Search For Truth (1961)

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] and the Lord God said worlds without number have I created and by the son I created them which is mine only begotten and as one Earth shall pass away and the heavens thereof even so shall another come and there is no end to my [Music] Works far in the distant past before time was you and I and every person who has ever lived upon the Earth dwelt in the presence of our heavenly father there we grew in intelligence saw worlds organized and peopled with Kindred Spirits there we longed and prayed for the time when we could come to our owner and take take upon ourselves mortal bodies and be tried and tested in all things and there stood one among them that was like unto God and he said unto those who were with him we will go down for there is space there and we will make an earth whereon these May dwell and we will prove them herewith to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them so somewhere amidst the galaxies and the Stars our solar system was organized drifting on the edge of the great Milky Way like puffs of dust in the vast oceans of space a sun and nine known planets one of these planets was our Earth a place where man could struggle and grow and seek for truth Sir Isaac Newton great physicist of the 17th century had many arguments with an agnostic friend on whether the universe came about by chance or whether it came about by special creation the story is told that one day Dr Newton I have great news the Paris Academy of Science has accepted my paper I've been invited to read it at the saor my congratul thank you sir Isaac now tell me what have you been doing since we're last met or is it a secret oh I have no secrets from you my friend but to tell you the truth I haven't been making much progress in my experiment in the nature of light why what have we here it's the model of our solar system how very interesting go on turn it it's perfectly harmless how very ingenious why this is the most marvelous demonstration of our solar system I've ever seen school boy would understand this where did you get it who made it nobody made it I'm serious where did you get this it's extremely clever I'm serious too this material just came together and assembl itself quite by chance of course you're not serious Dr Newton you and I know that the transformation of such a thing is a physical impossibility at last I've captured you in a web of your own making see here my friend you admired the simple model I've made yes I admit I was its creator this thing is a puny imitation of a much grander system with which you're already familiar you mean our universe yes do you still think that this great universe and this world of ours and everything in it came about by chance for every effect there's a cause to conceive this universe in all its marvelous detail required a cause an intelligence if you wish which understood and compared the quantities of matter in the Sun and planets and set the gravitating force between the Sun and planets now to adjust all this so delicately in such a marvelous variety of positions argues the original cars to be not blind and fortuitous but extremely well skilled in mechanics and geometry I like to think of these cars as [Music] God and today too men do not believe that order ever comes of itself it takes intelligence to make and assemble the parts of an automobile not to mention the miracle of the conception birth and organization of the extremely complex human body this leads us directly to the same age-old controversy which confronts young people today just as it did Newton did life on Earth come about by orderly creation as the revelations of God declared or did Life come into being spontaneously by the chance meeting of Elementary particles and without a guiding intelligence as put forth by some Skeptics this theory has become very widespread but a majority of scientists are now firmly convinced that creation was directed by an intelligent being for instance cresy Morrison prominent scientific report reporter has given us an illustration which suggests this premise suppose that you put 10 pennies marked from 1 to 10 in a piggy bank now try to get them out in sequence from 1 to 10 putting back the coin each time and shaking them all over again mathematically your chance of getting out the one marked number one the first time is 1 in 10 the chances of shaking out 1 and two in succession are one in 100 the chances of shaking out 1 2 and three in succession are 1 in 1,000 and so on your chances of shaking out all 10 numbers in succession would reach the unbelievable figure of 1 in 10 billion think of it one in 10 billion by the same reasoning there are so many exacting conditions necessary for life to exist on this planet that they could not possibly have come into the proper relationship by undirected chance for instance as Morrison also points out the Earth rotates on its axis at 1,000 mph at the equator producing our days and nights of 24 hours if the Earth rotates at only 100 mph our days and nights would be 10 times longer than they are now during the day the sun would likely burn up our vegetation while during the long night anything not destroyed by the sun would freeze again the sun has a surface temperature of 10,000 de F and our Earth is just far enough away so that its fire warms us just enough and yet not too much could that be by chance if the sun gave off only 1 half its present radiation we would freeze if it gave off half as much more radiation we would roast the Earth is tilted 23° and this gives us our seasons was this also by chance and another thing if our moon instead of its actual distance of 238,000 Mi were only 50,000 mi from the earth the tides of the ocean would be so enormous that twice a day all of the continents would be submerged even the mountains would soon be eroded away it is Apparent from these and other examples that there is not one chance in billions that life on our planet is accidental Dr Edwin Conlan Princeton University biologist has compared the probability of the Earth being created by chance to that of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing [Music] [Applause] [Music] shop [Music] anyone for Scrabble many scientists of the 19th century were misled by certain of their observations and as a result came to conclusions which were atheistic but now even the most pragmatic materialist in the face of present day scientific knowledge is led to the inevitable conclusion that the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handwork the first great principle of science is that all nature is orderly in its behavior and that it operates under a series of Eternal unchanging laws man has been able to duplicate some of the components of a simple cell but even under the most favorably controlled laboratory conditions a cell has never been observed to spontaneously come alive in fact if even the most simple cell in existence dies we are still unable to bring it back to life it's unimportant to know in exact detail how the earth and its life were created for the Lord did it by means only dimly guessed by man as yet but the important thing to know is that God is the creator and that he lives and is interested in us and this we may know most scientists today agree on this one great truth there is a God listen to Dr Armen J Hill dean of physical and Engineering Sciences at Brigham Young University as he gives the views of world-renowned scientists on this subject acceptance of new information as it becomes available is the true scientific approach when added knowledge points to new conclusions a true scientist never hesitates to discard the old theory in our world of research it is to be expected that researchers will change their views and their conclusions as they develop new knowledge it is no disgrace to change one's Mind by changing with newly acquired knowledge science is able to advance Dr William FG Swan International scientist and lecturer Bears this out when he says the man of science likes to separate fact from speculation now viewing the universe as a whole I cannot escape the fact that it is of intelligent design The Universe shows on a magnificent scale the same kind of inter relationship of its working and planning as an engineer strives to achieve in his own understandings it is not so much the failure to comprehend the universe which fills the man of science with awe but rather the fact that in what he does understand he sees a plan not only akin to his own way of doing things but one conceived with enormous cleverness and so the man of science conscious to some extent of how the thing is done is much more impressed by the intelligent design of the universe than would be the unscientific man of past ages a marvelous thing about the universe is the apparent Simplicity of its fundamental design it is the Simplicity of the perfect genius there are less than a 100 different kinds of atoms composing the variety of forms of matter known know to our everyday experience but even these are built according to a common plan out of but relatively few kinds of fundamental particles principle of which are only three different kinds the electron the proton and the neutron the laws governing the activities of these particles are relatively simple to the scientist and yet out of these laws is fashion all of the richness of nature it is because of these laws of the universe the laws of these fundamental particles that we have light and mechanisms in our eyes to make use of it it is because of them that we have been able to invent radar later to find that the bat had used the same principle from time immemorial to enable him to fly with safety at night it is because of these laws that The Marvelous interrelation of organisms represented by our own bodies has become a reality now may I add my own observation that in the contacts I have had with many of the Great scientists of this day I have found most of them to be humble sincere men with attitudes which are closely in harmony with those I have quoted here Also may I say that all I have observed in nature all I have studied in the fields of science has strengthened my own profound conviction that God lives and that what we see and experience as the physical world is his handiwork the director of The George C Marshall space flight center at Huntsville Alabama Dr Werner Fon BR one of the world's foremost authorities expresses himself this way today more than ever before our survival yours and mine and our children's depends on our adherent to ethical principles ethics alone will decide whether atomic energy will be an Earthly blessing or the source of Mankind's utter destruction where does the desire for ethical action come from what makes us want to be ethical I believe there are two forces which move us one US believe in the last judgment when every one of us has to account for what he did with God's great gift of life on the earth the other is belief in an immortal soul the soul which will cherish the award or suffer the penalty decreed in a final judgment belief in God and in immortality thus gives us the moral strength and the ethical guidance we need for virtually every action in our daily lives in our modern world many people seem to feel that science has somehow made such religious ideas untimely or old-fashioned but I think science has a real surprise for the Skeptics science for instance tells us that nothing in nature not even the tiniest particle can disappear Without a Trace think about that for a moment once you do your thoughts about life will never be the same science has found that nothing can disappear Without a Trace nature does not know Extinction all it knows is transformation now if God applies this fundamental principle to the most minute and insignificant parts of this universe doesn't it make sense to assume that he applies it also to the Masterpiece of his creation the human soul I think it does and everything science has taught me and continues to teach me strengthens my believe in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death nothing can disappear Without a Trace another eminent man of science Dr Harvey Fletcher father of stereophonic sound former director of physical research at Bell Laboratories and professor ameritus at Brigham Young University adds his testimony