Natural Theology: The Atheist’s Way to God 1685071988, 9781685071981

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RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY

NATURAL THEOLOGY THE ATHEIST’S WAY TO GOD

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RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY

NATURAL THEOLOGY THE ATHEIST’S WAY TO GOD

ANTHONY WALSH

Copyright © 2021 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. https://doi.org/10.52305/REUL9283 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic, tape, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the Publisher. We have partnered with Copyright Clearance Center to make it easy for you to obtain permissions to reuse content from this publication. Simply navigate to this publication’s page on Nova’s website and locate the “Get Permission” button below the title description. This button is linked directly to the title’s permission page on copyright.com. Alternatively, you can visit copyright.com and search by title, ISBN, or ISSN. For further questions about using the service on copyright.com, please contact: Copyright Clearance Center Phone: +1-(978) 750-8400 Fax: +1-(978) 750-4470 E-mail: [email protected].

NOTICE TO THE READER The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained in this book. The Publisher shall not be liable for any special, consequential, or exemplary damages resulting, in whole or in part, from the readers’ use of, or reliance upon, this material. Any parts of this book based on government reports are so indicated and copyright is claimed for those parts to the extent applicable to compilations of such works. Independent verification should be sought for any data, advice or recommendations contained in this book. In addition, no responsibility is assumed by the Publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property arising from any methods, products, instructions, ideas or otherwise contained in this publication. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered herein. It is sold with the clear understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or any other professional services. If legal or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent person should be sought. FROM A DECLARATION OF PARTICIPANTS JOINTLY ADOPTED BY A COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION AND A COMMITTEE OF PUBLISHERS. Additional color graphics may be available in the e-book version of this book.

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Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. † New York

CONTENTS Preface

vii

Acknowledgments

xi

Chapter 1

The Value of Natural Theology

1

Chapter 2

Anthropic Reasoning and Explanation in Science

17

Chapter 3

The Micro World

33

Chapter 4

The Big Bang: How It All Began

49

Chapter 5

We Live in the Best Zip Code in the Universe

67

Chapter 6

Feeding the Planet’s Life

85

Chapter 7

If You Don’t Want God, Better Get a Multiverse

103

Chapter 8

The Queen of All Scientific Problems: The Origin of Life

121

Chapter 9

The Language of Life

139

Chapter 10

Biological Evolution: Micro and Macro

155

Chapter 11

Intelligent Design and Theistic Evolution

173

Chapter 12

I Am Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

191

Chapter 13

The Brain: The Little Universe Within

209

vi

Contents

Chapter 14

The Secular Benefits of Christianity

227

Chapter 15

Philosophical Approaches to God

245

Chapter 16

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: The Event that Changed Everything

263

The Shroud of Turin: Silent Witness to the Resurrection?

283

Chapter 17 References

303

About the Author

331

Index of Names

333

Index of Terms

339

PREFACE Natural Theology: The Atheist’s Way to God is about how the Christian can effectively engage is apologetics with atheists. Natural theology involves the process of observing nature and engaging science and reason to provide evidence for God’s existence and Divine Providence by “reasoning to the best explanation.” It maintains that there are two books we may use to proclaim the glory of God: the book of God’s word (revealed scripture) and the book of God’s works (the wonders of nature). Natural theology thus investigates the existence of God by momentarily setting aside the revealed word and engaging only with the evidence supplied by science, history, and philosophical reasoning to arrive at a conclusion affirming the existence of God. If a believer can show how reasoning to the best explanation from science leads to theism and not atheism, as countless scientists have found, perhaps they will also abandon their empty, hopeless, and nihilistic atheism for the love of God. God is outside the natural realm, so His existence or non-existence can never be known by direct physical evidence within space and time because God is immaterial and transcends space-time. Christians believe God exists, but this belief cannot be directly tested, but it can be supported indirectly by the scientific exploration of His creation. So, the burden of proof is on we who affirm His existence to disprove the negative claim by making rational judgments from strong indirect evidence.

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This book essentially asks the question: “How do I go about discussing God with atheists who are convinced that science has given God his walking papers?” Atheists obviously will not listen to revealed theology because it presupposes what it purports to prove. Natural theology is a prelude to reveal theology and faith by which we may engage atheists on what they consider their home turf. The book provides signposts to God from solid evidence from physics, chemistry, biology, the social sciences, philosophy, history. Christians should acquaint themselves with a basic understanding of science, since atheists claim that it is science that has buried God. Arguments from science are the only arguments atheists will listen to, and Christians should be able to supply a robust defense of their beliefs in terms of the language spoken by Christianity’s detractors. If you are skeptical of the relevance of science for evangelical purposes, the words of the great astrophysicist Paul Davies may allay some of that skepticism: “It may seem bizarre, but in my opinion science offers a surer path to God than religion … science has actually advanced to the point where what were formerly religious questions can be seriously tackled.”1 Nevertheless, atheists continue to claim that science and religion are incompatible and in constant conflict. I intend to show that this is assuredly not true, and that science itself (particularly physics) has forced many scientists who have thought deeply about the ultimate philosophical meaning of their work, some kicking and screaming, to accept Almighty God as the Creator of everything. Albert Einstein, the greatest of all scientists, certainly did not believe that science and religion are incommensurable when he said at a conference in New York: “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”2 Then we have the words of exhortation to seekers of truth and meaning from Willian Kelvin, a giant of 19th century physics: “Do not be afraid of being free thinkers! If you think strongly enough you will be forced by science to the belief in God, which is the foundation of all religion. You will find science not antagonistic but helpful to religion”3 1

Davies, P. 1983, p. ix. Einstein, A. 1940. 3 In Smith, W. 1981, pp. 307-308. 2

Preface

ix

Effective natural theology requires knowledge of many different areas of science, which is preferable to expertise in just one. No one can be an expert in all of these areas. Indeed, No one can claim to be an expert even in the science in which they earned their PhD, because scientific knowledge increases exponentially, and expert knowledge is usually earned only in small sub-areas of one’s discipline. In my academic career I was a biosocial scientist and statistician whose research involved exploring the genetic and neurobiological bases of behavior. I claim no expertise outside of these areas. I am not a theologian, but I know enough about science and religion to know that science points the way to understanding God’s creation and to how Christianity is of immense benefit to a free, moral, and prosperous society. Many of the scientific writings I have reviewed for this book are highly technical, and I have had to seek expert verification of my own understanding of many topics. It is the nitty-gritty mathematical details of science that are difficult, but the concepts themselves are fairly simple. I make every effort to explain the content of these concepts in terms understandable to all without scientific training beyond high school science, making no assumptions about prior knowledge. I try to give the “big picture” rather than getting bogged down in extraneous details. Most atheists you may encounter and debate have little science background as well, so if you assimilate what is written here, you may dazzle them and even convert them. Then they can engage with revealed theology. Research has shown that the majority of atheists who become theists do so by reading scientific and philosophical arguments rather than purely religious ones.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to acknowledge the Nova Science team for their faith in the project and for expertly seeing it to fruition. The copyeditor spotted every stray or absent comma, dangling participle, or missing reference in the manuscript. I especially thank my brother, Robert J. Walsh, a retired professor of English and active lay theologian. He kept me on track both grammatically and theologically, and he really knows how to engage with atheists. Thanks also to anonymous reviewers, who made many excellent points. Any errors remaining are mine alone. Last, but certainly not least, I acknowledge and dedicate this book to my beautiful wife and soulmate, Grace, AKA “The face.” She is the nicest of persons and the center of my universe. I thank God for her every day. I love you, Facey!

Chapter 1

THE VALUE OF NATURAL THEOLOGY ARGUING WITH UNHAPPY ATHEISTS Blaise Pascal, a brilliant 17th century man of philosophy, science, and God, saw that the roots of human unhappiness lay in atheism. As he wrote in his book Pensees (“thoughts”): “There are only three types of people; those who have found God and serve him; those who have not found God and seek him, and those who live not seeking, or finding him. The first are rational and happy; the second unhappy and rational, and the third foolish and unhappy.”4 There is an enormous amount of data in the medical, psychological, and public health literature that supports Pascal’s point that life for the committed atheist is not a happy one. Atheists are far more likely to be depressed, to commit suicide, to have fewer positive family relationships, to abuse drugs and alcohol, and to have far more stressrelated illnesses than practicing Christians. It is understandable that atheists who reflect on their atheism have a very good chance at being depressed by its fatalistic and cynical nature. But there must be a lot of “unhappy and rational” atheists who have “not found God and seek him.” These are the people Christians can help, and perhaps we can help the “foolish and unhappy” ones as well. Even though 4

Pascal, B., 1958, p. 257.

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they may have no idea how to articulate what is meant by “atheism,” they live by it, and it destroys lives. I am not saying that all atheists are unhappy and lead immoral lives; some may live better lives than many Christians. I am only saying that hundreds of studies have shown that atheism is strongly related to unhappiness, immorality, and suicide. So, atheism is like smoking—a habit worth breaking. Making a case for the truth of Christianity isn’t just a job for pastors and priests; we are all called to proclaim, promote, and defend our faith. You can be confident that there are many good arguments for God, and it is our duty to share them with those who hunger for them, and even with those who think they don’t need them. In doing so you will be confronted with atheistic arguments, but let’s face it, there are no real good arguments for atheism since it is simply a position of denial. However, atheism is a knowledge claim (the atheist “knows” there is no God), and all knowledge claims should have some reason for them. But most atheists just say that they don’t believe in God and leave it at that. They may believe that Christianity is a good thing for society, but they just do not buy into it themselves. Most are indifferent to arguments either for or against God’s existence. They do not bother to examine either theistic or atheistic evidence, and simply dismiss God in the same way they dismiss Santa Claus or the tooth fairy. Indifferent atheism is a weak form of atheism; the unexamined absence of belief in God. These people harm only themselves by depriving themselves of the reality of God’s love and spiritual sustenance, but they do not seek to harm Christianity. There are some atheists, however, who are so militantly anti-Christian that we may define them not as atheists but as anti-theists whose message boils down to: “So many Christians, so few lions.” Militant atheists have declared Christianity their enemy, and to effectively engage the enemy one must know him. There are atheist websites that Christians should not be afraid of visiting in the spirit of “know thy enemy.” If you do, you won’t be descending into Satan’s lair, but you will encounter arguments you will not like. This is good, because criticism of our faith makes us more intellectually muscular as we wrestle with it. If there is no enemy at the gates, we grow fat and complacent in

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our views. The recent surge in militant atheism has awakened theologians from a long slumber, and theism is the better for it because many more Christians are now motivated to engage with atheistic arguments. I visit these atheist sites to engage in silent debate with points made on them, which typically center around the claim that science has given God His walking papers. In making this claim, they have told us where we must engage them—science. You might say “Golly; I can’t do that; I’ve never gone beyond high school chemistry.” It doesn’t matter; you won’t be debating scientists on their level, and the basics of science are not that difficult. As Albert Einstein once put it: “Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.”5 It’s the intricate proofs and the nitty-gritty of science that is so difficult; so difficult that scientists are obliged to specialize in one small area of their discipline for most of their careers. The kind of extreme specialization demanded today can lead to a kind of general scientific illiteracy among scientists whose work does not overlap with adjacent sciences. For instance, in a sample of physicists and geologists, Hazen and Trefil found that only 12.5% could explain the difference between DNA and RNA.6 Physicists are arguably the brightest folks on the planet, yet only 1 in 8 was able to explain this basic piece of biological information. This is obviously due to strict concentration on a few problems in their field than lack of natural talent or inquisitiveness. I explain the difference between DNA and RNA, and it is easy for anyone of average intelligence to understand. DNA has been called the “language of God.” If an atheist wants to know why we consider DNA to be God’s language, we should be able to give adequate answers. You can take as much or as little as you like from this book; no one is standing over your shoulder, and there are no tests. If you are serious about defending and spreading your faith, however, there is no escaping the challenge of science. Science is very much on our side, as we shall see.

5 6

Jammer, M. 1999, p.10. Hazen, R. & Trefil, J. 2009.

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THE CHRISTIAN PROSECUTOR It is doubtless true that few of us became believers through long philosophical conversations with ourselves about the pros and cons of God’s existence, nor did most atheists arrive at their atheism via similar intellectualizing. Most believers inherit their faith from their parents and either they grow in it or it withers. Many of the lapsed may return to their religious roots after their youthful years of rebellion and doubt. Others become committed Christians through deeply emotional experience that takes root. Once it has taken root, we need to be able to defend it on objective rational grounds and not on subjective emotions if we are to evangelize. We need to learn the best Christian apologetics, which comes from a Greek meaning “to make a defense.” If we cannot make a strong defense of our faith, atheists may be forgiven for not taking us seriously. If all we can say to our atheist friends is “I just believe,” it is no different from the atheist saying “I just don’t believe.” Atheists need not necessarily defend their position since it is an entirely negative one that simply denies the evidence. The atheist is like the prisoner in the dock; he doesn’t have to say anything. It is the Christian prosecutor who is making an affirmative claim about the existence of the Creator who must speak. We must offer sufficient evidence for our case for the jury to reject the assumption “beyond a reasonable doubt” that atheism is innocent of the charge of erroneous belief. To do this we must have a well-prepared case and solid evidence to present to the jury. If God exists it is logical to assume that He has given a process by which He can be known. For the Christian, He is known subjectively through the work of the Holy Spirit and as such needs no evidence apart from that. The doubter and the denier, however, naturally demand more. If the atheist takes the stand to protest his innocence with an affirmative claim that there is no God, his position requires justification. The burden of proof is always on the person making the affirmative claim. So if the atheist makes the claim that we don’t need God to explain the origin of the universe because the blind forces of physics does it for us, this is not simply a negative claim of non-belief in God, but a positive

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claim that demands proof. You, the “prosecutor,” must be able to vigorously interrogate the claim. Just as we cannot know with absolute certainty whether the man in the dock is guilty as charged, even though all the available evidence points in that direction, when arguing with a committed atheist we can only reason to the best explanation given the evidence available from science. Science can tell us how the universe came into existence which, incidentally, coincides with Genesis, but it cannot tell us why. Science may not be the best reason for a Christian’s faith, but it is the only way of knowing that a committed atheist will listen to, which is why we need to embrace it as part of our religious lives.

IN DEFENSE OF NATURAL THEOLOGY Bertrand Russell, a famous British mathematician and philosopher, was a staunch atheist who was asked at his 90th birthday party what he would say to God if he met Him at the judgment. Russell replied: “Why I should say, ‘God, you gave us insufficient evidence!’“ Russell obviously assumed that evidence for God should be direct and immediately obvious if we are to believe in Him. God is purposely in the shadows, but there is enough light for those who wish to see, and enough darkness for those who don’t. This reminds me of something Oxford mathematician and philosopher John Lennox said in one of his debates. When an atheist said to him “You Christians believe in God because you are afraid of the dark,” Lennox replied: “You atheists don’t believe in God because you are afraid of the light.” God must be hidden to a certain extent lest knowledge of His existence be forced on us. Philosophers and theologians have long argued that God must be at an intellectual distance (they call this epistemic distance) from us so that we can come to Him freely and not through coercion. Engaging science to provide evidence for God’s existence and Divine Providence is known as natural theology. Natural theology investigates the existence of God by momentarily setting aside the revealed word and engaging only with the evidence supplied by science, history, and

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philosophical reasoning to arrive at a conclusion affirming the existence of God. God is outside the natural realm, so His existence or non-existence can never be known by direct physical evidence within space and time because God is immaterial and transcends space-time. Christians believe God exists, but this belief cannot be directly tested. It can, however, be supported indirectly by the scientific exploration of His creation. The burden of proof is on we who affirm His existence to disprove the negative claim by making rational judgments from strong indirect evidence. The most exciting and meaningful verses in the Bible for me are: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:16-17, NIV). This is revealed theology that proves God’s unending love for us. It is super-natural theology that satisfies the believer, but using biblical verses to prove that the Bible is the true Word of God is circular reasoning and just won’t wash with the atheist. For most atheists, the better initial path to God is to understand Him “from what has been made,” as in Romans 1:20 (NIV): “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” Paul is saying that we can know at least something about God’s invisible qualities by looking at His visible creation. This sentiment is reflected in my favorite worship song, How Great Thou Art: “Oh Lord, my God, when I, in awesome wonder, consider all the worlds Thy hands have made, I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, thy power throughout the universe displayed.” Scripture urges us to behold the heavens and all the wonders therein so that we may recognize God in them. “Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing” (Isaiah: 40:26). Unless we are blinded by prejudices, we cannot fail to see that the universe proclaims a supreme intelligence that we Christians call God. As Albert Einstein has said: “Everyone who is seriously involved in the

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pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe–a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”7 Natural theology maintains that there are two books we may use to proclaim the glory of God: the book of God’s word (revealed scripture) and the book of God’s works (the wonders of nature). However, there are theologians who argue that appealing to natural theology places insufficient emphasis on the importance of scripture and revelation, and this may lead to a deistic idea of God; that is, viewing God as an impersonal God who created the universe and then took early retirement. Albert Einstein, the greatest of all scientific minds, once said: “The more I study science, the more I believe in God,” but Einstein’s God was deistic. The source of ultimate truth is revelation, but the book of God’s works supplies secondary support for revealed truth. Physician, geneticist, and former atheist, Francis Collins, is one who found his theistic God in his science: “I have found there is a wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or in the laboratory. By investigating God’s majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship.”8 To those who object to natural theory and who say that faith in the revealed word is enough, I point to Matthew 22:37, which quotes Jesus as saying: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Many believe that a subjective experience of God is enough to justify believing in God. This kind of selfauthentication can be foundational to one’s faith, but many believers, troubled by the fact that human experiences are often fallible, seek evidentiary support, and welcome it. It may be commendable to accept God on faith alone, as long as that faith is not blind faith. Real faith is trust, confidence, reliance in or on, a person or thing based on evidence and experience; blind faith is belief without true understanding, perception, or discrimination. The Christian can be quite comfortable believing that God 7 8

In Jammer, M. 1999, pp. 86-87. Collins, F. 2007, np.

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has created the world, even if he cannot make any cogent arguments at all for that conclusion. I believe that God does not want blind faith. He wants us to wrestle with Him like Jacob; to struggle from doubt to a reasoned faith and hope. He wants the lost lamb, the prodigal son, and the doubting Thomas. We can only bring them into the fold with reasoned and knowledgeable arguments. Doubt comes to all of us at times. There is nothing unbiblical about asking for evidence for our faith, nor is it an indictment of the asker’s faith. After all, didn’t the apostle Thomas ask for evidence, and didn’t Jesus gladly provide it? Jesus did say, however: “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John, 20:29, NIV). The fruitfulness of engaging natural theology when debating with atheists is provided by a study of the reasons why former atheists became Christians. In just over 50% of the cases, the primary reason for conversion was intellectual. The former atheists mentioned that by studying subjects such as cosmology and intelligent design, and various philosophical arguments, they became convinced of the inherent rationality of Christianity.9 Although I was never an atheist, I found the degree of faith that I now have in this way, so naturally I place great stock in it. Natural theology brings many lost lambs into the fold, and revealed theology then tells them the most beautiful of messages; that is, we don’t have to earn God’s grace for it is freely offered, and all they have to do is accept it and live accordingly. I agree with the objectors to natural theology that while intellectual knowledge of God may be necessary for the Christian to answer atheists in ways they are most likely to accept, but justifying one’s faith through science is not sufficient for one’s self. A saving faith requires more than intellectual assent; it requires commitment to God at the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual levels, and acceptance of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Messiah. As philosopher and theologian Martin Buber observed, viewing God only intellectually as the Creator is to place Him in an I-It subject-object relationship with you in which He is a wholly

9

Langston, J., Powers, H., and Facciani, M. 2019.

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“other” deistic God, cold, distant and inaccessible. Spiritual Christians accept God as both the Creator and the Father with whom they enter into an I-Thou subject-subject relationship.

THE ART OF ARGUING WITH ATHEISTS Did you ever discuss your faith with an atheist and both of you walked away in confusion, and even in anger and disgust? You may have also felt like a failure because you really want to bear witness to God’s glory, but this lost soul just wouldn’t listen. Perhaps you left the discussion believing like Christian Anfinsen, a Nobel Prize winning chemist, who said: “I think only an idiot can be an atheist. We must admit that there exists an incomprehensible power or force with limitless foresight and knowledge that started the whole universe going in the first place.” In your eagerness to share your faith, you should not go around calling your atheist friends idiots, for Ephesians 4:15 tells us to “speak the truth in love,” and Peter 3:15 commands “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” You can defend your faith without becoming defensive. It is the evidence of the “incomprehensible power” Anfinsen mentioned that will convince atheists who are searching for meaning in their lives. To do that you need to know a little about the science that declares God’s wonders. Before we get into that, however, let’s look briefly at the art of making your arguments respectful and effective. There are sound psychological strategies that transform doubters into a more receptive audience for your arguments. By “arguments” I do not mean heated head-banging squabbles going nowhere, but rather in the philosophical sense of a directed series of reasoned arguments for your claims delivered in a friendly way. For instance, we might begin a discussion with a premise both parties accept as true, such as “The universe exists.” We may then make a series of deductive claims from this to arrive at a conclusion we want the atheist to accept. However, it is the numerous supporting arguments between the premise and the conclusion that actually

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make the case for the conclusion. After all, everyone accepts the premise, but the conclusion— “God exists, and he created it”—is only accepted by you until you can convince your opponent of it. Like everything else, the more often we engage in these debates the more confidence we accumulate, and better witnesses we will become. Whatever your arguments are, they should be aimed at coming to truth, not at conquering your opponent. We want to win hearts and minds, not arguments. If your artillery of righteous logic is so fierce that you totally destroy the defenses of the person you wish to convince, he or she will be attentive only to your attitude, and not to your arguments. No one appreciates being put down by a smug no-it-all who insists on being right at all costs, and he or she will slam the door shut on further discussion. There are five general rules of effective argumentation to contemplate before we get into a discussion of our faith with atheists who may be searching for enlightenment. 1. Allow the atheist to make his or her arguments against God first. Listen intently and do not give in to the tendency to interrupt. This shows respect, and you cannot respond effectively if you haven’t really listened. You should establish whether or not the atheist has at least one reason to support his or her argument. If the person does not, it is simply an unsubstantiated opinion and not a reasoned argument. If this is the case, you may open with a question such as: “What do you find to be the best reason to believe in God, and why doesn’t it convince you?” 2. Attempt to paraphrase the atheist’s argument as clearly and fairly as possible so that he or she can sincerely say: “Gee, I wish that I would have thought of it that way.” You need to say “Are you saying…” frequently so that you don’t misunderstand what the person is saying. You need to respond to what the person was actually saying, not to what you thought he or she was saying. 3. Look for any points of agreement between you. That will tell the prospective convert that you are listening to him or her and sets a friendly and respectful tone to the discussion. A point of

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agreement is an effective jump-start for any argument. For instance, you can both agree on the value of science, and agree to follow the evidence wherever it leads. 4. If the atheist is able to give reasons for his or her argument, make a point to mention anything you may have learned from it. If you do not have a good answer immediately available, admit it and say that “I’ll research it and get back to you.” This goes a long way to neutralize any combative stance the person may have and will make him or her more receptive to your arguments in turn. 5. When a friendly and respectful stage is set, you can then proceed to respond to his or her arguments and offer your own. Beware, however, the trap of believing that an argument is good only if it persuades all reasonable people who have hitherto denied your account of the issue. This sets the bar impossibly high. If you accept this standard and fail to convince someone with your argument, you will have to conclude that either your opponent is not reasonable or that your argument is no good. Many very reasonable people will walk away unconvinced for reasons having little to do with rationality no matter how good the argument. Moreover, a good argument will get even better in its presentation after engaging with an intransigent opponent—we learn more from our defeats than from our victories. Trying to convince the atheist leopard to change his spots is difficult. Like all of us, atheists have a built-in bias against drastic life changes because what we have been used to doing and thinking is habitual. We may want to change aspects of our lives, but at the same time not want to. For instance, this ambivalence may be felt by a man who is seeking God, but who also frequently seeks adulterous relationships. He wants the Devine Judge, but at the same time doesn’t want to be judged. Psychologists use the phrase cognitive dissonance to describe the mental discomfort people feel when experiencing conflicts between their behaviors and their beliefs. Although we don’t easily recognize it as such, everyone experiences cognitive dissonance to some degree. If you’ve ever felt embarrassed or

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ashamed about something you’ve done, that means that your behavior has conflicted with your beliefs. The cognitive discomfort is only relieved by changing the belief or changing the behavior. If someone finds a particular behavior highly rewarding, you can bet that he or she has long ago rationalized away any contrary beliefs. Most practicing Christians have an emotional attachment to their faith because the message is a strongly positive one of love and hope. On the other hand, it is difficult to think of someone having an emotional attachment to atheism, since it is entirely nihilistic, and often just a position of convenience. There are strong atheists, however, who appear to have an emotional attachment to it. Philosopher Thomas Nagel admits his emotional attachment to atheism: “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It is just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I am right in that belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”10 It is sad to see someone locate his hope in a negative; these are the kinds of people that will rarely surrender their atheism.

