There are several intelligents atheists and skeptics who have responded to posts on this blog in recent weeks. I appreciate the spirited and mostly respectful debate, as well as the contribution of several theists and Christians. I’d like to pose a question to the atheists and skeptics and ask everyone to comment. Here it is:
What evidence would you need to see for you to be reasonably convinced that a theistic God exists?
I look forward to your responses.
The following is adapted from chapter 6 of I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist:
The God-of-the-Gaps fallacy occurs when someone falsely believes that God caused the event when it really was caused by undiscovered natural phenomena. For example, people used to believe that lightning was caused directly by God. There was a gap in our knowledge of nature, so we attributed the effect to God. Darwinists assert that theists are doing the same thing by claiming that God created the universe and life. Are they correct? No, for a number of reasons.
First, when we conclude that intelligence created the first cell or the human brain, it’s not simply because we lack evidence of a natural explanation; it’s also because we have positive, empirically detectable evidence for an intelligent cause. A message (specified complexity) is empirically detectable. When we detect a message like “Take out the garbage, Mom” or 1,000 encyclopedias we know that it must come from an intelligent being because all of our observational experience tells us that messages come only from intelligent beings. Every time we observe a message, it comes from an intelligent being. We couple this data with the fact that we never observe natural laws creating messages, and we know an intelligent being must be the cause. That’s a valid scientific conclusion based on observation and repetition. It’s not an argument from ignorance, nor is it based on any “gap” in our knowledge.
Second, Intelligent Design scientists are open to both natural and intelligent causes. They are not opposed to continued research into a natural explanation for the first life. They’re simply observing that all known natural explanations fail, and all empirically detectable evidence points to an intelligent Designer.
Now, one can question the wisdom of continuing to look for a natural cause of life. William Dembski, who has published extensive research on Intelligent Design, asks, “When does determination [to find a natural cause] become pigheadedness? . . . How long are we to continue a search before we have the right to give up the search and declare not only that continuing the search is vain but also that the very object of the search is nonexistent?” Consider the implications of Dembski’s question. Should we keep looking for a natural cause for phenomena like Mount Rushmore or messages like “Take out the garbage-Mom”? When is the case closed?
Walter Bradley, a coauthor of the seminal work The Mystery of Life’s Origin, believes A there doesn’t seem to be the potential of finding a [natural explanation] for the origin of life. He added, AI think people who believe that life emerged naturalistically need to have a great deal more faith than people who reasonably infer that there’s an Intelligent Designer.” Regardless of whether or not you think we should keep looking for a natural explanation, the main point is that ID scientists are open to both natural and intelligent causes. It just so happens that an intelligent cause best fits the evidence.
Third, the Intelligent Design conclusion is falsifiable. In other words, ID could be disproven if natural laws were someday discovered to create specified complexity. However, the same cannot be said about the Darwinist position. Darwinists don’t allow falsification of their “creation story” because, as we have described, they don’t allow any other creation story to be considered. Their “science” is not tentative or open to correction; it=s more closed-minded than the most dogmatic church doctrine the Darwinists are so apt to criticize.
Finally, it’s actually the Darwinists who are committing a kind of God-of the-Gaps fallacy. Darwin himself was once accused of considering natural selection “an active power or Deity” (see chapter 4 of Origin of Species). But it seems that natural selection actually is the deity or “God of the Gaps” for the Darwinists of today. When they are totally at a loss for how irreducibly complex, information-rich biological systems came into existence, they simply cover their gap in knowledge by claiming that natural selection, time, and chance did it.
The ability of such a mechanism to create information-rich biological systems runs counter to the observational evidence. Mutations that aren’t neutral are nearly always harmful, and time and chance do the Darwinists no good, as we explained in chapter 5. At best, natural selection may be responsible for minor changes in living species, but it cannot explain the origin of the basic forms of life. You need a living thing to start with for any natural selection to take place. Yet, despite the obvious problems with their mechanism, Darwinists insist that Natural Selection covers any gap in their knowledge. Moreover, they willfully ignore the positive, empirically detectable evidence for an intelligent being. This is not science but the dogma of a secular religion. One could say that Darwinists, like the opponents of Galileo, are letting their religion (or at least their philosophy) overrule scientific observations.