I myself have a firm belief that God lives and that life has purpose for each one of us living here upon Earth I did not obtain that Faith through scientific reasoning but rather through spiritual experiences with which are hard to explain to others but nevertheless are very real it's been my experience that a great many men of science believe in God True Religion never hesitates to be held up for investigation by men of science such men as Michael Faraday Louie pasture James Clerk Maxwell Robert a milin Michael pen all believed in God let me read to you the testimony of Michael pen at the time this was written he was president of the American Association for the advancement of science Professor Pine said the real purpose of science is not merely to make material things inventions to increase wealth and comfort if science does not help to give me and others a better Faith to live by a better understanding of the Creator a closer relationship to God so that I can carry out the Divine Purpose and science is a failure the soul of man is the highest product of God's creat ative handiwork now after God had spent Untold time in creating man and endowing him with the soul is it reasonable to suppose that man lives here on Earth for a brief span and then is extinguished by death that the soul perishes with the physical body that it existed in vain there's a growing tendency in this age to think that as one becomes mature one must throw off a belief in God just as one discards his belief in San Clause just where would such a position leave us we would be forced then to admit that this beautiful world of ours was not the product of design and planning but of mere undirected chance that your dearest friend is simply a jumble of atoms and molecules that just happen to land together to make a dear and loving personality I feel certain that in our quest for the mysteries of the physical universe that the Lord will guide and direct us into new scientific findings I also feel certain that if we search for a testimony with the same Vigor and energy that we will find that too I have likewise Dr Henry iring dean of the graduate school at the University of Utah and recently elected National president of the American Chemical Society says there is no doubt in my mind that God Lives I've had no serious difficulty in reconciling the truths of science with the truths of religion moreover God has instilled in us a desire to search after the truth I'm thankful that I belong to a church whose doctrines can be subjected to every test I recall the advice my father gave me as I left to study my freshman year at the University of Arizona come here Jeff you look just as pretty as a picture I'll tell you there this me straighten out B say Dad isn't it about time well let's see that afternoon train leaves Pima about 5:30 we've still got a few minutes oh you're going too sound to study science huh well now you're going to hear some things up there that don't Jive exactly with what you've learned in Sunday school but don't worry about it just keep an open mind and truth will eventually work its way to the surface I don't worry about how much you learn study all the science you can and if you remember your prayers and don't be profane and live in such a way that you feel comfortable in the company of good people then mother and I will feel good about your going and don't you worry about the gospel son it'll stand the test of all truth I appreciate what you're telling me dad but let's not miss that train well see you later Jeff seems like nowadays these young folks are always in a hurry oh come on son if it speeds you want I'll show you how to make this board really Ratt crank it up once more there you got him come on MAR take that [Music] trade the Lord has instilled a desire to search for truth that truth which my father mentioned into our very beings man and his ceaseless search for truth has discovered and partially explored six different worlds the first of these that wonderful practical everyday World in which we live a world in which things are measured in feet and inches seconds and hours and days then we have a second world the world of the biologist a world that is microscopic where cells are usually about a 10,000th of an inch across and may divide every few minutes next we delve into the chemical world of molecules and atoms where the atoms complete their vibrations in a 100 million millionths of a second inside the nucleus of the atom we enter a fourth world a world where things are happening millions of times faster still there is also a fifth world that we are beginning to know a world of vast distances where astronomers measure the Revolutions of the planets and years and where the unit of distance used for measurement the light year is about 6 million million miles in length and finally there is the spiritual world where time is measured in eternities and space is Limitless thus in our minds we can travel from the almost infinite tally small to the infinitely large now curiously enough there are good people who would have you believe that man who understands all these wonderful things and Masters them in part is no more than the dust of the earth to which his body returns to me this is inconceivable today the increasing effort to understand man's place in the grand scheme of things proceeds at an accelerated Pace the answer to this problem won't all be found in the laboratory because many of the most important answers to the question where did I come from what am I doing here and where am I going after death will be found in the realm of the spiritual and I don't think many scientists today would presume to say a thing may not be simply because they do not understand it nor would they deny the validity of spiritual experiences of others because they have been without such experiences themselves just as science has proven a help to religion so religion in its finest expression has given impetus to science there is no end to the progress of a man who seeks for truth death is not the end it is but one more step in the great forward March made possible by the Redemption of the savior of this I am [Music] [Applause] convinced