YOUTH AND FAMILY MINISTRIES by Michael Appel
Why Apologize? – One thing I’ve focused on this year with the youth and catechumens is the introduction of more apologetics. From the Greek word apología, it means “speech in defense”. Not just for admitting to wrongdoing, it can also mean to give a justification for something. Modern “apologetics” refers specifically to giving a defense for, or justifying, theological and religious positions. So what are some of the justifications we’ve learned so far?
1. The Universe exists. The fact that anything exists or happens at all is good evidence for a Source or Creator of some kind. All our scientific inquiry shows that everything has to come from somewhere and that if anything happens (biological, chemical, or physical), it has to be caused by something other than itself. For the longest time, secular scientists maintained that the universe had no beginning – that it just always existed. The “Big Bang Theory” we are familiar with didn’t come about until 1922, and is an admission by scientists that Creation had a starting point. Which would logically require a Creator – something or someone more powerful than all the energy of the universe (so that they could put it there), existing outside of space and time (because that’s part of the universe too). We call Him God.
2. Science is possible because logic exists. Something John Lenox often brings up in his book, Can Science Explain Everything?, which I’ve been reading with the youth group, is that scientists often like to think they have the high ground above religion because they use logic and reason instead of faith. However, they don’t ever seem to ask where logic itself came from. If the universe is all completely random, why does it create so much order that we can measure it and describe it with mathematics? If the scientist’s brain is the result of random, undirected processes, why can the conclusions it comes to be trusted to be logical? The great scientists of the Enlightenment understood that the only reason they could do science at all was that a loving God had created an orderly, logical universe for them to study. Modern secular scientists seem to have forgotten that if the Laws of Nature exist at all, there must be a law-giver. We call Him God.
3. Information can only come from a mind. Perhaps the greatest discovery in biology was that of DNA – the double-helix molecule containing all the information necessary for a living organism to function and reproduce. Evolutionists attempt to explain the vast diversity of life forms we see today as the result of a series of random changes to DNA sequences as generations upon generations of organisms reproduce. But what about the first organism? Where did that DNA sequence come from? How do a bunch of random chemicals come together to create a string of instructions so precise that they create a living creature? A creature that, without just the right environment, just the right nutrients and resources, will soon wither and die and likely end the story of life right there.
DNA is not just a random string of letters (well, molecular groups we’ve named with letters). Those specific strings have meaning. They give instructions to the rest of the cell to allow an organism to function. That information cannot come from nowhere. Computers have made that even more evident. Type a bunch of random nonsense into a computer program and nothing will happen. Change even one letter of a functioning program and the whole thing crashes. We know from experience that information has to come from someone – an intelligent being with a functioning mind. Someone who, with all power and authority, thought of and created the DNA of every living organism in the first place. Someone who literally spoke the world into existence. We call Him God.