Dr. Frank Turek (D.Min.) is an award-winning author and frequent college speaker who hosts a weekly TV show on DirectTV and a radio program that airs on 186 stations around the nation. His books include I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist and Stealing from God: Why atheists need God to make their case
The following is from I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, pages 92-93: In light of all the evidence for a beginning of the space-time universe, the Beginner must be outside the space-time universe. When God is suggested as the Beginner, atheists are quick to ask the age-old question, “Then who made God? If everything needs a cause, then God needs a cause too!”
As we have seen, the Law of Causality is the very foundation of science. Science is a search for causes, and that search is based on our consistent observation that everything that has a beginning has a cause. In fact, the question “Who made God?” points out how seriously we take the Law of Causality. It’s taken for granted that virtually everything needs a cause.
So why then doesn’t God need a cause? Because the atheist’s contention misunderstands the Law of Causality. The Law of Causality does not say that everything needs a cause. It says that everything that comes to be needs a cause. God did not come to be. No one made God. He is unmade. As an eternal being, God did not have a beginning, so he didn’t need a cause.
“But wait,” the atheist will protest, “if you can have an eternal God, then I can have an eternal universe! After all, if the universe is eternal, then it did not have a cause.” Yes, it is logically possible that the universe is eternal and therefore didn’t have a cause. In fact, it is one of only two possibilities: either the universe, or something outside the universe, is eternal. (Since something undeniably exists today, then something must have always existed; we have only two choices: the universe, or something that caused the universe.)
The problem for the atheist is that while it is logically possible that the universe is eternal, it does not seem to be actually possible. For all the scientific and philosophical evidence (SURGE– Second Law, Universe is expanding, Radiation Afterglow, Great galaxy seeds, Einstein’s GR– radioactive decay, and the Kalam Cosmological Argument) tells us the universe cannot be eternal. So by ruling out one of the two options, we are left with the only other option–something outside the universe is eternal.
When you get right down to it, there are only two possibilities for anything that exists: either 1) it has always existed and is therefore uncaused, or 2) it had a beginning and was caused by something else (it can’t be self-caused, because it would have had to exist already in order to cause anything). According to overwhelming evidence, the universe had a beginning, so it must be caused by something else– by something outside itself. Notice that this conclusion is consistent with theistic religions, but it is not based on those religions– it is based on good reason and evidence.
So what is this First Cause like? One might think you need to rely on a Bible or some other so-called religious revelation to answer that question, but, again, we don’t need anyone’s scripture to figure that out. Einstein was right when he said, “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.” Religion can be informed and confirmed by science, as it is by the Cosmological Argument. Namely, we can discover some characteristics of the First Cause just from the evidence we’ve discussed in this chapter. From that evidence alone, we know the First Cause must be:
These characteristics of the First Cause are exactly the characteristics theists ascribe to God. Again, these characteristics are not based on someone=s religion or subjective experience. They are drawn from the scientific evidence we have just reviewed, and they help us see a critically important section of the box top to this puzzle we call life.
(The book then goes on to build the case that this is the God of Christianity.)
Since the post Darwinists Have a Lot of Explaining to Do asks atheists to offer causes for at least ten truths about reality, I thought I would present my perspective on each of those truths. We’ll start with the origin of the universe out of nothing. The following is an excerpt from I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (p. 84) and follows a section about the evidence that the universe began with a Big Bang out of nothing. I appreciate your comments.
So the universe had a beginning. What does that mean for the question of God’s existence? The man who now sits in Edwin Hubble’s chair at the Mount Wilson observatory has a few things to say about that. His name is Robert Jastrow, an astronomer we’ve already quoted in this chapter. In addition to serving as the director of Mount Wilson, Jastrow is the founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies. Obviously his credentials as a scientist are impeccable. That’s why his book God and the Astronomers made such an impression on those investigating the implications of the Big Bang, namely those asking the question “Does the Big Bang point to God?” Jastrow reveals in the opening line of chapter 1 that he has no religious axe to grind. He writes, “When an astronomer writes about God, his colleagues assume he is either over the hill or going bonkers. In my case it should be understood from the start that I am an agnostic in religious matters.”
