It’s very, very important to get a conversation about spiritual things started off on the right foot. My favorite place to start is with the origin of the universe. I always use the same 3 evidences, but I found an article that has even MORE. First, let me talk about the ones I like, then I’ll send you the link to the article with the bigger list. Once you get the beginning proved, the next question is: who caused it?

Here’s the article from J. Warner Wallace.

He writes this:

My career as a Cold Case Detective was built on being evidentially certain about the suspects I brought to trial. There are times when my certainty was established and confirmed by the cumulative and diverse nature of the evidence. Let me give you an example. It’s great when a witness sees the crime and identifies the suspect, but it’s even better if we have DNA evidence placing the suspect at the scene. If the behavior of the suspect (before and after the time of the crime) also betrays his involvement, and if his statements when interviewed are equally incriminating, the case is even better. Cases such as these become more and more reasonable as they grow both in depth and diversity. It’s not just that we now have four different evidences pointing to the same conclusion, it’s that these evidences are from four different categories. Eyewitness testimony, forensic DNA, behaviors and admissions all point to the same reasonable inference. When we have a cumulative, diverse case such as this, our inferences become more reasonable and harder to deny. Why did I take the time to describe this evidential approach to reasonable conclusions? Because a similar methodology can be used to determine whether everything in the universe (all space, time and matter) came from nothing. We have good reason to believe our universe had a beginning, and this inference is established by a cumulative, diverse evidential case.

Here is his list of evidences:

1. Philosophical Evidence
2. Theoretical Evidence
3. Observational Evidence
4. Thermal Evidence
5. Quantitative Evidence
6. Residual Evidence

Now, if you listened to our podcast with astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, I mentioned the ones that I like, which are #3, #5 and #6. And I like these, because they are scientific, and because I have clever ways of explaining them using simple terms.

Here’s what he says:

3. Observational Evidence (from Astronomical Data)

Vesto Slipher, an American astronomer working at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, spent nearly ten years perfecting his understanding of spectrograph readings. His observations revealed something remarkable. If a distant object was moving toward Earth, its observable spectrograph colors shifted toward the blue end of the spectrum. If a distant object was moving away from Earth, its colors shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. Slipher identified several “nebulae” and observed a “redshift” in their spectrographic colors. If these “nebulae” were moving away from our galaxy (and one another) as Slipher observed, they must have once been tightly clustered together. By 1929, Astronomer Edwin Hubble published findings of his own, verifying Slipher’s observations and demonstrating the speed at which a star or galaxy moves away from us increases with its distance from the earth. This once again confirmed the expansion of the universe.

5. Quantitative Evidence (from the Abundance of Helium)

As Astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle studied the way elements are created within stars, he was able to calculate the amount of helium created if the universe came into being from nothing. Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe (Hydrogen is the first), but in order to form helium by nuclear fusion, temperatures must be incredibly high and conditions must be exceedingly dense. These would have been the conditions if the universe came into being from nothing. Hoyle’s calculations related to the formation of helium happen to coincide with our measurements of helium in the universe today. This, of course, is consistent with the universe having a moment of beginning.

6. Residual Evidence (from the Cosmic Background Radiation)

In 1964, two American physicists and radio astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson detected what is now referred to as “echo radiation”, winning a Nobel Prize for their discovery in 1978. Numerous additional experiments and observations have since established the existence of cosmic background radiation, including data from the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite launched in 1989, and the Planck space observatory launched in 2009. For many scientists, this discovery alone solidified their belief the universe had a beginning. If the universe leapt into existence, expanding from a state of tremendous heat, density and expansion, we should expect find this kind of cosmic background radiation.

So, I’ve made simple analogies for these, so that I can explain them to people from every background.

For #5, for example, I use the story of leaving you in a room with beads and strings and then watching you make one necklace of beads, and timing you, and then leaving you for an hour, and coming back and estimating how many necklaces you will have made, and how many beads you have left. With respect to the beginning of the universe, at the very beginning, it’s all hydrogen (beads). But there is nuclear fusion going on, and the beads are being fused into heavier elements like helium and carbon and oxygen (necklaces). Well, astronomers made predictions about HOW MUCH helium you could fuse during the very hot period, according to the standard cosmology, and the prediction was for 75% hydrogen (beads) and 24% helium (necklaces), and that’s exactly what we see today.

