Does The Cambrian Explosion Disprove Darwinism?

Does The Cambrian Explosion Disprove Darwinism?

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By Ryan Leasure

In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin argued that “all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from someone primordial form.”1 Darwin suggested that this primordial life form gradually developed into new life forms, which subsequently developed more life forms, eventually producing all the complex life forms we see today.

In short, Darwin asserted that all life descended from a common ancestor. And starting from that original ancestor, he believed nature selected the fittest species which would survive, reproduce, and last for generations. At the same time, nature would sift out the weaker species.

Darwin famously pictured the history of life as a tree. The first life form was the trunk, and all subsequent life forms are the branches. He was certain that the progression of life takes no sudden leaps, but evolves gradually with small-scale variations.

There was one small problem, though. When Darwin proposed his theory, some of the leading paleontologists rejected his theory based on the fossil record. More specifically, they didn’t believe Darwin’s theory could be reconciled with the Cambrian Explosion.

The Cambrian Explosion

The Cambrian Explosion refers to the abrupt appearance of animal life forms in the geological strata without any trace of prior transitional fossils. During this phenomenon, most of the major animal phyla appear in the strata in a geological blink of an eye.

Darwin was aware of the Cambrian Explosion. He noted, “If my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest [Cambrian] stratum was deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the [Cambrian] age to the present day; and that during these vast, yet quite unknown, periods of time, the world swarmed with living creatures.”2 Meaning, if he’s right, we should find not just a few missing links, but innumerable links preceding the Cambrian era.

After all, Darwin adamantly declared that his theory could take no sudden leaps. He knew that large-scale variations inevitably resulted in deformity or death. Louis Agassiz, the leading paleontologist of Darwin’s day, put it this way: “It is a matter of fact that extreme variations finally degenerate or become sterile; like monstrosities, they die out.”3

Yet these Cambrian animals seemingly came out of nowhere. Of our twenty-seven different phyla — or macro-level animal classifications — at least twenty of them appear in the geological strata suddenly, not gradually as Darwin’s theory demands.4 Hence the name “Cambrian Explosion.”

So how did Darwin respond to this dilemma? He acknowledged, “To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer… The case at present must maintain inexplicable, and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained.”5

Darwin, however, was confident that future discoveries would vindicate his theory. Future geological discoveries have since come. Yet these discoveries continue to present fatal objections to his theory.

The Tree Turned Upside Down

Darwin’s tree of life suggests that small-scale differences among species would precede large-scale differences, eventually resulting in different phyla categories altogether. That is to say, as time progressed, and the branches formed, wholesale diversity would result among living species. Phyla categories would only emerge after lower classifications of animals — like species, orders, and families — evolved so much as to warrant macro-level distinctions.

Richard Dawkins put it this way: “What had been distinct species within one genus become, in the fullness of time, distinct genera within one family. Later, families will be found to have diverged to the point where taxonomists prefer to call them orders, then classes, then phyla.”6

Yet, the Cambrian Explosion turns this pattern on its head. Instead of species leading to families, orders, and eventually phyla, the Cambrian Explosion presents phyla first, followed by lower-level diversifications (microevolution).

The Burgess Shale, located along the Canadian Rockies and perhaps the most significant Cambrian dig in North America with more than a hundred thousand fossil discoveries, confirms this upside-down model. Stephen Meyer notes, “the large differences in form between the first animals appeared suddenly in the Burgess Shale, and the appearance of such disparity arose before, not after, the diversification of many representatives of lower taxonomic categories within each higher category, designating a new body plan.”7

Additionally, the Maotianshan Shale of southern China further confirms the upside-down model. Again, this site does not show the gradual emergence of species progressing toward the diversity of phyla. Rather, it shows full-scale diversity of phyla with subsequent diversification among the species.8

The Common Objection By Darwinists

Darwinists typically respond by suggesting that the older, Pre-Cambrian layers could not have preserved the transitional fossils. And they usually suggest one of two reasons. Either the fossils themselves were too small or soft to have fossilized, or the quality of the sedimentary rock was not conducive for preserving fossils.

Neither of these claims, though, holds muster. First, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that older sedimentary rocks have fossilized both small and soft organisms. In several places around the world, Pre-Cambrian rocks have fossilized single-celled algae and other eukaryotes.9 Further discoveries in Western Australia show Pre-Cambrian rocks preserved fossilized bacteria of various kinds.

The Maotianshan Shale also preserved a great variety of Pre-Cambrian soft-bodied organism. Archeologist J. Y. Chen found several animals lacking exoskeletons, including corals, sponges, jellyfish, and worms. Chen and his colleague Paul Chien even discovered sponge embryos.

If the sedimentary rock can preserve soft-celled embryos, surely it could preserve the ancestors of the Cambrian animals. It should also be noted that many paleontologists call into question the claim that the ancestors of these hard-shelled animals would have been soft since the hard parts are necessary to protect their soft parts. In other words, the ancestors of these hard-shelled animals would have required a hard-shell to survive in nature. So, the soft-bodied hypothesis is far from certain. Be that as it may, the data still suggests that soft-bodied animals should have fossilized.

Conclusions From The Cambrian Explosion

Darwinism still dominates the biological landscape. But I believe the Cambrian Explosion gives us reason to pump the breaks.

As I’ve studied the Darwinian model, it seems to me that the strongest argument in favor of it is the similarity of genetic information across all living species. Meaning, the closeness of DNA and RNA suggests we all share a common ancestor. While this could be true, it’s also true that similarities in genes could suggest a common designer. For example, when one purchases a set of pots and pans, they all look similar despite their different sizes and shapes. The similarities of the handles and types of metal demonstrate not that they evolved from a common ancestor but that they share a common designer.

Meaning, the genetic similarities among living species is up for interpretation. It’s speculation at best. But the fossil record — especially the Cambrian Explosion — presents us with hard data that is difficult to square with Darwinism. Instead of slow, gradual variations, we see sudden leaps of full-bodied animals without any trace of transitional fossils below.

Darwin knew the Cambrian Explosion didn’t support his theory. But he hoped that future geological discoveries would vindicate him. The Burgess and Maotianshan Shale discoveries, however, create an even larger problem than he realized. For these reasons, I believe we have good grounds to doubt Darwinian evolution.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Science Doesn’t Say Anything, Scientists Do by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD, Mp3, and Mp4)

Oh, Why Didn’t I Say That? Does Science Disprove God? by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

Stealing From God by Dr. Frank Turek (Book)

Defending Creation vs. Evolution (mp3) by  Richard Howe

Exposing Naturalistic Presuppositions of Evolution (mp3) by Phillip Johnson

Macro Evolution? I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be a Darwinist (DVD Set) (MP3 Set) and (mp4 Download Set) by Dr. Frank Turek.

Darwin’s Dilemma (DVD) by Stephen Meyer and others

Inroad into the Scientific Academic Community (mp3) by Phillip Johnson

Public Schools / Intelligent Design (mp3) by Francis Beckwith

Answering Stephen Hawking & Other Atheists MP3 and DVD by Dr. Frank Turek 

 

Ryan Leasure holds a Master of Arts from Furman University and a Masters of Divinity from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Currently, he’s a Doctor of Ministry candidate at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also serves as a pastor at Grace Bible Church in Moore, SC.

Original Blog Source: https://bit.ly/2WtntOz

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Jeff Hester Debates William Lane Craig On The Topic “Is Belief In God Rational In A Scientific Age?”

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By Wintery Knight 

I was very excited to see a recent debate by Christian philosopher William Lane Craig against atheist astronomer Jeff Hester. When I summarize a debate, I do a fair, objective summary if the atheist is intelligent and informed, as with Peter Millican, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, or Austin Dacey. But the following summary is rated VS for Very Snarky, and you’ll soon see why.

The debate itself starts at 29 minutes:

The audio is very poor.

Dr. Craig’s opening speech

Dr. Craig went first, and he presented four arguments, as well as the ontological argument, which I won’t summarize or discuss. He later added another argument for theism from the existence of the universe that does not require an origin of the universe.

A1. Counter-examples

Theists who are elite scientists cannot be “irrational,” for example Allan Sandage, Gustav Tammann, George Ellis, Don Page, Christopher Isham

A2. Kalam cosmological argument

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

A3. Fine-tuning of the universe to permit complex, intelligent life

  1. The fine-tuning of the universe is due either to physical necessity, chance, or design.
  2. It is not due to physical necessity or chance.
  3. Therefore it is due to design.

A4. Moral argument

  1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
  2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
  3. Therefore, God exists.

