Science, Philosophy, and Jesus: Novel Ideas in Christian Apologetics in Connection with Modern Physics, Plato, and History

By James Frederick Ivey M.D.

It makes sense that the biblical God, who is both good and goodness as such, would necessarily want his human progeny to know him firsthand, and he would also want to draw closer to them by walking a mile in their shoes, providing for their eternal security and joy, and enjoying mutual love with them. So how does this good God make himself known to usand how can we draw closer to him?

In Science, Philosophy, and Jesus, author and physician James Frederick Ivey draws on his extensive formal and continuing education, and a fifty-year medical practice heavy in counseling, to provide a work of Christian apologetics written in conjunction with unbounded imagination but regulated by logical reasoning. As the second volume in Dr. Iveys book series, The Inevitable Truth, this insightful apologetic explores the person of Christ, the incarnation of the true God who left his realm of ultimate reality to enter illusory space-time. Dr. Ivey shows that the message of Jesus, supported by science and Plato, can provide humanity with a new paradigm that will replace our selfishness with selfless love and giving.

We can know that God exists, that he is unique, and that he is indeed the biblical deity, and by seeking him and his Son further, we can draw closer to him in love and in faith, all the while becoming transformed into new persons in Christ.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jan 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781973616054

James Frederick Ivey M.D.

Dr. Ivey is also the author of two books on Christian apologetics, The Physics and Philosophy of the Bible and Science, Philosophy, and Jesus Christ. These books form the series, The Inevitable Truth, and utilize quantum physics, relativity, Plato, the history of the Jews, and logic to show that God exists, that we are immortal, that there exists an absolute standard of ethics, that the true God is He of the Bible, and that this God came to us in Jesus of Nazareth.

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Copyright © 2018 James Frederick Ivey, M.D.

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Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB),

Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation Used by permission. www.Lockman.org

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-1604-7 (sc)

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WestBow Press rev. date: 1/30/2018

Volume 2 of The Inevitable Truth

Jesus is everything; the world and we were created through Him, and He gave His life that we might live forever in the timeless kingdom of God.

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. The Truth is the Arche’ whence all things come, the life is the most important aspect of The Truth, and if He is these things, He is most certainly the way.

To the late Sarkis Atamian, Karris Keirn, and John Mount Muse, and to John Branch Newsom, four of the finest friends and gentlemen who have ever graced the earth. I count it privilege upon privilege to have been, and in the case of Mr. Newsom, to be, friends of each of them.

Sarkis was a professor of sociology, well versed in philosophy. He was among the last of the African safari hunters and one of the few right-wing sociology professors of recent vintage. He championed the fair chase and exhibited the profound respect that the sportsman, above all others, has for his prey.

By the time I met him, he was retired and living with his wife in their dream house, a kind of small castle in Wasilla, Alaska, complete with something like thirty-five mounted heads of animals, plus a few full mounts, mostly from Africa and Alaska. This collection included the forever-immortalized Blackie, on whose corpse Sarkis landed as he descended from a hillside much more quickly than he had intended, vigorously converting on the spot to Christianity. From the first, he was an intellectual soul mate.

Sarkis’s wife, Allison, was a member of the Betts family, one of the first to risk taking me on as physician when I moved to Palmer, Alaska, in 1969. Her parents had homesteaded in the Wasilla area, and she had grown up with her brother and sister in that pioneering mode. When the time for college arrived, she went to the University of Alaska in Fairbanks and majored in home economics, which may explain why she is a gourmet cook. In sociology class, she met a suave Armenian professor with two classical Armenian names, a large and rounded Hittite nose, and a big cigar. She was entranced, and he was receptive, but … no proposal. However, when he began to miss her summers, he realized he had better ask her to accompany him to the altar lest some rival sweep her off her feet. He gave her a call, and the rest is history.

Sarkis and Allison subsequently treated me to many visits to their home, where I was bathed in luxury with martinis, gourmet meals, classical music echoing through their home, and great conversations. We mainly talked philosophy and the fundamental truths of Christianity during these visits. I thus had repeated access to a sage whom many sought and had sought. (I once saw him expound in his pajamas from a hospital bed, surrounded by admirers who came to experience his wisdom.)

What makes a friendship? It seems to me that common interests and shared beliefs about what aspects of life matter the most are of chief importance in drawing and holding two people together. Other opinions, such as political persuasions, matter much less. I am not sure it takes similar personalities for two people to be good friends, but neither Sarkis nor I could comfortably burn daylight or let the grass grow under our feet.

