Dr. Walter Bradley lectures on scientific evidence the creation and design of the universe

This lecture is special to me, because I bought a VHS tape of it just after I started working full-time, and watched it a million times. A lot of people come to their convictions about God’s existence because of parents or church or intuitions, but for me it’s all about the scientific evidence. This lecture changed my life. I wish more people taught their children about this evidence! This lecture was delivered at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

About the speaker:

Dr. Bradley received his B.S. in Engineering Science and his Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Texas in Austin.

Dr. Bradley taught for eight years at the Colorado School of Mines before assuming a position as Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University (TAMU) in 1976.

During his 24 years at Texas A&M, Dr. Bradley served as Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University and as Director of the Polymer Technology Center, and received five College of Engineering Research Awards. He has received over $4,500,000 in research grants and has published over 140 technical articles and book chapters. He has also co-authored “The Mystery Of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories. He is a Fellow of the American Society for Materials and of the American Scientific Affiliation and serves as a consultant for many Fortune 500 companies.

He currently serves as Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Baylor University.

The lecture: (63 minutes lecture, 25 minutes audience Q&A)

Summary slide:

This slide summarizes the content of the lecture
This slide summarizes the content of the lecture

Introduction:

  • At the beginning of the 20th century, people believed that the progress of science was pointing away from an intelligent Creator and Designer, and towards naturalism
  • A stream of new discoveries has shifted the support of science towards theism, and away from naturalism
  • Richard Dawkins, an atheist, says that nature only has the appearance of design, but that if you look closer, naturalistic mechanisms can account for the appearance of design
  • When deciding between design and apparent design (“designoid”), it matters whether you think there is an intelligence there to do the designing

Evidence #1: The Big Bang:

  • an eternal “steady state” universe is more compatible with naturalism, but a created universe is more compatible with a Creator
  • In 1929, Hubble used telescopes to observe that the light from distant galaxies was redshifted. The further away galaxies were, the faster they were moving away. Therefore, space is expanding in all directions, suggesting an explosive origin of the universe
  • In 1965, the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation matched a prediction of the Big Bang cosmology, and of the creation event
  • In 1992, the COBE space telescope allowed us to test four specific predictions of the Big Bang model, especially the predictions for light element abundances (hydrogen and helium), which matched the predictions of the creation model

Evidence #2: Simple mathematical structure of the physical laws

  • the simple mathematical structure of natural laws allows us to understand these laws, make discoveries, and engineer solutions to problems
  • early scientists saw the mathematical structure of the universe to mean that nature was designed by an intelligent to be understood
  • the fundamental equations of the laws of the universe can be easily written on one side of one sheet of paper
  • Eugene Wigner’s famous paper, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Physical Sciences” makes the point that this simple structure is an unexpected gift that allows is to do science

Evidence #3: fine-tuning of the physical constants and quantities

  • in order for any kind of complex life to survive, we need stars that provide energy within specific ranges for long periods of time
  • in order for any kind of complex life to survive, we need planets with stable orbits that will not suffer from extreme temperature swings as it varies in distance from its star
  • in order for any kind of complex life to survive, we need stable atomic structure
  • in order for any kind of complex life to survive, we need to have chemical diversity and correct relative abundances of each element
  • organic life has minimum requirements: process energy, store information, replicate, and you can’t fulfill those functions if there is only one element, e.g. – hydrogen
  • the energy level from the photons from the sun have to match the energy levels of the different elements in order to drive the chemical bonding needed for life
  • These requirements for life of any imaginable type depend on the values of the constants and quantities. The constants and quantities cannot vary much from what they are, or the universe will lose the characteristics (above) that allow it to support complex life of any imaginable time
  • For example, ratio of strong force to electromagnetic force:
    – if 2% larger, then no stable hydrogen, no long-lived stars, no compounds containing hydrogen, e.g. – water
    – if 5% smaller, no stable stars, heavy hydrogen would be unstable, few elements other than hydrogen

Evidence #4: initial conditions for habitability

  • Universe: expansion rate of the universe must be fast enough to avoid a re-collapse, but slow enough to allow matter to clump together and form stars and planets for complex life to live on
  • Planet: right distance from the star to get the right climate
  • Planet: right mass to retain the right atmosphere

