Debate Atheism Arrival Evil

Debating Atheists: Arrival of Evil (Part 4/5)

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By Dan Grossenbach

Understanding evil reveals an important part of reality. As much as we try to avoid it, evil is part of the universal human condition – something theists and atheists both have in common. You may be surprised, however; that the way atheists think about evil actually shows God exists.

Debate Atheism Arrival Evil

For the previous post on part 3, atheist arguments for the Arrival of Biological Information, click here. Unlike other points in this series so far, probing evil touches the heart. It gets emotional. The argument I’m presenting, by contrast, isn’t designed to address the emotional part of the problem. There are volumes dedicated to that. Rather, the point here is to reason through three facts about evil that nearly all people agree on and to see what follows:

  1. Evil exists

This fact is so obvious that even the argument of evil used against God relies on it. Readers have probably heard the “problem of evil” used as a critique against theism. This was something I knew Dr. Shapiro would bring up in our debate, since he’s brought it up in a prior encounter, so I decided to hit it head on. As expected, Dr. Shapiro parroted the classic criticism from 4th century BC philosopher Epicurus:  “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” [1]

The question puts God in a dilemma. Either he’s not all powerful (he can’t stop evil) or not all good (he’s unwilling to stop it). Theists believe God is both all-powerful and all-good thus find themselves having to eliminate one. I address this more later. What we must consider at present; however, is that the objector assumes the existence of evil prior to the objection. This is a huge assumption. Epicurus posed a fair question to the Greek polytheists of his day but is it fair to carry this over to God of the Bible? We’ll address that later. The immediate question is whether or not evil exists at all and this objection only works if it does. Put simply, if there’s a “problem” of evil, then there’s evil.

Seeing the plain consequences of this fact, skeptics typically go one of two ways: 1) ground goodness on something other than God, or 2) deny good or evil exist at all.

This first group accepts value propositions as something real (good and evil exist) but tries to avoid God. Freedom from Religion founder and president Dan Barker says “’Good’ is that which enhances life, and ‘evil’ is that which threatens it.”[2]

Sam Harris defines morality as the “right and wrong answers to the question of how to maximize human flourishing in any moment…”[3] In my debate with Dr. Shapiro, he repeated the secular humanist doctrine that value relates to the standard of universal “well-being.”

The careful reader may see that they shifted the meaning of good. Rather than goodness defined as ultimate moral perfection, they see it as the best way to accomplish a goal. Plenty could be said about this shift, but it doesn’t really matter for this part of my argument. Whether they ground goodness in human flourishing or not, they still have an objective standard. They don’t put it on God, but instead on something else of objective and universal value. Sam Harris urges, “we need some universal conception of right and wrong”[4]. So, despite this shift in definition, they find themselves in the same place in terms of establishing objective goodness. For this purpose, we can join together in agreement with atheists who agree objective goodness exists, right?

Not so fast! Other well-known atheists dismiss value altogether. In Darwinian naturalism, there is no way things are supposed to be. Dawkins puts this best:

In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference[5].

An abstract from Cornell University scientist William Provine’s second annual Darwin Day speech starts off this way: “Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly” One of those consequences, he suggests, is that “no ultimate foundation for ethics exists”[6].

If moral values aren’t real, this disrupts my first premise. There are plenty of reasons to reject the idea that moral values are a convenient social construct, but it’s important to show where this takes us if it were so.

It turns out the denial of moral value just exchanges one problem for another. If the atheists who deny evil are right, then the problem of evil goes out with it. If there’s no evil, there’s nothing to complain about. Saying there’s no evil is different than living that way, however. For most people, this isn’t as far as most are willing to go. Our gut-wrenching feelings on the inside and our outward actions tell us that everyone knows evil exists. In fact, even atheists arguing this objection often find themselves blaming God for the evil they just told us doesn’t exist. While the denial of evil may be something popular writers do, those dedicated to clear thinking on this issue have come to a much different conclusion. They know objective value is only possible with God.

The philosopher who put this most poetically was one of the greatest thinkers of the 19th century who also happened to be an ardent atheist Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche vividly illustrates the absurdity of a moral laden world without God in this passage from The Joyful Wisdom:

“Where is God gone?!” he called out. “I mean to tell you! We have killed him, – you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall we not have to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction? – for even Gods putrefy! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him![7]

In our own time, atheist philosopher of science Michael Ruse puts it this way,

“The position of the modern evolutionist . . . is that humans have an awareness of morality . . . because such an awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth . . . . Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says ‘Love they neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond themselves . . . . Nevertheless, . . . such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, . . . and any deeper meaning is illusory . . . . [8]

The late atheist Christopher Hitchens conceded that it “could be true, yes. That could well be true,” that morality is a by product of social evolution without any objective foundation[9]. He adds, “one wants to think their love for their fellow creature means more than that.” No Christopher, they don’t merely want to think it, they actually do think it and for good reason.

Nietzsche, Ruse, Hitchens, and other like-minded atheists may not believe in God and many despise him. However, they know that without him, they’re posed with another problem worse than the first. Namely, they are unable to account for the kinds of evil that we all know is real. Worse, they deny the very evil atheists typically point to as evidence against God. This argument turns the challenge on its head. We can only make sense of evil if God exists.

In my recent debate, my secular humanist opponent didn’t seem to grasp this. Instead, he doubled down. Dr. Shapiro indicted God for allowing things he described as real examples of evil. The irony here was that he was proving my point. If Shapiro is right that there are real unjustified evils that God was allowing, he’s granting that the first premise above. It’s as if he wants to argue “God exists and he’s really bad so he can’t exist!” He can’t have it both ways. Take it from the atheists, either evil exists or we need to act like it does.

So which is it? Do moral values exist in something other than God or are they useful illusions? We’ve seen how Darwinian naturalism leads to a world without value. On the other side, we’ve seen God’s critics condemn his acts as evil in no uncertain terms. We’ve also seen that a world devoid of evil can’t condemn God for something that doesn’t exist. If true, advocates of this view don’t point us to God nor do they challenge him, essentially making evil a non-issue. Those who blame God for real evil agree with us on this first point, but how far will they go?

  1. Evil entails objective good

By objective good, I mean absolute moral perfection by which all things of value are measured. Evil isn’t really a thing at all. Rather, it’s the absence of something – namely, something good. Just as darkness isn’t anything on its own without light (dark = the lack of light rays), evil only comes about when something good is taken away. For Harris, Barker, and Shapiro evil is when human well being doesn’t go the way it should. Whether we base value on God or our own idea of human flourishing, evil is when something goes wrong. It’s not the way things are supposed to be. This only makes sense if there’s a right way for things to be. Next, we see what kinds of things come with objective goodness.

  1. Objective good must transcend, precede, hold accountable, and value humanity.

Transcending:  First, goodness entails a moral authority which crosses all times, places, and cultures. People groups can’t make up their own values. Instead, value applies to all people regardless of what anyone thinks about it. That’s what philosophers mean by “mind-independent.” The Nazis can’t be just in doing what they did no matter how many people agreed with it. Instead, goodness must extend beyond the individual mind or community consensus to be the standard by which ALL people and cultures are compared. The value inherent in objective goodness must transcend humanity in this way.

Preceding:  Second, goodness cannot have been invented by the first humans. After all, any values established by man can be later undone by men[10]. It would be absurd to think the first humans could come up with whatever value system they wanted because they were first on the scene. It doesn’t take much effort to see the advantage of having lying or stealing as virtues. No, that isn’t an option available to us. Goodness wasn’t invented. It was already there.

