Category Archives: News

News

New video series on intelligent design starts off discussing the Cambrian explosion

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I am always on the lookout for good resources on science and Christianity. And I found some. Well, Uncommon Descent found them, and I read their blog, so I found them too. The first four episodes are out, and the topics are: 1) introducing the Cambrian explosion, 2) pre-Cambrian fossils, 3) punctuated equilibrium, and 4) Darwin’s “tree of life”. Each video is 12-20 minutes long.

So, before we see the videos, I feel I should explain the outline for arguing for a creator / designer of the universe from scratch. There are six main arguments. 1) the origin of the universe from nothing, 2) fine-tuning of the creation event, 3) fine-tuning for habitability in the galaxy, solar system, and planet, 4) the origin of the first living self-replicating organism, 5) irreducible / minimal complexity in molecular machines, 6) the sudden origin of basic body plans in the Cambrian explosion (a geological period a long time ago).

These four videos introduce you to the sixth argument in that list, the Cambrian explosion.

First video: Introducing the Cambrian explosion

Description:

When Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, he was painstakingly aware of the fact that the fossil record diametrically opposed his theory. Ever since Darwin’s time, paleontologists have put their finger on the Cambrian explosion, where most of the major animal phyla appear abruptly in the fossil record suddenly and without any evidence of intermediate forms preceding them in Precambrian strata.

Second video: evaluating precursors to the Cambrian explosion

Description:

Are there transitional forms and Precambrian fossils which reveal the evolution of the diverse animal phyla that appear in the Cambrian explosion? The history of paleontology shows the answer is no! As paleontologists have learned more about the fossil and geological record, the challenge of the Cambrian explosion to Darwinian theory has only increased.

Third video: evaluating punctuated equilibrium

Description:

In the 1970s, paleontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge proposed a model of evolution called punctuated equilibrium, intended to resolve the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record. Can “Punk Eek,” as it’s often called, resolve the abrupt appearance of new animal phyla in the Cambrian explosion? This video explains why the answer is No—among many other problems, Punk Eek requires too much evolutionary change too quickly and lacks a biological mechanism to account for the rapid origin of anatomical novelty we see in the Cambrian period.

Fourth video: evaluating homology and phylogenetics

Description:

As more scientists have realized that the fossil record poses serious challenges to Darwin’s theory of evolution, many have turned to molecular homologies and phylogenetic trees to defend Darwin’s tree of life. But do these approaches really support Darwin’s tree? Nope.

If you like these videos, you can read a much longer, more detailed book about it by Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, called “Darwin’s Doubt”. Or, you can do what I’m doing and just read a chapter about it in the new book “The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith“. That book covers all 6 of the arguments I mentioned before. You can see the table of contents on the Discovery Institute web site. The chapter by Dr. Gunter Bechly entitled “Does the Fossil Record Demonstrate Darwinian Evolution?” covers the fossil record, and the Cambrian explosion in particular. I like Gunter a LOT, because he had a recent debate on the Unbelievable show on this topic, and he really cleaned the clock of his opponent, a slippery theistic evolutionist named Joshua Swamidass. It was beautiful. He cut through all the theistic evolution garbage and got straight into the science.

I’m reading the book right now. Or rather, I’m having it read to me, because I got the audio book version. If you remember reading books like “Mere Creation” (1998) and “The Creation Hypothesis” (1994) as a young man like I do, then you will love this book.

I like to know a little about every interesting topic, and then watch lots of university lectures and formal debates about them, so I can debate these topics in the places where I live and work. The new book has a lot of different authors from a lot of different perspectives writing on a lot of different topics. You could find a way to talk about these topics in pretty much any environment.

So far, I like Dr. Fazale Rana’s chapter on Adam and Eve the best, but I’m still in Section I. I’m just starting on Jay Richards chapter next.

News

Biden-appointed judge rules that parents can’t opt their kids out of LGBT

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On Monday, I blogged about how a federal judge had ruled that a county in Tennessee could not protect children from being exposed to sexually-oriented performances. The same thing just happened in Texas. A federal judge blocked a Texas law that protected children from sexually-oriented performances. But now there is something even worse – banning parents from protecting their own kids.