Dr. Hester’s opening speech

Dr. Hester went second and presented two arguments, which both committed the genetic fallacy, a logical fallacy that makes the arguments have no force.

Hester starts his opening speech by asserting that Albert Einstein was irrational because he denied quantum mechanics.

Hester explains that he became an atheist at 15. This would have been before the evidence for the origin of the universe became widespread before we had very many examples of fine-tuning before the discovery that the origin of life problem is a problem of the origin of complex, specified information, etc. What kind of reasons can a 15-year-old child have for becoming an atheist? It’s hard to say, but I would suspect that they were psychological. Children often desire autonomy from moral authorities. They want to be free to pursue pleasure. They don’t want to be thought of as superstitious and morally straight by their non-religious peers.

Later on in the debate, Hester volunteers that he hated his father because his father professed to be a Christian, but he was focused on his career and making money. In the absence of any arguments for atheism, it’s reasonable to speculate that Hester became an atheist for psychological reasons. And as we’ll see, just like the typical 15-year-old child, he has no rational basis for atheism. What’s astonishing is how he continues to hold to the atheism of his teens when it has been falsified over and over by scientific discoveries in the years since.

Dr. Craig’s deductive arguments do have premises that reach a conclusion through the laws of logic. On the contrary, he just asserts that God exists as his conclusion, and then says that this assertion is the best explanation of a gap in our scientific knowledge. Some of the gaps in our scientific knowledge he uses in his arguments are: 1) he doesn’t understand why the Sun moves through the sky, so God exists, 2) he doesn’t understand why the wind blows, so God exists.

What counts as “rational” are things that have not been disproved. The progress of science has shown that the universe did not need a cause in order to begin to exist, and also there is no cosmic fine-tuning.

A1. The success of evolution in the software industry proves that there is no God.

All hardware and software are developed using genetic algorithms that exactly match Darwinian processes. All the major computer companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, etc. are just generating products using mutation and selection to evolve products over long periods of time. If you look over a typical software engineering degree, it’s all about Darwinian evolution, and nothing about design patterns, object-oriented design, etc.

This widespread use of evolution in the software industry undermines all of the arguments for God’s existence. Evolution caused the origin of the universe. Evolution explains why the universe is fine-tuned for life. Evolution, which requires replication already be in place in order to work, explains the origin of the first self-replicating organism.

A2. Theist’s view of the world is just a result of peer pressure from their tribes.

All of Dr. Craig’s logical arguments supported by scientific evidence don’t matter, because he got them from a primitive tribe of Christians that existed 2000 years ago. Everyone gets their view of origins, morality, meaning in life, death, etc. from their tribes. Except for me, I’m getting my beliefs from reason and evidence because I’m a smart atheist. I don’t have an atheist tribe in the university that would sanction me if I disagreed with nonsense like homosexuality is 100% genetic, transgenderism, man-made catastrophic global warming, fully naturalistic evolution, aliens seeded the Earth with life, infanticide is moral, socialism works, overpopulation will cause mass starvation, nuclear winter, etc. Also, my argument isn’t the genetic fallacy at all, because smart atheists don’t commit elementary logical fallacies that even a first-year philosophy student would know.

A3. Our brains evolved, so our rational faculties are unreliable, so God does not exist.

The logical reasoning that Dr. Craig uses to argue for theism are all nonsense, because human minds just have an illusion of consciousness, an illusion of rationality, and an illusion of free will. Everything Dr. Craig says is just deluded nonsense caused by chemicals in his brain. He has cognitive biases the undermine all his logical arguments and scientific evidence. He just invented an imaginary friend with superpowers. Except me, I’m a smart atheist, so I actually have real consciousness, real reasoning powers, and no cognitive biases. Also, my argument isn’t the genetic fallacy at all, because my arguments would not get an F in a first-year philosophy course.

Discussion

I’m not going to summarize everything in the discussion, or the question and answer time. I’m just going to list out some of the more interesting points.

Dr. Craig asks him how it is that he has managed to escape these biases from tribalism, projection, etc. He talks about how brave and noble atheist rebels are. The moderator asks him the same question. He repeats how brave and noble atheist rebels are.

Dr. Hester is asked whether he affirms a causeless beginning of the universe or an eternal universe. He replies he states that the universe came into being without a cause because causality doesn’t apply to the beginning of the universe. He also asserts with the explanation that Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin have undermined the kalam cosmological argument, mentioning a web site.

Dr. Craig replied to this phantom argument after the debate on Facebook:

Speaking of which, although I haven’t had time to consult the website mentioned by Dr. Hester concerning Guth and Vilenkin on the kalam cosmological argument, I know the work of these two gentlemen well enough to predict what one will find there. Since neither one is yet a theist (so much, by the way, for the dreaded confirmation bias!), they have to reject at least one of the premises of the kalam cosmological argument.

Guth wants to deny premiss (2) The universe began to exist–for which Vilenkin has rebuked him. Guth would avoid the implications of their theorem by holding our hope for the Carroll-Chen model, which denies the single condition of the BGV theorem. This gambit is, however, unsuccessful, since the Carroll-Chen model does so only by positing a reversal of the arrow of time at some point in the finite past. This is not only highly non-physical but fails to avert the universe’s beginning since that time-reversed, mirror universe is no sense in our past. The model really postulates two different universes with a common beginning.

So Vilenkin is forced to deny premiss (1) Whatever begins to exists has a cause. He says that if the positive energy associated with matter exactly counterbalances the negative energy associated with gravity, then the net sum of the energy is zero, and so the conservation of energy is not violated if the universe pops into being from nothing! But this is like saying that if your assets exactly balance your debts, then your net worth is zero, and so there does not need to be a cause of your financial situation! As Christopher Isham points out, there still needs to be “ontic seeding” in order to create positive and negative energy in the first place, even if on balance, their sum is zero.

Dr. Hester is asked how he explains the evidence for fine-tuning. He literally says that “Life is fine-tuned for the Universe,” i.e., that evolution will create living beings regardless of the laws of physics, constants, etc. For example, he thinks that in a universe with a weaker strong force, which would have only hydrogen atoms, evolution would still evolve life. And in a universe that recollapses in a hot fireball, and never forms stars or planets, evolution would produce life. Physicist Luke Barnes, who was commenting on the YouTube chat for the video, said this:

“Life is fine-tuned for the Universe” – complete ignorance of the field. Read a book.

Hester tries to cite Jeremy England to try to argue for life appearing regardless of what the laws of physics are. Barnes comments:

Jeremy England’s work supports no such claim.

Hester appealed to the multiverse, which faces numerous theoretical and observational difficulties. For example, the multiverse models have to have some mechanism to spawn different universes, but these mechanisms themselves require fine-tuning, as Robin Collins argues. And the multiverse is falsified observationally by the Boltzmann brain problem. It was so ironic that Hester claimed to be so committed to testing theories. The multiverse theory cannot be tested experimentally and must be accepted on faith.

Dr. Hester is asked how he grounds morality on atheism. He says there are no objective moral values and duties. He instead lists off a bunch of Christian beliefs which he thinks are objectively wrong. Even his statements about these moral issues are misinformed. For example, he asserts that homosexuality is causally determined by biology, but this is contradicted by identical twin studies that have a rate of 20-40% where both twins are gay.

Dr. Hester is asked about free will, which is required in order to make moral choices. He denies the existence of a free will, which undermines his earlier statements about morality. Morality is only possible if humans can make free choices to act in accordance with a moral standard. So, he claims that Christians are immoral, then he claims that they have no freedom to act other than they do.

Dr. Hester also volunteered that his father believed in the prosperity gospel, and tithed in order to be rewarded with money by God. Dr. Craig immediately says, “no wonder you’re in rebellion against Christianity.” Indeed.

Dr. Hester is asked about his view that human beings are unable to unable to perceive the world objectively. How is he able to perceive the world objectively, when all of the rest of us are unable to? His response is that he is just smarter than everyone else because his ideas have never been falsified by testing.

Scoring the debate

Dr. Craig’s five arguments went unrefuted. Hester’s argument about genetic algorithms was ludicrous to anyone who understands software engineering. His arguments about tribalism and unreliable mental faculties were self-refuting and committed the genetic fallacy. At several points, Hester denied mainstream science in favor of untested and untestable speculations. It was the worst defeat of atheism I have ever witnessed. He was uninformed and arrogant. He didn’t know what he was talking about, and he tried to resort to speculative, mystical bullshit to cover up his failure to meet Dr. Craig’s challenge.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Paperback), and (Sermon) by Norman Geisler  and Frank Turek

Why Science Needs God by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

Science Doesn’t Say Anything, Scientists Do by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD, Mp3, and Mp4)

Oh, Why Didn’t I Say That? Does Science Disprove God? by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

Stealing From God by Dr. Frank Turek (Book)

God’s Crime Scene: Cold-Case…Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe (Paperback), (Mp4 Download), and (DVD Set) by J. Warner Wallace

God’s Crime Scene: The Case for God’s Existence from the Appearance of Design (mp4 Download Set) by J. Warner Wallace 

God’s Crime Scene: The Case for God’s Existence from the Appearance of Design in Biology DVD Set by J. Warner Wallace 

 

Original Blog Source: https://bit.ly/2ySL4PM

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Is Earth Just A Pale Blue Dot?