Evidence #5: origin of life and information theory

  • It’s possible to explain every process in an automobile engine using plain old naturalistic mechanisms – no supernatural explanation is necessary to understand the processes
  • But the existence of engine itself: engineering all the parts has to be explained by the work of an intelligence
  • Similarly, we can understand how living systems work, but the existence of the living systems requires an intelligence
  • Even the simplest living system has to perform minimal function: capture energy, store information and replicate
  • Living systems are composed of objects like proteins that are composed of sequences of components complex such that the order of the components gives the overall structure function
  • Developing the components for a simple living cell is very improbable – even given the large number of galaxies, stars and planets in the universe, it is unlikely that complex, embodied life would exist anywhere in the universe

Evidence #6: more initial conditions for habitability

  • Location within the galaxy: you need to be away from the center of the galaxy, because the explosions from dying stars, and excessive radiation will kill life
  • Location within the galaxy: you need to be close enough to the center in order catch the heavy elements you need for life from the explosions of other stars
  • Location within the galaxy: the best location is between two arms of  a spiral galaxy, where you can get the heavy elements you need from dying stars, but without being hit with explosions and harmful radiation
  • Star mass: determines rate at which the sun burns, determines the energy level of photons that are used to drive chemical bonding reactions, determines the length of time the star will be stable
  • Star mass: star mass must be the correct value in order to allow liquid water on the planet’s surface, while still preserving stable orbit

I wish there was more curiosity about science in churches, and young Christians understood how critical science is for grounding the rationality of the Christian worldview. We need to be training up more scientists who think about the big questions, like Dr. Walter Bradley.

Psychologist claims father is an unfit parent for refusing to give son unhealthy fast food

Should a man marry a woman who doesn’t respect his decision-making ability? To me, if a woman doesn’t think that the man is good at making decisions, then she should just steer clear of him. Strangely enough, many women do marry men who they don’t respect at all as leaders. Let’s look at four cases where this happened, then draw some conclusions.

Consider this story from CBS News.

Excerpt:

Saying no to a toddler’s demands for a McDonald’s meal got a father branded an inept parent, he says in a lawsuit claiming a psychologist urged a judge to curtail his parental visits over the dinner debacle.

David E. Schorr says psychologist Marilyn Schiller pronounced him incapable of caring for his nearly 5-year-old son after he offered a choice — dinner anywhere but McDonald’s, or no dinner at all — and let the boy choose the latter. He then took his irate son home to the boy’s mother’s house early from their Oct 30 dinner date, according to a defamation suit Schorr filed Tuesday.

[…]”Normally not a very strict father who rarely refuses his child McDonald’s,” Schorr put his foot down Oct. 30 “because his son had been eating too much junk food,” the suit said. Schorr himself didn’t immediately return a call Friday.

He quickly regretted his stance when his son threw a tantrum, but he felt that giving in would reward bad behavior, so he offered the elsewhere-or-nowhere “final offer,” as his court papers put it.

“The child, stubborn as a mule, chose the ‘no dinner’ option,” the suit says. And the father promptly carted the boy back to Bari Schorr’s building, still trying to entice the child into changing his mind as they waited in the lobby for her to get home from work, according to the suit.

Schiller told a judge the fast food flap “raises concerns about the viability” of the father’s weekend visits with his son and asked a judge to eliminate or limit them, his lawsuit says.

The NY Post reports that the brat’s mother immediately took him to McDonald’s.

Excerpt:

Adding insult to injury, he said: “My wife immediately took him to McDonalds.”

[…]But the son apparently tattled on his dad and his wife flipped out and called the shrink, according to the suit.

Schorr claims that Dr. Schiller only interviewed the child and his mother and never asked for his side of the story before telling the court she was gravely concerned about Schorr’s parenting.

Bari Yunis Schorr sued her husband for a divorce in 2011, just four years after they married in a lavish ceremony at the St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan.

Now does this situation happen a lot? I mean a situation where a mother goes to the feminist authorities (psychologists/social workers/lawyers/teachers/judges) in order to overrule the father’s parenting authority?

Another case from Canada

Here is a story from Canada that provides another examples of mothers, female lawyers, female judges, etc. overriding a father’s leadership of his home.

Excerpt:

A Gatineau father lost an appeal Monday after a lower court ruled last June that he had issued a too severe punishment against his 12-year-old daughter.

The case involves a divorced man who says that in 2008 he caught the girl, over whom he had custody, surfing websites he had forbidden and posting “inappropriate pictures of herself” online. The girl’s father told her as a consequence that she would not be allowed to go on her class’ graduation trip to Quebec City, even though her mother had already given permission for her to do so.

