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

2. Does God Exist?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

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

The Price of Panic, with Dr. Jay Richards

Podcast

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What have we learned from the COVID pandemic and our response to it? Does the data show that the lockdown worked? What was the total human cost of the lockdown? What steps did the media take to disseminate “panic porn”? Why were the models so wrong? Why do we have conflicting scientific opinions? How many people really did die from COVID? Is the current increase in cases really something to worry about? What is the death rate and are deaths going up or down? How should we respond to this time?

Dr. Jay Richards joins Frank to discuss those and other questions related to his timely new book “The Price of Panic: How the Tyranny of Experts Turned a Pandemic into a Catastrophe”.

If you want to send us a question for the show, please email us at Hello@CrossExamined.org.

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October 21, 2020/by Frank Turek

The Importance of Critical Thinking

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Kathryn, V.

As a Christian apologist, it is easy to take for granted the understanding that when we impart information to others, they clearly comprehend what we are talking about.

Now, that may be the case with well-studied and well-versed individuals who understand critical thinking, however, the average American has not been exposed to critical thinking unless they have attended university. It is an unfortunate fact that the art of critical thinking is not taught in the vast majority of either primary or secondary schools.

Critical thinking is a skill that is a threat to our culture’s view of political correctness because it encourages people to see things from a different perspective that thinks through an idea or thought and compares it with an opposing view.

Anyone who has studied our western culture for any length of time is well aware that our cultural ideologies have had more influence on the church than the church has had on the culture in the last fifty years.

The vast majority of professing Christians in America today cannot explain why they believe what they believe. This has not been ideal for the Church, as studies show that there has been a sharp decline in church attendance over the past thirty years.

The absence of critical thinking is at the center of this apathy toward the importance of validating one’s belief in absolute truth which is at the core of the Judeo-Christian faith.

Much of this lack of fervor for one’s faith is because many are not sure if the Bible is valid for today’s world. It is a fact that less than nine percent of those individuals who profess to be Christian, believe in biblical inerrancy. Why is this? Part of the answer to this question lies in the inability to think critically. To think critically requires that one ask questions, but to ask a question suggests that one may find an answer that goes against the grain and that would cause friction. It is easier to simply go along with what one is told and then formulate one’s own set of beliefs based on what one feels is right.

Human nature is consistent in that our feelings fluctuate with circumstance (John 2:25) and because of this fact it is imperative that we seek the reality that forms the foundation of our beliefs and not base our eternity on emotions and feelings. Without the knowledge of God, people perish (Hos 4:6), but we cannot truly know the Creator unless we seek him in his word.

It goes to follow, that if you do not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture then you cannot truly come to know the character and nature of God.

The problem lies in the reality that all are called to know God and to live in obedience to his word and without a basic belief that the Bible is to be trusted, then there will be a disconnect. There are numerous books that spend at least a full chapter to show how scholars critically validate the Bible, and these include helpful tools that are used in this process. What I have discovered in my own interactions with the average believer, however, is that they do not have the confidence to break down the processes that scholars use to validate the Bible. Most of the reason for this lack of confidence stems from an unfamiliarity with the terminology and processes used in historical and literary research.

It is for this reason that I decided to devote an entire book to the process of how scholars use the tools of historical and literary criticism to validate the Bible, as well as other historically-based documents. The goal is to help the reader become intimately familiar with the terms and processes that scholars use to validate the word of God.

Hopefully, my readers will use the Under Investigation workbook as a tool to help them reach others for the kingdom of God by confidently explaining the scrutiny that the Judeo-Christian Bible has gone through and how other holy books have not been able to withstand the same type of analysis and critical investigation.

Hard Evidence the Book of Acts Was Written by an Eyewitness? A Reply to Bart Ehrman

4. Is the NT True?

By Jonathan Mclatchie

Last week, New Testament scholar Dr. Bart Ehrman published an article at his blog, in which he responded to a reader who had asked him his opinion on a popular approach to arguing for the reliability of the book of Acts. The questioner specifically cites popular apologist Dr. Frank Turek and Acts scholar Dr. Colin Hemer, who have pointed to specific and detailed knowledge demonstrated in the book of Acts that reveal its author to be close up to the facts, well informed and habitually reliable. The questioner noted that “Many of these are insignificant, but others seem to be things ‘only an eyewitness could know,’ like the location of a sailor’s landmark or sea approach to a city.”