THEISM, ATHEISM, SCIENCE, AND RATIONALITY A frequently heard argument is that atheism is rational and theism is irrational, but the truth is exactly the opposite. If atheism is so rational, and if scientists are the most rational of beings, then we should see that most scientists are atheists, but a large national sample of scientists found that only a piddling 9.8% so described themselves. Of the remainder, 34.9% believed in God and held no doubts, 16.6% believed in God but had doubts, 19.2% believed in a higher power, 4.4% believed “some of the time,” and 13.1% were agnostics.11 The rate of religious belief is higher among physicians, with 76% of a national sample of them affirming their belief in

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Nagel, T., 1997, p. 130. Gross, N. & Simmons, S. 2009.

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God.12 With almost two-thirds of scientists and just over three-quarters of physicians reporting some degree of belief in a divine Creator, it is patently false that science and reason are on the side of atheism—science and reason are on the side of God. Physicist Max Jammer, a colleague, friend, and biographer of Albert Einstein, quotes another friend of Einstein as saying: “Einstein used to speak so often of God that I tend to believe he has been a disguised theologian.”13 Then we have Baruch Shalev’s book documenting the religious views of all 719 Nobel Prize winners from 1901 to 2000 which found that only about 10.5% fell into an atheist, agnostic, or freethinker category, and it was winners in literature, not science, that make up the biggest category of non-believers (see Figure 1.1).14 Among physicists, only 4.7% fell into one of these categories. We cannot know how devout those scientists were, but it helps us to understand the words of prize-winning physicist Robert Griffiths: “If we need an atheist for a debate, we go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn’t much use.” What about rationality among Christians and atheists in the nonscientific world? Commenting on a Baylor University study titled What Americans Really Believe, Mollie Ziegler Hemingway wrote a telling piece about rationality among Christians and atheists in a Wall Street Journal piece titled “Look who’s irrational now.” She writes that the report decisively shows that “traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology.” The report also shows that the irreligious “tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.” Almost four times (31%) as many people who never attend church expressed strong belief in the paranormal than did weekly church attenders (8%), and the more evangelical the respondent, the less likely he or she was to believe in fortune telling or the “possibility of communicating with people who are dead.”15

12

Easton, J. 2005. Jammer, M. 1999, pp. 6-7. 14 Shalev, B. 2003. 15 Ziegler Hemingway, M. 2008, np. 13

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Figure 1.1. Percentage of “Atheists, Agnostics, or Freethinkers” among Nobel Laureates between 1901 and 2000.

In an attempt to explain the findings, Ziegler Hemingway cited a study showing that the decline of Christian belief among the college educated is a major cause for the increase in cults and weird superstitions, and that “atheists college students are by far the most likely to embrace these things and practicing Christian college students the least likely.” The problem seems to be one of “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” A certain amount of education makes people think they know it all, and to dismiss notions of the unseen God. Francis Bacon, who has been called the father of the scientific method, made an observation in line with this: “It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.”16 This sentiment is expressed more recently by Nobel laureate physicist Werner

16

In Beckingham, C. 1937, p. 451.

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Heisenberg: “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”17 Hiding themselves from God, atheists attach themselves to harmful and silly beliefs, ranging from palm reading to socialism. Practicing Christians tend to be conservatives because they already have a religion that has stood the test of time and have no need of silly or destructive alternatives. G. K. Chesterton said it best in one of his Father Brown books. He had his famous fictional detective say: “It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense. It’s drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it’s coming in like a sea; and the name of it is superstition. The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything. And a dog is an omen and a cat is a mystery”18 So, is it the theist or the atheist who is irrational?

17 18

In Walsh, A. 2020, p. 1. In Cammaert, E., 1937, p, 211.

Chapter 2

ANTHROPIC REASONING AND EXPLANATION IN SCIENCE THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE Nobel laureate physicist Robert Millikan once wrote that the more we investigate the wonders of existence the more “we recognize the existence of a Something, a Power, a Being in whom and because of whom we live and move and have our being—a Creator by whatever name we may call Him.”19 As we discovered more and more about our universe, many physicists began to ponder if the many parameters of the universe, so exquisitely fine-tuned, exist for the benefit of humanity. The possible values that these physical parameters could have taken makes the probability that they have the values that they do have astronomically small. Those who have given much thought to these things have come to the same conclusion as Millikan: that there is a powerful and incredibly intelligent Mind behind it all. The pairing of scientific observations with philosophical reasoning evolved into an idea called the Anthropic (“human centered”) Principle in the mid-20th century. The phrase was coined by physicist Brandon Carter, and is the polar opposite of the Copernican Principle which states that there 19

In Walsh, A. 2020, p. 23.

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is nothing special or privileged about us or our planet; we are just accidental creatures in an accidental universe. John Wheeler, one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, contrasts the Copernican and Anthropic principles: “Is man an unimportant bit of dust on an unimportant planet in an unimportant galaxy somewhere in the vastness of space? No! The necessity to produce life lies at the center of the universe’s whole machinery and design.”20 There are weak, strong, and final versions of the principle. The Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP) is defined by Carter as, “we must be prepared to take account of the fact that our location in the universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers.”21 Some dismiss WAP by pointing out that is not at all surprising that we see this compatibility since if the universe were not so we wouldn’t be here to discuss it. This is obvious, but it is a question-begging response because it does not inform us of why we are here to discuss it since it is overwhelmingly more likely that we should not be. Philosopher John Leslie rebutted the objection to WAP with his “firing squad” analogy. He asks us to imagine that a condemned man facing a firing squad of 100 expert marksmen. The order to fire is given, the shots ring out, but the condemned man walks away. It is entirely possible that one marksman missed, but surely it is impossible that all did. It would not make sense to say that this is not surprising since if they had not all missed the condemned man would not be alive to walk away. It is more sensible to conclude that something intentional was afoot; that is, the firing squad was designed such that the condemned man should go on living.22 We can apply the same reasoning to the universe—there is something intentional afoot. It is difficult to see how any physicist would find such an apparent truism as WAP useful, but physicist Frank Tipler observes: “But the Weak Anthropic Principle is not trivial, for it leads to unexpected relationships between observed quantities that appear to be unrelated!”23 Then we have

20

In Ofulla, A. 2013, p. 139. Carter, B., 1974, p. 293. 22 Leslie, J. 1989. 23 Tipler, F. 1988, p. 28. 21

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Stephen Hawking saying that the “Anthropic Principle is essential, if one is to pick out a solution to represent the universe,” and another great physicist, Andrei Linde, opines that: “Those who dislike anthropic principles are simply in denial…One may hate the Anthropic Principle or love it, but I bet that eventually everyone is going to use it.”24 It is a short step from the Anthropic Principle to a design argument, as physicist Josip Planinić points out: “The anthropic principle, or the fine-tuned universe argument, can also be put forward as a design argument...It seems that the universe is arranged (tuned) exclusively to be agreeable to man. This thought on the notion of purposefulness implies the existence of a Creator of the universe.”25 Carter later added the Strong Anthropic Principle (SAP), which says: “The universe (and thus the fundamental parameters on which it depends) must be such as to admit the creation of observers within it at some stage”26 This statement more strongly implies purpose and deliberate design behind the universe tailor-made for human existence. If an atheist friend blanches at the notion of a purposeful universe, point out that no less a mind than Albert Einstein believed in one: “The religious inclination lies in the dim consciousness that dwells in humans that all nature, including the humans in it, is in no way an accidental game, but a work of lawfulness that there is a fundamental cause of all existence.”27 There is no other reasonable explanation of why the universe had to “admit the creation of observers,” because an endless trail of astronomically improbable “happy accidents” just won’t cut it. Barrow and Tipler then proposed the Final Anthropic Principle (FAP), which says: “Intelligent information-processing must come into existence in the universe, and, once it comes into existence, it will never die out.”28 The FAP is reminiscent of a basic tenet of Christian faith as set forth in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” 24

All cited in Susskind, L. 2005, p. 353. Planinić, J. 2010, p. 47. 26 Carter, B., 1974, p. 294. 27 In Isaacson, W. 2007, p. 20. 28 Barrow, J. & Tipler, F. 1986, p. 23. 25

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Needless to say, the idea that a Supreme Being created the universe as a home for intelligent life is most unattractive to the atheist. But atheist scientists have to bump into the Anthropic Principle at least occasionally. When they do, they either have to ignore it, explore it, or attempt to explain it away: “Faced with questions that do not neatly fit into the framework of science, they are loath to resort to religious explanation; yet their curiosity will not let them leave matters unaddressed. Hence, the anthropic principle. It is the closest that some atheists can get to God.”29 A scientific theory must fit the known facts about a domain of inquiry into a coherent pattern. This is abductive reasoning, or providing the best explanation for the facts. It must also allow us to make predictions deduced from it about as yet unknown areas of that domain. The Anthropic Principle satisfies only the first of these criteria; that is, it looks backwards to coherently explain in broad terms what is already known, and can accommodate what we may later discover. It does not ordinarily allow us to make predictions from it, although it has been claimed that Fred Hoyle made such a prediction when reasoning about the process of forging carbon in the stars. In other words, anthropic reasoning is abductive; a post hoc “reasoning to the best explanation.” of the facts at hand. To give a simple example, you may observe that the street is wet and conclude that it has rained. It could be wet if the street cleaners had just gone past or a water pipe had burst nearby. All three hypotheses (rain, street cleaners, a broken water pipe) have explanatory power; if any were true, it would explain why the street is wet. Intuitively, however, the rain hypothesis is much better than the others, especially if we seek further evidence. If, for instance, we find that the roof is wet and that there is fresh water in the rain gutters, we can reject the other possibilities and conclude that the street is wet because it rained. Just as we can offer three different explanations of why we observed the wet street, we can offer three different explanations for the anthropic fine-tuning. First, the universe is deliberately designed to allow for the emergence of intelligent life sometime in the universe’s evolution. Second,

29

Pagels, H. 1985, p. 38.

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the universe is one big fluke, and we are incredibly lucky that it has the right combination of physical, chemical, and biological conditions to lead to human life—it’s all about chance and necessity. Lastly, we can say that our universe is only one among trillions of other universes with physical laws that differ drastically from ours. If there are that many universes manifesting different laws of physics, we just happen to live in one that is life permitting. After surveying all available evidence, one has to choose from the three options by reasoning to the best explanation.

CARBON: FRED HOYLE’S ANTHROPIC REASONING An example of an anthropic prediction is Fred Hoyle’s prediction of the energy level needed for the stellar nucleosynthesis of carbon. All life is carbon-based, and we have it in abundance (the fourth most abundant element in the universe). Physicists used to be puzzled by why there is such an abundance when their calculations showed that most stars are thousands of times cooler than required to burn helium into carbon. Carbon is made when three “alpha”(α) particles (the nuclei of helium) fuse their combined 12 nucleons (6 protons, 6 neutrons) to form carbon-12 (12C). However: “as soon as 12C is synthesized from helium, it absorbs another α particle and becomes 16O [oxygen] leaving no carbon. The reaction forming 12C was much slower than the reaction that destroys it. If so, argued Hoyle, life should not exist!”30 John Gribbin and Martin Rees note that Hoyle reasoned from the fact that we exist to predicting that carbon must have an energy level at 7.6 MeV (7.6 million electrovolts—the units of energy that provide particle acceleration), and that was precisely the level experiments found it to be: “As far as we know, this is the only genuine anthropic principle prediction...There is no better evidence to support the argument that the Universe has been designed for our benefit–tailor-made for man.”31

30 31

Shaviv, G. 2015, p. 311. Gribbin, J. and Rees, M. 1989, p. 247.

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The energy level of 7.6 MeV is Hoyle’s prediction of the resonance state of 12C. “Resonance” refers to the reaction by the excitation of an object’s internal motion (“vibration”) by an outside source. Every object in the universe has its own natural frequency of vibration. For instance, if we have two identical tuning forks mounted on sound boxes and strike the first with some object, it begins vibrating at its natural frequency. These vibrations set the air inside the second sound box vibrating at the same frequency because of the sound waves impinging on it. If the prongs of the first fork are then grabbed to prevent further vibration, the same sound is heard from the second fork that wasn’t struck. The incoming sound waves made by the first fork synchronize with the second fork, which begins to vibrate at this shared natural frequency. Another example is the use of ultrasound to break up kidney stones and gall stones. The ultrasound frequency matches the natural frequency of the stones and cause them to oscillate and breaks up. This matching of energies is resonance. We use the language of resonance in everyday language; “I feel his vibes;” “That song really resonates with me;” “Sally and I are on the same wavelength.” To get two atomic nuclei to fuse requires the vibrational frequency of incoming nuclei to resonate with the energy of the receiving nucleus. Two fused helium nuclei create a highly unstable isotope of beryllium ( 8Be) which decays back into two helium nuclei in about 10-17 seconds (one tenthousandth of a trillionth of a second). Thus, making carbon requires exquisite precision in timing, and is known as the “triple alpha process.” The process involves three steps as shown in Figure 2.1. First, two alpha particles (4He) fuse to form beryllium (8Be) and emit a gamma ray. The 8 Be will decay back to helium within 10-17 seconds unless a third alpha particle fuses with the 8Be nucleus to produce the excited resonance state (the Hoyle state) of 12C. When particles come together a small portion of their mass is converted to energy as a force called the strong force (discused in the next chapter) pushes them together overcomes the electromagnetic force holding them apart. These are the gamma photons emitted by the 4He/ 8Be fusion. It is estimated only one in 2,500 of these fusions transition to stable carbon atoms; the rest decay.

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Figure 2.1. The Triple-Alpha Process.

Even that one-in-2,500 12C atom is in danger if another alpha particle fuses with it to produce oxygen (16O). We need oxygen, but we don’t want it at the expense of carbon. Preventing that has to do with energy levels. A very slight change in the nuclear resonance levels of oxygen (MeV 7.12) and carbon (MeV 7.65) would make the production of either impossible. The slightest change in either the electromagnetic or the strong force would change the energy levels, and that would be catastrophic. If the Hoyle energy state was a little less there would be an abundance of carbon, but helium would burn into carbon much earlier and the star would not be hot enough to produce sufficient oxygen. Cassé explains that: “It turns out that the sum of the mass energies of carbon and helium is just 1% above an energy level of oxygen-16 [thus no resonance]. But this 1% difference is not enough for all the carbon to disappear in the stellar crucible, thereby destroying any chance of life at a later date.”32 Physicist George Greenstein marvels at the whole carbon and oxygen process, but puts it all down to “lucky breaks”: “Other nuclear reactions do not proceed by such a remarkable chain of lucky breaks...It is like discovering deep and complex resonances between a car, a bicycle, and a truck. Why should such

32

Cassé, M. 2003, p. 143.

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disparate structures mesh together so perfectly? Upon this our existence, and that of every life form in the universe, depends.”33 Fred Hoyle writes of his awe of the miraculous relation of the energy levels of carbon and oxygen in the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics: “If you wanted to produce carbon and oxygen in roughly equal quantities by stellar nucleosynthesis, these are the two levels you would have to fix, and your fixing would have to be just where these levels are actually found to be.” He does not speak of “coincidences” or “lucky breaks;” rather, he asks if it could be “another put-up job,” and concludes that: “A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”34 Who else but God could be the super-intellect that “monkeyed” with the laws of physics (carbon’s improbable fusion), chemistry (carbon’s amazing bonding features), and biology (carbon’s basis for life)? And which of the interacting “coincidences” out of the thousands found so far will be the final straw to lead the atheist scientist to God? Hoyle himself said that he believed that any scientist who examined the evidence would “draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside the stars. If this is so, then my apparently random quirks have become part of a deeplaid scheme. If not, then we are back again to a monstrous sequence of accidents.”35 There are many who continue to prefer belief in a “monstrous sequence of accidents” than belief in God.

SCIENCE’S WORKING ASSUMPTIONS Scientists work with several assumptions about the universe and how to acquire knowledge about its workings. The success of science lies in its 33

Greenstein, G. 1988, pp 43-44. Hoyle, F. 1982, p. 16. 35 In Holder, R., 2013, p. 48. 34

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conviction that the universe is orderly and knowable, and that there are laws of nature that await our discovery. These assumptions arose only within the theological matrix of Western Christianity. From the very earliest days of Christianity, the Church taught that reason is a unique gift of God, and that we must use this gift to come to know Him through incrementally coming to understand His creation. Sir Isaac Newton’s faith in the immutable laws of nature came from his faith that God created the world in an ordered way and gave us the ways (mathematics) of understanding it, as did, Quintus Tertullian of Carthage, in the second century AD: “Reason is a thing of God, inasmuch as there is nothing which God the Maker of all has not provided, disposed, ordained by reason— nothing which He has not willed should be handled and understood by reason.”36 The 13th century patron saint of science, Albertus Magnus, informed us that: “It is the task of natural science not simply to accept what we are told but to inquire into the causes of things.”37 When the Catholic Church founded the University of Bologna 1088 and made mathematics and science compulsory parts of the education of anyone wanting to study theology. Many advances in early science were made by ordained priests or monks. Roger Bacon is the father of the scientific method; Roger Boscovich, produced the precursor of atomic theory; Gregor Mendel, founder of the science of genetics; Nicolas Steno, is the father of geology; Jean-Baptiste Carnoy, the father of cell biology, and Georges Lemaitre, father of Big Bang cosmology. Those who hold that there is conflict between theism and science can take little comfort in this. There is no conflict between science and theism, but there is conflict between theism and materialism in its metaphysical or ontological sense. Metaphysical materialism maintains that there is no reality beyond matter and the natural world. Adherents of this position, such as Richard Lewontin, describes science as in a struggle with the supernatural: We take the side of science .... because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions 36 37

In Coyne and Heller, 2008, p. 42. In Kennedy, D. 1907, p. 265.

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Anthony Walsh of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations…. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. 38

Atheists such as Lewontin are committed to the metaphysics of ultimate meaninglessness; viewing everything that exists as either being due to random processes or a product of chance and necessity. For them, the nature of the universe is entirely dependent on matter, the fundamental and final reality beyond which there is nothing. They rule out design by fiat: “we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.” Methodological materialism, on the other hand, is simply a working rule adopted by all scientists that maintains only that non-material assumptions are not to be made in science and says nothing about an alternative reality outside science. Methodological materialists are materialists in their daily work because matter is what they work with. This does not preclude them from rejecting the notion that matter and the natural world is all that exists. Some scientists claim adherence to a philosophy known as naturalism. Materialism and naturalism are largely synonymous, but materialism is more dogmatic in its metaphysics. The materialist ontology is that all existence is matter, and that there is no metaphysical reality. Naturalism shares with materialism the denial of causal mechanisms outside of the natural, but many naturalists also deny that all effects have material causes. Some naturalists affirm the existence of a non-material material mind separate from the material brain, but for the ontological materialist, mental phenomena are illusionary, and are merely electrical energy moving stuff around in the brain. For instance, geneticist Francis Crick has written: “‘You,’ your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. Who you are is nothing but a pack of neurons.”39 If Crick is travelling that 38 39

Lewontin, R., 1997., np. Crick, F., 1994, p. 3.

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road he might have gone a little further because neurons are made of atoms, and atoms are made of quarks, so he might have said that we are nothing but an animated pack of quarks. Mental phenomena cannot exist without their physical substrates, but the mind cannot be reduced to them without remainder. Crick’s words come from his book, The Astonishing Hypothesis. It is indeed astonishing, and one wonders why he didn’t subtitle it The Zombie Within. Take the phenomenon of romantic love as an example of Crick’s extreme materialism. Neuroscientists have discovered neurochemical correlates of romantic love in a soup of neurotransmitters lighting up the brain’s major pleasure centers of people in love. This does not mean, however, that we can reduce the intoxication of romantic love to the soup and sparks of brain activity. This neural activity does not come anywhere near to explaining why Romeo fell in love with Juliet; they merely tell us what happened in his brain when he did. The phenomenon of romantic love is an example of “top-down” causation because love came first and then generated the soup and sparks; that is, the physical products are consequences of mental process and not the other way around.

EXPLANATION IN SCIENCE Scientific explanation is no different from explanations in any other area because the goal of explanation is to provide understanding. When you or I explain some complicated event, we try to fit the known facts together into a logical and coherent whole. We might explain why or how it happened, or we may simply describe what happened without how or why it did. The scientific method of explanation assumes that it is possible for a set of claims to be accurate because it is supported by evidence that other scientists can evaluate by assessing its merits or conducting their own studies. Explanatory reasoning involves mixtures of deduction, induction, and abduction. Deduction is a “top down” method that reasons from a premise that is self-evidently true to a conclusion that logically follows. Deduction reasoning is most evident in mathematics because mathematical

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enquiries always begin with self-evident truths. For this reason, a philosophical school called rationalism idealizes mathematics as the preferred path to truth because mathematical thinking rests on knowledge that is true by definition. If x = 2 and y = 3, then (x) (y) = 6 is absolute in all possible instances. Rationalists rightly contend that the world can only be understood through the intellect because the senses allow us only to see it as it appears. They say that the world comes to us through the buzzing confusion of sense perceptions and must be filtered and organized by the intellect. It is true that our senses may deceive us, and that whatever we experience with them must be mentally interpreted. But rationalists appear to be saying that our intellect cannot deceive us; which is a serious error because it deceives even the greatest of minds. Nevertheless, deductive “top-down” reasoning from truths considered self-evident has been taken as the ideal path to knowledge because it guarantees the truth of the conclusion given that it is already present in the premise (“All crimes are against the law.”) and any denial of it is self-contradictory (if an act is not against the law, it cannot be crime, even if we think it should be). Once we leave the certainty of mathematics, however, we run into trouble with deductive reasoning because except in the most trivial sense (“All mothers are females”) we have few major premises that are selfevidently true. Knowledge must be gained by observation and experiment by “bottom up” reasoning from the specific to the general. This is known as induction. A “conclusion” in a deductive mode is a “hypothesis” in an inductive mode; an assertion to be tested experimentally. To conduct experiments or make observations, scientists are guided by theories from which hypotheses are logically deduced. However, theories are not true by definition, and so our deductions from theory must predispose broad inductions to validate their major premises. All real knowledge of the world can only be achieved with some degree of confidence when we test our concepts in the world outside our own minds. Empirical science cannot produce the absolute certainty demanded by those who identify all true knowledge with mathematics, but the inductive method is the bedrock of science.

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The third method of reasoning is abduction, which I previously identified with anthropic reasoning. Abduction starts with all available relevant observations and proceeds to the most reasonable explanation for them but leaves open other possible explanations. Peter Lipton offers an example of abductive reasoning in the form of a detective zeroing in on Sherlock Holmes’ arch enemy, Professor Moriarty. Sherlock infers that Moriarty is guilty because that hypothesis best explains all the evidence gathered, such as fingerprints, blood stains, and other such evidence. Lipton says that Sherlock’s belief is not arrived at deductively: “The evidence will not entail that Moriarty is to blame, since it always remains possible that someone else was the perpetrator. Nevertheless, Holmes is right to make his inference, since Moriarty’s guilt would provide a better explanation of the evidence than would anyone else’s.”40 Given the sum of the evidence that Lipton presents, any neutral jury would have to conclude that Moriarty is guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt,” but not beyond all doubt. Unlike deductive reasoning whereby the conclusion is guaranteed by the axiom, the jury will have to reach the simplest and most logical conclusion it could draw from multiple lines of evidence. Science sets up such a decision-making process the same way that the Anglo-American legal system tests the guilt or innocence of the accused—it assumes that the person in the dock is innocent. This is called the null hypothesis. The assumption of innocence and null hypotheses are precautionary measures that require stringent evidence to reject. Some of the evidence may carry little weight, but piling evidence upon evidence, upon evidence, will eventually build such a weighty case that few reasonable people will reject on purely rational grounds. When we have collected all relevant evidence, we test it against multiple competing hypotheses (ruling out other possible suspects) and make an “inference to the best explanation.”

40

Lipton, P., 2000, p. 185.

