Life and Death

A Question of Life or Death is a Zenit article. It notes church history relevant to abortion as written about in a book authored by Dennis Di Mauro titled A Love for Life: Christianity's Consistent Protection of the Unborn.

In the book's introduction Di Mauro, secretary of the National Pro-Life Religious Council and president of Northern Virginia Lutherans for Life, asserts that Christianity has been, is now, and will be in the future, a pro-life religion.

The first chapters of the book examine the Biblical passages that reveal a pro-life message. Di Mauro then turns to the testimony of the early Fathers of the Church. From the very start of the Church, in writings such as the late first-century Didache, abortion was regarded as immoral.

Apologists, such as the second-century Athenagorus, or the author of the second or third-century Epistle to Diogenetus, also clearly regarded the life in the womb as human, Di Mauro explains.

The Epistle states: "They [Christians] marry as do all others; they beget children, but they do not destroy their offspring."

At the end of the second century Tertullian, in defending Christianity against accusations of infant sacrifice, replied saying that for Christians homicide has been forbidden and that it is not permitted to destroy what has been conceived in the womb. Tertullian also believed that a child received its soul at the moment of conception, Di Mauro notes.

By the fourth century, the book explains, the councils of the Church began to proscribe punishments for those who procured abortions. In fact, transgressors were only re-admitted to the Church on their deathbeds.

In 305 the Synod of Elvira, in Spain, condemned abortion and proscribed excommunication for those who procured abortions.

HT: Clare

From Scoffing to Apologetics

The blog entry at Telic Thoughts Scoffing: A Tactical Weapon gave rise to a number of comments and links with apologetic value. From the thread:

Cornelius Tacitus

This link supplied by fmm.

This link courtesy of chunkdz

The Jesus Seminar Under Fire

This comment supplied by Vividbleau

This comment of mine

Another comment of mine

This comment of fifth monarchy man

A Lioness with a Taste for Italian Cuisine

Lea, the spaghetti lioness is a Creation on the Web article. Lea is a lioness who was born and raised in Italy. When she was six weeks old she was taken and cared for by Antonio Vincenzo who lived in the Italian village of Nettuno. Lea acquired the nickname "Spaghetti Lioness" by virtue of her diet. She was fed potatoes, green vegetables and cheesy pasta and managed to thrive in spite of it. But before being dubbed "Spaghetti Lioness" Lea was called the "Spaghetti Kid" because her favorite food was spaghetti, which she preferred flavored with Neapolitan sauce.

When Antonio Vincenzo could no longer care for her Lea was taken to a zoo on the outskirts of Rome. Her concrete living quarters were not ideal and Vincenzo, after years of searching, eventually located a permanent home for Lea in South Africa. Her present home includes outdoor grassy enclosures and a diet of raw meat to which she has grown accustomed. Quoting the author of the article "Lea’s new caretakers at The Rhino & Lion Nature Reserve have advised us that she was weaned from spaghetti in one week and now has ‘absolutely no problem’ with fresh red meat, which is fed to her—she does not hunt." The author also made this point (quoting):

...the Bible tells us that felines were originally created vegetarian (Genesis 1:30) and it also speaks of a time when ‘the lion will eat straw like the ox’ (Isaiah 11:7, 65:25). So, from the Bible, vegetarian ‘carnivores’ make much more sense.

An Ancient Hebrew Inscription

Oldest Hebrew Text Uncovered By Israeli Archaeologists is the title of an article appearing at Red Orbit. The article cites the discovery of a piece of pottery said to be 3,000 years old which contains an inscription in Hebrew. There is much significance to the find because it is very good evidence that the ancient Israelites were literate. This in turn makes it plausible to assume that Biblical accounts could have been recorded in writing as well as preserved through an oral tradition. Written recordings made soon after the occurences of described events would be evidence against the contention that events were mythological.

The Versatile Sea Urchin Genome

Sea Urchins' Genetics Add To Knowledge Of Cancer, Alzheimer's And Infertility is a Science Daily article addressing the potential medical benefits that might acrue from the study of the sea urchin. Sea urchins have been mentioned in connection with front loading at Telic Thoughts and elsewhere. Mike Gene did much to advance the case for front loading there and elsewhere. Frankly I did not give the idea much thought prior to frequenting Telic Thoughts.

Mike's influence on me and others is certainly traceable in part to his knowledge and persuasive arguments. But there is another less discussed factor. Mike's temperment and mannerisms make him ideally suited to impact others. He's not insulting or combative as all too many of those involved in discussions of Intelligent Design are. Most of the hostility is traced to ID critics although you would never know it based on alarm bells continually sounded about the ID movement.

