Tag Archives: Logic

Mentoring

Does God exist? Is there any scientific evidence to prove that God exists?

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Since I haven’t talked about science in a while, I thought that now would be a good time to list some of the more common arguments for a Creator and Designer of the universe and/or intelligent life. I like to use arguments drawn from mainstream science that do not assume the Bible or inerrancy or anything specifically religious. The arguments below all show that the reality we live in exhibits effects in nature that are not explained by particles in motion, chance and the operation of natural laws.

First, here’s the list of a few of the better-known arguments:

The average knuckle-dragging atheist will not be familiar with any of these arguments, will have never seen them used in academic debates, and will not even click through to read about them. That’s atheism these days – it’s non-cognitive. Atheism is all about escaping from moral values and moral obligations, which are not even rationally grounded by atheism.

The point of being familiar with these arguments is to show that religion and science are virtually identical. Both are trying to explain the external world. Both are bound by the laws of logic. Both use evidence to verify and falsify claims. For example, the discovery of the origin of the universe falsifies Hinduism, Buddhism and Mormonism, but it leaves Christianity, Islam and Judaism unscathed. All religions make truth claims and those claims can be tested against what science tells us about the world.

What is the significance of scientific progress for Christians?

Some general points to know when presenting these arguments.

1. You need to emphasize that atheism is in full flight away from the progress of science. Each of these arguments has gotten stronger as the evidence grew and grew. For example, scientists had to be forced to turn away from the eternal universe as new discoveries arrived, such as the cosmic microwave background radiation measurements. Scientists had to turn away from the view that the cosmological constants are nothing special, as more and more fine-tuned quantities were discovered.

2. Christians need to pay attention in school and score top grades in mathematics and experimental sciences. Science is God-friendly, and we need to have Christians doing cutting edge research in the best labs at the universities. Think of the work done by Doug Axe at Cambridge University in which he was able to publish research showing that very few sequences of amino acids have biological function, so getting functional sequences at random is virtually impossible. One of Doug’s papers is here. We need more people like him.

3. Each of these arguments needs to be studied in the context of polemics and debates. The best way to present each of these arguments is by presenting them as a struggle against opposing forces. For example, when talking about the big bang, emphasize how atheists kept trying to come up with eternal universe speculations. When talking about the fine-tuning, talk about the unobservable multiverse. When talking about irreducible complexity, talk about the co-option fallacy. Don’t preach – teach the controversy.

4. Don’t make lazy excuses about how scientific evidence doesn’t persuade non-Christians. Science is absolutely the core of any argument for Christianity, along with the case for the resurrection of Jesus. Christianity is about knowledge. Christians who refuse to subject their faith to science are probably just trying to make sure that Christianity isn’t so true that it dictates how they should live. They like the uncertainty of blind faith, because it preserves their autonomy to disregard Christian moral teachings when it suits them.

5. The purpose of linking your Christian faith to scientific arguments is to demonstrate to non-Christians that Christianity is real. It is not a personal preference. It is not something you grew up with. It is not something you inherited from your parents. When you link your Christian faith with scientific facts in the external world, you are declaring to non-Christians that Christianity is testable and binding on everyone who shares the objective reality we live in. You can’t expect people to act Christianly without showing that Christianity is objectively true.

6. Scientific arguments are tremendously useful even for believing Christians, because sometimes it is difficult to act in a Christian way when your emotions are telling you not to. When your feelings make it hard for you to behave Christianly, that is when scientific evidence can come into play in order to rationally justify acts of self-denial and self-sacrifice. For example, scientific evidence for the existence of God is a helpful counterbalance to the problem of apparently gratuitous evil, which often discourages Christians.

My complete index of arguments for and against Christian theism is here.

UPDATE: I notice that in the popular culture, people are not really aware of these arguments, and are still arguing for religious faith based on pragmatism and personal experience, not on evidence. Using reason and evidence is much better, and it’s what the Bible teaches, too.

Polemics

How is Christianity different from other world religions?

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Peter Sean Bradley comments on the Hindu/Christian debate I posted yesterday. The debate really showed the difference between how Hindus view religion and how Christians view religion. I thought one of his points was particularly interesting.

