2. Does God Exist? Archives | CrossExamined.org - Christian Apologetics Resources

In 2013, I had the privilege of participating in both a written and panel dialog/debate with K. Scott Oliphint of Westminster Seminary and Jason Lisle founder of the Biblical Science Institute. Oliphint is a theologian and Lisle is an astrophysicist. Both are proponents of the apologetic method of Presuppositionalism in the tradition of Cornelius Van Til.

Recently a student of mine asked me how I would respond to one of Jason Lisle’s challenges to me.

I contend that all knowledge begins in the senses and is completed in the intellect.

(Lest the reader misunderstand what I specifically mean by my use of the term ‘knowledge’ in this context, he is encouraged to read my blog article titled “Discussing Aquinas” here.) Lisle asked:

“How does he know that he’s not in the ‘Matrix’ and that his sensory experiences have nothing to do with the real world?”[1]

In helping the student by answering Lisle’s question directly, I also wanted to take the occasion to set Lisle’s question in a broader philosophical context to see how his question conceals certain philosophical assumptions that need to be surfaced and examined.

Lisle’s question is ultimately impossible. I claim that it is undeniable that one can know reality through the sensory faculties—seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling. The reader should note the subtle shift here. Above, I said that all knowledge begins in the senses. Lisle’s challenge is in effect asking how any knowledge can arise from the senses. More to the point, Lisle is asking how I can know that my senses are reliable—how can I “know” that I “know.” Lisle’s challenge is less complicated to answer than my original contention is to defend. I will take the less complicated route here. It remains that the fact that any knowledge can arise from the senses is a necessary condition for the claim that all knowledge arises from the senses (and is completed in the intellect).[2]

The most common responses or challenges to my claim are this one that Lisle poses (how do you know your senses are reliable?) and questions to the effect of how can one acquire knowledge about non-physical truths like logic, morality, metaphysics, and God by means of the senses.

He makes the charge (in teeing up his challenge) that I have “tacitly presupposed (among other things) that our senses correspond to reality.”[3] As we shall see, I have done no such thing.

Lisle’s question implies that I could know that I know reality only if I know that my senses are reliable. Let’s momentarily grant his point for the sake of argument. I’ll come back to answer it directly. For now, consider what questions one would need to ask about Lisle’s challenge. Since my senses are themselves part of reality, how could I know that my senses are reliable when I claim that it is in them that my knowledge of reality has its origin? In other words, whatever means (be they other faculties besides the sensory faculties or something else) I use to deliver to me the conclusion that my senses are reliable, I would then have to ask how I know that this means was itself reliable. By whatever means #2 I might offer as to how I would answer that, how could I know means #2 is reliable when it tells me that the first means was reliable in telling me that my senses were reliable in telling me about reality? If I posit means #3 to tell me that means #2 is reliable when it tells me that the first means is reliable when it tells me that my senses are reliable in telling me what reality is, then ….

You get the picture. You have an infinite regress. Lisle thinks that he doesn’t have an infinite regress because he thinks he knows that God has told him about reality (or, more strictly, that God has told him that his senses are reliable). But how does Lisle know that God told him that? He thinks it’s because he has the Bible. He says, “Sensory experience is only reliable if our senses correspond to reality; and only the Christian worldview can rationally justify this.”[4] Lisle goes on, “Presuppositional apologetics is the method of defending the Christian faith that relies on the Bible as the supreme authority in all matters.”[5] But how can Lisle know that the book he’s referring to is a Bible and that the words he’s reading off the page are what he thinks they are? Isn’t Lisle using his eyes to read his Bible? But how can Lisle know that his eyes are telling him the truth of what’s written there, or, for that matter, whether there’s anything written at all? He can’t use the conclusions he gets from what his eyes are telling him he’s reading in the Bible to give him the certainty that he’s reading a Bible that tells him that he’s reading a message from God that is telling him that his eyes are reliable. It’s a vacuous, vicious circular argument.

Surprisingly, Lisle gladly acknowledges that his position is circular, though he will deny that it either vacuous or vicious. He seems to think he’s on to something when he says:

“It may surprise some people to learn that circular reasoning is actually logically valid.”[6]

But this is a trivial observation about validity. It would not surprise anyone with a basic understanding in formal logic. By definition, an argument is valid just in case it is impossible for the argument to have all true premises and a false conclusion.[7] This allows one to prove an argument is valid by showing how it would be impossible for a given argument to have a false conclusion where all the premises are true.

Consider this in light of what it is to be circular. A circular argument is one where the conclusion of the argument is the same as one of the premises in the argument. Being the same would mean that the conclusion and the premise would have the same truth value. If the conclusion is true, then the premise that makes the same claim as the conclusion would also be true. If the conclusion is false, then the premise that makes the same claim as the conclusion would also be false. Note, therefore, how this makes it impossible for a circular argument to be invalid. If the conclusion was false (to apply the test for invalidity by having a false conclusion with all true premises), then the premise to which it is identical would have to be false. Thus, it would be impossible for the argument to be rendered invalid since a false conclusion would necessitate one false premise (since they affirm the same thing and, thus, have the same truth value). Since such an argument cannot be rendered invalid, it is proven to be valid.

As it turns out, to point out that a circular argument is valid is to say nothing particularly significant about the argument.

Neither is it saying anything important about circularity. After all, any argument that has at least one premise that is a contradiction could not fulfill the conditions of invalidity either. This means that any argument that has a contradictory premise is valid.[8] Suppose someone accused Lisle of having a premise in his argument for Presuppositionalism that was a contradiction. How silly would it sound for Lisle to respond “It may surprise some people to learn that any argument where one of the premises is a contradiction is actually logically valid!” If Lisle is interested in putting forth a cogent deductive argument for his Presuppositionalism, what really matters is not merely whether the argument is valid, but whether the argument is sound—a valid argument with all true premises.

Having made his relatively unimportant comment about circularity and validity, Lisle then retorts that every epistemology is circular and proceeds to try to show why his circularity is not vacuous while the circularity of all other epistemologies is vacuous. He comments,

“The notion that circular reasoning is always wrong reveals a bit of philosophical naivety. In fact, all ultimate standards must be defended in a somewhat circular way (by a transcendental argument).”[9]

In this he is echoing what his presuppositional mentors have directed. Van Til says,

“To admit one’s own presuppositions and to point out the presuppositions of others is, therefore, to maintain that all reasoning is, in the nature of the case, circular reasoning. The starting point, the method, and the conclusion are always involved in one another.”[10]

Greg Bahnsen carries on Van Til’s position.

“So if, when it comes to the fundamental question of Christian faith, arguments are ultimately circular (since metaphysics and epistemology depend on one another), then the matter reduces to one of submission or rebellion to the authority of the revealed God. … Hence a Christian’s apologetical argument (working on a transcendental level) will finally be circular …”[11]

Scott Oliphint is right in line with the presuppositional orthodoxy.

“I admitted to him that I certainly was arguing in (some kind of) a circle. … Then I made clear to the other presenters that they were all asking that their own views, based on their own reasoning and sources, be accepted as true. In every case, I said, every other presenter appealed to his own final authority. ‘So, ‘ I asked, ‘on what basis should I accept your circle over mine?’”[12]

Are the Presuppositionalists right in maintaining that all reasoning is circular? No, they are not. Before I am done, I will explain why. For now, I should like to turn my focus back to the question at hand. In reading Presuppositionalists, I have discovered how often it is that they offer their Presuppositionalism as the only “solution” to philosophical problems that arise (for the most part) out of modern and contemporary philosophy (i.e., from the 17th century onward). By offering their Presuppositionalism as the “answer” to these problems, they show their tacit commitment to the assumptions of the very philosophy that created the problems in the first place. In Part Two of this article, I will, God willing, explore several of these philosophical problems.

Such a concession to the assumptions of modern and contemporary philosophy is never more evident than with Lisle’s challenge to me. He (perhaps unwittingly) has bought into the philosophical method of critical realism.[13] Critical realism is the approach to epistemology that tries to maintain the conclusions of philosophical realism (we will see in a moment what philosophical realism is) with the methods of critical philosophy (the otherwise legitimate expectation philosophers have of reasons or arguments demonstrating philosophical conclusions).

The term “realism” and its cognates have several different usages.

A person who sees himself as one who avoids romantic delusions about his circumstances or about the world might call himself a realist. In philosophy, the term is used in two very important yet distinct ways, only one of which concerns me here. One way has to do with whether one grants the reality of “universals” and, if so, how one regards the nature of a universal, especially in relation to “particulars.”[14] The other use has to do with whether one maintains that there is a physical world that exists external to us as knowers and that this world can be known by us as humans.

This kind of realist would deny that the world around us is somehow largely or entirely the ideas in our own minds (as opposed to physical objects external to our minds) and/or is the result of God’s imposing upon our minds the ideas out of which that world is constituted. These are variations upon the view called Idealism. Critical realism maintains that philosophy is obligated to “prove” or “justify” its claims that there is a world external to us as knowers. It insists that philosophical realists must somehow “prove” or “justify” philosophical realism; that is, that one must “prove” or “justify” the claim that one is not in the Matrix. Lisle’s challenge is quintessential critical realism.

Questions that have occupied philosophical realists through the millennia aim at exploring how it is that we know this external world.

Is it partly or entirely through the senses? Are there some aspects of the external world that can be accessed only through the mind with the faculty of intuition? Are there certain innate ideas that assist us in knowing some of the external world? Are there other options?

Notice what the philosophers are not asking or, at least, should not be asking if they are philosophical realists. They are not asking whether we know reality. Instead, they are asking how we know reality. My own view goes by different names, almost all of which employ the term ‘realism’.

It is a tradition arising from Aristotle (385-323 BC) and which finds its greatest expression in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). One will find a number of students of Aquinas scattered throughout the philosophical world. The number is perhaps small relative to those philosophers who reject Aquinas’s thinking. This is not to say, however, that all of those philosophers who reject Aquinas’s thinking would necessarily reject philosophical realism. The number is even smaller within Protestant Christianity and is very close to non-existence with evangelical Christianity.

My seminary, Southern Evangelical Seminary, is the only evangelical seminary in the world of which I am aware that deliberately embraces Thomistic philosophy.

The version of philosophical realism in this Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition has been called Moderate Realism,[15] Classical Realism, Scholastic Realism,[16] and Thomistic (or Thomist) Realism. Sometimes it goes by the simpler moniker of Thomism.