The remainder of this blog entry is an apologetic so if you're an atheist you might as well find another use for your time. God sometimes has multiple purposes in mind which, in this case, could center around the genome of the sea urchin. The unexpected number of similar genes to those found in humans might have evidentiary value for Intelligent Design and, as the linked article indicates, for medical uses as well. Humanity is given charge over the earth's resources. We are to use them responsibly. We are also to take advantage of that which is given to us and use it for good. Sea urchin genes look to have been designed with more than the sea urchin in mind. That's consistent with the character of a loving creator.

Neuroscience and the Golden Rule

Brains Are Hardwired To Act According To The Golden Rule, a Science Daily article, notes a form of human behavior that appears to be at odds with the proposition that individuals seek to maximize their chances for survival and by doing so increase the likelihood that their own genes will be propagated. Of course there have been attempts to explain behavior that is counterintuitive from a neo-Darwinian point of view. The linked article would fit that description.

The article cites an incident in which a 55 year old man named Wesley Autrey risks his own life to save a stranger from death. It's an heroic act consistent with the Golden Rule which is: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." But what is the selective value of whatever leads to goodness or putting one's own life at risk for a stranger? That this incident is consistent with the view that humans are created in the image of God is obvious. It is not obvious that a blind watchmaker would have developed such traits in humanity.

Looking out for number one is an expected Darwinian paradigm. Besides the fact that it is everywhere in evidence it is also logically consistent with the concept of passing on one's genes to posterity. So conventional wisdom offers an explanation for selfish behavior that aligns well with natural selection. I've also seen the explanations for altruism. There have been efforts to fit these in within mainstream biology. Selection then would explain everything- selfishness and altruism. Beware of theories that explain it all with little more required than conceptual adaptations by theoreticians.

Mainstream biology is wedded to materialism. A capacity to choose between selfish and altruistic behavior involves faculties enabling consciousness and free will. These key aspects to what makes us human have not yielded to explanations based on reductionist approaches. Like the origin of life and the origin of the universe they are destined to remain forever surrounded in mystery made inevitable by science itself.

In response to this Telic Thoughts blog entry by Mike Gene, a commenter said this:

In general you appear to agree with the scientific consensus regarding evolution, but then you make a possibility argument for teleology afterward. But sure, anything is possible. The question is, What are the positive evidences for it?

The Science Daily article reminds us of how little we know about behavior and brain function. Well documented explanations as to how behaviors evolved are rarer still. The wide open possibilities and unanswered questions in neuroscience signify it may yield explanations favorable to ID. Whether this occurs is likely to depend on constrictions imposed on science like a huge boa who, while unable to strangle the elephant he has grabbed onto, is equally unable to acknowledge he never will do so. As long as no intelligence is allowed the scientific dark ages, that have descended on consciousness and origins issues, will continue.

Described, Not Explained

(Cross-posted from "More Than Words").

According to the "New Atheists", the goal of science is to provide an explanation for reality without recourse to the supernatural. Any need for a religious explanation for anything is thus removed, and the old superstitions fall to the ground, outmoded and obsolete.

Well, how are they doing? To hear some of them speak, you'd think that the goal was almost reached. Look at the progress made since the scientific revolution began, they say: we now know so much!

The real answer, though, is "absolutely zero". Science has made tremendous strides forward; but in terms of providing ammunition for atheism, the cupboard's still empty. How come?

Let's taken the law of gravity as an example. This is a case of Newton's second "law" (which we now know isn't really a law at all, but this is just for illustrative purposes). It tells us what we can expect to happen when an object goes up: it comes down again. In more technical terms, there is a force exerted on it by the immense mass of the earth, which causes it to accelerate back to the earth again. It's an inverse square law: the acceleration increases in proportion with the inverse of the distance between the object and the earth multiplied by itself.

What Newton has helped us to do there is to describe the motion of a falling body. What has this, though, to do with the atheist goal? Description is not explanation. To say that the object falls because of Newton's law is precisely the wrong way round. Newton's formula is an attempt to describe, the predictable and repeatable phenomena of gravity. It tells us nothing, though, about the fundamental questions of explanation, such as:Just why does gravity obey an inverse square law? Why not an inverse cube law? Or a linear square law? What exactly gives rise to this force which Newton observed? Where does it come from, and what's driving it? Objects do not fall because Newton's law tells them to; Newton's law is the after-the-fact description of what just happened, not the theory that tells us how it could have happened.

When Newton originally proposed his law, it was opposed for philosophical reasons - it posited an "occult" force which managed to act at a distance. Somehow, the object thrown up has knowledge about the earth and how far away it is at any one particular moment, through some kind of magical instantaneous communication. In fact it seemed to strongly imply that materialist atheism couldn't be true - because materialism cannot account for instantaneous immaterial communication.