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THE GOD HYPOTHESIS We need to impress on our atheist friends that we are all members of a very important jury in which we must make the most important decision of our lives—the existence of God and whether or not we will accept Him. We do not have to rule out multiple hypotheses since the only alternative to our hypothesis that God exists is that He does not. Our friend then has to choose the most plausible explanation for the origin of our life-bearing universe: either it was created by God or it created itself. Just as the prosecutor asks the jurors to examine the evidence presented without bias, we must ask our atheist friend to examine multiple lines of evidence from multiple fields of inquiry without bias, and then to decide whether or not to reject the null hypothesis that God does not exist. Eminent philosopher of science Stephen Meyer illustrates how abduction is used in science and how science is pointing to the existence of the Creator “beyond a reasonable doubt.” He notes that multiple lines of evidence from the natural sciences cosmology, physics, chemistry, and biology, show that theism has the scope and power to explain a very wide ranges of metaphysical scientific evidence: “more simply, adequately, and comprehensively than other major competing worldviews or metaphysical systems.” Meyer realizes that this does not absolutely prove God’s existence because it “does not constitute deductive certainty. It does suggest, however, that the natural sciences now provide strong epistemological support for the existence of God as affirmed by both a theistic and Judeo-Christian worldview.”41 We have chosen the power of Almighty God as the best explanation for the origin of the universe. Atheistic scientists do not like to think in terms of First Causes because it leads them into areas they would rather not go. Few scientists doubt that the universe commenced its existence with the Big Bang, at which time the physicists tell us that the laws of physics break down. If the laws of physics cannot supply an explanation due to this impasse, then the explanation must be beyond physics; that is,

41

Meyer, S., 1999, p. 27.

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it must be metaphysical. If we assert that the inference to the best explanation is that God is the cause of the existence of the universe, the standard atheist response is: “If everything requires a cause, then what caused God?” This kind of response asks for an explanation of the explanation and demonstrates a faulty understanding of God as Christians know Him. We talk of the aseity of God, meaning that He is the Uncaused Cause, the eternally self-existent uncreated Creator and sustainer of all things. Only things that begin to exist need a cause. After all, the universe is finite, so we can’t keep pushing contingent causes back forever so we have to stop at something that is a sufficient explanation for its own existence. “Who made God” is a meaningless question because God is not bound by naturalistic parameters of time, space, beginning, and causality—He is the Beginningless Uncaused Cause. When atheists argue that Christian claims that everything has a cause but that God has no cause is contradictory, they miss this point entirely. When we assert that everything is caused; we mean that everything contingent, everything material; everything in time, and everything imperfect requires a cause. God, who is unconditional, immaterial, timeless, and perfect, does not. God is God precisely because He does not have a creator. Another reason why asking an explanation of the explanation is simply not logical, is that all explanations must arrive at a stopping point beyond which it is impossible to go. An attempt to explain the explanation would lead to an infinite regress: If X created God; who or what created X? Y created X. Who or what then created Y? And so on, ad infinitum. We could literally go on repeating this regress forever, which is why all causal explanations must have an ultimate terminus; an uncaused First Cause. Infinity may be mathematically realizable (although no matter how large the number you always say “+ 1”), but it is not physically realizable. The great mathematician David Hilbert provided a mathematical proof of the impossibility of an infinite regress, concluding his famous paper on the subject saying: “Our principal result is that the infinite is nowhere to be found in reality. It neither exists in nature nor provides a legitimate basis for rational thought. …The role that remains for the infinite is solely that

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of an idea.”42 Because there is no “before” the Big Bang, an infinite regress is nonsense. The atheist might ponder this and reply: “Okay; it’s agreed that there must be a stopping point, and we agree the Big Bang started it all, but there is one more step because the Big Bang is contingent and material. Something caused the Big Bang, but why does it have to be God? Why can’t we assume that the universe is its own uncaused cause?” That would stop the infinite regress without resorting to the supernatural. However, your atheist friend would be saying that the universe pulled itself up by its own bootstraps, and did it so astoundingly well that it would eventually produce sentient beings capable of probing its secrets. Atheism’s “creation” seems more miraculous than theism’s because it posits that all energy/matter came from nothing. What was this Godless naturalistic “nothing” that created matter/energy from nothing? The atheist has no idea what this “nothing” was; so, he has neither a natural nor a supernatural explanation for creation, which underlines the hollowness of his arguments—nothing created something from nothing for no reason! To say that the universe contains within itself the explanation of itself is analogous to saying that a man can literally be the father of himself, or perhaps a man can exist without being fathered. Rather than claiming that matter and energy somehow created itself, Nobel laureate physicist Sir Edmund Whittaker says: “It is simpler to postulate creation ex nihilo— Divine Will constituting Nature from nothingness.”43 Another Nobel laureate physicist, Arno Penzias, arrives at the same conclusion: “Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe that was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying (one might say, supernatural) plan.”44

42

In Lasota, J. 2011, p. 315. In Heeren, F., 2000, p. 121. 44 In Ofulla, A. 2013, p 146. 43

Chapter 3

THE MICRO WORLD CATEGORY MISTAKES AND GOD-OF-THE-GAPS As science has poked and prodded nature over the last few hundred years it has yielded many secrets. Science has been so successful in this endeavor that perhaps it will one day be capable of explaining everything that happens in nature. If science can find natural causes for everything that happens in nature, the atheist may ask, “What need is there for God?” The assumption is that for each advance in science God is incrementally squeezed out of the picture. This assumption is an example of what philosophers call a category mistake. The category mistake in this instance is confusing the impersonal principles of science with the personal agency of God. The explanatory power of science should not be confused with God’s creative power. They are entirely different categories; the first is the tool, the second is the toolmaker. Science provides explanations and discovers laws, but science cannot explain why those laws exist. Natural causes presuppose the existence of an ordered nature with fundamental laws, and God caused nature and its laws to exist. Science searches for details of how God created the universe; theism searches for why He did.

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As Einstein put it: “I want to know how God created this world… I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.”45 John Lennox uses the example of a Ford automobile to explain the atheist’s category mistake. He says that an engineer could explain in detail how the car works, but if he wanted to know why the car existed, he would have to invoke agency. That is, why Henry Ford chose to manufacture cars in the first place. Ford’s agency has absolutely no place in the description of how his cars work, but he is necessary to explain their existence. Likewise, God’s agency has no place in describing the details of how the universe works, but He is necessary to explain its existence. Just as we need both agency and mechanisms to have a necessary and sufficient explanation of the lowly Model-T, to have a necessary and sufficient explanation of the magnificence of nature we need both science and the Creator. God is the ground of all explanation, and His gift of the human mind provides the possibility that we will “know his thoughts” as they relate to nature. The atheist argument that science has rendered God unnecessary assumes that Christians invoke God as an explanation of the details of science. This is called a God-of-the-gaps argument, and is illustrated in a well-known cartoon in which two physicists are standing looking puzzled at a blackboard full of equations with a tag on the end reading “Then a miracle occurs!” Although this was meant to provide a chuckle, variations of it are found littering atheist websites. They use it to make the strawman argument that Christians believe that because science has not yet found an explanation for this or that, why not just stop and say “God did it?” God is reduced to a placeholder filling a gap until a scientific explanation is found, but God does not live in gaps! His presence is felt in what we know, not in what we don’t. Atheists point out that humans have always created gods to explain natural phenomena that mystified them, and claim that Christians are no different. The ancients created Thor and his hammer to explain thunder, and Zeus, who threw lightning bolts to show his anger, and so forth. Thor,

45

In Wagman, M. 2000, p. 173.

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Zeus, and all the rest of them were true gods of the gaps squeezed out of the picture with scientific advances. Atheists extrapolate these absurd humanly created gods to the uncreated God who becomes more, not less, real with the march of science. How can we not see God beyond the widening expanse of science that stunningly reveals a universe so beautiful and complex that only the mind of a supreme intelligence could bring into being? As the gaps in science close, rather than squeezing God out, science is inviting Him in. More and more scientists are agreeing with Nobel Prize winning physicist Joseph J. Thomson, who wrote: “As we conquer peak after peak we see in front of us regions full of interest and beauty, but we do not see our goal, we do not see the horizon; in the distance tower still higher peaks, which will yield to those who ascend them still wider prospects, and deepen the feeling, the truth of which is emphasized by every advance in science, that ‘Great are the Works of the Lord’.”46

FINDING GOD IN THE MICRO WORLD: THE STANDARD MODEL OF PARTICLE PHYSICS Everything in God’s universe is organized by the laws governing the behavior of atoms. Atoms are the building blocks of all material things, and come in a variety of forms we call elements. Different elements are composed of the same kind of atom. For instance, pure carbon is made from only one type of atom, but its bulk properties depend on how the atoms are connected. Diamonds and graphite are both pure carbons, but their atoms are arranged differently, making them different minerals with different crystal structures. As we look at the periodic table, the elements increase according to the number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus, which together make up almost all the mass of an atom. Isotopes are atoms that have the same numbers of protons but different numbers of neutrons. A proton is positively electrically charged, which is balanced by an electron, which has an equal negative charge to make the atom electrically

46

In Singh, S., 2004, pp. 361-362.

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neutral. As the name suggests, a neutron has no charge. Atoms that are not electrically neutral—they have gained or lost electrons—are called ions. The mass of an electron is about 1/2000 the mass of a proton or neutron and orbits far away from the nucleus. It has been estimated that if we could magnify the simple hydrogen nucleus (one proton, one electron, no neutron) to the size of a basketball, its lone electron would be about 2 miles away. This means that atoms can be thought of as mostly made up of empty space, although this is not entirely true since electrons surround the nucleus like a fog rather than orbiting like a satellite. Atoms are unimaginably small, the “average” atom measuring 100 picometres, or about one-trillionth of a meter. On the “Ask a Physicist” website, a physicist estimated that there are just about half the number of atoms in a single grain of sand, as there are grains of sand on all the Earth’s beaches. Another way of looking at it is that if we blew an atom up to the size of a tennis ball and then blew the tennis ball up to the same extent, the ball would be about the size of the Earth. If that gives us some idea of the insane smallness of an atom, how much smaller is the size of a proton or an electron? It gets even more mind-blowing when we realize that protons and neutrons consist of even smaller particles. Electrons are fundamental particles and do not consist of smaller particles. Figure 3.1 presents the Standard Model of Particle Physics and its elementary particles. They are elementary because they cannot be broken down any further. We see that all matter is composed of fermions, the building blocks of atoms. The bosons are carriers of the fundamental forces discussed later. The two types of fermions are quarks and leptons. Quarks always act together and never alone. For instance, protons and neutrons are both made of three quarks; protons contain two up quarks and one down, and neutrons have two down quarks and one up. Leptons, however, can exist independently. It is not necessary to get into the complications of mass, charge, and spin; suffice to say that these values are used by particle physicists to explore the behavior of protons and neutrons. The bosons are force carriers that govern the interactions of fermions. We will discuss this strange particle menagerie further when we discuss the four fundamental forces of nature.

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Figure 3.1. Standard model of elementary particles.

However, I will give a little more attention to the Higgs boson now because without it, it is assumed, that the universe would be massless. Its discovery was announced with much fanfare on July 4th, 2012. The Higgs boson was theorized first in 1964 when scientists, including Peter Higgs after whom it is named, were perturbed that their theories seemed to predict a universe without mass. They believed that all particles in the early universe had no mass and traveled at the speed of light, and that there must be a quantum field that gives particles their mass, which they later called the Higgs field. The Higgs field is a field of oscillating energy that pervades the universe, and when particles pass through it, they are slowed down and gain small quantities of that energy. If they interact with the field long enough, they accumulate energy as mass. There are only two known particles that zip through the Higgs field without interacting and are thus massless: photons that carry the electromagnetic force and gluons that

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carry the strong force. Quantum theory informs us that all fields have particles associated with them, so the Higgs field must have its own forcecarrying particle. The Higgs boson (which was whimsically nicknamed the “God Particle”) is the quantum of energy (like a photon is a single quantum of light energy) with which the Higgs field interacts with other particles. The existence of something that imparts mass to particles was taken as self-evident, but the search for it had to await the building of the largest machine ever built: The Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The LHC is a 17mile ring of superconducting magnets spanning the borders of Switzerland and France and run by CERN. It operates by sending protons along a number of accelerating structures in opposite directions at within decimal points of the speed of light, smashing them together and analyzing the resulting debris. The difficulty in finding the Higgs is that it decays in 1022 seconds, which led William Lane Craig to comment that the reason it was labeled (apart from its obvious publicity value) the “God particle” is because like God, it underlies every physical object that exists, and is very difficult to detect. Finding the boson is effectively the same as proving the existence of the Higgs field. The discovery of the Higgs capped 50 years of an uninterrupted streak of successes for the Standard Model of particle physics. Yet physicist Harry Cliff tells us that physicists regard the Standard Model as a highly “unnatural” theory because of the large number of particles and forces that are precariously balanced such that changing any of the values: “you rapidly find yourself living in a universe without atoms. This spooky finetuning worries many physicists, leaving the universe looking as though it has been set up in just the right way for life to exist.” 47 Naturalness in physics is basically a prohibition against fine tuning. Observable parameters that don’t “naturally” emerge from a theory are called finely tuned, and physicists don’t like that. They want their theories and the universe not to appear contrived. The Higgs boson has so much unnaturalness about it that particle physicist Euan McLean says that it has led some physicists to panic about its “spooky” nature. The problem is that

47

Cliff, H. 2013, np.

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its mass is fine-tuned by multiple trillions of degrees more than the Standard Model predicted: “It seems like, to generate a universe remotely like the one we live in, nature needs to decide on a parameter m0 [the mass of a particle before interacting with a field] highly tuned to 33 decimal places.”48 Particle physicist Michael Strauss finds nothing spooky in the standard model; rather, he sees the Higgs as providing insights into the existence of God. He marvels at the fact that physicists sat down in 1964 and came up with mathematical calculations that predicted that the Higgs field should exist, and then 48 years later it was found. The fact that we can describe the universe mathematically leads Strauss to opine that all explanations other than God are inadequate to explain our highly complex universe. On the Higgs particle, he notes that: “Though it may not be properly ‘The God Particle,’ the mathematical description and complexity of our universe, along with its actual existence, gives a clear indication of a true deity who has designed and created what we now have the privilege to observe and study.”49 Another physicist, Lawrence Krauss, has a different opinion, saying that the Higgs particle is “more relevant than God” because it could be the quantum burp by which the universe created itself out of nothing. John Lennox’s response to Krauss was: “The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out that the meaning of a system will not be found within the system. The meaning of the universe will be found where Newton and Clerk Maxwell found it: in God. So what can we say about the Higgs boson? Simply this: God created it, Higgs predicted it, and CERN found it.”50

McLean, E. 2017, np. An easy example of what we should expect and what is “spooky” is provided by astrophysicist Ethan Siegel, which I greatly condense and paraphrase. Two people pick a number between 1 and 10. Theoretically, we expect very little difference in the chosen numbers, and they may well match. This is akin to the standard model science lives with. Now they are asked to pick any number between 1 and 1,000,000,000. There will probably be a vast gap between the chosen numbers. If there is a very small difference, or none at all, between the chosen numbers, this would be “spooky” fine-tuning, and an indication that something intentional was afoot. 49 Strauss, M. 2017, np. 50 Lennox, J. 2012, np. 48

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THE FUNDAMENTAL FORCES OF NATURE Everything that happens in the universe, from the formation of galaxies to the formation of atomic nuclei, happens by the action of just four forces: gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. The four fundamental forces all work both with and against each other to attain an overall stable state in the universe, even within the tiny “universe” of an atom. Each of these forces are so fine-tuned that even the slightest variation in their values and the universe would not exist. To quote physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow: “The emergence of the complex structures capable of supporting intelligent observers seems to be very fragile. The laws of nature form a system that is extremely fine-tuned, and very little in physical law can be altered without destroying the possibility of the development of life as we know it. Were it not for a series of startling coincidences in the precise details of physical law, it seems, humans and similar life-forms would never have come into being.”51 Notice that they call the numerous laws of physics and the phenomena they describe “coincidences.” How many coincidences would you need before you say: “Something intentional is going on”?

GRAVITY Gravity is the force that operates throughout the universe. It causes the Earth and the other planets in our solar system to orbit the Sun and the moon to orbit the Earth. It is the force that gathered the material of the Big Bang and made it coalesce in stars and planets. The continued existence of stars is a balancing act between the force of gravity pushing in and the pressure from the explosive gases produced by burning hydrogen pushing out. If gravity was any stronger a star would collapse; any weaker and there would be no stars at all. Gravity is very powerful at the level of big things like stars, but it is by far the weakest of the four forces; trillions of times

51

Hawking, S. and Mlodinow, L. 2010, pp. 160-161.

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weaker than even the weak force. Think of a paperclip held in place on your desk by gravity being attracted by a weak magnet. The magnet is pulling against the gravitational force of the entire planet, but the magnet wins the contest easily. All objects are subject to gravity, the strength of which depends on an object’s mass, and how close it is to other objects. We are constantly being pulled down towards the earth, but because we have so little mass, we don’t feel it unless we topple off a building. Without Earth’s gravity, however, we would fly off into space. The strength of gravity increases proportional to the masses involved, and decreases with the square of their distance apart. If gravity had been slightly weaker by the smallest degree at the moment of creation, it would not have been able to pull matter together to form stars and planets. If it had been slightly stronger to the same degree, it would have pulled matter back into a big crunch before stars and planets were able to form. The extraordinary fine-tuning of gravity is explained by physicist Robin Collins, who asks us to imagine a gravity dial broken down into one-inch increments that stretches right across the universe. This would be more inches than all the grains of sand on Earth. Collins noted that if we moved gravity’s setting just one inch out of those unimaginable trillions from its current setting, it would increase gravity by a billion-fold. If some malevolent finger moved the dial even the tiniest fraction of an inch to increase its power, everything in the universe would be crushed into a super dense mass.52 On the other hand, if the dial was moved in the other direction reducing gravity by as little as five percent, the gravitational force holding the Earth’s interior would be weaker. That would result in worldwide earthquakes, volcanos, and tsunamis, cloaking the Earth with layers of mushy volcanic ash. The weaker gravitational pull of the Sun on the Earth would move the Earth to a more distant orbit, resulting in less heat reaching 52

In Strobel, L., 2004, p. 161. In Einstein's general relativity view, gravity is not a force, but rather an attribute of spacetime. What we think of as the force of gravity is just the warping of spacetime caused by the presence of mass and energy. However, without a force acting them, planets will move in a straight line. They don’t move in a straight line because they have “fallen” into the curvature of spacetime caused by their parent body, so it’s probably alright to consider gravity a force.

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the Earth. The Sun would also cool down since it needs the crush of gravity to push hydrogen atoms to its core where they fuse together and release energy. The combination of the accumulation of ice and ash resulting from all these catastrophic events would eventually turn the Earth into a giant snowball. We can thank God that the gravity dial is set just right. Unlike the other three fundamental forces, gravity does not have a known force carrying it, although there is a hypothesized carrier (a boson) called a graviton. Gravitational waves, which are ripples in space-time created by violent cosmic processes such as the merging of two black holes, have been detected. These waves are thought to be made up of gravitons, but because they would interact extraordinarily weakly with matter, we don’t have equipment sensitive enough to detect a single graviton.

ELECTROMAGNETISM The electromagnetic force is the interaction between electrically charged particles, and is carried by units (or “quanta”) of light called virtual photons travelling at the speed of light. It is the combination of all electrical and magnetic forces, and is the best understood of the fundamental forces. We depend on electromagnetic energy when we watch TV, make a phone call, pop popcorn in a microwave oven, and employ any number of other gizmos. Note from Figure 3.2 that electromagnetic energy travels in waves in a broad spectrum from very long radio waves, which are harmless, to very short gamma rays, which are deadly. Visible light is only a small portion of this spectrum. Just as our eyes can only detect this part of the spectrum, various other devices such as radios, x-ray machines, and PET scanners detect other portions. The Sun is a source of energy across the full spectrum (we may get some from far-away exploding stars). The Earth’s atmospheric gases such as ozone and carbon dioxide, as well as its magnetic shield, protects us from exposure to the range of higher energy waves such as gamma rays, x-rays, and some ultraviolet waves that are harmful to us.

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Figure 3.2. The electromagnetic spectrum.

The electromagnetic force is the force that makes chemical bonding possible and gives matter its strength, shape, and hardness. Just as gravity holds everything together on a cosmic scale, the electromagnetic force holds everything else together. It holds electrons in orbit around the nucleus, and if electromagnetic bonding in the nuclei was the slightest bit weaker, electrons could not be held in orbit, and if it was slightly stronger the electrons could not bond with the electrons of other atoms to make other elements. This would rule out molecule formation, and thus life. Like gravity, the electromagnetic force has an infinite range, with its strength is proportional to the inverse square of the distance. Unlike gravity which only attracts, the electromagnetic force can attract or repulse, as in magnets with like poles pushed together. The electromagnetic force holds atoms and molecules together by the action of its attraction and repulsive charges, and is so powerful that in comparison the contribution of other fundamental forces as determiners of atomic and molecular structures is negligible. As small as the relative contributions of the other forces may be with respect to this, they are still very important because without them the electromagnetic force would be useless. Paul Davies notes that if the ratio of the strong force to the electromagnetic force had been different by 1 part in 1016 the stars could not have formed. This is a really big number when we realize that a trillion is 1012. Davies also tells us that if the ratio of the electromagnetic force to the gravitational force were increased by one part in 1040 only small stars can exist, and if it were decreased by the same amount there would be only large stars. “You must have both large and

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small stars in the universe: the large ones produce elements in their thermonuclear furnaces; and it is only the small ones that burn long enough to sustain a planet with life.”53

THE STRONG FORCE The strong nuclear force is by far the most powerful of the four forces, but it has the shortest interaction distance, confined as it is to the nuclei of atoms. The strong force is carried by a type of boson called a gluon, so called because gluons “glue” the nucleus and its constituent protons and neutrons together. It is thus the force that binds quarks together to form the protons and neutrons in the nuclei of atoms. Each atom is made up of a number of positively charged protons, and as we know, positively charged objects brought close together will repel one another by the action of the electromagnetic force. Despite this repulsion, protons must have a way of sticking together or we would have no elements heavier than hydrogen or helium, and thus no life. It is the strong force that overcomes the proton’s natural unwillingness to bond with others and explains why atomic nuclei do not fly apart. The strong nuclear force is also the force that powers the stars by crushing hydrogen atoms so tightly that their nuclei overcome their natural repulsion and fuse together, which results in the massive energy that keep the stars alive. One of the strange things about atoms is that the mass of their nucleus is slightly less than the sum of the masses of its constituent protons and neutrons (collectively called nucleons). This phenomenon exists because when protons and neutrons come together to form a nucleus, a small portion of their mass is converted to energy (recall Einstein’s famous mass/energy equivalence formula: E = MC2). Martin Rees informs us that the mass converted to energy is only .007 of the nucleon’s initial mass, but if it was .006, a proton would not bond to a neutron to make helium and the universe would consist only of hydrogen. On the other hand, if it was

53

In Lennox, J., 2009, p. 70.

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.008, there would be ready and rapid fusion, and no hydrogen would have survived.54 The phenomena of mass/energy conversion occurs because elements like to have an equal number of protons and neutrons. When they don’t, their binding energy is not strong enough to hold the nucleus together. Additional protons or neutrons upsets the binding energy and causes the atom to become unstable. An unstable atom wants to get back to a balanced state, and does so by shedding either charged particles or electromagnetic rays (radiation) depending on the nature of its instability. All elements with atomic numbers greater than 83 are radioisotopes, meaning that these elements have highly unstable nuclei and are radioactive. For instance, if you look at the periodic table you will see that the atomic number of uranium is 92, meaning that it has 92 protons and 92 electrons. The mass number of the isotope is 238, so it has 238 - 92 = 146 neutrons. The 54 excess neutrons make uranium 238 highly radioactive.

THE WEAK FORCE While gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong nuclear force hold things together, the weak nuclear force helps to make things within atoms come apart by radioactive or nuclear decay. Many physicists have trouble thinking of the weak force as a “force” because it does not push or pull, rather it transforms one thing into another, but we’ll leave that issue to the particle physicists. The decay caused by the weak force is vital for building different elements. During what is called beta decay, a neutron is replaced by a proton or a proton by a neutron, with an electron being ejected from the nucleus. This interaction between subatomic particles is what we call the weak force, and is carried by bosons called W (named from the Weak force), which has either a positive or a negative charge, and Z (so-called because it has Zero charge). The stars could not exist without this radioactive decay process. It is this force that drives the fusion of hydrogen

54

In Lemley, B., 2000, p.64.