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By Ryan Leasure 

In his book Pale Blue Dot, the late astronomer Carl Sagan had this to say about the above photograph taken aboard Voyager I:

Because of the reflection of sunlight… Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light as if there were some special significance to this small world. But it’s just an accident of geometry and optics… Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

Sagan reiterates what is commonly known as the Copernican Principle, or the Principle of Mediocrity. It’s the idea that earth and by extension human beings aren’t significant in the grand scheme of things. We’re just a random speck of dust revolving around an average star in the corner of an average galaxy.

Sagan was so confident of his view that he predicted the Milky Way galaxy probably contains as many as a million advanced civilizations. But is this a reasonable conclusion? I think it’s unlikely. In fact, the more we learn about the requirements for habitability, the less probable life in other places becomes. To demonstrate this claim, I want to highlight seven different habitability requirements — or habitable zones — that are necessary for advanced life to exist in the universe. As far as we know, the earth is the only planet to meet all the requirements.

The Right Kind Of Galaxy

The Right Kind Of Galaxy

Astronomers have placed galaxies into three categories — spiral, elliptical, and irregular. Of these three, only spiral galaxies can support life. Elliptical galaxies contain mostly ancient stars that lack necessary resources — like heavy elements — that life needs. Additionally, because of the shape of elliptical galaxies, and the close proximity of the stars, stable planetary orbits are impossible.

Similarly, irregular galaxies lack the necessary qualities for habitability. For starters, their irregular shape leads to chaotic stellar and planetary orbits which result in planets colliding or brushing too closely to ultra-violet emitting stars. Additionally, large irregular galaxies possess active nuclei which spew too much deadly radiation for life to exist. Conversely, small irregular galaxies lack the necessary heavy elements for habitability.

Only spiral galaxies can support life. And not just any spiral galaxy, but one that possesses the right size and structure that can yield heavy elements and protect a host planet from deadly radiation and gravitational disruptions along the spiral arms. It just so happens that the Milky Way meets these necessary requirements.

The Right Location In That Galaxy

Not only is the right kind of spiral galaxy necessary for habitability, but the location inside that galaxy is also just as important. And that location is close to the mid-plane of the galaxy about halfway between the galactic nucleus and the external edge.

If the earth’s solar system was closer to the nucleus, it would face the onslaught of radiation and overwhelming gravitational force from the galactic black hole nucleus. Moreover, this territory inside the galactic habitable zone contains trillions of comets, which combined with the erratic gravitational forces would inevitably lead to several comet collisions and wipe out any existing population. Conversely, stars located towards the outer galactic edge can only host small terrestrial planets that are too small to retain an atmosphere or sustain plate tectonics.

This galactic habitable zone is usually represented by a thin ring that circles around the Milky Way galaxy. Only stars that land on this narrow ring can realistically sustain life. Furthermore, our solar system is located in a safe place between the Sagittarius and Perseus spiral arms. Spiral arms are dangerous places with fluctuating radiation and erratic orbits. And as many astronomers have pointed out, this relatively gas and dust free environment proves to be the ideal location for viewing the universe and making further discoveries.

The Right Kind Of Star

The Right Kind Of Star

In addition to being in the right location of the galaxy, the star must possess the right qualities to support life. Of the stars located in the galactic habitable zone, about 3 percent of them have the right qualities for any kind of life to survive. In fact, to emit a sufficient level of ultra-violet radiation, the host star must be virtually identical to the sun. Larger stars than our sun give off extreme variations of UV radiations, as do smaller stars than the sun. Our sun is also metal-rich compared to most stars making it possible to host planets like earth.

While it’s true that the sun is an average star (a yellow dwarf) as far as size goes, its average quality is essential for life. In addition to emitting erratic levels of UV radiation, larger stars burn their fuel faster and have shorter life spans — too short to host advanced life. On the other hand, smaller stars, like red dwarfs, give off such low levels of energy that a planet would have to orbit extremely close to it. This close proximity inevitably leads to tidal locking where one side of the planet bakes in unending misery while the opposite side remains frozen in perpetual darkness.

The Right Distance From The Star

Next, for habitability to be possible, a planet must maintain liquid water. And this is only possible for planets that are the right distance from their host star. For example, if the earth were slightly closer to the sun, all water would evaporate. If it was slightly further away, all water would freeze. Furthermore, for water to remain, the planet must have the appropriate level of atmospheric pressure.

The planet must also receive the right amount of UV radiation, and much of this depends on its distance from that star. If it receives too little, vitamin D levels would be too low to produce strong bones, prevent cancer, and maintains healthy immune systems. On the flip side, if UV radiation were stronger, most if not all would suffer from skin cancer and bad eyesight.

Additionally, a planet must be the right distance from its host star for photosynthesis to occur. While some life-forms could exist without photosynthesis, large-bodied warm-blooded animals could not.

The proper distance also impacts its rotation rate. As I mentioned earlier, a planet that is close to its host star experiences tidal locking, meaning it does not rotate due to the intense gravitational force. This results in one side of the planet enduring an onslaught of heat and radiation while the opposite side remains perpetually in the cold dark. This kind of planet could not sustain life as it could not have liquid water. Conversely, if the earth rotated faster, we’d experience extreme temperatures and atmospheric winds that would make life virtually impossible.

The Right Kind Of Neighbors

While the other planets in our solar system aren’t suitable for life, they still serve a purpose in contributing to the earth’s own habitability. For starters, larger planets such as Jupiter and Saturn serve as earth’s bodyguards against comets or asteroid bombardments. Due to their size and relative force of gravity, these large gas giants act like giant vacuum cleaners for potentially dangerous collisions. Even smaller planets like Venus and Mars offer protection despite their limited gravity. Mars, for example, stands between us and an asteroid belt and has taken a few hits for us over the years.

Additionally, these other planets have contributed to important scientific discoveries. Johannes Kepler formulated his famous laws of planetary motion by observing these other planets. One of these discoveries was that planetary orbits are not circles but ellipses. And these discoveries served foundational for Newton’s laws of motion and gravity, which became the foundation for Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

The Right Kind Of Moon

Of the dozens of moons in our solar system, the moon if fifty times larger than any other moon compared to the mass of its host planet. Moreover, the moon orbits more closely to earth than any other large satellite yet discovered.

The size and proximity of the moon stabilize the earth’s rotation on its axis around 23.5 degrees. If the moon were smaller, like the Martian moons, the tilt would wobble about 30 degrees like Mars. The results of an unstable title would be catastrophic. If the North Pole, for example, were leaning more sunward during the summer, most of the Northern Hemisphere would experience months of scorching heat and perpetual daylight. Then in the winter months of the year, any survivors would experience extremely cold dark winters that would make Antarctica feel mild by comparison.

With no tilt, the earth would not experience seasons and rain distribution across the planet. The result would be large swaths of arid land uninhabitable for life.

It’s also worth noting that earth is the only place in our solar system where a perfect solar eclipse is possible. This phenomenon is possible because while the moon is four hundred times smaller than the sun, it is four hundred times closer making them both appear the exact same size from our vantage point. This phenomenon is highly coincidental if the earth is just a “pale blue dot.”

The Right Kind Of Planet

Finally, the right planet is also necessary for habitability. For example, life could not survive on a gas planet, but one made of rock. Additionally, this planet must have liquid water. But if the planet was perfectly smooth, the entire planet would be submerged in water. Fortunately, the earth has continents, mountain ranges, and valleys which allow for life to exist simultaneously with oceans and lakes. And this is made possible by plate tectonics. Yes, plate tectonics can be dangerous, but without them, life could not exist. And earth is the only planet in our solar system with plate tectonics.

A planet must also maintain a powerful, stable magnetic field. Without this protective fence, the earth’s atmosphere would eventually float away towards the sun making it impossible to sustain life. Of course, to maintain the right magnetic field requires the right internal composition of a rocky planet. Specifically, it requires a liquid iron outer core and a solid iron inner core.

