Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God

The odds of life existing on another planet grow ever longer. Intelligent design, anyone?

 

 

from here: http://www.wsj.com/articles/eric-metaxas-science-increasingly-makes-the-case-for-god-1419544568

 

By Eric Metaxas

Dec. 25, 2014 4:56 p.m. ET

In 1966 Time magazine ran a cover story asking: Is God Dead? Many have accepted the cultural narrative that he’s obsolete—that as science progresses, there is less need for a “God” to explain the universe. Yet it turns out that the rumors of God’s death were premature. More amazing is that the relatively recent case for his existence comes from a surprising place—science itself.
Here’s the story: The same year Time featured the now-famous headline, the astronomer Carl Sagan announced that there were two important criteria for a planet to support life: The right kind of star, and a planet the right distance from that star. Given the roughly octillion—1 followed by 24 zeros—planets in the universe, there should have been about septillion—1 followed by 21 zeros—planets capable of supporting life.

With such spectacular odds, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a large, expensive collection of private and publicly funded projects launched in the 1960s, was sure to turn up something soon. Scientists listened with a vast radio telescopic network for signals that resembled coded intelligence and were not merely random. But as years passed, the silence from the rest of the universe was deafening. Congress defunded SETI in 1993, but the search continues with private funds. As of 2014, researches have discovered precisely bubkis—0 followed by nothing.

What happened? As our knowledge of the universe increased, it became clear that there were far more factors necessary for life than Sagan supposed. His two parameters grew to 10 and then 20 and then 50, and so the number of potentially life-supporting planets decreased accordingly. The number dropped to a few thousand planets and kept on plummeting.

Even SETI proponents acknowledged the problem. Peter Schenkel wrote in a 2006 piece for Skeptical Inquirer magazine: “In light of new findings and insights, it seems appropriate to put excessive euphoria to rest . . . . We should quietly admit that the early estimates . . . may no longer be tenable.”

As factors continued to be discovered, the number of possible planets hit zero, and kept going. In other words, the odds turned against any planet in the universe supporting life, including this one. Probability said that even we shouldn’t be here.

Today there are more than 200 known parameters necessary for a planet to support life—every single one of which must be perfectly met, or the whole thing falls apart. Without a massive planet like Jupiter nearby, whose gravity will draw away asteroids, a thousand times as many would hit Earth’s surface. The odds against life in the universe are simply astonishing.

Yet here we are, not only existing, but talking about existing. What can account for it? Can every one of those many parameters have been perfect by accident? At what point is it fair to admit that science suggests that we cannot be the result of random forces? Doesn’t assuming that an intelligence created these perfect conditions require far less faith than believing that a life-sustaining Earth just happened to beat the inconceivable odds to come into being?

There’s more. The fine-tuning necessary for life to exist on a planet is nothing compared with the fine-tuning required for the universe to exist at all. For example, astrophysicists now know that the values of the four fundamental forces—gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the “strong” and “weak” nuclear forces—were determined less than one millionth of a second after the big bang. Alter any one value and the universe could not exist. For instance, if the ratio between the nuclear strong force and the electromagnetic force had been off by the tiniest fraction of the tiniest fraction—by even one part in 100,000,000,000,000,000—then no stars could have ever formed at all. Feel free to gulp.

Multiply that single parameter by all the other necessary conditions, and the odds against the universe existing are so heart-stoppingly astronomical that the notion that it all “just happened” defies common sense. It would be like tossing a coin and having it come up heads 10 quintillion times in a row. Really?

Fred Hoyle, the astronomer who coined the term “big bang,” said that his atheism was “greatly shaken” at these developments. He later wrote that “a common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology . . . . The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”

Theoretical physicist Paul Davies has said that “the appearance of design is overwhelming” and Oxford professor Dr. John Lennox has said “the more we get to know about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a Creator . . . gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here.”

The greatest miracle of all time, without any close seconds, is the universe. It is the miracle of all miracles, one that ineluctably points with the combined brightness of every star to something—or Someone—beyond itself.
 
Mr. Metaxas is the author, most recently, of “Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life” ( Dutton Adult, 2014).

What's Wrong with the "Wrong Side of History" argument?

from here: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2014/08/05/whats-wrong-with-the-wrong-side-of-history-argument/

It has become one of the most common refrains. When Vladimir Putin acts like an international bully, geopolitical leaders are quickly dismissive of his thuggish behavior as being on the “wrong side of history.” Closer to home, when Christians and other religious conservatives maintain that marriage is between a man and a woman, you can count on a chorus of voices declaring confidently that these old bigoted views are on the “wrong side of history.” The phrase is meant to sting, and it often does. It conjures up pictures of segregationists clinging to their disgusting notions of racial supremacy. Or pictures of flat-earthers warning Columbus about sailing off the edge of the world. The phrase seeks to win an argument by not having one. It says, “Your ideas are so laughably backward, they don’t deserve to be taken seriously. In time everyone will be embarrassed who ever held to theNo doubt, the “wrong side of history” retort is rhetorically powerful. But it also happens to be intellectually bankrupt. What’s wrong with the phrase? At least three things. 