Here’s the story from The Federalist:

On Aug. 24, the U.S. District Court judge denied a requested injunction from a group of Muslim, Catholic, and Orthodox parents to opt their children out of LGBT storybook lessons.

[…]A stone’s throw from Washington, D.C., Montgomery County Public Schools is one of the largest public school systems in the country, with roughly 70,000 students attending elementary school. Last fall, the Montgomery County Board of Education announced it was adopting a collection of more than 20 “LGBTQ+ inclusive” books for use in pre-K through eighth-grade classrooms.

[…]When parents initially raised objections to the books, the school board said they could opt their children out of instruction involving the books, as parents can for other parts of the curriculum. By the spring, however, the school board announced parents would not only no longer be notified in advance when the books would be read, they also couldn’t opt their children out of instruction involving the books.

Some of the parents who pay the taxes for the salaries of these education bureaucrats didn’t like this, and they sued. They argued that in America, parents have Constitutional freedoms. And they wanted to be allowed to opt their children out of LGBT indoctrination.

But a Biden-appointed judge, who is also paid by the taxpayers, disagreed with the taxpayers:

Biden-appointed Judge Deborah Boardman denied the requested injunction, just days after oral argument. “[T]he plaintiffs have not shown that the no-opt-out policy likely will result in the indoctrination of their children,” she wrote. But what about the parents’ rights to direct the religious upbringing of the children? Boardman’s take is that “[e]ven if their children’s exposure to religiously offensive ideas makes the parents’ efforts less likely to succeed, that does not amount to a government-imposed burden on their religious exercise.”

It’s fine for atheists to tell Christian parents what to do with their kids. And it doesn’t matter when those Christian parents are paying the salaries of those atheists. Parents must pay, and they should be grateful to the atheists who turn their children against God. Parents have no right to direct the religious upbringing of their children. Parents are just there to work, to pay better people to raise their children for them. Atheists are better people. They should be making the decisions about what your children learn. You just pay for it.

Remember, if you don’t like what the taxpayer-funded schools are teaching your children, then you’re a “domestic terrorist”. And since you’re a “domestic terrorist”, then maybe the FBI needs to park 6 SUVs outside your house and break down your door and point loaded assault rifles at your wife and children. The FBI is also paid by taxpayer dollars. You pay them to pre-dawn raid your house.

News

The worst mistake you can make when defending the Christian worldview

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So, this is just an advice post for doing apologetics.

Here are three situations I’ve run into while doing apologetics in the last month.

First situation. I was talking with a lady who is an atheist. I had a copy of “God’s Crime Scene” in my hand, and she asked me about it. I told her that it was a book written by the guy who solved the homicide case that I asked her to watch on Dateline. She remembered – it was the two-hour special on the woman who was killed with a garrotte. She pointed at the book and said “what’s in it?” I said, it has 8 pieces of evidence that fit better with a theistic worldview than with an atheistic one, and some of them scientific. Her reply to me was – literally – “which denomination do you want me to join?”

Second situation. I was talking with a friend of mine who teaches in a Catholic school. She was telling that she got the opportunity to talk to her students about God, and found out that some of them were not even theists, and many of them had questions. So she asked them for questions and got a list. The list included many hard cases, like “what about the Bible and slavery” and “why do Christians oppose gay marriage?” and so on.

Third situation. Talking to a grad student about God’s existence. I’m laying out my scientific arguments for her, holding up the peer-reviewed papers for each discovery. I get to the Doug Axe paper on protein folding probabilities, and she holds up her hand. One question: “Am I going to Hell?”

So think about those three situations. In each case, the opponent is trying to reject Christianity by jumping way, way ahead to the very end of the process. When you do Christian apologetics, you do not take the bait and jump to the end of the process dealing with nitty gritty details until you have made your case for the core of the Christian worldview using your strongest evidence. Let me explain.