Deists from Newton's day and onwards took his law to imply that the universe was a gigantic machine. They supposed that there was no need for God, because it implied that once started (which they allowed God to do), the universe just carried on according to a fixed set of rules. This was another colossal philosophical error, because as explained above it made the description into an explanation. You might observe that Mrs. Anderson lives in the same house as me. Good spot. That's not why she's my wife though, or how she came to be my wife. It's merely an observation of one of our marriage's consequences.

The area in which atheism needs to make advances is in explanation, particularly of origins. That means things like the following:

• What is the cause of the "laws" by which we describe physical reality?
  
  
• Why do those laws exist in just the form that they do, and not another?
  
  
• How do those laws (e.g. gravity, magnetism) manage to operate at a distance, instantaneously and without material communication?
  
  
• Why is it that these laws take such elegant mathematical forms? Elegant mathematics is intimately connected with minds - we have minds which understand this elegance; how did it arise in nature if not by a mind?
  
  
• How did life originate? What about self-consciousness? What is the origin of the vast quantities of biological information, co-ordinated with itself at multiple levels?
  
  
• Why do time, space and matter even exist in the first place? Where have they come from?
  

On the real questions which atheists need to give a naturalistic scientific answer to in order to argue that science is slowly but surely abolishing the credibility of the supernatural, the score so far is a big fat zero. Atheists who are perverting science to advance their cause are involved in a bait-and-switch. They lead us to marvel at all that science has described; and then they pull the wool over our eyes by implying that these are the same things as science has explained. Don't be fooled.

An Archeological Find

First Temple seal found in Jerusalem, an article from The Jerusalem Post, tells of the discovery of a stone seal during an archeological excavation. The seal bears the name of a family who were servants in the First Temple, exiled to Babylonia and then returned to Jerusalem. The name Temech is engraved on the seal which is about 2,500 years old. The Temech family is mentioned in the Book of Nehemiah.

A personal universe

(Cross-posted from "More Than Words" - http://mothwo.blogspot.com/2008/01/personal-universe.html)

What is the right understanding of reality and the universe?

Introducing Naturalism

Amongst those who've made a serious effort to think through their assumptions about reality, many in the modern west hold to the system of naturalism. Naturalists seek to explain all of reality in terms of matter and the physical forces, or interactions, between matter. They treat the physical universe as a closed, self-contained and self-sufficient system. Everything must ultimately be explained in terms of physical laws. Naturalism seeks to rule out any kind of idea of a divine mind behind the universe, or a divine will active in it. Naturalism seeks to remove the category of the "transcendent" from reality - ultimately, all is matter and there is nothing beyond it.

Naturalism Expressed

In biology, naturalism is expressed in the theory of Darwinism, which seeks to explain all of life's complexity by the mechanism of natural selection working upon random mutations. In psychology, naturalism seeks to reduce all of human behaviour to the chemistry of the human brain. In theology, naturalism seeks to empty the Bible of the concepts of divine revelation, human fallenness and a gracious Saviour, and reduce it to a helpful ethical message about how to live a good life. And so on. Naturalism is a powerful, even dominant, force in many areas of study in our time.

Naturalism And Personality

One of the immense problems that naturalists have not yet approached any kind of coherent explanation for is the problem of personality.

We live in a personal universe. Beyond the molecules, cells and systems which are present in your body, there is a you which transcends them all. Almost every cell in your body is replaced within seven years - yet there is still a you which continues on throughout your whole lifetime. I am not a different being from the one I was as a little boy - even though there's hardly a molecule shared between me now and there. You are a personal, self-conscious, thinking being. You think thoughts, you weigh up moral decisions, you consider ideas - and you can do all of those things without being determined by your genes. The thoughts that go on in my childrens' heads are not pre-determined by the genes that mum and dad gave them. We might both love classical music; they will be free to decide that it's boring if they choose.

Our awareness of our own self-consciousness and of the reality of our existence as personal beings is summed up most simply, most memorably and most famously in philosopher Rene Decartes' dictum: Cogito, ergo sum. Or in English: "I think; therefore, I am".

Decartes had the aim to how much he could deduce from a position of radical skepticism. He aimed to drop every assumption and pre-conception about reality, and simply deduce what he could from the naked act of thinking. His celebrated first deduction was that since he was sure that he was partaking in the act of thinking, he must exist. There was a distinct, personal being chewing the cud.

To sum up what we've discussed here: Our awareness of the reality of the university as being personal - that we have individualities which transcend the physical - is one of the deepest, most fundamental facts about our existence.