First, the phrase assumes a progressive view of history that is empirically false and as a methodology has been thoroughly discredited. Today’s historians often warn against “Whig history,” a phrase coined by Herbert Butterfield in 1931 which has come to refer to historiography which assumes the past has been an inexorable march from darkness to light and from ignorance into enlightenment. Whig history has in common with Marxist views of history a confidence in the rationality of man and the inevitability of progress. But of course, history is never that neat and knowing the future is never that easy. The Whiggish approach, with its presumption of enlightenment and progress, is not the best way to understand the past and not by itself an adequate way to make sense of the present.

Second, the phrase “wrong side of history” forgets that progressives can be just as dimwitted as conservatives. To cite but one example, Thomas Sowell, in his book Intellectuals and Race, demonstrates that it was progressives in the early twentieth century–often applying Darwin’s biological theories to other disciplines–who championed eugenics and racial determinism. Many of the elite intellectuals of the day accepted “scientific” theories about innate mental differences among the races, and it was leaders on the left who argued for eliminating the “inferior stock” of mankind through restricted immigration, institutionalized, and mass sterilization. If there is a “wrong side of history” there are enough examples in history to tell us that anyone from any intellectual tradition could be on it.

Third, when applied to Christians, the “wrong side of history” argument usually perpetuates half-truth or outright falsehoods about Christian history. For example, the church did not object to Columbus’ voyage because it thought the earth was flat. That’s a myth that has been erroneously believed since Andrew Dickinson White, the founder and first president of Cornell University, authored his influential study, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom in 1896. The “sundry wise men of Spain” who challenged Columbus did not do so on account of their belief in the earth’s flatness, but because they thought Columbus had underestimated the circumference of the earth, which he had.[1] Every educated person in Columbus’ day knew the earth was round. Jeffrey Burton Russel argues that during the first fifteen centuries of the Christian era “nearly unanimous scholarly opinion pronounced the earth spherical, and by the fifteenth century all doubt had disappeared.”[2] Sphere by the title of the most popular medieval textbook on astronomy which was written in the 13th century, and generations before Columbus’ voyage, Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly, chancellor of the University of Paris, wrote “although there are mountains and valleys on the earth, for which it is not perfectly round, it approximates very nearly to roundness.”[3] Centuries earlier, the Venerable Bede (673-734) taught that the world was round, as did Bishop Virgilius of Salzburg (8th c.), Hildegard of Bingen (12th c.) and Thomas Aquinas (13th c.), all four of whom are canonized saints in the Catholic Church.

And while it’s true, shamefully true, that Christians in the South, some of them good Calvinists, defended chattel slavery, we need to put this sad fact in context. By the nineteenth century, slavery had existed for a long time, and it was usually not promoted along ethnic or racial lines. Africans had more slaves of their own than were sent to the New World. Muslim slave-trading began centuries before Europeans discovered the New World and continued longer, being legally abolished in Saudi Arabia only in 1962.

Of course, this doesn’t mean Christians have no complicity in the evils of slavery, but we must remember that it is chiefly owing to Christians and Christian nations that slavery was eradicated. The overthrow of slavery (after near universal slavery for almost of all of recorded human history) came about from two main factors: the rise of nation states (so it became too dangerous to go raid other peoples) and Christian opposition to its practice. For all its grave faults, European imperialism is largely responsible for ending slavery. Starting in the 19th century, the British stamped out slavery in their Empire, which at that time covered a fourth of the world. They destroyed slave trading ships, made slavery illegal, and blockaded islands and coasts until slavery was shut down. Thomas Sowell, the African-American economist writes, “It would be hard to think of any other crusade pursued so relentlessly for so long by any nation, as such mounting costs, without any economic or other tangible benefit to itself.”[4] And the crusade was championed by Christians, William Wilberforce chief among them.