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protons and neutrons to form deuterium (a rare isotope of hydrogen with a nucleus consisting of one proton and one neutron). The energy generated from nuclear fusion is the source of the heat we get from the sun. This vital action is extremely fine-tuned. The tiniest increase in the strength of the weak force would drive the hydrogen-to-deuterium process faster, making stars use up their energy faster than their planets could cool, and thus life could not develop on the planet we all Earth. A weaker force may have been too feeble to do much fusing at all, and all we may have in the universe is hydrogen. As weak as it is, the weak force plays a crucial role for life. The heavier elements necessary for life are formed in giant stars and spewed into space in supernovae explosions. Supernovae explosions fuel the cosmic cycle by pollinating the new stars formed from its gasses and dust containing the heavy elements. Such explosions would not occur if the weak force was not exquisitely calibrated. As Paul Davies explains: “If the weak interactions were slightly weaker, the neutrinos [neutrinos are similar to electrons, but they do not carry an electric charge] would not be able to exert enough pressure on the outer envelope of the star to cause the supernova explosion. On the other hand, if it were slightly stronger, the neutrinos would be trapped inside the core, and rendered impotent.”55 The fine-tuning of the relationships among subatomic particles is noted by Hawking and Mlodinow: “If protons were 0.2 percent heavier, they would decay into neutrons, destabilizing atoms. If the sum of the types of quark that make up a proton were changed by as little as 10 percent, there would be far fewer of the stable atom nuclei of which we are made; in fact, the summed quark masses seem roughly optimized for the existence of the largest number of stable nuclei.”56 Additional fine-tuning involves the proton-to-electron mass ratio. The mass of a neutron is slightly more than the combined masses of a proton, an electron and a neutrino. If neutrons were less massive by even the slightest amount, they could not decay without energy input. “If its mass were lower by 1%, then isolated

55 56

Davies, P. 1982, p.68. Hawking, S. and Mlodinow, L. 2010, p. 160.

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protons would decay instead of neutrons, and very few atoms heavier than lithium could form.”57 We, as well as everything else in the universe, are compounds of molecules composed of two or more elements. Elements are atoms; atoms are composed of protons .... and so on until at each lower level the solidity of matter fades away into the vibrations of little strings of energy and statistical equations. What is behind those energy vibrations that seem to be the rock bottom of natural reality? Nobel laureate Max Planck noted that these vibrations hold the atom together and concluded: “We must assume behind this force is the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.”58 Another great physicist, James Jean, has written: “ Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter... we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.”59 There are many other physicists, including Nobel winners, who think of the universe as a great thought. What does that remind you of theologically? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John1.1, NIV).

57

Borwein, J, and Bailey, D. 2014, np. In Olsen, B. 2013, p.382. 59 Jeans, J. 1930, p. 137. 58

Chapter 4

THE BIG BANG: HOW IT ALL BEGAN CREATION FROM NOTHING Ask an atheist friend to cast his eyes on the night sky and ask him where it all came from. Odds are that he will say he doesn’t know, or perhaps that it just is and always has been. He may be surprised to learn that this idea that the universe had no beginning was the accepted view of most scientists up to the 1930s. The Christian view is that the universes had a beginning. Genesis 1:1 tells us: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” God’s creation was creatio ex nihilo, which was deemed absurd by scientists since nothing (no-thing) comes from nothing. Even the great Sir Isaac Newton, a deeply religious man, accepted the past eternal universe, even though it conflicted with Genesis, because it answered the question of why gravity did not cause all the matter in the universe to collapse into itself. A universe that was beginningless, static, eternal in time, and infinite in space and matter, was accepted as simply a brute fact of existence. This was known as the “steady state” model; one that relieved scientists of getting into messy metaphysical questions about what caused the universe to exist. The steady-state universe was so entrenched that when Einstein formulated his famous general theory of relativity, he was unsettled to find that his equations predicted the expansion of the universe. He “corrected”

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his equations by adding what he termed the “cosmological constant” to represent a repulsive force to counter gravity’s attraction, and thus leaving the universe static in accordance to the scientific orthodoxy of the day. He later called this the greatest blunder of his life, because his initial equations turned out to be right—the universe had a beginning and is expanding. Socalled dark energy is now considered the repulsive force countering the attraction of gravity in an extremely finely-tuned balancing act. In the 1920s, Belgian priest and mathematician/physicist, Georges Lemaitre, took Einstein’s equations without his infamous “fudge factor,” and came up with a model of an expanding universe. Lemaitre reasoned that in a state of past eternity gravity would have long ago pulled all the matter in the universe together into one huge mass. He concluded that to avoid this crunch the universe had to be expanding, and if it was expanding, it had to do so from a finite point in time. Lemaitre also reasoned that the expansion force slightly exceeds the gravitational force, and that rewinding the cosmic tape we should arrive at a point when all matter was condensed into a single entity, which he called the “primeval atom.” Modern physicists call this the singularity; a “point” of infinite density and infinite temperature, yet zero volume. Everything that exists in the universe, every last atom of matter, every physical force, and time itself was contained in this dense concentration of energy. This singularity was not some tiny dot hanging around in space somewhere because there was no “somewhere” for it to be, nor was it hanging around to pop into existence because there was no time before it popped. Because this sounded all too weird, almost all physicists at the time dismissed Lemaitre’s reasoning as mixing theology with science. In 1929-1930, astronomer Edwin Hubble, working at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, provided evidence for Lemaitre’s expanding universe. Hubble’s careful observations of the cosmos showed that all galaxies are moving away from us and away from each other, and that the farther away they were the faster they were moving. This was determined by examining the wavelength spectrum of stars, with galaxies farther from us being the reddest (more “red-shifted”) as the light wavelength is stretched. This effect is known as the Doppler Effect and is

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seen in all physical wavelengths. We experience it most clearly with sound, but it is equally true of the color of light. We experience it every time we hear the sirens of emergency vehicles. As they come closer to us the sound waves are compressed, and as they recede, they are stretched as the siren’s pitch decreases. The inescapable conclusion from these observations was that some gigantic event caused the universe to expand with unfathomable force some 13.8 billion years ago, give or take a few million years. This creation event became known as the Big Bang. The Big Bang brought all matter/energy, space, and time into being in a split-second flash. It was not an expansion into previously unoccupied space like a balloon being blown up. Balloons are embedded in three-dimensional space with centers and edges into which they expand, but the universe has no center or edges to expand into. Rather, the Big Bang created space as it expanded, and so it was not an explosion in space but an explosion of space. Literal explosions throw matter apart in all directions which falls back randomly under the influence of gravity. They never result in matter clumping together in orderly patterns such as we see after the Big Bang formed into ordered galaxies, stars, and planets. The attractive force of gravity pulling matter back in had to be exquisitely calibrated to the “explosive” force driving it forward. How exquisite was this balance? Physicist Paul Davies informs us that if the rate of expansion from the beginning differed by more that 10-18 seconds we wouldn’t be here: “The explosive vigour of the universe is thus matched with almost unbelievable accuracy to its gravitational power. The big bang was not evidently, any old bang, but an explosion of exquisitely arranged magnitude.”60 Is this exquisite arrangement simply a coincidence, or is it the work of an infinitely creative mind? The Bible has always told us that the universe had a beginning and a cause, and that cause has to be an entity that transcends time, space, and matter/energy since these things did not exist before the creation. Science only arrived at the truth that the universe had a beginning less than 100 years ago. As astronomer George Greenstein wrote about the Big Bang: “As we survey all the evidence, the thought

60

Davies, P. 1984, p. 184.

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insistently arises that some supernatural agency, or rather Agency, must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being?”61

THE KALAM COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR THE BEGINNING OF THE UNIVERSE Astronomer Robert Jastrow’s account of how science caught up with theology on the matter of creation is interesting and poetic: “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”62 One of the theological arguments for a beginning is the Kalam cosmological argument. This argument is based on ancient Christian arguments against the Greek doctrine of an eternal universe. It relies on deductive logic such that if the major and minor premises are accepted as true, the conclusion must be accepted. The argument asserts that the universe had a beginning in finite time using the argument of cause and effect. The modern champion of the Kalam argument is philosopher William Craig, who offers it in the form of the following syllogism:63 1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. The major premise comports with self-evident everyday experience; every physical object or system, or change in that object or system, has a cause preceding the effect. Physicists now realize that past infinity is not physically realizable, although Fred Hoyle tried to fit infinity into a mathematical model to avoid the question of a beginning and a First Cause. Hoyle was an atheist who attacked Christian beliefs at every opportunity, but it was a mathematical equation—Dirac’s 61

In Strobel, L., 2004, p. 189. Jastrow, R. 1992, p. 107. 63 Craig, W. 2010. 62

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quantum mechanical equation regarding the fine balance between subatomic particles in nucleosynthesis—that led him to question his atheism. He did not embrace Christian theism, but rather a purposeful deistic universe. In 1994 he wrote: “It is because of this incredible chain of subtlety that I doubt the nineteenth century denial of a purposive universe.”64 If the universe is purposeful, it must have some intelligent entity to determine what that purpose is. 2. The universe began to exist. While the minor premise logically follows from the major premise, we have seen that the standard assumption prior to evidence of the Big Bang was that the universe was past eternal. A beginning of the universe made many scientists uncomfortable, because it suggests that something must have caused it to come into being. To be consistent with a purely naturalistic perspective, scientists would have to say that the universe somehow created itself. Of course, they realized that nothing can be the cause of itself since it would have to have existed prior to itself to do so, which is absurd. Yet the universe is here, and it had a beginning. The inimitable Stephen Hawking also noted that the notion of an infinitely old universe runs into the brick-wall of the second law of Thermodynamics. He states that there had to have been a beginning: “Otherwise, the universe would be in a state of complete disorder [maximum entropy] by now, and everything would be at the same temperature. In an infinite and everlasting universe, every line of sight would end on the surface of a star. This would mean that the night sky would have been as bright as the surface of the Sun. The only way of avoiding this problem would be if, for some reason, the stars did not shine before a certain time.”65 In other words, we know that in some finite time in the future the universe will reach maximum entropy, so if there was an infinite past, we would already be there,

64 65

In Bussey, P., 2016, p. 70. Hawking, S. Stephen Hawking website, No date.

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Anthony Walsh and if the “stars did not shine before a certain time,” it means they had a beginning. 3. The universe has a cause. It is the conclusion of the syllogism that rattled atheist scientists determined to leave metaphysical entities such as a First Cause off the discussion table. But if the universe began to exist at some finite time in the past, it had to have a cause. Either it caused itself or it was caused by a supremely intelligent and agentic being. Craig provides some descriptors of this being: “A cause of space and time must be uncaused, beginningless, timeless, spaceless, immaterial personal being endowed with freedom of will and enormous power. And that is a core concept of God.”66

EARLY SCIENTIFIC OPPOSITION TO A BEGINNING Everything that begins to exist has a cause, but most scientists in the early 20th century could not fathom a beginning of the universe. Marxist philosopher Georges Politizer vehemently denied the Big Bang because of what it implied for Marxist materialism: “The universe was not a created object. If it were, then it would have to be created instantaneously by God and brought into existence from nothing. To admit Creation, one has to admit, in the first place, the existence of a moment when the universe did not exist, and that something came out of nothingness. This is something to which science cannot accede.”67 Biologist John Maddox called the Big Bang “philosophically unacceptable” because it supported Genesis: “Creationists and those of similar persuasions seeking support for their opinions have ample justification in the doctrine of the Big Bang.”68 Robert Jastrow points out why there was such opposition to the Big Bang: “This religious faith of the scientist [in materialism as the only reality] is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which 66

In Strobel, L. 2004, p. 132. In Yahya, H. 1999, p. 19. 68 Maddox, J. 1989, p. 425. 67

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the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatized.”69 Many scientists were indeed traumatized. Even the phrase “Big Bang” is a cynical one coined by Fred Hoyle. Scientists committed to a materialist philosophy rejected the Big Bang because it echoes the “spooky” Genesis story of divine creation ex nihilo. Other scientists who railed against the idea of a universe with a finite past include astronomer Arthur Eddington, who said that, “Philosophically, the notion of a beginning is repugnant to me.” Eddington’s opinion was not animated by anti-religious motives because he was a deeply religious man who “considered that no matter how far science advanced, God’s creation remains ultimately mysterious and wonderful.”70 Astronomer Allan Sandage, considered the “Grand old man of cosmology,” initially said of the Big Bang: “It is such a strange conclusion….it cannot really be true.” Sandage later became a Christian, noting that “It was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science. It was only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence.”71 As the Big Bang became mainstream, Fred Hoyle opined that: “The reason why scientists like the ‘big bang’ is because they are overshadowed by the Book of Genesis. It is deep within the psyche of most scientists to believe in the first page of Genesis.”72 Indeed, Nobel Prize winning physicist Arno Penzias has stated: “The best data we have (concerning the big bang) are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.”73 However, it is more likely that the Big Bang influenced more scientists to accept Genesis than the other way around. Jastrow sees the Genesis account of the begining and the Big Bang as the same thing described in two different 69

Jastrow, R., 1981, p. 19. Appolloni, S., 2011, p. 29. 71 In Strobel, L., 2004, p. 84. 72 In Wallace, P. 2016, p. 101. 73 In Schaefer, H., 2003, p. 49. 70

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languages: “Now we see how the astronomical evidence supports the Biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and Biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.”74

THE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND RADIATION Hubble’s observations of an expanding universe did not conclusively convince all scientists to accept the Big Bang. The discovery of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation was additional evidence that drove remaining naysayers into the camp. The CMB was discovered accidentally in 1964 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, two scientists working at Bell laboratories in New Jersey who were working to detect and measure radio waves. To do this they had to eliminate all interference from their receiver, such as radar or broadcasting signals. After weeks of doing everything possible to eliminate interference, they found an annoying hiss that it was coming from every direction of the sky with equal strength. Penzias and Wilson finally concluded that radiation was coming from outside our own galaxy, but they could not explain it. The CMB had been predicted since the 1940s as the radiation remnant of the Big Bang. It was predicted that the radiation would be found to be microwaves because of a massive redshift all the way back to about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The CMB was created at a time in the universe’s history called the Recombination Era when the universe had cooled to about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This was cool enough for electrons and protons to “recombine” into hydrogen atoms and to release photons as the radiation we call the CMB. Because the radiation was coming from everywhere at once, it was realized that, “Not only was it a real signal, it was evidence for the big bang itself.”75 According to scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the 74 75

Jastrow, R., 1981, p. 19. Trefil, J. and Hazen, R., 2007, p. 318.

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fact that CMB radiation is detected everywhere we look and has a uniform temperature (2.725° above absolute zero Kelvin, or -454.765 Fahrenheit) to better than one part in a thousand “is one compelling reason to interpret the radiation as remnant heat from the Big Bang; it would be very difficult to imagine a local source of radiation that was this uniform. In fact, many scientists have tried to devise alternative explanations for the source of this radiation, but none have succeeded.”76 You have witnessed the CMB yourself. The hissing and “snow” you see on your out-of-tune television is the microwave echo of creation.

THE ABUNDANCE OF LIGHT ELEMENTS The third piece of evidence for the Big Bang is the abundance of light elements in the universe. Scientists trace the history of the universe all the way back to “Planck time,” which is an astounding 10-43 seconds after the Big Bang. At this time, the fundamental forces of nature—gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, and weak nuclear force—were one. At the beginning the universe was so hot (about 80 million trillion, trillion, degrees Fahrenheit) that no atoms could form. At 10-5 seconds, quarks, the first “matter,” appeared. At first, quarks and antiquarks zipped around in unbound states. They then suddenly formed themselves into threes to form protons and neutrons with electrical charges set precisely to the level required to capture the electrons needed to form atoms of hydrogen and helium, the light elements. Protons and neutrons have mirror images of themselves called antimatter with the same mass. Matter has a negatively charged electron and antimatter has a positively charged positron. As matter and antimatter particles whizzed around in the hellish maelstrom, they annihilated each other in a flash of radiation, with new particles of both kinds spontaneously arising from that same radiation. The laws of physics tell us that we should have expected equal amounts of matter and antimatter, but because there was about one more matter

76

National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Tests of Big Bang, nd.

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particle than antimatter particles in every billion particles, matter prevailed, and here we are. At about three minutes (a huge time jump on this scale), protons and neutrons were able to form stable nuclei. It was hundreds of thousands of years later in the Recombination Era that the temperature was cool enough that an electron could attach itself to a proton and neutron to form hydrogen and helium atoms. The abundance of the light elements found today is consistent with their creation in Big Bang nucleosynthesis. The abundance of deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen) is particularly important because it is much more abundant than could have been produced by stellar nucleosynthesis. Stars destroy deuterium, which strongly suggests its synthesis in Big Bang nucleosynthesis. The 75/23 hydrogen to helium ratio is taken to be the ratio which existed at the time when the deuteron, a particle consisting of a proton and a neutron, which as an atom is deuterium, became stable, thus halting the decay of free neutrons with the expansion and cooling of the universe.77 Heavier elements had to wait for the formation of stars from hydrogen and helium gases because they require the extreme temperatures and pressures found within stars and are cooked up in the process of stellar nucleosynthesis. This process produces elements up to iron; all elements heavier than iron are formed in the massive energy released by supernovae explosions in the process of supernova nucleosynthesis. Cosmologists call the time before the formation of hydrogen atoms the cosmological “dark ages” because there was literally no light in the universe. Stars and galaxies provide the universe with light, but they had not yet formed, and thus there was no source of visible light. The universe consisted of a dense soup of neutral hydrogen and helium proto-atoms (no electrons). Plenty of photons existed, and light is composed of photons, but at this point in the early universe they ricocheted off free electrons. Photons interact strongly with charged matter, and only travel a short distance before being scattered, much as a dense fog scatters the light from a car’s headlights. When protons and neutrons were finally able to capture

77

Bromm, V., and Larson, R., 2004.

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electrons to form atoms, photons were freed to travel through space, leaving behind the CMB radiation. With this decoupling of matter and radiation we get light, and thus astronomers are able to see back into the universe to about 380,000 years after the Big Bang.78 Figure 4.1 from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the timeline for the expansion of space.

Figure 4.1. The timeline for the expansion of space from the Big Bang.

GETTING THE SHOW ON THE ROAD WITH NUMBERS BEYOND ASTRONOMICAL Physicists present us with some extremely unlikely events that some expect us to believe are mere coincidences. When the probabilities of these events occurring are calculated, the results are literally astronomical. We might ask what is the point at which something highly improbable becomes impossible? Mathematician William Dembski has computed the absolute

78

Ibid.

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limit of probability (the probability boundary) using three estimates from physics: (A) the estimated number of atoms in the known universe (1080), (B) Planck time (1045), and (C) the number of seconds since the Big Bang (1025) at the time of his calculations. Planck time sets a limit on the rate at which the properties of any of the elementary particles can transition from one state to another. Dembski concludes: “If we now assume that any specification of an event within the known physical universe requires at least one elementary particle to specify it and that such specifications cannot be generated any faster than the Planck time, then these cosmological constraints imply that the total number of specified events throughout cosmic history cannot exceed 1080 x 1045 x 1025 = 10150.”79 This number completely exhausts all probability resources since he includes the product of all known matter in the universe, all seconds since the universe began, and the fastest possible time in which an event can occur. The most remarkable fine-tuning of all is getting the universe started in the first place, and that involves an improbability well beyond Dempski’s probability boundary. From a theological point of view, God simply spoke the universe into existence: “In the beginning was the Word.” From a scientific point of view, physicists seem to have found the fingerprints of God’s creation in the “Creator’s aim” in phase-space. Phase-space is dynamic multidimensional space in which all possible coordinates are represented, with each coordinate specifying the possible state of a physical system. When discussing the beginning of the universe we are talking about the ratio of the phase-space volume corresponding to the macroscopic state of the universe as it is today (immense beyond comprehension) to the phase space volume corresponding to the microscopic state of the universe (unimaginably small) at the time of the Big Bang. The issue of the state of the universe at the Big Bang is intimately connected to the second law of thermodynamics and entropy, which is the really big brother of Murphy’s Law. Recall that entropy is the degree of thermodynamic disorder, which in a closed system is always increasing.

79

Dembski, W. 2004, pp. 84-85.

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Given this, there had to be an immense degree of order at the Big Bang because a universe capable of producing intelligent life must begin with the lowest possible degree of entropy—the possibility of a high entropy universe is immeasurably greater. Nobel laureate physicist Sir Roger Penrose asks us to imagine all the possible ways that the universe might have started off in phase-space and the probability that the Creator could hit the exact point to create a life-producing universe. He calculated the probability of the initial entropy conditions of the Big Bang by calculating the maximum entropy of the universe (thermodynamic equilibrium). This figure is an estimate of the total phase-space volume available to the Creator, and is the logarithm of the total phase-space volume of all possible beginnings of the universe, or 10123. Because logarithms and exponents are inverse functions, the total phase-space volume is 1010 (123). Penrose asks: “How big was the original phase-space volume W [W = original phasespace volume] that the Creator had to aim for in order to provide a universe compatible with the second law of thermodynamics and with what we now observe?” He then remarks on the two ways to estimate this figure and writes: “Either way, the ratio of V [total phase-space volume available] to W will be, closely V/W = 1010 (123).”80 Penrose states that this huge number could not be written down if we had every elementary particle in the universe to write a zero on. To put it another way, the probability is vastly smaller than the probability of one person winning the Powerball jackpot every day for the 13.8 billion years the universe has existed, with everyone on Earth buying a ticket. Penrose’s calculations have presented problems for physicists who think only in terms of materialism. For instance, in the Journal of High Energy Physics, three eminent Stanford University physicists addressed the following issue: “The question then is whether the origin of the universe can be a naturally occurring fluctuation, or must it be due to an external agent which starts the system out in a specific low entropy state?”81 They note that it is an undisputed fact that the universe only makes sense if it began in a state of exceptionally low entropy, and added: “there 80 81

Penrose, R., 2016, pp. 445-446. Dyson, L., Kleban, M., and Susskind, L., 2002. p. 3.

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is no universally accepted explanation of how the universe got into such a special state. In this paper we would like to sharpen the question by making two assumptions which we feel are well motivated from observation and recent theory. Far from providing a solution to the problem, we will be led to a disturbing crisis.” The “disturbing crisis” the authors mention it is nothing less than forcing cosmologists to think the unthinkable: “Another possibility is an unknown agent intervened in the evolution, and for reasons of its own restarted the universe in the state of low entropy characterizing inflation.”82 There is no reason outside of God himself for His creative acts. God created a universe susceptible to scientific analysis so that His creatures can glimpse his awesome power. He invested all material things with their own causal power so that they may become intelligible to us.

THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE UNIVERSE AND THE COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT Despite its “disturbing” improbability, the universe was set in motion. After the period of recombination, the universe was a homogeneous mass of matter and energy of immense density. For matter to coalesce into galaxies there must be some contrast or “roughness” in the smooth homogeneity of the distribution of matter to enable it to collapse under the pull of gravity. The formation of galaxies thus depends crucially on matter density variation from one location to another, but this variation must be very small. We can actually see these density perturbations in the images supplied by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, a mission charged with measuring temperature differences in the cosmic microwave background across the visible universe. “Anisotropy” refers to small temperature fluctuations in the background radiation, and is the opposite of isotropy, or universal homogeneity. Scientists note that anisotropy is fine-tuned to about one part in 100,000. If it had been “significantly

82

Ibid, p.1.