My direct answer to Lisle is to deny the coherency of his question. The Thomist—indeed, I would insist every “normal” person—already knows he’s not in the Matrix. The only reason the movie plot works is because the movie viewer is in the theatre and not in the movie itself. The very fact that we are in a world not of our own making that exists external to us as knowers is undeniably self-evident. To try to “prove” that self-evident reality, is to set up a process that inevitably makes the proof impossible. Historian of philosophy Etienne Gilson puts it deftly.

After passing twenty centuries of the very model of those self‑evident facts that only a madman would ever dream of doubting, the existence of the external world finally received its metaphysical demonstration from Descartes. Yet no sooner had he demonstrated the existence of the external world than his disciples realized that, not only was his proof worthless, but the very principles which made such a demonstration necessary at the same time rendered the attempted proof impossible.[17]

Lisle’s challenge is actually begging the question in favor of Idealism against Realism. As humans, we encounter the existing things of the external world by means of the senses. That world is reality (though, as Christians, we know that’s not all there is in reality). It is incoherent to demand that the knower somehow get back behind the sensible reality we know, and from there put together some “proof” or “argument” which arrives at the conclusion that there’s an external world out there that he knows. To put it more facetiously, if the world of sensible objects right in front of me is not enough for me to know that it’s there, then how can any argument about the sensible world be more compelling? The argument is itself one step removed from the world. And, as I argued above, from what “reality” could that argument arise that already doesn’t employ the very faculties to know it, for whose reliability Lisle demands a proof? It should be clear why Lisle’s Presuppositionalism is completely inadequate. If it is not clear, I shall, God willing, expand on my response as I explore in Part Two some of the other philosophical assumptions that Presuppositionalists make in laying out and defending their Presuppositionalism.

To complete my thoughts about circularity, Van Til et al. are certainly wrong in their contention that all reasoning is circular.

The mistake they make is assuming that reasoning starts with presuppositions (or assumptions, to use Bahnsen’s term). But human reasoning does not start with assumptions or presuppositions. These are all cognitive terms having to do with the activity of the intellect. But the intellect has to have some object to know. We don’t merely begin reasoning with reasoning itself. Instead, we begin reasoning with our encounter with the objective, sensible world. The things we encounter in the objective, sensible world are not propositions or assumptions or presuppositions. Rather, we encounter things—people, dogs, trees, etc. But the conclusion of an argument is a proposition.

A proposition is about reality. It is not, as a proposition, itself external reality.

Thus, the starting point of reasoning is not the same as the conclusion of the reasoning. It is manifest that for philosophical realists like Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas there is no circularity in their overall epistemology.

Presuppositionalists think that reasoning is circular largely because, when they think of epistemology, they think of it in the same terms that many modern and contemporary philosophers define the task of knowing. Modern (and, more so, contemporary) philosophers often couch knowing questions fundamentally along the contours of cognitive elements (propositions; assumptions; beliefs; logic) or consciousness elements (properties; qualia; thoughts, etc.). In contrast, the classical philosophy of Aristotle will define knowledge as beginning with the formal identity of the knower (via the intellect) and the known (without leaving out, when necessary and where appropriate, the cognitive and consciousness elements listed). Here, ‘formally’ means “employing the metaphysical aspect of the Form of sensible objects.” The specter of circularity comes up precisely because the elements according to which some philosophers cash out knowledge are themselves elements of the knowing process, without regard to factoring in the metaphysics of what it is to be a knower and what it is to be a known. As long as epistemology tries to “justify” itself only in terms of itself, it can hardly avoid being circular in some way. This the Thomistic model does not do.

While Lisle does not raise the following objection, I think it is important to deal with it nonetheless. It will do no good for someone to insist that we need a “proof” of the reliability of our senses since there are particular examples where our senses fail to tell us accurately what’s going on in the world.[18] Optical illusions can be known to be illusions only because we know the truth about a matter to which the illusion stands in contrast. If I think I see a pool of water ahead in the desert only to discover that it was a mirage, what were the means by which I discovered that it wasn’t really a pool of water after all? If everything is an illusion (or, as some have put it, if everything is a dream (Lisle’s Matrix challenge)) then the word ‘illusion’ doesn’t mean anything.

If one claims that everything he experiences is a dream, he has just exchanged the term ‘real’ for the term ‘dream’.

His dream is just what the rest of us call real. A dream is a dream only because it is in contrast to the real.[19] Without that contrast, one is committing what is known as the fallacy of lost contrast. Neither challenge—(1) challenging the reliability of the senses by offering a particular instance where the senses fail to tell us the truth about a situation or (2) globally challenging the reliability of the senses—offers any solace for the anti-realist or the Presuppositionalist.

While some of these types of challenges from the Presuppositionalist might have some force against modern and contemporary versions of empiricism, they are completely irrelevant to the classical empiricism of Aristotle and Aquinas. All the less are they demonstrations of the viability of Presuppositionalism.

References

[1] Jason Lisle, “Young Earth Presuppositionalism,” Christian Apologetics Journal 11, no. 2 (Fall 2013): 110, available at http://richardghowe.com/index_htm_files/CAJPresuppositionalism.pdf, accessed 06/08/20.

[2] In fairness to me, one should note that my specific claim to which Lisle was responding was: “As a Classical (or Scholastic) Realist I would submit that our sensory experiences of reality also deliver to us metaphysical truths.” [Richard G. Howe, “Classical Apologetics and Creationism,” Christian Apologetics Journal 11, no. 2 (Fall 2013): 93] This should allow me to confine my thoughts here to the weaker of the two claims. It remains for another occasion to address my contention about that we can know metaphysical truths from sensory experiences.

[3] Jason Lisle, “Presuppositional Reply,” Christian Apologetics Journal 11, no. 2 (Fall 2013): 110.

[4] Jason Lisle, “Presuppositional Reply,” 110.

[5] Jason Lisle, “Young Earth Presuppositionalism,” 65.

[6] Lisle, “Young Earth Presuppositionalism,” 80.

[7] Another way to say this is an argument is valid when the truth of the premises necessitates the truth of the conclusion. For a valid argument, if the premises are true, the conclusion has to be true.

[8] “Any argument at least one of whose premises is a contradiction is necessarily valid.” Robert Baum, Logic (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1975), 191.

[9] Lisle, “Young Earth Presuppositionalism,” 81.

[10] Cornelius Van Til, Apologetics (unpublished syllabus), “IV – The Problem of Method,” p. 62, emphasis in original.

[11] Greg Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended (Power Springs: American Vision Presuppositionalists; Nacogdoches: Covenant Media Press, 2008), 86.

[12] K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith (Wheaton: Crossway, 2013), 24.

[13] For a treatment critical realism, see Etienne Gilson, Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge, trans. by Mark A. Wauck, (San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1986).

[14] An example of a universal is vividly displayed in the Nuremburg Trials. The justices in the trials were from the Soviet Union, France, the UK, and the US. The Nazi defendants could not be tried on the basis of the laws of these nations since they were not citizens of these nations. Neither could the Nazi defendants be tried on the basis of German law since none of their atrocities of the holocaust were in violation of German law. Instead, the Nazi defendants were indicted as having committed “crimes against humanity.” One would need to ask exactly what is a “humanity.” Is it male or female? Is it white, black, or some other race? Is it young or old? Is it rich or poor? Is it sick or well? One can see that “humanity” is none of the particular things. Instead, “humanity” is what philosophers call a universal. The question then is this: is the universal “humanity” real or not real in any meaningful sense of the term ‘real’? If you say that it is not real in any meaningful sense of the term ‘real’ (perhaps because you say it is nothing more than a concept in the mind), then how can one possibly commit a crime against it? If you say that it is real in some meaningful sense of the term ‘real’, then I submit that your understanding of the nature of the reality of that universal is likely going to be somewhere along the lines of the thinking of Plato or somewhere along the lines of the thinking of Aristotle—two of the most significant philosophers whose philosophy has help forge the contours of Western civilization. I am indebted to philosopher Joseph Koterski for this illustration from his lecture “Natural Law and Human Nature” in The Great Courses audio series.

[15] The ‘moderate’ of moderate realism comes from the fact that Aristotle’s view of universals falls between the extreme realism of Plato and the anti-realism of later philosophy.

[16] I am indebted to philosopher Edward Feser for this expression. It seeks to distinguish Thomas Aquinas’s view of universals from that of Aristotle’s regarding how universals are understood vis-à-vis the God of Christianity and the Christian doctrine of creation.

[17] Etienne Gilson, Thomist Realism, p. 27. For a scaled-down version of Gilson’s point in this work, see his Methodical Realism, trans. Philip Trower (Front Royal: Christendom Press, 1990). Reprinted Methodical Realism: A Primer for Beginning Realists (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011).

[18] For a treatment of how epistemologies throughout history have sought to account for error in light of their accounts of knowledge, see Leo W. Keeler, The Problem of Error from Plato to Kant: A Historical and Critical Study. (Rome: Apud Aedes Pontificiae Universitatis Gregorianae, 1934). For a treatment of the issue within the context of Thomistic Realism, see Francis H. Parker, “On the Being of Falsity,” in Philosophy of Knowledge: Selected Readings. (Chicago: J. B. Lippincott, 1960): 290-316.

[19] I don’t mean here that there no sense in which a dream, as a dream, is real. My dream is real in a way that the dream of a fictional character in a novel is not. Rather, I’m saying that a dream about, for example, sunning on the beach is not the same as actually sunning on the beach.

Does The Big Bang Require An Absolute Beginning To The Universe?

2. Does God Exist?

By Luke Nix

Has Dr. Sean Carroll escaped the theistic implications of the Big Bang?

Does The Universe Have A Cause?

One of the most popular arguments for God’s existence is the argument from the beginning of the universe. It goes like this:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

2. The universe has a beginning

3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

That conclusion serves as a springboard to identify that the cause of the universe must be timeless, spaceless, and possess immense causal power. When combined with other scientific observations of the universe, it is implied that this cause additionally is both intelligent and personal. The argument from the beginning of the universe provides powerful evidence that God is the Cause of the universe.