Furthermore, it’s not as if nineteenth century Christians were the first ones to object to slavery. This is why the analogy with the church’s view of homosexuality falls wide of the mark. The church has always believed homosexual behavior to be sinful. The church–and not the whole church–can only be found to be supporting chattel slavery in a relatively brief historical window. Even if we look at slavery of any kind, it’s not as if Christians never spoke against the institution until the nineteenth century. As early as the seventh century, Saith Bathilde (wife of King Clovis III) became famous for her campaign to stop slave-trading and free all the slaves in the kingdom. In 851 Saint Anskar began his efforts to halt the Viking slave trade. In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas argued that slavery was a sin, and a series of Popes upheld the position. During the 1430s the Spanish colonized the Canary Islands and began to enslave the native population. Pope Eugene IV issued a bull, giving everyone fifteen days from receipt of his bull, “to restore to their earlier liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of said Canary Islands…these people are to be totally and perpetually free and are to be let go without exaction or reception of any money.”[5] The bull didn’t help much, but that is owing to the weakness of the church’s power at the time, not indifference to slavery. Pope Paul III made a similar pronouncement in 1537. Slavery was condemned in papal bulls in 1462, 1537, 1639, 1741, 1815, and 1839. In America, the first abolitionist tract was published in 1700 by Samuel Sewall, a devout Puritan. Meanwhile, Enlightenment bigwigs like Hobbes, Locke, Voltaire, and Montesquieu all supported slavery.

I am not trying to rewrite history here and make the record of the church into one long string of unbroken heroism. But since we get the impression from so many folks, Christians and non-Christians alike, that the church has been an unmitigated disaster on social issues since the beginning of time, we should take the time to get the rest of the story, in context and un-sensationalized. Christians as individuals have been wrong about ten thousand things. Christians collectively have probably been wrong about just as many things. But to suggest the whole church has always at all times and in all places been wrong about something is an audacious claim. As Christians we ought to fear being on the wrong side of the holy, catholic church more than fear being on the wrong side of Whig notions of progress and enlightenment.[2] Ibid., 122.

NOTES

[1] Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 121.

[2] Ibid., 122.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Thomas Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2005), 123.

[5] For the Glory of God, 330.

Portions of this blog post have been taken from my chapter “The Historical: One Holy Catholic Church” in Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion (Moody 2009).

- See more at: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2014/08/05/whats-wrong-with-the-wrong-side-of-history-argument/#sthash.pmSn7s25.dpuf

from here: http://kateelizabethconner.com/look-up-why-i-hated-womens-ministry/

Look Up (Why I Hated Women’s Ministry)

I was in high school when I started hating women’s ministry.   Not hating – I should say “getting annoyed by.”

I never cared for girls nights, and teas sounded downright dreadful, like being made to sit at the grown-up table after you were finished eating to “listen to us talk.”

In college I started ministering to women, but I still didn’t like women’s ministry.  When I confessed that I didn’t like it, as I sometimes did, I was met with confused or offended looks.  Wait, you’re an RA for 70 girls at Liberty University and you don’t like women’s ministry?  Well, yeah.  I like hanging out and praying/teaching/learning.  I like organizing events, and writing curriculum, and discipling girls who really end up discipling me because that’s how it works – but I don’t like…teas.  Or doilies.  Or the book of Ruth, if we’re being honest.

I didn’t have words to express the rub.  Any time I attended a women’s event, it wasn’t BAD, it just wasn’t…something.  Ten years later, I found some words.

This isn’t a commentary on all women’s ministries, or even the ones I was a part of growing up.   It’s very likely that the problem was me.  But I know that I know that I know I’m not alone here.   So if you like Jesus but don’t like church, or you like ministering to women, but you don’t like women’s ministry, maybe I can help put some words to the rub, maybe wipe the fog off of the glass so we can see what’s really bugging us.

Here are the things that bored and irritated me about women’s ministry:

• The book of Ruth (she was loyal and diligent and she got her prince!)
• Proverbs 31 (She got up early!  Taking care of a family and a home is hard and noble!  And look, she handled finances and worked outside of the home, too!  Equality!)
• Deborah (See?  God uses women, too!)
• Teas (Jesus loves you!  Pink!  Doilies!  Warm fuzzies!)
• Self-esteem seminars (You are beautiful just the way you are!  God loves you and that is all that matters!)

Here are the things I love about women’s ministry:

• The book of Ruth (An allegory of Jesus Christ, who redeems us and comes for us who are abandoned and hopeless.)
• Proverbs 31 (“Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”)
• Deborah  (God calls us to radical courage, radical trust, radical purpose and obedience.  The battle, victory, and glory are His.)
• Teas (And by teas I mean barbeques.  This is a personal preference influenced by my distaste for cucumber sandwiches.  If you want to pamper me, do it with burgers.  Or smoothies.  I could get on board with a smoothie-tea.)
• Missions seminars  (There is a great love burning inside of us.  There is a great task at hand.  Let’s get to work.)