And for #6, I talk about baking a cake. Suppose you heated up your oven and put a ban full of cake batter in there for an hour. You notice that the room is 68 Fahrenheit (20 Celsius) when the cake went in. Then you take the cake out to cool, but you leave the oven open. An hour later, you notice that the oven is cool, but the temperature of the room has gone up to 72 Fahrenheit (22 Celsius). When you have a source of heat in a small area, then you open it up in a bigger area, the smaller area cools down, and the bigger area warms up a bit. Astronomers made a prediction that the very hot creation event would leave a small 3 degrees Kelvin “cosmic microwave background radiation” everywhere in space, and when they were finally able to measure it, they found that the predicted 3 Kelvin temperature was found exactly as predicted.

So, if you don’t know all of these evidences for a beginning, read the article, pick your favorites, and be ready to explain them.

I’m not sure if you’ve been following Richard Dawkins lately, but he has been getting less and less beastly. First of all, he did several debates with Christian scholars. Second, he’s realized the difference that Christian values make for morality and civilization. And thirdly – and this is the new one – he thinks that the intelligent design hypothesis is a valid scientific hypothesis. Let’s take a look.

In this clip from the preview of a debate that Richard Dawkins had with John Lennox, he explains (at around the 3-minute mark) that a “reasonably respectable case” can be made for a deistic God. That means a God who creates and designs the universe, but does not intefere:

That happened back in 2008. And in their debate he said this: “A serious case could be made for a deistic God”.

So already, he was starting to sound more like Anthony Flew, who, atheist though he was, always showed that he would be willing to go wherever the evidence led. I remember in Flew’s debate with William Lane Craig, an atheist questioner asked him why he was accepting the case for a supernatural cause of the beginning of the universe, instead of trying to proposing a different model that would get out of the need for a Creator. And Flew said that he had to go with the scientific consensus, which requires a beginning of the universe. A few years later, Flew gave up atheism and accepted theism (although not Christianity). He was honest about what science shows. I can tell a smart atheist from a dumb atheist.

Anyway, round 2 of Dawkins is when he recently lamented the fact that the decline of Christianity (which he spent his life trying to achieve) had caused changes in British culture that he didn’t like.

Here it is from Christian Post:

Atheist author Richard Dawkins described himself as a “cultural Christian” and lamented the faith’s waning cultural influence in Europe, though he still derided its key tenets as “nonsense,” during an interview on Easter Sunday.

Speaking with British journalist Rachel Johnson, Dawkins noted that the United Kingdom is “fundamentally a Christian country,” and he still personally values the Christian ethos despite not believing the religion from which it emerged.

“I call myself a cultural Christian,” said the evolutionary biologist and author of The God Delusion. “I’m not a believer, but there’s a distinction between being a believing Christian and being a cultural Christian. And so, I love hymns and Christmas carols, and I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos. I feel that we are a Christian country in that sense.”

All right, here is the latest Richard Dawkins news, from Evolution News:

Recently Dr. Dawkins had a moving dialogue with former New Atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is also a former Muslim. She has announced her conversion to Christianity for what she describes as “very subjective” reasons. It was in response to a “personal crisis”: “I lived for about a decade with intense depression and anxiety and self-loathing. I hit rock bottom. I went to a place where I actually didn’t want to live anymore, but wasn’t brave enough to take my own life.” Faith was her way out of the crisis.

Dawkins answers kindly that belief in a creator or designer is more than a mere subjective response: “You appear to be a theist,” he tells her. “You appear to believe in some kind of higher power. Now, I think that the hypothesis of theism is the most exciting scientific hypothesis you could possibly hold” (emphasis added). Hold that thought in your mind.

Obviously, Dawkins wasn’t giving up his own atheism. He goes on: “And the idea that the universe was actually created by a supernatural intelligence is a dramatic, important idea. If it were true, it would completely change everything we know. We’d be living in a totally different, different universe. That’s a big thing. It’s bigger than personal comfort and nice stories and these things. The idea that the universe has lurking beneath it an intelligence or supernatural intelligence that invented the laws of physics, that invented mathematics, is a stupendous idea, if it’s true.” Minus the reference to “lurking,” that is of course the thesis of intelligent design. He adds, “To me that simply dwarfs all talk of nobility and morality and comfort and that sort of thing.”

This is a remarkable response, granting the premise of arguments for intelligent design like those of Stephen Meyer in Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries Revealing the Mind Behind the Universe. The premise is that in discussions of ID, there really is a scientific question to consider. The design hypothesis could be wrong, or it could be right. But let’s weigh it on its own terms as the scientific hypothesis that it is. Thank you to Richard Dawkins for using his authority to point that out.