Readers who are interested in a presentation of examples of this sort of detailed and specific knowledge shown by Acts may wish to check out this webinar I did with philosopher Dr. Timothy McGrew (which also contains a solid discussion of some of Ehrman’s objections to Acts). This webinar I did with Acts scholar Dr. Craig Keener is also worth checking out. For those more inclined to read written material, I highly recommend Colin Hemer’s book The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History, which covers many examples of this. I will also provide a few examples here to give a flavor of the sort of evidence we are talking about. I will list a handful of instances of the titles of local officials that Luke so effortlessly gets right.

Luke gets right the precise designation for the magistrates of the colony at Philippi as στρατηγοὶ (Acts 16:22), following the general term ἄρχοντας in verse 19. Luke also uses the correct term πολιτάρχας of the magistrates in Thessalonica (17:6). He also gets right the term Ἀρεοπαγίτης as the appropriate title for the member of the court in Areopagus (Acts 17:34). He also correctly identifies Gallio as proconsul, resident in Corinth (18:12), an allusion that allows us to date the events to the period of summer of 51 A.D. to the spring of 52 A.D., since that is when Gallio served as proconsul of Achaia. Luke also uses the correct title, γραμματεὺς, for the chief executive magistrate in Ephesus (19:35), found in inscriptions there. Furthermore, when Luke tells us of the riot in Ephesus, he indicates that the city clerk told the crowd that “There are proconsuls” (Acts 19:38). A proconsul is a Roman authority to whom one might take a complaint. Normally, there was only one. So, why does Luke so casually use the plural term (ἀνθύπατοί) here? It turns out that, just at that particular time, there was in fact two as a result of the assassination by poisoning, in the fall of 54 A.D., of the previous proconsul, Silanus (see Tacitus’ Annals 13.1). This, again, is something that would be rather difficult to get right by fluke.

Luke even uses the correct Athenian slang word that the Athenians use of Paul in 17:18, σπερμολόγος (literally, “seed picker”), as well as the term used of the court in 17:19 — Ἄρειον Πάγον, meaning “the hill of Ares”.

Luke also gets right numerous points of geography, sea routes and landmarks. For example, he gets right a natural crossing between correctly named ports (Acts 13:4-5). He names the proper port, Perga, for a ship crossing from Cyprus (13:13). He names the proper port, Attalia, that returning travelers would use (14:25). Luke also correctly names the place of a sailor’s landmark, Samothrace (16:11). He also correctly implies that sea travel was the most convenient means of travelling from Berea to Athens (17:14-15). As I documented in a previous article, Luke even gets the implied location of the island of Cauda correct in Acts 27, despite Ptolemy and Pliny the Elder getting it wrong. And so it goes on and on.

How does Ehrman reply to this argument? He writes,

…I do NOT appreciate Frank Turkey [sic] or Colin Hemer for making the argument, since surely they know better. If they do know better, shame on them for trying to dupe others. If they don’t know better, would someone please tell them to start thinking more clearly?

Unfortunately, in this case as we shall see, it is Bart Ehrman, not Turek or Hemer, who needs to start thinking more clearly. Ehrman asks how we know Acts to be historical reportage rather than legend. He writes,

The traditional answer is that Acts was written by an eyewitness, a person who accompanied Paul on his missionary journeys. The presumption is that if it was written by an eyewitness, then the accounts almost certainly must be historically accurate. I won’t be going into that issue here (of whether eyewitness = accurate), but if you have ever known an eyewitness to an event who got it completely wrong (and if you’re a sentient human being, I bet you have known at least one!) you can immediately see at least one aspect of the problem.