Holding Accountable:  Third, there is no objective goodness if evil goes unpunished. As my friend Frank Turek puts it, where there’s no justice, there’s no injustice. When people are allowed to do bad things without any consequences, there is no justice. Objective goodness demands justice. But there’s not always justice in this world. The murderers of black teenager Emmet Till in the 1950’s rural Mississippi never faced trial. The murderer of 6 year old Adam Walsh admitted the killing but was never charged. While in his 70’s Joseph Stalin had already killed about 50 million people (not including war casualties) and continued his genocidal orders from his deathbed in a Moscow mansion. In a purely natural world with no accountability for all people, there’s no justice for all people. If there’s no justice for all people, there’s no justice at all. If that’s not good, then goodness must include universal human accountability.

Value Giving:  Fourth, objective goodness must include the intrinsic value inherent in all human life. By intrinsic, I mean they all have equal worth just for being part of the species and not for any act, experience, or attribute they have or lack. It would make no sense to violate the rights of a human being if they aren’t valued in the first place. Evil and suffering experienced by humans only makes sense if the species has worth beyond itself and that their value is an objective fact of reality.     

  1. Therefore, since evil exists, there is a transcendent, authoritative, human valuing source of objective goodness

Biblical Christianity’s explanation offers a solution that perfectly fits these facts:

  • God transcendshumanity – Job 12:10, Acts 17:25, 28, Col 1:17, Heb 1:3, Eph 4:6
  • God precedeshumanity – Gen 1-2, Ps 90:2, Job 36:26, Rev 1:8, Jn 8:58
  • God holds humanity accountable– Gen 3:24, Amos 9:1-4, Mt 6:20, 1 Pet 4:4-5, 2 Pet 3:9, Mt 25, Mk 9:43, Rev 14:9-11, 20:10
  • God valueshumanity – Gen 1:27, Ps 16:11, 73:25-26, Isa 62:5, Zep 3:17-18, Jn 3:16, Eph 5:23-32, 1 Jn 4:19
  • God isobjective goodness – Gen 1:31, Ps 100:5, Lk 18:19, Rom 12:2, 1 Thes 5:18, 1 Jn  4:8

As I said in the beginning of this post, it’s hard to separate emotion from logic when reflecting seriously on evil. This was a tough one to cover. On stage during the live debate, I had three examples of human suffering in my slide show but by the third one I lost my composure and had to skip it. I know I was being overly emotional in my appeal, but my unexpected emotional response just emphasized the point. Evil exists and deep down we all know it. Christianity might not be what people like, but it provides the best explanation. Dr. Shapiro didn’t think so, but he missed the point entirely. This was most evident during the Q&A when he said “I want to clear up something really fast. Christians always say if you don’t believe in God you can’t say anything about morality. That’s nonsense!”

Nobody ever argued this and Dr. Shapiro is smart enough to know better. The point he ignored that there is no objective basis to ground moral values under atheism. I’ve had the chance to meet with Dr. Shapiro since our debate and learned he considers all morality as relative. So, even when he grants the horrid act of abusing babies as objectively wrong, he still considers it relative.

Strangely, Dr. Shapiro seems to embrace moral realism when he condemns God’s actions, or his failures to act. Shapiro can’t allow for any moral values as real and mind independent since it makes no sense under atheistic naturalism. In other words, Dr. Shapiro might argue like this: Since God doesn’t exist, there are no moral values outside of the human mind. Since there are no values outside human minds, all morality is relative.

The trouble is, I don’t think Dr. Shapiro has followed the logic as far as it goes. As Dr. Shapiro said in his opening speech “It just is what it is.” At bottom, the universe has no meaning or purpose outside of humanity, he said.

Christianity does offer it. It offers a basis for grounding value in the universe, a value of humanity and holding people accountable. Dr. Shapiro didn’t understand the point and furthered the case for Christianity every time he complained about evil. It’s ironic, actually. The very person he blamed for evil – God – is the one we can see much more clearly in contrast to the evil we all know exists. The intellectual dishonesty really showed in the inconsistent demand Shapiro and questioners put on Christianity. They tolerated, even celebrated ignorance on origins of cosmos or biology but demanded to know why God allowed evil. Even if they could ground evil in something transcendent and authoritative, why not find ignorance on that just as “refreshing?” It gets worse.

This brings us to an important rule: the one who bears the burden of proof is the one who makes the claim. It wasn’t my burden to refute my opponent’s unsupported assertions but they are his to defend. I had to provide support for my position, but so did he. No one gets a free pass here.

Dr. Shapiro is fully within his rights to criticize my ideas, but he must do more than rely on emotional reaction and make a compelling case for his view. He gave no case so there was nothing to address. That’s why I pointed out to the audience that Dr. Shapiro depended on a “shock” factor in the absence of sound argument. In addition to pointing out this fallacy, I gave three points that Dr. Shapiro needed to defend for the Epicurian dilemma mentioned at the top of this post:

  • God has no moral authority to do as he sees fit with his creation.
  • God has no justification to accomplish a greater good (and we have enough knowledge to determine this).
  • God could have done otherwise to accomplish a better result.

Even after pointing this out during my rebuttal speech, Dr. Shapiro still failed to provide any good reasons to believe these three hidden assumptions implicit in his complaint about God.  Instead of arguing it, the appeal was to the heart, “How could a good God allow this?!”

As in the other points I made, I invited Dr. Shapiro to present an alternative explanation for evil. Since he didn’t do that, the offer presented consistent with Christian theism remained the best explanation offered that day.

Theism offers the best explanation but it does more. It is so obvious that there are things wrong with this world, that the burden falls on those who deny it. Sitting on a comfy couch with my wife talking about our day is all it takes to bring this reality home. As a federal agent and a nurse, the common question “How was your day, honey?” makes this evident daily. Regardless of where you are in life, I’m sure this could be true for you too.

Christian theism not only explains evil in our world, but it’s the only one that offers a satisfying solution to it. The same God of the Bible whose perfect nature sets the standard for value also offers mercy to people who have violated it. In perfect justice, the crimes against him are paid in full by the only one who can bear it, the God-man Jesus of Nazareth. Clearly, this is something that atheists won’t grant. But you would be surprised what they do say about him. The question of Jesus will take us to the fourth and final point in this short series.

Endnotes:

 

[1] Classic argument for the “problem of evil” first attributed in this form to the Greek philosopher Epicurus

[2] Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith, page 125

[3] Sam Harris, bases his moral standard on what he deems human flourishing,https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/thinking-about-go

[4] Ibid

[5] Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: The Darwinian View of Life, Basic Books, 1995, p133

[6] William Provine, “Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life” [abstract] from speech given at the Second Annual Darwin Day Celebration, University of Tennessee – Knoxville on Feb. 12, 1998https://web.archive.org/web/20070829083051/http://eeb.bio.utk.edu/darwin/Archives/1998ProvineAbstract.htm

[7] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom,https://archive.org/stream/completenietasch10nietuoft/completenietasch10nietuoft_djvu.txt

[8] Michael Ruse, “Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics,” in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 262, 268-269.