When I take a step back and look, the problem is clear:

I don’t like women’s ministries that are about Christian womanhood.
I like women’s ministries that are about The Gospel.

And not The Gospel*

*for women.

Just The Gospel.

I was tired of looking at myself through a Jesus lens.  I just wanted to look at Jesus.

My freshman year of college (in a discussion with my Dad re: my new Bible Study book) I said, “I don’t mind Esther, but… can we read ROMANS?”  I felt the tension way back then, I just couldn’t articulate it.  I didn’t have those words then, but I have them now.

I am tired of hearing about Christian womanhood.  I want to hear about God.

There are of course issues that are women’s issues.  Womanhood is a sisterhood, and I don’t need my femininity to be ignored; I need it to be seen and addressed and esteemed.  But women’s issues are so, so secondary to gospel issues, because womanhood is so, so secondary to PERSONHOOD.  To child-of-God-hood.

To harp on my “women’s issues” at the cost of ever having time to harp on the glory of God and the gospel of Jesus is to miss the whole darn thing.

So, if you think you don’t like women’s ministry, or church or whatever, maybe you’re just tired of looking at yourself.

If you’re OVER hearing how to be a better person and you wonder what’s wrong with you because hearing that “you are a child of God” doesn’t really move or impress you very much – you’re not alone.  I was there too.   I suspect that we are all just starving for The Main Thing.

If that’s you, be encouraged.  You’re not missing it, you’re getting it.   Just look up.   Find a community that looks, and talks, and points UP.

I love this, from Norman Douty (as quoted in The Complete Green Letters by Miles J. Stanford – a book that changed my life, given to me by a women’s ministry leader that helped me look up)

“If I am to be like Him, then God in his grace must do it, and the sooner I come to recognize it the sooner I will be delivered from another form of bondage. Throw down every endeavor and say, I cannot do it, the more I try the farther I get from his likeness. What shall I do? Ah, the Holy Spirit says, you cannot do it; just withdraw; come out of it. You have been in the arena, you have been endeavoring, you are a failure, come out and sit down, and as you sit there behold Him, look at Him. Don’t try to be like Him, just look at Him. Just be occupied with Him. Forget about trying to be like Him. Instead of letting that fill our mind and heart, let Him fill it. Just behold Him, look upon Him through the Word. Come to the Word for one purpose and that is to meet the Lord. Not to get your mind crammed full of things about the sacred Word, but come to it to meet the Lord. Make it to be a medium, not to Biblical scholarship, but of fellowship with Christ.”

I still struggle.  It’s so easy to forget.  This is a reminder to myself and to my own bored, distracted, divided heart.  Look up.  Stop looking at yourself and your life and your habits through Jesus-lens – and just look at glorious, radical King Jesus.

Pre-Decide; Before They Go to School… Have This Conversation

from here: http://lysaterkeurst.com/2014/08/before-they-go-to-school-have-this-conversation/

Before They Go to School… Have This Conversation

I look around the dinner table and feel that desperate ache not uncommon to women who deeply love.

Whether it’s my own family or those who just feel like family, I want so much for them. These young people who are so full of possibility and dreams and bright futures… they have my heart.

Yet my heart feels fragile in the hands of these young people. They are smart. They are grounded. But they are young.

It takes me back to me at that age.

And that scares me.

I remember feeling so grown up and crazy excited at the chance to be in charge of my own life. Ready for independence. Ready for love. Ready for the next chapter of my life.

Chasing what felt good and thrilling, I quickly learned the wind blows in dangerous directions sometimes. Going with the flow led me places I didn’t intend to go. And I woke up one morning ashamed of my choices, wondering how in the world I got to this place.

How?

I cringe thinking back on it. And I cry. Because I don’t want that experience for these people I desperately love.

So, in the midst of the laughter and casual banter, I turn the conversation at the dinner table to a word I want them to know and live.

Pre-decide.

Decide today who you want to be. In this moment of togetherness, surrounded by family, and saturated in love — decide.

Decide what your answer will be when the talk turns ugly and the laughter turns mean against that girl who desperately needs you to be her friend.

Decide what your answer will be when someone invites you to the cool party full of drinks and drugs.

Decide what your answer will be when the boy says it’s no big deal to stay the night.

Decide what your answer will be when “friends” laugh at your Christian views and challenge you to lighten up.

Pre-decide.

Decide today who you are going to turn to if you do get into trouble. Remember, the people at this table. Remember, who truly has your best interest at heart. Remember who you are.

Pre-decide.

Decide today to turn around any mistakes from your past by asking for God’s forgiveness and walking in His grace.