The argument here is actually not that Luke is reliable because he was an eyewitness. Rather, we infer him to be an eyewitness because of, among other things, his demonstrated reliability on so many matters. Luke’s demonstrated meticulousness and detailed accuracy as an historian reveals him to be someone who is close up to the facts, well informed, and habitually reliable. This is best explained by his being an eyewitness. And Luke’s track record of accurate reportage gives us some reason to trust him on matters on which he cannot be directly cross-checked. I discuss some of the reasons why we think Luke was an eyewitness in a previous article, so I will not repeat myself here.

Ehrman notes that,

The reason for thinking Acts was written by an eyewitness is that in four passages in these chapters, the author moves from talking about what “they” (Paul and his companions) were doing to about what “we” were doing. It sounds like he’s including himself in a number of the events as one who was there. The natural conclusion: he was an eyewitness.

This is a simplistic representation of the argument, since there is a lot more to it than that. For a scholarly discussion of why the use of the plural pronoun indicates that the author was an eyewitness, readers may refer to Craig Keener’s commentary on Acts, which covers this in detail. I mentioned in my previous article, for instance, that the “we” pronouns trail off when Paul travels through Philippi, only to reappear in Acts 20 when Paul passes once again through Philippi. This is suggestive that the author had remained behind in Philippi and subsequently re-joined Paul when Paul returned through Philippi.

Returning to the detailed knowledge shown by Acts, Ehrman thinks he has found a flaw in this argument. He writes,

If you can show that the account knows where certain places actually were, and knows details about what were in those places, and landmarks, and so on: doesn’t that show the author must have been with Paul on his journeys? Uh, why would it show *that*?? Wouldn’t it just show that he knew about these locations and what was in them? Wouldn’t you get precisely the same kind of narrative if this was someone who had traveled a good bit himself, or knew others who had, and pieced it all together?

To illustrate this point, Ehrman offers an analogy. He writes,

Suppose in 2000 years someone uncovers a story that describes an event that happened to Professor Bart Ehrman in March 2016. Professor Ehrman taught at the University of North Carolina which was located in a college town named Chapel Hill. That semester he was teaching his course on the New Testament in a large lecture classroom in a building called Hamilton Hall. On the afternoon of March 14, Professor was just leaving his office in Carolina Hall to take the three-minute walk to his classroom, when he heard a massive explosion, and going out of his building he saw that Hamilton Hall had been destroyed in an explosion, killing 172 people. Later investigators discovered that it had been caused by a gas leak.

Now, this future researcher who has uncovered the story decides to look into the archaeological record to see if the account is accurate. He learns that way back then there really was a state called North Carolina, and sees that archaeologists had indeed uncovered a town called Chapel Hill, where there really was a university. More than that, they had excavated the university and had found Carolina Hall and – mirabile dictu – there was an actual map of the campus in the ruins. It turns out one of the major lecture rooms for large classes was a short distance away, within eyesight, in Hamilton Hall. Just as in the story!! Moreover, the records of all the professors from the early 21st century were discovered, and there was a fellow named Bart Ehrman who did indeed teach courses on something called the New Testament, and was teaching one such course in Spring semester, 2016.

BINGO! This story MUST have been written by someone who was a companion of Bart Ehrman who was there to see all these things! How else would he have had all this information about NC, Chapel Hill, the university, Hamilton Hall, Carolina Hall, Bart Ehrman, and a class on the NT that particular semester? And that means Hamilton Hall really was destroyed by an explosion caused by a gas leak, right?

Uh, well, no. Millions of people know about NC, and the existence of Chapel Hill, and that there is a university there. Hundreds of thousands know about both Carolina Hall and Hamilton Hall, and have a general sense of their proximity, and that some fellow named Bart Ehrman teaches NT there. Why would the account of the gas leak-explosion have to be written by someone who was there at the time? Or even someone who knew me? Or someone who observed the event?