So....

At this point, naturalism is utterly stumped. How can a lump of flesh generate self-consciousness? The concept of self-consciousness transcends the categories of naturalism - naturalism has no place for an I or a you. Naturalism has to explain how, somehow, the bone material of my skull is not self-conscious and yet the lump of brain tissue contained in that skull is!

Stories about how a physical world could develop out of nothing can be made to sound plausible. (How plausible they sound after you've thought about them a little is another matter). We can all, in our heads, at least picture the idea of fish turning into amphibians, and then into mammals, apes and then people. It strikes us as at least being worthy of discussing. It's quite another thing, however, to try to cook up a story about how there can be an I and a you.

In other words, naturalism is completely up the creek when it comes to explaining one of the most basic facts about reality. The evidence of personality as a basic and transcendent category in the universe we live in points very definitely not to an impersonal reality behind the university. It testifies clearly to a vast Personality who is behind it all.

In other words:

I think; therefore God is.

Inventions or Discoveries?

(Cross-posted from my new blog: "More Than Words").

There are plenty of things in everyday life we don't think much about - but we ought to!

One thing I am profoundly grateful for, and amazed by, is modern technology. There is such a vast amount of technology involved just in the act of blogging that it is breath-taking

Just to mention a few...

• The laptop it's typed out on. The processor, the display, the battery (power cuts happen here!), etcetera...
  
  
• Then it gets beamed a short distance through the air to my mobile phone,
  
  
• from where it gets beamed to the nearest mobile tower.
  
  
• Then a combination of fibre-optics and/or satellites get it to blogger, somewhere in the USA, where it is stored on magnetic disks.
  
  
• And then over to you!

I live in Africa, but because of the Internet in many ways the distance feels quite short. I can e-mail video clips and photos, receive e-mails, read the BBC news, send SMS messages, just as when I lived in the UK. If I really wanted to, I could do all of those things on a mobile phone handset costing about £80 (it's probably cheaper where you live!). A tiny thing that fits in my pocket and is so light I don't notice it's there can do all of that. Amazing!

The reason I find it amazing isn't because I think it's magic. I studied scientific subjects at school and university, and as a boy technology was always one of my interests. My understanding of how many of these things work doesn't make them seem less wonderful - it makes them seem far more wonderful. The above list includes the technology involved in electricity, electro-magnetic radiation, satelite technology, magnetism, fibre-optics. When we understand more, we don't marvel less: quite the opposite.

Coming To The Point...

So, what am I saying? Did you notice that I said I was profoundly grateful for these things? Where should that gratitude be directed, exactly?

Often we describe these things as being "inventions". And indeed, in an important sense, they are. There's a big step in between understanding the principles of fibre-optics, electricity, and so on, and then actually putting together all the equipment that uses those principles to make it possible for my thoughts to get out of my head, though the air, and onto your screen. It needed someone to make the long route from A to B.

Fundamentally, though, these things are not inventions, but are discoveries. For the human "inventor", they did not come out of nothing at all, but were a harnessing of things that already existed. In the days when our ancestors did not have electricity, mobile phones or e-mail, the potential for such things were all still latent in the world around them - they just had not been harnessed.

The Big Question

So, is that all just luck? Our "gratitude" is misplaced - a false emotion? We should just be saying, "that's a stroke of fortune"? It is just a wonderful coincidence that such "blessings" (wrong word again!) just "happen" to exist?

Such things are reasons why it's impossible to be a consistent atheist. To have to attribute these things, and many more besides, just to happy coincidence. Let's call it the "good-luck-of-the-gaps" explanation - denying the reality of God, who made all these things for our pleasure and his glory, we have to write off huge areas of human life as being mere fortune. An appeal to "luck", though, is not an actual explanation - it is a confession of ignorance. "Luck" is not a cause or a mechanism - it is a philosophical abstraction. Luck is not a person or mind, and cannot actually do anything.

Such things as the above also make it hard to be an inconsistent theist. By that I mean, acknowledging in our minds the reality of God, but failing to give him thanks or worship with our lives. Technology depends upon minds - human minds which piece it all together, understand it, and manufacture the wonderful little gadgets that result. Much more fundamentally, though, technology depends upon a divine mind. A divine mind, that constructed the creation where all those possibilities have lain latent until a spark of inspiration moved the human inventor to harness them. The enormous potential in the material world for technology speaks clearly of a divine mind behind it. A mind that made it all, and made us so that we might discover and harness it - and give him the praise. We, unless we totally refuse to think about these things, have a corresponding and correct sense that we ought to direct our gratitude and praise somewhere. That's a sense which shouldn't be suppressed, but yielded to.