Decide today to ignore the enemy who wants to trick you and trip you and take you out.

Pre-decide.

Yes, pre-decide.

And then we go around the table and tell what we are pre-deciding this year. And my heart feels less of that ache.

I’m not so foolish to think this will act as a bad choice immunization. We are all susceptible. But it is a way to infuse their heart with a memory of a pre-decision.

And with that the plates are cleared, the cookies are nothing more than crumbs, and it’s time to go.

So, I whisper a few last words that are a “best yes” for them…

Go where wisdom gathers, not where wisdom scatters. 

Make decisions today that will still be good tomorrow.

And (insert voice cracking and tears welling up), remember how much I love you.

Here are some great Bible Verses to pray for our kids as they head off to school this year:

Galatians 1:10

For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Romans 12:2

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Joshua 24:15

But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve… But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.

Proverbs 29:25

The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.

1 Thessalonians 2:4

But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts.

1 Corinthians 15:33

Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.”

Acts 5:29

But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men.”

from here: http://lysaterkeurst.com/2012/08/people-pleasing/

People-Pleasing

Hello, my name is Lysa and I want people to like me. So, I will sometimes say yes when I really want to say no. And when I do say no, I sometimes worry about how much I’m disappointing that person.

I would much rather write this blog in past tense. Like, “I used to struggle with this but I’ve really matured past it all. So, let me share how I bravely say no and never fret over that decision.”

But this isn’t a past tense issue in my life.

Though I have gotten better, I still have quite a ways to go. When I wrote Unglued, I confessed how hard it is for me to be honest with some people. My tendency to just stuff and smile has at it’s root, this desire to be liked.

No matter how I want to spin what this is, I have to call it people-pleasing.

It’s part of my DNA to love others. Love them and not disappoint them. But I have to realize, real love is honest. Real love cares enough about other people to say no when saying yes would build up a barrier in the relationship. Real love pursues authenticity rather than chasing acceptance.

So here’s how I’m challenging myself to break free from people-pleasing…I have to make peace with these realities:

* I am going to disappoint someone.

Every “yes” will cost me something. Every “no” carries with it the potential for disappointment.

Either, I will disappoint this person by not meeting the full extent of their expectations, or I will disappoint my family by taking too much time from them. Do I wish I could say yes to everything and still keep my sanity? Yes! But I can’t. So here’s how I will say no:

“Thank you for asking me. My heart says yes, yes, yes-but the reality of my time says no.”

A good verse for this is Proverbs 29:25, “The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.”

* I must pause before giving immediate answers.

Sometimes it might be realistic for me to say yes, but I’ve learned to let my “yes” sit for a spell. Pausing allows me to assess how much stress this will add into my life. The person asking me for this favor probably won’t be on the receiving end of my stress. It’s the people I love the most that will start getting my worst when I say yes to too many people.

So, here’s how I will give myself time to make an honest assessment:

“Thank you for asking me. Let me check in with my family. If you haven’t heard back from me by the end of the week, please connect with me again.”

A good verse for this is found in Proverbs 31. Tucked between all the responsibilities she has is a verse that reveals her attitude. Proverbs 31:25 says, “She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come.” What this says to me is she doesn’t set her heart up to dread what lies ahead.

* Make peace with the fact some people won’t like me. In an effort to keep my life balanced, I will have to say no to many things. If someone stops liking me for saying no they’ll eventually stop liking me even if I say yes right now.

There are some people I won’t please no matter how much I give. And some people won’t stop liking me no matter how many no’s I give. My true friends are in that second group and I love them for that.

Here’s a great verse for this: “For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man I would not be a servant of Christ,” (Galatians 1:10).

Now, I want to hear from you. Do you have some people-pleasing tendencies you know you need to work on? Or, have you discovered some things you’d like to share to help those still working through this?

I’d love to hear from you on this topic today. Let’s chat it up in the comments below.

And if you happen to live in city where there’s a K-LOVE radio station, I’ll be on the morning show today from 9-11 am EST and tomorrow from 7-9am EST. We’ll be discussing Unglued and taking callers. I’d love to hear your sweet voice.

But if you need to say no to me, I’m all about that. I will clap my hands and be so proud of you. See? We’re making progress on this people-pleasing thing together.

The greatest hoax - Evolutionary theory is riddled with contradictions.

from here: http://creation.com/greatest-hoax

The greatest hoax

Evolutionary theory is riddled with contradictions.

Jonathan Sarfati talks to Peter Hastie

Published: 8 May 2014 (GMT+10)

(First published in Australian Presbyterian magazine, Autumn 2012, pages 3–6; republished with permission.)

