Why We Believe

“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” (Heb 11:6 NIV)

There are two things to point out about God. First, we need to show that God exists; and second, we need to demonstrate his person and character. Christians assume the existence of God and would go to the Bible to flesh out His person and character, but the non-Christian has no experience with the God of the Bible and needs to know God exists before going any further. Christian and non-Christian philosophers from Plato to Thomas Aquinas to William Lane Craig have sought to do just that: demonstrate the existence of God, through natural theology.

Natural Theology

Natural Theology involves a discussion of philosophical proofs of God’s existence: cosmological (space, time and causality) and teleological (design) with related findings from science and the observation of the universe.

Kalam Cosmological Argument

1. Whatever begins to exist began from a cause.

2. The universe began to exist.

3. Therefore, the universe began from a cause.

Premise One does not say everything has a cause, only things that sprang into existence have a cause.

Reason One for the Logic of Premise One

Logically, to argue that the universe sprang into existence without a cause prompts one to argue if the universe can spring into existence without a cause, then why can't other things? Why not dogs or houses or other objects?

Reason Two for the Logic of Premise One

The idea advanced by Lawrence Krauss and Stephen Hawking that before the universe was a relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical-vacuum (being a real nothing, that is no physical stuff) out of which the universe appeared is problematic. They apparently identified something from nothing with particles originating from fluctuations of energy in a vacuum. However, in physics a vacuum is a sea of fluctuating activity governed by physical laws and not nothing as a vacuum might be understood in popular venues. Physics discusses the arrangement of physical particles but does not address where they came from.

Recently, a video attempting to go around the first premise of Kalam surfaced on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGKe6YzHiME). In the video, various philosophers and physicists such as Alan Guth and Alexander Vilenkin, are quoted. Obfuscating interpretations of quantum mechanics applied to the beginning of our universe (one of several interpretations, the Copenhagen Interpretation was mentioned) and dismissal of the original low entropy of the universe are offered. Multiple theories of how the Universe could begin without a cause are advanced, but in the entirety of the presentation, no empirical evidence is provided for the theories proposed.¹

Reason One in Support for Premise Two

Findings by Edwin Hubble in 1929 of a “red shift” in the light spectrum of a galaxy appear to show that the universe is expanding. Objects moving away from a point of reference move toward the red end of the spectrum whereas objects moving toward the point of reference move toward the blue end. On the light spectrum It was observed that objects are moving away from one another, hence the red shift and, therefore, an expanding universe. Also, the discovery by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in 1965 of cosmic background radiation as a left-over of the “Big Bang" showed the posssibility of a universe expanding from a violent explosive beginning. If the universe is expanding, there must have been a starting point for the expansion.²

Reason Two in Support for Premise Two

Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem

The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) theorem demonstrates that every universe that expands must have a spacetime boundary in the past. That means that no expanding universe, no matter what the model, can be eternal into the past. There MUST be a beginning (creation event?) outside the space-time continuum. If there is a creation event, there must be a creator!³

Teleological Argument (argument from Design)

Support for Design from Physics and Cosmology

Fine Tuning

The earth lies within a very narrow range from the sun called the habitable zone or area where all constants are perfectly suitable for life. In fact, our solar system lies in a very narrow part of the Milky Way galaxy that is perfectly suitable to the development of intelligent life, observation and discovery. An example of observability might be our position relative to the sun and the moon. The sun is approximately 400 times the size of our moon and about 400 times farther away. Therefore, we can observe solar eclipses because the moon will completely cover the sun. Is this just a coincidence?

Constants of Nature

There are a number of constants and quantities in nature that are so balanced as to affect the possibility of life on our earth. For example, carbon and oxygen are necessities for life. When two helium elements collide at high temperatures during star (and subsequently solar system) formation, they form unstable beryllium-8. This unstable element lasts just 10^-16 seconds. In that time a third alpha particle must be found to produce carbon-12. In the early 1950s Fred Hoyle noted the abundance of carbon-12 in the universe and discovered an extremely fine tuned resonance to produce the necessary stable carbon. A nuclear resonance is an energy range that greatly enhances a capture of a particle (neutron or proton) by a nucleus. If the resonance in the Strong Nuclear Force (force that binds a nucleus together) at the energy level required to make stable carbon occured slightly lower there would not be enough carbon produced to make oxygen-16.

