Posted on 08/01/2006 12:42:58 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
In the first chapter of their new book, 20 Compelling Evidences that God exists, Ken Boa and Robert Bowman write, “We don’t mean to discourage you from reading the rest of this book. But in the interest of full disclosure, we should tell you that, in a sense, there is only one good reason to believe that God exists: because it’s true.”
That statement is both profound and well expressed. Unfortunately, these days it’s not the kind of statement you can make in public without having scorn heaped upon your head. As the authors jokingly point out, the popular viewpoint regarding truth is, “Anyone who believes that he is right and others are wrong is intolerant.” Now that’s self-contradictory on its face, but it’s almost certain to be thrown at you if you assert a truth claim.
That’s why Boa and Bowman have titled their book 20 Compelling Evidences that God Exists—because they recognize that for any claim to truth to be taken seriously in today’s culture, it needs solid evidence to back it up. As the authors write, “There are many such evidences, but they all have value because they help us see that the God of the Bible is real.” In fewer than two hundred pages, they clearly and concisely examine some of today’s most pervasive worldviews and their flaws. Then they present their case for God’s existence and His revelation of Himself through Jesus Christ.
What kind of evidences are they talking about? There’s an amazing variety. They don’t state it right upfront, but they are organizing their “20 compelling evidences” in a way that takes readers through the doctrines of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration—the four basic elements of the Christian worldview that I set forth in How Now Shall We Live?
They start with evidence about the universe and the origins of life. And they talk, for example, about how finely our solar system and our planet had to be calibrated to support life. At “an extremely conservative estimate,” they say, the probability of our planet being capable of sustaining us is about one in a billion. It had to be at just the right place in the solar system, which had to be at just the right place in the galaxy. Even the expansion of the universe had to happen at just the right rate in order for all of us to be here today.
From evidence about the universe, the authors move on to evidence of humanity’s sinful nature; then evidence of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection; and finally, evidence of those who have lived and died for Christ. Examining concepts ranging from Greek philosophy to archeology to the Big Bang theory to postmodernism, the authors make a powerful case for the existence of a loving Creator.
In short, I highly recommend Boa and Bowman’s book. They provide in a very readable form an excellent apologetic resource for Christians wondering how to defend their faith in a world that’s “tolerant” of everything except Christianity.
Ken Boa is a great apologist—one of the most engaging and popular teachers in our Centurion’s training program. You can visit our website, BreakPoint.org, to find out how you can get 20 Compelling Evidences that God Exists. While you’re there, be sure to check out some of our other Christian worldview resources.
Meanwhile, in your own reply:
Cosmologists debate whether the space-time continuum is finite or infinite, bounded or unbounded. In all scenarios, the fine-tuning remains the same.
Exactly -- and yet some of them are foolish enough to try to speculate about how *other* universes based on entirely different principles might behave, in all their myriad details, and then draw confident conclusions from their mental masturbation about what the laws of physics would end up like under different conditions, *and* whether those laws would allow any kind of life to exist. Excuse me while I bust a gut laughing.
Cheap laffs are my specialty
And yet the probability of life appearing on Earth in very short order after the initial "global warming" is 1. Very curious.
Yes, it's curious that you would make such a questionable claim without offering a shred of support for it.
Good questions. Take the opportunity to edu-macate them. :-)
I'm not "assuming" that at all, son -- look closely, and you'll see that all the "some god must exist because the universe is finely tuned" horse crap *IS* based on anthropomorphic presumptions, like "the fact that life is possible here means that a god exists who cares about things like 'life'". OOPS! Depending on how you slice that, it's either rank anthropomorphism, or circular reasoning, or both.
Nice try.
I'm just showing how the claims of "god likes XYZ" are goofy even on their own terms. If god "finely tuned" this universe for life, he sure did a crappy job of it. At the very least, the fact that the overwhelming percentage of the universe is *NOT* "tuned for life" (and in fact is outright deadly to life) demonstrates that whatever the universe might be allegedly "tuned" for, life was nowhere near the highest priority, if it was even a priority at all (and the percentages call that into question). So there goes *that* silly argument.
It's not creationists, I.Ders, or people who started out trying to support "deities" who came up with the arguments about the fundamental physical constants being very critical for life. It's physicists, astrophysicists, cosmologists, etc. Maybe you think all theoretical physics is "philosophical masturbation?"
No I don't. But apparently you think that there can't be physicicsts who aren't also creationists, and who engage in mental masturbation when they stray into the area of theology and philosophy. Wrong.
Come back and try again when you learn enough about the world to be able to hold up your end of the conversation, I have better things to do than correct all of your elementary misconceptions.
Ah, but the problem is that given any reasonable odds of life developing, we would have heard radio noise by now. Even if we a million years behind the other civilizations, their transmissions from their equivalent of the 20th and 21st Centuries would still be echoing through the Universe. So where are they?
Or do you care?
No I dont.
?
Don't presume that just because someone rolls their eyes and points out the fallacies in certain goofy "evidence for God" arguments, that they're an atheist. THere are quite a few goofy arguments *against* the existence of god(s) that I cheerfully puncture too. I'm not anti-God, I'm anti-nonsense.
Why are they so interested in God if they don't believe in God?
Has it ever occurred to you that they might be open-minded enough to look into a thread like this to see whether they might have overlooked something that might challenge their atheism and require them to change their position? Apparently it hasn't.