Dr Jonathan Sarfati is the bestselling author of Refuting Evolution (more than 500,000 copies in print), Refuting Compromise and The Greatest Hoax on Earth? Refuting Dawkins on Evolution. This last book is one of the most detailed examinations of Richard Dawkins’ views available today. Jonathan was born in Ararat, Victoria, and obtained a PhD in physical chemistry at Victoria University, Wellington. He now lives in Atlanta in the USA and works as a research scientist, speaker and editorial consultant for Creation Ministries International.

At the 2012 Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne the view of Richard Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion, was again proclaimed that science is essentially anti-God and that no scientist could claim to be both a Christian and rational. How should we respond to such a claim?

I think Dawkins needs to revisit the history of science and the assumptions that make it work. Science, by its very nature, presupposes an orderly universe. The philosophical basis for modern science was actually derived from a common belief in the biblical God of order. Science would be impossible without presupposing the reality of order in the universe. Without this conviction, we have no basis for assuming fundamental scientific laws.

Dawkins faces a huge problem in that atheists cannot provide a proper philosophical basis for scientific enterprise in the first place. When he claims that science is anti-God, he is effectively cutting off the branch he is sitting on.

Is it possible to make any real progress in science on the basis of atheistic naturalism?

No, not really. Scientists who are committed to the view that the world is largely the result of chance have no logical basis for thinking that we live in an orderly universe. You can’t derive that idea from atheistic naturalism. To the extent that they see the world in this way, they are hijacking the Christian worldview. Loren Eiseley, the American anthropologist and philosopher, said that the foundations of modern science could be traced to belief in a rational designer.

Naturalism has a very ancient pedigree. Do cultures that have this outlook have a basis for scientific advance?

Naturalism itself doesn’t provide any basis for thinking about the universe in terms of order. The Greek philosopher, Epicurus, was a naturalist. He thought about the world in terms of ‘atoms’ that came into being by time and chance. Of course, the problem with his worldview is that a chance universe cannot provide the uniformity that’s required for science.

Jeff Buck [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Many Christians are convinced that there’s a reasonable basis for believing in the Creator God of the Bible without necessarily relying on the Bible itself to establish their belief. As a scientist, do you see any compelling evidence to establish the existence of the Creator God that we find in Scripture?

For me, one of the most compelling pieces of evidence relates to the origin of the first living cell. Where did it come from? Evolutionists need to be able to explain how that cell came into being. We now know that a single cell is incredibly complicated. It’s got oodles of biochemical machinery and massive amounts of coded information and decoding machines. All these mechanisms are essential for the life of the cell and, on the evolutionary model, they need to be in place for the process of evolution by natural selection to get under way. However evolutionists like Dawkins cannot provide a credible explanation for the existence of this first living cell.

Antony Flew, who was a leading atheist philosopher, said that Darwinian evolution requires this first living cell for the process of evolution to occur. However, he pointed out that neither Darwin nor Dawkins can provide a reasonable account for the existence of this cell and therefore evolution is effectively dead on the starting-line. I think that’s a very powerful argument for a Creator God—the complexity of even the simplest living things.

I think another piece of compelling evidence is the incredible fine-tuning of the universe as a whole. In fact, the constants are tuned as precisely as hitting a bulls-eye at the other end of the universe. If just one or two of these laws were varied then atoms couldn’t form. When you consider that some of these leading evolutionary cosmologists suggest that multiple universes may exist, it’s even more amazing that we just happen to live in the universe with the right conditions. Their assumption actually concedes the point that our universe is incredibly unusual and that it wouldn’t arise by chance. So, in fact, the evolutionists are actually confirming that our universe bears all the marks of design by a greater intelligence.

Richard Dawkins has admitted that his theory of naturalistic evolution is not watertight and has many unsolved mysteries. What are the main difficulties with which scientists like him struggle in attributing the origin of human life to evolution?

Dawkins has admitted he is, as yet, unable to solve the problem of the origin of life. He also admits that the origin of sexual reproduction is a big mystery to him. He says that one day he might pluck up the courage to solve it. He cannot explain how the first sexual being actually arose and how it mated with another creature of its own kind.

There are other significant difficulties that evolutionists face such as the origin of human language and the existence of morality and ethics. If, according to evolutionists, we are essentially animals, how do we explain the notions of right and wrong that are universally accepted? Evolutionists can’t really justify morality on their own terms. They do talk about certain things having survival advantages, but right and wrong mean nothing in the evolutionary scheme. For instance, two evolutionists wrote a book suggesting that rape was simply a way of men propagating their genes. When one of them was challenged in an interview about the morality of his position, he had no way of explaining why rape would be wrong from an evolutionary point-of-view.

