Tag Archive for: Skepticism

Christmas Conundrums

Resolving Christmas Conundrums

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By Evan Minton

Christmas is one of my favorite holidays and has been for as long as I’ve walked this Earth. As a kid, it was because I got a boatload of toys on Christmas morning that I got to play with as Mom and Dad prepared Christmas dinner for us and the rest of my family. As someone who is now a born-again Christian, my primary reason has shifted from getting gifts to praising God for taking on human flesh to begin His mission of redeeming fallen humanity. We all know the story: of how Gabriel appeared to Mary, told her she would become miraculously pregnant with Jesus, how Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem where Jesus would then be born, etc. However, those of us who witness to non-believers will encounter some objections about the reliability of the Christmas narrative.

It is the point of this blog post to wrestle with these challenges to the gospels’ reliability.

1: The Census 

Luke 2:1-3 says “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register.” 

The Bible is clear that Jesus was born when Herod The Great was in power and when Quirinius was governor, but (A) Flavius Josephus says Herod died in A.D 4 and (B) secular history attests that Quirinius didn’t become governor until A.D 6?  Did The Bible get it wrong?

First of all, I think we should give Luke the benefit of the doubt. In The Book Of Acts In The Setting Of Hellenistic History, the classic scholar Dr. Collin J. Hemer shows that archeology proves that the book of Acts got it right in 84 incidental details. The first chapter of Luke and the first chapter of Acts both give us clues that these books are written by the same author (Luke), such as the fact that they’re both addressed to a man named Theophilus and in Acts, the writer alludes “to my former work” (Acts 1:1). This is one piece of internal evidence that Luke and Acts had the same author. Now, if Acts gets it right in 84 different places, then is it really reasonable to suspect that this same writer would be so sloppy in his previous work? In fact, the famed scholar and archeologist Sir William Ramsay once said: “Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy, he is possessed of the true historic sense…in short, this author should be placed along with the greatest of historians.”[1] Click here to read about some of the things Luke got right in both of his books.  

Secondly, there are proposed solutions which could resolve the issue. One proposed solution has been that there were two different men named Quirinius governing on two different occasions. That possibility isn’t entirely out of the question. After all, we’ve had more than one president whose first name is George. The two-Quirinius explanation would be analogous to George Bush’ presidency in the 90s and George W. Bush’ presidency in the 2000s.

Another proposal is that the Qurinius reigned on two different occasions. As Daryl E Witmer of ChristianAnswers.net explains: “There is good reason to believe that Quirinius was actually twice in a position of command (the Greek expression hegemoneuo in Luke 2:2 which is often translated ‘governor’ really just means ‘to be leading’ or ‘in charge of’) over the province of Syria, which included Judea as a political subdivision. The first time would have been when he was leading military action against the Homonadensians during the period between 12 and 2 B.C. His title may even have been ‘military governor.’ “[2]

Either of these proposals would solve the timing of Quirinius’ governorship. Either there were two governors by this name, or, as seems most likely, Quirinius was the governor on two separate occasions. This latter view is the one that archeologist William Ramsay endorsed.[3]

But what about the census itself? Was this really a practice that the Roman government did?

Here’s a quote from an official governmental order dated AD 104. Gaius Vibius Maximus, Prefect of Egypt [says]:

“Seeing that the time has come for the house to house census, it is necessary to compel all those who for any cause whatsoever are residing out of their provinces to return to their own homes, that they may both carry out the regular order of the census and may also attend diligently to the cultivation of their allotments.”[4]

As you can see, that practice is confirmed by this document. And another papyrus from AD 48 implies that the entire family was involved in the census. Moreover, there have been scholars who argued that Romans were known to occasionally allow a census to be taken according to local customs in order to avoid ticking off the population.

According to ancient Semitic culture, what this means is that Mary and Joseph would have had to trek to the home of their ancestors.