Because this argument’s reasoning is valid and its conclusion strongly implies theism, atheists commonly attack the argument by denying one of its premises: namely, the second one, that the universe had a beginning. Dr. Sean Carroll is one such atheist. He attempts to escape the theistic implications of the beginning of the universe without denying the (appearance of a) beginning of the universe. A friend presented to me this slideshow from Dr. Carroll not too long ago:

What We (Don’t) Know About The Beginning Of The Universe

What We Don’t Know

In this presentation, Dr. Carroll points to the reality that scientists can peer all the way back into the history of the universe except for the precious few moments after the cosmic creation event that we call the “big bang.” He appeals to this unknown epoch of time to claim that it is illegitimate to ask if the universe had a beginning. But rather he says that the question should be “is it plausible that the laws of physics allow for a universe with a beginning?” His answer is “yes, the laws of physics do allow for a universe with a beginning.” This means that Dr. Carroll is positing that the laws of physics exist outside and independent of this universe, exist eternally, and permit the appearance of a universe that has a beginning (our universe).

Already, Dr. Carroll has claimed that the super-natural exists- the necessary and inescapable implication of the argument from the beginning of the universe. His view is that there is something that exists eternally beyond this universe, so while he may be an atheist, he is still a super-naturalist. This is important to keep in mind through the rest of this discussion.

Because super-natural laws of physics could exist eternally, they permit an eternally existent reality (one with no beginning and no need for a Cause). So, Dr. Carroll posits that the only question we have is, “what is the nature of that eternal reality that allows for a beginning of the universe we live in?” He presents several different models and offers that one of these or a yet-to-be-theorized model could also be on the table.

If Dr. Carroll is sound in his reasoning, the major implication here is that the universe’s creation at the big bang does not necessarily posit a Creator of physical reality. And on first glance, it appears that Dr. Carroll has been successful in his attempted undermining of the argument from the beginning of the universe for God’s existence. For those who are not familiar with the argument from the beginning, please take a few minutes to watch this video from Reasonable Faith:

No Time, But Time

With all due respect to Dr. Carroll as a theoretical quantum physicist, he is not a philosopher and makes three elementary mistakes in his argument. Each mistake individually undermines his conclusion.

First, his logic allows him to argue from the plausibility of an eternal physical reality permitted by super-natural laws of physics to the plausibility of an eternal physical reality. Here is his argument formalized:

1. The reality that exists can be fully described by super-natural laws of physics (sans time).
2. The super-natural laws of physics (sans time) allow for an eternal reality.
3. Therefore, the reality that exists allows for an eternal reality.
The parenthetical phrase is quite important to this argument because Dr. Carroll must grant that time, as we experience it, began to exist with the big bang. However, he cautions the viewer in Slide 8, that “there was an initial moment — a time before which there was no time” (emphasis added). By that he is saying that there is a super-natural time or another dimension of time. The time that we experience exists within this other time, and the time that we experience had a beginning within this other time.

It is this super-natural time that serves as the defeater for both premises of his argument (because both premises rely on it). Considering the fact that his laws of physics exist outside of this universe, they are bound by this super-natural time. An eternal reality requires a series of an infinite number of past moments. The discovery that our universe has a beginning places a hard stop on the number of past moments, so our universe is demonstrably not eternal and has a definite beginning. Dr. Carroll, though, attempts to escape a beginning to all physical reality by positing this super-natural time.

It is this super-natural time that he is claiming to be eternal- with an infinite number of past moments already traversed and an infinite number of future moments yet to be traversed. But he has a problem. An actual infinity is asymptotic, meaning that infinity is a theoretical boundary that is approached but never reached. This is a feature of mathematics that must also exist outside our universe to constrain the laws of physics which Dr. Carroll already assumed exist outside our universe. If the moments in this super-natural time can be counted using numbers, mathematics necessarily constrains this super-natural time, as well. If Dr. Carroll’s super-natural time is past-eternal, then an infinite number of moments have happened. But because it is a necessary feature of mathematics that an actual infinite number is impossible to reach, it is also impossible that an infinite number of moments have happened. Thus it is impossible that supernatural reality is infinite into the past no matter what kind of time is posited. Without the greater reality existing into the infinite past, it is not eternally existent, thus it also had a beginning.

Dr. Carroll knows that time, as we experience it in this universe, comes to an absolute beginning; however, he does not seem to recognize that the laws of physics are not the only thing that cause the present time to come to an absolute beginning- mathematics does as well. The laws of physics, that govern the expansion of our universe, just dictate where along the time-line that absolute beginning is located for our universe (approximately 13.7 billion years ago). All he has done by positing a super-natural time is to move the problem back one step. The super-natural time, though not limited by the laws of physics that govern our universe (or the super-natural yet physical reality of Dr. Carroll), is constrained by mathematics, which necessarily forces that super-natural time to an absolute beginning.

Dr. Carroll’s first philosophical mistake is that he has undermined both of his own premises as he is making his argument for his conclusion. He has attempted to escape a necessary implication of time by positing another type of time, but even that type of time is stuck with the necessary implication he is trying to avoid. Without the truth of his two premises, his conclusion does not follow. Not only that, the conclusion that he is trying to undermine (that physical reality had a beginning) is only delayed by one step, but it still is necessarily true.

Cherry-Picking

Dr. Carroll posits that while we may not know what kind of universe we live in, it is some kind of eternal universe where time (in one sense or another) exists in the infinite past. Dr. Carroll presents the naturalist with many options to choose from or they are permitted to suspend their choice for a better model: cyclic universes, hibernating universes, reproducing universes, and time-symmetric multiverses.

All of these cosmologies have one feature in common that, if impossible, makes them all impossible (regardless of which one you wish to choose). This feature is the past series of infinite moments that was demonstrated as impossible above. Even if the naturalist were to suspend their commitment to a particular model, they have not suspended their commitment to a past series of an infinite number of moments. Thus, they are still committing themselves to an impossibility.

Now, Dr. Carroll uses the unknown of the initial moments of the universe to argue that it is possible at this universe is part of a larger, eternal reality. But this is not a matter of epistemology (what we have not yet discovered, in this case) but a matter of ontology (what is impossible). What is impossible (ontology) cannot be discovered (epistemology). Epistemology is necessarily confined by ontology. What is possible to be known is necessarily limited by what is impossible to exist. Dr. Carroll has taken only a portion of the full evidential base of reality to make his case and has ignored (or is ignorant of the implications of) the larger evidential base. (The larger evidential base that I am referring to is that of the constraints on reality by mathematics explained above).

His second error is that he has cherry-picked the evidence of the flexibility of laws of physics in support of his view and ignored the evidence of constraints of mathematics that would defeat his view.

God of the Gaps?

According to Dr. Carroll, the options to explain our universe’s beginning are endless, so why must we feel committed to choosing God? This would be a classic example of god-of-the-gaps reasoning. An <option>-of-the-gaps reasoning is an improper application of the process of elimination. The process of elimination is an evidential knock-out exercise. You start with many options on the table of possibility and remove them based upon their impossibility of explaining the evidence available. If you are to conclude that one option is correct without having logically removed the other options, then you have committed an <option>-of-the-gaps fallacy. However, if you have knocked-out the other options based upon the evidence, then the conclusion that the remaining one is possible (or even true) is logical, and no fallacy has been committed. All sorts of diagnosticians use this reasoning method in their work to identify causes of problems and resolve them: computer technicians, auto mechanics, medical doctors, etc.

Dr. Carroll presents several eternal cosmologies (super-natural but physical realities) as being on the table, which they are, until we evaluate them evidentially based upon the nature of mathematics. Once mathematics is brought to bear upon the options on the table, all eternal cosmologies are logically (thus legitimately) knocked out and removed from the table of options. Thus, only cosmologies with a beginning still exist on the table of possibility.

Dr. Carroll has not evidentially eliminated cosmologies with a beginning from the table, and he has concluded that an eternal cosmology is correct. An “eternal universe-of-the-gaps” fallacy has been offered by Dr. Carroll as an alternative to the sound argument from the universe’s beginning for God’s existence. Yet the theist has evidentially and logically removed eternal cosmologies from the table of options, thus they are not committing a “beginning/god-of-the-gaps fallacy” when they conclude that all physical reality had an ultimate beginning.

Contrary to Dr. Carroll’s claims, his critics have not committed an <option>-of-the-gaps fallacy by not removing other options from the table legitimately; it is Dr. Carroll who has not evidentially or logically removed an ultimate beginning to reality from the table, thus he is the party that is guilty of his own accusation- the commission of an <option>-of-the-gaps fallacy- His third mistake.

“Proof of the beginning of time probably ranks as the most theologically significant theorem. This great significance arises from the theorem establishing that the universe must be caused by some Entity capable of creating the universe entirely independent of space and time. Such an entity matches the attributes of the God of the Bible…”- Hugh Ross

A Way of Escape: Denying Logic

A way to avoid these necessary implications, though, is to deny that logic (thus denying mathematics as well) and these philosophical categories exist either prior to the big bang or without the universe is to ultimately destroy any foundation by which to ground or govern ANY quantum (physical) and/or metaphysical (non-physical, including natural or super-natural) causal activity prior to the big bang and/or outside this universe. This move would rule out ALL causes, which would mean that Dr. Carroll must offer a model for the cause of the big bang and/or origin of the singularity with the non-existence of logic, mathematics and causes.

And let’s make this just a bit more difficult for Dr. Carroll: in order for logic and mathematics to exist, they must have a foundation outside of even his super-natural reality for his super-natural reality to be governed by them. God is the only source of such a foundation, so even if Dr. Carroll was correct that a supernatural reality does exist, God is still necessary and cannot be logically escaped. For more on this, please check out my posts “6 Ways Atheism Is A Science Stopper” and “The Multiverse Instead of God?: Four Philosophical Problems.”

Conclusion

So, Dr. Carroll is correct that we do not know those early moments of the universe. But that does not give us a reason to think that God is not necessary. What we know from other knowledge disciplines simply defeats Dr. Carroll’s attempts to escape the God of the Bible. Because of what we know from the other knowledge disciplines, his appeals to unknown features of reality simply do not help his conclusion. The fact that he has to ignore these other knowledge disciplines (which ironically ground his own discipline) in order to make his case is telling. Dr. Hugh Ross put it quite nicely in his book “The Creator and the Cosmos: How The Latest Scientific Discoveries Reveal God“:

Evidence in the Flesh for Apologetics

2. Does God Exist?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Dawn Simon

I was raised in a family and a community where religious beliefs were considered personal and virtually never discussed. I attended a Catholic grade school and continued with religion classes through high school. I was a good student and knew what I was supposed to believe – but no matter how hard I tried, I just could not convince myself that any of it was true.