Not so very long before he died, he spoke seriously and enthusiastically about going hunting again, though he barely had the strength and the wind to play pool. (That was the first time I was ever able to beat him at that game.)

Sarkis was originally from Rhode Island, and his northeastern United States accent was distinctive, and the nuances of his voice unmistakable. As a youth, he was a track star of some renown. He early developed an interest in Tarzan of the apes and later wrote, in his retirement years, a book on his opinions concerning the sources from which Edgar Rice Burroughs derived the ape.

Sarkis was a medic in World War II, and one notes his compassion for patients in reading The Bears of Manley, his book of reflections on his hunting trips and on hunting as an art form. Like many particularly intelligent and thoughtful seekers of truth, he passed through a time of skepticism before committing himself to the Christ later in life. His conversion appears to have come from three primary sources: his belief in an absolute standard of ethics, the compatibility of the simple teachings of the Man of Galilee with the workings of a logical mind, and a profound encounter with a small black bear, about which you may read in detail in The Bears.

Allison and Sarkis’s marriage had that give-give quality wherein each party gives all they can to the other without thought of what they might get in return. I repeatedly and consistently observed Alison’s complete and awesome devotion to her husband. Appropriately, his hunting book begins with this dedication: To Allison, my beloved wife and angel, whose love has been my great treasure gifted by God’s grace. No affectionate term other than angel could have sufficed.

Sarkis loved the Armenian people and decried the tragedy of genocide by the Muslim Turks that had punctuated their course in history. (Armenia was the first officially Christian country.)

Sarkis recognized the importance of David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists and therefore gave me what is, along with Antony Flew’s There Is a God, one of the two most important references that I have for the creation of this writing. Whereas it took me years to discover the crucial value of The Philosophical Scientists, he did so immediately.

On the back cover of The Bears of Manley, we find the following endorsement. Without a doubt, Sarkis Atamian is the modern-day Theodore Roosevelt. Atamian exhibits invincible reasoning and integrity while advocating the philosophy of a strenuous outdoor lifestyle. Just preceding this remark are statements by two members of Safari Club International, the best-known hunters’ organization in the world. Keith Bates, former editor of its magazine, wrote, Sarkis Atamian is the voice of American Hunter, and C. J. McElroy, founder of the club, had this to say: Sarkis is the greatest speaker the Safari Club International has ever had. God bless you Sarkis for your great contributions to our cause.

I love to hunt. I love to shoot. I have never hunted without salvaging meat. Admittedly, Sarkis was a trophy hunter, and that is a minus. I have never, however, known anyone without a minus, and I do not judge him, because I judge no one and because of the overwhelmingly grand aspects of his goodness, which far more than balance out this negative factor. Many men that I otherwise respect or have respected have been unfaithful to their wives, and that is far worse than trophy hunting. Einstein, for all his greatness and goodness, was one of these. Sarkis would never have thought of such a thing.

Sarkis was an excellent runner in his youth. He now runs with Blackie the eternal race through the mind of God as he learns and learns and learns, as he was wont to do before he departed space-time. I expect to see him frolicking in heaven with the animals he pursued while on earth, perhaps reenacting the chase with pretend bullets in that land where the lion lies down with the lamb. I can see him with little Blackie and with the Brooks Range grizzly bear, both of which nearly ended his hunting career. Contemplating the full body mounts of those beautiful creatures caused Sarkis to have thoughts of heaven and of black and golden mists ambling along in the distance, in an eternal present. He thought of himself in spiked shoes jogging behind, trying to catch up with these powerful predators, a boy without a care in the world. Neither one knows anything about diabetes, he wrote of his beloved bears, and he did love them passionately. They both turn, beckoning me on. I chuckle because both rascals are in cahoots, teasing the old man, and how I wish I could be running with them forever.

You are doing that now, Sarkis. Run with them, as you timelessly love your wife and are now able to express your love for your Lord face-to-face.

Karris was a merry Irishman; a finer man I never knew. He taught corrective physical education in Los Angeles and retired in Alaska in 1974. I used to take my children to his home so that they could talk with him and possibly absorb some of his personality. What you saw was what you got, and I miss him sorely.

An excellent all-round hunter, Karris was also a champion of the fair chase and an excellent shot. He hunted only for meat, but he did not mind keeping horns or hide to admire and show to friends.

He and I struck a deal, wherein he would exercise his grand expertise as master of the construction and maintenance of the ideal hunting camp in return for my providing him with transportation. It was one of my better ideas. All I had to do was fly out to what was, with him on the scene, a turnkey situation. He always had placed two sixty-by-thirty-foot tarps overhead and had usually strung bells around the perimeter of the camp for a warning system against bears. He often put together a shower as well.