2: The Christmas Star

In Matthew 2:2, the magi appear before King Herod and ask him where the baby Jesus is. They said“Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” The Magi knew how to get to the town Jesus was born because a huge shining star in the sky acted like a celestial GPS system. This incident of the star that guided the magi has baffled historians and astronomers for years. What kind of event could this be? What astronomical phenomenon could have occurred in the universe to have caused a star to shine noticeably bright for the duration of the magis’ journey?

Some Christians have responded to this challenge by asking why it even has to be a literal star at all? Why can’t it just be a supernatural light caused by God? Or why couldn’t it be supernatural light given off by an angel? The problem is that the text specifically calls it a star, or at least some kind of celestial body in this universe. The Greek Word translated as “star” is aster, and according to Hugh Ross, this Greek word can indicate a number of different astronomical bodies, including a star, planet, comet, asteroid, or meteor. If we’re to read the plain meaning of scripture, we should probably conclude that this is a star, planet, meteor, or some other astronomical body rather than an angel or a miracle light. This would be to stick to the hermeneutical principle that The Bible should be interpreted literally unless good reasons can be given to take a term metaphorically.

The astrophysicist Hugh Ross once argued that the star was a recurring nova. He wrote “The brighter novae are rare enough that they could catch the attention of the Magi (who, it seems, were waiting for a sign), yet also dim enough to escape the notice of other observers. And, unlike supernovae, a few novae actually can erupt several times.”[5]

However, he himself said there was “a snag” in this explanation. He said that all the recurring novae that astronomers had observed had a recurrence rate of 10 years or even a century! Nevertheless, Dr. Ross said that believed it was possible for a nova to recur in less than two years. In 2014, new scientific evidence came to light to vindicate Ross. Ross wrote about these findings, saying “Astronomers observed nova M31N 2008-12a recurring within a period of only one year. Following this discovery, a team of four astronomers demonstrated that a certain kind of white dwarf star could exhibit recurring nova eruptions with a period as short as two months. Such a white dwarf star’s rotation rate would need to be close to zero and its mass would need to be 1.38 times the Sun’s mass. It also would need to be accreting mass from a companion star at a rate of 0.00000036 solar masses per year. The team also showed that a one-year nova eruption period requires a white dwarf with a mass = 1.30 solar masses and an accretion rate = 0.00000015 solar masses per year.”[6]

Dr. Ross says that this is a rare occurrence in the Milky Way Galaxy, but that nevertheless, these kinds of white dwarfs exist in a sufficient enough number to make the account of the star of Bethlehem credible.

3: Herod’s Slaughter Of Innocent Babies 

Matthew 2 records that King Herod sought to kill all of the babies in Bethlehem who were 2 years old or younger because he believed the prophecies in The Old Testament about the coming of the Messiah (the giant star talked about in the previous subheader being a sign that he had arrived). Historians and scholars of ancient history have doubted whether this incident ever really occurred. Why? Because the only place it’s recorded is in the gospel of Matthew. Surely a person of such prominence as King Herod committing an act as heinous as murdering all of Bethelem’s infants would have been talked about by more people than Matthew, right?. You would expect Josephus or Tacitus to have at least made a passing reference to this event, right?

What are we to do about this objection? Did King Herod’s genocide not occur? Did Matthew make the whole thing up? Lee Strobel brought this objection up in his interview with Archeologist John McCray in his book The Case For Christ. In that interview, McCray responds with the following:

“‘You have to put yourself back in the first century and keep a few things in mind. First, Bethlehem was probably no bigger than Nazareth, so how many babies of that age would there be in a village of five hundred or six hundred people? Not thousands, not hundreds, although certainly a few. ‘Second, Herod the Great was a bloodthirsty king: he killed members of his own family; he executed lots of people who he thought might challenge him. So the fact that he killed some babies in Bethlehem is not going to captivate the attention of people in the Roman world. And third, there was no television, no radio, no newspapers. It would have taken a long time for word of this to get out, especially from such a minor village way in the back hills of nowhere, and historians had much bigger stories to write about.”[7]

So, in other words, Bethelem was extremely tiny so the slaughter wouldn’t have been a major holocaust. Secondly, Herod was known for heinous acts (see the writings of Josephus), and thirdly, it would have taken a long time for this to have circulated. Given the second point, it wouldn’t have probably been of much interest to people outside of Bethelem.