I had a long list of questions but mostly kept those to myself. I was pretty sure that these doubts made me a bad person and I was not eager to advertise this fact. The few times I did seek help left me feeling that there were no answers to my questions. I developed an idea that belief in God was some sort of magical thinking – and while I too desperately wanted this magic, it clearly was not meant for me. Another difficulty I faced was that believers always seemed so sure about their faith. I am not a person who is certain about anything – this too made me think that Christianity – or faith of any kind was not for me.

Moving ahead to my time now in Kearney, Nebraska – I moved here in 2009 and met Tim Stratton a few years later when he was in the early stages of developing his FreeThinking Argument for the existence of God. At this time, there was a fair bit of noise being made in the local newspaper about issues related to evolution and it was attracting attention at work. Because of this I started regularly reading the opinion pieces, as well as associated comments. The name Tim Stratton appeared frequently. To be clear, I did not agree with a single thing he wrote. However, he was unfailingly kind, whereas some people on “my side” were behaving atrociously. This was the first thing I noticed about Tim – and if not for that, I truly might still be an atheist today.

I was able to meet Tim in person at a local public outreach event about evolution. This was a brief meeting – but a short time later he added me as a Facebook friend. This is when the arguing started in earnest (and to be honest has not completely ceased to this day – we just argue about different things now). For a period of about two months, we exchanged messages almost daily that initially were centered on his FreeThinking Argument for the Existence of God. Those discussions could probably best be summarized as exchanges where I would tell him I was not convinced of some specific point (which is my default position) and then Tim would both encourage me and try to convince me. If you know either of us, you already know that these were not short discussions.

About a month into this I was forced to admit — contra many scientifically-minded atheists — that while I was not certain, I did think humans possessed libertarian free will. It is worth noting here that in my discussions with Tim, I had already been relieved of the notion that one needed to be absolutely certain to believe something was true. The natural extension of this was that if I believed I had free will, according to Tim’s argument (which despite my best efforts seemed strong) meant I also believed in God. This realization took my breath away (and the memory of it still does the same) – I know exactly where I was and what I was doing when for the first time in my life I felt like God was talking directly to me.

This was just the beginning though – it took at least 6 months more before I called myself a Christian (Mike Licona’s work on the historical Resurrection eventually sealed the deal). It was an incredibly tumultuous time in my life. I was starting to really believe that Christianity was probably true and while part of me found that exciting, a bigger part was truly terrified at the prospect. Tim helped me at every single step of the way – I have countless stories of doubts and fears that he helped me through with reason and kindness.

During this time, I could not help but compare my conversion story to that of others – and I will admit I found it frustrating. Tim would tell me about other people he had helped and how in a 24-hour period they accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. It was hard for me to understand how this was possible and to be honest, I didn’t think it was fair. Why was it so much work for me? What I came to realize – surely with God’s help – was that my conversion story had to be different because of how I am wired. If God had appeared to me in the flesh, I am certain I would be more convinced of a brain tumor than God’s existence. Reason and argument was the only way it could work for me. I am not proud of that, but it is the truth. I am profoundly grateful that God is able to reach people in a myriad of ways – and specifically that he used Tim and apologetics to reach me.

What Does Thermodynamics Have To Do With The Origin Of The Universe?

2. Does God Exist?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Bob Perry

Big Bang cosmology isn’t the only scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning. There are parallel laws of nature that point us to the same conclusion. We get one of them from the study of thermodynamics. This is not something that is hard to comprehend. You already understand it because you have to charge your cell phone every night.

A battery contains a fixed amount of energy. You can use that energy but you won’t get any more. If you don’t plug it in to recharge it, the battery will eventually go dead. As far as we know, the universe is a “closed system” similar to a giant battery. But it’s not rechargeable.

Barring some outside influence, this kind of process can only go in one direction. We all recognize that this is how energy works. It’s not a mystery. It’s a simple concept that is based on a couple of natural laws:

The Law of Conservation of Energy — energy is neither created nor destroyed; it can only be transformed from one form to another.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics — in a closed system, the total entropy of the system will always increase and this process is irreversible.

So, let’s put these together.

Don’t be freaked out by the term, “entropy.” Think of it as “level of chaos.” Just like the battery, there is only a finite amount of energy in a closed system. The amount of energy cannot be increased; it can only be transformed to a higher level of chaos. An example might help.

To Understand The Second Law Of Thermodynamics, Burn A Match

You have a match in your hand. The head of the match is made of combustible material that has the potential to create a flame. The amount of potential energy concentrated in the head of the match and is fixed. It cannot increase. When you strike the match, the potential chemical energy in the head of the match converts to heat energy in a flame. Then, the heat energy from the flame disperses into the room. Our energy system has gone from a concentrated potential energy source to a flame, to a random dispersal of heat into the air. In other words, it has taken a more “chaotic” form. When we say that “entropy has increased,” that is all it means.

Here’s the key — the process will not go in the opposite direction. You won’t see the heat content in a room suddenly coagulate into a single flame, and then reorganize that flame into a concentrated ball of chemical energy in a single location (like the head of a match). The very idea of such a thing is ridiculous.

Thermodynamics tells us that energy only goes in one direction

The Universe – A Giant Battery

The universe works the same way. Like a giant battery, it contains a fixed amount of energy. As time marches on, the energy inside it becomes more and more useless as it disperses. The “chaos” level (entropy) of the entire system is always increasing. At some point, the usefulness of the energy will run out altogether. Scientists call this “heat death.” The universe is headed toward heat death.

This is a law of nature. It is the basis for the operation of everything from the engine that launches a rocket into orbit, to the biological machinery that runs every cell in your body. And what it means is that we know the whole system — the whole universe — must have started this energy transforming process when its “battery” was full.

The universe had to have a beginning. And, for the same reasons mentioned in our discussion of the cosmological argument, something outside the known universe must have flipped the switch to initiate the beginning of the process. Listen to Frank Turek’s short explanation for the Second Law…

https://youtu.be/Q6tv_L0Bn5w

… and how William Lane Craig connects it to a cosmic beginning:

https://youtu.be/atnk5VBVd-g

Challenges to neo-Darwinian theories of development

2. Does God Exist?, Philosophy of Science

By Julie Hannah

In Article 1, “The arising of our universe: design or chance?” I discussed evidence for the design behind our finely-tuned universe, which has convinced some mainstream scientists of the existence of a transcendent Creator. Article 2, “Can living cells arise randomly from non-living chemicals?” presented recent research findings that call into question the theory that living cells could have arisen from random operations on non-living chemicals. This article considers challenges to reductionist aspects of neo-Darwinian theories of evolution.

How does science account for the range of complex life forms? According to the deterministic neo-Darwinian Modern Synthesis model, random errors in DNA-copying cause mutations, and only some of the resulting forms survive the environmental process of natural selection. It is generally agreed that these gene-driven processes can account for some aspects of development, but many scientists are questioning whether they can fully explain the complexity of all life forms. Eugene Koonin, an evolutionary biologist at the National Center for Biotechnology Information makes this blunt observation: “The summary of the state of affairs on the 150th anniversary of the Origin is somewhat shocking: in the post-genomic era, all major tenets of the Modern Synthesis are, if not outright overturned, replaced by a new and incomparably more complex vision of the key aspects of evolution. So, not to mince words, the Modern Synthesis is gone” (“Origin at 150,” 474–75).

Standard evolutionary theory is being challenged in the following three major areas.

Challenge 1: Only small, continuous changes?

Microevolution involves minor genetic mutations and natural selection. But according to geneticists Baguñà and Garcia-Fernàndez, repeated microevolution does not explain major evolutionary transitions, and as a result, “even to the most unbounded optimist, we are still far from understanding morphological diversity and evolution” (“Evo-Devo,” 706). Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould argued that there was a fundamental difference between minor adaptations and the formation of new species, an opinion that is also expressed by paleobiologist Douglas Erwin of the Smithsonian Institute in his article, “Macroevolution is More Than Repeated Rounds of Microevolution.” Anthropologist Jeffrey Schwartz points out that some major groups “appear in the fossil record as Athena did from the head of Zeus—full-blown and raring to go, in contradiction to Darwin’s depiction of evolution as resulting from the gradual accumulation of countless infinitesimally minute variations” (Sudden Origins, 3). And Eugene Koonin concludes that “the idea of evolution being driven primarily by infinitesimal heritable changes in the Darwinian tradition has become untenable” (“Origin at 150,” 474).

Challenge 2: Only random variations and natural selection?

Some scientists are questioning the purely random nature of evolutionary change. For example, molecular geneticist James Shapiro makes this observation: “It is difficult (if not impossible) to find a genome change operator that is truly random in its action within the DNA of the cell where it works. All careful studies of mutagenesis find statistically significant non-random patterns of change” (Evolution, 82). Gerd Müller, Head of the Department of Theoretical Biology at the University of Vienna, argues that developmental systems seem to have innate tendencies towards certain solutions, and these tendencies have as strong an influence on development as random DNA variations (“Extended Evolutionary Synthesis,” 4, 7). Professor of evolutionary biology Kevin Laland agrees that “much variation is not random because developmental processes generate certain forms more readily than others” (“Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?” 162).

The theory of random variations also presents unresolved problems. According to genetic biologists Thornton and DeSalle, “It remains a mystery how the undirected process of mutation, combined with natural selection, has resulted in the creation of thousands of new proteins with extraordinarily diverse and well optimized functions. This problem is particularly acute for tightly integrated molecular systems that consist of many interacting parts . . . It is not clear how a new function for any protein might be selected for unless the other members of the complex are already present, creating a molecular version of the ancient evolutionary riddle of the chicken and the egg” (“Gene Family Evolution,” 64).

Simon Conway Morris, who holds the Chair in Evolutionary Paleobiology at Cambridge, also argues that adaptation is not an undirected, random walk through all possibilities. For example, when muscle tissue develops into organs that produce electricity, the process requires very precise amino acid replacements at specific sites, together with accelerated evolution of the new function, and Conway Morris concludes that “there is little doubt that these changes are very far from random” (Runes of Evolution, 38). He therefore argues that while the underlying principles of Darwinian evolution are correct, they do not provide a complete explanation of development, and a more comprehensive theory of evolution is required.

Gould also pointed out that many evolutionists now doubt the exclusive role of natural selection in genetic change (“New and General Theory of Evolution,” 12). And Andras Pellionisz, an expert in genome informatics, suggests that the theory of natural selection should be extended to include goal-directed aspects (“Principle of Recursive Genome Function,” 349).