His wise and lovely wife, Carmen, died earlier this year at age 100, having outlived Karris by twenty years.

John Muse was a friend of about forty-two years, from the time we met when I was twenty-two years old until his death in 2004. He had no acquaintances, only friends. His home church lacked the necessary room for his memorial service; they had to take it uptown.

Nancy and I met the Muses the first time we attended Sunday school in Atlanta, where I was attending medical school at Emory University, about a month following our marriage. We were in a couples’ class that was called Noah’s Ark because we came two by two. John and Gerry asked us to their home that very day for lunch, and that began the best of friendships, which permeated through their whole family as it enlarged through the years. One of their sons is my namesake, and one of mine is named John, after him and two others.

I miss John so much that it is hard to write about him; I thought he would live beyond the age of seventy-four. Gerry was a beautiful woman of faith who died from breast cancer when she was sixty—a tragedy we can ponder but never understand.

John and I had many personal conversations of considerable depth. Few men have two wonderful wives in a lifetime, but John and I shared that blessing. John’s second wife, Virginia, is still a good friend. I respect her tremendously and appreciate her love for John more than I can say.

John Branch Newsom is my closest living friend.

We collected old-time baseball players’ autographs together and played marbles on his living room floor. Occasionally, we shot out the streetlight in front of his home with a BB gun.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Foreword: James Thomas Ivey

About The Author: My Christian Experience, Method, and Intent

Personal Promises to You

The Lord I Tout

My Own Belief and Commitment

Development by Experience

Development by Learning

NOTES

Preface: The Shortcomings, the Dilemmas, and the Charge of Christians

Christians Far From Perfect

A Dilemma

Count the Cost

A No-Nonsense God of Character

Real Christians and True Christianity

The Christian’s Greatest Dilemma

Notes

Overture: Plan and Purpose

Notes

Orientation: Structure

PART 1:   BACKGROUND INFORMATION AND PERTINENT IDEAS

Chapter 1:   Treasure in Heaven

The Beauty of the Christ

Our Immortality

Other Opinions with Regard to Death and Afterward

Time-Bound Versus Timeless Life

Development in Time

Going to Heaven Gradually

Justice

Notes

Chapter 2:   The Mind of Christ

God’s Computer

The Virtual World as Potential

Discourse with God

How He is Making Us

Notes

Chapter 3:   Levels and Parallels: The Hierarchy of God’s Creation

Definition and Varieties of Levels

The Few Among the Many

The Small Part of the Large

Parallels Across the Veil

Our Projects and God’s

Growing a Plant and Growing a Universe

Our Part in Creation

Qualities and Principles across the Veil

Beauty and the Arts

All This and the Music of Bach Too!

Sex across the Veil

Choices

Numbers across the Veil

Knowledge versus Belief in the Two Realms

Four More Examples

Points ff View

Comparisons on Lower Levels

Types

Notes

PART 2:   THE ONE TRUE GOD

Chapter 4:   How to Find the Answer

Beginning with Reason

Adding Faith and Watching out for Doxa

Help from the Best Philosophers

Something Must Exist

Cognitive Life Must Exist

Disregard Everything That Does Not Include Absolute Ethics

Be of The Camp of Logos

Choose from the Possibilities at Hand

Notes

Chapter 5:   THE FATHER

The True and Real God of Jews and Christians

Consensus

Threatening Gods

Our Humanoid God

Characteristics of an Imagined Ideal God Versus the Traits of the Old Testament God

Prevention of the Second Death

God as the Best Possible Parent

God’s Love

God’s Wisdom

God’s Power

Difficulties of God’s Relating to Us and Revealing Himself

Miracles

The Necessity of Faith

The Ultimate Revelation

Notes

Chapter 6:   The Alpha and the Omega

Christianity, the Most Attractive Faith

Jesus Presented Honestly in the Gospel

The Difference He Made in the World

Jesus Is What We Would Expect in the Incarnation

of the One True God

Jesus, Most Satisfying to the Mind

Jesus, Unique

Jesus, the Embodiment of Goodness

Jesus’s Great Love

Jesus’s Great Wisdom

Jesus’s Humility

Jesus’s Modesty

Jesus’s Empathy

Jesus’s Allowing Us to Work with Him

Jesus: Like a Good Parent

Jesus Trusts

If He Had Not Come

But He Did Come

The Enneagram

Jesus’s Tolerance

Jesus’s Patience

Jesus, Caring and Compassionate

Jesus’s Solidarity

Jesus’s Vision

Jesus’s Creativity

Jesus’s Sincerity

Jesus, Clever

Distance

Jesus’s Courage

Jesus’s Personality

Jesus’s Peacefulness

Jesus Is God

Perhaps the Best Apologetic Statement of All

Imagine!