Ehrman speaks here as if, in the first century world, the geographical, political, terminological, and other subtle facts that the book of Acts gets right would have been widely and easily known or accessible. However, this is absolutely absurd. The argument for Acts being based on eyewitness testimony is that the book of Acts gets hard things right. Ehrman’s illustration about the University of North Carolina implies a situation where one can easily look up these facts, using modern resources like Google or Wikipedia, and include them in a fictional story. However, in the case of the book of Acts, which was written in a world without the ease of access to information that we enjoy today, Ehrman’s proposed scenario would imply that the author would have had to travel around all of those same places (or at the very least interview people who had been there) and include those very specific facts in an account of historical fiction, a genre that did not even exist at the time. Ehrman’s scenario here is very ad hoc and anachronistic.

A further issue with Ehrman’s statement is his use of the word “must.” None of us are arguing that the evidence proves that Luke was an eyewitness and traveling companion of Paul. We are talking about probabilities, and what best explains the relevant data. It is also not the case that Julius Caesar must have crossed the Rubicon, or that Abraham Lincoln must have emancipated the slaves, though the evidence for those things is very strong.

In Ehrman’s final paragraph, he writes,

I’m not saying that because of this Acts is unreliable historically. I’m saying that if someone wants to argue it is, they need to come up with good arguments instead of completely irrelevant ones. I do understand that if the author had gotten all the geographical information wrong it could be relevant to whether the account was accurate or not; my argument is that getting that kind of information right is not. If Christian apologists don’t see the difference – then I’m afraid I can’t help them.

Now, if all Ehrman meant here is that the correctness of the specific details in Acts doesn’t logically entail the historical truth of the narrative, then I would have to agree (though I do not know anyone who has ever argued that it does). However, Ehrman is here saying something that is much stronger. Here, he is asserting that the arguments in question are “completely irrelevant.” This statement is totally indefensible and is logically impossible, since it cannot simultaneously be relevant if the information is incorrect but completely irrelevant if the information is in fact correct.

We can be charitable here, however, and take him to be speaking colloquially, to mean that the relevance of accurate details in Acts is negligible or not worth speaking of. However, this too is problematic. What is the argument for this? One might conjecture that Ehrman takes it to be part of the background information that Acts is highly realistic fiction, a conclusion he has come to on independent grounds. But how does he arrive independently at this conclusion? In fact, the sort of arguments that Ehrman wields against Acts (such as alleged discrepancies with Paul’s letters) would suggest that it isn’t highly realistic fiction, since on Ehrman’s view Acts is contradicting primary sources for the life of Paul. If the author of Acts went to the trouble of visiting all of the places that he claims Paul travelled to, gathering highly specific information in order to incorporate them into his realistic fictional account of Paul’s travels, why would he also contradict the Pauline epistles, which would have been in wide circulation and therefore much more easily accessible? Ehrman’s standards in regards to those alleged discrepancies are entirely wrong. All of the contradictions Ehrman alleges between Acts and Paul’s letters, as I have documented elsewhere (e.g. see my ongoing series of reviews on this site of Ehrman’s book Jesus, Interrupted) are the result of over-readings, tendentious interpretations, and arguments from silence. The forcefulness that Ehrman ascribes to those, combined with his dismissal of the difficult details Luke gets right concerning geography and other matters as “completely irrelevant” is astounding, and really reveals his unscholarly bias against the New Testament.

To conclude, I do NOT appreciate Bart Ehrman for making the argument, since surely he knows better. If he does know better, shame on him for trying to dupe others. If he doesn’t know better, would someone please tell him to start thinking more clearly? This post by Ehrman represents yet another example of why Ehrman should no longer be taken seriously as a scholarly critic of Christianity, despite his popularity in atheistic and Muslim circles. It is time that Ehrman is called out for his poor scholarship, bad standards, and faulty epistemology. For more on that, I refer you to my ongoing series of reviews at this site of Jesus, Interrupted (part 1, part 2, part 3)

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

Another Gospel with Alisa Childers

Podcast

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There is a far deeper problem than atheism infecting the church. Alisa Childers, a Christian singer with ZOEgirl, almost got infected herself. She was challenged to renounce the true gospel and adopt another gospel—that of progressive Christianity. She joins Frank to tell her story and discuss her fabulous new book “Another Gospel,” which is part autobiographical and part apologetics.