Plus, of course, threads with titles like these often contain a lot of atheist bashing (because, you know, they must be real fools if they don't fall to their knees in the face of fallacious arguments and weak "evidence" of God like this), so I imagine a number of them would come by to defend their beleaguered group.
Try posting a thread claiming multiple lines of evidence *against* the existence of God and see how many non-atheists descend... But at least in that case, no one would be silly enough to ask, "why are the believers so interested in the non-existence of God if they believe in God"?
Daddy: "We all know how objectivists, logical positivists, and militant atheists hate metaphysics. It's like talking about Santa Claus or the Pixies, for Darwin's sake."
Boy: But why is the sky blue?
Daddy: The logical naturalistic materialists who have Nazi, Communist, Hitler and Stalin and MaoTsetung who killed millions of people.
Boy: But why is the sky blue?
Daddy: The Bible says to accept Jesus into your heart. If the Bible says the sky is yellow, the Bible is right.
Boy: But the sky is blue, isn't it?
Daddy: What god says is true. Satan makes you think the sky is blue.
Boy: puzzled look, and wondering if anything about skies makes any sense now.
Ah, but the problem is that given any reasonable odds of life developing, we would have heard radio noise by now.
Highly unlikely.
Even if we a million years behind the other civilizations, their transmissions from their equivalent of the 20th and 21st Centuries would still be echoing through the Universe.
No they wouldn't, radio/TV transmissions don't "echo through the Universe". Even if they did, after the first few years they would be so attenuated (remember our old friend, the Inverse-Square Law?) that there's no way we would be able to detect them with current technology.
So where are they?
For most plausible values of the Drake Equation, they're too far away for us to "hear" or for them to come visit us.
You, conviently, forget how much the Church pressed peasants to give of their meagre income to support Popes and Bishops and Priests in lavish lifestyles. You forget that Martin Luther created a major schism by objecting to this.
Ypu, conviently, forget the doctrine of the "Divine Right of Kings". The US Constitution rejected these church notions. There is no "divine right".
Yeah, as a certifed PADI Advanced Open Water Diver, I'm familiar with the diversity of sharks. But deciding to be a dolphin pod and growing neon bioluminescent billbords? No way. I laughed my butt off.
We've already sent messages to likely stars. In a universe that almost certainly contains millions of planets, no one has decided to aim one at us, or aim one at another system that we end up overhearing?
See posts 226, 231 and 234. Keep in mind that radio astronomy is not my field, and that I admit up front that I don't believe in Little Green Men.
"And how exactly do they determine what kind of matter is or is not possible in a "conceptual universe", when they don't even understand the workings of *our* universe well enough to have been able to predict, based on nothing but the values of the physical constants, whether life would have been possible in this one?"
I would say physicists today understand "the workings of our universe" pretty well. I wish I could lay hands on the refs which show how tiny changes in basic physical constants make the observed nature of matter impossible.
""basic variables"
The point is that some of these quantities are not variables at all. They are fixed at values which allow matter as we know it. Slight changes would change everything.
"Nor do I know of any biologists or other scientists who can contradict them, or even try.
Then you haven't looked real carefully, this kind of nonsense gets frequently refuted."
By whom? Biologists? (I suspect from your posting name that you are a biologist.) I'm not talking here about quibbling over thermal and chemical conditions which allow "life as we know it." I'm talking about physical constants which have to be within narrow ranges in order for the physical universe to exist, not just life.
I think physics and cosmology are much farther along than you imply. And I'm not talking about imaginary "alternate physics," but the sum of known physics at the present time, with all the known forces but gravity thought to have been integrated.
"And how exactly do they determine what kind of matter is or is not possible in a "conceptual universe", when they don't even understand the workings of *our* universe well enough to have been able to predict, based on nothing but the values of the physical constants, whether life would have been possible in this one?"
I think they assume that life requires certain light and heavy elements, certain temperature ranges, certain pressure ranges, etc., all of which are only found on planets somewhat like ours, which formed from heavy elements manufactured in supernovas, then accreted around newer stars. They believe that because all the life we know of requires such conditions. Do you have an alternate theory of suitable habitats or mechanisms for intelligent life? I'm sure the scientific community would be delighted to hear of it.
"A "conceptual universe" is just someone using their imagination."
No, it's people using the current state of science (physical laws, etc.) to calculate how matter and energy would be distributed. It's no more imaginary than the process by which biologists conclude that all organisms, including extinct ones which we cannot observe except as fossil hard parts, arose by natural selection and nothing else. It simply entails extrapolation and deduction.
I've wondered about that. The thing is, those with an optimistic view of contact with aliens would probably be right if said aliens existed, IMHO. You see, there's just no reason to travel several light years to make trouble. Why fight for something that would be undefended in the next star system over?
Did you ever hear the story about the unaired episode Larry niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote for the "V" TV series?
I'll be buying a copy of this latest attempt to prove the existence of a deity. I've already read so many of them that one more won't be too trying.
You seem to be reaching out, but I'll tell ya, you're going about this the wrong way. You say you're an atheist. An atheist isn't looking, because an atheist "knows". Suspending your disbelief long enough to take a leap of faith is an enormous leap, one you may feel too insurmountable to take. If you ever do take that leap, ask Him to open your eyes & ears.
Archive
***God gave man free will.***
Chapter and verse please.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.