Therefore

Notes

PART 3:   CLOSURE

Chapter 7:   One Fell Swoop: Major Items Of Apologetics That, By Themselves, Reveal The Truth Of The Biblical God And Him Of The Gospel

Dawkins

Flew

Flew versus Dawkins

Flew on Ross

Flew on Evolution

More Fell Swoops

Lord, Lunatic, or Liar

The Correlation between Jesus’s Teachings and Modern Physics

No Competition

The Big Bang plus the Inflation Era

Ross’s Fine-Tunings

Mind Primary in the Universe

The Truth of the Bible

Notes

Chapter 8:   A Theodicy

Our Question and the Opinion of Atheists

The Goodness of Jesus

The Question per Se

God Is Indeed Good and Cannot Possibly Create Evil

The Beginning and End Of Evil

The Atheist Responds

Two Kinds of Bad Things

Annulment of Evil?

Chapter 9:   Questions

Notes

Glossary

Comments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The acknowledgments that are due at this point are nearly the same as those of The Physics and Philosophy of the Bible, the prequel to this volume. A new item is that a new step-granddaughter, Kyndra Jean Monroe, arrived last year, to the great joy of Grandma Pamela Jean, who cannot get enough Kyndra fixes. I content myself with reiterating the immeasurable joy in my life that has come to me through my physical and spiritual offspring. I cannot, however, resist mentioning my wife again. I began a list a while back of all she does for me, and it stands at forty-five items thus far, and it is the mere beginning of a compilation of her glorious features. I admire her and am grateful beyond adjectives. Everyone who wishes to be her friend is heartily welcomed as such. To her everlasting credit, she seems not even aware that racial, societal, or economic differences exist among people. She has recognized and solved the problems of numerous people of which she has become aware, and she is the go-to person of our (large) church and of our neighborhood. Generally, she has been asked to be the leader of the numerous charitable or otherwise benevolent organizations that she has joined.

To my daughter-in-law, Eowyn LeMay Ivey, of Palmer, Alaska, a much better writer than me, for highly valued evaluation and numerous suggestions that I have followed in my writing. I have read her first novel, The Snow Child, with wonder, and I have done so three times because I miss my friends, the characters thereof. I can easily see why it was one of three books of fiction that vied for a Pulitzer prize.

To Dan Ivey, my youngest son and an expert in the English language; to James, my oldest son and clone; to my wonderful and wise daughter, a source of constant joy; to my dynamic second son, to be rich someday; to my champion son, Shamrock Sam, the sourdough; to my oldest grandchild, Christy, who is, for practical purposes, a daughter; to my other grandchildren, my stepchild, my bright step-grandchildren; my godchildren, and my foster child: I am spectacularly grateful for the accomplishments, Christian faith, and loving ways.

To my great-grandchildren, who have come along at a tender age: Layla Thomas is a brilliant, lovely, and kind little girl, and Miles Thomas is a little cannonball, a real boy’s boy.

To the Athenaeum Society of the University of Florida, the members of which elected me president while I was still pondering the honor of membership. This club was established in 1905 by the first president of the University of Florida, of which I am most happy to be an alumnus. It meets fourteen times a year for the purpose of scholarly talks and discussion. I have made exceedingly valuable friends therein—in particular Robert Ramey and Henry Sheldon.

There are indeed many others who deserve recognition, and I thank both them and those whom I have mentioned by name.

If you have read The Physics and Philosophy of the Bible, you may skip the following lengthy introduction, which duplicates the material that precedes chapter 1 of that book.

FOREWORD: JAMES THOMAS IVEY

As my dad’s son, I am perhaps best able to contribute to your experience with the reading of this book by lending to you some of my perspective. I know the author very well, and perhaps I can help set the tone and context by telling you a little about him, the relationship we’ve enjoyed, and some of what we talked about when I was growing up.

My earliest memory of my dad is of his holding out his hands to me. I’m sitting on a sloping tree trunk, and he is standing on the ground, a few feet away, waiting. Next, he is building me a tree house with football-shaped windows, and this memory is followed by instructions he is giving me: how to reel in a weedless black worm bait for optimal presentation to largemouth bass. I dutifully perform this prescribed activity while he unloads a small green johnboat from a pickup truck. By this time, I can’t be more than three years old.