Challenge 3: What about the complex genetic code?

It is generally accepted that the modern genetic code evolved from a simpler form, but there is no agreement about when or how this initial code evolved. In their article, “Chance and Necessity Do Not Explain the Origin of Life,” microbiologist Jack Trevors and cyberneticist David Abel explain why they believe natural selection could not be the primary mechanism for developing DNA coding (“Chance and Necessity,” 734 – 35):

“Without the machinery and protein workers, the [DNA] message cannot be received and understood. And without genetic instruction, the machinery cannot be assembled . . . It is not reasonable to expect hundreds to thousands of random sequence polymers to all cooperatively selforganize into an amazingly efficient holistic metabolic network.”
“Natural processes, mechanisms, and chemical catalyses do not explain any of these emergent conceptual phenomena. . . . Even ‘meaningful’ RNA or DNA inserted into a lifeless physical world such as the ancient Earth, would not be ‘readable.’ It could not communicate its coded message for protein synthesis unless a language (operating system) context already existed.”
“Contentions that offer nothing more than long periods of time offer no mechanism of explanation for the derivation of genetic programming. No new information is provided by such tautologies. The argument simply says it happened. As such, it is nothing more than blind belief.” In other words, “time made it happen” might be science’s version of “God made it happen.”

Atheist biologist Richard Dawkins insists there is only an “illusion of design in the living world” (God Delusion, 25), and he claims that “cumulative selection, by slow and gradual degrees, is the explanation, the only workable explanation that has ever been proposed, for the existence of life’s complex design” (Blind Watchmaker, 317, original emphasis). However, atheist geneticist and evolutionist Richard Lewontin disagrees, pointing out that Dawkins’s adamant assertion ignores an enormous amount of recent research. He writes: “Dawkins’s vulgarizations of Darwinism speak of nothing in evolution but an inexorable ascendancy of genes that are selectively superior, while the entire body of technical advance in experimental and theoretical evolutionary genetics of the last fifty years has moved in the direction of emphasizing non-selective forces in evolution” (“Billions of Demons,” 29).

Computational physiologist Denis Noble argues that the highly reductionist and deterministic worldview of neo-Darwinism is not a necessary conclusion from the scientific evidence. He expresses the desire of many biologists to “distance [themselves] from the biased conceptual scheme that neo-Darwinism has brought to biology, made more problematic by the fact that it has been presented as literal truth” (“Evolution Beyond neo-Darwinism,” 12). And as Gerd Müller points out, this is not the view of only a handful of fringe scientists because an increasing number of publications call for a major revision of standard evolutionary theory (“Extended Evolutionary Synthesis,” 2).

The more recent approach to evolutionary development is not deterministic or gene-driven. Instead, it argues that there are complex non-random processes at work. However, Laland et al. point out that there is passionate resistance to the newer Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES): “The number of biologists calling for change in how evolution is conceptualized is growing rapidly . . . Yet the mere mention of the EES often evokes an emotional, even hostile, reaction among evolutionary biologists . . . This is no storm in an academic tearoom, it is a struggle for the very soul of the discipline” (“Evolutionary Theory,” 162).

Marcos Eberlin, a winner of the Thomson Medal in Chemistry, summarized a wide range of recent scientific findings in his 2019 book Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose, which is endorsed by three winners of Nobel Prizes in science. Eberlin reaches this conclusion about the evidence regarding the development of life on Earth: it “seems to point beyond any blind evolutionary process to the workings of an attribute unique to minds—foresight. And yes, I know: We’re told that it’s out of bounds for science to go there… [but] I urge you to inspect the evidence” (Foresight, 13–14).

Note

Adapted from A Skeptic’s Investigation into Jesus, J P Hannah.

https://www.amazon.com/Skeptics-Investigation-into-Jesus/dp/1532674619

Used with kind permission from Wipf and Stock Publishers: www.wipfandstock.com.

References

Baguñà, Jaume, and Jordi García -Fernàndez. “Evo-Devo: the Long and Winding Road.” The International Journal of Developmental Biology 47 (2003) 705–13.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8892395_Evo-Devo_The_Long_and_Winding_Road

Conway Morris, Simon. The Runes of Evolution: How the Universe Became Self-Aware. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton, 2005.

Eberlin, Marcos. Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose. Seattle: Discovery Institute, 2019.

Erwin, Douglas H. “Macroevolution is more than repeated rounds of microevolution.” Evolution and Development 2 (2000) 78–84.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1525-142x.2000.00045.x

Gould, Stephen Jay. “Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?” Paleobiology 6 (1980) 119–30.

http://www.somosbacteriasyvirus.com/gould.pdf

Koonin Eugene V. “The Origin at 150: Is a New Evolutionary Synthesis in Sight?” Trends in Genetics 25 (2009) 473–75. doi:10.1016/j.tig.2009.09.007.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2784144/

Laland Kevin N., et al. “Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?” Nature 514 (2014) 161–64.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gerd_Mueller/publication/278258986_Does_evolutionary_theory_need_a_rethink_-_POINT_Yes_urgently/links/55cd2f8708aebd6b88e05e5f/Does-evolutionary-theory-need-a-rethink-POINT-Yes-urgently.pdf?origin=publication_detail

Lewontin, Richard. “Billions and Billions of Demons: A Review of The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan.” New York Review of Books 44 (1997) 28–30.

http://www.drjbloom.com/Public%20files/Lewontin_Review.htm

Müller, Gerd B. “Why an extended evolutionary synthesis is necessary.” Interface Focus 7: 20170015.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0015

Noble, Denis. “Evolution beyond neo-darwinism: a new conceptual framework.” The Journal of Experimental Biology 218 (2015) 7–13.

http://jeb.biologists.org/content/jexbio/218/1/7.full.pdf

Pellionisz, Andras J. “The Principle of Recursive Genome Function.” Cerebellum 7 (2008) 348–59. http://ww.junkdna.com/pellionisz_principle_of_recursive_genome_function.pdf

Schwartz, Jeffrey H. Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species. New York: Wiley, 1999.

Shapiro, James, A. Evolution: A View from the 21st Century. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2011.

Thornton, Joseph W., and Rob DeSalle. “Gene Family Evolution and Homology: Genomics Meets Phylogenetics.” Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics 1 (2000) 41–73.

https://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/~nicholls/BIOSCI743/thorntonanddesalle.pdf

Trevors, Jack T., and David L. Abel. “Chance and necessity do not explain the origin of life.” Cell Biology International 28 (2004) 729–39.

https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~stevel/565/literature/Chance%20and%20necessity%20do%20not%20explain%20the%20origin%20of%20life.pdf

Can living cells arise randomly from non-living chemicals?

2. Does God Exist?, Philosophy of Science

By Julie Hannah

In Article 1, “The arising of our universe: design or chance?” I discussed evidence for the design behind our finely-tuned universe, which has convinced some mainstream scientists of the existence of a transcendent Creator. In this article, I present recent findings related to the theory that living cells arose through random operations on abiotic (non-living) chemicals.

In 1953, scientists Miller and Urey sent sparks through a mixture of gases to produce amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. This seemed to support the theory that life arose on Earth when non-living chemicals randomly combined to form organic compounds, which then spontaneously developed the ability to replicate. However, this process of abiogenesis has been difficult to confirm and model for the following reasons.

Problem 1: Many steps are still not understood

Atheist biologist Richard Dawkins admits that “nobody knows how it happened but, somehow, without violating the laws of physics and chemistry, a molecule arose that just happened to have the property of self-copying” (Climbing Mount Improbable, 259). George Whitesides, who was awarded the Priestley Medal for Chemistry in 2007, also frankly expresses uncertainty: “Most chemists believe, as do I, that life emerged spontaneously from mixtures of molecules in the prebiotic Earth. How? I have no idea” (“Revolutions in Chemistry,” 15). As recently as 2018, geoscientists Kitadai and Maruyama published an extensive review of research results in abiogenesis and were forced to conclude that several steps in the process are still unconfirmed and remain highly hypothetical (“Origins of Building Blocks of Life: A Review,” 1117, 1142).

Problem 2: The first self-replicating molecule has still not been identified

The replication of living cells requires the presence of both protein and DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). But this poses a chicken-or-egg problem because DNA holds the genetic code for building proteins, but this information can only be accessed if proteins are already present. Philosopher of science Karl Popper explained the problem: “The genetic code is without any biological function unless it is translated; that is unless it leads to the synthesis of the proteins whose structure is laid down by the code. But . . . the code cannot be translated except by using certain products of its translation. This constitutes a really baffling circle” (“Scientific Reduction,” 270). Microbiologist Jack Trevors and cyberneticist David Abel point out that this DNA-protein problem has still not been solved and remains a scientific enigma (“Chance and Necessity,” 734).

To avoid this dilemma, scientists are trying to identify a molecule that arose before DNA, which could have performed both roles: providing genetic information and also promoting self-replication. This might be RNA (ribonucleic acid), but there are some uncertainties: “The most promising candidate is RNA if a mechanism existed on the primitive Earth for the formation of oligoribonucleotides, and if some of these polymers acquired, by chance, the ability to copy their sequences” (Kitadai and Maruyama, “Origins,” 1138, emphasis added). In Whitesides’s opinion, the proposed RNA world “is so far removed in its complexity from dilute solutions of mixtures of simple molecules in a hot, reducing ocean under a high pressure of CO₂that I don’t know how to connect the two” (“Revolutions in Chemistry,” 15). Kitadai and Maruyama explain that many problems remain unresolved regarding the spontaneous arising of RNA (“Origins,” 1141). And molecular scientists Robertson and Joyce express this opinion: “The myth of a small RNA molecule that arises de novo and can replicate efficiently and with high fidelity under plausible prebiotic conditions . . . [is] unrealistic in light of current understanding of prebiotic chemistry” (“Origins of RNA World,” 7). Nobel-winning biochemist Christian de Duve agrees: “Contrary to what is sometimes intimated, the idea of a few RNA molecules coming together by some chance combination of circumstances and henceforth being reproduced and amplified by replication simply is not tenable” (“Beginnings of Life,” 432). Research chemist Leslie Orgel comments: “It is possible that all of these, and many other difficulties, will one day be overcome and that a convincing prebiotic synthesis of RNA will become available. However, many researchers in the field, myself included, think that this is unlikely” (“Prebiotic Chemistry,” 114).