Much better to live as a convinced worshipper. Or as the Psalmist wrote, 3000 years ago:

O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:

All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;

The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.

O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!

(Psalm 8)

Archeological Evidence

During an exchange at Telic Thoughts I made this comment mentioning types of evidence that could be introduced to support Judaism and Christianity both of which which are supported by biblical narratives depicting historic events.

Excavation Opportunities in 2008, at the Bible Places Blog, is a source of information about possible future excavations that could become part of an existing compilation of archeological evidence supporting biblical accounts.

'The Case for the Real Jesus': A Book Review

Lee Strobel has written a new book called 'The Case for the Real Jesus.' It is a fitting sequel to his prior best seller 'The Case for Christ.' The book focuses attention on six challenges to Christianity that have been prominently publicized in recent years. The challenges involve rehashing old objections that have been answered previously. However, new generations tend to forget both the objections and the answers that overcame them.

Strobel repeats a pattern established with 'The Case for Christ' by interviewing reknown scholars and getting their responses to the six challenges. The six are as follows:

* Alleging that there are plausible ancient manuscripts providing different views than the four gospels

* Allegations that the church tampered with biblical texts and therefore the texts cannot be trusted

* New refutations of the resurrection

* Christian beliefs were actually copied from pagan religions

* Jesus was an imposter and did not fulfill messianic prophacies

* People are best advised to pick and choose that which they wish to believe about Jesus.

The interviewed scholars did a thorough job of debunking each challenge. Craig A. Evans, PhD in biblical studies and prolific writer and editor of more than 50 books, was questioned about the claim that our understanding of Christianity would change if certain ancient manuscripts were incorporated into what the church considers canonical writings. One manuscript specifically mentioned was the so called Gospel of Thomas. Critics have dated the writing of the "Gospel of Thomas" to around the middle of the first century. This would lend support to a number of arguments they make based on this assumption. Unfortunately that also seems to be the motive for the dating of Thomas.

The Evans interview, in many ways, paralleled the results of other interviews by bringing forth decisive evidence against charges that the church ignored plausible early writings that would have changed the nature of Christianity. An objective scholarly analysis would date Thomas to at least a century later than the time frame provided by critics. An examination of the actual evidence is revealing. Evans disclosed the facts that are downplayed or ignored by those touting Thomas as a canonical candidate. Evidence indicates that Thomas was written no earlier than the latter part of the second century which contrasts with dating from the middle of the first century proposed by critics. The reasons:

* More than half the New Testament writings were referred to or paralleled in Thomas including 14 or 15 of the 27 New Testament books. Some of this material was not recorded until the last decade of the first century. Evans, a noted New Testament scholar, was unaware of a single Christian writing prior to the year 150 that referenced as much of the New Testament as Thomas.

* Thomas was written in a number of languages which include Syriac- spoken in Syria. Syrian Christians did not have access to the four Gospels in their own language until the year 175 when a blend of the four Gospels known as the Diatessaron was recorded in Syriac. The content of Thomas reveals familiarity with the Diatessaron particularly its material arrangement and order. In addition only the Syrian church referred to Thomas as Judas Thomas; the name used in the Gospel of Thomas. Values of the Syrian culture of the second century- its ascetics and anti-commercialism, its mysticism and its elitism are all evident in Thomas.

* Most striking though are 114 sayings that appear in Thomas. Their order does not appear noteworthy in Greek or Coptic but in Syriac there are catchwords that act as memory aids. The catchwords link the sayings together. A word in one saying is indicated by the preceeding saying and so on.

Similar devastating refutations of revisionist Christian history are evident throughout 'The Case for the Real Jesus.' Strobel's other interviews reflect the knowing scholarship evidenced by Evans which contrasts with the selective use of evidence by church critics. Strobel has authored another fine Christian apologetic.

Are you incredulous?

In a couple of posts so far I've been analysing some of the logical dodges and tricks that often turn up in popular Darwinist argumentation:

1. Is "God of the gaps" always a fallacious argument?
   
   
2. What is the "Fine Tuning" argument?

Here's another one today: the "argument from personal incredulity".

EvoWiki defines this logical fallacy this way: "An appeal to ignorance is an argument that absence of proof is evidence of absence." (http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Argument_from_incredulity)

In the 80s film "Back to the Future" (part 3), Doc Brown, having lost the love of his life, stays up all night in a 1880s saloon bar. He doesn't actually get round to drinking anything until 8am the next morning. Having loved and lost, he no longer cares enough to keep up the pretence of being a bona fide resident of the 19th century, and starts spilling the beans about the future. He explains to his fellow bar-dwellers about engines and cars - and that in future, people will only run for fun. They, of course, just laugh at him.