Do modern discoveries about the genetic code help us to determine which is the better model—creation or evolution?

Yes, I believe that recent discoveries about the nature of the genetic code point strongly to the existence of a Designer. The reason for this is that our genes consist of multiple codes and these codes can only come from an intelligent source. Just as language and computers operate on various codes, so do the basic building blocks of life. Our DNA contains complex codes which are read by enormously complex machines.

Evolutionists like Dawkins cannot provide a credible explanation for the existence of this first living cell.

One problem for evolutionists is that the instructions that create these machines are on the DNA itself. The DNA is meaningless without these decoding machines and, to add to the complexity, you can’t build the decoding machines without the instructions on the DNA.

Furthermore, not only is there a main genetic code, but there are other codes that overlay it. So, our DNA has at least three different codes on it. It’s hard to think of a sequence of letters that could make sense in English and in French, as well as making sense backwards and by skipping every other letter. However, that’s the sort of thing that we have in our DNA sequence, which means that it makes sense in several different languages. And that’s why we can have 20,000 genes coding for 100,000 proteins, because we’ve got these codes upon codes to enable this to happen.

So the likelihood of it happening by chance is just non-existent?

I think even one code by chance is almost non-existent, but codes upon codes makes it inconceivable.

Dawkins has claimed that evolution has been observed. If it’s true, doesn’t this mean that creationism has been disproved?

Actually, what he said was, “evolution has been observed; it’s just that it hasn’t been observed while it’s happening”.

Of course, what Dawkins is performing here is the old game of “bait and switch”. He engages in equivocation because he redefines evolution as meaning “change in gene frequencies over time”. Now the interesting thing is that if that’s what evolution means, you and I must be evolutionists as well. No one disputes that things change over time. However, we do dispute the idea that everything came from a single cell and that that cell came from a primordial soup. That’s the real issue that’s at the heart of this debate and no one ever observed this process. So Dawkins plays “bait and switch” by using two different meanings of evolution.

NPS [public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Does Dawkins make a number of self-contradictory comments?

Yes, he does. For instance, in his book, The Greatest Show on Earth, he says that he is not anti-religious but of course he wrote the book called The God Delusion, which is ferociously anti-Christian. So he changes his tune depending on the audience to whom he is speaking. The problem is that some of his statements are at odds with one another. For instance, he says that evolution means a “change of gene frequency over time” and in the same breath asserts that “40% of Americans deny evolution”. However, 40% of Americans do not deny the change of gene frequency over time. In fact, I can’t think of anyone who does.

Does the fossil record provide us with any indications that human life may have evolved from more primitive life forms?

Not in the slightest.

Why do people keep saying that it does?

It’s a case of wishful thinking. Darwin knew that the fossil record didn’t provide the intermediate forms and so he had to make excuses as to why these links were missing. Evolutionists often talk about the discovery of “missing links”, but the so-called discoveries are very inconclusive. When I went to school I was taught that Ramapithecus was a missing link. However, scientists no longer believe that.Ramapithecus is now thought to be a variety of orangutan.

Neanderthals and Homo erectus seem to be just varieties of modern man because their genomes, structure, and technology are quite clearly in the range of modern man. Neanderthals could make cosmetics, which requires a certain chemical know-how. They made a kind of super-glue and Homo-erectus seems to have been able to make long sea voyages. So they were every bit as human as we are.

There are also a number of dating methods that point to a far younger earth than billions of years.

Over the last few decades we’ve had claims made about a so-called hominid, “Lucy”, in Africa. What is the status of those claims now?

Mary Leakey, an anthropologist, found human footprints that were associated with this discovery and assumed that they must have been made by someone/thing like “Lucy”. However, the footprints were human and there was no evidence anything but a human made them. “Lucy” also had very curved bones in her fingers and toes that are typical for an arboreal creature that hangs onto branches. It also had particular bones on its wrist that could lock, which is typical of a knucklewalker. So on the ground it would knuckle-walk and it probably lived in a tree, which is why it had the curved finger bones. The evidence more likely suggests that it was an arboreal knuckle-walker. It was really a unique type of creature that was not related to humans.

How reliable are artistic reconstructions of the so-called evolution of man? Are they based on scientific evidence? If not, what are they based upon?