I would add to McRay’s points by pointing out that much of ancient writings have been lost in the sands of time, decayed away. Sometimes portions of these writings survive as citations in other works, such as Thallus’ mention of the darkness at Jesus’ crucifixion quoted in a work by Julius Africanus which was itself quoted by a historian named George Syncellus[8]. Both Thallus’ and Africanus’ works are lost, but both partially survive in Syncellus’ work. That’s one way we know that they didn’t survive; because historians see these authors quoted yet the quoted works are nowhere to be found. So, it may be the case that some other historians did make mention of it, but their works either haven’t been found yet or none of the manuscripts survived to the present day. We just don’t know.

Conclusion 

Archeology and astronomy have helped to shed light on these Christmas Conundrums. We have reason to believe that Matthew and Luke accurately recorded the story of Jesus’ birth.

Notes 

[1] Sir William M. Ramsey, The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament, Hodder & Stoughton, 1915.

[2] Daryl E. Witmer, “When Did The Luke 2 Census Occur?”, https://christiananswers.net/q-aiia/census-luke2.html 

[3] John McRay, Archaeology and the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991), 155, emphasis added.

[4] William Mitchell Ramsay, The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament (London: Forgotten Books, 2012, reprint of 1909 edition), 277.

[5] Hugh Ross, “Astronomy Sheds New Light On The Christmas Star”, December 1, 2014, http://reasons.org/explore/blogs/todays-new-reason-to-believe/read/tnrtb/2014/12/01/astronomy-sheds-new-light-on-the-christmas-star 

[6] Ibid.

[7] Strobel, Lee; Strobel, Lee. Case for Christ Movie Edition: Solving the Biggest Mystery of All Time (Case for … Series) (Kindle Locations 2256-2263). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

[8] George Syncellus, quoting Julius Africanus, “History Of The World, Book 3”.

 

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2B4LwGg

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Christians Bias Believe

Do Christians Have a Bias to Believe?

By Al Serrato

To the skeptic, most Christians – certainly most who appear willing to “defend” their faith – may seem a bit one-dimensional, perhaps in some cases fanatical. They seem so convinced of their views, regardless of how bizarre some of these views seem to the unbeliever. Many conclude, then, that the believer is simply biased in favor of what he wants to believe. He has accepted a “bill of goods” without having struggled over where best to place his trust.

But this is not an accurate description of the faith journey of many believers. Indeed, most go through a period of doubt in which they struggle with what they were taught in childhood. That was certainly my experience. Having been raised in the Catholic Church, I was taught doctrines and rituals which were both mysterious and comforting. Until I began law school, though, these beliefs went largely unchallenged, leaving me unprepared to defend what I thought was “the truth.” Encountering highly intelligent people who were not afraid to point out why they viewed my faith as foolish, I began to believe that all religions were pretty much the same – they could provide comfort, but they weren’t really true. Truth, after all, was a relative concept, dependent on one’s point of view and cultural narrative. And science had pretty much shown that there isn’t a need for God. While faith might make a good crutch when bad things happen, it probably did more harm than good in the long run, because it was at odds with reason. These conclusions just happened to coincide with an increasing desire to put the restrictions of Christianity behind me and to put aside whatever feelings of guilt would arise from time to time.

As I look back on it now, I realize that despite my upbringing, I did not actually have a bias to believe in Christianity. My bias, as I was discovering, was to take the path of least resistance. As a practicing Christian, I needed to conform my behavior to something outside myself, depriving me of a certain amount of freedom. Removing the restrictions of religion would allow me to remain “moral” but would also allow me to define morality any way I chose. After all, with no law-giver, there was no reason to comply with rules that I did not make for myself.

