A Lighthearted Discussion on the Necessity of a Divine Creator - Part Four

Nothing.

Like a million years ago, in Part Three of this series (One, Two), I promised that next time (this time) we'd explore the word 'nothing' and see if we couldn't figure out what it's all about. It's actually not all that complicated, but happens to be so simple that it's very easy to get confused thinking about it, expecting it to be more complex than it actually is and getting lost in an infinite thought loop.

No one wants that for you, so, allow me to make good on my promise.

A Lighthearted Discussion on the Necessity of a Divine Creator - Part Two

This is part two in our lighthearted discussion on the necessity of a divine creator. For part one, click here.

So, we’re going with ‘nothing exploded, which brought everything (the sum total of mass and energy within our universe) into existence.’ Alright, if you say so.

A Lighthearted Discussion on the Necessity of a Divine Creator - Part One

Why do intelligent people believe in God?

Lessons in Bad Philosophy: Dawkins Edition (part 4)

To all those who hung in there for this entire series (part one, part two, part three), thanks! It's been a fun ride, and I am glad to be finally taking a look at Dawkins' unfounded conclusion to his unsound premises. So, without further ado.

Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist.

As I said in the first post in this short series (and as Bill Craig points out in On Guard), even if all of the premises were sound this conclusion simply does not follow. We have seen how none of them are sound, but for the heck of it I'll address this unfounded conclusion as well.

It has been rightly observed and communicated by many an apologist over the centuries that in order to know there is no God one would need to have comprehensive knowledge of the entire universe, both the visible and invisible realms, and also be able to soundly refute thousands of years of spiritual experience, not to mention the myriad of near death experiences of  people who would bet their lives (pun definitely intended) that what they experienced was more real than this physical life. This is clearly impossible. As impossible as swallowing the ocean. 

Now, Dawkins thinks he's clever and has, no doubt after decades of being told the above, reworded the statement to leave an air of uncertainty. He has changed it from "there is no God," which is the only truthful way for an atheist to phrase is, to "God almost certainly does not exist." This slight change, in all honesty, doesn't really do much to lessen requisites which must be present for him to be able to make such a statement authoritatively. 

To illustrate my point, let's say I took one of those handheld metal detectors to the beach, put on my crazy person visor and Bermuda shorts, and braved that scandalous lust-factory in search of buried treasure (for the record, I love the beach and I don't think it's a sin to go there). If I wanted to be able to authoritatively state that there is almost certainly no metal under the sand at that beach I would still need to have covered a good 95% or more of that beach with my metal detector. Sure, it's not 100%, but it's close enough,

Dawkins thinks that his wording exempts him from needing to qualify as an omniscient being in order to justifiably make his statement, but in reality he would still need to be nigh-omniscient before anyone should take this conclusion seriously. But then he would be something so close to God that he may as well be God, and then he would have to either be a theist, which he is clearly intellectually and emotionally opposed to, or deny his own existence, and that would be even more ridiculous than ignoring a universe full of evidence of a divine designer.

Lessons in Bad Philosophy: Dawkins Edition (part 3)

In this, my third post in this series (start here), I'll address Dawkins' last three premises in his argument against God, and then in the fourth and final post I'll sink my teeth into his conclusion that "God almost certainly does not exist."

Let's jump right in.

4) The most ingenious and powerful explanation is Darwinian evolution by natural selection.

Now, Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and deserves some respect for his years of study and decades of experience, so I won't speak as forcefully against this premise as I do the more philosophical examples. I will, however, offer two quick points which illustrate that at the very least Darwinian evolution is NOT the most powerful explanation for anything, and at best, it is pseudo-science which belongs in the history books rather than the science books.

The first is that Darwin himself predicted the fossil record would be overflowing with transitional species by now, and yet science has yet to offer a single unchallenged "missing link" between any species and another. If Darwinian evolution were true then the fossil record would be absolutely teeming with these transitional species. In fact, there should be far, far more of these than of the fully-formed species we find in all corners of the record. So, even if there were a handful of fossils which science categorized as transitional species, which there is not, it would still be inadequate evidence for a system of speciation which requires hundreds or thousands of in-between stages for each fully-formed species.