Among the issues they cover:

How did your pastor try to convert away from the true Gospel?
What is progressive and Christian about progressive Christianity?
What are the basic beliefs of progressive Christianity?
What the signs of a person or church-going in that direction?
Why do people become progressive Christians?
How is progressive Christianity more intolerant than true Christianity?
What are its racist and Marxist roots?
What evidence do we have that the early Christians were conservative, not progressive?
How do you reach out to those who consider themselves progressive Christians?

Get the book! Here’s Frank’s endorsement: “I love this book! Alisa Childers takes you on a captivating journey from her unreflective conservative Christian faith to the cliff of another gospel and then back home to the true Jesus. Along the way, she deconstructs progressive Christianity with wit, insight, and easy-to-remember evidence. Another Gospel? will inoculate you from a temptation far more seductive than atheism. And it’s an enjoyable read too!”

If you want to send us a question for the show, please email us at Hello@CrossExamined.org.

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October 16, 2020/by Frank Turek

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.

Was Luke Wrong about the Census?

4. Is the NT True?, Jesus Christ

By Ryan Leasure

One of the more challenging texts in the Gospels is Luke’s reference to the census. We read in Luke 2:1-5:

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David, which was called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.

So, why is this text difficult? It’s difficult because Luke places Quirinius’ census at the time of Jesus’ birth prior to King Herod’s death in 4 BC (Mt 2:1; Lk 1:5). Historical records, however, date Quirinius’ Syrian governorship from AD 6-9. This alleged historical discrepancy has led to objections of various kinds. These objections can be summarized into five main points:[1]

Nothing is known of an empire-wide census during Augustus.
No census would require Joseph to travel to Bethlehem.
No census would have happened in Palestine during the reign of King Herod.
Josephus only knows of Quirinius’ census in AD 6.
Quirinius was not the governor of Syria during the time of Jesus’ birth.

Do these five objections prove that Luke was wrong about the census? Let’s consider each of them in turn.

Nothing is known of an empire-wide census during Augustus

This claim simply isn’t true. According to historical records, Augustus instituted at least three censuses.[2] We also know of other cyclical censuses that transpired across in the empire during this time period in places such as Syria, Gaul, and Spain.[3] If this is true, why couldn’t Augustus issue a census in Palestine for taxation purposes?

No Census would Require Joseph to Travel to Bethlehem

This objection assumes that Rome did not allow local regions to operate according to their own customs. We know, however, that Rome often allowed Israel to operate according to their own customs provided they didn’t cause too trouble for the Romans. For example, they were allowed to observe the Sabbath, maintain their temple, and opt-out of activities that violated their Jewish consciences.[4] With this in mind, it seems perfectly reasonable to think that Rome would allow the Jewish people to conduct an ancestral census per their customs (2 Sam 24).

Additionally, Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem coincides with the time period of Herod the Great’s reign. For if this census occurred in AD 6, Joseph never would have left Herod Antipas’ territory (Nazareth) to Archelaus’ territory (Bethlehem). A journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem for registration purposes only makes sense during an era when both towns were part of one jurisdiction. After Herod died, these territories were split up.

No Census would have happened in Palestine during the Reign of King Herod

This claim overexaggerates Herod’s power. After all, Herod was a puppet king for the Romans. Yes, he’s historically referred to as King Herod the Great, but let’s not forget that Caesar could have deposed him at any moment. Herod simply rose to power through some politically calculated moves on his part.

Furthermore, The Romans frequently conducted censuses in vassal kingdoms across the empire.[5] Palestine wouldn’t have been any different.

We also know that after Herod’s death, Roman taxes were slashed by 25% in Samaria under the rule of Archelaus, indicating that regular taxes existed in Palestine during the time of Jesus’ birth.

Josephus only knows of Quirinius’ census in AD 6

Josephus dates the Quirinian census to thirty-seven years after Octavian defeated Mark Antony at Actium in 31 BC. Thirty-seven years later places the census in AD 6.[6] Josephus also tells us that this census caused a significant revolt. Those who deny that a census took place during the birth of Jesus suggest that the AD 6 revolt was due to the fact that Rome had never conducted a census in Palestine such as this. But as has already been discussed, we have good reasons to reject that view.