The girl then contacted a legal-aid lawyer who was involved in the parents’ custody battle, who convinced the court to order that the girl be allowed to go on the trip with her class.  The father appealed the decision on principle, although his daughter went on the trip in the meantime.

The appeals court reportedly warned in its ruling that the case should not be seen as an open invitation for children to take legal action against their parents when grounded.

The girl now lives with her mother.

You may think that this would be overturned on appeal, but the father LOST his appeal, too.

So, what the daughter, wife, prosecuting attorney and judge (all feminists?) are all telling this Dad that he can donate sperm, pay bills, and pay taxes to welfare spending, but that he cannot lead his own children. He cannot have any moral authority to guide the child into becoming a man. That job is for child care workers, single mothers and public school teachers. Men need to butt out of parenting – except they can pay for all these experts through taxes, of course.

Recently, I blogged about a case in Canada where a father was overruled by female teachers, principals, lawyers, and judges, because he opposed the transgendering of his child (which was supported by the mother).

And there was also a case in California, where the mother of a child also wanted to transgender the child. The father collected together all the evidence showing that this would not be a good idea in the long run, but a female judge overruled him. Not only did he lose custody of the child, but he was banned from contacting the child, too.

Questions:

  • Does anyone care what men want from marriage and parenting, or should we just be ordered around like little boys?
  • Do we really think that state coercion is going to make men be more involved with their marriages and children?

I think that marriage should allow men to express themselves as fathers, just as much as women can express themselves as mothers. Parenting should be an equally shared responsibility, and the father should have at least as much parental authority as the mother.

Compassion vs standards

Here is a pretty good article by Jewish scholar Dennis Prager that argues against compassion and for moral standards. He tells a story of a team losing a baseball game 24-7, when the scoreboard is reset to 0-0 DURING THE GAME. He then asks what beliefs would motivate this action.

As is happening throughout America, compassion trumped all other values.

Truth was the first value compassion trashed. In the name of compassion, the adults in charge decided to lie. The score was not 0-0; it was 24-7.

Wisdom was the second value compassion obliterated. It is unwise to the point of imbecilic to believe that the losing boys were in any way helped by changing the score. On the contrary, they learned lessons that will hamper their ability to mature.

He lists the lessons that the winning and losing boys learned from this compassionate act, and how they will act in the future. Then he continues his list.

Building character was the third value trumped by compassion. People build character far more through handling defeat than through winning. The human being grows up only when forced to deal with disappointment. We remain children until the day we take full responsibility for our lives.

…The fourth value that compassion denied here was fairness. It is remarkable how often compassion-based liberals speak of “fairness” in formulating social policy given how unfair so many of their policies are. It was entirely unfair to the winning team to have their score expunged, all their work denied. But for the compassion-first crowd, the winning team is like “the rich” who earn “too much” and should therefore be penalized with a higher tax rate; the winning team scored “too many” runs to be allowed to keep them all.

What the “compassion” crowd mean by compassion is “don’t judge”. “Don’t judge” is their highest morality. Male leadership isn’t just worthless, it’s dangerous. Men are only good for spending money, and for being sperm donors. It would be best if they didn’t talk at all.

Compassion undermines moral standards, but also standards of rationality. The former is under attack from moral relativism, and the latter is under attach from postmodernism. These ideologies are dangerous, and they are at the root of a lot of the problems we’re seeing with children today. When men cannot correct moral relativism and postmodernism in their homes, then the children make terrible decisions, and often get into big trouble later on.

Advice for men

When men are getting into relationships with women, they should consider whether the woman is choosing them because they are good at leading, especially on moral and spiritual issues. If she is not choosing you because she likes how you lead, then run for the hills. You do not want to invest in a relationship that is going to be adjudicated in the courts by feminist lawyers and feminist judges. If you like to lead, pick a woman who likes how you lead. A woman who thinks that moral relativism is false, and postmodern relativism is also false.

Should a man marry a woman who supports sexualizing children?

There was a very interesting story earlier this week about a single mom of four in Tennessee named Jessee Graham. She is now famous for protesting against the removal of obscene LGBT materials from the local public library, which is funded by taxpayers. Even the White House re-tweeted her protest speech.