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smaller, the early universe would have been too smooth for stars and galaxies to have formed” … and “galaxies would have been denser, resulting in numerous stellar collisions, so that stable, long-lived stars with planetary systems would have been very rare.”83 In other words, the contrast and density of matter had to be just right from the very instant of the Big Bang. There is a critical value (pcrit) of energy density that prevents gravity from overcoming the force of expansion and pulling all matter into a big crunch. The value of p has to be microscopically close to pcrit to avoid this, and in fact it had to vary by less than one part in 1060 from the very beginning of creation. Paul Davies expresses his amazement of this finetuning: “We know of no reason why p is not a purely arbitrary number...to choose p so close to pcrit, fine-tuned to such stunning accuracy, is surely one of the great mysteries of cosmology.”84 NASA scientists tell us that: “The value of the critical density is very small: it corresponds to roughly 6 hydrogen atoms per cubic meter [that’s just over 35 cubic feet], an astonishingly good vacuum by terrestrial standards!”85 To put 1060 in perspective, estimates of the number of grains of sand on Earth hover around 1022. The density of matter in the universe affects the geometry of spacetime, with the critical value noted by Davies above to fit the requirement for a flat universe. Only in a flat universe is the energy of matter balanced by the energy of the gravity the mass creates. But what do we mean by a flat universe; don’t we live in a 3D world with up, down, and sideways? When physicists say the universe is flat, they mean that all their cosmological data suggests that the universe is flat, meaning that the geometry of the universe has no curvature. That is, overall, the geometry of the universe is such that parallel lines will never cross, the angles in a triangle will always add up to 180 degrees. There is a lot of subtlety in the language and lots of insane mathematics used to describe this geometry which I confess I do not understand. Suffice to say that the geometry of the 83

Bailey, D. 2018. Davies, P. 1982, p. 90. 85 National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2019. 84

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universe is determined by its relative density, and that the cosmic microwave background and the distribution of galaxies comprise the measuring rods. In a spherical universe with greater than critical density, Euclidean geometry breaks down; the three angles of a triangle no longer equal 180 degrees, and lines that start out parallel will eventually meet. A universe with such density will curve space-time in on itself and gravity will collapse it in a “big crunch.” This was the basis for the now discredited oscillating universe in which the universe was said to undergo endless cycles of big bangs and big crunches. In a saddle-shaped (hyperbolic) universe there is insufficient mass to cause the expansion of the universe to stop and it will expand forever. Our flat universe will also expand forever, but with the rate of expansion gradually approaching zero after an almost infinite amount of time. As we have seen, in the early universe matter was clumped closer together, and therefore there was greater mass density straining against gravity’s grip. The repulsive force of the Big Bang was enough to balance this out for a long time, but this has to dissipate eventually, thus requiring another force to prevent a “big crunch.” The Supernova Cosmology Project began in 1998 expecting to measure the deceleration of the universe but found that it was accelerating.86 Gravity needed to dominate during the period of matter accretion into galaxies, stars, and planets, but for some reason known only to God, dark energy now rules the roost. Einstein’s cosmological constant is this dark energy built into the vacuum of space is the force keeping the universe expanding. There is much about the amazing precision of the cosmological constant that it puzzles physicists. Alejandro Jenkins and Gilad Perez remark that the “most serious fine-tuning problem in theoretical physics: the smallness of the ‘cosmological constant,’ thanks to which our universe neither recollapsed into nothingness a fraction of a second after the big bang, nor was ripped part by an exponentially accelerating expansion.”87 Physicists Livio and Rees argue that anthropic reasoning is becoming seriously discussed in physics and may have predictive power for sorting 86 87

Perlmutter, S., Aldering, G., Goldhaber, G., et al., 1999. Jenkins, A., & Perez, G. 2010, p. 44.

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out certain cosmological phenomena, such as the mystery of the cosmological constant. They ask: “Why is the force so small? If there was an inflationary era with a large cosmic repulsion, how could that force have been switched off (or somehow have been neutralized) with such amazing precision? In our present universe, Λ [Λ, “lambda,” the symbol for the cosmological constant] is lower by a factor of about 10120 than the value that seems natural to theorists.”88 The “switching off” or “neutralization” of repulsion they refer to must be unbelievably exquisitely fine-tuned to 120 decimal places from the very beginning of the universe. Livio and Rees go on to note that: “If Λ were larger, then the acceleration would have overwhelmed gravity before galaxies had a chance to form.”89 Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg’s understanding of the razor’s edge balance between dark energy and gravity lead him to exclaim that: “This is the one fine-tuning that seems to be extreme, far beyond what you could imagine just having to accept as a mere accident.”90 I believe that no one in his right mind would talk about “accidents” when contemplating such mind-scrambling probabilities.

88

Livio, M., & Rees, M. 2005, p. 1022. Ibid, p 1022. 90 In Folger, 2008. 89

Chapter 5

WE LIVE IN THE BEST ZIP CODE IN THE UNIVERSE THE MILKY WAY Suppose you are a cosmic architect commissioned to build the best planet possible in the best neighborhood in the universe. You have billions of galaxies to choose from in the vastness of space and billions of stars in that galaxy for it to orbit around. You could find no better galaxy than the Milky Way galaxy for a variety of reasons. The best reason is that it is in the top one or two percent of galaxies massive enough to have sufficient building material to construct your planet. Large mass means that it has gravity strong enough to attract sufficient galactic gases (primarily hydrogen) to construct the heavier elements we need for life, such as carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus. Hydrogen is transformed in the stars into these building blocks of life via nuclear fusion. As we saw when we discussed carbon, the immense heat and pressure in a star’s core causes fusion reactions. The primeval fusion is two light hydrogen nuclei merging to form a single heavier helium nucleus. The resulting helium nucleus mass is less than the sum of the mass of the two nuclei that made it. That mass is lost in the form of energy (again, because of the equivalence of mass and energy). To put this in perspective, the Sun consumes 600 million tons of

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hydrogen and turns it into 596 million tons of helium every second, the four million tons of mass lost is the energy produced.91 Older stars have burned long enough to produce many of the heavier elements, but the heavier the element the less fusion energy produced. The most massive stars (about eight times larger than our Sun) fuse elements up to iron, at which point the energy required to fuse it is more than the energy the star gets back. With no energy being released, the star’s core quickly collapses under the tremendous crush of gravity and the star goes supernova and spews out its elements into space. The elements beyond iron are formed by the mighty heat energy of supernovae explosions. When a star is about to go supernova, the heat of the core increases so quickly that iron is smashed apart by photons into helium, which, in turn, is shattered into protons and neutrons. The mighty energy released by supernovae releases a superabundance of free nucleons cascading from the collapsing core that drive massive fusion reactions that forge the remaining elements found on Earth.92 We live in a privileged part of the universe in a spiral galaxy called the Milky Way. It is widely believed that for a number of reasons only a spiral galaxy such as ours is capable of sustaining intelligent life; elliptical and irregular galaxies cannot. Elliptical galaxies are spherical or egg-shaped and contain mostly ancient stars with limited resources for building planets. Star formation ceases too early in elliptical galaxies to produce sufficient amounts of the heavy elements, and the stars they contain are too crowded to sustain stable planetary orbits. The situation is even worse in irregular galaxies, so-called because they come in a variety of shapes. Irregular galaxies contain no spiral arms or nuclear bulges, and their stars have chaotic orbits which takes them periodically into the vicinity of planets, disrupting their orbits and bathing them in deadly radiation. But our own Milky Way has many unsavory neighborhoods containing densely packed collections of millions of ancient stars revolving around the galactic core called globular clusters. Earth-like planets cannot exist in globular clusters because their ancient stars are poor in the heavier 91 92

Star Date Online, 2020. Cassé, M. 2003.

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elements necessary to build them. The gravitational pull of the myriad of stars results in highly elliptical orbits of such planets that either plunge them into each other or into extremes of heat and cold as they move closer or farther from their stars.93

Figure 5.1. Habitable zones around different types of stars.

THE GALACTIC HABITABLE ZONE The Milky Way galaxy is about 180,000 light years across. Our zone of the galaxy is about 27,000 light years from its center, and tens of thousands of light-years away from the outer rim of the galaxy’s spiral arm. Remember, a light year is the distance light travels in a year at 186,282 miles per second, so one light year is equal to 5,878,625,370,000 miles. Multiply that by 27,000 and you will get a very large number. Our solar system orbits the galaxy about once every 200 to 250 million years traveling at about 500,000 miles an hour.

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Ross, H. 2016.

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Our neighborhood in the galaxy is in what is known as the Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ). The minimal requirement for calling a planet habitable is that it must have liquid water, meaning that the planet is not too hot or too cold. Figure 5.1 presents habitable zones around three different star types: M dwarfs, K dwarfs, and G main-sequence stars. Observe the narrowness of M and K stars’ habitable zones and how much x-ray irradiance (how much a planet is exposed to radiation) there is. Some astronomers see K-star systems as the “sweet spot” for life simply because K dwarfs will burn four times longer than G-stars (longer time to kick-start life) while not subject to the massive irradiation of M-stars. However, their 25x (it could even be 100x) greater irradiation planets would be exposed to precludes life as we know it.94 The GHZ is so-called because it has both the availability of material to build a habitable planet and is secluded from cosmic threats. The center of the galaxy is a very dangerous place full of exploding supernovae and a gigantic black hole, but the GHZ band is far enough from the center to avoid the effects of deadly radiation of exploding stars or the possibility of drifting too close to the black hole and getting sucked in. On the other hand, our planet is close enough to benefit from the heavy elements that supernovae explosions spew out into space. If it were any further out on the fringes of the spiral arms of the galaxy, there would not be enough heavy elements to build Earth-like planets and we would be exposed to hazardous giant gas clouds the spiral arms often visit. Our solar system exists as part of the galactic spiral called the Orion Arm located between two other spiral arms—Sagittarius and Perseus. Stars in the Orion Arm orbit around the galactic center close to the corotation circle. Being close, but not too close, to the corotation circle means that we are moving around the galactic center at the same speed as the spiral arms. Stars closer to the center of the galaxy move faster, and stars farther away move slower. Both are in danger of crossing the spiral arms, which disrupts planetary orbits. Moving at identical speeds means that our Sun will remain between the other two spiral arms and not wander into them. Stars

94

National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2020.

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actually at (not near, but at) the corotation circle will inevitably visit spiral arms and get ripped apart. Most other solar systems do not evidence our orbital pattern, and very few of our neighbors enjoy the same level of safety. Stars at the fringes of spiral arms are too far from the galaxy’s “industrial zone” to benefit from supernovae heavy elements necessary for planet formation. For a variety of reasons, only a spiral galaxy can support an Earth-like planet, but not any spiral galaxy will do either. Such a galaxy can be neither too big nor too small. Galaxies more massive than the Milky Way spawn massive back holes with enough mass to ignite jets of deadly radiation, and their immense gravitation cause chaotic mergers with many smaller galaxies. Both too large and too small galaxies run into the problem of the corotation radius. In larger galaxies the corotation is far too long for the heavier elements to reach any planets that may otherwise have potential for advanced life. The problem for smaller galaxies is that the co-rotation radius is too short for life because planets will be too close to the galactic core’s deadly radiation. As Gonzales, Brownlee, and Ward so aptly put it: “We live in prime real estate.”95

THE CIRCUMSTELLAR HABITABLE ZONE If the solar system is in a prime real estate area, so is Earth’s location within it. We live in the Circumstellar Habitable Zone (CHZ). The CHZ is a band of space around the Sun that is hospitable to life because planets residing there can potentially hold water. The CHZ band is measured in astronomical units (AUs). One AU equals the distance between the Earth and the Sun, or 92,955,807 miles = 1.0 AU. Venus (barely) and Mars (at the far end) also lie within the CHZ, but neither has surface water. The Earth’s orbit is very special in terms of its orbital eccentricity— the degree to which it departs from circularity. The eccentricity value of orbits ranges from zero (perfectly circular orbit around the Sun at constant

95

Gonzales, G., Brownlee, D. and Ward, P., 2001, p. 62.

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speed) to 1. Our eccentricity value is a mere 0.0167, which makes our weather patterns stable. The closer a planet gets to an eccentricity of 1, its orbit becomes increasingly longer and will eventually escape the parent body’s gravity and fly into deep space. This is so because all bodies of matter in space want to keep moving forward in a straight line, not in circles. Without the Sun pulling us toward it, the Earth would zoom away into the cold depths of space. Orbits are the result of this tug-of-war between planets and their parent body. The parent body’s gravity wants to pull an orbiting body in, but the body wants to move straight ahead. Orbits are thus the result of a precise balance between the forward motion of a body in space and the pull of gravity on it from another body in space. If we were orbiting much closer to the Sun we may be caught in a tidal lock. Tidal locking means that a body’s rotational period equals its orbital period around its parent body. This occurs because the gravitational pull of a parent body slows rotation until one side always faces the parent body and the other always faces away. Because magnetism depends on motion, the reduction of orbital speed will eventually shut down any magnetic shield a planet may have had. Mercury is tidally locked to the Sun, and the Moon is tidally locked to the Earth. This results in an extremely hot surface on the side of a planet facing its star, and extreme cold on the side facing away; both being hostile to complex life forms. This is a major problem for planets within the habitable zones of stars with low luminosity, such as M and K dwarfs, because they have to hug their stars more closely to capture its heat, but in doing so that eventually become tidally locked. Unlike most planets, the Earth’s orbit around the Sun describes an almost perfect circle, keeping it in the CHZ permanently. Venus’s orbit is more circular than the Earth’s, but it is close to being tidally locked; it has such a slow rotation that its day of 243 Earth days is actually longer than its year of 225 Earth days. That is, it rotates on its axis slower than it orbits the Sun. Earth’s 24-hour rotation keeps it from being too long in the light and heat of the day or in the dark and cold of the night.

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THE SUN Our Sun has all the necessary characteristics to make complex life possible. Unlike about 85% of other stars, the Sun is solitary. The other 85% are locked with two or more other stars, which results in wild gravitational pulls that make stable planetary orbits impossible. The Sun is a relatively young star, forming only about 4.6 billion years ago. It formed from an immense cloud of dust and gas called a nebular cloud composed mostly of hydrogen. At some point, the gas cloud began to spiral around its center until gravity overcame the gas pressure and fused hydrogen into helium to ignite our Sun into the flaming ball of plasma it is today. The cloud’s material not used for the Sun coalesced into the planets, moons, and other such objects in the solar system. According to NASA, the Sun’s diameter is 864,400 miles, which is about 109 times the diameter of Earth and the Sun is 333,000 more massive than Earth. It has a core temperature of about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit, and it has a surface temperature about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It is composed mostly of hydrogen (about 76%) and helium (about 22%), with traces of other elements such as oxygen and carbon. The Sun’s energy makes life possible by sending us its precious photons. When atoms are smashed together in the Sun’s core, energy is released in the form of photons. Sunlight is used as energy by plant life to synthesize foods from carbon dioxide and water in the process of photosynthesis. We are thus eating recycled sunlight when we eat plants, or eat the meat of animals that live on plants. You probably know that the photons bathing your body on the beach took just over eight minutes to travel the 92,955,807 miles from the surface of the Sun. So, how long did it take them to travel the 432,168.96 miles from the Sun’s core to its surface. You might have done the math and come up with about 2.3 seconds, but you would be way. This is because the photons released when hydrogen nuclei fuse to form helium are deadly gamma rays, and we don’t want them hitting us. The gamma ray emitted

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from the fusion may take thousands of years to leave the core because the core is incredibly dense (only 2% of the Sun’s volume but 40% of its mass).97 Photons move only a microscopic distance before they are absorbed by protons and then re-emitted. Once out of the core, it moves into what’s called the radiative zone. In this super-dense zone (though much less dense than the core), the photons bounce around wildly as they hit protons and are re-emitted—one step forward, three to the left, one step backwards, two to the right, and so on, like a drunken sailor. Depending on the average number of collisions the photon has on its way out, and this depends on the average matter density it encounters, this process can take anywhere from 10,000 to 200,000 years. After trillions of collisions, the gamma rays lose energy and become less energetic x-rays and UV rays. Once these photons escape the radiative zone, they enter the coolers and much less dense convective zone. Here, they are carried toward the surface by hot gas, like bubbles in a pan of boiling water. This journey takes only a few days and they can then zip off to Earth as infrared radiation (about 50%; this provides heat) visible light (about 42%) and UV rays (about 8%). Stars are categorized according to their mass and luminosity. Luminosity is a star’s intrinsic brightness and energy output, which depends on its mass and temperature, and the Sun’s brightness and energy are “just right” for life. NASA scientists tell us that the Sun’s luminosity is highly stable, varying by only one-tenth of a percent. This is very important because more variety would lead to wild climate changes on Earth. Many stars frequently undergo large increases in luminosity, and thus release immense additional heat energy radiating to any bodies orbiting them. We are fortunate that our star is as massive as it is, but it cannot be so massive that it burns out before the Earth acquires water and manufactures an atmosphere. At the other end of the spectrum, low mass stars are more likely to tidally lock any planets it may have, and their unstable luminosity would sterilize life on an Earth-like planet due to regular large and deadly stellar flares.98 We are indeed blessed by the Sun’s

97 98

Cassé, M. 2003. Tarter, J., Backus, P., Mancinelli, R., et al., 2007.

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anomalous properties—its mass, luminosity, and stability—all of which make Earth’s habitability possible. The Sun sends us so much energy that much of it has to be returned to space to keep Earth from overheating. In fact, the Earth sends a little more heat out into space that it receives because the Earth generates its own heat from radioactive decay deep inside it. About a third of the Sun’s energy is reflected by clouds, water, and snow. What is not reflected is absorbed and used. “How is this balance maintained?” asks a University of California, Davis, online astronomy course on the electromagnetic spectrum, and replies that “Earth warms up to exactly the temperature that is necessary to re-radiate exactly the right amount of energy” [my emphasis].99 Wind is another source of energy for which the Sun is ultimately responsible. Wind is the movement of atmospheric gases around the planet caused by the Sun’s heat. Heat warms the land and bodies of water at different rates because land and water absorb or reflect sunlight differently. This uneven heating results in changes in the atmosphere as hot air rises and cool air moves in to replace it. The flow directly moves around the high/low pressure systems because of the rotation of the Earth. Although high winds can cause a lot of damage, wind plays a vital role in keeping the air, land, and sea fresh. It drives the ocean currents and aids plant life to disperse their seeds, spores, and pollen. Wind-driven turbines are also playing an increasing role in providing us with clean and renewable energy.

THE MOON Our Moon is an anomalously large moon in comparison to its parent planet at almost one-third the size of the Earth. But it is not just this ratio that is odd; a recent in-depth analysis of our Moon and moons found orbiting other planets revealed that a moon such as ours may be extremely rare throughout the known universe.100 It is generally accepted that the 99

University of California, Davis (nd). Vieru, T. 2011.

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Moon was formed about 4.5 billion years ago by a collision at an oblique angle of a Mars-size object with the embryonic Earth. This “big whack,” as astronomers have dubbed it, threw off a massive amount of material that eventually coalesced to the bright body in the night sky. The gravitational pull of the newly formed moon slowed the Earth’s rotation, slowly lengthening our day from about 5 or 6 hours to the current 24 hours. Rotation causes wind, and a rotational period of 5 or 6 hours would have meant constant cyclonic winds raging around the Earth. The Earth’s spin axis (the degree to which it tilts toward or away from the Sun) varies little from its present angle of 23.5 degrees, but without the Moon’s gravity it would vary chaotically. If the tilt of the Earth was around 60 degrees it would mean that all of the Northern hemisphere would lean toward the scorching heat of the Sun and perpetual summer light for half of the year and the Southern hemisphere in darkness and freezing cold in a six-month winter. Complex life could not exist under those conditions. On the other hand, a tilt of much less than the 23.5 degrees would prevent the distribution of wind patterns and hence the distribution of rain around the world. As it is, our stable tilt gives us our predictable four seasons and wind patterns. Tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the Moon which causes a slight bulge in the Earth and oceans that moves the oceans about. Tides help to clean and oxygenate the oceans, and bring to them vital nutrients from erosion of the earth. The tides currents mix arctic water not able to absorb much solar energy with warmer water from regions that can, which balances planetary temperatures and making for a more predictable and habitable climate. Physicist Joseph Spradley provides us with some insight into the importance of the Moon for life on Earth and its theistic implications. He notes that the uniqueness of the Earth-Moon system violates the notion that life should be commonplace in the universe. “For Christians, it supports the belief that God can work through natural and seemingly random processes to achieve his purposes in creation. It

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encourages a new appreciation for the special gift of life and an environment suitable for its survival.”101

JUPITER, SATURN, AND MARS Few people are aware of the Moon’s vital contribution to life on Earth, even fewer of the role of Jupiter. It has long been suggested that Jupiter is both a maker and destroyer of planets. Jupiter is a gas giant 10 times larger than the Earth and 300 times its mass (mass refers to the amount of matter contained in an object; size refers to its dimensions). A number of astrophysicists have shown than our solar system, for a variety of reasons, is an “odd-ball” system. The most common mode of planetary formation generates planets with much greater masses than the Earth, and these are tightly packed closely around their parent star with short orbital periods. Jupiter was the first planet to form and was able to dominate the planetbuilding process thereafter. Where the rocky planets are today, there were nascent planets destined to be bigger and gassier (like Jupiter and Saturn) than the Earth and uninhabitable. This model of planet formation is known as the “Grand Tack,” which posits that Jupiter migrated in and then back out of the inner solar system early in its history.102 The gravitational interactions during this long journey caused young planets to crash into each other with the debris either falling into the Sun or leaving the remnants to form the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter. Jupiter itself would have fallen into the Sun if it maintained its inner trajectory, but the formation of Saturn caused a gravitational interaction and fixed both their current orbits. This explains our “oddball” solar system and how these catastrophic events caused the debris to coalesce into the small rocky planets, including Earth. Jupiter and Saturn (indirectly as the savior of Jupiter), have contributed to the Earth’s formation and habitability. Some of the debris (asteroids) of the planets destroyed by Jupiter was flung off into space when it came too close to 101 102

Spradley, J., 2010, p. 273. Batygin, K., & Laughlin, G., 2015.

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Jupiter’s orbit. Millions of these asteroids and meteorites pummeled the early Earth over a period of about 400 thousand years in what is known as “the period of heavy bombardment,” seeding it with vital life-essential elements. We needed an asteroid belt neither too large nor too small. A much smaller belt would have failed to bring the essential chemicals and minerals to us; a larger one may have pummeled us too much. Although there are far fewer asteroids today, we need protection from them, and the respective masses of Mars and Jupiter, the two planets marking the boundary of the belt, are most helpful in this regard. If Mars was more massive, as all models of planetary formation say that it should be, its gravity would sling more of these things our way but instead takes a number of hits for us. Jupiter’s powerful gravity functions as a giant vacuum cleaner sucking up asteroids that have been bumped out of orbit. Jupiter’s clean-up role was in evidence when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted it in 1994; had its gravity not sucked up the comet, it may have entered our neighborhood. The solar system’s bully has become the Earth’s bodyguard.

DOWN TO EARTH: OUR “JUST RIGHT” MASS AND ATMOSPHERE We now come to our own special place in the cosmos which Carl Sagan famously dubbed the “pale blue dot” upon viewing pictures of Earth sent from the Voyager 1 probe from 3.6 billion miles away. Earth is often referred to as the “Goldilocks” planet because it seems to be the only place in the universe that is “just right” for intelligent life that can plumb the depths of its own existence. Our prize patch of cosmic real estate was formed from the left-over materials from the creation of the Sun. Solar winds blew away most of the lighter elements (hydrogen and helium) from our planet, leaving behind the heavier elements that are needed. If Earth had been further away from the Sun, the solar winds would have been too weak to have this effect, and the light elements would have coalesced into gas giants such as Jupiter and Saturn. We were thus in the right place at

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the right time to capture an atmosphere, an ocean, and a landmass, the minimum requirements for life. How likely is this a “happy accident?” Gonzales and Richards calculated that the probability of getting an Earthlike planet by chance far exceeds the probability boundary: “even in a universe with 1011 stars per galaxy and 1011 galaxies, totaling 1122 available attempts, the chances of getting one such system would still be one chance in 10158”103 If a planet is to be habitable its mass must not be too small or too large. Of the thousands of exoplanets discovered so far, just about all are more massive than the Earth. A planet discovered in 2009 is in the habitable zone of its solar system, but it is 6.55 times Earth’s mass.104 Such a huge mass means greater gravity, which prevents the formation of mountains and continents. This planet has a mostly hydrogen/helium atmosphere, and its mass is 50% water. By way of contrast, Earth’s water mass has only 0.06%, thus allowing continental land masses to form, and it has very little hydrogen and helium gas. However, a planet must have sufficient mass to hold an atmosphere and greenhouse gases to allow for surface face water and for its warming, and the right surface pressure and temperature must stay in the same range for billions of years to prevent atmospheric escape into space, as happened on Mars. Gravity must be sufficiently high to prevent this, but it can’t be too high that the planet could not rid itself of the thick hydrogen-rich atmosphere that existed on the early planet. On occasion, the Sun sends eruptions of energy towards Earth called solar flares, which include life-inhibiting x-rays, gamma-rays, and UV radiation. Our first line of defense against this onslaught is the magnetic shield that surrounds the Earth and extends about 370,000 miles out into space. Some of this radiation penetrates the shield, but is channeled toward the poles and produce the beautiful auroras. Such a shield is most important in a planet’s early life when its host star is more excitable and throws more of its material out into space and strips planets of their atmosphere, as the Sun did to Mars. This Magnetic field is generated by a molten iron core at the center of the Earth. This solid inner core is two-thirds of the size of the 103 104

Gonzales, G. and Richards, J., 2004, p. 327. Charbonneau, D. et al., 2009.