In light of Jastrow’s personal agnosticism, his theistic quotations are all the more provocative. After explaining some of the Big Bang evidence we’ve just reviewed, Jastrow writes, “Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.”
The overwhelming evidence for the Big Bang and its consistency with the biblical account in Genesis led Jastrow to observe in an interview, “Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover. . . . That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.”
By evoking the supernatural, Jastrow echoes the conclusion of Einstein contemporary Arthur Eddington. As we mentioned earlier, although he found it “repugnant,” Eddington admitted, “The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural.”
Now why would Jastrow and Eddington admit that there are “supernatural” forces at work? Why couldn’t natural forces have produced the universe? Because these scientists know as well as anyone that natural forces– indeed all of nature– were created at the Big Bang. In other words, the Big Bang was the beginning point for the entire physical universe. Time, space, and matter came into existence at that point. There was no natural world or natural law prior to the Big Bang. Since a cause cannot come after its effect, natural forces cannot account for the Big Bang. Therefore, there must be something outside of nature to do the job. That’s exactly what the word supernatural means.
The discoverers of the radiation afterglow, Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias, were not Bible-thumpers either. Both initially believed in the Steady State Theory. But due to the mounting evidence, they’ve since changed their views and acknowledged facts that are consistent with the Bible. Penzias admits, “The Steady State theory turned out to be so ugly that people dismissed it. The easiest way to fit the observations with the least number of parameters was one in which the universe was created out of nothing, in an instant, and continues to expand.”
Wilson, who once took a class from Fred Hoyle (the man who popularized the Steady State Theory in 1948), said, “I philosophically liked the Steady State. And clearly I’ve had to give that up.” When science writer Fred Heeren asked him if the Big Bang evidence is indicative of a Creator, Wilson responded, “Certainly there was something that set it all off. Certainly, if you are religious, I can’t think of a better theory of the origin of the universe to match with Genesis.” George Smoot echoed Wilson’s assessment. He said, “There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the big bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing.”
Robert Jastrow suggested the same when he ended his book God and the Astronomers with this classic line: “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
Dr. Frank Turek (D.Min.) is an award-winning author and frequent college speaker who hosts a weekly TV show on DirectTV and a radio program that airs on 186 stations around the nation. His books include I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist and Stealing from God: Why atheists need God to make their case
There have been a couple of posts on this blog that have spurred quite a good discussion (see below: Atheists Have No Basis for Morality, and “Expelled” is a Must See: Freedom is the Victim). While there have been some good points made back and forth, it seems like we are getting down in the weeds on a couple of issues and perhaps ignoring the bigger picture. So this post is an attempt to take a look at the bigger picture. Namely, what is the correct worldview? A worldview is an explanation for why things are the way they are.
Every effect has a cause and there are many effects about reality that cry out for an explanation. A worldview, for example, answers questions such as: Why does this majestic and vast universe exist? What caused these amazing beings we call life? Why are we conscious? Why is there good? Why is there evil? In fact, why is there anything at all? Any good worldview must be able to explain at least the following:
Anyone trying to tell you that his worldview is right must provide an adequate cause for all of those realities—atheists must, Christians must, and so must everyone in between. It won’t do any good to have a possible explanation for one or two of them and ignore the rest.
For example, Darwinists (i.e. atheistic evolutionists) try to tell us they have a cause for number nine. But even if we overlook the flaws and gaps in their theory and grant them that point, so what? It seems to me that their worldview can’t be considered adequate until they can provide an adequate cause for the other nine realities on the list. In other words, even if new life forms can be explained by Darwinism, how do atheists explain everything else? How does a biological theory explain the origin and design of the universe, physics, morality, reason, intelligence, etc.?