Here is the video of her speech, and full text is below:

@lindsayjmh

WATCH THIS Jessee Graham @librealtorn spoke out against a conservative group during a Maury County, Tennessee Board of Trustees meeting after a library director allegedly resigned due to pressure from the group over a Pride display and LGBTQ books they deemed inappropriate. #bannedbooks #ally #bansoff #tennessee #lgbtq #censorship #maurycounty #librarylove #kidsbooks

♬ original sound – lindsayjmh

You really have to see the look on her face when she’s talking. That looks like hatred to me.

Full text:

Our town has never seen so much homophobic crap as we have since Miller came along, and I’m sick of it. These people have been with us this entire time, and we have never had a problem with it. They have never done any of the vile and disgusting things that that man and his weird cronies have leaked out of their mouth.

I’ve never been sexually assaulted at a drag show, but I have been in church—twice.

And I’ll tell you what, the men at that church told me it was my fault. This whole scenario should have stopped at the United States of America where we have free speech, but it didn’t.

We’re here, and it’s so ironic that he also served in the military that guarantees us these freedoms, moved from another place to come here and tell us that a community that we love, we are related to, we are friends with, that we work with, that they’re dangerous. That’s bullsh*t. They haven’t done anything and I am so sick of listening to this weird, fake pious crap about Christianity being the reason behind—we have to protect the kids. Jesus didn’t go anywhere and condemn people. He did not ever walk into any place spew hatred and lies and completely annihilate a group of human beings who just want to exist. Any of my four children that I also grew inside my womb in case pious pippies here are part of this community, they will be lucky because there is not a whole lot of families that would love their child unconditionally. And the fact that they want to take that away from children, that is child abuse. To immediately tell your child he is wrong for feeling like he doesn’t belong. Conversion therapy, child abuse. And you don’t need a moral compass to recognize something is wrong when it immediately hurts other people.

So why are we even here? Why does hate even have a platform? I am so sick of these straight, white, Christian males who are already at the top of the food chain acting like somebody is out to get them. They just want to exist, Aaron. Peacefully. Leave them alone. I’m done, love to you all.

Her speech was cited favorably by a wide range of secular left sources, from the mainstream media (CNN) to LGBT publications (the Los Angeles Blade), and a variety of progressive blogs.

The Los Angeles Blade called her on the phone, and she told them:

I’m raising four children, eleven- to two-years old, and statistically speaking, one in five kids is queer. I do not want my children to inherit a world that puts a target on their back for being their perfect selves. I’m sick of the hate.

A lot of people have not studied the Bible but want to redefine Christianity so that it means “doing whatever makes me feel good, and not being judged for it”. I know a lot of church-attenders who would side with Jessee. A lot of pastors, too. The only rule is to make everyone feel good about whatever they are doing.

And then when it destroys the lives of the children a few years later, then they just feign surprise. “I am so shocked that the child we cut the organs off of is unhappy!” Just like the people who voted for Biden to attack the oil and gas industry, and are now shocked by higher electricity and gas prices. They do what feels good in the moment – what makes people like them – and then when it explodes in their faces, they scream and swear at the people who warned them, and feign surprise at the logical consequences of their own actions.

It’s very funny that she talks about how terrible those “weird, fake, pious” Christians in church are. It’s getting to be a daily occurrence now that we find stories like this one from Fox News, about her friends in the LGBT movement:

A transgender activist in New York City was arrested and charged for allegedly soliciting a minor, legal documents show.

Trans and HIV activist Lailani Muniz was arrested last month in the Bronx after corresponding with someone whom Muniz thought was a 14-year-old boy identified as “Josh” on the LGBT dating app Grindr, according to the criminal complaint obtained by Fox News Digital.

“Josh,” however, was actually a man who works at the nonprofit NY Creeps Spotlight, which exposes people who target children. The man asked Fox News Digital to only be identified as FM.

The secular left is celebrating her because they agree with her that adults should not control their desires for the sake of children’s rights. And they don’t want to be judged for harming children.

Where are all the good men?

A lot of women today don’t like men like Aaron Miller. Men with strong views on religion and morality. These women choose men who lack strong views on religion and morality. And then those men abuse them or leave them, because men who “don’t judge” don’t judge themselves when they do immoral things to you. Those are the REAL bad men. Not Aaron Miller, who is trying to be a faithful Christian man.

Where are all the good men? They are smart enough not to get into a marriage relationship with women who hate their goodness. And no amount of screeching, swearing, shaming or blaming is going to pressure a good man into marrying a woman who puts adult selfishness above the needs of children.