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Moon and is as hot as the Sun’s surface. The pressure of gravity—which is really crushing at close to 4,000 miles below the Earth’s surface— prevents it from becoming liquid, but its surrounding outer 1,243-mile outer core of iron, nickel, and some other metals is kept fluid because of lower gravitational pressure there. Because the Earth is spinning, it causes what is known as the Coriolis force. This force causes swirling whirlpools of liquid iron deep within the Earth, generating electric currents, which in turn produce the magnetic fields. Because of the spiraling, the different shields align and combine to produce the magnetic shield.105 The Earth’s atmosphere also provides protection from deadly solar radiation in the form of the ozone layer, which is concentrated in a layer in the stratosphere, about 10 to 20 miles above the Earth’s surface. Ozone (or trioxygen) is formed when UV rays split oxygen atoms and three become covalently bonded (bonded by sharing their electrons). UV radiation thus creates the very ozone that scatters other UV rays in a continuing cycle. The amount of ozone in the atmosphere has to be finely tuned. Too much ozone would hinder respiration for large creatures such as ourselves and reduce crop yields; too little would lead to increased UV radiation to reach the Earth and which would also damage crops and lead to more skin cancer, impaired immune systems, and other health risks. Ozone deflects about 97% of UV rays, which is a remarkable level of efficiency. Oncologist Arthur Brown writes: “The Ozone layer is a mighty proof of the Creator’s forethought. ... A wall which prevents death to every living thing, just the right thickness, and exactly the right defense, gives every evidence of plan.”106 We need protection from the Sun’s harmful radiation, but when the threat comes from beyond our solar system, the Sun itself protects us. The threat is in the form of extremely high-energy particles that originate mainly from supernovae explosions. Their energy is great enough to easily penetrate the Earth’s protective atmosphere and magnetic field, which would make life impossible by destroying DNA and our hospitable climate. The protection provided by the Sun is an interplanetary magnetic 105 106

Physics.org (nd). In Hick, J. 1963, p. 25.

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field known as the heliosphere. Our Sun is a magnetic star whose plasma atmosphere (mostly electrons, protons and alpha particles—helium nuclei) blows from its surface to cause the solar wind. The solar wind deflects about 90 percent of the galactic cosmic rays away from Earth and our own atmosphere and magnetic shield takes care of the almost all rest to the point that they present almost zero harm to life.

PLATE TECTONICS The Earth’s surface is a dynamic system that is always moving because of plate tectonics. Plate tectonics is the movement of plates of the outer shell of the Earth that drift on top of a thick, fluid mantle beneath the Earth’s surface. This process has formed continents, pushed up mountains, and brought needed molecules to the Earth’s surface via volcanic activity. The continents move on gigantic plates pushing against one another. When enough pressure has built up, we get earthquakes. The Earth’s lithosphere, consisting of the crust and upper mantle, is crisscrossed by a jigsaw of large and small rigid plates in motion relative to adjacent plates. The motion of the plates causes deformation of the land by subduction, a process that occurs when one crustal plate sinks beneath another. This movement is generated by convection currents carrying heat from the Earth’s interior to its surface. The Earth’s heat comes partly from what is left over from its early molten state and partly from the decay of radioactive elements in the core and mantle.107 Research has demonstrated that the composition of these radioactive elements has been fine-tuned for long-term and stable plate tectonics and the Earth’s habitability.108 Over millennia the movement of the continental plates has pushed the Earth’s crust up to form magnificent mountain chains. Mountains are vital for life because without them there would be no rivers and thus precious little fresh water to be found. Mountains capture and hold snow and ice during the winter and when snow and ice melts in the summer, water 107 108

Trefil, J and Hazen, R., 2007, p. 362. Jellinek, A. and Jackson, M. 2015.

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cascades down to facilitate our agricultural and industrial activity. We seldom think of the benefits of mountains, but they provide “60–80% of the world’s freshwater resources for domestic, agricultural, and industrial consumption… The mountains we see today also supply important minerals and genetic resources for major food crops”109 We see mountains everywhere on the planet instead of a flat, lifeless water world, so we can thank plate tectonics for continuously pushing them up. Both plate tectonics and the magnetic field depend on a process called convection by which the less dense material of the Earth rises and more dense material sinks. Rocks, water, and air become less dense as their temperature increases, and so they rise; when they become colder, they become denser and sink. It is this convective motion that over time breaks the tough lithosphere into plates. A planet lacking convective activity lacks plate tectonics and all the benefits the process involves. Just as large-mass planets harbor too much gravity for mountains and continents to form, small-mass planets lack plate tectonics, which has the same result. A low mass planet leads to early cooling from its molten state and its crust solidifying into a “stagnant lid” (no movement of its crust). If the planetary mass is too great, plate tectonics may be too mobile. The Earth’s plate tectonics have just the right amount of vigor, because it “falls within a zone of transition between ‘hard’ stagnant lid and mobile plate regimes.”110 The “big whack” collision that formed the moon is thought to have helped to create both the magnetic field and plate tectonics. The collision generated such intense heat that liquid iron sank to Earth’s center, thus providing the mechanism for generating magnetism. It also removed a large amount of its crust, which is important because a much thicker crust may have prevented plate tectonics. Without plate tectonics constantly pushing material upwards and maintaining volcanic activity the Earth would be a lifeless water world. We need water, but we don’t owe our existence to just Earth’s water: “The Earth is not unique because of its oceans. Any planet in the right part of the habitable zone will have those. What is unique about the Earth is that it has LAND. If the moon had not 109 110

Kohler T; Pratt J; Debarbieux B; Balsiger J., et al. 2012, p. 7. Valencia, D., O’Connell, R. and Sasselov, D., 2007, p. 47.

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carried away most of the crust, there would be no ocean basins, no land, and no chance for life to evolve on land.”111 Note that Genesis 1:9-10 described first the appearance of water on the planet, and then the land: “And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called the Seas: and God saw that it was good.” It wasn’t until 1963 that science conclusively accepted the “outlandish” idea that the Earth’s interior actually moved to “let the dry land appear” and “that it was good.” Wallace Pratt, perhaps the 20th century’s most prominent geologist, has noted the accuracy of Genesis given its intended audience: “If I as a geologist were called upon to explain briefly our modern ideas of the origin of the earth and the development of life on it to a simple, pastoral people, such as the tribes to whom the Book of Genesis was addressed, I could hardly do better than follow rather closely much of the language of the first chapter of Genesis.”112 Pratt further noted that the sequence of events according to the science of geology—first there was water, then the emergence of land, then marine life, followed by land animals, is the same as ordering revealed in Genesis. Genesis is not a book of science, but Pratt’s observations do make a person think.

111 112

Hoffman, N. 2001, np. In Copithorne, W. 1971, p. 14.

Chapter 6

FEEDING THE PLANET’S LIFE WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE When we ask God to give us our daily bread in the Lord’s Prayer, we don’t stop to think of all the incredible processes that must occur to make a simple loaf of bread. One ingredient needed is water. Water is taken for granted in modern societies where it is everywhere. We bathe in it, brush our teeth with it, wash the car with it, swim in it, and hundreds of other things. This matrix of life covers almost three-quarters of our planet, and yet no one really understands it. Some scientists spend their careers trying to figure out this marvelous molecule. Water is fascinating, because despite its simple H2O structure, it is the strangest liquid on the planet because it bends the rules of chemistry. Chemists graph the boiling points of similar molecules by their atomic weights and find that they all behave as expected—except water. If water “followed the rules” its atomic weight leads chemists to expect, it would boil at -100 degrees Celsius rather than +100 degrees, and it would exist on Earth only as a gas. Atoms and molecules in almost all substances huddle closer together as they get colder and eventually solidify, but water attains its greatest density at just over 39 degrees Fahrenheit, at which point it begins to sink to the bottom of lakes and ponds. Defying all the rules the molecules of other substances obey, water molecules again move farther apart as the

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temperature drops below the level of maximum density and becomes ice, which floats to the top. This insulates the liquid water and the living organisms underneath it. Without this unique property, we would have a runaway freeze-up as layers of ice accumulated from bottom to top, putting an end to aquatic life. It would also make the world colder once its mass inevitably reached the surface by reflecting more and more light from the Sun. Water is also unique in that it is the only substance found to exist naturally in solid, liquid, and gaseous forms. Water makes up about 60% of a human adult’s body, and it is vital for metabolism, temperature regulation, and the flushing of toxins. It is the solvent required for biochemical reactions, affecting the stability, flexibility and structure and dynamics of proteins, nucleic acids and DNA. Life depends on the many of its anomalous properties, and if it behaved as expected we wouldn’t be here. Water is a “polar” molecule that has a tiny positive charge at one side (the hydrogen pole) and a tiny negative charge on the other (the oxygen pole). The molecule has a tetrahedral geometry with an atom located at the center with four substituents located at the corners of a tetrahedron (having four plane triangular faces like a triangular pyramid). As a gas, H2O is lighter than almost any other gas, as a liquid it is much denser, and as a solid, it is much lighter than chemists are led to expect compared to the nature of other molecules. Water molecules are so good at bonding to each other that they can actually overcome the force of gravity by capillary action. Capillary action occurs because water molecules like to stay close together, but they are also attracted to and stick to other substances. This allows water pooled at the root of a plant to move upwards to feed its leaves when the adhesion to the plant walls is stronger than the cohesive forces between the water molecules. This is also the marvelous force that takes water conveying oxygen and other nutrients up to your brain. You can demonstrate this capillary action yourself. Take a glass of colored water and an empty class of the same size beside it. Fold a paper towel length wise four times, and then fold it in the middle. Place the paper towel into both glasses, and watch the water from the full glass climb up it and into the empty glass. It will climb until both glasses hold equal amounts of water.

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The same water has been recycling on the earth for millions of years moving nutrients, pathogens, and sediment in and out of aquatic environments. This known as the hydrologic cycle; a perfect method of distributing fresh, clean water around the planet to plants, animals, and us. We begin the cycle with the power of the Sun as it lifts surface water via evaporation as gas. These gas molecules are too small and weak to bring with them major contaminants muddying the waters. However, there is no “pure” water found in nature; H2O molecules are very sticky and attract all kinds of harmless particulates. Clouds form from these molecules in as condensation, and when the air cools to the point that it cannot support water vapor, droplets of rain, hail, sleet, or snow become precipitation. When these droplets fall to the ground, we have our water supply replenished, which is then ready to evaporate again to keep the cycle going via endlessly different paths that water can take on its pilgrimage of life. Water is crucial for maintaining our planetary atmosphere by both heating and cooling it. The Sun bombards the Earth with a tremendous amount of heat, the majority of which is absorbed by the ocean acting like a massive heat-retaining solar panel. Water has a very high heating capacity, which means that it takes more energy to raise its temperature than it does for other liquids. Water’s hydrogen bonds can soak up a lot of energy before it changes from liquid to gas, which enables the ocean’s water to store heat for us during the day keeping us from getting too hot and releases it at night preventing us from getting too cold. As we know, the Sun’s radiation is unevenly distributed on the surface of the Earth. The equatorial areas get the lion’s share of this heat, but the oceans have a way to distribute this excess heat to less fortunate areas via ocean currents. These currents are caused by the Earth’s rotation, winds, water density, and tides. Like a gigantic conveyer belt, it moves heated water from the hottest areas of the planet to the coldest areas and in return the hotter areas get cold water from the coldest. Without this movement and temperature regulation the Earth would be super-hot at the equator and super-frigid toward the poles, thus reducing the landmass on Earth that would be habitable.

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Water itself needs nurturing. An atmosphere at the right temperature supplying the right gravitational pressure on a planet’s surface is needed to keep it from boiling away into space. Also, through its role in temperature regulation, plate tectonics has sustained the conditions required for surface liquid water to exist over billions of years. But since, like every other solid body in the universe, the Earth began as an inhospitable ball of white-hot molten rock, where did all our water come from? Scientists admit that water’s origin is still something of a mystery, but according to Plaxco and Gross: “Jupiter’s massive gravitational effects perturbed the orbits of icy, volatile-rich planetesimals (asteroids and icy comets) from the outer solar system and ‘tossed’ them into the inner Solar System, where they collided with—and provided the volatile [chemical elements and compounds] inventory of–the rocky inner planets.”113 Other scientists maintain that far less than 50% of the Earth’s water could have come from planetesimals, and that probably most of the Earth’s water has been here from the very beginning, albeit not in ready-made form. The current notion is that when Earth was forming, hydrogen from the solar nebula (gases and dust that formed the Sun and planets) was incorporated into its interior. Some of this hydrogen combined with oxygen—the most abundant element in the Earth’s crust—during such things as volcanic eruptions and/or chemical reactions in the mantle to help create Earth’s abundant water supply.114 Using data from hundreds of seismographs over a number of years scientists have discovered a vast reservoir of water three times the volume of all the oceans deep beneath the Earth’s surface.115 Water is everywhere in the cosmos; after all, hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, and oxygen is the third most abundant. “As long as the supply of hydrogen can be sustained, one can speculate that water formed from this process could be a contributor to the origin of water during Earth’s early accretion. Water formed in the mantle can reach the surface via multiple ways, for example, carried by magma in the form 113

Plaxo, K. and Gross, M., 2006, p. 53. Wu, J., et al., 2018. 115 Coghlan, A. 2014. 114

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of volcanic activities.”116 The abundance of water does not mean that Earth-like planets are abundant. Geologists Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams marvel at the uniqueness of our planet: “The more we learn about how Earth acquired and retained its water, the more it seems the situation was incredibly fortuitous...Even in a water-filled cosmos, Earth might still be one of a kind amid water worlds far weirder—and more hostile to life— than our own. We might be in possession of an extraordinarily precious, rare jewel: our oceans.”117 The fine-tuning of water for life is even evident at the quantum level. In her article about water’s weird properties, Lisa Grossman states: “Water’s life-giving properties exist on a knife-edge. It turns out that life as we know it relies on a fortuitous, but incredibly delicate, balance of quantum forces.” She goes on to tell us what these forces are. Water is held together by weak hydrogen bonds whose lengths keep changing, as we expect because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. In this context, the uncertainty principle says that molecules cannot have a definite position with respect to the others. This indefiniteness should destabilize the network structure of water and would remove many of water’s marvelous life-sustaining properties were it not for a second quantum effect that cancels the effect of the first. Evidently, the uncertainty principle affects each water molecule’s bond length by strengthening the attraction between them, thus keeping the network intact. Grossman concludes her article by noting that: “We are used to the idea that the cosmos’s physical constants are fine-tuned for life. Now it seems water’s quantum forces can be added to this ‘just right’ list.”118 Commenting on the many anomalies of water, Michael Cory quotes Harvard biochemist Lawrence Henderson on the tailor-made properties of water and carbon: “The chance that this unique ensemble of properties should occur by accident’ is almost infinitely small. The chance that each of the unit properties of the ensemble, by itself and in cooperation with

116

Coghlan, A. 2017. Zalasiewicz, J. & Williams, M. 2014, np. 118 Grossman, L. 2011, p. 14. 117

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others, should ‘accidentally’ contribute a maximum increment is also almost infinitely small.”119

SOIL If water is unappreciated, the stuff under our feet, dirt and soil (dirt is dead soil), are even less so. We spend our lives stepping on the stuff and washing it from our bodies as if it was deadly to us, but it is the solid source and sustainer of life. Soil is the thin layer of the Earth where rock and life intersect to form its “skin.” Soil gives plants a place to grow and provides them with minerals, nutrients and water; it is the filter that gives us mineral-rich water to drink, and serves as a sponge soaking up rain and preventing flooding. Soil is one of the earth’s most valuable resources providing the beginning point for food (e.g., fruits and vegetables), clothing (e.g., hemp, cotton, flax) shelter (e.g., wood), and fuel (e.g., peat, coal). Soil also helps to regulate the climate by capturing and locking away carbon away deep underground; in fact, it stores more carbon than all the trees on Earth combined. Soil is composed of inorganic matter such as clay, silt, sand, water and gas. It is also full of live creatures as well as dead organic matter such as plant, animal, and microbial residues in various states of decomposition, The Earth’s soil took hundreds of millions of years to develop from rock that has to be ground down and from trillions of dead primitive microorganisms. Breaking down rock is done by physical, chemical, and biological weathering. Physical weathering gradually breaks rocks down through collisions, earthquakes, volcanos, and cracking by ice and frost. Chemical breakdown occurs when the chemical properties of minerals within rocks interact with various components of the atmosphere such as oxygen, carbon, and rain. Biological weathering can be either physical or chemical. Roots of trees and plants weather rocks growing between cracks and fractures of rocks and splitting them apart. This sets the rocks up by

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Corey, M. 2001, p. 120.

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exposing more surface area to physical and chemical weathering. Whole mountain ranges have been slowly ground down into soil over millions of years by these processes. Using a simple formula, geologists calculate that a typical mountain mass of 1.2 miles in height and 2.5 square miles wide would have completely disappeared in 123 million years, which a very short time in geological terms. Thankfully, plate tectonics ensures that the Earth continues to slowly push more rock to the Earth’s surface, keeping us supplied with lots of beautiful mountains. Forces of weather, movement, chemistry, and life have thus combined to grind the rocky layers of the Earth into smaller and finer grains infused with nutrients provided by dead plant and microscopic animal life, making once lifeless rock into the dwelling place of trillions of God’s tiniest creatures. It has been estimated that in one trowel of unadulterated soil there are more microorganisms than all the people that have ever lived on Earth. Many of these microorganisms have evolved antibiotic compounds from which antibiotic medicines have been made, and there are potentially more medicines to be found there. Live microbes and worms create pockets in the soil for air and water to penetrate. In fact, Charles Darwin characterized the lowly earthworm as the animal that has been more important to human existence than any other. Earthworms wiggle around in the soil aerating it, which both enables the soil to breath (suck in what it needs from the atmosphere) and creates pockets for plant roots to take hold. Without soil (and rejuvenated dirt) we would not be able to grow food, and the animals we eat would have nothing to eat themselves. Soil also performs other services that contribute to a healthy planet such as nutrient cycling and water filtration. Plants grown in the soil help to regulate the atmosphere by absorbing and storing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. For plants to exist and provide these services they need soil, and to get soil we need a dynamic planet with the right atmosphere, water, and plate tectonics, as well as the early appearance of single-celled bacteria and archaea (similar to bacteria but a little more complex). Our planet required a vast amount of soil to ready it for human habitation. Only a dynamic planet has soil, and it is the interaction of the tectonic activity,

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weather, and hydrologic systems combined with the early appearance of microorganisms could make it possible.120 The coming together of so many highly improbable things render it almost impossible not to see Divine creation at work.

THE NITROGEN CYCLE We have talked about the role of water and soil in growing plants that sustain animal life, now we’ll add a little natural fertilizer (“to make fertile,” or “life bearing).” Nature’s chief fertilizer is nitrogen. Nitrogen is the most abundant element in the Earth’s atmosphere: approximately 78% of the atmosphere is nitrogen, 21% is oxygen, and the remaining onepercent is made up of other gases. Nitrogen is a core component of many plant structures, and is often referred to as the “backbone” of plants. It provides energy for their metabolic processes, and is an essential element providing the amino acids for building plant (and human) proteins, and nucleic acids to form DNA. Because of its unique structure, no other element could possibly be substituted to make these vital molecules. However, although there is plenty of nitrogen in the air, it is not accessible to living things directly. The only way we can get nitrogen is from the plants we eat, or from the animals that have eaten the plants. The plants themselves obtain it from nitrates, which is made by a series of complex chemical reaction from atmospheric nitrogen. How nitrogen gets cycled to produce nitrates is probably the most complex of all Earth’s cycling processes. Nitrogen gas is very unreactive because it has appropriate proton-neutron ratios, so they don’t have to give off energy to stabilize themselves. A tremendous amount of energy is thus needed to turn it into a usable form so that it can be incorporated into our cells in reactive form. We cannot absorb nitrogen directly because nitrogen molecules consist of two very tightly bonded atoms that do not readily interact, and the human body’s chemistry does not provide sufficient

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Ross, H., 2016.

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energy to break them apart. The conversion of nitrogen gas into usable form is done for us in two different ways: biological and physical. Biologically, a process called nitrogen fixation is needed to change atmospheric nitrogen (N2) into usable reactive form for plants. Most nitrogen fixation is done by soil bacteria that possess an enzyme that combines N2 with hydrogen (H2) to make ammonia (NH3) and then to nitrites (NO3). It’s all very complicated, so in the spirit of “A picture is worth a thousand words,” this nitrogen fixation is illustrated in Figure 6.1.

Figure 6.1. The nitrogen cycle.

Another way nitrogen’s tight bonds are split is through the awesome power of lightning. A typical bolt of lightning has enough electrical energy (a lightning bolt is about 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit) to separate the nitrogen atoms floating around in the atmosphere. When they are separated, some of the free atoms combine with oxygen to form nitrogen dioxide. Nitrogen dioxide dissolves in water, which creates nitric acid, which creates nitrates. Nitrates are powerful natural fertilizers that mix with the rain and fall to earth, watering and fertilizing the soil at the same time. No wonder farmers love lightning storms and their nitrogen-charged

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raindrops! As Figure 6.1 illustrates; when plants and animals die, their nitrogen compounds are broken down by bacteria as the organic matter decays, which transforms nitrates back to nitrogen. This nitrogen is then released into the soil and back into the atmosphere, thus completing the cycle.121

PHOTOSYNTHESIS AND THE CARBON-OXYGEN CYCLE We have the water, soil, and fertilizer necessary for plant life and baking our daily bread, but plants need one more thing: sunlight. Plants are the first link in the food chain; we eat plants and the animals that eat plants. Plants are also living things that grow and reproduce, so they also need nourishment. Unlike animals, plants make their own food internally from non-living materials in the process of photosynthesis. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of photosynthesis for life. It may be the most important chemical reaction on the planet because it not only provides food for plant life; it provides us with the oxygen we need and traps the carbon dioxide we don’t. So, not only would we have nothing to eat without the continual process of photosynthesis, we wouldn’t be around long to complain about it if the process stopped because we would literally be “out of breath.” The ingredients plants use to make their food are atmospheric carbon dioxide, sunlight, and water. Carbon dioxide and sunlight enter plants through microscopic holes on the underside of the leaf called stomata, which have antennae that capture the needed carbon dioxide and photons. Water enters the plant through its roots and climbs up to the leaves where photosynthesis takes place. Within each cell on the plant’s leaves are organelles called chloroplasts. These structures both store the energy of the photons in ATP and provide the plants with a chemical called chlorophyll. Chlorophyll transfers the sun’s energy to a photon reaction center in the plant’s cells where it is converted to chemical energy that is used to split

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Fowler, D., et al., 2013.

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water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. After this split, the hydrogen is combined with carbon dioxide and used by the plant to produce starch, sugar, and sucrose, and oxygen is released into the atmosphere through the stomata as a waste product. To prevent the energy from dissipating as heat, the transformation of photons into carbohydrates takes place in a miraculous one million billionths of a second. When a plant’s antennae capture photons and transfers the excitation energy to reaction centers, there must be mechanisms to regulate the rate of delivery of the energy long enough to resist natural recombination and for them to perform the work nature requires. Photosynthesis needs such a resisting mechanism because photons that are energetic enough to break H20 apart would also break apart most other biological molecules. These mechanisms rely on quantum mechanics as a way to transport energy in the most efficient way possible. Because of superposition, when plants are in an environment that varies in warmth and moisture, a quantum particle/wave is everywhere at once and thus can take every possible path to its destination in photosynthesis.122 Photosynthesis removes large quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Without Earth’s plant life continually sucking up carbon dioxide, it would build up in the atmosphere trapping heat and causing disastrous climate change. Human industrial and personal activities, such as burning fossil fuels while at the same time destroying large swaths of forest vegetation, is destroying the delicate ecological balance. When you think about it, as well as being the ultimate source of our food, photosynthesis is responsible for all the energy burned in the world. It is the source of the energy stored in fossil fuels such as the coal and petroleum, as well as wood and wood products. It thus makes sense to try to harness this energy directly by artificially mimicking photosynthesis. However, chemists, biologists, and physicists have been at work since photosynthesis was discovered over 100 years ago trying to duplicate God’s ingenuity without much success. They keep trying though, because artificial photosynthesis is the holy grail of energy. Using solar

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Collini, E., Wong, C., Wilk, K., et al., 2010.