Since I knew many believers, I would raise these issues with them, hoping that they could respond to my challenges. Most, unfortunately, would talk about faith as a feeling or remind me that the Church’s teachings were infallible. They would suggest that my skepticism was not pleasing to God and raise the specter of eternal punishment. In short, they were telling me that I was wrong, but not why I was wrong. I would just have to take it “on faith.” They were wrong: I wasn’t persuaded by discussions of how faith would make me “feel” (I already felt good in church) or with threats of hell for failing to follow someone else’s rituals. I also wasn’t satisfied with “infallible teachings.” If in fact the world was broken down into “faith” and “reason” – as my law school friends maintained – then I knew I would side with reason.

I thought this conclusion would satisfy me, but in the end, it did not. Two things continued to nag at me. The first was this concept of truth. As a criminal investigator and then a prosecutor, I had chosen a field in which truth actually mattered. After all, it just wasn’t okay to get a conviction if I had the wrong guy. I became increasingly fascinated with and drawn to the concept of objective truth. From my legal training, I also had developed a strong interest in reason. Concepts such as “the reasonable person” standard and proof beyond a “reasonable doubt” showed that the thinkers who laid the foundation for the orderly society we developed put a great amount of stock in the mind’s ability to reason to a just result. I didn’t know how this applied to religion, and I still suspected that no one religion had the corner on truth, but I made a commitment to myself that I would follow truth where it led. In other words, I realized that I had some strong motivations to ignore the truth, especially when it seemed inconvenient, and I made a promise to myself that I would seek the truth and submit to it, to the best of my ability.

The second problem nagging at me was with the notion that only simpletons adhered to religion. As I learned more about history, I realized that some of the greatest and most powerful thinkers in history grappled with the same questions that troubled me and that they concluded that there is, in fact, a God and that he is the God described in the Bible. These included not just philosophers, but also the scientists who essentially developed what we recognize today as Western science. The more I learned, the more I realized that treating religious belief as an “opiate for the masses” just wouldn’t fly. There was something there, and I wanted to find out what it was.

In sum, then, my journey began with faith and that faith ran into a brick wall that I thought was “reason.” It ended with the realization that the dichotomy between faith and reason was in fact false. The two are in fact compatible. Christianity was never based on wishful thinking, nor is it dependent solely on “faith.” Instead, it was based on specific truth claims about events which occurred in history, and which were verifiable. This evidence supports a conclusion that Jesus rose from the dead, providing a rational basis to place one’s faith in his message of salvation.

Sadly, the nonbeliever accuses those who have taken this journey of having a closed mind. Quite the contrary is true: while my mind is open – to receiving and evaluating new evidence – given what I have seen so far, I am not ambivalent. Can the skeptic say the same?

It is also worth noting that remaining perpetually “on the fence” – unwilling to reach a firm conclusion – brings with it risks as well. In my next post, I will attempt to lay out just what those are.

 

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2Av6bXX

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Skeptic God Evil

Skeptics Can’t Have It Both Ways

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Former L.A. County District Attorney and agnostic Vince Bugliosi believes that the problem of evil is fatal to believing in Christianity.

“I’m an agnostic only on the issue of whether there is a God, a supernatural being who created the universe. I’m not an agnostic on the Christian God… while God can be all-powerful or all-good, he cannot be both, since these are irreconcilable virtues in a world overflowing with the bloody crops of evil. Even eliminating all the other supposed attributes of God, if he is all-powerful, and hence capable of preventing evil, for him to cause, or do nothing to stop, the unbelievable suffering and horror in this world immediately tells one that God cannot be all-good, as Christianity believes its God to be.” ¹

But then, in a later chapter in his book he mentions numerous parts of the Bible where God actually does something to put a stop to evil, and he is furiously outraged at Him for doing so. Ok, technically, he doesn’t say it that way. But he argues, as skeptics increasingly have in recent years,

“So Christians and Jews call God all-good and all-perfect, but when they get around to printing their bibles that describe his conduct, they describe someone who would make history’s greatest villains look like very pale imitations by comparison. Would even Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Osama bin Laden, or Tomas de Torquemada do the things the God of Jewish and Christian scriptures did?” ²

Of course, he is referring here to events like The Flood and the destruction of Jericho, among others.

