Tag Archives: Big Bang

Podcasts

Frank Turek explains the kalam argument and some objections to it

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His latest show focus on three of the better known scientific arguments for the existence of God. The argument from the origin of the universe, the argument from the cosmic fine-tuning, and the argument from biological information. He is especially focused on the first argument. He answers about a half-dozen objections raised by university students during his most recent speaking engagements on secular college campuses.

If you need a refresher on the kalam argument, read this first.

The MP3 file is here.

Topics:

Atheist dogma
– they pre-suppose natural causation and no evidence can overturn the assumption
– they rule out intelligent causes before they look at the evidence
– they rule out supernatural causes before they look at the evidence
– the assumption of naturalism is just a philosophical assumption
– the assumption is not subject to debate – they just believe it on faith
– the view that all truth must be detected with scientific methods is self-refuting

How atheists oppose the origin of the universe:
– that’s a god of the gaps argument
– you have to find an answer to problems that fits with my assumption of naturalism
– who made God?
– quantum mechanics shows that things can pop into being uncaused – maybe the universe did too
– given enough time, the universe will pop into being out of nothing

Responses:
– the cause of nature’s coming into existence cannot be inside of nature
– if nature has a beginning, then the cause of the beginning cannot be natural
– nature is the effect, the cause cannot be natural – it must be supernatural
– the only objection to the origin of the universe is the pre-supposition of naturalism
– but naturalism is not science – it’s a faith commitment to an unproven assumption
– only an agent with free will can cause an effect when/where there is no physical cause
– the inference to a supernatural cause is not based on ignorance, but on what we know
– the scientific evidence for the origin of the universe is the foundation of the argument
– the scientific evidence has gotten strong as more discoveries emerged
– regarding quantum mechanics, the particles do not come into being from nothing
– the virtual particles come into being from a vaccuum, which is not nothing
– to say that events occur without causes is to deny the scientific method itself

Videos

Can intelligent design be front-loaded at the creation of the universe?

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Structure of DNA
Structure of DNA

This video introduction to intelligent design packs a lot of information into a very small video. (H/T Brian Auten from Apologetics 315)

When it comes to the science of DNA, theistic evolutionists and atheists agree: matter, law and chance are sufficient to evolve DNA. No intelligence is needed to sequence the base pairs or the amino acids. That agreement that intelligent causes are not needed to explain DNA is why I call theistic evolution “functional atheism”.

Theistic evolutionists express subjective opinions about God that no one can investigate using science. These untestable opinions about God are similar to the opinions of little children about Santa Claus. And yet they insist that they be taken seriously alongside the people who actually think Christianity is objective knowledge, not subjective opinion.

To defuse a theistic evolutionist, simply ask them for  fully materialistic and naturalistic explanation for the first living organism – the origin of life. And then watch how they avoid answering the question. For even Richard Dawkins has no idea how life could begin, if only purely naturalistic, materialistic causes are allowed in the explanation.

Theistic evolutionists hate talking about evidence. They want to talk their private feelings and beliefs and experiences in order to reassure you that they are just like you. Don’t let them talk about religion – stick to what science can show. Demand evidence that the material processes can do the creating that the theistic evolutionists think that material processes can do.

Here’s an easy article that you can read that explains a bit more about what the video discussed. Here is one is a bit more difficult. These are mentoring articles for Christians.

If you want to read some serious research, then read this post and listen to this interview which are both about the work of Doug Axe.

Mentoring

Book review of Stephen Hawking’s “The Grand Design” by Edgar Andrews

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First, who is Edgar Andrews?

Professor Edgar H. Andrews (BSc, PhD, DSc, FInstP, FIMMM, CEng, CPhys.) is Emeritus Professor of Materials at the University of London and an international expert on the science of large molecules. In 1967 he set up the Department of Materials at Queen Mary College, University of London, and served both as its Head and later as Dean of Engineering. He has published well over 100 scientific research papers and books, together with two Bible Commentaries and various works on science and religion and on theology. His book From Nothing to Nature has been translated into ten languages.

Edgar Andrews was an international consultant to the Dow Chemical Company (USA) for over thirty years and to the 3M Company (USA) for twenty years. He was a non-executive director of Denbyware PLC throughout the 1970s and for five years a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Neste Oy, the national oil company of Finland.

And now an excerpt from the book review: (H/T Apologetics 315)

Hawking and Mlodinow declare: ‘According to M-theory, ours is not the only universe. Instead, M-theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing. Their creation does not require the intervention of some supernatural being or god. Rather, these multiple universes arise naturally from physical law. They are a prediction of science’ (p.9).

So what is this magical M-theory? The authors are rather coy about it. ‘M-theory’, they say, ‘Is not a theory in the usual sense. It is a whole family of different theories, each of which is a good description of observations only in some range of physical situations’ (p.8). Theoretical physicist Lee Smolin is more explicit: ‘… we still do not know what M-theory is, or whether there is any theory deserving of the name’ (The trouble with physics, Allen Lane, 2007, p.146).

The fact is that M-theory is an untestable mathematical construction which many scientists believe has no bearing on physical reality. But that doesn’t deter our authors because they don’t believe in ‘objective reality’ anyway. What we think is ‘real’, they say, is simply a model assembled in our brains from raw data input by our senses. But, confusingly, the authors then claim that the best models are those that reflect the way things really do happen in the real world — appealing to the very objective reality they say does not exist! Confused? Me too.

But it gets worse. They claim that M-theory (whatever it might be) predicts not one universe but a multiverse — a vast collection of universes which cannot be observed or known to us in any way. On their own criterion, this makes M-theory a very bad model indeed. So it’s hardly a useful replacement for God.

Here’s a better book to read if you want to understand how belief in God relates to experimental science.

My Dad just finished reading his book “Who Made God?” and called me up to tell me how much he liked the book. My Dad is not a scientist, yet he read the whole thing and learned a lot about science. This is the book for people who haven’t read a thing about science and religion. It’s easy to understand because he explains the same thing over and other giving more and more detail. Even a child can understand the first explanation, and then he keeps layering on details until he gets up to the state-of-the-art.

Remember Brian Auten of Apologetics 315 picked this book as his favorite of 2010. You can’t go wrong!

My Dad is now reading my copy of “Is God Just a Human Invention?” by Jonathan Morrow and Sean McDowell. I’m working on “Is God a Moral Monster?” by Paul Copan. I like books where difficult questions are asked and then careful answers are given. Then when people ask me the same questions, I can answer them using what I’ve learned – and often phrase the question even more clearly and forcefully than they did when they asked me.