Peter Sean Bradley writes:

According to Professor Philip Carey, Christianity is unique in the religious-sphere because of its obsession with the person of Jesus.  Because Christianity is about a person, it is essential to know who that person is, which therefore puts a heavy emphasis on doctrine, specifically correct doctrine, about the person of Jesus.  Christianity is thus a faith rather than simply a practice and faith – being intellectual adherence to ideas – are by definition exclusive.  One can, for example, be faithful to many things, until there is a conflict among those things, and then the true faith has to be determined. This is the reason for the Christian obsession with orthodoxy, i.e., “correct belief,” rather than some Christian proclivity for hair-splitting.

The apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:12-14:

12But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.

14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.

Basically, Christianity is the only religion that stands or falls on a historical event: the resurrection. Either it happened or it didn’t. And the job of every individual is to test for themselves and act accordingly. Christianity is about truth – what really happened. If people are just interested in religion to comfort them, or to spur them towards good deeds, or as a cultural/ethnic identity, or as a set of rules and rituals, then they cannot be Christians.

Consider the words of Jesus from John 18:36-37, when he is being questioned by Pilate:

36Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

37“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

And it turns out that Hindus are not the only ones who tend to think that religion is not about propositional truth. Peter Sean Bradley cites this interview with Paula Fredricksen, a Jewish historian who specializes in ancient history. Paula says that even Judaism is not exclusive in the sense that it required pagans to abandon other gods in order to worship in the Jewish synagogue.

My experience dealing with Jewish believers is that they have one of two views. The ones I’ve met were either cultural Jews who are functional atheists, or they believed that a religion is “true” so long as it results in good works. In my experience, debates and apologetics are not emphasized in Judaism, (or in Hinduism). Two of my favorite radio talk show hosts are Jewish. Michael Medved (orthodox) and Dennis Prager (Reformed), have both stated this point of view on air many times.

Mentoring

Does being a nice person make your religious beliefs true?

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I used to really enjoy listening to Dennis Prager and Michael Medved back when I wasn’t writing all the time. And one of the things I noticed about these two famous Jewish radio talk show hosts is that they believed that the test of whether a religion is true is whether it results in good behavior.

I agree with Dennis and Michael on many topics, but not on this topic. When it comes to religious epistemology, I am solely and completely concerned with only one question. Is it true?

The Pugnacious Irishman posted recently on this topic of whether 1) subjective experiences and “good” works, or 2) correspondence to reality, should be the standard for choosing a religion.

He writes:

For Christian public school teachers, the most interesting opportunities happen in the staff lounge at lunch.

As I sat down to eat lunch on Friday, a few of the teachers were talking about Mormonism.

“My pastor calls Mormonism a cult. That pisses me off. Why doesn’t he just leave them alone? The Mormon kids in my classroom are such nice and dependable kids.”

[…]“You know, I’ve got a better question to ask. Rather than asking, ‘does a certain religion make nice and conscientious followers’ (which is a plus in some ways), a more fundamental question to ask is, ‘is the religion true‘?”

One of the teachers at the table balked, “That can be kind of hard to determine, can’t it?”

“Not necessarily. If a religion makes historical and scientific claims, it can be verified or not. Most of the monotheistic religions make these types of claims, so they can be tested in that regard.”

A religion that is verifiable has a distinct advantage over religions that are not.

[…]It was a good conversation. And that is the fundamental question, isn’t it? A certain religion can produce nice people and still be wholly false. Of course, you need to figure ‘what kind of person it produces’ into the equation–if a certain religion, followed accurately, routinely produced a Charles Manson, that would most definitely be a strike against it–but that isn’t the most fundamental issue. It’s necessary, but not sufficient.

Rather, the most fundamental question you should ask is, “is the religion true?” Asking such a question doesn’t make you intolerant or bigoted.

When it comes to choosing a religion or talking about religion, the first and only rule is to focus on public, testable, propositional truth. The reason why so many Christians struggle to get into the kinds of conversations that Rich gets into is because they are not taking Rich’s approach. Find the claims of a religion that can be tested, then test them.

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