the latter verse
should be better translated "did not understand," which is later
confirmed (Acts 26:14,) since the voice was in Hebrew, which the
servants did not comprehend.
More significant, however, is the unexpected lack of obvious errors
and internal discrepancies that are abundant in every ancient as
well as modern works. Skeptics like to call the stories myth, but
myths do not have specific detail that can be checked.
Mathematically, it is astonishing that the Bible is so accurate, in
stark contrast to the current best science of the ancients, like
when speaking of the number of Abraham's descendants being as
innumerable as the stars, (Genesis 15:5), and comparable to the
grains of sand on the sea shore, (Genesis 22:17.) Estimates for both
are similar, and vary from 1020 (1 followed by 21 zeros) up to 1025.
Ignoring the abundant examples of consistency, skeptics turn to
Bible passages they can't accept, like people that routinely lived
to over 200 years, up to Methuselah's 969 years. However, our eating
habits and internal body clocks age us, not degeneration by wearing
out. Children of 12 sometimes die of old age symptoms (Progeria),
about the age of dogs. By contrast, reptiles don't age as fast as
us. In fact, turtles apparently never age; there has never been a
turtle reported to have died of old age, just accident or disease.
The Captain Cook turtle lived to over 200 years. We replace all the
soft cells of our bodies every few years, except in the brain. Cell
life studies of the maximum cell replacement indicate a maximum body
life of several hundreds years, but not thousands. The Babylonians
recorded their Kings often lived for 10,000 years, which is
supportive of old ages, but likely an exaggeration of real history.
Time is destructive to genetic patterns, much faster than any
possible benefit of mutations to engineer new structures that
integrate with existing ones. However, mutations can express a
recessive gene, which gives the illusion of creating. Mutations in
the blood (hemoglobin) must continue to be able to transport oxygen
in every generation or their offspring will die. Also, the mutation
load on any population will cause it to self-destruct rapidly.
Natural selection is only beneficial in slowing this downward
spiral. Moreover, mankind is certainly not on a path to evolutionary
improvement, since we heroically save the lives of our children with
genetic disorders, who go on to have babies.
The rate of growth in human population is best explained as a
geometrical increase from eight persons from Noah’s family about
5000 years. Strangely the population statistics are rarely shown on
a log scale, which would demonstrate this. There is a paucity of
humanoid skeletons and burials, let alone the myriads that should be
there, which gives lie to the proposed millions of years of
ancestors. The earliest ant, spider, bat (which was already
echo-locating), starfish, shark, and crab are all are very similar
to the modern variant. This is no problem for the creation model,
but logically devastating for the evolutionist model of common
descent. Species of life cluster into groups that are similar enough
to have a common ancestor, like the dogs and wolf, or almost totally
different, like the cat family is to dogs.
My deductive study has convinced me that it is compelling to believe
in the reliability of the Bible (in the original writing,)
recognizing that by now some minor linguistic misunderstandings and
transmission difficulties can occur. But I think any such problems
are negligible, as demonstrated by the Dead Sea Scrolls complete
copy of Isaiah in Hebrew, and early Greek papyrus fragments of the
book of John, like the Rylands manuscript, in the early Second
Century. The Greek manuscript variations are miniscule compared to
most ancient documents.
It is hopeless for us to live a Godly life, unless we accept the
awesome Power and Judgment of God for sinful behavior as described
in the Hebrew Old Testament Bible, and unless we accepts God's
redemptive plan of atonement for Sin by Christ's blood as described
in the Greek New Testament Bible. How else could we really trust
Proverbs 3:4-5: "Trust in the LORD and do not lean in your own
understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and he will make
your paths straight?"
The many pastors and congregations who claim to believe in the
Bible, but reject Genesis as an allegory, thinking that step-by-step
evolution over millions of years is a fact, have really been
deceived. They are living their lives and teaching without real
confidence in God’s trustworthy direction, as I was also, giving
only lip-service to the Bible and Jesus. Many of them abandon their
faith when confronted with family tragedy, convinced that God
doesn't care about them. It is largely neglect of Bible authority
that causes this. And its authority is undermined by the constant
barrage of evolutionist mantras only showing animals eating each
other but neglecting their complex design.
The Christian who doubts the Bible's accuracy in Genesis also can't
really trust the Bible's words that say: Jesus walked on the water;
he turned water into wine; he was hidden (Greek passive) from the
eyes those that wanted to stone him, rather than furtively hide
himself (John 8:59,) i.e., they couldn’t see Him! He was never
surprised or introduced; he taught others, but was never taught. He
always knew the thoughts of his enemies and desires of his friends,
even when he was a baby, and before he had an earthly body (John
8:58).
What kind of picture do we get of God the Father and Jesus the Son
in most Christian churches and books today? Just the opposite - more
of a God just like us (anthropomorphism), but kindlier, just like
the one my anthropologist professor told me that the primitive
people invent. This fallacy alone would be enough to convince me
that the Bible must be a supernatural work. We rarely hear in church
about the Hebrew Bible, and almost never about Genesis, except a
concession that we have an ambiguous "sin nature." It is totally
opposite from what man will invent, even by those who claim to
believe the Bible, but are mislead into buying into eons of
evolution, the trapped by its dogma.
When I accepted progressive evolution at Berkeley, I did not believe
it any more than my token acceptance the Bible. By contrast, today
you must believe as fact these just-so stories from the past are
true, or be denied an advanced degree or tenure. To be even
suspected of being one is like being suspected of being communist
professor in the 1950’s. Forrest Mims (who even denied being a
creationist) was fired from his Amateur Scientist column in the
Scientific American when the editor found out he was skeptical of
Darwinian evolution. Creationists need not bother to apply for a
teaching job, even at most Christian universities, and if they speak
out they will not get tenure (Jerry Bergman), and if they already
have tenure they will be shunned or denied classes (Dean Kenyon at
San Francisco State.)
Real belief means trust - are you willing to die for it and why?
Jesus says that "Greater love has no man than this: that one lay
down his life for his friends." (John 15:13). What an illogical
statement! What rational person would do this? Perhaps only a
fictional character would, as in Charles Dickens' Tale of Two
Cities? Actually, only a God who really cared about His Creation
would care, who cared for us so much that he would send His Son
Jesus to model his life for us, and to lay down his life as an
example for us to follow his example.
Since the First century, Christians the world around have given
unceasing testimony to the transforming power of the Word of God by
serving in hospitals and dangerous parts around the world to give
testimony to the life-changing power of Christ if would only heed
his Word. The Apostle Paul writes: "Do not be conformed to this
world, but be transformed, so that you may prove what the will of
God is, that what is good and acceptable and perfect." (Romans 12:2)
[Scripture quotes are NASB]
John N. Johnson, Ph.D. (Mathematics).
Rev. 4/29/2006