[9] Hitchens vs. Craig debate “Does God Exist,” Biola University (La Mirada, CA), April 4, 2009, at approximately 1:25 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tYm41hb48o

[10] Gregory Koukl, The Story of Reality, p73

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2xAUvhp

 

 

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Debating Atheists Biological Information

Debating Atheists: Arrival of Biological Information (Part 3/5)

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By Dan Grossenbach

Information embedded inside all of life demands an explanation. Virtually all agree that, at some point in earth’s early history, the first living being came about from non-living (dead) material. Setting aside for the moment the incredible principle of life arising from death, what we find inside of life gives us the greatest mystery of all. The information inside of life is exactly what we see in high tech computer engineering. It’s remarkably designed. Bestselling atheist writer and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins remarks on information in every cell this way:

Debating Atheists Biological Information

“The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like. Apart from differences in jargon, the pages of a molecular biology journal might be interchanged with those of a computer engineering journal.”[1]

So the argument goes like this…

  1. All life requires DNA/RNA.

Citing Richard Dawkins, “DNA code is universal among all living things” [2]

  1. DNA/RNA is information

What’s information? “By information, I mean the specification of the amino acid sequence in protein…Information means here the precise determination of sequence, either of bases of the nucleus acid or in amino acid residue in the protein.” Christian skeptic and co-discoverer of the DNA structure, Francis Crick. “Genes are information…a code…in sequence…just like what a computer programmer would do!” [3]

  1. Information requires a mind

In his debate with Christian apologist David Wood last year, leading atheist and editor of Skeptic Magazine Michael Shermer explains it this way,

Is there some advanced intelligence, a designer, call it whatever you want. Maybe. How do we know? Our methodology is actually pretty good for finding out…[Y]ou know the SETI program has algorithms. They grind through of signals coming from space to determine if it’s random noise or if it’s a signal. [4]

Shermer concedes that information infers an intelligent cause and even offers a way to verify it. Ironically, his method is the very same one offered by the ID advocates he’s trying to refute.

  1. Therefore, life required a mind.

This is why religion critics like Francis Crick[5], Richard Dawkins [6] and others propose the rarely accepted view of panspermia, or the idea that intelligent alien life seeded the early earth at just the right time for life to take root. In fact, there’s little discussed about origin of life at all. Normally, the question skips the origin of life issue and goes right into the evolution mechanism. Like all facts which lead us to conclusions we don’t like, it’s much easier to simply ignore the problem.

But not all of them are. The arrival of biological information is an area evolutionary biologists around the world are dealing with. In Nov 2016, scientists from around the world met in London to discuss how the neo-darwinian mechanism fails to account for the complexity of life. Recordings of the lectures will be provided on the Royal Society website soon. What’s more, is that the issue of information already in the cell before the first organism ever existed is not even a matter of evolution at all.

The reason I presented this as evidence for God is the same reason atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel and former atheist Antony Flew saw purpose and design in biological life. Every living cell requires something that is so particular that it cannot, in principle, be attributed to chance or natural causes. The DNA molecule contains not only complexity – for it has that. The complexity must also be arranged in such a way that it performs a specific function for the development of a living organism.

The specific complexity of this program is exactly like computer software. In fact, the four fundamental nucleotide base chemicals comprising the DNA molecule strands are not only similar to a computer program but they are the exact same thing. The pioneer of modern software, and no friend to Christianity, recognized this when he said, “DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.” [7] The four chemicals abbreviated A-C-G-T are a four character code much like the binary two character code of human developed software consists of particularly placed zeros and ones. The only difference, is that whereas a slight computer code error typically results in a minor disfunction, any deviation from the DNA sequence most likely terminates the organism and any future decendants. This poses major problems for the. Neodarwinist theory of random mutation but that’s beyond our immediate scope.

Lest anyone be tempted to think time and chance under natural laws can produce such a function-based information code, atheist paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould shows that time is not available to us:

[W]e are left with very little time between the development of suitable conditions for life on the earth’s surface and the origin of life. Life is not a complex accident that required immense time to convert the vastly improbable into the nearly certain. Instead, life, for all its intricacy, probably arose rapidly about as soon as it could. [8]

Richard Dawkins goes further by ruling out chance a priori:

However many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead, or rather not alive. You may throw cells together at random, over and over again for a billion years, and not once will you get a conglomeration that flies or swims or burrows or runs, or does anything, even badly, that could remotely be construed as working to keep itself alive. [9]

Not only was there no time for the DNA/RNA to develop naturally, there was also no known natural mechanism for it to do so.

Atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel agrees, “The more details we learn about the chemical basis of life and the intricacy of the genetic code, the more unbelievable the standard historical account [neo-Darwinian evolution] becomes.” [10]

“It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection.” [11]

“I realize that such doubts will strike many people as outrageous, but that is because almost everyone in our secular culture has been browbeaten into regarding the reductive research program as sacrosanct on the ground that anything else would not be science.” [12]

“I believe the defenders of ID deserve our gratitude for challenging a scientific world view that owes some of the passion displayed by its adherents precisely to the fact that it is thought to liberate us from religion.” [13]

Whenever information is found, in uniform and repeated human experience, it’s been the product of an intelligent mind. I left it to Dr. Shapiro to provide at least one piece of evidence to the contrary. He didn’t. 

This was the third in a series of five posts showing how atheists concede four primary facts that infer biblical Christianity. For a fuller picture of this argument, you may want to check out part one (introduction) or part two (arrival of the universe). 

Notes

[1] Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, New York:Basic Books/Harper Collins, 1995., p17

[2] This fact is so widely assumed it was hard to find a direct quote. Richard Dawkins cited in a news article https://news.virginia.edu/content/richard-dawkins-universal-dna-code-knockdown-evidence-evolution. It’s worth noting after an exhaustive search, I found no published work directly denying this fact.

[3] Richard Dawkins interview starting at 1:25 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oF1UzhPA5N8

[4] Michael Shermer vs. David Wood debate on “Does God Exist” October 10, 2016, Kennesaw State University

[5] Francis Crick, directed panspermia 1972, https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/scbccp.pdf

[6] Richard Dawkins at the end of Expelled https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=Dee3DLgEDEw

[7] Bill Gates, The Road Ahead p228

[8] Stephen Jay Gould, “An Early Start,” Natural History, February, 1978.

[9] The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design 1988, p9 The immediate relevance to this was pointed out to me by Douglas Axe.

[10] Nagel, Thomas (2012). Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p5

[11] ibid, p5

[12] ibid, p7

[13] ibid, p12

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Freedom Obedience Star Wars

Freedom Through Obedience: A Lesson from Star Wars

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Personal autonomy has become the reigning virtue of our day. If it feels true to you, then it must be true for you. As SCOTUS Justice Anthony Kennedy famously said, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” On this view, freedom entails obeying only the self.

But the Star Wars franchise portrays a different kind of freedom, a freedom that is found through obedience. For instance, in episode IV (the first Star Wars film) Obi-Wan Kenobi sneaks Luke Skywalker, R2-D2, and C-3PO past a small group of stormtroopers. When the stormtroopers stop them for inquiry, Ob-Wan simply waves his hand and says, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.” One of the stormtroopers repeats the phrase and they obey.

In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke learns the powers of the Force by submitting to Yoda. Luke realizes he cannot learn the Force alone and that he must obey his Master. And in the climactic scene of Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader ultimately saves his son Luke through not obeying the Emperor and fatally heaving him into a chasm in the Death Star.

In his excellent book Movies are Prayers, Josh Larsen describes how the newest Star Wars hero, Rey, learns freedom through obedience in The Force Awakens (2015):

Interestingly, Rey initially refused to acknowledge the power of the Force when she encountered it earlier in the film, after discovering the lightsaber that once belonged to Luke Skywalker. Her journey, then, is one in which she learns that submitting to the Force leads to flourishing. In both that mind-control showdown with Kylo Ren and a climactic lightsaber duel with him, it isn’t until Rey closes her eyes and prayerfully steps outside of her own self that the Force fully flows through her. In following the Force, she is freed. In trying to bend the Force to his own will, Kylo Ren suffers (p. 124).

Star Wars, of course, is fiction. But it is based upon a premise that runs against the prevailing virtue of our day—personal autonomy. Star Wars portrays freedom as being found through submitting to proper authority and objective reality, not through defining one’s own existence. On this view, freedom is not found through following one’s feelings, but submitting one’s feelings to reality. In other words, freedom is found through obedience.