The thing is, we don’t have fossils of the soft parts of animal or human tissue. Mostly it’s bones and what you put inside the soft part depends on what you think is ape-like or humanlike. In my book, The Greatest Hoax on Earth?, I document how one such artist, Ron Ervin, was told to make his illustrations either more ape-like or human-like, depending on the conclusion that the writer wanted to make. It’s possible when you are simply shown bones to have a fair bit of artistic licence in portraying the outward features of a person or an animal. For example, you could make someone with a Neanderthal skeletal structure look relatively human. There are certainly people around today with the big brow ridges that have some resemblance to this type. You sometimes see these characteristics in certain European populations. You probably wouldn’t even notice them walking down the street. So a lot of it is based on artistic licence.

For evolution to be true, the earth needs to be billions of years old. Can we know this for sure? How reliable are modern dating methods?

All dating methods have certain built-in assumptions. You can certainly measure radioactive decay over time, but of course you have to make an assumption about how much of the material was there to begin with. That’s a huge assumption. You have to assume the rate that we observe today has always been this rate, and again that’s an assumption. In fact, we do know of things that can change decay rate. So dating methods are built upon one assumption after another.

We undermine the entire message of Scripture if we try to introduce the idea of evolution into it.

I think it’s only fair to point out that there are also a number of dating methods that point to a far younger earth than billions of years. These dating methods make more sense. The things that point to an older age can be explained under a young earth framework but not the other way around.

One of the best dating methods I think is radiocarbon, which decays so quickly that if the whole earth was made of radiocarbon, it wouldn’t last a million years. Yet we’re finding radiocarbon in coal and in diamonds. Diamond is the hardest substance on earth, so it can’t be contaminated. But we find diamonds that are dated as billions of years old and they still contain radiocarbon. So it means they can’t have been that old because the carbon would have disappeared by then. In coal as well, supposedly 300 million years old, we still find radiocarbon. So once again, this puts an upper limit on the age of coal and diamonds. The upper limit is on how long the C-14 would last—less than a million years. So here is a case where the famous Carbon-14 dating proves to be an ally of the biblical creation models.

There are many Christians who believe in the processes of evolution as an explanation of the origin of life. On the other hand you’ve got people like Richard Dawkins who claim that biblical, and especially evangelical Christianity, is fundamentally incompatible with evolutionary theory. Who’s right?

GFDL, via Wikimedia Commons

Here is one case where I agree with Dawkins. The thing is the Bible is very clear about certain things. It says that the world was created in six days and that a flood covered the whole earth. It’s also very clear that the death and suffering we see around us is a result of the fall of Adam and Eve. The New Testament is emphatic about this. In Romans 5, and 1 Corinthians 15, Paul tells us Adam brought death into the world and Jesus Christ, the last Adam, brings the resurrection from the dead.

So the whole gospel of Jesus Christ depends on a literal happening in the Garden of Eden where Adam sinned against God and brought God’s curse upon us. Evolution undermines this account of our origins by putting death before sin. The Bible also says that death is the “last enemy” (1 Cor. 15:26); yet theistic evolutionists would have us believe that God used his last enemy to create things which then became “very good” (Gen 1:31). However, according to the evolutionary view there was death, suffering and disease for millions of years. Frankly, I find it hard to imagine how that can even remotely be described as very good.

Christians who believe in evolution also have to face the problem of restoration. If Christ is going to restore or “regenerate” the world, what will He restore it to? Will we simply experience millions more years of death, suffering and disease? Once Christians accept an evolutionary hypothesis they are buying into a worldview that not only denies just a few verses in Genesis; in fact, evolution is opposed to the biblical ideas of creation, fall and redemption. We undermine the entire message of Scripture if we try to introduce the idea of evolution into it.

Where does this leave Christians who believe that evolution resolves the conflict between religion and science?

You lose your ability to understand where this death and suffering comes from. You lose the ability to understand Jesus as the Kinsman-redeemer, who is our blood relative because He comes from Adam and all the rest of us come from Adam. But if there’s no real Adam, then the Kinsman-redeemer concept gets thrown out the window as well. The authority of Scripture is undermined because there’s no real way you can develop evolutionary ideas from Scripture. This means that fallible evolutionary science becomes the underlying hermeneutic for Scripture. Is this something that evangelicals can afford to tolerate?

We easily forget the warning of people like the late leading biologist Jacques Monod. He said that evolution is the cruellest, most wasteful, and inefficient way that anyone could imagine of creating the world. I think Monod is right. Evolution leaves us with a supposed God of love who uses a cruel and wasteful process to eliminate the unfit. The gospel of God’s grace, however, is about the God of mercy who delights to save sinners.

Related Articles

• An awesome mind
• The Greatest Hoax on Earth? (Introduction & Chapter 1)
• The Greatest Hoax on Earth? (Chapter 17)

Further Reading

• Creation scientists and other specialists of interest