After all, nobody runs just for fun. And the idea of mechanical, motorised vehicles - pure nonsense! Unbelievable! The Doc is obviously a crank.

If we look around today, lots of what we take almost for granted would seem like magic to those of previous generations, and if we were able to hold a conversation with them and tell them about it all, they might think we were barking mad. To be able to see a live picture of a person on the other side of the globe and hear their voice in real time? Visiting the moon? An orchestra that fits in your pocket and weighs only 50 grammes? Nonsense, my boy!

That's the appeal to personal incredulity. And it's bogus. Things that we can't explain do exist. An explanation may be forthcoming in future; or maybe already exists now but you just don't know it.

So, there is such a thing as a bogus appeal to personal incredulity. It's arguing that because you can't understand how a thing could be, therefore that thing isn't. (At this point you may like to pause and consider Richard Dawkins' well-worn argument that it is illegitimate to speak of an intelligent designer because we can't explain where that designer came from, or in its briefer form - "Who designed the designer?"...)

Charge!

This is a logical fallacy which Darwinists are very confident that critics of Darwinism use all the time. EvoWiki in the article above, under the heading "Examples in creationist arguments" offers us a sample of 41 instances covering a vast amount of ground. What strikes me, though, as I look at some of the instances under that list, is the extent to which the authors of the articles linked from it have over-played their hand.

Let's float back to that 1880s saloon, and imagine that a different conversation is taking place. Doc Brown is still at the bar, glass (not yet drunk!) in his hand. He's explaining that in the year 1985, where he comes from, people will be able to travel at faster than the speed of light, and that telegrams will actually travel completely instantaneously - no time at all. The other regulars in the bar are laughing at him - they are incredulous.

Are they laughing because of their personal incredulity? Very likely. But the scientific data which we have actually points to their incredulity being right. Transport the Doc back into the late 20th century, and have him make the same case to a competent group of physicists. They laugh just like the bar-dwellers did. Their laughing, though, is an informed one - and arguably correct. They have some data, and it points in the opposite direction to the Doc's ideas. Of course, they don't know with absolute certainty, because their interpretation of the data might be based upon faulty assumptions at some point. Their may be new data yet to be discovered which may give a different spin on things. But the point is, it's not just personal incredulity which is driving their skepticism.

That's enough to begin with. Next time, God-willing (or, for the atheists out there, should the molecules favour us by bouncing into the right positions), I'll develop this line of thought a bit more, and identify some particular and telling ways in which the argument from personal incredulity is being abused in order to shore up the troubled foundations of the materialist world view. If you want something to chew over and see where it leads, start pondering these questions. What is the relationship between skepticism and the scientific method? When is incredulity good? 'Til next time...

David Anderson

Cosmic Jackpot

I got hold of the book Cosmic Jackpot by Paul Davies. I'll focus on a very small section of it for the purpose of this post. In chapter 9 (Intelligent and Not-So-Intelligent Design) there is a subsection entitled God as a Necessary Being. In a somewhat unorthodox manner Davies broaches the who designed God or who designed the designer question. Davies correctly identifies God as having unique properties including an existence that is not owed to a preexisting cause. Davies then goes on to describe God as a necessary being making it logically impossible for God not to exist. Dwelling on the word necessarily, Davies cites God's choice to create the universe as logically problematic; asking if a necessary being can behave in a way that is not necessary?

Although generally a precise thinker Davies allows linguistic ambiguities to guide his own analysis. God's actions are not necessary in the sense that God's behavoir is predetermined by causal necessity. There is no reason to assume an absence of divine freedom of choice.

Logical difficulties are inherent with accounts of beginings- at least from the perspective of finite human minds. Conceptual difficulties are inherent to differing and conflicting accounts of origins. Those who find logical difficulties with a God, who preexists the universe, could find logical difficulties with alternative explanations if they look for them. For example, assume there is no God. There is, however, a universe and attempts to account for its existence lead to infinte regress arguments. If the universe is attributed to a big bang then what caused the big bang? If the big bang was preceeded by a singularity and specified conditions then what led to this and so on. When confronted with the alternative, a God who existed prior to and outside his created universe, no longer can be seen as entailing uniquely difficult conceptualizations.

Does all this mean we can know God through human reason alone? No, but God can and has revealed himself to us. The seal of credibility was the resurrection of the Son of Man.

What is the "Fine Tuning" argument?

Some of the other guys on this blog have forgotten more biology than I've ever learned. I hope, though, that I can bring something else to this blog. I want to carry on some discussion of some of the logical arguments used in the intelligent design debate that I hope everyone can profit from.