Additionally, the planet must also have the right kind of atmosphere. In particular, the ozone shield is necessary for protecting a planet from receiving too much harmful radiation. Currently, earth’s ozone layer absorbs about 98 percent of the sun’s harmful UV radiation while allowing the beneficial radiation to pass through to earth’s surface. In this sense, the ozone layer acts as a shield or a type of sunscreen protecting us from too much of the sun’s radiation but allowing just enough beneficial for life.

Just A Pale Blue Dot?

So many are the requirements necessary for habitability that extraterrestrial life seems improbable. Back in the 1960s, when Sagan’s theory began to pick up steam, scientists launched the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). When the search began, scientists were convinced we would find advanced life on the moon or Mars. Now the search is more modest. They hope to find some kind of lower life form to an obscure moon orbiting Saturn that may or may not contain liquid water. In other words, the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in SETI have been spent to no avail.

Additionally, this search raises some important questions. If life really exists all over the universe, why haven’t they found us yet? After all, are we so conceited to think that we are the most advanced civilization? Surely, if millions of other civilizations exist, some of them would have greater capabilities than us.

Furthermore, good scientific theories are always falsifiable. But isn’t this theory unfalsifiable? At what point will those who say the universe is teeming with life say they were wrong? After sixty years of searching, they’re still saying, “Just give us more time. We’ll find it.” And they could keep saying it for a thousand years. In the end, the search for extraterrestrial life seems like a fools errand. So many are the conditions necessary for habitability. Earth appears to be pretty special after all.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

God’s Crime Scene: Cold-Case…Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe (Paperback), (Mp4 Download), and (DVD Set) by J. Warner Wallace

God’s Crime Scene: The Case for God’s Existence from the Appearance of Design (mp4 Download Set) by J. Warner Wallace 

God’s Crime Scene: The Case for God’s Existence from the Appearance of Design in Biology DVD Set by J. Warner Wallace 

What is God Like? Look to the Heavens by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4) 

I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Paperback), and (Sermon) by Norman Geisler 

 

Ryan Leasure holds a Master of Arts from Furman University and a Masters of Divinity from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Presently, he’s working on a Doctor of Ministry degree from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also serves as a pastor at Grace Bible Church in Moore, SC.

Original Blog Source: https://bit.ly/3e7HgtE

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Could The Universe Be Eternal?

Could The Universe Be Eternal?

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By Ryan Leasure

One of my favorite arguments for God’s existence is the Kalam Cosmological Argument. While this argument has historical roots, contemporary Christian philosopher William Lane Craig has popularized it more recently. The argument goes like this:

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

This is a logically airtight argument. That is, if we can demonstrate that both premise (1) and (2) are true, the conclusion (3) necessarily follows as true. Let’s consider the premises in turn.

(1) Everything That Begins To Exist Has A Cause.

This first premise seems intuitively obvious. To reject it, one would have to posit that something can come from nothing. But that view has to be the height of absurdity. Nothing can’t produce anything. After all, our own experiences and scientific observations tell us that things just don’t pop into existence uncaused. None of us, for example, have ever experienced a new Corvette popping into existence in our driveways, as nice as that would be. Additionally, if things can pop into existence uncaused, then it remains inexplicable as to why this doesn’t happen all the time.

As one might imagine, most embrace this premise, although a few have sought to refute it over the years. Quentin Smith, for example, suggests that “the most reasonable belief is that we came from nothing, by nothing, and for nothing.”1 But I must confess, I’m not sure I understand how this is possible. How did we come from nothing? How did nothing have the capability of causing anything at all?

If prior to the existence of the universe, nothing existed – including space, time, matter, or God – how did the universe come to be? People, like Quentin Smith, must violate everything we know about the cause and effect relationship in our universe to adopt this position. Even the great skeptic David Hume once remarked, “I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause.”2

To get around this metaphysical impossibility, skeptic Lawrence Krauss suggests that the universe came into being from nothing. But then he goes on to explain that “nothing” is really a quantum vacuum of fluctuating energy. And as many have already pointed out, Krauss equivocates on the word nothing. After all, a quantum vacuum of fluctuating energy isn’t no-thing. It’s something. One still needs to explain how this vacuum came to be.

Additionally, others have adopted the position that premise (1) is true for all things inside the universe, but it’s not necessarily true of the universe itself. The problem with this view is that it commits the taxicab fallacy. That is to say, it adopts the standard cause and effect principle when it’s convenient but then hops off — like one would a taxi — once it gets to its desired destination. Not only is this view logically inconsistent, it assumes that the causal principle is only true of the material world. But the cause and effect principle is a metaphysical principle, in that it’s true for all reality. Being cannot come from nonbeing.

Finally, the last objection to premise (1) usually comes in the form of a question: “Who caused God?” But this misunderstands the premise. The premise doesn’t state that “whatever exists has a cause.” Rather it states that “whatever begins to exist has a cause.” And theists have maintained that God has never had a beginning. He exists eternally by necessity. If he doesn’t, then he’s not God. This is what we mean when we say “God.” If he owes his existence to an external cause, that external cause would be God. So asking the question, “who caused God?” doesn’t help the skeptic get around premise (1). Theists have maintained for millennia now, that God is necessarily eternal. And to ask, “what caused him?” misunderstands our position.

(2) The Universe Began To Exist.

Since it’s difficult to disprove premise (1), many skeptics set their sights on premise (2) which asserts that the universe began to exist. In a previous post, I laid out scientific evidence which suggests the universe is not eternal. In this post, however, I want to focus on the philosophical reasons for rejecting a past-eternal universe.

To get around premise (2), the skeptic must maintain that the physical universe has existed for all eternity and has thus existed for an infinite number of moments. However, while we use infinity in mathematical or theoretical worlds, infinity, in reality, is impossible as it results in all sorts of logical absurdities.

Think, for example, about a meter stick that you divide in halves forever. Could you divide the meter stick in half an infinite number of times? How do you know the point at which you cross the threshold of a natural number to infinity? And if you reach infinity, isn’t it true that you could subdivide the meter stick one more time?

Perhaps the most famous example demonstrating the absurdity of infinity, in reality, is David Hilbert’s thought experiment — Hilbert’s Hotel. Hilbert told us to imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms. Additionally, he said to imagine that all the rooms are occupied so that not a single room is vacant. Now, suppose a guest comes to the check-in desk and asks for a room. The manager says, “yes, of course, you can have a room.” He then proceeds to move the person in room #1 to room #2, and the person in room #2 to room #3, and the person in room #3 to room #4, and so forth to infinity. He then takes the new guest and places them in the vacant room #1. But remember, before the guest showed up, the infinite number of rooms were already occupied.

Now, Hilbert says to suppose an infinite number of guests show up to a fully occupied hotel asking for a room. “Of course, the manager says.” He then proceeds to move the person in room #1 to room #2, and the person in room #2 to room #4, and the person in room #3 to room #6, and so forth to infinity, always putting the previous occupants in a room number twice their original one. Because all the former occupants now reside in even-numbered rooms, the infinite number of new guests all go into the odd-numbered rooms. Remember, though, before the infinite number of guests arrived, all the infinite number of rooms were occupied.

In the first example, we already had an infinite number of guests, but we were able to add one more. So, the equation would look something like this: infinity + 1 = infinity. In the second example, we had an infinite number of guests already staying in the hotel before adding another infinite number of guests. This equation would look like this: infinity + infinity = infinity. Despite adding a different amount to infinity in both equations, we still ended up with the same sum of infinity. The mathematical impossibility of such a hotel demonstrates the absurdity of an actual infinity in reality.

Consider another example. The medieval philosopher al-Ghazali asks us to imagine both Jupiter and Saturn orbiting the sun from eternity past. If for every time Saturn orbits the sun, Jupiter orbits it 2.5 times, which planet has orbited the sun more times? Well, if both planets have been orbiting from eternity past, the answer is that they’ve both orbited the sun the same amount — infinity. But doesn’t that seem absurd? In fact, we know that the higher the number of orbits, the greater the discrepancy that exists between the two. But if Saturn has orbited an infinite number of times, even though Jupiter has been orbiting 2.5 times for every Saturn orbit, they’ve both orbited the sun the same amount.

These illustrations help demonstrate that an actual infinite number, in reality, is impossible. And if an actual infinity is impossible, the universe could not exist for an infinite number of moments.

These absurdities raise another significant problem for the person who wants to reject premise (2). And that problem is that it’s impossible to traverse the infinite. Put another way; if the universe has existed for an infinite number of days, we could never arrive at today because that would mean infinity came to an end. But infinity can’t come to an end. That’s what it means to be infinity.

