Category: Science

Did Nature Cause Itself?

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I haven’t heard anyone say specifically that nature caused itself, in so many words,(other than the Hawking axiom about the laws of gravity causing the universe), but that is the question begged by any assertion that God doesn’t exist. Anyone who maintains that nature and natural causes are the beginning and the end of all reality is begging that question: did nature cause itself?

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to the assertion that nothing supernatural exists is the Big Bang. The Big Bang is accepted science. The evidence is very compelling, though it wasn’t received well when it was first postulated. The thought that the universe was not eternal and had a beginning was thought to be “repugnant” and to “betray the very foundations of science”.[1]

This is because a beginning to the universe suggests that the universe had a Beginner. The initial reluctance to accept the Big Bang has long ago changed, however, as the evidence has accumulated. Stephen Hawking proved it mathematically, but struggled with the implications of it the rest of his life. Continue reading “Did Nature Cause Itself?” →

The Myth of Objectivity

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Thoughtful and thought-provoking articles are a source for many articles I write. When those two characteristics are exemplified in the same single article, I often use it as a springboard. An article by Trent Horn, Neil DeGrasse Tyson Shows Why Science Can’t Build a Utopia[1], is my springboard for this article.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson, of course, is the outspoken agnostic ambassador of science. The Horn article was precipitated by Tyson’s tweet: “Earth needs a virtual country: #Rationalia, with a one-line Constitution: All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence”[2] and Horn’s counter-tweet: “@neiltyson ‘Rationalia’ is as useless as ‘Correctistan,’ or a country whose constitution says, ‘Always make the correct decisions.'”

To illustrate what he means by his counter-tweet, the author used the example of a driverless car. Fatalities have already happened with them and will undoubtedly happen again. That isn’t the point, though. The point is this: how should they be programmed when confronted with two options – to run over pedestrians or run into an object that may kill the passengers?

How does Rationalia weigh the evidence to determine which is the best course? Continue reading “The Myth of Objectivity” →

Atoms, Empty Space and Opinion

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I am a follower of Christ, and a believer in truth. Not that I have a monopoly on truth. Truth is truth, I like to say. Facets of it are available to everyone at all times.

Truth might be overrated. I say that only partially tongue in cheek.  Jesus says He is the way, the truth and the life, so truth is only part of the equation – even for Jesus.

This is also a truth: there is nothing new under the sun. To “prove” that statement, I offer Democritus, who lived centuries before Christ and millennia before “modern” scientific discoveries.

He might have been a typical modernist, eschewing any reality but matter and energy, but for the fact that he was born in another era, and he believed in gods.

Iron age ignorance is what moderns call it now. That fits into the opinion part, between atoms and empty space.

I think we take comfort, or try to, in the vastness of time and space. It leaves a lot of room to stretch out. We don’t like being hemmed in. Me included.

But, there is this nagging small voice. Continue reading “Atoms, Empty Space and Opinion” →

Ten Quick Responses to Difficult Questions on Faith with the Help of John Lennox

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The ten statements and responses suggested below are inspired by a presentation by John Lennox, the famous mathematician, philosopher and Christian theist. Neither the statements nor the responses are comprehensive in the least, but they offer a quick look into the richly rational world of faith through a theistic (and Christian) lens. At the same time, they expose the shallowness of many atheistic objections to the idea of God.

                1)   Christians are really just atheists regarding Zeus and other gods. True atheists go one god further and reject the Christian god.

Statements like these reveal a willful ignorance. The Christian God (as with Allah of Islam and Yahweh of Judaism, for instance) is an exclusive claim: there are no other gods. That Christians, Muslims and Jews cannot all be correct in their understanding of that exclusive God does not negate the possibility that such a God exists. Continue reading “Ten Quick Responses to Difficult Questions on Faith with the Help of John Lennox” →

Reasoning to the Best Explanation for Life

Whether the universe, which has the appearance of design, was actually designed is the question that is begged by modern science.

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I recently read the book, Darwin’s Doubt, by Stephen C. Meyer, a Cambridge University Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Science. The book uses Darwin’s acknowledgment that the Cambrian Explosion posed a potential problem to the evolutionary paradigm as a springboard to explore that “problem” in detail. Thus, the title of the book is aptly named “Darwin’s Doubt”.

I have summarized the first ten chapters of the book in a different Blog, Perspective, starting with a summary of the first four chapters of the book. Read my blog if you want a summary description of the detail that Meyer explores without buying the book, though I strongly suggest buying the book if your are interested.

In this blog, I want to explore the basis for Intelligent Design, which is ultimately the theory that Meyer espouses. For Meyer, the key bases for Intelligent Design are 1) the argument from biological or genetic information and 2) the argument from physics or cosmology. Both arguments can be summed up in the statement that we live in a world so finely-tuned for life that it could not have happened by chance or unguided “natural law”.

If you are reading this, you may have encountered these fine-tuning arguments before. Biological fine-tuning focuses on the complex biological machines that exist for which, as the argument goes, prior information is necessary. Any discussion of that complexity begs the question: where did that information necessary to build the protein parts out of which the complex structures are made come from in the first place?

The evidence in physics and cosmology is the “fine tuning” that we observe in the constants and initial conditions of the universe and the “fine tuning” of the conditions necessary to make life on planet earth possible, fit for habitability and fit for scientific discovery. He calls this last observation (a planet fit for human scientific discovery) the “Privileged Planet Hypothesis”.

Meyer focuses, in particular, on the question: What cause is capable of generating that information? To answer that question, he takes instruction from Darwin. Meyer argues that we can use the same scientific method Darwin used to infer that the cause had to be conscious mind or intelligence. I will try to summarize what I think he means below.

Continue reading “Reasoning to the Best Explanation for Life” →