Secondly, Darwin stated: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." The field of biochemistry alone has demonstrated this very thing. In fact, there is no organism that could have been formed in this way because every organism contains organs, processes, and other aspects which are irreducibly complex - meaning that they absolutely cannot lose a single feature of their construction without being rendered useless, which would have caused them to be rejected by natural selection. A few examples of irreducible complexity in nature are the human eye, the blood clotting factor, and cilia. For more on this get your hands on Michael Behe's fantastic book, Darwin's Black Box. 

5) We don't have an equivalent explanation for physics.

Let's see if I understand what he is saying here. It seems like Dawkins is trying to tell us that there are no antiquated, unfounded, unscientific, wildly speculative, marginally theoretical explanations for physics. I guess I disagree here as well, since physicists such as Stephen Hawking seem to be absolutely overflowing with these sorts of ideas. 

6) We should not give up the hope of a better explanation arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology.

This is nothing more than the blind faith of a committed atheist. This kind of thinking is ironically (and hypocritically) identical to the "God-of-the-gaps" fallacy atheists are so quick to accuse proponents of intelligent design of committing. See, physicists have yet to come up with any explanation at all for the physical world (i.e., the time-space-matter continuum), so otherwise intelligent atheists like Dawkins commit the "no-God-of-the-gaps" fallacy by inserting a yet unknown naturalistic explanation into gaps like this. The really sad part is, unlike theists of old who had no explanation for natural phenomena like lightning and such, who then attributed these phenomena to God, these atheists are so intellectually and/or emotionally committed to atheism that they purposefully exclude what seems to be the most logical explanations for things like a highly-ordered, extremely fine-tuned, indescribably massive, energy-laden, life supporting universe, the irreducible complexity of every living organism, the existence of an undeniable moral code, and plenty of others. 

These guys can maintain hope that someday they will find all the naturalistic explanations they've been dreaming of, but if they are smart and sincerely desire truth above all else, perhaps some of them will finally see the insurmountable heap of evidence for design as... well, evidence for design!

Next time: Does God almost certainly not exist?

Lessons in Bad Philosophy: Dawkins Edition (part 2)

As I promised in my last post, today I will be offering some responses to the the first three premises of Richard Dawkins' syllogism which he has said encapsulates his primary argument against God from his book, The God Delusion. We'll just tackle the first three in this post.

The very first thing, which needs to be addressed right away is that, as William Lane Craig points out in his book On Guard, even if every one of his premises is sound his conclusion simply does not follow. This is just a textbook example of a biologist playing a philosopher (and not the only example!). Dawkins is clearly not qualified to form a coherent, logical argument against God, and he proves that with this abysmally unsound syllogism.

That said, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and still look at each of his premises to see if maybe he had a good idea but just didn't know how to form it into a logical argument.

1) One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.

In other words, "because we know there is no designer we just can't figure out why everything we see exhibits so many signs of having been designed."

Because Dawkins has an a priori commitment to naturalism - he has ruled out a designer before ever looking at the evidence - he simply cannot understand why the universe and everything in it boast so many features which seem to evidence design.

2) The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself.

Again, to paraphrase for those who aren't fluent in atheist-speak: "Because everything looks so designed, the temptation to believe that what looks like design is actually design is unavoidable." Or, "Just because it looks like and swims like and quacks like and has the same DNA as a duck, isn't proof enough that it's a duck."

Dawkins' prior assumption that there is no creator comes out more with each of his premises, betraying the fact that he has an agenda which is far more important to him than actually following evidence where it leads. 

3) The temptation is a false one because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer.

Out of all of his premises, which are all pretty ridiculous, this one will probably be the most misunderstood, and therefore may be prematurely accepted. It may seem like a good argument at first to dismiss the designer argument because it seemingly only pushes the question one step back. After all, when atheist thinkers like Francis Crick suggest that we were seeded here on earth by aliens, we rightly ask the inevitable question, "well where did those aliens come from?"

Isn't this the same thing? It actually isn't. See, in our argument against the alien-seeding theory we are justified in asking that question because, well, aliens aren't eternal, uncreated beings. Crick, Dawkins, and other atheists who resort to this alien-of-the-gaps theory will submit that those aliens had to have evolved somewhere, somehow. This really does push the question back.

Conversely, Dawkins' argument here falls flat because God is described in the holy Bible as an eternal, uncreated, infinitely powerful and intelligent, immaterial Spirit. He needs no explanation because He is a necessary Being - meaning that exists by a necessity of His own nature.