Biblical Freedom

This is the paradox of freedom. And it is the view of freedom portrayed in the Bible. In his final speech to the Israelites before they enter the Promised Land, Moses sums up what God desires of them:

And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good? (Deuteronomy 10:12-13).

In other words, the Israelites would only be free if they obey God by “walk[ing] in His ways,” which were given for their good. The Israelites would find freedom if they submitted their lives to God’s direction rather than their own.

The idea of freedom through obedience is counterintuitive for those raised in a culture that values personal autonomy. But Star Wars subversively portrays a truth we intuitively grasp—that obedience is required for genuine freedom. That is why King David said, “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple” (Ps. 19:7).

 

 

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Contingency Argument God

The Contingency Argument For God’s Existence

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By Evan Minton

Why does anything at all exist? Why isn’t there just nothing? This is the first philosophical question I ever remember asking myself. I remember lying in bed at night when I was about 6 years old, and I asked and pondered this very question. I thought to myself “Everything must have been made by God. If God didn’t exist, then nothing else would exist either. Since everything exists, God must exist. But what if God didn’t exist either? Then nothing else would exist.” It was only 15 years later that I discovered that my childlike insight was actually developed into a sophisticated philosophical argument for the existence of God long before I was even born. In fact, I had even forgotten that moment of reflection when I was a small child until I started reading about the argument as an adult. Then I remembered.

The argument is called “The Contingency Argument For God’s Existence”. Sometimes it’s referred to as “The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument”, the reason why it is called that is that the argument was first formulated by the mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. The argument’s premises are:

1: Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence (either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause).

2: If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.

3: The universe exists.

4: Therefore, The universe has an explanation of its existence.

5: Therefore, the explanation of the universe’s existence is God.

Now, this is a logically airtight argument. So if the atheist wants to deny the conclusion, he has to say that one of the three premises is false. Let’s examine the premises to see what reasons can be given for affirming them.

Premise 1: Everything That Exists Has An Explanation Of Its Existence (Either In The Necessity Of Its Own Nature Or In An External Cause). 

*Types Of Explanations – There are 2 types of explanations for why something exists. X was either caused to exist by something that exists outside of and prior to X or X exists out of a necessity of its own nature (I.e its non-existence is impossible and it depends on nothing outside of itself to bring it into or keep it in existence). Something was either caused to exist by something else or it exists out of logical necessity.

*This Premise Is Self-Evident – We all intuitively know that whatever exists has some sort of explanation as to why it exists. Imagine you were walking in the forest with a friend and found a ball lying on the ground. You would naturally wonder how the ball came to be there. If your friend said to you “Don’t worry about it. The Ball just exists inexplicably” you would either think he was crazy or was joking around. Either way, you’d never take seriously the notion that the ball just existed there with no explanation for why it existed or how it came to be there.

Whatever it is we think about, whether it be cars, trucks, chairs, tables, people, houses, trees, balloons, mountains, planets, galaxies, etc. we know that they must have some explanation for their existence. Nothing exists for no reason. Even little children know this. Why else would they ask Mom and Dad “Where do babies come from?” They know that they have an explanation for their existence. They know that they don’t exist inexplicably.

*Objection: Does God Have An Explanation Of His Existence?

Critics of this argument frequently object to this premise by saying that if everything that exists must have an explanation for why it exists, then God must have an explanation for His existence. If God exists, then the premise applies to Him as well. However, that would demean God as it would mean something existed outside of God Himself which brought Him into existence. In other words, God would have a Creator and we would have a Heavenly Grandfather. Now, if we make God an exception to premise 1, the skeptic would rightly accuse us of special pleading. And moreover, he could ask that if we’re allowed to make God an exception to premise 1, why not exempt the universe?

This objection does not succeed. Read the first premise again. “Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence (either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause)”. We would agree that God’s greatness would be diminished if he had anexternal cause for His existence. But that’s not the only type of explanation there is. One category of existence-explanation is necessary existence. What the Christian Apologist would say in response is that God does indeed have an explanation for His existence, but that explanation is that He exists by the necessity of His own nature. If God exists, He cannot not exist. His non-existence is logically impossible.

So premise 1 certainly seems to be true. What about premise 2? Is premise 2 true?

Premise 2: If The Universe Has An Explanation Of Its Existence, That Explanation Is God.

At first, this premise may seem like a huge logical leap. But it actually makes sense when you think about it. In order to have caused the universe to come into being, the cause of the universe must be beyond the universe, beyond space and time. And therefore cannot be a material, spatial, or temporal type of thing. Whatever caused the universe to come into being must be a spaceless, immaterial, uncaused, powerful, personal Creator. Why is that?

The cause must be

Spaceless — because it brought space into existence. If the cause is responsible for space’s existence, it cannot be inside of space. It cannot exist inside of something that doesn’t exist yet. Just as the builder of your house could not have existed inside your house, so the cause could not have existed inside of space.

Immaterial – The cause’s non-spatiality entails immateriality. How? Because material objects cannot exist unless space exists. Material objects occupy spatial dimensions. If there is no space, matter cannot exist. This means that because the cause is non-spatial, it is therefore non-material.

Supernatural – “Nature” and “The universe” are synonyms. Since the cause is beyond nature (given that its the explanation why nature exists), it follows that the cause is supernatural. After all, that’s what phenomenon transcendent to nature is. Supernatural, that which transcends the natural.

Powerful – Whatever is able to create and/or sustain the entire physical cosmos must have enormous power.

Uncaused – Given that the cause of the universe is a necesarilly existent being, it must therefore be uncaused. Necesarry existence presupposes eternal existence.

Personal – This is an entailment of the cause’s immateriality. There are two types of things recognized by philosophers that are immaterial: abstract objects (such as numbers, sets, or other mathematical entities) or unembodied minds. Philosophers realize that abstract objects if they exist, they exist as non-physical entities. However, abstract objects cannot produce any effects. That’s part of what it means to be abstract. The number 3 isn’t going to be producing any effects anytime soon. Given that abstract objects are causally impotent, it, therefore, follows that an unembodied mind is the cause of the universe’ beginning.

This sounds an awful lot like God to me. Now, we don’t have to call this cause “God” if that makes the atheist feel uncomfortable. We could just call it “The non-spatial, immaterial, unimaginably powerful, necesarilly existent Mind behind the universe”. But to avoid getting out of breath, I prefer to label this explanation “God”.

Moreover, even if the universe were beginningless, it would still be the case that it needs a cause that has the aforementioned properties. Leibniz’ argument doesn’t depend on proving that the universe had a beginning. As long as the universe is not a necessarily existent thing, then it needs a non-spatial, non-material, powerful, uncreated Mind to be the explanation for why it exists. For The Contingency Argument to succeed, all that needs to be true is that the universe is contingent.

3: The Universe Exists.

The truth of this premise is overwhelmingly obvious to anyone with even a small shred of sanity. No defense of this premise needs to be given.

Of course, if someone wanted to resort to some crazy idea like solipsism (the view that you are the only thing that exists, and the entire universe and everything you experience are projections of your own mind), that doesn’t get you out of this premise. In this case, one could just say that YOU are the universe.

4: Therefore, The Universe Has An Explanation Of Its Existence.

This follows logically from premises 1 and 3.

5: Therefore, The Explanation Of The Existence Of The Universe Is God.

This follows logically from premises 2 and 4.

*Objection: “Well, Maybe The Universe Doesn’t Need To Have An External Explanation For Its Existence. Maybe The Universe Exists By A Necessity Of Its Own Nature.”