Others suggest that the revolt occurred because Rome ignored the Jewish customs during the AD 6 census. Meaning, previous censuses were conducted in a way that satisfied the Jewish people. If this hypothesis is true, Josephus would have and no reason to comment on the Luke 2 census since it occurred without controversy. As with most historians, Josephus only writes about “newsworthy” events.

We must also note that just because Luke is the only one who testifies to this earlier census doesn’t mean that it didn’t occur. We have thousands of singularly attested events in ancient literature. Additional sources would certainly give us more confidence that those events occurred, but not having additional sources in no way proves those events didn’t happen. Let’s also bear in mind that Luke has proven himself to be meticulously accurate in his handling of facts that can be checked.[7]

Quirinius was not the Governor of Syria During the Time of Jesus’ Birth

If Jesus was born in 4 BC, and Quirinius wasn’t governor of Syria until AD 6, how can Luke be right about the timing of the census? Three solutions have been offered to this challenging objection.

First, many have suggested that Quirinius served as the Syrian governor twice. In fact, historical data leaves a governorship gap between 4-1 BC. Which means, we don’t know who served as governor of Syria during that time. The challenge with this particular view is that even if Quirinius filled the historical gap, his rule most likely would have come after Herod’s death. Yet this explanation could still work. Censuses were known to take several years. If the census began while Herod still reigned over Judea, the results might not have emerged until Quirinius’ reign so that his name was attached to the census.

Second, others argue that Quirinius was not the governor Syria during the Luke 2 census. Rather, he served in some administrative capacity – perhaps an overseer for the Syrian census. After all, Luke does not use the technical Greek word for “governor” in the text. Rather, he uses a verb which means “to rule, command, or lead.” In other words, Luke indicates that Quirinius was ruling in some kind of leadership capacity during this census. And since a census was a big job, it makes sense that someone would be appointed to oversee the project.

Third, some have proposed a different solution altogether. Instead of arguing from history, many have gone down the textual route by suggesting that the Greek word prote should not be translated “first” but “before.” If this is true, Luke is saying that the census took place before Quirinius was governor of Syria. But without getting too technical, this view is a stretch. It also seems odd for Luke to tell us that this event occurred before someone was governor. Why not tell us who the governor was at the time? Most scholars agree that “first” is the better translation.

Solution

Based on the above discussion, we don’t need to adopt the view that Luke committed a historical blunder on the Luke 2 census. We know that Rome conducted censuses somewhat frequently, and Jewish customs would have required Joseph to return to his native homeland.

Luke also indicates in Luke 2 that this was the “first” census. Meaning, he knew of a later census. And it just so happens he refers to that later census from AD 6 in Acts 5:31 – the one which led to a Jewish revolt.

But how do we reconcile a census during the rule of both Herod and Quirinius? It seems to me that the best explanation is that Quirinius was appointed as administrator of this earlier census. After all, Luke did not indicate that Quirinius was the “governor” of Syria, despite our English translations. He merely indicated that he “ruled” at that time. We know that he later became the official governor of Syria in AD 6. But as is the case with most people in political power, they usually have other positions along the way as they climb their way up the ladder.

While we can’t be historically certain on this hypothesis, we don’t need adopt the view that Luke made a mistake.

Notes

[1] Darrell Bock, Luke 1:1-9:50. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), 903.

[2] Tacitus, Annals 1.11; Dio Cassius, Roman History 53.30.2

[3] Bock, Luke 1:1-9:50. 904.

[4] Josephus, Antiquities. 14.10.6, 20.

[5] Hoehner, H. W., Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ cites 16 examples. Tacitus, Annals 2.42; 6.41

[6] Josephus, Antiquities. 17.13.5; 18.1.1.

[7] See Colin Hemer, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History.

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.

Tag Archive for: apologetics

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Challenge 3: What about the complex genetic code?

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Problem 4: Probabilities are low

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