Or think about it another way. Before we can arrive at today, yesterday would have to occur, and the day before that, and the day before that, and so on to infinity. But how does one know when we’ve reached infinity in the past? There’s no point at which we could start counting the days backward to today. That would be like counting all the negative numbers from infinity back to zero.

Interestingly, many skeptics acknowledge our universe isn’t past eternal based on the scientific evidence. A lot of these same skeptics, however, attempt to get around this problem by suggesting an eternal multiverse. But the absurdity of infinity still applies to a multiverse. It’s impossible to traverse an infinite number of points in any physical universe, even one beyond our ability to detect. So, the skeptic still faces the same problem.

In sum, since it’s absurd to suggest that the universe has existed for an infinite number of moments, the universe must have begun to exist a finite time ago.

(3) Therefore, The Universe Has A Cause.

Since whatever begins to exist has a cause (1), and the universe began to exist (2), it follows necessarily that the universe has a cause (3). Based on this argument, what can we know about the nature of this cause?

First, whatever caused the universe must come from outside the universe itself. That is to say, it must transcend the natural world.

Meaning, this cause must be spaceless, timeless, and immaterial since space, time, and matter all came into existence at the beginning of the universe. Especially relevant to this argument is that the cause is timeless and, therefore, never had a beginning. Now, the skeptic might object that a past eternal cause faces the same dilemma of a past eternal universe. But he would be mistaken because the cause of the universe exists outside of, or independent of, time. That is to say, this cause existed in a timeless state and thus hasn’t traversed over an infinite number of points.

The cause must also be personal. We reach this conclusion based on the fact that there are only two possibilities for a spaceless, timeless, and immaterial entity — either an abstract object like a number or an unembodied mind. But abstract objects don’t possess causal power. They can’t do anything. This leaves a conscious mind who made a free will choice to create as the best explanation.

Finally, based on the size and complexity of our universe, this spaceless, timeless, immaterial, personal being must be all-powerful and extremely intelligent. And this being is what theists refer to as God.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

How Old is the Universe? (DVD), (Mp3), and (Mp4 Download) by Dr. Frank Turek 

God’s Crime Scene: Cold-Case…Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe (Paperback), (Mp4 Download), and (DVD Set) by J. Warner Wallace

God’s Crime Scene: The Case for God’s Existence from the Appearance of Design (mp4 Download Set) by J. Warner Wallace 

God’s Crime Scene: The Case for God’s Existence from the Appearance of Design in Biology DVD Set by J. Warner Wallace 

What is God Like? Look to the Heavens by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

 

Ryan Leasure holds a Master of Arts from Furman University and a Masters of Divinity from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Presently, he’s working on a Doctor of Ministry degree from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also serves as a pastor at Grace Bible Church in Moore, SC.

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

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No, it’s not wrong to argue for God’s existence.

No, it’s not wrong to argue for God’s existence.

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By Erik Manning

There are dozens of arguments for the existence of God. To rattle off just a few: there’s the moral argument, ontological, religious experience, miracles, consciousness, reason, desire, and the families of cosmological arguments and design arguments.

Some Christians say that while these arguments are good for building up the faithful, they’re useless for apologetics and evangelism. After all, we’re not trying to make generic theists. Even the demons believe in God, but that doesn’t give them a saving relationship with Him! (James 2:20) Apologists using these arguments in conversations or debates are barking up the wrong tree at best, and at worst, are being unfaithful to God.

To make the point, these critics will often point to the case of Antony Flew. Flew was a notable philosopher of religion who argued against the existence of God for decades. Near the end of his life, Flew changed his tune. He became a believer in God because of the philosophical and scientific arguments for God. He even wrote a book about it. Here’s a quote that sums up Flew’s conversion:

“I now believe that the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence. I believe that this universe’s intricate laws manifest what scientists have called the Mind of God. I believe that life and reproduction originate in a divine Source. Why do I believe this, given that I expounded and defended atheism for more than a half-century? The short answer is this: this is the world picture, as I see it, that has emerged from modern science.” There is a God.

Flew’s turnabout sent shockwaves through academic circles and a lot of Christian apologists claimed it as a victory for scientific and philosophical apologetics.

Here’s the rub: Flew never became a Christian. He declared himself to be a deist. Deists, if you don’t know, reject direct revelation and miracles. If this is what successful apologetics looks like, then what’s the point?

Here’s the thing though — For every Antony Flew, you have dozens of people like me. Quick background story: During my teenage years, I was an atheist. But along the course of time, I gradually became convinced God existed. But I wasn’t satisfied with the idea of deism or a generic God. Why?

There are a couple of reasons for that: If God exists, it would be weird if God never communicated with us. And if God was going to communicate with us, he’s not probably going to do it only privately.

The problem with Deism and mysticism

Let’s think about it for a second: Why would a Supreme Being create intelligent beings with the ability for communication and then never speak to them? Not even a ”howdy”? Wouldn’t we expect this God to offer a few words of advice or the occasional helping hand? Deism might explain why there’s a cosmos, consciousness, or the moral law. But it doesn’t offer much of an explanation of God’s silence.

There’s also the problem of God speaking only through private revelation. Anyone could claim that God’s speaking to them, how do we parse that out and see who’s right? It would be spiritual anarchy.

As human beings, we all have the same basic needs and problems in life. It would make more practical sense for God to speak to us about these things publicly and collectively. An all-wise being would talk to us a way that anyone could access and understand. Scripture, or something like it, makes a lot of sense.

It’s this commonsense reasoning that led me to dig up a Bible and start reading. Even though I had issues with the idea of miracles at first, I eventually had an experience with the Holy Spirit and became a Christian. You might say this is just anecdotal, but I’m not the only person to make the jump from ‘generic theism’ to Christianity.

How Natural theology helped lead three former atheists to Jesus

A philosopher’s Journey

Ed Feser taught philosophy of religion for years as a college professor. After going through the arguments semester after semester, he eventually became a philosophical theist. Says Feser:

“I don’t know exactly when everything clicked. There was no single event, but a gradual transformation. As I taught and thought about the arguments for God’s existence, and in particular the cosmological argument, I went from thinking “These arguments are no good” to thinking “These arguments are a little better than they are given credit for” and then to “These arguments are actually kind of interesting.” Eventually, it hit me: “Oh my goodness, these arguments are right after all!” The Road From Atheism

Edward C. Feser is an American philosopher. He is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California

But that’s not where the story ends. Feser eventually became a Christian. He didn’t remain a mere philosophical theist. Not content merely knowing that the God of the philosophers existed, Feser continued his journey and eventually met Jesus.

A scientist’s story

Physicist Frank Tipler is another example of someone who became a Christian after looking at different proofs for God. While Feser was impressed with the philosophical reasons for the existence of God, Tipler became a believer based on the evidence from cosmology and physics, his specialty. While many atheists argue that science and reason will lead someone to reject faith, Tipler found the opposite was true. In the intro of his book The Physics of Immortality, he wrote:

“When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics.”

Frank Tipler is a mathematical physicist and cosmologist, holding a joint appointment in the Departments of Mathematics and Physics at Tulane University.

So obviously Tipler didn’t stay in the camp of belief in a deistic or generic deity. His discovery left him wanting to know who this Creator and Designer was.

An Oxford Student’s testimony

I could multiply examples, but for the sake of space, I’ll offer just one more. Sarah-Irving Stonebraker is a history professor in Australia. In an article entitled, ‘How Oxford and Peter Singer Drove Me From Atheism to Jesus‘, Sarah outlines her journey.

“I grew up in Australia, in a loving, secular home, and arrived at Sydney University as a critic of “religion.” I didn’t need faith to ground my identity or my values. I knew from the age of eight that I wanted to study history at Cambridge and become a historian. My identity lay in academic achievement, and my secular humanism was based on self-evident truths…

After Cambridge, I was elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at Oxford. There, I attended three guest lectures by world-class philosopher and atheist public intellectual, Peter Singer. Singer recognized that philosophy faces a vexing problem in relation to the issue of human worth. The natural world yields no egalitarian picture of human capacities. What about the child whose disabilities or illness compromises her abilities to reason? Yet, without reference to some set of capacities as the basis of human worth, the intrinsic value of all human beings becomes an ungrounded assertion; a premise which needs to be agreed upon before any conversation can take place.

I remember leaving Singer’s lectures with a strange intellectual vertigo; I was committed to believing that universal human value was more than just a well-meaning conceit of liberalism. But I knew from my own research in the history of European empires and their encounters with indigenous cultures, that societies have always had different conceptions of human worth or lack thereof. The premise of human equality is not a self-evident truth: it is profoundly historically contingent. I began to realize that the implications of my atheism were incompatible with almost every value I held dear … One Sunday, shortly before my 28th birthday, I walked into a church for the first time as someone earnestly seeking God.