This is one way an atheist could escape the conclusion of this argument. Perhaps premise 2 of this argument is false. The atheist could say “Well, granted. God or a being remarkably similar to God must be the explanation of the universe’s existence provided the assumption that the universe requires an external cause. But maybe that assumption is wrong. Maybe the explanation for the universe’s existence is that exists by a nature of its own existence.”

In order to save premise 2 and ergo the argument’s conclusion, we’ll need to show that the universe does require an external cause for its existence. There are some pretty clear reasons why we wouldn’t want to embrace this alternative. As we think about this big ole world we live in, none of the things that it consists of seem to exist necessarily. It seems like all of these things didn’t have to exist. It seems like they could have failed to exist.

But, you might say, perhaps the matter that these things are made of exists necessarily? Perhaps that although the galaxies, stars, planets, people, etc. and everything in the universe doesn’t exist necesarilly, the material stuff these things are made of exists necesarilly.

This proposal just simply doesn’t work. Allow me to explain why. You see, according to physicists, matter consists of teensy weensy particles called “quarks.” Everything in our world are just different arrangements of these quarks. But it seems to me that one could ask why a different collection of quarks could not have existed in the stead of this one? Are we expected to believe that every single quark in existence cannot possibly fail to exist? Does the skeptic want us to buy into the notion that all of the quarks in the universe have to exist?

“Okay, well maybe quarks aren’t necessarily existent. But maybe the particles of which the quarks are composed exist necessarily.” This suggestion won’t work because quarks aren’t composed of anything! They just are the basic units of matter. So if a quark doesn’t exist, the matter doesn’t exist.

It seems obvious to me that the existence of a different collection of quarks comprising everything of the cosmos was possible, but in that case, it follows that a different universe could have existed, and if a different universe could have existed, then it follows that our universe isn’t necessarily existent.

To see the point, think of your house. Could your house have been made of candy? Now, I’m not asking if you could have had a different house (one made of candy) in the stead of the one you actually live in. I’m asking if the very house you’re currently living in ifthat house could have been composed of candy. Obviously not. If it did, then it would not be the same house. It would be a different house.

Similarly, a cosmos comrpised of different quarks would be a different cosmos. Even if the said quarks were arranged in such a way as to resemble our universe identically, it still wouldn’t be the same universe because the quarks comrprising it would be different quarks. It follows from this that the universe does not exist by a necessity of its own nature.

Moreover, we have powerful scientific evidence that not only could the universe have failed to exist, but there was a time when it actually did not in fact exist. The Big Bang Theory has a lot of scientific evidence in its favor. A Big Bang beginning is a logical entailment of the expansion of the universe which is itself an entailment of the empirically verified “red shift” of distant galaxies, and moreover, The Big Bang is the only explanation for the abundance of light elements in the universe. Moreover, the universe is running out of usable energy over time, and if the universe had existed from eternity past, it would have run out of usable energy by now. Yet the universe has not run out of usable energy by now. This means that the universe cannot be eternal in the past, but must have an absolute beginning. Since the universe had an absolute beginning, it cannot exist by a necessity of its own nature. Why? Because necessary existence entails beginningless existence. It something cannot possibly not exist, then it could not have had a beginning to its existence. Since if it had a beginning to its existence, that would mean there was a time that it did not exist.

Conclusion

Given the truth of the 3 premises, the conclusion follows: God is the explanation for why the universe exists.

 

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2te1kFa

 

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London Attack

God, Evil and the London Attack

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If you’d had the knowledge and power to stop the terrorist attack in London, would you have done so? Of course. In fact, if you could have stopped it but didn’t, we would call you morally deficient. We would partially blame you for the attacks!

What does this say about the supposedly all-loving, all-knowing, all powerful God? He didn’t stop it. Some say it’s because He doesn’t exist.

When the attack hit, I was in London to speak at several churches on my book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist. The morning after the attack I decided to change my topic to If God Exists, Why is There Evil in the World?

Evil Actually Shows God Is Real

While I can’t provide a complete answer to that question in this short column, the one thing the attacks cannot prove is that there is no God. In fact, if the attack was truly a grave injustice — if it was truly evil — it shows that God actually does exist.

How so? Because evil doesn’t exist on its own. It only exists as a lack or a deficiency in a good thing.

Evil is like rust in a car: If you take all of the rust out of a car, you have a better car; if you take the car out of the rust, you have nothing. Evil is like a wound in your body: If you take the wound out of your body, you have a better body; if you take the body out of your wound, you have nothing.

There Could Be No Evil Without Good

That’s why we often describe evil as negations of good things. For example, we say the attack on London was immoral, unjust, inhumane, not right, etc. In other words, there would be no such thing as evil unless good existed. But there would also be no such thing as good unless God existed.

If the attack was truly a grave injustice — if it was truly evil — it shows that God actually does exist.

C. S. Lewis was once an atheist who thought all the injustice in the world disproved God. He later realized he was stealing a moral standard from God in order to argue against Him. He wrote in Mere Christianity, “[As an atheist] my argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”

As an atheist, Lewis compared this unjust universe to God’s perfectly just nature while claiming that God didn’t exist. In effect, Lewis was sitting in God’s lap to slap his face.

“There Must Be Something … for Them to be True About”

Later, while the Nazis were bombing London in WWII, the Christian Lewis was on the BBC saying things like,

The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something — some Real Morality — for them to be true about.

Likewise, to rightfully condemn the London attacks, there must be an unchanging standard of goodness, righteousness and justice that is beyond us, and beyond the terrorists, too. That standard is, by definition, the essence of the greatest possible Being, which is what we call “God.”

Without God There Is No Objective Standard

The very existence of evil boomerangs back to show that God exists.

Without God there would be no objective, authoritative, moral standard beyond humanity, which means human beings would have no moral obligations and every action or behavior would be merely a matter of human opinion. Do you think the London terrorist attack was wrong? Without God, that’s just your opinion against that of ISIS. The murder of six million Jews? It’s just your opinion against Hitler’s opinion. The sexual abuse of children? It’s only wrong if God exists.

If evil is real — as headlines from London plainly reveal — then God exists. The most evil can do is show there’s a devil out there, but it can’t disprove God. The very existence of evil boomerangs back to show that God exists.

But which God? The terrorists would claim that they were following the commands of Allah, particularly Suras 8 and 9 in the Qur’an. Ironically, though, Allah isn’t a viable candidate for the standard of Good because according to Islamic doctrine, Allah is arbitrary. Whatever Allah does is good. By contrast, the God of the Bible is revealed as the unchanging ground of all Goodness. He isn’t arbitrary — He is Goodness.

Evil Is a Problem For Every Worldview — But Christianity Can Handle It

Still, if the God of the Bible actually exists, why would He allow evil to occur? There are several revealed and philosophical answers to that question which I cited in my presentation that Sunday at Kensington Temple in London (and more completely in my book Stealing from God: Why atheists need God to make their case.).

Regardless of the reasons, evil is a problem for every worldview including atheism. Christianity is the only worldview equipped to handle it. In fact, the entire Christian story is an answer to the problem of evil. God Himself provides the ultimate solution — He takes evil on Himself. Jesus attaches humanity to His Divine Nature and allows the creatures who introduced evil into the world to torture and kill Him so we could be reconciled to Him. He takes the punishment for our evil deeds and offers forgiveness as a gift.

Christ’s gift isn’t the subject of a fictional story — there’s very good evidence that the story is actually true. That means you have the real opportunity to accept that gift right now. When Jesus comes back to finally quarantine evil in a place called Hell, the time for choosing will be over. The Being whose essence is Justice has to accomplish final Justice at some point.

Relevant Podcasts on the topic of Evil

 

John Lennox: If God, Why Evil?

Stealing Evil From God

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God Gaps Apologetics

What About God of the Gaps?