Now some of you may respond, “So what’s your explanation? Did God do everything? Isn’t that God-of-the-Gaps?” I’ll address that in a future post (if you want to jump ahead, you can read it in I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist). For now, forget my explanation. What I’d like to see, if you are a Darwinist, is your explanation. How does an atheist explain the other nine realities on the list? I know it’s a lot to discuss. Maybe take one at a time. I look forward to your insights. (Thanks especially to Christopher and JJ for participating.)
Monday night at UNC Wilmington, despite no cooperation from the school (see my last post), just over 200 people showed up for part 1 of I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist. Several atheists asked questions– actually made statements– and struggled greatly when I asked them to offer some objective basis for morality from their atheistic worldview. They kept trying to give tests for how we know something is moral rather than why something is moral. One atheist said “not harming people” is the standard. But why is harming people wrong if there is no God? Another said, “happiness” is the basis for morality. (After I asked him, “Happiness according to who, Mother Teresa or Hitler?,” he said, “I need to think about this more,” and then sat down.) This says nothing about the intelligence of these people– there just is no good answer to the question. Without God there is no basis for objective morals. It’s just Mother Teresa’s opinion against Hitler’s.
The atheists’ responses to the cosmological and design arguments– the arguments that show us that the universe exploded into being out of nothing and did so with amazing design and precision– were “we don’t know how that happened.” This is simply an evasion of the evidence that clearly points to an eternal, immaterial, powerful, intelligent, personal and moral First Cause of the universe. Since nature itself was created, this Cause must be beyond nature or “supernatural.”
We got plenty of encouraging comments from the believers who attended. And there will be a lot more written about this event when popular columnist Mike Adams posts his next column later this week. Just to give you a preview: during the Q&A Mike, who was our host, asked all faculty members to stand up. Only one person other than himself did. Out of 400-500 professors at UNC Wilmington– a school where the faculty claims to be champions of “diversity”– only two show up to a talk about the most important subject anyone could discuss (God)? Adams will have a field day with this. Track his columns on Townhall.com here.
Last week we launched our invasion of college campuses for the Spring with two major events at Olivet Nazarene University (ONU is a one-hundred-year-old Christian university about 80 miles south of Chicago, but it may be best known as the site for the Chicago Bears Training camp). I spoke to 1800 students and faculty at chapel in the morning and nearly 400 at a smaller venue that night.
Despite being a Christian school, there is a faculty member at ONU who has convinced many of the students to believe in evolution. I didn’t know that going in, but I sure stirred up a lot of controversy by making a strong scientific case for creation and intelligent design. Several questions during the Q & A period had to do with evolution. Afterwards, many of the students, and even some faculty members, expressed great relief to finally see compelling evidence for creation and intelligent design. One professor, who was visibly moved by the evidence, said, “Wow, you really expanded my understanding of God and his creation with the arguments you presented.” It’s always gratifying to affect the professors positively because they have an ongoing influence with the students.
If evolution has crept into even our Christian universities, you can only imagine what’s being taught at typical secular schools. It’s no wonder why 75% of our kids are leaving the church!
Two secular schools are next. We head to NC State on February 7th for an I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist seminar in Reynolds Coliseum from 8 to 9:30 p.m. The next day I’ll spend four hours taking questions, first from the Campus Crusade team and then from the students. A return visit to Appalachian State will happen Monday, February 25.
One more exciting note: our weekly one-hour TV show called I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist beings Sunday night, February 17 at 6 pm. on DirecTV Channel 378. Now, we don’t charge students for college events, and we pay to produce the TV show and the CrossExamined website. That’s why we’ll only be able to help our kids see the truth if you continue to support us both prayerfully and financially. Please pray as we again enter the lion’s den, and make a high-impact donation securely by selecting Donate on the left. Thank you for partnering with us!