Before long I found myself overwhelmed. At last, I was fully known and seen and, I realized, unconditionally loved – perhaps I had a sense of relief from no longer running from God. A friend gave me C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, and one night, after a couple months of attending church, I knelt in my closet in my apartment and asked Jesus to save me, and to become the Lord of my life”

Dr. Sarah Irving-Stonebraker is Senior Lecturer (in Australia, this is a tenured professor position) in Modern European History at Western Sydney University in Australia, where she teaches in the History and Political Thought major.

So after learning that God existed through the moral argument, Irving-Stonebraker didn’t stop there. She wasn’t content knowing that a generic God existed. The moral argument made her want to find just who this Moral Lawgiver is.

Arguing for God’s existence isn’t fruitless

So what’s my point?

While Antony Flew’s non-conversion might feel like a failure, there are many people like Feser, Tipler, Irving-Stonebraker, and myself who didn’t stop at generic theism. And the writer of Hebrews tells us that belief in God is a necessary precondition to pleasing God. (Hebrews 11:6) The next part is seeking Him. So when someone like William Lane Craig argues for the existence of God, they’re laying some foundational groundwork and we’re wrong to think little of that.

Once you become convinced God is real, then unless you’re apathetic, you’ll want to get to know him personally. And it’s not as if Craig or others like him stop after offering the arguments for God, they almost always then argue for the resurrection.

And as I said before, intuition and common sense tell us that if God exists, he’s not going to remain silent and stand aloof. And if he’s as smart as design arguments show, he’s going to communicate with us in an accessible way. God can and has used these arguments to get past someone’s intellectual hang-ups or blind spots and to take a step towards him. How could that possibly be a bad thing?

Recommended resources related to the topic:

So the Next Generation will Know by J. Warner Wallace (Book and Participant’s Guide)

Reaching Atheists for Christ by Greg Koukl (Mp3)

Living Loud: Defending Your Faith by Norman Geisler (Book)

Fearless Faith by Mike Adams, Frank Turek and J. Warner Wallace (Complete DVD Series)

Defending the Faith on Campus by Frank Turek (DVD Set, mp4 Download set and Complete Package)

Can All Religions Be True? mp3 by Frank Turek

Counter Culture Christian: Is There Truth in Religion? (DVD) by Frank Turek

 

Erik Manning is a former atheist turned Christian after an experience with the Holy Spirit. He’s a former freelance baseball writer and digital marketing specialist who is passionate about the intersection of evangelism and apologetics.

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

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Clearing Up Cosmos: Fact and Fiction in Neil deGrasse Tyson's Landmark Series

Clearing Up Cosmos: Fact and Fiction in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Landmark Series

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By Terrell Clemmons

Douglas Ell became an atheist as a youth because of misinformation handed down to him in the name of science. It took him thirty years “to climb out of the atheist hole.” Sadly, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, the 2014 series brought to you by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane, and a host of like-minded celebrity atheists, served up thirteen dazzling episodes containing similar misinformation. The series mixed, quoting Jay W. Richards, “one-part illuminating discussion of scientific discoveries, one part fanciful, highly speculative narrative, and one-part rigid ideology disguised as the assured results of scientific research.”

If you like science—science done well, that is—you’ll find invaluable help making sense out of Cosmos with The Unofficial Guide to Cosmos: Fact and Fiction in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Landmark Science Series, an easily readable volume co-authored by Ell, Richards, David Klinghoffer, and Casey Luskin. The Unofficial Guide to Cosmos sorts out, episode by episode, the legitimate science from the liberal doses of materialist philosophy, revised history, and brazen ideology the makers of the series have carelessly (or intentionally?) stirred into the mix. Here’s a sampling:

Materialist Philosophy. Without acknowledging it, Cosmos presupposes a priori the materialist worldview. This should come no surprise. But the makers deceive themselves if they think they’ve dispensed with the religious. Scientific thought, according to Tyson, is the “light” that has “set us free.” And discovering our “long lost cousins” (organisms with similar DNA sequences) can be a “spiritual experience.”

Science History. With respect to history, there are errors of commission, a deceptive retelling of the Giordano Bruno affair, for example, clearly designed to paint Christianity as a mortal enemy of science. And there are errors of omission, such as the utter desacralization of many revered fathers of science (Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, and more), who were men of open Christian piety.

Ideology. In later episodes, Tyson lectures viewers about a dire need to save the planet, and he casts climate dissenters, who are “in the grip of denial,” as either ignorant or evil—this against a backdrop of cheering Nazis, to round out the propaganda package.

An especially insidious error of omission involves the makers’ failure to even hint that a vigorous debate rages today among scientists. “Cosmos has done a wonderful job of recalling how old mistaken ideas were overturned—ideas about geocentrism, stellar composition, continental drift…and more,” writes Luskin. “However, these are all tales from the annals of scientific history. Cosmos presents current scientific thinking as if it were all correct, with everything figured out…Tyson never discusses evidence that challenges the prevailing evolutionary view.” This is inexcusable.

Even scientists sympathetic to the makers’ agenda have pointed out serious flaws. “Cosmos is a fantastic artifact of scientific myth making,” wrote science historian Joseph Martin of Michigan State University. Yet, he defends the series, including the myth making. Why? Luskin parses Martin’s defense: because Martin thinks it’s permissible to lie if the lie helps “promote greater public trust in science.” Martin calls this kind of useful lie a “taradiddle.”

Luskin furthermore puts his finger on the million-dollar question the thinking public should be asking: If the science academy is condoning telling us ‘taradiddles’ to curry our trust in science, why should we blindly trust them when they claim that only their “science” can explain the origin of life and the cosmos?

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Why Science Needs God by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

Science Doesn’t Say Anything, Scientists Do by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD, Mp3 and Mp4)

Oh, Why Didn’t I Say That? Does Science Disprove God? by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

Stealing From God by Dr. Frank Turek (Book)

 

Terrell Clemmons is a freelance writer and blogger on apologetics and matters of faith.

This article was originally published at salvomag.com: http://bit.ly/2ISmala

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Materialism Cannot Explain the Origin of Life on Earth

Materialism Cannot Explain the Origin of Life on Earth

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By Bob Perry

As I’ve discussed elsewhere, Darwinian Evolution tells a great story. But that story is wholly disconnected from the actual evidence of life on Earth. That’s especially true when it comes to the origin of life. To be fair, Darwinian Evolution insists it has nothing to do with the question of the origin of life. But that doesn’t let materialism off the hook. If there is no God, there must be a materialist explanation for the origin and diversity of the life we see around us. But there isn’t one. Darwinian Evolution fails to explain the diversity of life on Earth. And Materialism cannot explain the origin of life.

Nothing to Select

Natural selection is the core mechanism in the Darwinian model for explaining life. This is the source of the “survival of the fittest” idea with which we are all familiar. Mutations in some organisms provide them with a competitive advantage over others. These more adaptive traits are “selected” and further enhance the propagation of those species. This seems to make sense. But it cannot apply to the origin of life. A lifeless Earth would have contained no organisms. There was nothing to mutate, so there could not have been any “helpful” mutations. Natural selection had nothing to work with. It may help us understand the diversity of life. But what it cannot do is explain life’s origin. So, evolutionary biologists have been trying for decades to find a way to explain how life got started using only stuff available in the material world.

And they’ve failed.

The Miller-Urey Experiment

In 1953, biochemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey of the University of Chicago conducted an experiment to demonstrate how life began. Their goal was to show that life could have arisen through purely chemical processes. For that reason, they could only use the elements that were available on the early Earth. Their experiment passed electrical impulses through a mixture of methane, hydrogen, and ammonia. These were the elements they thought made up the atmosphere of the early Earth. Their goal was to confirm Charles Darwin’s speculations about the origin of life. Darwin believed that life arose from a “primordial soup” of pure chemicals in a “warm little pond.”

A Myth Repeated

On their first attempt, Miller and Urey were able to form some simple amino acids. They believed they had proved that the origin of life on Earth was no longer a mystery. To this day, you will still see the staggering success of this experiment touted in science textbooks.

But it’s not true. Reports of the success of their experiment have been greatly exaggerated.

For starters, it turns out Miller-Urey assumed the wrong initial conditions that existed on the early Earth. Most importantly, they neglected to include oxygen as being part of the early atmosphere.