As a result, some scientists are now looking for an even simpler molecule that preceded RNA. However, this precursor has still not been identified. And in any case, as Robertson and Joyce point out, “all of the arguments concerning the relationship between the fidelity of replication and the maximum allowable genome length would still apply to this earlier genetic system” (“Origins of RNA World,” 9).

Professor of chemistry Robert Shapiro also pointed out that there is still no explanation for how the first self-replicating molecule could have been formed (“Small Molecule Interactions,” 106). It cannot have arisen through natural selection because this process can only operate on an existing self-replicating system, which results in another chicken-or-egg problem.

Problem 3: Laboratory experiments might not replicate conditions on early Earth

When scientists synthesize living molecules in the laboratory, they might be using processes that could not have occurred on the primitive Earth. For example, it is not known whether ribozymes (a type of RNA molecule) could have developed from materials that would have been abundant on early Earth (see Robertson and Joyce, “Origins of RNA World,” 12). Kolomiytsev and Poddubnaya reach this conclusion: “No one has found conditions as yet that could result in the formation of ribonucleotides on the primitive Earth. . . Darwin’s ‘warm little pond’ as well as a pond ﬁlled with self-copying RNA molecules and concentrated solutions of all the biochemical precursors of RNA could scarcely exist” (“Diffuse Organism,” 69–70).Kitadai and Maruyama write: “Various sites for the origin of life have been proposed, including transient melt zones in a frozen ocean, hydrothermal systems within volcanos, and subterranean lithic zones. Although each setting has advantages in some stages of chemical evolution, unsolved problems also remain” (“Origins,” 1121, emphasis added).

Problem 4: Probabilities are low

The proposed evolution of living molecules from abiotic chemicals is extremely complex and requires at least eight different reaction conditions (see Kitadai and Maruyama “Origins,” 1117). Regarding one hypothetical process for the random arising of adenine (a nucleobase of DNA), Robert Shapiro remarks: “While no single reaction or location in this sequence violates the possibilities of chemistry or geology, the need for them to occur in an exact order creates an implausibility comparable to that involved in generating a particular English sentence by hitting word processor keys at random” (“Small Molecule Interactions,” 110). George Whitesides, therefore, makes this admission about the random arising of living molecules: “Perhaps it was by the spontaneous emergence of ‘simple’ autocatalytic cycles and then by their combination. On the basis of all the chemistry that I know, it seems to me astonishingly improbable” (“Revolutions in Chemistry,” 15).

Nobel Prize-winning chemist Ilya Prigogineexpressed a similar opinion: “The probability that at ordinary temperatures a macroscopic number of molecules is assembled to give rise to the highly ordered structures and to the coordinated functions characterizing living organisms is vanishingly small. The idea of spontaneous genesis of life in its present form is therefore highly improbable, even on the scale of the billions of years during which prebiotic evolution occurred” (“Thermodynamics of Evolution,” 23). In other words, the popular claim that random processes could convert chemicals into living cells over sufficient time is not supported by science.

In short,after more than seventy years of heavily funded international research into abiogenesis, there is still “no plausible scenario that can explain all the stages of the origin of life” (Kitadai and Maruyama, “Origins,” 1121), and there remains an “insuperable gap between pre biological chemistry and the ﬁrst living systems” (Kolomiytsev and Poddubnaya, “Diffuse Organism,” 76). A clear route from prebiotic chemicals to nucleotides and living cells remains, in Orgel’s terms, “the Molecular Biologist’s Dream” (“Prebiotic Chemistry,” 119). As a result, some scientists now suggest that organic molecules must have been formed somewhere else in the universe and been carried to Earth on meteors to provide the biological basis for life. However, this merely transfers the problem of life’s origins to a different location.

Notes

Adapted from A Skeptic’s Investigation into Jesus, J P Hannah.

https://www.amazon.com/Skeptics-Investigation-into-Jesus/dp/1532674619

Used with kind permission from Wipf and Stock Publishers: www.wipfandstock.com.

References

Dawkins, Richard. Climbing Mount Improbable. Penguin: London, 1996.

———. The God Delusion. New York: Mariner, 2008.

de Duve, Christian. “The Beginnings of Life on Earth.” American Scientist 83 (1995) 428–37.

http://www2.nau.edu/~gaud/bio372/class/readings/beglifeerth.htm

Kitadai, Norio, and Shigenori Maruyama. “Origins of building blocks of life: A review.” Geoscience Frontiers 9 (2018) 1117–153.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/sdfe/reader/pii/S1674987117301305/pdf

Kittel, Charles, and Herbert Kroemer. Thermal Physics. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Freeman, 1980.

Kolomiytsev, Nikolay P., and Nadezhda Ya Poddubnaya. “The Diffuse Organism as the First Biological System.” Biological Theory 5 (2010) 67–78.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237937058_The_Diffuse_Organism_as_the_First_Biological_System

Orgel, Leslie E. “The Implausibility of Metabolic Cycles on the Prebiotic Earth.” PLOS Biology 6 (2008) 5–13.

———. “Prebiotic Chemistry and the Origin of the RNA World. Critical Reviews in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 39 (2004) 99–123.

Popper, Karl R. “Scientific Reduction and the Essential Incompleteness of All Science.” In Studies in the Philosophy of Biology: Reduction and Related Problems, edited by F. J. Ayala, and T. Dobzhansky, 259–84. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974.

Prigogine, Ilya, et al. “Thermodynamics of Evolution.” Physics Today 25 (1972) 23–28.

Robertson, Michael P., and Gerald F. Joyce. “The Origins of the RNA World.” Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology 4.5 (2012) a003608.

https://cshperspectives.cshlp.org/content/4/5/a003608.full.pdf+html

Shapiro, Robert. “Small molecule interactions were central to the origin of life.” The Quarterly Review of Biology 81 (2006) 105–26.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/fd8a/8ef0c136dd80fa2365332fe409c9f0d35475.pdf?_ga=2.155355579.1445154396.1565957529-266559242.1550312466

Trevors, Jack T., and David L. Abel. “Chance and necessity do not explain the origin of life.” Cell Biology International 28 (2004) 729–39.

https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~stevel/565/literature/Chance%20and%20necessity%20do%20not%20explain%20the%20origin%20of%20life.pdf

Whitesides, George M. “Revolutions In Chemistry: Priestley Medalist George M. Whitesides’ Address.” Chemical and Engineering News 85 (2007) 12–17.

https://cen.acs.org/articles/85/i13/Revolutions-Chemistry.html

How We Can Know Who Created the Universe

2. Does God Exist?

By Al Serrato

It is difficult to overstate the importance of the discovery of the Big Bang. After all, even without sophisticated philosophical arguments, most people intuitively recognize that all things that come into existence must have some preceding cause sufficient to the task. But when science, or more specifically physics, supports the Christian worldview by affirming the need for a creator, one would think that many skeptics would begin to accept that Christianity is not the enemy of science. Instead, the atheist will sometimes resort to ridicule to challenge the reasonableness of believing in an omnipotent creator. For example, one skeptic compared belief in God to the thinking of primitive Norsemen attributing thunderbolts to the “god” Thor. Not understanding how thunderstorms formed, and in search of an explanation, such men came up with a mythical character to fill the role. Can’t we see, the skeptic will argue, that positing God as the creator of the universe is no different – we’re just substituting one fictitious being for another, aren’t we? Why not just admit that we just don’t know what preceded the Big Bang and wait for science to solve the problem?

This argument is clever because it puts the believer on the defensive. The implied critique goes something like this: people in earlier times with no knowledge of weather science resorted to something they could understand when they assumed that a personal agent directly caused the lightning they were seeing. In the same way, modern believers who likewise lack knowledge of as yet undiscovered scientific theories are also guilty of ignorance when they rush to assume that a personal agent – here, God – is the explanation. As in past times, they contend, resorting to this “god of the gaps” is just filler until science comes up with the correct answer.

But a moment’s reflection will demonstrate that this line of argument misses the point. Sometimes events occur as the result of purely impersonal natural laws, such as when lightning triggers a forest fire. Other times, by contrast, personal agents cause events, like when someone intentionally or inadvertently sets a fire. In either setting, science may provide the explanation for why combustion occurred, but this does not address whether a personal agent was the original cause. To do that, we must use reason to assess the available evidence to reach a logical conclusion as to what in the particular instance set the events into motion.

Since primitive human beings had no scientific knowledge, it is understandable that they might attribute a powerful event like a thunderstorm to a personal source. Not comprehending that a thunderstorm arises in response to predictable conditions in the atmosphere, and how the resulting movement of air masses generates electrical energy, their minds naturally sought a reason. And since thunderstorms are frightening events, it was natural for them to conclude that someone very powerful was perhaps expressing anger or displeasure. But Christians are not imagining a creator when they consider the explanation necessary to make sense of the evidence we have for the cause of the universe. This evidence includes not just that the universe came into existence from absolute nothingness at a specific point in the past, as science demonstrates, but also the characteristics of the universe: the exquisite fine-tuning and order we see and more importantly the fact that from this mix of matter and energy life, consciousness and intelligence emerged. Using reason, it is indeed quite proper, and quite supportable, to infer that something immensely intelligent and immensely powerful set these things into motion. That the Creator used natural laws to run things is why we have science in the first place; using our senses and our ability to reason, we use the scientific method to learn about these laws. But developing increased understanding of the laws of nature does not eliminate the need to find the source of these laws.

What, then, of the skeptic’s challenge that because we cannot show how God created the universe – what precise steps he took – it is illegitimate to infer that He in fact did so? Why not accept the argument that there is never a need to resort to the “god of the gaps” to explain things, that we should instead simply wait for further scientific discoveries? I submit the answer is because for many things we find around us, the relevant question is not exactly how something works, but is instead by whom was it made? Did it come into being by the work of impersonal forces, such as the contours of the walls of the Grand Canyon, or was it chiseled into existence by an intelligence source, such as the sculptor who gave us Mr. Rushmore? I cannot begin to imagine how that artist could “see” the faces that eventually emerged from his chiseling, but I am right to conclude that time and random chance did not make those changes.