Atheist Christopher Hitchens is morally outraged with the Christian belief that God created us and put us under Him without our consent. (This is typical of atheists– they have moral objections to God while they have no objective grounds by which to make moral objections unless God exists.) But as John Piper points out, even if God does not exist, we are still here without our consent:
The fact that we had no say in our creation is what creation means. It’s also what birth means. Neither God nor Mother Nature gives anyone the choice to be created or born. There is a lesson in that. We are dependent. That’s not debatable. It’s just the way it is. But if you embrace the reality of dependence and follow it all the way to the free gift of salvation through Christ, it is not condemnation but liberation. It does not feel disempowering to be called a “fellow-heir of God” (Romans 8:17). (For Piper’s complete post, click here .)
Atheists such as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris assert that belief in God is our greatest problem. If we could only do away with belief in God we would be liberated. But exactly the opposite is true. Liberation comes from putting our trust in Christ. In other words, we can all overcome the hand we’ve been dealt– each of us can choose to become children of God (John 1:12) and be liberated from this bondage to decay and death. Through Christ we have some control. Through atheism we have none– atheism leaves no way out.
Before I attended Seminary, I took a class in Constitutional law at The George Washington University. The class was taught by a very liberal law professor who made it known she was an atheist. When we got to the so-called “separation of church and state” issue, the professor realized I was a Christian and began to grill me.
“Frank, are you a fundamentalist?” she barked, the contempt clear in her tone. “Are you so religious that you believe the Bible is actually true?”
I tentatively answered yes, but I was stammering in my response. I hardly knew how to support my beliefs with any facts. Like most other Christian college students, I didn’t know much about the evidence in support of the Bible and Christianity, and I didn’t know how to turn the tables on her to reveal that she too was a religious fundamentalist who had a lot of faith.
What? She was an atheist—how could she be a religious fundamentalist with faith? It may sound counterintuitive, but I think it’s true. Just like everyone else, she was religious, had her own fundamentals, and needed faith to believe them. In fact, I’d like to offer a three-point news bulletin for the mocking critics of Christianity:
1. Everyone is religious.
Did you ever notice that people often give their opinions about religion but then caveat it by saying, “But I’m not a theologian”? Well, the truth is everyone’s a theologian. Some are more informed theologians than others, but everyone has some set of religious beliefs. If we define religion as someone’s explanation of ultimate reality—the origin, operation, meaning, and destiny of all things—then everyone is religious, including atheists. While some people devoutly believe that God is the cause of all this, others are just as devout in support of an atheistic explanation or that of some other religious worldview. Even those who are devoutly agnostic or indifferent have taken a religious position. It’s not that they’ve never thought about an explanation for ultimate reality, it’s that they believe the question is unknowable, undecided, or irrelevant. That’s still a religious position.
2. Everyone is a fundamentalist.
While Christians are often mocked for being fundamentalists, everyone has fundamental beliefs about why things are the way they are and how we should live in light of that. Atheists, for example, believe that there is no God; that life arose from non-life without any intelligent intervention; that there is no afterlife; and that science is the supreme if not exclusive source of all truth. Those fundamental beliefs usually result in moral fundamentals such as tolerance for everything (except for those who don’t tolerate everything). So the question is not who is or isn’t a fundamentalist—everyone is. The question is “whose fundamentals are true?”
3. Everyone has faith.
If we define faith as believing something that lacks complete evidence, then everyone has faith. Since no human is all-knowing, all of us—even atheists—require some degree of faith to believe our religious fundamentals. Those that have more evidence for their fundamentals, require less faith– those with less evidence need more faith.
I say all that to show that the playing field is truly level. Everyone is some kind of religious fundamentalist, and everyone has a certain amount of faith. That means that the seventy-five percent of churched students who reject the Christian faith after high school are implicitly adopting another faith, one with its own set of fundamentals and religious beliefs. Of course, few realize that. They think that they are becoming beacons of rationality by rejecting Christianity. Ironically, I think the evidence shows that the exact opposite is true. Those who reject Christianity are becoming more irrational. They require more faith to believe their new worldview than the Christian one they abandoned. The I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist seminar begins to show them why. (To go deeper into the details, get the book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist.)