But let’s think about this a moment. What if God hadn’t sent the flood? No doubt, Bugliosi and other skeptics would cry out something like this –

“God created humans, and within a short time, the earth was filled with violence. Violence, violence everywhere! And where was God in all this? Why didn’t he do something about it?”

And if God hadn’t wiped out Jericho and other cities and kingdoms around Israel, we’d no doubt here the complaint that –

“The Caananites were sacrificing children to their gods generation after generation. It had gone on for 400 years at one point, but God just let it continue! How can God be considered all-loving and all-powerful at the same time?”

One might object that God has no right to take the life of innocent children who haven’t done anything wrong, as scripture records God doing in these cases. But what about the possibility that the children of the flood and of Jericho could easily have gone on to be as savage as their parents? I wonder what Bugliosi would say if Adolf Hitler had died in a house fire in Austria in 1890, when he was 1 years old. Probably something like this –

“An innocent baby named Adolf Hitler, who had done nothing wrong, nothing at all, was allowed by this supposedly merciful God to die in a fire. Why didn’t God stop it? Couldn’t He have easily stopped it with an impromptu rain shower?”

We have no way of knowing if a particular baby would have grown up to be a mass murderer or worse. But perhaps if Bugliosi was God, he would have let the child grow old enough until it had actually done something wrong, was no longer innocent, and then taken its life. But then, he’s just allowed evil to take place, and some skeptic would blast him because he could have stopped it. Oops!

But perhaps Bugliosi has a better idea on what to do with evil people. Instead of taking the life of those who will commit evil, perhaps he would keep them permanently suspended in a perpetual force field that keeps them from moving. But how long before this becomes sheer torture of boredom, if nothing else? How would Bugliosi respond to the skeptics who would no doubt complain that this is cruel and unusual punishment?

When all is said and done, God is merciful and has decided to withhold His wrath in many cases precisely because He isn’t the cruel, uncompassionate monster skeptics thinks He is. Yet, His goodness means that He won’t withhold it forever, and He does choose to intervene – even if skeptics call him a monster for doing so.

¹ Bugliosi, Vincent. Divinity of Doubt, pp. 25-26

² Bugliosi, Vincent. Divinity of Doubt, pp. 156

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2qt3G3u

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One Fewer God

One Fewer God?

By Derrick Stokes

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

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

So what’s the difference?

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

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

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

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

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

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

However…

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

This brings us to the first two commandments:

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

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

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

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

Derrick Stokes

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

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What Counts as Evidence for God from Science_

What Counts as Evidence for God from Science?

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Some might say that science leaves no room for the supernatural and therefore it’s impossible for science to ever provide any evidence for God. Note that if such a claim is made then science could likewise never claim any evidence against God’s existence as it would be completely blind in that realm. There is actually a scientific effort underway to try to find intelligent life beyond earth. They’re looking for physical alien life forms but a search for supernatural intelligence shares much in common. Both types of searches seek to discover artifacts not produced by humans or natural processes.

 

Independent of how one defines science, however, science can support the truth of premises in philosophical arguments. That is what I would like to offer in this series – philosophical arguments for the existence of God where we have scientific support for the truth of key premises. We want to find the truth about origins without worrying about conventions concerning how to define science. As I previously blogged, science is not the only source of knowledge.