And there's another, more practical and philosophically oriented argument against premise number 3: You don't need to be able to explain the explanation if its is truly the best and most likely explanation. Think about it, when we look at Stonehenge we don't need an explanation of its designers, or to even know if they were human, alien, superhuman, or divine. The best explanation for Stonehenge is that intelligent being(s) designed it. In the same way, we don't need an explanation for a designer of the universe and of life in order to recognize that one must exist. A designer is the best and most likely explanation. Period.

In the following entry we'll look at premises 4-6, and save the conclusion for its own post. See you next time!

Lessons in Bad Philosophy: Dawkins Edition (part 1)

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. 

1 Peter 3:15

Based upon the Lord's instructions here, as transmitted through His servant, Peter, every Christian should be prepared to give a reasoned defense of the Faith. Now, there's no way that every believer can know how to adequately answer every argument against God, there are several arguments that every believer should prepare to answer. This is one of those arguments.

Richard Dawkins, who is probably the most high profile of the vociferously rabid, God-hating "New Atheists" of our day, summarized his central argument against God (from his best-selling The God Delusion) in the following syllogism:

1) One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.

2) The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself.
3) The temptation is a false one because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer.

4) The most ingenious and powerful explanation is Darwinian evolution by natural selection.

5) We don't have an equivalent explanation for physics.

6) We should not give up the hope of a better explanation arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology.

Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist.

Well, it's obvious the man is no philosopher since the conclusion wouldn't follow from the premises even if all six of them were sound. But we should still all be able to refute the faulty premises here and of course the "conclusion."

If you don't think you could interact with this argument in a meaningful way, take this as a challenge from God. This is the loudest and most unrelenting spokesperson for the anti-God movement presenting his central, and therefore seemingly most compelling argument against God as creator. If there's one intellectually-oriented atheist argument we should be prepared to answer with confidence it is this one. 

In my next post on this topic I will offer some arguments against a few of these premises and in subsequent entries I'll take on the final three premises and I'll finish in my last entry in the series by refuting the conclusion. Keep your eyes peeled for that!

Deep Thoughts & Prosaic Phrases

There are a great many things in my life for which I have shown tremendous neglect over the past several months. A partial list would include: My son, my classes, my devotional time, my Lord in general, my guitar students, my books, mi familia, and my friends... oh, and Azeroth. But I have also neglected this wonderful outlet for the raging torrent of thoughts, emotions, thoughtmotions, emoticons, and general complaining which have been welling up for far too long. So, in hopes of avoiding a spontaneous self-destruction, and for no other reason at all, I am writing this blog update.

So, I don't know what you all have been thinking about recently, but I have been a veritable overcrowded warehouse of troubling thoughts, and deep ponderings... I have assumed the persona of one of those "troubled souls" you hear so much about in literature and film, but without the interesting life and exciting circumstances to make it worthwhile. Do not be troubled yourselves though, as it seems the Lord is pulling me out of that pit. But what are these thoughts, these questions which have oppressed and depressed me? I don't really wanna talk about it, ok, so stop brow-beating me already!

I will say that the majority of my issues have fallen into one or both of the categories of theology and philosophy; questions about God, humanity, life, death, afterlife, eternity, the Bible, evil, suffering, etc., etc... Questions like, "Why doesn't God seem to work in the same ways He did in the past? If He is immutable then why does it appear that He has changed?" and, "If God is eternal then what was He doing (pardon the mixed metaphor) before He created the universe, and if He is unchanging then wouldn't He have never made a universe since that would constitute a universe-sized change in His pre-creation habits?" and... "I understand the existence of love to be in harmony with a good God who is both unchanging and triune, because there has always been love among the members if the Godhead, but where did His 'wrath' originate?"

These are not easy questions to answer, and so you can understand why I have been, again, troubled (to say the least). So, here's an experiment: Take your best shot at answering one or more of the above. I have answered many of the questions I have had over the past several months, or at least come to terms with the fact that I may never have an answer this side of the grave. So, this is an exercise for you. How solid is your foundation? What would you say if a genuine skeptic, a non-Christian asked you one of these questions?

Go ahead, take a stab. If our God is truly the Almighty, the Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer of the universe and of us, then we can trust His words, the words of God the Son, when He said, "Whoever comes to me I will never cast out."