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By

If you present the cosmological or design arguments to skeptics at least a few times, it’s extremely likely that you’ll hear the words “That’s a ‘God of the gaps’ argument.” This objection is rooted in the idea that because a number of things throughout human history have been wrongly attributed to the supernatural activity of God or gods, we can now safely dismiss God as a cause behind anything else we observe. These previous misfires include primitive myths like lightning bolts being signs from Zeus and Thor to the universally admired Isaac Newton positing God as a mechanic to straighten out errant orbits. We later learned that lightning has to do with electrical qualities, while wobbly orbits turned out to be the result of other bodies in orbit around the sun. ¹

So, in the mind of many skeptics, this trumps any theistic argument. Because science has previously found natural causes behind assumed supernatural events, it will do so in the future. “So”, says the skeptic, “you have a gap in knowledge, and you just arbitrarily insert God into the gap.” There are problems with this argument, one being that not all proposed gap fill-ins are equal. As John Lennox discusses here, there are arguments for God’s existence that are based on what we do know, rather than what we don’t.

Indeed, both the cosmological and design arguments rely on the same method of inductive reasoning that the anti-supernatural position relies on. After observing that natural causes have replaced miracles as an explanation for a number of events, the inference is drawn that all events will be explained by natural causes. Likewise, the design argument is based on the observation that complex specified information (such as that found in DNA) has never been shown to originate from anything other than an intelligent mind. The cosmological argument also relies on the same logic, that every time we observe something that comes into existence, there is always a cause behind it.

Well, not exactly. There is one very important difference. The anti-miracle conclusion is not by any means the only obvious or plausible way of interpreting the data. For example, 19th century scholars were often highly skeptical of claims made by ancient historians. However, archaeology has revealed that these historians were correct on a number of doubted claims key. But it would be totally illegitimate to infer that archaeology will vindicate them at every point someday. It just means that they were more reliable than previously thought. Likewise, natural causes to certain events would only show at best that the universe has less supernatural activity than previously believed. The origin of information and the necessity of causality conclusions that belong to their respective theistic arguments also have far more instances of observation, without any reasonable alternative rearing its head.

But in the case of false supernatural claims, there is another alternative that presents itself. To illustrate, let’s ask the question “Does this really tell us more about the universe, or more about humanity?” For example, there are many cases of UFO sightings turning out to involve something more down to earth. Does this tell us anything about what is “out there” in space? No, it tells that humans are curious and prone to believing that aliens do exist. But this has not stopped the search for intelligent extraterrestrial life from being a live area of scientific research. As a total hypothetical, let’s say an alien space craft did land and interact with several people. Once they told others, it is pretty likely that others would start to see moving objects in the sky and jump to unjustified conclusions about them being a sign of alien life. False reports about aliens would be almost certain feature of a universe where they actually have visited earth. False reports could also be a feature of a universe where they don’t exist at all. The existence of false reports doesn’t tell us much by itself. We’d have to decide based on other evidence.

But in the same way, in a universe where God has put a spiritual desire for Himself in the human heart, it is to be expected that some humans would falsely attribute some or even a lot of phenomena to the divine. This is an almost certain feature of what a theistic universe with fallible humans would look like. This by itself doesn’t prove that God exists or acts in the universe, but by itself it also doesn’t point in the opposite direction, either.

One other point is worth mentioning. It wasn’t because of science that people began to disbelieve that Zeus was throwing lightning bolts from the sky. It happened because, unlike paganism, which saw the gods as not being distinct from the creation, Christians saw God as being separate from it. ² There was no need to see a god behind virtually every force of nature.

¹. Wiker, Benjamin. Moral Darwinism, pp. 127-28
². Carroll, Bruce and Shiflett, David. Christianity on Trial. p. 58-59

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2pQVTMj 

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Kalam Cosmological Argument

The Kalam: An Overview & Defense

By Ronald Cram

William Lane Craig is famous for resurrecting and defending the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA). The argument appeals to both philosophical and scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe. If the Kalam is sound, it seems to prove the existence of God.

The question is raised: Is the argument sound given our modern, scientific understanding of cosmology? In this essay I will review and examine the premises of the Kalam to see if we have good reason to affirm them as probably true. The standard form of the KCA goes as follows:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

We can add the following steps:

4. The universe (all space, time, and matter) cannot cause itself.
5. The cause of the universe must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and uncaused.
6. This uncaused, immaterial and timeless cause of the universe is what everyone means by God.
7. Therefore, God exists.

The argument is valid, but are the premises true? Science uses Bayesian probability theory to assign a probability to a hypothesis. I will follow that procedure for each of the premises.

Step #1

All science is based on cause and effect relationships. Zero evidence exists that this premise is false and so this premise has never faced any serious or informed challenges. In our daily experience, objects do not pop into existence uncaused.

Scientists have proposed a number of possible causes of the Big Bang including colliding branes in string theory, false vacuum in inflationary theory, and quantum fluctuations in quantum mechanics. Each of these ideas propose a “universe generator” of some type that must exist prior to our Big Bang. Scientists recognize that the Big Bang must have a cause.

Some have attempted to claim that quantum fluctuations are uncaused, but this claim is untrue. Quantum fluctuations are caused by the energy in the vacuum. While no one can predict where quantum fluctuations will appear, the number of fluctuations within a given volume and time are quite predictable.

Others have proposed that while things within the universe need a cause to begin to exist, we have no reason to believe the universe as a whole needs a cause. This is special pleading of the most irrational type. If objects within the universe need a cause (when the atoms and molecules already exist), then it is even more true that the universe as a whole needs a cause to exist because an extra step is required (the creation of matter, energy, space and time). A Bayesian probability can be assigned to this premise of 99+%.

Step #2

This is more complicated. Stated simply, the standard cosmology is that the universe is 13.8 billion years old. This means the universe began to exist 13.8 billion years ago. While it is true that theorists are working on models for a past eternal universe, a Bayesian probability can be assigned to this premise of 98%.

For those who are not interested in cosmology, you may skip to the discussion of the third premise. For those interested in cosmology and a defense of this Bayesian probability, read on.

William Lane Craig often refers to BGV theorem in his debates with atheists. (The theorem is often misunderstood to be a singularity theorem. It is not. It is an incompleteness theorem. But it is completely compatible with the singularity theorems.) BGV theorem states that any universe which is on average expanding throughout its history cannot be eternal into the past but must have had a beginning. This is an extremely robust theorem. Within a classical spacetime, BGV theorem does not depend upon any particular energy condition (low energy, high energy) nor does it depend on any particular solution to Einstein’s equations. The fact the theorem is so robust makes it very difficult to evade. It applies to multiverse theories and cyclic universe theories. Any past eternal cosmological theory must evade BGV theorem.

In his debate with William Lane Craig, Sean Carroll referred to his paper titled “What if time really exists?” and its Quantum Eternity Theorem.

In Carroll’s post-debate reflections, he writes:

“Indeed, I quoted a stronger theorem, the “Quantum Eternity Theorem” (QET) — under conventional quantum mechanics, any universe with a non-zero energy and a time-independent Hamiltonian will necessarily last forever toward both the past and the future. For convenience I quoted my own paper as a reference, although I’m surely not the first to figure it out; it’s a fairly trivial result once you think about it.” (Click here)

The QET is not a “stronger theorem” in any sense. Most cosmologists believe our universe has zero net energy. So any model built on a non-zero energy is extremely unlikely. Also, the theorem has the requirement of “under conventional quantum mechanics.” But a beginning necessarily requires something other than conventional quantum mechanics. There’s nothing to prevent a beginning of our conventional quantum mechanics. In reality, Carroll’s QET is not at all helpful to his argument. Aron Wall provides a cosmologist’s assessment of Carroll’s claims and his use of QET (click here).