Last post I talked a little about the "God of the gaps" fallacy, which isn't always as fallacious as materialists suggest. This time, I want to talk a little about "fine tuning". Here again, materialist apologists are misrepresenting what's being said - and missing the point.

Fine Tuning

Within what bounds is life possible? What are the ranges of values that various physical constants must exist within for us to exist? This is the "fine tuning" question. Let me borrow a few examples from another web site to give you an idea of some of the facts involved:

• The electromagnetic coupling constant binds electrons to protons in atoms. If it was smaller, fewer electrons could be held. If it was larger, electrons would be held too tightly to bond with other atoms.~
  
  
• Ratio of electron to proton mass (1:1836). Again, if this was larger or smaller, molecules could not form.
  
  
• Carbon and oxygen nuclei have finely tuned energy levels.
  
  
• Electromagnetic and gravitational forces are finely tuned, so the right kind of star can be stable.
  
  
• Our sun is the right colour. If it was redder or bluer, photosynthetic response would be weaker.
  
  
• Our sun is also the right mass. If it was larger, its brightness would change too quickly and there would be too much high energy radiation. If it was smaller, the range of planetary distances able to support life would be too narrow; the right distance would be so close to the star that tidal forces would disrupt the planet's rotational period. UV radiation would also be inadequate for photosynthesis.
  
  
• The earth's distance from the sun is crucial for a stable water cycle. Too far away, and most water would freeze; too close and most water would boil.
  
  
• The earth’s gravity, axial tilt, rotation period, magnetic field, crust thickness, oxygen/nitrogen ratio, carbon dioxide, water vapour and ozone levels are just right.
  
  (http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/3841)

Impressive, is it not? The most memorable quote that sums the situation up is from eminent Cambridge physicist Fred Hoyle: he said that it appeared as if "a super-intellect has been monkeying with physics". The set-up seems rigged.

The question is, is this a valid argument? Many materialist apologists strongly argue that it isn't, and pour scorn on the fools who disagree. Here I include a quotation from blog of "the atheist experience", a "weekly live call-in television show sponsored by the Atheist Community of Austin." Here's what they think:

The whole assumption about fine tuning is a fallacy called affirming the consequent, or arguing from your conclusion. ... Douglas Adams goofed on this in a now-immortal passage in his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.

". . . imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'"

http://atheistexperience.blogspot.com/...godandscienceorg-part-1-of.html

I like the illustration - it makes the point very well. Because we are here, therefore we know that the right conditions for us to be here must exist, therefore the discovery that those conditions do in fact exist proves nothing. The probability of making this discovery is 100%. Ta-dah! Cue atheist victory lap.

Hang on a minute...

If you've been concentrating really hard, though, you may have noticed that Adams' objection makes a subtle switch in the calculation being made. Adams' illustration uses this calculation:

P ( the conditions exist for life | life exists)

i.e. "The probability that conditions are tuned for life, given than life exists". As the event space being considered is completely included within the event space that is given, the answer is certainty, and the calculation is not particularly useful. Life is known to exist, so calculations about its probability have no value. The interesting calculation is to look at how narrow the boundaries are for the various conditions that make life possible.

As scientists seek to discover the extent of these boundaries, the possible results have two extremes:

1. There are very wide ranges of conditions within which life is possible.
   
   
2. The range of conditions within which life is possible is very small.

If you've got that point, you'll see where Adams went wrong. The question isn't "is life possible?" - we know that the answer to that is "yes, with absolute certainty". The question is "was life very possible, or rather unlikely, or somewhere in between?".

Imagine that a man tosses a coin 500 times, and I call out "heads, tails, heads, heads, tails", etc., to give a sequence 500 guesses long. Suppose that after I do so, a man hands me a prize. What did I get the prize for? You don't know, so you do some investigating.

Suppose that I got given the prize for getting more than 50% of my guesses correct. That's not massively impressive, is it? But suppose rather that you discovered that the prize was only given to me because I got 100% of my guesses correct. That would be staggering. The chances of doing that are about 1 in 3 * 10^150 - an incredible number, beyond the number of atoms believed to exist in the universe.

If we keep in mind Adams' illustration, then Adams has said: "he's got the prize, so we know that he guessed up to the necessary standard - so it proves nothing". Actually, though, the question is to find out what room for error I had in order to get that prize. What we then find out is that "to get the prize was phenomenally unlikely - I suspect someone's monkeyed with the coin".

Looking More Closely At The Outcome

Look at those two extremes for the outcome again. The first is that scientists might discover that there is a broad range of circumstances within which life would be possible. What would this prove? Would it indicate that life arose by chance?