So, your strongest evidence as a Christian are the scientific arguments, along with the moral argument. Those would include (for starters) the following:

  1. kalam cosmological argument
  2. cosmic fine-tuning
  3. galactic and stellar habitability
  4. origin of life / DNA
  5. molecular machines / irreducible complexity
  6. the moral argument

The problem I am seeing today is that atheists are rejecting discussions about evidence because they think that all we are interested in is getting them to become Christians. Well, yes. I want you to become a Christian. But I know perfectly well what that entails – it entails a change of life priorities. Both of the women I spoke to are living with their boyfriends, and the kids in the Catholic school just want to have fun. None of them wants to believe in a God who will require self-denial, self-control, and self-sacrifice. Nobody wants God to be in that leader position in their lives. Christianity is 100% reversed from today’s me-first, fun-seeking, thrill-seeking, fear-of-missing-out travel spirit of the age.

So, how to answer all these late-game questions? The answer is simple. You don’t answer any late-game questions until the person you are talking with accounts for the widely-accepted data in your list. These are things that have got to be accepted before any discussion about minor issues like one angel vs two angels at the empty tomb can occur. When we discuss all the basic issues where the evidence is the strongest, then we can go on to discuss issues where the evidence is debatable, then finally, in the last bits before the end, we can discuss these other kinds of questions.

How to explain why this process must be followed to the person who asks specific questions about minor issues? Simple. You explain that your goal is not to get them to become a Christian right now. That you want to let them believe anything thing they want. That’s right. They can believe anything they want to believe. As long as what they believe is consistent with the evidence. And what I am going to do is give them the evidence, and then they can believe whatever they want – so long as it’s consistent with the evidence.

So, for example, I’m going to tell them 3 pieces of evidence for a cosmic beginning of the universe: the expanding universe (redshift), the cosmic microwave background radiation, and the light element abundances. That’s mainstream science that shows that the universe came into being out of nothing, a finite time in the past. And I will charge them not to believe in any religion that assumes that the universe has always been here. For example, Mormonism is ruled out, they believe in eternally existing matter. See how that works? Hey, Ms. Atheist. You can believe anything you want. As long as what you believe is consistent with the evidence. 

I think this approach of not letting them rush you to the end at the beginning is important for two reasons. First, we can get our foot in the door to talk about things that are interesting to everyone, in a non-stressed environment. Everyone can talk about evidence comfortably. Second, we show that we hold our beliefs because we are simply letting evidence set boundaries for us on what we are allowed to believe. We can’t believe not-Christianity, because not-Christianity is not consistent with the evidence. And you start with the most well-supported evidence, and eliminate worldviews that are falsified by the most well-supported evidence. Atheism actually gets falsified pretty quickly, because of the scientific evidence.

So, that’s my advice. Had a friend of mine named William try this out about a week ago. It went down like this:

William to me:

This guy I know messaged me and bragged for a while about how easy he can dismantle Christianity. He said: “present the gospel to me as you understand it. I’ll simply ask questions to demonstrate it is not worth your belief.”

WK to William:

First of all, he isn’t allowed to just sit there and poke holes in your case, he has to present a positive case for atheism. Second, don’t discuss Christianity with him at all until you first discuss the evidence for theism – start with the good scientific evidence.

And William wrote this to his friend:

The way I’m wired is that I process all competing theories and go with the best one. By doing a comparative analysis of worldviews I find that Christian theology easily explains the most about the world I find myself living in.

I’m pretty sure that a God of some sort exists because of the scientific evidence for the origin of the universe and the fine tuning in physics. From there I find it quite intuitive that if a God went through the trouble of creating and tuning a universe for life that this God likely has some sort of interest in it and has revealed Himself to humanity in some way.

From there I can look at the major world religions and compare them to see which one explains the past and the present the best. Christianity easily comes out on top.

And then a few days later, I got this from William:

I finally got the agnostic to tell me what he thinks about origin and fine tuning. When I started pointing out that his views were unscientific, he blew a gasket, called me dishonest and told me he didn’t want to discuss anything further.

And that’s where you want to be. Cut off all discussions where the challenger tries to jump to the end and get you to debate the very last steps of your case. Present the strongest evidence for your core claims, and get him to account for this evidence within his own worldview. Lead the discussion with public, testable evidence. All warfare depends on picking the terrain, weapons and tactics that allow you to match your strength against your opponent’s weakness.