Proposed Models

Some models have been proposed than can evade BGV theorem. We will look at a few of these theories in greater detail.

A. The first of these is the Aguirre-Gratton model supported by Sean Carroll in his debate with Craig. Obviously, Carroll thinks this model is the strongest possible, the most likely to be true, or he wouldn’t have used it to support his position that the universe may be past eternal. But what is the Bayesian probability this model describes our universe?

In the Abstract of his paper “Eternal inflation and its implications,” Alan Guth writes:

“Although inflation is generically eternal into the future, it is not eternal into the past: it can be proven under reasonable assumptions that the inflating region [our universe] must be incomplete in past directions [have a beginning], so some physics other than inflation is needed to describe the past boundary of the inflating region.”

On page 14 of the same paper Guth writes:

“If the universe can be eternal into the future, is it possible that it is also eternal into the past? Here I will describe a recent theorem [43] which shows, under plausible assumptions, that the answer to this question is no.”

According to Guth, under “reasonable assumptions” and “plausible assumptions” the BGV theorem cannot be avoided. On page 16, Guth discusses the Aguirre-Gratton model with its reversal of the arrow of time and explains that this model does evade BGV theorem. The natural conclusion is that the Aguirre-Gratton model does not have reasonable or plausible assumptions. Aguirre and Gratton have not put forward any plausible mechanisms that might cause the arrow of time to reverse and no reversal of time has ever been observed.

Remember this is the best model that Sean Carroll had to represent his view that the universe is past-eternal. A Bayesian probability that the Aguirre-Gratton model applies to our universe is <1%.

B. Cosmology from Quantum Potential Model – Because the BGV theorem applies to classical spacetimes, another way to evade the theorem is to appeal to the uncertainty of quantum mechanics. One example is the paper “Cosmology from Quantum Potential.”

However, this cosmological model has serious problems. A recent paper titled “Perturbative Instability of Cosmology from Quantum Potential” has the following Abstract:

“Apart from its debatable correctness, we examine the perturbative stability of the recently proposed cosmology from quantum potential. We find that the proposed quantum corrections invoke additional parameters which apparently introduce perturbative instability to the Universe.”

Our universe is stable. This model does not produce a universe like the one we observe. The Bayesian probability of this model being correct is less than the Aguirre-Gratton model and is <1%.

C. Emergent Universe Models – This class of models successfully evade BGV theorem. The idea is that a “cosmic egg” that exists forever until it breaks open to produce an expanding universe. Proponents of these ideas include Ellis, Barrow, Campo, Wu, and Graham.

Mithani and Vilenkin show that this class of models can collapse quantum mechanically, and therefore cannot have an eternal past.

A Bayesian probability of Emergent Universe Models being correct is <1%.

Side Note: What About Guth?weird-guth-sign

Someone may mention the photo of Alan Guth holding a sign at the Carroll/Craig debate that read [The universe is] very likely eternal but nobody knows.” Why would Guth pose holding that sign when all of his scientific papers say the universe had a beginning? Some assumed Guth was going to publish a new paper that explained his change of view, but it’s been three years and no paper has been published supporting a change in the science.

Perhaps Guth posed for that picture just as a favor to Carroll.

In order to defeat premise #2, skeptics must be able to show that a past-eternal universe is more likely than a universe of a finite age. While a number of past-eternal models have been proposed, the cosmological community has rejected all of them as highly unlikely. A Bayesian probability can be assigned to premise (2) of 98%.

Step #3

The third step of the argument is the rational conclusion of the first two premises. A Bayesian probability can be assigned to this conclusion of 98%.

Step #4

The fourth premise – “The universe cannot cause itself” – seems non-controversial. However, cosmologists (driven by their dislike of the way a beginning of the universe points to creation by God) have proposed ideas attempting to challenge this premise. Lawrence Krauss’s book, A Universe from Nothing, was one of the first of these proposals to get a wide audience. The idea, first proposed by Edward Tryon, is that the universe is a quantum fluctuation. Physicist Don Page pointed out that Krauss’s idea is not really “from nothing” because quantum fluctuations require a quantum field (which is something). Since the quantum field must exist before the Big Bang, this is not a universe from nothing at all.

Alexander Vilenkin modified Tryon’s idea referring to the origin of the universe as a “quantum nucleation” that happened before the existence of any matter, energy, time or space. In order words, the quantum nucleation happened in the absence of a quantum field. Not only is this logically incoherent as things happening before time require time, but this idea is problematic for most physicists because the theory makes an untestable claim. Scientifically untestable claims are not scientific. The probability the universe can cause itself is <1%.

Step #5

“The cause of the universe must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and uncaused” is mostly non-controversial. If the universe is defined as “all matter, energy, space and time” and the universe cannot create itself, then it follows that the cause of the universe must be spaceless, timeless and immaterial. Some may argue that the cause does not necessarily have to be uncaused. But if a contingent being of finite age were the creator, that being would not be the ultimate answer.

The real Creator would be the one who created the intermediate being. An infinite causal regress is a logical absurdity and has been rejected by philosophers since the time of Aristotle. A Bayesian probability can be assigned to this premise of 99%.

Step #6

“This uncaused, immaterial and timeless cause of the universe is what everyone means by God” is largely uncontroversial. A Bayesian probability can be assigned to this premise of 99%.

Step #7

“Therefore God exists” is a rational conclusion. A Bayesian probability can be assigned to this conclusion of >95%.

Whether this God is the God of the Bible or some other God is a separate question and requires additional evidence and reasoning.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2mJ8ZFg

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Necessary Existence of God

Necessary Existence of God

By Prayson Daniel

Judeo-Christians understand God as a being that is perfect in knowledge (Ps. 147:5), power (Job 42:2), presence (Ps. 139), acts (Ps. 18:30) and has none greater (Heb. 6:13) nor equal (Ps. 40:6).

Following Anselm’s “credimus te esse aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit“¹, God is understood to be a Being that exhibits maximal perfection. God is, borrowing Alvin Plantinga’s words, a being “having an unsurpassable degree of greatness—that is, having a degree of greatness such that it’s not possible that there exist a being having more.” (Plantinga 2002: 102 emp. removed)

God is thus understood to be a being having maximal excellence with respect to power (omnipotence), knowledge (omniscience), presence (omnipresence), and is morally perfect (this is why, for example, God cannot lie or be unrighteous).

From S5 modal logic the existence of such a being(God) is either impossible or necessary. The concept of contingent existence of God is a contradictory idea since (i) necessarily, “a being is maximally great only if it has maximal excellence in every world” and (ii) necessarily, “a being has maximal excellence in every world only if it has omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection in every world.” (2002: 111)

Thus either the existence of God is impossible or necessary. The existence of God is not impossible. Therefore it is necessary. Therefore God, as understood by Judeo-Christians, exists.

Is this a persuasive case for existence of such a Being? I think it is not persuasive. Nevertheless it does show that Judeo-Christians’ understanding of God is rationally acceptable. Theists do have warrant in believing in a being with unsurpassed degree of greatness (God).

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¹ Anselmus Cantuariensis Prologion: Trans. [W]e believe that You[God] are a being than which nothing greater can be conceived.

Plantinga, Alvin (2002) God, Freedom & Evil. First published by Harper and Row., 1974. Reprinted 2002.

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One Fewer God

One Fewer God?

By Derrick Stokes

There’s a popular quote by atheist Steven F. Roberts that many nonbelievers cite or paraphrase when debating Christians that says, “I contend we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer God than you do.”

The atheist is saying that since we Christians don’t believe in Baal, Zeus, Odin, Vishnu, Quetzalcoatl, or any other god other than the God of the Bible, then we assume the same lack of belief system. They just take it one deity further.