In fact, it would prove nothing. A wide range allows both that life might have arisen by chance, or might not - you have to look elsewhere to find out which. If I score a tap-in in a game of soccer, I might be a soccer genius; or I might not; you'll never know - the evidence can't decide.

On the other hand, if scientists discover that the range within which life is possible is extremely small, then this is positive evidence for intelligent design. The point is not that the system is fine-tuned (as in Adams' mistake); the point is that the fine tuning was absolutely necessary. If I take ten free-kicks in soccer from long distance and curl them all into the top corner, then the thesis that "David can't play soccer" takes a severe beating. (I can always dream!).

The signficance of this is that the "fine tuning" argument is valid, puddles notwithstanding. The discovery that life requires extreme fine-tuning is a highly significant piece of evidence. Science is turning up more and more evidence that our world is intelligently designed.

David Anderson

Is "God of the gaps" always a fallacious argument?

In contemporary materialist apologetics, much is made of the alleged "God of the gaps" fallacy. It goes a little something like this:

• X argues that Y cannot be explained by purely natural processes. Therefore X infers that a creative super-intelligence has been involved.
  
  
• X, though, is invoking "God of the gaps". X's God lives only in the gaps that cannot be explained by naturalism; his God must shrink every time science advances. His God must be very small by now.
  
  
• Therefore, X's arguments can be dismissed.
  

At worst, naturalists resort just to wheeling out the phrase "God of the gaps" whenever their paradigm is challenged, in order to avoid argument.

The Gaps Are Real!

Actually, "God of the gaps" can be a perfectly valid argument; in fact, a required argument. If phenomena Y cannot be explained satisfactorily within naturalism, then we might say we have a "gap". We grant, for the sake of argument, that naturalism could cover a certain amount of space - but then we show that there is space that it doesn't and can't cover. That space is a "gap". The logical complement to naturalism is super-naturalism; if a naturalistic explanation can't cover the gap, then a supernatural one is required. That's not "God of the gaps"; that's simple logic. The gap is evidence of the supernatural. For the naturalist to merely trot out the retort "you're using a God-of-the-gaps argument!" is no kind of rebuttal - in some cases, it is merely identification of problem which he has no solution for within his world-view. To identify the problem is not the same as solving it!

Over the last decades, science has made tremendous progress in analysing and describing the universe that we live in. As it has done so, it has revealed a number of staggering "gaps". Complexity has appeared at lower and lower levels - levels at which, according to naturalism, we ought to be finding simplicity, not complexity.

In physics, the simplicity of Newtonian mechanics has given way to the greater complexity of Einsteinian relativity and quantum mechanics. As physicists have got to lower levels, they have discovered that the structure of the physical universe has more gaps than they thought: it is not the simple machine that Newtonian mechanics posited. Wave-particle duality is another instance: lower-level explanation has shown not that complex things are the result of the amalgamation of simple things, but that when we take apart the complex things we find more complex things.

In biology, the idea that life could arise out of the bringing together of a few simple chemicals in primitive conditions is now acknowledged as a non-starter. And as biologists have gained the ability to examine the macro-structure of the "simplest" cells, they've discovered that they're not simple at all. The most "primitive" organisms turn out to have just as much complexity as the most "advanced" - contrary to the predictions of naturalism. The building blocks of life, the DNA code, turns out to be the most intricate and complicated code known to man; its origin is a total mystery to naturalism, because there is nothing intrinsic in the nature of amino acids that requires them to construct themselves into codes. The DNA code reveals deliberate, detailed, fine-tuned complexity. The complexity of life is not reducible to simplicity, but is fundamental to it.

This is a pattern being repeated over and over. Naturalism predicts that as we get "lower down", we will find more simplicity; in fact, as we get lower down, we discover fundamental complexity. There is an enormous reality gap between naturalism's possibilities, and the universe which actually exists. These reality gaps are clear testimonies of the supernatural.

There are such things as invalid "God of the gaps" arguments. Those arguments have this structure:

• We don't understand X.
  
  
• Therefore X is supernatural.

I do not believe that God inhabits only the gaps, or that the "natural" exists separately from him. That would be another "God of the gaps" fallacy. I believe that the "natural" is God's ordinary way of working, and the "supernatural" is God's extraordinary way of working. Such arguments deserve to be rejected. To point out, though, that reality contains fundamental complexity which cannot be explained within naturalism's paradigm, is not only valid, but essential. By definition, the only way to point to the supernatural is to point to that which is beyond the natural. When materialists deny this as a valid argument, they are trying to win the argument by default. If pointing to the gaps is disallowed, then no discussion is possible, because it is the only thing that can be discussed. When materialists have to resort to that, it's becoming clearer that their world-view has some severe problems.

David Anderson