The Oxygen Conundrum

As it turns out, oxygen was not only present; it is also required to support life. The problem is that if there is oxygen in the atmosphere, or dissolved in water; it shuts down pre-biotic chemical pathways. But that’s not all. If oxygen is not present, pre-biotic chemistry doesn’t work either. So, whether oxygen is present or absent, it ruins Darwin’s infamous “primordial soup.” Pre-biotic molecules cannot form.

Explaining the origin of life requires that oxygen be present. But the presence of oxygen also wrecks the process. The oxygen conundrum is that both of these have to be true at the same time.

But that’s not all.

Chicken and Egg Scenarios

There are regular conferences that meet to discuss the Origin of Life. If you attend one, you will find that oxygen is not the only problem with explaining how life got started. And they keep piling up. The more biochemists learn, the worse the problem gets.

Metabolism and Replication

Cellular life must be able to use the energy it gets from its surroundings. To survive, it has to transform that energy so that it can develop, grow, and sustain itself. This is known as metabolism. No matter how simple the life form is, it must also have the ability to copy and reproduce itself. This is what we call replication. This means that the very first life form must also have had these processes in place. And both of these processes had to have arisen simultaneously.

Proteins and DNA

Along with the replication issue, there is an even more intractable problem. Replication requires proteins which act to copy DNA and use that copy to form a new cell. But without DNA, the cell cannot produce proteins. DNA is the ‘blueprint” used to build an organism. Proteins are the “workers” that follow the blueprint to assemble the cell. And therein lies the problem.

You can’t create the blueprint (DNA) without the workers.

But you can’t assemble the workers without the blueprint.

You need both the blueprint and the workers to be in place right from the beginning.

An Inevitable Conclusion

You can read more about the origin of life issue in Fazale “Fuz” Rana‘s book linked below. But here’s the bottom line. There is no materialistic explanation for the emergence of life from non-life. Wishful thinking and Darwinian “just-so” stories are easy to concoct. But the evidence against them continues to pile up. The more we learn, the more the existence of life seems to depend on the intervention of an intelligent agent. But one thing is certain — materialism cannot explain the origin of life.

Life and a Creator God

But there is another line of evidence that is sitting right in front of our faces. It may be the most astounding evidence of all. The evidence I’m referring to is the evidence about the origin and nature of life itself. This is just one more aspect of the world we live in that is best explained by an intelligent, powerful being. Someone you might refer to as God.

Here is a great summary of why the evidence for the origin of life points straight to God.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Science Doesn’t Say Anything, Scientists Do by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD, Mp3 and Mp4)

Oh, Why Didn’t I Say That? Does Science Disprove God? by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

Stealing From God by Dr. Frank Turek (Book)

Defending Creation vs. Evolution (mp3) by  Richard Howe

Exposing Naturalistic Presuppositions of Evolution (mp3) by Phillip Johnson

Macro Evolution? I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be a Darwinist (DVD Set), (MP3 Set) and (mp4 Download Set) by Dr. Frank Turek

Darwin’s Dilemma (DVD) by Stephen Meyer and others

Inroad into the Scientific Academic Community (mp3) by Phillip Johnson

Public Schools / Intelligent Design (mp3) by Francis Beckwith

 

Bob Perry is a Christian apologetics writer, teacher, and speaker who blogs about Christianity and the culture at truehorizon.org. He is a Contributing Writer for the Christian Research Journal and has also been published in Touchstone, and Salvo. Bob is a professional aviator with 37 years of military and commercial flying experience. He has a B.S., Aerospace Engineering from the U. S. Naval Academy, and a M.A., Christian Apologetics from Biola University. He has been married to his high school sweetheart since 1985. They have five grown sons.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2of535D

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God & Evil: A Rapid-Fire Response

God & Evil: A Rapid-Fire Response

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By Timothy Fox

The problem of evil (pain or suffering) is probably the number one argument against the existence of God. While it is definitely not a problem that can be answered quickly and simply, I’d like to offer some short, rapid-fire responses that can be used to begin a deeper discussion:

Free will – Freedom is a great good that God has granted us. But God can’t give us free will and then forbid us from using it. He can’t give us commands and force us to obey them. And when we disobey God, we – and others – get hurt…

Consequences – Bad decisions often have bad consequences. If there were no consequences for our wrong choices, what do any of our choices matter?

Learning from experience – When we face evil or experience the suffering of others, we (should!) learn from it. Evil teaches us what not to do and should inspire us to stop it.

God is king – God is not a beat cop or a superhero. God is King of the universe. A king makes commands and delegates authority to others. He is not a soldier; he commands soldiers. God has authorized parents to guide and protect their families. He has authorized rulers to promote good and punish evil (Rom. 13). God does not micromanage the universe, and neither is he a helicopter parent. Similarly, …

Minimal interference – What if God simply wants us to make the best of this world – problems and all – with minimal interference? Maybe he wants us to grow and to learn, to solve our own problems.

Inspiration – People who overcome great obstacles are an inspiration to others. The greater the pain, suffering, and other hardships, the greater the inspiration.

Priorities – Tragedy reminds us that life is short, fragile, and should not be wasted. It teaches us to pursue what really matters in life. Similarly, …

Life-altering events – There have been major events that have altered human history, such as the Holocaust and terror attacks of 9/11. Likewise, there are events that impact our individual lives and can steer them into a different direction. Experiencing an act of evil may not result directly in a “greater good,” but it can simply shift the trajectory of our lives and result in a greater end.

Evil chases us to God – What if someone had a perfectly pain-free life but never came to faith in Christ? Instead, what if someone experienced a great evil that led him or her to turn to God for strength? If knowing God is the greatest possible good, then a life with great pain and suffering that leads us to God is infinitely better than a pain-free life in which we never come to faith in Jesus.

Suffering binds us together – Suffering brings us to God, and it also draws us to each other. When friends and family suffer, we learn to lean on each other for strength and help. We develop love and compassion. Suffering can create a community that would not have otherwise existed.

Perspective – We experience evil from the “bottom-up.” We witness it firsthand and don’t understand it, causing us to question the existence of a good God. But we need to view evil – and everything else in life – from the “top-down.” Everything has a purpose. All of our actions are connected. We don’t have a God’s-eye view of reality. God does

When God prevents evil, we still complain – The great flood. The destruction of the Canaanites. The Bible gives accounts of God punishing the wicked and preventing further evil, and yet skeptics complain that God acted immorally. So no matter what God does or doesn’t do, some people are going to be unhappy.

Unknown evil – The previous point refers to evil; we know that God has stopped. But what about the evil that God has prevented without us even knowing? It’s possible that God has prevented far more evil than he has permitted, and only as much evil necessary to bring about the greatest amount of good.

Evil awakens our consciences – Because of sin, our moral compasses are misaligned. We believe some evils are good and are even apathetic towards evil. Great instances of evil may jolt our consciences awake, or snap them back into alignment.

Soul-building – Pain, and suffering strengthens us and builds our souls (Rom. 5:3-4, 2 Cor. 4:17). We develop virtues such as patience and determination and gain compassion towards others who suffer. Our suffering molds us into citizens worthy of the Kingdom of God. Remember, the purpose of life is not happiness but holiness.

Fallen world – Living in a fallen world, we should expect pain and suffering. Suffering reminds us that things are not the way they ought to be and to hope for a world in which there is no pain or suffering…

Heaven – Once we reach heaven, all of our sufferings, no matter how great it may be here on earth, will be a distant memory. There will be no sadness or pain there, and perhaps our past sufferings on earth will help us to appreciate heaven all the more.

Jesus – God did not sit idly by and watch us suffer from a distance. God entered into history and lived among us. He also suffered and died for us. Jesus Christ is the solution to the problem of evil.

These are some rapid-fire responses to the problem of evil. Remember, they are not exhaustive, but are simply starting points for deeper discussions. Maybe you can think of more responses yourself, or you can use the ones here to reflect on the pain and suffering you or your loved ones have faced. And for greater study, I highly recommend The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis and Why Does God Allow Evil? by Clay Jones.

 

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2Z03V2k

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We live in a beatiful world

We Live In A Beautiful World

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By Bob Perry

In classical thinking, saying that something is beautiful is not a matter of subjective opinion. It’s a way to identify an objective feature of the world. We don’t construct beauty; we discover it. And we try to mimic it. A lot of ink has gone to a paper discussing this view when it comes to truth and goodness. In fact, Christians make the case that truth and goodness are grounded in the character of God. But there’s more to the story. The ancient philosophers who talked about those also included a third feature with them. They called it beauty. For some reason, we don’t talk the same way about beauty anymore. But don’t be confused. Beauty is in the same category. Classical thinkers have always linked truth, goodness, and beauty together as interdependent, objective features of the world.