As another introductory blog in this series, I want to provide some background and lay down a foundation. Let’s start with the proper definition of evidence – evidence is not the same thing as proof. Science isn’t in the business of proving things and if you’re waiting for mathematical-type proofs before acting on evidence you’re going to be pretty idle because one almost never has such proof. Here is a fairly standard way of defining evidence: An observation is evidence for a hypothesis if the hypothesis is more likely given the observation than it would have otherwise been.

One can have some evidence for each of several different competing scientific explanations. In some cases, there is not yet enough evidence to determine which candidate hypothesis is true. Thus, evidence does not even necessarily make it more likely that the hypothesis is true than not. The combined evidence and prior probabilities can yield this assessment (from a Bayesian perspective). What I would like to do in this series is to present several different lines of evidence for God that together form a powerful cumulative case. Independent of one’s prior probability that God exists, each piece of evidence increases the likelihood that God exists. Each line of evidence can and should be assessed independently before combining all of the probability assessments. This is a standard Bayesian approach to probability. This series of blogs will be somewhat like a courtroom evaluation of some science-related evidence. I encourage you to interact with this evidence and the argument that it points to God.

There at least two general ways in which God might operate within the universe in detectable ways. First, God might directly intervene to do something beyond the laws of nature to bring about life or some intended feature of nature. This could be detected by finding some feature of nature that seems generally in accord with God’s purposes but which is very unlikely to be the product of natural processes. Secondly, God might setup the natural processes themselves and/or the initial conditions to bring about His purposes. This “fine-tuning” would be detectable evidence for God if these natural laws or initial conditions were constrained to a tiny range among possibilities. Some leading atheist thinkers agree that it’s possible to have this type of scientific evidence for God although they obviously resist the conclusion. Stephen Hawking admits in Brief History of Time that fine-tuning is possible evidence of “a divine purpose in Creation and the choice of the laws of science (by God)” Peter Millican, a prominent philosopher at Oxford, conceded in a debate with William Lane Craig that “if there is an inexplicable coincidence in the fundamental constants of nature whose values have to be precisely-tuned within a wide range of otherwise available possibilities that would make a complex universe possible then this constitutes a phenomenon that very naturally invites explanation in terms of a cosmic scale designer.”

I’ll discuss their responses to this evidence in a future blog but first I’d like to discuss a few possible pitfalls in the origins debate. Here are some problematic responses or arguments in this debate about God and design:

“Feature X is so complicated it must be designed”

This is not a good way to argue for design because it’s not really an argument at all. The theist needs to argue why natural processes would not be expected to account for feature X and why God would be expected to want such a feature.

“Science has no explanation for X, therefore God did it”

This is a “god of the gaps” argument, an argument from ignorance. Even in the Christian view, God has set up many natural processes and it’s highly inappropriate to assume by default that divine intervention is happening in every unknown situation.

Indiscriminately calling every argument for God a ‘god of the gaps’ argument

At the other extreme, the skeptic may reject any evidence that seems to point to God by appealing to a future but as of yet undiscovered natural explanation. Philosopher of science Karl Popper coined a term for this unsubstantiated hope in future evidence to sustain naturalism – “promissory naturalism.” Just as promissory notes promise to pay money in the future, some naturalists promise that evidence will be found to justify naturalism. Returning to our courtroom analogy, one cannot appeal to possible evidence that might be found in the future but rather a judge must examine only currently available evidence. If what is known about science indicates natural processes are highly unlikely to produce an effect that God would plausibly want to bring about, then this wouldn’t be a “god of the gaps” argument.

Using questionable theology to refute clear science

An atheist should not have overly narrow expectations of what a god would or wouldn’t do. If you don’t believe that any gods exist, why assume very particular expectations of how a god would act? Just as a SETI researcher should not refuse to recognize evidence of alien artifacts just because she is surprised at certain aspects of the artifacts relative to her narrowly preconceived expectations, so a truth-seeker shouldn’t dismiss evidence for God because of overly narrow expectations of what God would and wouldn’t do.

In the next blog, we’ll start off at the very beginning and see if we can find evidence for God based on the origin of the universe.

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