Welcome back to Defenders Voice. This is Dr.Paul. Thank you for joining us today. Defenders Voice is about defending the truth against the falsehoods of our time. Please visit our website http://www.doctorpaul.org. There you can subscribe to our podcast. Our channel is dedicated to answering your questions. You can send your questions to info@doctorpaul.org. Please send any question you want me to answer to info@doctorpaul.org. Someone sent me a link to this video and asked me, what is your opinion about the Jen Fishburne lecture on the nature of God. Jen Fishburne is an ex-Christian teacher. She left Christianity and created her own theology. I gave the link to her video below. Watch it so that you can follow what I am saying in this video.
Jen Fishburne starts her lecture with the words: “God is not Jesus. Jesus is not God. God is energy. Energy is God.” Then, she takes us through the Bible describing the characteristics of God and ascribing those characteristics to Energy.
She starts with the first law of thermodynamics. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. She asks, Doesn’t that sound like God? God cannot be created nor be destroyed.
God can not lie. Energy cannot lie.
God guides us. Energy guides us.
God loves us. Energy loves us.
God protects us. Energy protects us.
God is omnipresent. Energy is omnipresent.
God is omniscient. Energy is omniscient.
God is omnipotent. Energy is omnipotent.
Jen Fishburne says so God is energy. Energy is God.
Jen, you are 6000 years late. It is called pantheism. When I was in India, I used to visit Hindu temples. Hindus call it Shakthi. Shakthi means Energy.
There is energy in the water. The Ganges River flowing from the hair of god Shiva.
There is energy in the rain. That is god Indra.
There is energy in food. That is goddess Annapoorna.
There is energy in Sati, the first wife of Shiva. When your husband dies, you will immolate yourself on his funeral pyre, to become one with the universal energy, the Shiva.
There is energy in wisdom. That is goddess Saraswati.
There is energy in wealth. That is goddess Lakshmi.
So, Jen Fishburne lost her faith in Christianity and asked us to become Hindus. Her god is not the God of the Bible. How do you define God? Let me give you my definition, which I made up based on my understanding of the Bible.
“God is a personal, eternal, uncreated, self-sufficient, methodical,moral, emotional, possessive, intelligent and intentional being who is revealed to humanity in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
That is how I define God. Look at Jen’s Energy in the light of this definition and you will realize that none of these characteristics of God apply to the Energy of the Universe.
God is personal, energy is not
God is eternal, energy is not
God is uncreated, energy is not
God is self-sufficient, energy is not
God is methodical, energy is not
God is moral, energy is not
God is emotional, energy is not
God is possessive, energy is not
God is intelligent, energy is not
God is intentional, energy is not
God revealed to us in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, not in energy.
Let us go one by one:
God is personal, energy is not: God is a Person. When you go out, you see different objects. You see homes, roads, cars, trucks, animals, trees, computers, printers, books, buildings, sun, planets, stars, galaxies…you can reduce all of those physical objects into energy. You can reduce all physical things in this universe into invisible energy..a quantum field of energy. But it is still not a person.
God is eternal, energy is not
Jen Fishburne starts her argument with the laws of thermodynamics. What do these laws teach us? This universe is not eternal. Consider the Second Law of thermodynamics. It evokes the image of broken eggs.
You take eggs, break them, add some salt, pepper and onions and make an omelet. You can break the eggs and make an omelet, but you cannot unbreak the eggs out of the omelet. You cannot recreate the eggs out of the omelet.
We observe this fundamental irreversibility of natural processes all around us. Scientists call this Arrow of Time. It says time has a direction, past, present and future. No one can change that order. Past, Present and Future.
According to the Second Law of thermodynamics, entropy is increasing with time. That means, as we move into the future, entropy will increase and as we move into the past, entropy will decrease.
Entropy cannot decrease forever. It must have a very low entropy almost zero at some point in the past. That is where we got the third law of thermodynamics which states that the entropy of a perfect crystal at absolute zero is exactly equal to zero.
There is a minimum possible temperature, absolute zero, at which the entropy is also minimum. There was a time when entropy has a minimum value. When the arrow to time left the bow of creation, entropy was almost zero.
That means time must have had a beginning. It takes us back to Genesis chapter 1, on Day of Creation, when God created time. So, time, matter and energy: they all started together. Energy cannot be eternal. Only God is eternal.
Then,
God is uncreated, energy is not
Jen said, the first law of thermodynamics states energy cannot be created or destroyed. God cannot be created or destroyed. So, energy is god. There is a false equivalence here.
Let me explain. The first law of thermodynamics is about the law of conservation of energy. It does not say anything about the creation of energy. Let me give you an illustration.
One morning you woke up and found a 1000 dollar deposit in your bank account. You wondered how that 1000 dollars came into your account. You did not touch it for a year. After a year, you still have 1000 dollars in your bank account. You conserved it. But you still wonder how a 1000 dollars came into your account! That 1000 dollars.
Though you don’t know how it got into your account, you still assume that someone did it. The money cannot create itself. In the same way, energy is conserved. But how did it come into existence? It was created. So, it cannot be like God, who is uncreated.
God is self-sufficient, energy is not
Go to Einstein’s famous equation, E = MC2. Energy is equal to mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. The existence of energy is dependent on the mass and the speed of light.
But God is not dependent on anything outside of himself. He is not equal to anything outside of himself. He is a unique being who is self-sufficient.