The Ancient Idea of Beauty

The ancient Greek philosophers saw beauty in objects that displayed symmetry, order, balance, unity, and proportion. In fact, the Greek word we translated into “beauty” was hora. This is the root from which we have derived the word hour. That’s because beauty includes a sense of timing. It takes into account what we know about the purpose for which the object exists.

Think of a flower. The ancients saw beauty not only in the symmetry of the flower’s petals or the vivid colors it displayed. They also recognized that these properties became most prominent when the flower reached its prime – when it bloomed. In the same way, fruit was most beautiful when it ripened. A mature woman was beautiful – and a young girl was beautiful – each in a way that fulfilled their purpose for that stage of their being. There was no beauty in an older woman trying to look younger than she really was. Nor was it beautiful when a young woman tried to look older than she should.

In other words, the characteristics that made something beautiful were built into the object one was observing. Beauty was dependent on an object’s nature and purpose.

It had nothing to do with an observer’s opinion of it.

Recognizing Beauty

design in a Chambered Nautilus Shell
Photo by Pixabay

Scientists uncover evidence of this kind of beauty everywhere in nature. We see it in “eerie proportional coincidences” like the “Golden Number,” Phi (1.618), and the “Golden Triangle” derived from it. The ratio shows up in commonly-accepted shapes of rectangles used to frame pictures and in the triangle-faced sides of the Great Pyramids. Humans design things using these proportions because they make them look pleasing to the eye. The mathematician Fibonacci derived his infamous Fibonacci Sequence from it.

But this ratio also shows up in nature all on its own. The radius of a spiraling Chambered Nautilus shell expands in relation to it. The similarly appealing geometry of flower petals — and the radiating pattern of combs in a honey bee hive — grow by the same proportions. These kinds of forms and patterns appear so often in nature; we use them to our benefit … and for our pleasure.

Leveraging Beauty

In their book, A Meaningful World, Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt show how “the arts and sciences reveal the genius of nature.” One of the examples they use to demonstrate this is the Periodic Table of Elements. That table, we all learned about in junior high school is a snapshot of nature’s beauty. The chemists who developed it did so by finding “elegant mathematical relationships between atomic weights of elements and the properties of elements.” Doing so drove them to predict the existence of elements we didn’t even know to exist. It was the beauty that led them to fill the table in.

Resonant Beauty

The same type of patterns and relationships that led to the Periodic Table bring meaning and transcendence to our lives. Consider the relationship between mathematics and music, for instance. We can describe musical harmony using mathematical equations. But it works because it resonates with our souls.

The philosopher Leibniz described music as “the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.” But music has a way of moving more than just our feet to the beat of a song. It stirs our emotions. Tradition has it that when Handel was composing his epic Messiah, one of his servants walked in on him while he was writing the famous “Hallelujah Chorus.” The composer was weeping.

Handel is said to have remarked, “I do believe I’ve seen the gates of Heaven.”

Beauty Inspires Us

The beauty of a rainbow inspires us
Photo by Frans Van Heerden

The God-glorifying nature of music is just one of the many ways beauty is manifested in our world. The symmetry, form, and vivid colors of a butterfly enchant us. We marvel at the complexion and immensity of a rainbow, or at the power and majesty of a grand landscape.

These things elicit involuntary reactions in us when we experience them. They can take our breath away. They can make our feet start tapping. They can bring us to tears. They are the kinds of things that add richness and depth to our lives.

Reproducing Beauty

We discover beauty in our world and then try to reproduce it in the things we create. And we long to create things because we are made in the image of the ultimate Creator. Part of what it means to be “made in the image of God” is that we attempt to mimic Him. And when we’re successful, the results are stunning.

Today, we are beginning to use the digital capabilities we have discovered in biology to revolutionize our computers. We design airplanes based on the features we see in birds. We write literature and poetry that elevates our aspirations and invokes the divine. We paint landscapes to reflect the majesty of the world we live in.

We build cathedrals that point to the heavens.

And that’s the point.

Beauty Transcends Us

This all makes sense inside the Christian worldview because beauty is just another form of truth. And like truth itself, we don’t make it up. It draws us in. The character of God is the common reality that explains the trinity of truth, goodness, and beauty. They are the essence, character, and reflection of Him.

Beauty is not subjective. It’s part of the fabric of the universe. It inspires us to think outside ourselves.

 

Bob Perry is a Christian apologetics writer, teacher, and speaker who blogs about Christianity and the culture at truehorizon.org. He is a Contributing Writer for the Christian Research Journal and has also been published in Touchstone, and Salvo. Bob is a professional aviator with 37 years of military and commercial flying experience. He has a B.S., Aerospace Engineering from the U. S. Naval Academy, and a M.A., Christian Apologetics from Biola University. He has been married to his high school sweetheart since 1985. They have five grown sons.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/30TeZzO

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Give Credit Where Credit Is Due

Give Credit Where Credit Is Due

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By Alex McElroy

I’ve never been much of an artist. I do, however, have great respect for those that possess the skill and patience to create a masterpiece. In fact, I admire anyone that can draw anything beyond a stick figure. I remember when I was growing up, my brother would draw figures from comic books, and my best drawings would pale in comparison. My wife is an amazing artist as well, and I now see similar talents in my daughter. I have to give credit where credit is due.

Often when you are in the presence of a great work of art or anything that has been finely made, you stand in awe. However, we are not simply in awe of what was made but that someone was able to conceive of and make it. The magnificence of the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel is not the details in the design of what has been painted but in the fact that Michelangelo had the ability to paint such details.

To not give credit to Michelangelo is a lesser example of not giving credit to the designer of everything… including Michelangelo. We also see evidence of design in ourselves, on the earth and in the universe. We all see it, but we don’t all give credit to whom it is due. To acknowledge a work of art while ignoring the artist is disrespectful. To benefit from the works of the ultimate artist and not give Him credit is to worship the creation while ignoring the Creator. We have a purpose precisely because the ultimate designer has purposefully designed us.

Credit for making

When we see elements of design, we always understand that a designer initiated the process. In 1953 Francis Crick helped discover DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), the molecular building blocks of life. DNA is the most complex system of message every composed. There are five levels of information transmission (statistics, cosyntics, semantics, pragmatics, and apobetics). The highest level, apobetics, involves requests with an expectation of a response. DNA is information at the highest level. In other words, there is a clear design to DNA. To assume that this level of information could be achieved randomly or as a result of impersonal, non-communicative physical forces seems illogical. It seems, in that case, we would not be giving credit to whom it is due.

In Life Itself, Francis Crick proposed that some form of primordial life was shipped to the earth billions of years ago in spaceships—by supposedly ‘more evolved’ (therefore advanced) alien beings. Unfortunately, that theory still begs the question – who created the aliens? When it comes to how we’re made, maybe there is someone else we should be giving credit to.

Credit for morality

When we are trying to understand objective truths, it is helpful to note that they usually exist through their opposite. For example, we know what left is because we know what right is. Almost everyone agrees that true evil does exist. This implies that true good must exist. For those that don’t believe in God, where do you root this idea of objective good? C.S. Lewis, who was an atheist and called himself ‘England’s most reluctant convert,’ wrote, “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?”

If moral values originate from humans, they will fluctuate with the whims and preferences of humans – thereby making them subjective. If there is objective evil, then there is an objective moral law. If that is true, then there is an objective moral law-giver – God. And He deserves the credit for the moral standard that we seek to live by.

Credit for meaning

If we are the product of time plus matter plus chance, then life has no meaning. However, everything about how we live and the fact that we are able to live points to the fact that life does have meaning. It behooves us to give credit to the source of that meaning.

The worldview we espouse will, by and large, determine our understanding of the meaning of life itself. This is important because if life has no ultimate purpose, then neither do you or I. In that case; there would be no purpose to fulfill, assignment to complete, or reason to exist. Once you are clear about your origin, you can gain clarity on your purpose. Once you gain clarity on your purpose, you gain clarity on where you’re going. That clarity comes from determining what is true and by giving credit to the source of all truth.

 

Alex McElroy is an international speaker, author, blogger, leadership advisor, and the Pastor of Education at New Life Covenant Southeast Church, with over 20,000 members led by Pastor John F. Hannah. Alex has been serving in both youth and teaching ministries at New Life for over 12 years. In his role, he teaches Discipleship class designed for adults to learn, fellowship, and grow in their faith within a small group setting. Alex also trains hundreds of teachers and ministers to deliver lessons in proper lifestyle, Biblical study, focused preparation, and Apologetics in order to maximize their effectiveness in and for the Kingdom of God.

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

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