So what’s the difference?

Well it doesn’t take much to realize that this argument is constructed in a way to throw the believer off guard. Let’s look at the two members of the argument. An atheist and a theist. The word atheist comes from the Greek atheos.  The prefix a meaning “without” and theos meaning “god”. In other words atheism is the belief that there is no god or gods. No Supreme Ruler whatsoever. The atheist’s worldview is completely shrouded and perceived in the material realm. That anything outside it is pure speculation and unprovable (or not proven yet).

However, for the theist (Christian in our case) the material realm is just another dimension of reality. For us there is also the spiritual realm. The spiritual realm is, in fact, the truest reality because it existed first. God is spirit (John 4:24) and He created all that exists (Genesis 1, John 1:3) in the spiritual and material world.

Now let me point out that Christians during the 1st century were called atheists because they rejected the pantheon of greco-roman gods of the surrounding culture. This was also because the Christians of the day had no temple, priest, or sacrifice, as Romans would have recognized. Yet, believers in Christ saw Jesus as the temple. He is the only way to the Holy of Holies. Believers in Christ saw Him as priest because He is the Ultimate High Priest. Believers in Christ saw Jesus as the sacrifice because of the work He accomplished on the cross. He is the sacrificial Lamb of God and no sacrifice is needed after Him. (John 1:29; Hebrews 4:14; 10:10-11, 19-20)

After the resurrection of Jesus and the birth of the Church there was no “physical” representation of their God like the Romans had. The Romans had statues and Caesar.  If you didn’t worship as they worshipped and whom they worshipped then you worshipped nothing. Therefore, the term atheist was applied to early Christians out of ignorance and out of insult.

In the Martyrdom of Polycarp, Polycarp is brought before the Roman governor for trial. The governor has the intention of making Polycarp betray his Christian brethren. Polycarp must say, “Away with the atheists” or else be condemned. He looks around at “the crowd of lawless heathen”(the pagan Romans) and says “Away with the atheists” flipping the name on to his accusers. (Martyrdom of Polycarp 9:2)

But, let’s be reminded. Atheists reject all gods. They reject false gods and the true God, Yahweh. They don’t just reject one more god than Christians. They reject THE God. The only true and living God. Even though God has made Himself plainly evident through His creation, atheists won’t come to the knowledge of the truth. (Romans 19:21)

However…

Atheists might reject the notion of gods as supernatural, ethereal beings, but they still have gods. We all serve something or someone. We all worship something or someone. Whether it be ourselves, pleasure, fortune, fame, other people, hobbies, pets, nature, gods made of wood or gold, or the God of the Bible; something gets our worship whether we choose to accept the notion or not.

This brings us to the first two commandments:

1)You shall have no other gods before Me [Yahweh]
2)You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them. (Exodus 20:3-4a)

If we have broken these commandments, and we all have if God is not who we worship, then we make ourselves idolaters. Anything other than God that gets our worship has become an idol. These are Paul’s words in Philippians 3:18-19

18 For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things.

If this is true of you today, please understand that God wants to be the object of your worship. He knows that anything else that competes for your attention above Him is a false god. He knows that no other god can bring you true joy and fulfillment. Anything else is an imitation and will never come close to the perfect love, holiness, and eternality of God. Don’t be blinded by passion for the things of the world. Things will break. Trends will fade. This world and everything in it will pass away. God and His Word are forever. And don’t place any person above God. Human beings are imperfect and all have fallen far short of God’s glory. But, God is not man that He should lie or change His mind. Nor will He ever leave us or forsake us. So, give your worship to God and to God alone because He alone is worthy.

Derrick Stokes

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This post was originally published as “…ONE LESS GOD…”? at https://theologetics315.wordpress.com/2016/11/13/one-less-god/

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DNA Required Life

Essential DNA Required for Life

By Philip Carlson

If one believes in evolution, it is important to know what is required for life. Not just what environmental conditions are needed, but also what biochemical conditions.

It is often quoted that there are 250 essential proteins required for basic life. To have life, you need 250 proteins so it was thought. While those were previous guesses it is now possible to determine what parts of DNA are essential for life. A study released in the journal Molecular Systems Biology provides a method of testing just that. Not only  do they give a method they also performed the test on a “simple” bacterium (Caulobacter crescentus). 

The complete genome of this bacterium was sequenced in 2001. Which helps tremendously with the task of determining which parts are essential for its survival. It is important to know that just because the genome was sequenced does not mean that the function of all the pieces is known, just that the nucleobase sequence that makes up the DNA is known.

With the bacteria in hand, these researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine took a close look at exactly what parts of DNA are required for this bacteria to live in the lab.

“This work addresses a fundamental question in biology: What is essential for life?” said Beat Christen, PhD, one of the co-first authors of the new paper and a postdoctoral scholar in developmental biology. “We came up with a method to identify all the parts of the genome required for life.”(1)

What is essential for life from a biochemical standpoint? They came up with some interesting conclusions which dwarf the previous estimates.

In total, the essential Caulobacter genome was 492,941 base pairs long and included 480 protein-coding genes that were clustered in two regions of the chromosome. The researchers also identified 402 essential promoter regions that increase or decrease the activity of those genes, and 130 segments of DNA that do not code for proteins but have other roles in modifying bacterial metabolism or reproduction. Of the individual DNA regions identified as essential, 91 were non-coding regions of unknown function and 49 were genes coding proteins whose function is unknown. (1)

We are told, “that 12 percent of the bacteria’s genetic material is essential for survival under laboratory conditions.” (1) Sounds like a small percentage overall, but keep in mind that this essential genome was 492,941 base pairs long. These are base pairs that are needed for life in this bacterium. This means that 985,882 amino acids were needed in the correct arrangement to allow life for this bacterium. The implications this has for the unaided formation of the first life are staggering. (While we could stop here and calculate the apparent overly absurd odds of this happening, such a calculation would serve little purpose. As a side note, creationist literature often attempts to calculate the absurd odds of things happening the way evolutions claim. Many set up straw men with these types of processes. I think that more often than not those types of calculations oversimplify the problems and ashamedly make a caricature of the opponents position. This type of “argumentation” is best left off the table if any real headway is to be made with this issue. While I do believe that such odds could be calculated at a rudimentary level, it could never be done to complete satisfaction without knowing all the factors involved. We do know, however, that the improbability is greatly increased because of the sheer number of correctly sequenced amino acids needed.) The researches did find 480 protein coding regions that are essential. This nearly doubles the previous estimates of how many proteins are needed for life. While is is a bit of an extrapolation to say that all of those 480 proteins are needed for life I think we can say that if that part of the DNA is needed it stands to reason that so are those proteins. They also found 91 essential coding regions and 49 coding regions that have unknown function.

“There were many surprises in the analysis of the essential regions of Caulobacter’s genome,” said Lucy Shapiro, PhD, the paper’s senior author. “For instance, we found 91 essential DNA segments where we have no idea what they do. These may provide clues to lead us to new and completely unknown bacterial functions.” Shapiro is a professor of developmental biology and the director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine at Stanford. (1)

These 91 essential DNA segments that are of unknown function were still found to be essential to life! This reminds me of the old vestigial organs argument often used in support of evolution. That is right, just because we don’t know the function does not means there isn’t one. See the previous discussion on pseudogenes for another example of that type of thinking.

This new research helps to contribute to our (mis)understanding of an evolutionary origin of life, and, I think, push us toward accepting that the transcendent creator did not use evolution to bring about life.

1. Digitale, E. “New method reveals parts of bacterium genome essential to life”. Stanford School of Medicine news release, August 30, 2011, http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2011/august/shapiro.html

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