Then the memories take on a different character. They are framed in the picturesque majesty of Alaskan mountains and glaciers. I stumble over river boulders the size of grapefruit, hewn out and rounded by their formative association with rushing water and crushing ice. I follow my dad through tangles of alder and thick stands of thorny devil’s club. I follow along the thin blades of mountain ridges, dividing treacherously steep and rugged cliffs of granite outcroppings and loose shale.

On another occasion, we transplant delicate broccoli and cauliflower bedding plants into the cool, silt-rich topsoil of the Matanuska Valley. I can see their pale leaves flat against the dark earth, two-dimensional in appearance, softly reflecting the rays of the subarctic sun. It is perhaps ten or eleven at night.

At some point, we began to talk about God and science. I talked, and Dad listened. He carefully evaluated my every observation and patiently supplemented my understanding of concepts from his own reading and science background. Over time, a compendium of conversation developed and became recurrent on many levels, spanning quite a range of topics, from the origin of life to properties of light, from biblical truths to the wisdom of philosophers and apologists of bygone eras.

The essence of the conversation was that science, far from being a thing to be feared or resented as threatening faith, was rather something to pursue with the eager expectation that faith would be rewarded in learning all we could about our world and indeed our universe.

As we progressed in our thinking, we began to derive great enjoyment from discussing what appeared to be the ultimate nature of the physical reality of our surroundings. Was it the overwhelming beauty of Alaska that made so plain to us this notion that only a Creator could have formed our world? Was it my dad’s knowledge and experience as a doctor of medicine that taught him that human life is precious and surely directed and affected by wisdom beyond itself? These questions I cannot answer, but I do know that truth, more than any other quality or substance, became my dad’s life’s pursuit. And I know somehow that his faith was, and is, that, in finding truth, he would find God.

I have no doubt that Dad has indeed encountered God. And I cannot help but think that his compassion as a physician moves him to share his discoveries with others. I have seen him turn and pause on the trail many times, pointing out the next blaze, or warning of a rough or steep stretch. I like to think that he is still the man standing at the base of the tree, holding out his hands, waiting. His answers may not be beyond healthy debate, but I continue to savor all that he has to say. And I have been listening for many years.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: MY CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE,

METHOD, AND INTENT

PERSONAL PROMISES TO YOU

This book is about Christian philosophy and apologetics. It touches on a few fascinating concepts—for example, that of quantum observation in conjunction with God’s method of creation and the derivation of God from all goodness. It demonstrates that apologists are very close to the non-necessity of having to deal with whether God exists or not.

I begin with imagination, which Einstein said is more important than knowledge, and work from there to imbue the reader with advanced perspective, such as the ability to see the world with a timeless mind-set. My son, James, almost like a twin brother to me, having read a piece that I sent to him, expressed part of what I am about better than I ever could. I think these ideas are coming together in a profound way. When an object begins to be recognizable from many angles and distances, though appearing differently due to perspective in each case, that object begins to take form as an entity in our minds. Soon we can begin to imagine what it would look like even from a perspective as yet outside of our experience. (An example here is that I’ve never seen a polar bear quartering away from me to my right from one hundred yards, but I can imagine what it would probably look like.) You’ve come at the question of ultimate truth from many angles and distances. It seems like the conclusions are becoming increasingly recognizable—something we can think about and imagine, beyond our experience and perhaps beyond even our normal earthbound modes of perception.

I am a physician, and the primary maxim in the practice of medicine is First do no harm. This is a quote from the Greek physician Hippocrates, who lived in the fifth century BC. I take it as a rule by which to live my entire life, professional and otherwise. It is reminiscent of Jesus’s admonition that we should not be judgmental. I do not preach in terms of condescension; in no way do I perceive myself as superior to you, and I certainly may not judge you. There is no question in my mind that only a person who is both morally perfect and omniscient can be the ultimate judge of anyone, and I am of course not such a person, such that it would be hypocritical of me to try to perform this function; actually, the stronger term ridiculous is quite appropriate here. Jesus said, Judge not, that ye be not judged, and He meant that, if we try to usurp His exclusive right to evaluate the innermost thinking of any person, we ourselves will be held all the more accountable for our own shortcomings. We are accountable enough already, because our shortcomings are many and major (Matthew 7:1).

On the other hand, I do not think that all preaching is bad because, if I preach with respect and convince you that Jesus is The Truth and should be worshipped as the true God, I believe I have done a