This, along with several other "coincidences" allow stars to produce carbon and oxygen in comparable and sufficient amounts to make life possible. Is it just an accident that constants and quantities just fell into place? Plausibility is too remote for chance.⁴

Why is the universe fine-tuned? Perhaps intelligent design. However, alternative theories could be that the universe’s existence might be due to chance or physical necessity. Using the following syllogism:

1. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance or design.

2. It is not due to physical necessity or chance.

3. Therefore, it is due to design.

Is fine-tuning due to chance or physical necessity? The theory of multiple universes that expand, implode at heat death and start all over for eternity is a way for secularists to protect chance from the argument that the universe had a beginning. However, this theory only exists on paper. Evidence of universes that do not permit life are more plausible, but a life-permitting universe is too surprising. Even a multiple worlds situation must be fine-tuned. A mechanism that generates a multi-universe cannot be fine-tuned without a designer. A flocking to this hypothesis to rescue chance is a back-handed compliment to argument by design. Finally, there is no proof that these conditions must be due to physical necessity.

Support for Design from Biology

Cambrian Explosion

The term Cambrian explosion describes the geologically sudden appearance of animals in the fossil record during the Cambrian period of geologic time (about 550 million years ago). During this event, at least nineteen, and perhaps as many as thirty-five (of forty total) phyla made their first appearance on earth. Phyla constitute the highest biological categories in the animal kingdom, with each phylum exhibiting a unique architecture, blueprint, or structural body plan—and no precursor. No precursor implies creation and a creator.

Irreducible Complexity

The idea of irreducible complexity championed by Michael Behe and others states that every cell is so complex that it would be impossible for it to function without every part working together. This would preclude development through random mutations as a slight change in any part would render the cell—and the organism unworkable.

For example, in the Evolution of the Eye Demystified Otangelo Grasso discusses the importance of Rhodopsins in even the simplest of microorganisms and their role in light recognition. According to Grasso, Rhodopsins are composed of two parts: opsin proteins and retinal, which is a light-absorbing chromophore. These building blocks are essential for rhodopsins to function. Rhodopsins are found in the simplest of light sensing organisms such as green algae and are considered the precursor to the vertebrate eye. Minus any of its parts would disallow the whole light-sensing phenomena to operate. It is important to note that Behe, Grasso and others are not saying it is impossible for the eye to evolve, only that certain necessary parts such as rhodopsins have no known predecessor and yet are extremely complex.⁵

Detractors of Design, Proponents of Chance

1) Neo-Darwinists believe the eye evolved from simple eyespots containing rhodopsins, but as Grasso has pointed out these eyespots, and the rhodopsins they contain, are anything but simple. It is impossible for these eyespots to develop randomly because of the irreducible complexity of its organization. Any part missing in an undeveloped stage would render the entire eyespot useless and the function would run into a wall. Hence, the call for a design.

2) The designer seems unexplained: Who designed the designer? This is Richard Dawkins’ objection. However, in asking who designed the designer, we reply that we do not need to explain the explanation. If astronauts found machinery on the dark side of the moon, they would be justified to explain its presence by means of an intelligent designer. This requirement for the designer to be designed destroys science. We could never come to any conclusions to our observations in anything.⁶

Arguments from Necessity

Dissatisfied with the absurd, virtually zero possibility of random chance to explain "origin of life," researchers have turned to physical necessity. The idea is that just as there are contingencies in non-organic matter (i.e., water is dependent on oxygen and hydrogen, and this contingency becomes a law of nature: oxygen and hydrogen combine to become water), so DNA and RNA by necessity must form from laws of nature. However, physical necessity enthusiasts never really identify the process. They work out self-organizing schemes that invoke forces of attraction, but fail to explain how this leads to information-rich DNA. In his book Signature in the Cell, Stephen Meyer reviews all such proposals such as Michael Polanyi's argument of bonding affinities between molecules of hydrogen in the DNA molecule. Polanyi believed this would lead to differential bonding between information-rich sequences. However, there are no differential bonding affinities at that location in the DNA structure.⁷

In addition to reviews of others, Meyer reviewed Stuart Kauffman's work proposing that sufficiently diverse catalytic molecules can assemble and spontaneously undergo a transition (like crystallization) and produce a self-reproducing system. However, a fatal assumption is that for autocatalysis to occur the system must start with a lot of specified information-rich complexity. This does not explain the origin of the information-rich starting ingredients. Meyer concludes, "In my view, these models either begged the question or invoked a logical contradiction. Proposals that merely transfer the information problem elsewhere necessarily fail because they assume the existence of the very entity-- specified information-- they are trying to explain."⁸