There are countless other examples. I am using a computer to write this essay, yet I know next to nothing about how programming, hard drives and BIOS’s work. This lack of knowledge is completely irrelevant to the question of whether the computer came about on its own, through strictly impersonal laws, or is instead the manifestation of the work of some intelligence. If I see alphabet cereal strewn about the kitchen table, the conclusion I draw as to how that happened will be different if I see groupings that spell out a particular message to me. Again, while I may lack an answer as to how the letters came to be arranged in that particular location at that time, I can indeed conclude that an intelligent, personal source was behind it. This insistence then that attributing a personal source to the origin of the universe is fallacious “god of the gaps” thinking is itself an illogical move. It simply does not take complete knowledge of the “how” to ascertain with adequate reliability that there was indeed a “who” behind it.

As Christians, we unapologetically call that Creator by the name he provided for us. Jesus isn’t a mythical figure from the ancient past. He isn’t a creation of the imagination trotted out to explain physical laws of nature. No, he was a real man who walked the earth, who lived at a particular time and place in history and so impacted the lives of those around him that some sought to kill him and others, a small but growing group of followers with adherents twenty centuries later, changed the trajectory of world history. We need not rely solely upon reason to conclude that an intelligent personal source brought the universe into existence, because first through the prophets and then through the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, He took the time to tell us about himself.
In the end, science and the Christian worldview are not in conflict. It is the one who insists despite the evidence that there is no God – and ultimately no one to whom we will one day be called to account – that is persisting in ignorance.

The arising of our Universe: Design or Chance?

2. Does God Exist?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Julie Hannah

How likely is it that our universe is the result of random physical operations? Scientists point out that shaping the universe into its present form required a very precise balance of many finely-tuned physical constants such as these:

Gravitational attraction—This had to be in perfect balance with the rate of expansion to enable structures to form.
The ratio of gravitational force to electromagnetic force—A slightly different ratio would have created stars that were either white dwarfs or blue giants, neither of which can support complex life.
The electrical charge of electrons—If this were even slightly different, stars would not be able to burn hydrogen and helium, or would not explode to distribute heavy elements.
The strong nuclear force—A slightly weaker force would have prevented the formation of heavy elements, but a slightly stronger force would have converted all hydrogen into other elements, resulting in no water and no fuel for stars to burn.
Formation of carbon—Stars are only able to produce carbon from helium because the carbon nucleus has very specific values of spin and resonance energy.
Initial entropy (disorder)—The entropy of our universe continues to increase, but it is still not at its maximum. Its initial value must therefore have been exceptionally small, with an extremely low probability of 1 out of 10^(10^123 ). This ridiculously large number has more zeros than the total number of protons and neutrons in the entire universe!

For carbon-based life such as ours to be possible, approximately twenty-six such physical properties had to have extremely precise and statistically improbable values. In addition, pairs of matter-antimatter particles annihilate each other, and matter only exists because one extra matter particle somehow came to be formed for every billion pairs. Scientists still do not understand how this imbalance could have arisen.

What about the theory of an infinite number of universes?

To avoid the implication of design, some scientists propose that there is an infinite number of universes with different physical laws. In that case, it is to be expected that ours could arise by chance with the specific properties necessary for human life. But there are problems with this theory.

Paul Davies writes: “It flies in the face of Occam’s razor, by introducing vast (indeed infinite) complexity to explain the regularities of just one universe. I find this ‘blunderbuss’ approach to explain the specialness of our universe scientifically questionable” (Mind of God, 218–19). (According to the principle of Occam’s Razor, the most likely explanation should have the least number of assumptions and conditions.)
The multiverse theory cannot be scientifically proven because it does not provide testable predictions. In the opinion of physicist Peter Woit, the theory, therefore, does not lie within the domain of science: “Maybe we really live in a ‘multiverse’ of different possible universes . . . [But] this way of thinking about physics does not seem to lead to any falsifiable predictions, and so is one that physicists have traditionally considered to be unscientific” (Not Even Wrong, xi).
Cosmologist George Ellis, co-author with Stephen Hawking, is critical of the theory. He argues that universes which actually exist, rather than merely being theoretically possible, would still require specific laws and would probably share a common causal connection. (See “Multiverses and Physical Cosmology.”)
Any inflationary universe must have a beginning in time, which would still need an explanation. (See Borde and Vilenkin, “Eternal Inflation,” 1.)
There are serious difficulties with trying to apply the mathematical concept of infinity to a physical situation. As mathematician David Hilbert pointed out, “The infinite is nowhere to be found in reality” (“On the Infinite,” 151). George Ellis and others argue that an infinite collection of universes is highly problematic and does not solve the problem of origins. He and his co-researchers ask: “Can there really be an infinite set of really existing universes? We suggest that, on the basis of well-known philosophical arguments, the answer is no. The common perception that this is possible arises from not taking seriously enough the difficulties associated with this profoundly difficult concept. . . Many universes in the ensemble may themselves have infinite spatial extent and contain an infinite amount of matter, with the paradoxical conclusions that entails . . . The phrase ‘everything that can exist, exists’ implies such an infinitude, but glosses over all the profound difficulties implied.” As Ellis points out, “Existence of the hypothesized ensemble remains a matter of faith rather than proof. Furthermore, in the end, it simply represents a regress of causation. Ultimate questions remain” (“Multiverses and Physical Cosmology,” 921; 927–28; 935).

In general, there is a problem with the popular belief that infinity renders anything possible. For example, monkeys typing for an infinite length of time are supposed to eventually type out any given text, but if there are 50 keys, the probability of producing just one given five-letter word is

This is a tremendously low probability, and it decreases exponentially when letters are added. A computer program that simulated random typing once produced nineteen consecutive letters and characters that appear in a line of a Shakespearean play, but this result took 42,162,500,000 billion years to achieve! (See Wershler-Henry’s History of Typewriting.) According to scientists Kittel and Kroemer, the probability of randomly typing out Hamlet is, therefore, zero in any operational sense (Thermal Physics, 53).

Against this background, what is the probability that all the universe’s required physical constants arose by chance? The improbability of this fine-tuning has led some scientists to argue that random operations are not sufficient. Below are some examples.

Paul Davies: There is “powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all…It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe…The impression of design is overwhelming” (Cosmic Blueprint, 203). “I belong to the group of scientists who do not subscribe to a conventional religion but nevertheless deny that the universe is a purposeless accident” (Mind of God, 16).

Physicist Frank Wilczek: “It is logically possible that parameters determined uniquely by abstract theoretical principles just happen to exhibit all the apparent fine-tunings required to produce, by a lucky coincidence, a Universe containing complex condensed structures. But that, I think, really strains credulity” (“Absolute Units,” 10–11).

Fred Hoyle, atheist astrophysicist: “A common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature” (“The Universe,” 12).

Freeman Dyson, theoretical physicist: “The more I examine the Universe and study the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the Universe in some sense must have known we were coming” (Disturbing the Universe, 250).

Stephen Hawking (in his forties): “The initial state of the Universe must have been very carefully chosen indeed if the hot big bang model was correct right back to the beginning of time. It would be very difficult to explain why the Universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us” (Brief History of Time, 133–34).

Allan Sandage, a prominent cosmologist who converted to Christianity: “The world is too complicated in all its parts and interconnections to be due to chance alone” (“A Scientist Reflects on Religious Belief,” 57).

Even an atheist professor of astronomy, George Greenstein, makes this admission about the fine-tuning of the universe: “The more I read the more I became convinced that such ‘coincidences’ could hardly have happened by chance”; “As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency—or, rather, Agency—must be involved.” However, he passionately rejects this implication: “As this conviction grew, something else grew as well . . . It was intense revulsion, and at times it was almost physical in nature”; “I will have nothing to do with it. My conviction is that the world obeys laws, the laws of nature and that nothing can ever occur that stands outside those laws” (Symbiotic Universe, 27, 24, 87). Greenstein speaks for many people who are offended by suggestions of any influence beyond blind physical laws, but evidence from cosmology and physics strongly suggests that the existence of our universe cannot be explained as the result of purely random events.

It is therefore not intellectually weak, scientifically ignorant, or logically unsound to consider the possibility of a directing Intelligence at work behind the physical laws of the universe.

References

Borde, Arvind, and Alexander Vilenkin. “Eternal inflation and the initial singularity.” Physics Review Letters 72 (1994) 3305–309. https://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/9312022.pdf

Davies, Paul. The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature’s Creative Ability To Order the Universe. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.

———. The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning. London: Penguin, 1992.

Dyson, Freeman J. Disturbing the Universe. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.

Ellis, George F. R., U. Kirchner, W. R. Stoeger. “Multiverses and Physical Cosmology.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 347 (2004) 921–36. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2004.07261.x

Greenstein, George. The Symbiotic Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos. New York: William Morrow, 1988.

Hawking, Stephen W. A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. New York: Bantam, 1989.

Hilbert, David. “On the Infinite.” Translated by Ema Putnam, and Gerald J. Massey. 1925. In Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings, edited by Paul Benacerraf and Hilary Putnam, 134–51. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964.

Hoyle, Fred. “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections.” Engineering and Science 45 (1981) 8–12.

Sandage, Allan. “A scientist reflects on religious belief.” Truth: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Christian Thought 1 (1985) 56–57. http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth15.html

Wilczek, Frank. “On Absolute Units, III: Absolutely Not?” Physics Today 59 (2006) 11. http://ctpweb.lns.mit.edu/physics_today/phystoday/Abs_limits400.pdf

Woit, Peter. Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law. New York: Basic, 2006.

Systems Engineering in Nature

2. Does God Exist?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Cathryn Buse

Before I had children, I worked as a systems engineer at NASA at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL. Through my career, I met a lot of brilliant scientists and engineers who were committed Christians. But I also encountered a lot of intellectual skepticism to Christianity, especially on the question of God’s existence.

The question of God’s existence is one of the most consistent challenges Christians face. How can we adequately answer that question, especially when the questioner is scientifically minded? One way is through the evidence of design, something known as the “teleological argument.” It simply means where there is design, planning, and order there must be a Designer, Planner, and Organizer behind it. Something designed cannot be explained by just a natural process or material cause; design requires intelligence.

So if there is design in the universe, then there must be a designer. But is there design in the universe?

Atheists say there is not. Before we can adequately answer that, we have to determine what would constitute something being “designed.” It isn’t just that a system looks complicated or has lots of parts. For something to be designed, it requires several well-matched, collocated, and integrated components in order to work, where it would not work if any one of those parts were removed. Something like that would need a designer with intelligence and forethought to select the right components, size them accordingly, and integrate them together so it could function – and ultimately survive and reproduce.