And of course, anyone who has looked into these things knows the elements of the scientific case for theism:

1. origin of the universe
2. cosmic fine-tuning
3. galactic, stellar and planetary habitability
4. origin of life
5. Cambrian explosion
6. molecular machines / irreducible complexity

A lot of atheists don’t go near enough to the evidence to be able to make a statement like what Dawkins said. I’m impressed with Dawkins, because he was even able to correct Ayann Hirsi Ali about what Christianity actually involves. Christianity is not primarily about subjective beliefs or communities or even a set of moral teachings. Christianity is a knowledge tradition. It’s a set of claims about reality that are either true or false. And he knows that Christianity makes testable claims, and some of them can be verified or falsified by science. Dawkins has a more respectful view of what Christianity is than many Christians. Impressive.

Atheists are the most politically active group in America. They are overwhelmingly for leftist policies. As I have shown before, atheists do not have a rational foundation for moral values and duties. When doing the right thing goes against their self-interest, they have no rational justification to do the right thing. So what happens when they go into government? Can they be trusted to do their jobs?

Here’s an article from the New York Post:

A Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) supervisor told disaster relief workers in Florida to “avoid homes” with signs supporting President-elect Donald Trump, the agency confirmed Friday.

The FEMA official — Marn’i Washington — conveyed her edict both verbally and in a Microsoft Teams chat used by relief workers canvassing Lake Placid homes ravaged by Hurricane Milton last month, according to the Daily Wire.

“Avoid homes advertising Trump,” Washington wrote in a “best practices” memo to employees.

The order was the second bullet point in a list instructing workers to not go “anywhere alone,” practice “de-escalation,” stay hydrated and to “follow the rules.”

FEMA employees told the outlet that at least 20 homes displaying Trump signs or flags — a common sight during election season — were passed between the end of October and into November because of the order.

“Trump sign no entry per leadership,” read messages left by workers in FEMA’s tracking system when homes were skipped because of the banners.

By ignoring the homes, residents were denied the opportunity to sign up for federal FEMA disaster relief assistance in the wake of the Category 3 hurricane’s landfall.

You might remember that we learned previously that FEMA was deliberately blocking relief efforts for people in North Carolina, specifically in areas with many Republican voters.

Remember this article from Fox Business?

Elon Musk on Friday slammed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), claiming that it is blocking shipments of Starlink satellite internet deliveries in hurricane-ravaged North Carolina.

“FEMA is not merely failing to adequately help people in trouble, but is actively blocking citizens who try to help!” the billionaire claimed on X.

Musk said he had just received a note from a SpaceX engineer, Starlink’s parent company, in Asheville, North Carolina, who said the company has “powered up two large operating bases for choppers to deliver goods into hands. We’ve deployed 300+ starlinks and outpour is it has saved many lives.”

But Musk said the engineer claimed that FEMA is “actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own. It’s very real and scary how much they have taken control to stop people helping. We are blocked now on the shipments of new starlinks coming in until we get an escort from the fire dept. but that may not be enough.”

It’s very important for taxpayers to reflect on the actions that we see from secular leftists who are in government.

We see:

• pre-dawn raids on the homes of enemies of the Democrat party
• false dossiers used to obtain warrants to spy on political opponents
• statements claiming that laptops are “Russian disinformation” when they are actually genuine
• slow-walking prosecutions of relatives of Democrat party members
• labeling concerned parents of students as “domestic terrorists”
• persecuting Christian business owners for their religious beliefs
• forcing Christian medical professionals to perform violent acts that go against their consciences
• seizing children from parents when disagree with secular leftist sexual ideologies
• launching criminal prosecutions of their political opponents before an election

And this is not to mention all the times that actual political violence has been committed by Democrats against Republicans, such as the attempted murder of Congressman Steve Scalise by a former Bernie Sanders campaign worker. There are many such cases.

When you find these cases happening, and you ask secular leftists what is an appropriate measure to take to deter it, they say they will suspend the person(s) who were caught, and launch an investigation. Is it enough, though? When secular leftists get angry with Christians who merely disagree with them, they drag them into court, and try to shut down their businesses and take their life savings. Maybe it’s time for Republicans to start thinking about how to deter the secular left from using government as a weapon against their fellow Americans who have every right to speak up and participate in the political process without being punished.