Next,
God is methodical, energy is not
God is methodical. You get up at a certain time of the day, you brush your teeth, you dress up, go to work at a certain time, you make plans like I am going to eat this for lunch, I am going to cook this for dinner. You are methodical. God is like that. He makes plans: what should I do today, what should I do next year. God has a plan.He is highly methodical. Galatians 4:4 says,
“When the fulness of the time was come,
God sent forth his Son, made of a woman”
Galatians 4:4
When the fullness of the time was come, God sent his Son Jesus into the world.
God has a plan of salvation for us. God keeps his times. We often sing, ‘In his, in his time, he makes all things beautiful, in his time’
Atheists often throw temper tantrums, saying, ‘God must come down now and stop all evil in this world. Only then will I accept his existence’.
They need to know that God has a plan. In his time, he will make all things beautiful. He is methodical. You cannot say the same thing about energy. Energy makes no plans.
Then,
God is moral, energy is not
God has moral standards. He never does certain things no matter what. He cannot lie. He cannot cheat. He cannot contradict himself. He is a moral being. You cannot say the same thing about energy. Energy is an impersonal, amoral physical entity.
Then,
God is emotional, energy is not
God is an emotional being. In Psalm chapter 2, we see God laughing, in Genesis chapter 6, we see God regretting, in Isaiah chapter 63, we see God enduring distress and suffering.
In John chapter 11, we see Jesus weeping at the tomb of his friend Lazarus. Jesus is the God who wept. He is a God of emotions. Energy has no emotions. It cannot love you or hate you.
For Dante, it was divine love that motivated the entire universe. Love preceded the universe and its energy. So, God’s love existed before the creation of this universe and all its energy.
God is possessive, energy is not
God says this is my earth, this is my friend
Abraham, this is my servant Moses, this is my son Israel. While hanging on the cross, Jesus looked at his disciple John and told him, ‘take care of my mother’. He is a God of possessions. Energy cannot make such statements. It cannot make friends or enemies.
God is intelligent, energy is not
God is the most intelligent being ever existed. Intelligence is not just knowing a lot of facts about the universe. It is not just inventing something grandeur. We talk about emotional intelligence. Doing the right thing for the right persons at the right time with the right emotions. God knows everything about you. Your name, your location, the number of cells in your body, number of hair on your head. Energy does not have such intelligence. It knows nothing about you.
Then,
God is intentional, energy is not
God makes choices. God has free will. Energy does not have a free will.
And finally, God revealed to us in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ
So, this great God of our universe came to this world in the form of a Jewish gentleman, named Jesus.
That is the mind-boggling truth at the center of Christian faith. Our God came to us as Jesus. He did not come to us in the form of energy. He came to us in the form of a person, the person of Jesus Christ.
Having said that, we are not completely dissociating God from the universe and its energy. I have a iphone. I love using it round the clock. When I look at it, I often think about its creator, Steve Jobs. It fits beautifully in the palm of my hand, its sleek design gives me a sense of Steve Job’s aesthetics; when I scroll through different apps, I think of Steve Job’s great intelligence.
My iphone reflects the grandeur of Steve Job’s great mind. In the same way, this universe reflects the grandeur of God’s great mind. The Bible says,
‘Heavens declare the glory of God’
Psalm 19:1
Iphone is not Steve Jobs. Universe is not God. Its energy is not God.
Apostle Paul warned us in Romans chapter 1. When we leave God, we abandon the truth about reality and make gods out of nature. Sadly, Jen Fishburne walked on that road. She left God of the Bible and now made a god out of nature.
Hundred and fifty years ago, Darwin did the same thing.
How did earth come into existence? Natural selection.
How did life originate? Natural selection.
How did animals originate? Natural selection. How did plants originate? Natural selection.
How did human beings come into existence? Natural selection.
How did morality originate? Natural selection.
He deified and personified nature.
He took the glory which should belong to God and gave it to nature. Jen Fishburne is doing the same thing today.
In Star Wars movies, Obi Wan Kenobi says, ‘the Force will be with you….always’. George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars movies, was deeply influenced by Hinduism.
So, Jen Fishburne’s theology is as old as the garden of Eden. You can be your own god. She is 6000 years late compared to Hindus
2000 years late compared to Apostle Paul
150 years late compared to Charles Darwin
50 years late compared to George Lukas
We can call her the Queen of Pantheism, who is late to the show.
Finally she talked about the law of attraction. No serious scientist would agree with her. There is nothing in nature we can influence with our consciousness.
Quantum consciousness is complete nonsense. Buddhists made a big mess in Quantum physics. Hindus made a big mess in Quantum physics. That is the beauty of Christian faith. We believe in Dualism.
Jesus said, ‘render unto Cesar the things that are Caesars,
and unto God the things that are God’s’
Mark 12:17
In the same way, Christians separated material objects from spiritual entities.
Render unto the scientist the things that are physical
and unto God the things that are spiritual
Great Christian philosopher Rene Descartes did that three hundred years ago. We don’t need to go back to pantheism which equates spiritual with the physical and robs both of their essence.
That’s all for today. Remember Lord Jesus Christ died for your sins and rose again again from the dead to give you hope, meaning and eternal life. I pray you come to God who revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ, our Lord. I pray that you confess your sins and invite Jesus into your heart as your Lord and Savior. Thank you.
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