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photovoltaic cells in the place of chlorophyll to absorb sunlight, they can turn it into electricity, but as yet solar energy cannot be suitably stored by batteries. Because plants are living things, they respire. The verb respire literally means “breathe in and out;” the inhalation of oxygen and exhalation of carbon dioxide. Respiration is a metabolic process by which an organism acquires energy through oxidizing nutrients and producing waste. Although plants respire, they do not have any specialized organs like lungs for breathing, nor do they have a circulatory system to transport the gases to their cells. However, they require oxygen for respiration and need to expel the carbon dioxide produced during the process. Plants use stomata and lenticels (found in stems) for this gas exchange. Plant respiration is the opposite of photosynthesis in the same way as breathing out is the opposite of breathing in. During plant respiration, plants use oxygen and the sugars produced during photosynthesis plus oxygen to produce energy for growth. Plants can only photosynthesize when in the sunshine, but respiration occurs constantly. Photosynthesis and respiration occur simultaneously during the sunlight hours so the amount of oxygen produced by plants greatly exceeds that of carbon dioxide. Evolutionary biologists take it for granted that the process of photosynthesis occurred piecemeal in tiny steps, although it is acknowledged that there is no direct evidence to support any of the hypotheses that have been advanced for it. Surely, all the functioning parts and the physics and biochemistry involved in the many steps of photosynthesis and respiration must be present simultaneously if it is to occur. Just the assembly of chlorophyll takes 17 enzymes, which require many base pairs (the “letters” in the genetic code) to line up correctly. How likely is all this to have occurred by blind evolutionary chance? “Why would evolution produce a series of enzymes that only generate useless intermediates until all of the enzymes needed for the end product have evolved?” asks plant geneticist Rick Swindell. He answers that: “if groups [of bases] of 1,000 recombined at a rate of a billion per second (109 tries) for 30 billion years (1018 seconds), with the number of bases being equal to the number of electrons that could fit with no space between them into

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a universe of 5-billion-year radius (10130). This would yield 10157 total tries, an inconceivably huge number....”123

THE ROLE OF VOLCANOS The sight of red-hot lava streaming down a volcano’s sides accompanied by ash clouds and water vapor gushing thousands of feet into the atmosphere is a very scary one. It might thus seem strange to pair destructive volcanos with the creative business of photosynthesis. Yet, much of the fuel photosynthesis requires—water, soil, and atmospheric gasses—are supplied by volcanos. Earth would have been barren without volcanos. They are Earth’s geologic architects, creating much of its landmass from interior molten rock and form around the edges of tectonic plates pushing against each other. Volcanic gases are also the source of most of the water on Earth because without them most of the water would remain trapped in the crust and mantle. Volcanism moves carbon in and out of the Earth’s interior. Like a “living” global thermostat, volcanos regulate the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and help to maintain the carbon dioxide/oxygen ratio. In fact, volcanism played a major role in making the atmosphere from the beginning of Earth’s time. It did this by the outgassing of gases such as hydrogen sulfide, methane, and carbon dioxide stored in the Earth’s interior. A series of interactions in the atmosphere combined with aquatic bacteria, led to an atmosphere much like we see today composed of nitrogen and oxygen. Volcanic lava liberates nutrients that create the soil that we need for crops. When volcanic dust, ash and rocks decompose they produce soils called andisols that are mineral-rich and easily worked. The particulate matter released into the atmosphere contains many essential minerals, including phosphorus. Phosphorus is a vital component of all life because it supplies part of the sugar-phosphate backbone of DNA and RNA, and is

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Swindell, R. 2003, p. 79.

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an essential ingredient of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) that provides the energy needed for photosynthesis. Small amounts of fixed nitrogen is found in volcanic activity. While this amount is insignificant today, the early Earth had much greater volcanic activity, and that may have served to get the nitrogen fixation process in motion (along with lightning) before sufficient biological resources (bacteria, animal decay, etc.) were available for biological fixation. Plants need sunlight to photosynthesize, but most plants thrive better in softer, shaded, sunlight than in its direct glare. This is where volcanos come into play. When volcanos erupt, a good portion of the planet becomes slightly shadier. There are at least 20 volcanoes actively erupting at any given moment and may be thought of as the Earth’s efforts to cool itself. The 1991 eruptions of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines and Mount. Hudson in Chile resulted in a reduction in average global temperature of 1.0-degree Celsius and an increase in global photosynthesis of between 8 and 23% for two or three years. Photosynthesis increased because volcanic gases react with water to make sulfuric acid. This can form a haze of liquid droplets in the atmosphere called aerosols, which scatter and absorb sunlight, thus reducing glare.124 The interrelated feedback systems of the Earth are so fine-tuned for life that we are led to think of its organic and inorganic matter as a mutually sustaining integrated whole. To achieve this wonderful symbiosis, living organisms need to be fine-tuned in order to give positive feedback to sustain the environment, just as the Earth needs to be fine-tuned to sustain them. The Earth’s crust, and its atmosphere and oceans are regulated by the behavior of the biota—flora and fauna—and its biota is regulated and sustained by soil, air, and water. Inorganic matter, plant, and human life share a symbiotic relationship, and it is inconceivable to think that there is no design behind the literally millions of finely-tuned mechanisms from the Big Bang onwards necessary for this symbiosis to exist. Thinking in anthropic terms helps us to understand how intimately everything is

124

Gu, L., Baldocchi, D., Wofsy, S., et al. 2003, p. 2035.

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connected; that is, how things that most of us think of as having absolutely no relationship at all are substantially and advantageously interrelated. The wonders of our natural bread-making factory are surely so impressive that it must arouse suspicion that something purposive is afoot. This kind of anthropic thinking is teleologic—X exists for the purpose of sustaining Y. End-directed, final cause thinking, is anathema to atheists who emphasize that there is no purpose in anything; the many thousands of chemical reaction processes that bring harmony to the ecosystem is yet another happy accident. The notion that everything in nature works together as a harmonious whole for the good of the whole, might get folks thinking in terms of why, and that might lead them to think of God.

CAN AN EARTH-LIKE SYSTEM OCCUR MORE THAN ONCE? The more we find out about fine-tuning the deeper the mysteries become, and the more implausible a fully naturalistic explanation of it all seems to be. If all the parameters of the universe are so exquisitely finetuned, then perhaps they require a fine-tuner. Astronomer Robert Jastrow’s account of how science caught up with theology on the matter of creation is both interesting and poetic: “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”125 With all the incredibly precise fine-tuning in evidence in our galactic neighborhood, we are tempted to ask once again the question that every philosopher of the heavens has asked: “Are we alone?” Is it inexcusably arrogant, based on any weight of evidence, to claim that Earth is the only planet in the universe with intelligent life? For a committed naturalist, it is. The narrative of naturalism is guided by the Copernican Principle that

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Jastrow, R. 1992, p. 107.

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asserts there is nothing special about planet Earth, but the principle is wrong. Ever since the discovery of the Big Bang, astronomers believed that the universe is inflating randomly and that the galaxies are distributed within it without any particular structure. But a number of studies of the alignment of the cosmic microwave background found that it is aligned with the plane of our solar system, which suggested that our solar system may be central. This alignment was dubbed the “axis of evil” by those who haver overdosed on the Copernican Principle. This really irked atheist physicist Lawrence Krauss, who exclaimed: “Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That’s crazy. We’re looking out at the whole universe. There’s no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun—the plane of the earth around the sun—the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe.”126 But back to the question: are we alone? The necessary conditions for intelligent life are so many and so fine-tuned that astrophysicist Hugh Ross estimates that the probability of a planet falling within necessary parameters for the emergence of intelligent life as less than 1 in 10 215: “fewer than a trillionth of a trillionth of a percent of all stars will have a planet capable of sustaining advanced life. Considering that the observable universe contains less than a trillion galaxies, each averaging a hundred billion stars, we can see that not even one planet would be expected, by natural processes alone, to possess the necessary conditions to sustain life.”127 Astrophysicist John Gribbin also asks if intelligent life elsewhere in the universes and answers: “Almost certainly no, given the chain of circumstances that led to our existence.”128 And upon being awarded the prestigious Leonard Award for outstanding contributions to planetary science, Stuart Taylor addressed the difficulties of making an Earth-like planet given the staggering improbabilities of a myriad of things from the formation of the Milky Way to the origin of life and concluded: “When the remote chances of developing a habitable planet are added to the chances of both high intelligence and a technically advanced civilization, the odds 126

Frank, A. 2013, np. Ross, H. 1994, pp. 169-170. 128 Gribbin, J. 2018, p. 99. 127

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of finding ‘little green men’ elsewhere in the universe decline to zero.”129 Astrobiologists Plaxco and Gross also weighed the probability of intelligent life on other planets given the thousands of multiple exquisitely coordinated parameters required to get it going and concluded: “The range of values in Drake’s parameters [an equation for estimating the probability of intelligent life outside the Earth] could adopt is so great, that despite the huge numbers of stars in the Universe, current scientific knowledge is entirely consistent with N=1. That is, Fermi [Enrico Fermi, the ItalianAmerica Nobel Prize winning physicist] was right, and we are alone.”130 It really doesn’t matter if we are not alone anyway; the Creator could have literally salted the universe with intelligent life if that was his desire. His existence hardly rests on an affirmative answer to the question of human cosmic uniqueness or whether or not we are at the center of the universe. If against all odds intelligent life does exist elsewhere in the cosmos, why would that argue against His existence rather than for His creative power? Why should more be less?

129 130

Taylor, S. 1998, p. 327. Plaxo, K. and Gross, M., 2006, p. 247.

Chapter 7

IF YOU DON’T WANT GOD, BETTER GET A MULTIVERSE WHY THE MULTIVERSE? To avoid the theological implications of the incredible fine-tuning of nature’s laws and the anthropic notion that life seems central to the universe, some physicists have instinctively turned to the extravagant speculation that our universe is but one of trillions of other universes in what they call a “multiverse.” Some have gone as far to saying that because the concept of infinity is mathematical realizable, physical infinity must also be realizable, and if this is true, all the insane improbabilities are covered. If you don’t want God, get yourself a multiverse, because either a fine-tuned universe has a fine-tuner or else we have a multiverse of untold trillions of universes in which every possible combination of physical constants and forces exist somewhere. Physicist Alan Lightman concedes that we have no conceivable way of observing other universes and thus cannot prove their existence, but says: “Not only must we accept that the basic properties of our universe are accidental and incalculable. In addition, we must believe in the existence of many other universes... Thus, to explain what we see in the world and in our mental deductions, we must

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believe in what we cannot prove.”131 Physicists such as Lightman have invented this multiverse metaphysical entity that we can never know to get rid of another—God—who we can know. Lightman sounds much like atheism’s pope speaking ex cathedra and demanding that all devout atheists must believe in an unseen and unknowable multiverse. There are a number of different multiverse models, all based on finding a non-design explanation for cosmic fine-tuning. The argument from design is that the probability of functional higher-order complexities produced by step-wise interactions of simpler constituent parts are highly improbable when considered against the vastly greater probability that they would produce a huge number of non-functional combinations. The multiverse hypothesis allows the design argument to be rejected because given an infinite multiverse and infinite time, the notion of impossibility disappears; the impossible becomes probable, and the probable becomes inevitable. Hypothesize sufficient universes and you will beat the odds of finding one with its physical constants fine-tuned to such an incomprehensible degree such as ours. That is, if there is an infinity of universes (of course, there can’t be an infinity, so let’s just think “untold trillions” when the word “infinity” appears) at least one should contain all the “coincidences” that have led to complex and intelligent life on Earth. This is like saying that if you buy all the lottery tickets you are bound to win the lottery. But the multiverse hypothesis is a serious weapon in the atheist armory, so it is necessary for Christians to know at least something about it.

MULTIVERSE MODELS The different multiverse models proposed by Max Tegmark are in hierarchical fashion such that subsequent levels encompass and expand on the lower levels.132 Each of level increasingly reveals how far into unreality some scientists will go to deny the Creator. Level I are universes with the 131 132

Lightman, A., 2011, pp. 38-40. Tegmark, M., 2009.

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same laws and constants as ours with similar, and even identical, configurations, and thus each of us will have identical twins in these different universes. All of these supposed parallel universes arose when rapid inflation milliseconds after the Big Bang created different universes in bubbles of space with identical laws of physics. We will never be able to see these other universes or Skype our identical twins since they are beyond our Hubble volume (the observable universe). Level II are universe with different laws of physics, as opposed to universes spawned in Level I where each universe has a different initial distribution of matter but the same laws of physics, Level II assumes that different regions of space exhibit different laws of physics in different localities. For Tegmark there are thus an infinite number of developmental possibilities for these universes. This model assumes that the Big Bang was just one of an infinite number of space-time bubbles arising within a larger system, like bubbles popping into existence as we run water in a bathtub, and our universe is just one of the bubbles. Because our universe bubbled into existence from a pre-existing mega-universe, this eternally inflating mega-universe takes us back to a past eternal multiverse. Even if they existed, these alternate universes with trajectories stretching infinitely into the past are not possible because everything would be in thermodynamic equilibrium by now. Tegmark knows this, of course, but because the multiverse notion is based purely on mathematical models, he can fiddle with infinity all he likes. Level III are quantum mechanical s universes, which means that quantum events unfold in every possible way in different universes. Each quantum event splits the universe into copies of itself. In the strange world of quantum mechanics, you can have a simultaneous “event” and a “nonevent,” just as an atom is both decayed and not decayed at the same time. This is called a “superposition,” which is the principle that a quantum system exists in all possible states at the same time until it is measured. Tegmark argues that quantum superpositions are not confined to the micro world because we, and everything else, are made of atoms, and if atoms can be in superposition and thus in more than one place at the same time, then so can we (don’t let your boss know this)! Tegmark informs us that

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the only difference between Level I and Level III is where your twins reside. In Level I they live in familiar three-dimensional space like us, but in “Level III they live on another quantum branch in infinite-dimensional Hilbert space [a mathematical concept used to infer dimension beyond the familiar four dimensions—three spacial and one time dimension—of everyday reality]”133 Tegmark revs up the speculation throttle to the max with Level IV. In this level, multiple universes are made up of all the mathematical structures we can conceive of and governed by different equations from those that govern our universe. Level IV is Tegmark’s favored level because he argues that any conceivable universe is subsumed within it, and therefore there can be no fifth level. He explains that this level “can be viewed as a form of radical Platonism, asserting that the mathematical structures in Plato’s realm of ideas…exist ‘out there’ in a physical sense, casting the socalled modal realism theory…in mathematical terms akin to what Barrow refers to as ‘π in the sky.’”134 Modal realism is the view that all possible worlds are just as real as the actual world that we know. While it is counterintuitive to endow merely “possible” worlds with the same ontological status as the actual empirical world, modal logic has proved useful in several domains of inquiry. There you have it; every mathematical structure has a physical reality outside of spacetime and which no measurement or observation could ever falsify their existence. Tegmark believes in the Platonic notion that mathematics is the ultimate reality, and that the empirical things they describe are imperfect copies of their real form found only within their mathematical description. He really believes this: “I argue that it means that our universe isn’t just described by math, but that it is math in the sense that we’re all parts of a giant mathematical object, which in turn is part of a multiverse so huge that it makes the other multiverses debated in recent years seem puny in comparison.”135 Tegmark wants mathematicians and physicists to test his notions by dreaming up new mathematical 133

Ibid, p. 8. Ibid, p. 12. 135 Tegmark, M., 2014, np. 134

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solutions, but mathematics is a deductive enterprise with its own notions of truth seeking separate from the empirical sciences. Testing theories in science always rests on the firm ground of induction from experimental data to theory, adjusting the theory as the data warrants.

M-THEORY M-theory is a kind of meta-theory that unites the five versions of string theory that scientists have been struggling with since the 1970s, and is the mathematical basis for the notion of the multiverse. String theories are attempts to unify gravity with quantum mechanics by smoothing out the mathematical inconsistencies between quantum theory and the general theory of relativity. M-theory asserts that the fundamental constituents of physical reality are not the particles of standard physics such as quarks, but rather even tinier filaments of energy called “strings.” These strings are strings of vibrating energy in a quantum field that give rise to all particles and forces in the universe. The standard subatomic particles are simply different vibrations of a fundamental string, some of which are useful, such as those in our universe, and others, such as in the vast majority of other universes, are not. They are said not to only vibrate in the familiar three dimensions of space and one of time, but rather 11 dimensions—10 spatial dimensions plus time—that are ‘folded” in on one another. All the postulated dimensions are curled up in what is called “internal space” in trillions of possible ways, each of which are assumed to be able to describe phenomena with its own restricted range. It has been said that the number of possible solutions to the equations of M-theory may be as many as 10500, which means that any experimental result could be consistent with the theory, and it could not be proved either right or wrong. In their book The Grand Design, Hawking and Mlodinow note that the universe is exquisitely fine-tuned, but like Tegmark, they want to attribute it to blind luck because if multiple trillions of universes exist, there must be a winner in the ultimate Powerball game. Hawking and Mlodinow inform us that: “People are still trying to decipher the nature of M-theory,

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but that may not be possible,”136 but they continue as though it’s not only possible, but has been done and dusted. They go on to posit the existence of a many different universes by appealing the “laws” of M-theory (which they previously said may be undecipherable) as existing in the internal curled spaces. They write: “The laws of M-theory therefore allow for different universes with different apparent laws, depending on how internal space is curled. M-theory has solutions that allow for many different internal spaces, perhaps as many as 10500, which means that it allows for 10500 different universes, each with its own laws.”137 M-theorists write as though they ascribe intelligence and agency to mathematical equations, since they appear to believe that their equations can bring universes into existence: “Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing... Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”138 The universe creating itself from nothing is saying that something that does not exist managed to create itself. This mysterious nothing is gravity. Gravity is a measure of how mass warps the shape of spacetime, and spacetime warps because of matter, so the concept would appear to be meaningless without matter. Because Hawking and Mlodinow insist that gravity existed prior to the existence of the material universe, they should explain just how this is possible, but do not. To be fair, Hawking and Mlodinow say that it was the laws of gravity, and not gravity itself, that existed before space-time and matter. Senior NASA astronomer Seth Shostak ridicules the notion of gravity as the prime mover of the universe as Plan B. He notes that Hawking and Mlodinow’s assumption that it is all about gravity begs the question of who designed gravity: “Isn’t it remarkable that this gentle force seems so perfectly suited to the job of assembling a grand and habitable universe? And indeed, even leaving gravity aside, there are many other physical parameters that seem to be nicely adjusted for our presence. …Depending on your personal 136

Hawking, S. and Mlodinow, L., 2010, p. 117. Ibid, p. 118. 138 Ibid, p. 180. 137

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philosophies, you can either credit this custom fitting to the intentions of God, or go for Plan B.”139 By pitting the laws of nature against God who created them and opting for Plan B, John Lennox accuses Hawking and Mlodinow of committing the classical category error of confusing a physical law with personal agency. Laws are mathematical models that describe the behavior of forces or things that already exist; they do not possess agency to bring those forces or things into existence. An abstraction has never created a concrete reality. As Lennox said in one of his YouTube debates: “The laws of arithmetic tell me that 2 + 2 = 4, but that has never put £4 in my pocket.” A better question for materialists would be to ask who made the universe in such a brilliantly fine-tuned intelligible way that it can be described by elegant mathematical laws. The divine law that Hawking and Mlodinow say created trillions of universes from nothing is gravity, which is something, not nothing. When asked to where gravity came from, Hawking answered: “M-theory.”140 So gravity was created by math equations coming to life—can you feel Newton and Einstein rolling over in their graves? Tim Radford, science editor of the Guardian, captures nicely the God-like nature with which Hawking and Mlodinow endowed M-theory: “M-theory invokes something different: a prime mover, a begetter, a creative force that is everywhere and nowhere. This force cannot be identified by instruments or examined by comprehensible mathematical prediction, and yet it contains all possibilities. It incorporates omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence, and it’s a big mystery. Remind you of Anybody?”141

M-THEORY AND HYPOTHESES IN SCIENCE Scientists earn their living seeking new knowledge about the world. They do this in an orderly way by first making themselves masters of what 139

Shostak, S. 2011, np. Lennox, J., 2011, p. 39. 141 Radford, T., 2010, np. 140

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is already known. This known knowledge has been organized in a systematic way by fitting facts into coherent and harmonious patterns we call theories. In addition to being looking backwards to fit known facts into a coherent pattern, theories must also be forward looking, telling researchers where they might look to fill in the gaps in their knowledge. Looking to fill the gaps in our knowledge takes the form of a series of statements that can be logically deduced from theory called hypotheses, which are deductive statements about relationships between and among factors we expect to find based on the logic of our theories. Theories provided the raw material (the ideas) for generating hypotheses, and hypotheses support or fail to support theories by exposing them to empirical testing. A theory is never proven true, but it must have the quality of being falsifiable. If a theory is formulated in such a way that no amount of evidence could possibly falsify it, then it is not a scientific theory. Hawking and Mlodinow imply that M-theory possesses both predictive accuracy and predictive scope, but M-theory has not provided one scrap of empirical evidence; it is a gun that’s never been fired, so we cannot gauge its accuracy. Furthermore, there is no way, even in principle, that the theory could be falsified. Failure to discover strings could falsify the theory, but could strings ever be discovered? It is most unlikely because the smaller the hypothesized particle, the more the energy needed to detect it, but even the 17-mile Large Hadron Collider is not sufficient. What would have to be the dimensions of a tunnel long enough to detect the hypothesized strings? There is a formula to calculate the radius of curvature needed for a collider given the energy of a particle, as well as for the strength of the magnetic field for the bending magnets that keep particles traveling on a circular trajectory. Physicist Frank Heile has done the math, and shows that the radius would have to be 517 light years, which means that the diameter of such a collider tunnel would be 1,034 lightyears, and that the magnetic power required would be quadrillions of times more powerful that the Earth’s magnetic shield.142 Thus, the multiverse is a highly speculative scenario which is untestable, even in principle.

142

Heile, F., 2016.

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Physicists of an atheistic bent feel that the multiverse is the only way that they can escape God. Many other physicists dismiss the whole multiverse notion, with some claiming that it threatens the scientific status of physics.

MATHEMATICS IN SCIENCE Of course, there are scientists interested in the mathematics of string theory because they hope that it may lead them to reconcile the macro world of relativity theory with the micro world of quantum mechanics, and who may not give multiverse speculations the time of day. They realize that M-theory is not a theory in the scientific sense, because such a theory demands empirical support. M-theory is a purely mathematical theory with a ridiculously large number of possible solutions. This is not to criticize mathematics, because it is the backbone of all science. Early scientists such as Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton new that the universe was capable of mathematical description because a rational God fashioned it that way. The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics has given it a mystical aura. As Nobel laureate Roger Penrose said of it: “There is something absolute and ‘God given ‘ about mathematical truth.”143 And as another Nobel laureate, physicist Paul Dirac, opined: “God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.”144 Mathematical truths represent the real world in abstract symbols, and have been amazingly successful in doing so. However, M-theorists want to decouple mathematics from empirical validation, claiming that the validity of their mathematical models depends on the ‘beauty” or “elegance” of their equations, not on empirical findings. Although the world is comprehensible through mathematics, just because it is describable in mathematical terms does not mean that the world is mathematics. Yet in the rarefied corridors in which M-theory resides, physicists seem to have reached precisely the opposite conclusion. Their 143 144

Penrose, R., 2016, p. 146. In Varghese, P. p. xviii.

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operative equation is evidently that “beauty = truth” and have quarantined the problem of empirical data behind a wall of equations. If physicists invent an imaginary world with clearly expressed and beautiful mathematical rules, we can use these rules to gather further mathematical “evidence” about that imaginary world. From this base, they can shape a theory that is internally consistent according to observers who understand the rules of the mathematics involved, and can conclude that because the theory is “beautiful” it must be valid. An example of mathematical beauty is Stephen Hawking’s notion of imaginary time.145 Imagine a straight horizontal line describing the arrow of time from the Big Bang to the future. Hawking’s imaginary time, which he says is as “real” as real time, is imagined as a vertical line intersecting real time at right angles. From where to where this timeline is traveling? Hawking admits he has no idea. This imaginary time is said to have existed before the Big Bang and was always there and existed in a “bent” state. Hawking knows that the laws of physics cannot explain anything before the Big Bang because there was no “before” and that his imaginary time has no physical meaning, but he has conjured it up by virtue of his almost unmatched grasp of mathematics. To arrive at his model of imaginary time, Hawking uses imaginary numbers such as the square root of -1. Imaginary numbers do not have a tangible value; you can’t use them to figure your grocery bill, but are “real” in the sense that they are used in higher mathematics. Just as imaginary time is perpendicular to real time, imaginary numbers are perpendicular to the familiar horizontal number line. Hawking thus uses imaginary numbers to invent imaginary time, which I am sure is something much admired and by mathematicians for its beauty. He makes it clear that he is unconcerned about whether or not extra dimensions such as “bent” time are real as long as they appear in the math. Although imaginary time obviously has no more meaning in everyday empirical reality than an imaginary bank account, it is still a useful idea for multiverse proponents to bandy about.

145

Hawking, S. 2001.