From my background, I like to refer to this as systems engineering in nature. Part of my job at NASA was reviewing the Ares I Upper Stage design to make sure each system would integrate correctly so the vehicle could actually get off the ground. I would be checking for things like if propulsion lines were placed too close to an electronics box because of the extreme cold temperatures of the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Or I would make sure the battery boxes were located near a human access point so they could be changed out at the launch pad. I would verify that a valve needing power from the launch tower had a connector on the umbilical plate. One of my favorite projects was making sure the vehicle could be shipped without being damaged. It needs covers, environmental controls, and other ground support equipment, especially since it ships horizontally but sits vertically on the launch pad.

As you can see, a NASA launch vehicle requires lots of systems engineering – and lots of intelligent design! Each system must be designed alongside the other systems so they will function together. If one system changes something, it may have devastating effects on the other systems. It must be a collaborative design effort. A launch vehicle won’t function if only one system is in place while the other systems are being built. The propulsion system must work with the design of the structure, the avionics and software, the thrust vector control system, and the engine. Remove any one component and the vehicle won’t get off the ground – or worse, will have a catastrophic failure.

So the launch vehicle needs all of these systems and their components to be functional and integrated all at the same time in order to work. A successful launch vehicle requires planning, order, and design; it requires intelligence – and many Designers.

Granted, a launch vehicle is obviously man-made. But is there something comparable in nature? If we can show a biological feature that requires systems engineering, then, like that launch vehicle, it could not have been formed by natural or material causes. It must be explained by some intelligent power behind it.

Luckily, you don’t have to be rocket scientist to find design in nature. We can find systems engineering in the interrelationships of the human body organ systems. For example, the circulatory system pumps oxygenated blood from the heart to the other parts of your body so they can do work. The blood stream then returns the oxygen-depleted blood back to the heart. But the circulatory system cannot distribute oxygenated blood by itself. It needs the respiratory system to get the oxygen. Tiny air sacs in the lungs, called alveoli, transfer oxygen from the lungs to the blood vessels. When the deoxygenated blood is returned, the blood cells transfer carbon dioxide and water, the waste products from the cell, back to the alveoli so it can be breathed out. The circulatory system, therefore, is quite useless without the respiratory system.

However, both of these systems are dependent on the nervous system. The hypothalamus section of the brain controls the body’s autonomic functions, life critical functions our body continually does without us thinking about them, like breathing and pumping your heart. Without this part of the brain and the network of nerves running from it through the spinal cord to the organs themselves, our circulatory and respiratory systems could not work.

The circulatory system also depends on the muscular system. The heart is a specific type of muscle made up of a specific cell type that allows it to contract and pump blood around the body. And it even depends on the skeletal system. The bone marrow produces the red and white blood cells and platelets that the heart is busy pumping around our bodies. Without the skeletal system, there would be no blood to pump.

Even the urinary system is necessary for the circulatory system to function. All of the body’s blood is circulated through the kidneys, where waste chemicals and excess water are filtered out. The kidneys then return clean blood back to the bloodstream. And there is even an interrelationship between the circulatory system and the endocrine system. Hormones from the adrenal gland can speed up your heart rate when it senses danger so you can run away quickly. Hormones from the pancreas are used to control blood sugar levels, which can be deadly if not maintained properly.

We know that everything in our body is dependent on blood flow, but it becomes clear that our blood flow is also dependent on everything else in the body! The human body is the epitome of systems engineering design. What does the body sound like? It sounds like that launch vehicle where the propulsion system needs the structural system, the avionics & software system, and the engine before it can ever get off the ground!

Now if the launch vehicle is missing a system, it fails to launch; we are delayed from resupplying astronauts or sending new missions to space until the design can be completed. But if a system is missing from the body, the body cannot live. All these body systems must show up at the same time, in the same place, fully functional and integrated for life to exist. And like the Ares I launch vehicle, its existence cannot be explained by a random, natural process. The human body has been uniquely and perfectly designed. And design requires a Designer.

What Is The Fine-Tuning Argument For God’s Existence, And Does The Multiverse Counter It?

2. Does God Exist?

By Wintery Knight

One of the best arguments for the existence of a Creator and Designer of the universe is the cosmic fine-tuning argument. The argument argues that individual constants and quantities in nature cannot be much smaller or larger than they are, because it would remove the ability of the universe to support life of any kind. Dr. Michael Strauss, an experimental physicist, explains some examples of the fine-tuning in a recent post on his blog.

He writes:

I liken the finely-tuned universe to a panel that controls the parameters of the universe with about 100 knobs that can be set to certain values. If you turn any knob just a little to the right or to the left, the result is either a universe that is inhospitable to life or no universe at all.

Consider the knob that controls the strength of the strong nuclear force that holds quarks inside the neutrons and protons and binds the nucleus of the atom together. If the strength were increased by 2%, the element hydrogen would be either non-existent or very rare. Without hydrogen, there would be no water (H₂O) or stars that burn hydrogen as their nuclear fuel like our sun. Without hydrogen, there would be no life. If the strength of the strong nuclear force were decreased by about 5%, then hydrogen would be the only element in the universe. That would simplify the periodic table and make Chemistry class very easy, but it would render life impossible.

All known life in this universe is based on the element carbon, which is formed in the final stages of a star’s life. The carbon you and I are made of is the result of the nuclear processes that occurred as previous stars ended their lives. One nice recent study showed that if the mass of the quarks that make up neutrons and protons were changed by just a few percents, then the process that makes carbon as stars die would be altered in such a way that there would not be sufficient carbon in the universe for life. The masses of the lightest sub-atomic quarks are the precise value that is required for carbon to form and for life to exist.

Regarding the multiverse, let me just quote from MIT physicist Alan Lightman, writing in Harper’s magazine about the multiverse:

The… conjecture that there are many other worlds… [T]here is no way they can prove this conjecture. That same uncertainty disturbs many physicists who are adjusting to the idea of the multiverse. Not only must we accept that the basic properties of our universe are accidental and uncalculable. In addition, we must believe in the existence of many other universes. But we have no conceivable way of observing these other universes and cannot prove their existence. Thus, to explain what we see in the world and in our mental deductions, we must believe in what we cannot prove.

Sound familiar? Theologians are accustomed to taking some beliefs on faith. Scientists are not. All we can do is hope that the same theories that predict the multiverse also produce many other predictions that we can test here in our own universe. But the other universes themselves will almost certainly remain a conjecture.

The multiverse is not pure nonsense; it is theoretically possible. But even if there were a multiverse, the generator that makes the universes itself would require fine-tuning, so the multiverse doesn’t get rid of the problem. And, as Lightman indicates, we have no independent experimental evidence for the existence of the multiverse in any case. Atheists just have to take it on faith and hope that their speculations will be proved right. Meanwhile, the fine-tuning is just as easily explained by postulating God, and we have independent evidence for God’s existence, like the origin of biological information, the sudden appearance of animal body plans, the argument from consciousness, and so on. Even if the naturalists could explain the fine-tuning, they would still have a lot of explaining to do. Theism (intelligent causation) is the simplest explanation for all of the things we learn from the progress of science.

It’s very important to understand that if these values were any different, then it’s not like we would bridges on our foreheads, or have green skin, or have pointy ears, etc. That’s what science fiction teaches you. And many atheists form their view of science by watching science fiction entertainment. But the truth is that the consequences of changing these values are much more consequential: no stars, no planets, no hydrogen, no heavy elements, the universe re-collapses into a hot fireball. You’re not going to have complex, embodied intelligent agents running around making moral decisions and relating to God in a world like that.

Questions like the existence of God should be NOT decided by feelings and faith and superstitious nonsense. They ought to be decided by evidence. Specifically, scientific evidence. Everyone has to account for this scientific evidence for fine-tuning within their worldview, and they have to account for it in a way that is responsible and rational. Punting to the multiverse, without any evidence for it, is neither rational nor responsible. Holding out hope that the evidence we have now will all go away is neither rational nor responsible.

By the way, if you are looking for a good book on the cosmic fine-tuning, especially for evangelism and debating with atheists, you really need to get a copy of “A Fortunate Universe. “ Although it is from one of the most prestigious academic presses, it is pretty funny to read, and the main points are made clear, even if you don’t understand science. Two astrophysicists wrote it – one who believes that God is the best explanation of the fine-tuning, and one who doesn’t. I really think that Christians need to get used to the idea that evangelism can be pretty easy, so long as you are arguing from peer-reviewed facts. When you get a good book on evidence for God that is not in dispute, then you are invincible. Everybody ought to believe in God in a universe with this much overt scientific evidence spilling out everywhere. Whether this Creator and Designer is the God of the Bible, who visited us as Jesus of Nazareth, takes more work to establish. Working through the emotional objections people have to God, and coaching them to take on the difficulties of living out an authentic Christian life (very unpopular!), is even harder.

I contend that all knowledge begins in the senses and is completed in the intellect.

The most common responses or challenges to my claim are this one that Lisle poses (how do you know your senses are reliable?) and questions to the effect of how can one acquire knowledge about non-physical truths like logic, morality, metaphysics, and God by means of the senses.

As it turns out, to point out that a circular argument is valid is to say nothing particularly significant about the argument.

The term “realism” and its cognates have several different usages.

Questions that have occupied philosophical realists through the millennia aim at exploring how it is that we know this external world.

My seminary, Southern Evangelical Seminary, is the only evangelical seminary in the world of which I am aware that deliberately embraces Thomistic philosophy.

To complete my thoughts about circularity, Van Til et al. are certainly wrong in their contention that all reasoning is circular.

A proposition is about reality. It is not, as a proposition, itself external reality.

If one claims that everything he experiences is a dream, he has just exchanged the term ‘real’ for the term ‘dream’.

References

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Has Dr. Sean Carroll escaped the theistic implications of the Big Bang?

Does The Universe Have A Cause?

What We Don’t Know

Cherry-Picking

God of the Gaps?

A Way of Escape: Denying Logic

Conclusion

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To Understand The Second Law Of Thermodynamics, Burn A Match

The Universe – A Giant Battery

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Challenge 1: Only small, continuous changes?

Challenge 2: Only random variations and natural selection?

Challenge 3: What about the complex genetic code?

Note

References

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Problem 1: Many steps are still not understood

Problem 2: The first self-replicating molecule has still not been identified

Problem 3: Laboratory experiments might not replicate conditions on early Earth

Problem 4: Probabilities are low

Notes

References

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What about the theory of an infinite number of universes?

References

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