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Beauty cannot equal truth because sometimes equally beautiful equations may clash violently, particularly if applied to seemingly incommensurate domains, such as general relativity and quantum mechanics. Mathematical physicist Don Page notes this: “different mathematical structures can be contradictory, and contradictory ones cannot co-exist. For example, one structure could assert that spacetime exists somewhere and another that it does not exist at all…these two structures cannot both describe reality.”146 As mathematically elegant as M-theory may be, it is a creature of the imagination designed to explain away the reality of the fine-tuning of our universe. Mathematician George Ellis believes that it is our current inability to explain why the fundamental physical constants have the values they do that drive multiverse speculations. If we could explain them, “the drive for a multiverse explanation would fall away.”147 The math in M-theory is so difficult that it keeps the critical layperson such as me at arm’s length, so I will call on Albert Einstein, who said: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”148 Math must conform to reality, not reality to math. There are many processes in nature that cannot always be expressed in stringent formulae because of uncertainties (chaos) involved. Herbert Dingle, a formidable mathematician, tells us how almost anything imaginable can be done with mathematics: “In the language of mathematics we can tell lies as well as truths, and within the scope of mathematics itself there is no possible way of telling one from the other. We can distinguish them only by experience or by reasoning outside the mathematics, applied to the possible relation between the mathematical solution and its physical correlate.”149 Recall how Einstein stopped the universe in its tracks on paper by inserting lambda into his equations, and that Hawking has his imaginary time running perpendicular to real time.

146

Page, D. 2007, p. 424. Ellis, G., 2011, p.295. 148 Einstein, A., 1923, p. 28. 149 Dingle, H., 1972, pp. 31-32. 147

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Hawking and Mlodinow make reference to “model-dependent realism” whereby reality depends on what model is applied to understand it. It is acceptable for each theory to have its own version of reality as long as they agree in their predictions. This makes scientific sense when we realize that it is meaningless to talk about “true reality” in any absolute sense; only God knows true reality. No model of reality is reality any more than a map of Boston is Boston. Model-dependent realism can only be judged with reference to other models that are also model-dependent realities (like one map of Boston being judged with reference to another). But if all maps were drawn without ever having seen the contours and streets of Boston, one should be wary of any and all maps of Boston. Likewise, the various models of reality drawn by string theorists are based on mathematical models unsupported by empirical data. Kurt Gödel’s version of Anselm’s ontological proof of God’s existence (see Chapter 15 for a discussion of this) expressed in the language of mathematical logic is an example of what can be accomplished with mathematics. No one has ever found inconsistencies in Gödel’s theorem, and in 2014, computer scientists fed it into high-powered computer programs called “higher-order automated theorem provers” and proved Gödel to be right.150 They showed that his proof was correct by way of higher modal logic (modes of qualifying truth based on notions of necessity, contingency, and possibility). Of course, multiverse proponents such as Hawking would not accept Gödel’s conclusion. They would say that the theorem was proved only according to the internal consistency of the mathematics, which is based on certain assumptions, and they would be right. We cannot prove God exists by mathematics any more than we can prove the existence of a multiverse. Since God is outside of nature, He lies outside of definition and measurement. We can describe a tree, a cloud, the movement of the planets, and a million other things with math because they are “things.” They are material and natural while God is immaterial and supernatural, and not amenable to measurement. In mathematical

150

Benzmüller, C., and Paleo, B., 2014.

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terms, God is not a theorem to be proved; He is a self-evident axiom from which ultimately everything must be deduced.

PHYSICISTS AND MATHEMATICIANS WEIGH IN ON M-THEORY M-theory has many supporters, but also many detractors. Roger Penrose describes Hawking and Mlodinow’s multiverse notions as “hardly science,” and “not even a theory,” Another Nobel Laureate physicist, Richard Feynman, dismissed M-theory as “crazy,” “nonsense,” and “the wrong direction” for physics.151 Mathematical physicist Peter Woit wrote a stinging book-length criticism of string theory, likening it to that caricature of learning called postmodernism. Woit says: “There is a striking analogy between the way superstring theory research is pursued in physics departments and the way postmodern ‘theory’ has been pursued in humanities departments. In both cases, there are practitioners that revel in the difficulty and obscurity of their research, often being overly impressed with themselves because of this.”152 Ellis and Silk note that the mathematical elegance of M-theory generates grand but untestable hypotheses, and conclude that because Mtheory is metaphysical, “theoretical physics risks becoming a no-man’sland between mathematics, physics and philosophy that does not truly meet the requirements of any.”153 They also argue that theories such as M-theory harm physics when proponents argue for relaxing the criteria by which a theory is judged useful or not, and note that among the time-honored criteria for a scientific theory is that it must be falsifiable. Yet because Mtheorists are faced with fundamental difficulties in meshing their theories to the observed universe have argued for a change in how physics is done. Tom Hartsfield joins the chorus of other physicists criticizing M-theory and calls it a passing theoretical fad asking that the rules be changed to 151

Penrose, R., 2010, np. Woit, P., 2006, p. 207. 153 Ellis, G., and Silk, J., 2014, p.321. 152

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accommodate it: “To loosen the principles of our fantastically successful scientific method just to allow for one to continue would be a disaster.”154 Likewise, Carlo Rovelli calls M-theory the physics of the “why not,” and opines that theoretical physics has had a poor record in the last few decades because it has gotten itself trapped in the idea that it can disregard the content of previous theories: “Largely because of the philosophical superficiality of the current bunch of scientists.”155

WHAT IF THE MULTIVERSE EXISTS? But what if, against all odds, M-theorists turn out to be right and the exquisite laws of nature in our universe turn out to be just local by-laws and other localities have different ones? What are the implications for theists’ belief in the God of Christianity? Many atheistic scientists affirm that our universe is the result of “natural selection” among many trillions of universes, and that we must make a choice; an infinite number of universes ruled by blind chance, or just the one designed by the Creator. When we ascribe chance to something occurring, we often attribute power to it, but chance is not a causative agent, it is merely a statement of statistical probability. The chance of rolling a double-six in dice is 1/36, but there is nothing in that number that caused the double-six. Chance phenomena are constrained to act within the boundaries of their nature; variables such as gravity, air resistance, and the friction of the table interacting with the shape and weight of the dice and the force with which they were thrown, caused the outcome. Thus, when scientists talk of chance outcomes, they are talking about the probability of preexisting forces and preexisting matter influencing an outcome, and there is nothing inherently atheistic at all about attributing outcomes to chance. There are theistic scientists who maintain that it is reasonable to assume that God allows chance to play its part in creation thereby enhancing His respect for the freedom He gives his creation. 154 155

Hartsfield, T., 2016, np. In Horgan, J., 2014, np.

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I cannot fathom all the wonders of the universe (or multiverse) being attributable to chance, but I recall Niels Bohr’s reply to Einstein’s dismissal of the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics: “God does not play dice with the universe.” Bohr’s reply is a little lesson in humility: “Albert, stop telling God what to do.” It is no part of the finite mind of man to presume to know how an infinite and transcendent God decided to create everything. God can work through seemingly natural and random processes, all of which are astronomically improbable to achieve his purpose. To deny that the Lord cannot “work in mysterious ways His wonders to perform” is to deny his omnipotence and to question His judgement. Let us not forget the words of Isaiah 55:8-9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” We delude ourselves if we think we know His thoughts and purpose. As Nobel laureate chemist Richard Smalley remarks: “The purpose of this universe is something that only God knows for sure, but it is increasingly clear to modern science that the universe was exquisitely fine-tuned to enable human life. We are somehow critically involved in His purpose. Our job is to sense that purpose as best we can, love one another, and help Him get that job done.”156 Richard Dawkins’ take on Hawking and Mlodinow’s Grand Design is that Darwin’s natural selection fatally wounded God, and physics has administered the coup de grace. Thus, there is no God-or-multiverse choice to be made: the multiverse has won. Others have declared that the multiverse does not rule out God, nor God the multiverse, but we must still choose because the two choices are mutually exclusive. For instance, Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg notes that: “If you discovered a really impressive fine-tuning…I think you’d really be left with only two explanations: a benevolent designer or a multiverse.”157 It does not seem rational to me to posit trillions of universes to explain the fine-tuning orderliness of our universe rather than to posit God, and I believe that there 156 157

In Overman, D. 2008, p.11. In Gefter, A. 2008, p. 48.

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is no choice involved. If an infinity of universes exists, then I would say that it points to an infinitely creative God; that is, there is no reason that one should logically preclude the other. Astrophysicist Gerald Cleaver is an M-theorist who does not believe that the theory precludes God. He writes: “The bulk universe [the multiverse] is consistent with belief in a God whose nature does not change and whose nature contains the attribute of creating. It yields a picture of an infinite, eternal God, who eternally creates and creates infinitely. This should be no surprise, for those who believe in an eternal, self-consistent God, characterized by all of the classical ‘omni’ attributes.”158 Cosmologist Bernard Carr also believes that the so-called “choice” between God and the multiverse is wrong-headed for several reasons, because if God created one universe, he is quite capable of creating many. Yet he finds it: “not surprising that the multiverse proposal has commended itself to atheists. Indeed, Neil Manson has described the multiverse as ‘the last resort for the desperate atheist.’ For if ours is the only universe, then one has a problem explaining the fine-tunings and might well be forced into a theological direction.”159 Even if a multiverse exists, it is more reasonable that it does so by God’s creative hand than by investing God-like power to a mindless something that spontaneously created itself from nothing. A pre-Big Bang scenario just pushes us further back to the beginning of His creation. Perhaps God purposely created the universe (or multiverse) in such an incredibly unlikely way so that we never stop looking for His fingerprints. If there are trillions of other universes, it only adds to the majesty of God. The things we currently find utterly improbable or even impossible, may at some distant future be found true. And if they are, we can rejoice that they will be found to be the fruits of the grand design inherent in the laws of the universe that He set in motion. God did not create a universe incapable of being described in natural terms. He is the Agent that designed it all, and who gave us the intelligence and motivation to figure it all out. God’s hand is seen in the secondary causes through His laws of nature. The 158 159

Cleaver, G. 2006, p. 7. Carr, B., 2013, p. 168.

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“how” questions of nature are the domain of science; the “why” questions are the domain of God’s agency and purpose. Confronted with all the evidence we have from cosmology, all we can do is reason to the best explanation of why we are here, and that explanation points unerringly to a creator God of this universe, or of multiple others as well. Frank Tipler, a former atheist, came to the same conclusion after a career spent exploring quantum physics and cosmology: “When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics.”160 The multiverse may be “the last resort for the desperate atheist,” but even if it exists it provides no comfort for them because it still needed a Creator.

160

Tipler, F., 1994, preface p. i.

Chapter 8

THE QUEEN OF ALL SCIENTIFIC PROBLEMS: THE ORIGIN OF LIFE LIFE FROM THE LIFELESS How did life get started on Earth? Materialism proposes that life arose from dead matter. The term abiogenesis is used for the hypothetical process by which chemical (inorganic) evolution became biological (organic) evolution. This leap from non-living matter to living matter would require a set of random non-living molecules to arrange themselves in a very specific and complex way completely undirected. All living systems possess two hugely complex systems for them to be characterized as such: metabolism and reproductive capacity. The immense challenge origin of life (OoL) researchers are confronted with is not only how inanimate matter could be transformed into something we could call life, but also which of these systems came first. Before life existed, how did these things that are essential to all living systems, and produced only by living systems, come into being? Because the chemistry outside the cell is hostile to it, living cells must have been enclosed in some sort of protective bubble. Cells must also have a mechanism to draw energy from its environment to fuel its chemical machinery, and be able to self-replicate according to the information

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provided by DNA. All these necessary things are so interdependent and irreducibly complex that it is almost impossible to even imagine how these things arrived in stepwise evolutionary fashion, but these mind-boggling complexities are required to give birth to even the simplest self-replicating cell. There is a mountain of chicken-or-egg problems in OoL research, the complexity of which may be gauged by the fact that 150 theories of abiogenesis were published between the 1957 and 2000, and others have arrived on the scene since then.161 Nobel laureate Francis Crick, the codiscoverer of the structure of DNA has stated that: “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.”162 The God-like contrivance secular scientists rely on to explain the immense gap between the chemistry on a lifeless Earth and the stunningly complex instructions in DNA is immense periods of time. OoL researchers Trevors and Abel scold them for this, writing: “Contentions that offer nothing more than long periods of time offer no mechanisms of explanation for the derivation of genetic programming. No new information is provided by such tautologies. The argument simply says it happened. As such it is nothing more than blind belief.”163 Biologists were not always so pessimistic. OoL researcher, Dean Kenyon, published a book in 1969, in which he proposed that abiogenesis was not only possible, but inevitable. Biologists and chemists were thrilled with a book by a leading biophysicist asserting that life was inevitable and that ruled out an intelligent designer. However, after a 30 years trying unsuccessfully to determine how complex proteins could self-organize naturalistically, Kenyon came to the conclusion that: “We have not the slightest chance of a chemical evolutionary origin for even the simplest of cells...so, the concept of the intelligent design of life was immensely attractive to me and made a great deal of sense, as it very closely matched the multiple Świeżyński, A. 2016. In Lim, R., 2017, p. 58. 163 Trevors, J. and Abel, D., 2004, p. 736. 161 162

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discoveries of molecular biology.”164 Kenyon, a former atheist, was dragged to God by his science. Nobel laureate biochemist Christian de Duve appears to have agreed with Kenyon, writing that: “If you equate the probability of the birth of a bacterial cell to that of the chance assembly of its component atoms, even eternity will not suffice to produce one for you.”165 Another Nobel laureate (physiology and medicine), George Wald, noted that life from non-life is either spontaneous chance or Divine creation. He ruled out Divine creation because: “We cannot accept that on philosophical grounds; therefore, we choose to believe the impossible: that life arose spontaneously by chance!”166 Wald later took an extra half-step and became a deist upon contemplating the fitness of the universe for life and consciousness (mind as an immaterial phenomenon). In the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry, he wrote: “It has occurred to me lately—I must confess with some shock at first to my scientific sensibilities—that both questions might be brought into some degree of congruence. This is with the assumption that mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always, as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality—that the stuff of which physical reality is composed is mindstuff.”167 Christians call Wald’s “mind-stuff” from which physical reality came, “the Word of God.”

THE MILLER-UREY EXPERIMENT The earliest speculations about a naturalistic OoL were that life could not have formed from an oxygen-rich atmosphere such as that which currently bathes the Earth. They reasoned thusly because oxygen interferes with reactions that might have transformed simpler organic molecules into more complex ones by stealing electrons from hydrogen atoms. It was

164

Kenyon, D. 2002, p. 35. In Andrews 2017, p. 248. 166 Wald, G., 1954, p.48. 167 Wald, G., 1984, p.1. 165

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therefore posited that Earth’s early atmosphere must have been “reducing;” that is, one in which there is little or no oxygen present and one that easily produces chemical reactions. Such an atmosphere was considered to be rich in hydrogen and other compounds such as methane and ammonia that readily donate atoms to other substance. These reducing gases were considered the major components in the so-called “primordial soup” by which chance and necessity produced the basic units of life in the form of the amino acids that build proteins. In 1953, a famous experiment known as the Miller-Urey experiment was conducted by Harold Urey and Stanley Miller. They created a system of flasks containing the reducing gases assumed to constitute the Earth’s early atmosphere—methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water. A Bunsen burner served as a heat source, and electrodes provided a continuous electric spark in the apparatus to mimic the role of lightning in the real world. After about a week, a tar-like sludge was produced in the flask which contained five amino acids, the building blocks of protein. The OoL folks were ecstatic, believing that “life-in-the-lab” was just around the corner. But the distance from simple amino acids to proteins, never mind to RNA, DNA, and functioning cells, can be measured in light years. Amino acids do not live, and the fact that they combine to make proteins in a very specific way presents a huge problem for naturalistic explanations. The appeal of a reducing atmosphere for OoL researchers is that under such conditions it would not take much energy to form the carbon-rich molecules vital to life. However, in a reducing oxygen-free world there would be no ozone layer (made by oxygen), and large amounts of ultraviolet radiation would reach the Earth’s surface, which would make delicate (and they would have to be very delicate) chemical reactions on the Earth very difficult. Oxygen thus forms a paradox for OoL researchers because either its presence (interfering with chemical reactions) or its absence (no ozone protection) stymies prebiotic molecule formation. Furthermore, we now know that the conditions on early Earth were not conducive to the formation of a reducing atmosphere, but rather they were conducive to an oxygen-rich atmosphere such as our current atmosphere.

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That is, the early Earth atmosphere had an oxygen level close to the present-day Earth. As Bruce Watson, an atmospheric scientist with the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, put it: “We can now say with some certainty that many scientists studying the origins of life on Earth simply picked the wrong atmosphere.”168

AMINO ACIDS TO PROTEINS: CHIRALITY AND REACTION RATES Even if you can make amino acids under strict laboratory conditions, it’s a far cry from making them self-assemble into chains to form a protein because proteins are the most structurally complex and sophisticated molecules known to science. Amino acids are monomers (“one part”) that must bond together into large molecular chains called polymers (“many parts”) to form functioning proteins in the process called polymerization. Unfortunately, a nascent amino chain forming in the hypothesized prebiotic aqueous soup, would be far more likely to break apart than to assemble further. Biological chemists point out that there is no evidence that a primordial soup ever existed, but even if it did: “Polymerisation into RNA requires both energy and high concentrations of ribonucleotides [the building blocks of RNA]. There is no obvious source of energy in a primordial soup. Ionizing UV radiation inherently destroys as much as it creates.”169 Living things need to extract energy for the environment to continue living, and unguided polymerization runs afoul of the second law of thermodynamics. Because polymerized molecules have already reacted, they are at thermodynamic equilibrium. No further reactions can occur in a system in a state of thermodynamic equilibrium because there is no free energy intrinsic to the system that would allow them. Free energy can only be supplied to a living system by a mechanism that can harvest energy from the environment to counteract the decaying effects of the second law; 168 169

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 2011, Bruce Watson. Lane, N., Allen, J., and Martin, W. 2010, p. 272.

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only then can the living system break free from its shackles. The problem is that a system must already be alive for it to possess such a mechanism. Getting amino acids to polymerize and produce a functional protein runs into the so-called chirality problem. Chiral comes from the Greek for “hand.” Two amino acids that are alike in structure and function may also be distinct from each other because they are mirror-images, just as your hands are. One amino acid version is labeled D (“dextro”) for right-handed, and the other L (“levo”), or left-handed. D and L amino acids are structurally identical (they have the same atoms: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen) just as your hands are identical, but you cannot fit your right hand into your left glove. Likewise, D and L amino acids will not bond because chemical reactions that drive our cells only work with molecules of the correct “handedness.” When amino acids are found in nonliving material or synthesized in the lab, they come equally in D and L forms. Biologists call equal D and L forms a racemic or heterochirality. While there are an equal number of Ds and Ls in nature, a homochiral set of building blocks is necessary for life; that is, all amino acids must be left-handed, just as all sugars (ribose) must be right-handed if DNA and RNA are to be produced. The molecular locks of life can only be opened by molecular keys with the proper handedness; nothing else will fit. Even one right-handed amino acid would destabilize the familiar DNA helix and it would not be able to form long chains of information. Given that the laws of nature always produce a racemic, what is the probability that even a short protein could form from all left-handed monomers in a racemic on a prebiotic Earth? Plaxco and Gross use a short chain of 189 acids and inform us that it “is highly improbable that a random chemistry could produce a polymer molecule that contained monomers of only one-handedness. To be precise, the probability of achieving homochirality in a 189-unit polymer from an equal-molar mixture of leftand right-handed monomers is 1 in 2189 (1in 8 x 1056)!”170 A 189-unit polymer is very short; many are thousands of monomers long, so, it seems

170

Plaxco, K., and Gross, M. 2006, p. 114.

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absurd to think that something as highly optimized as the genetic code could arrive by accident. There is another problem besides the mind-numbing statistical improbability of achieving homochirality, and that is back again to the second law of thermodynamics. Biochemist A. Garay notes: “Consider one of the simplest steps in the origin and evolution of life, the choice of one chiral form over racemic mixture. Thermodynamics do not permit this initial step. They dictate full racemization of all non-completely racemic mixtures. In this respect, weak nuclear interactions seemingly do not obey the second law.”171 He goes on to show why this is so via mechanisms from quantum physics, but he is basically saying that a naturalistic origin of homochirality is probably impossible given its violation of the second law. Then we have the problem of amino acid reaction rates. If you have the 20 different L-amino acids that make the proteins found in the human body in the lab and allow them to interact with the expectation that they will eventually form a functioning protein chain, you will find that the most reactive acid will link up first and the least reactive will line up next last. In other words, the molecules of life are not ordered in any way by amino acid reaction rates. Given the hundreds or thousands of L-amino acids have to line up in a precise sequence to get a functional protein, it is no surprise that this never happens by unguided processes as it does every minute of every day guided by the information content of DNA. If only the laws of physics and chemistry determined the sequence we would not be around since getting the precise sequence by random chemical reactions in an unguided context is beyond unlikely. As molecular chemist Steven Benner informs us: “An enormous amount of empirical data have established, as a rule, that organic systems, given energy and left to themselves, devolve to give useless complex mixtures.”172 Unguided organic reactions in a pool of chemicals form a gooey tar, a problem known as the “asphalt problem.” Benner lists a number of other seemingly unresolvable paradoxes that

171 172

Garay, A., 1993, p.168. Benner, S., 2014, p. 341.

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“suggest that it is impossible for any non-living chemical system to escape devolution to enter the Darwinian world of the ‘living.’“173

THE MULTIVERSE AND PANSPERMIA To address the improbability of life emerging from non-life, some OoL scientists have taken a page from the physicist’s handbook and posited a multiverse. Evolutionary biologist Eugene Koonin has calculated the enormous improbability for the simultaneous emergence of translation (ribosomes using RNA as a template to make proteins) and replication (DNA making a replica of itself): “the probability that a coupled translation-replication emerges by chance in a single O-region [observable region of the universe] is P< 10-1018. Obviously, this version of the breakthrough stage can be considered only in the context of a universe with an infinite (or, in the very least, extremely vast) number of O-regions.”174 Koonin’s calculation is just the probability of getting replication and translation. You still have to get these functions enclosed in a cell with all its complex interdependent parts. But never mind the messy chemistry; just concentrate on trillions of “O-regions” and we get back to blind chance, and it’s a problem solved! Fred Hoyle agreed that the complexity of life does not lend itself to chance. With his colleague Chandra Wickramasinghe, he wrote of probabilities of getting the 20 amino acids to line up correctly and of obtaining a suitable sugar backbone for DNA/RNA, and the probability of getting functioning enzymes. They concluded: “there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (1020)2000 = 1040,000, an outrageously small probability .... this simple calculation wipes the idea entirely out of court.”175 Hoyle looked to the heavens as a way out of the conundrum, but not to God. What he looked to instead was the notion of panspermia (“seeds everywhere”). 173

Ibid, p. 342. Koonin, E., 2007, p.19. 175 Hoyle, F., and Wickramasinghe, C., 1981, pp.19-21. 174

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There are two versions of panspermia posited–directed and undirected. Undirected panspermia is the notion that life arose somewhere in the vastness of the cosmos and hitched a ride on the millions of comets, meteors, and asteroids that bombarded the early Earth. The hostile environment of interstellar space led many to dismiss undirected panspermia for directed panspermia. In this version, intelligent aliens are said to provide the direction, either by sending protected spores out into the universe with the hope of seeding some suitable planet, or that they came to Earth themselves to kick-start life. Among the supporters of this option were Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel (Orgel later rejected it), who write: “It now seems unlikely that extraterrestrial living organisms could have reached the earth either as spores driven by the radiation pressure from another star or as living organisms imbedded in a meteorite. As an alternative. . . we have considered Directed Panspermia, the theory that organisms were deliberately transmitted to the earth by intelligent beings on another planet.”176 Hoyle’s calculations might have ruled spontaneous chemical evolution “out of court,” but the notion of panspermia does not solve the OoL puzzle. It merely moves its origin elsewhere in the vastness of space where the same 1040,000 problem is encountered. So, even if we conceive of a multiverse with an almost infinite number of universes with perhaps 1 in a billion having some potential for life, 1040,000 still wipes chance “entirely out of court.” Ever the enigmatic thinker, Hoyle was aware that he had merely moved the origins of life elsewhere, and that does not solve the problem of how life arose, or why it did, but he posited “intelligent alien control” over the process. In Hoyle’s The Intelligent Universe, he wrote: “Even after widening the stage for the origin of life from our tiny Earth to the Universe at large, we must still return to the same problem that opened this book—the vast unlikelihood that life, even on a cosmic scale, arose from non-living matter. It is apparent that the origin of life is overwhelmingly a matter of arrangement by intelligent control.

176

Crick, F., and Orgel, L. 1973, p. 341.

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Unintelligent natural selection is only too likely to produce an unintelligent result” [my emphasis].177 Hoyle left unanswered the nature of this intelligent controller, yet the enigmatic nature of this brilliant scientist made many statements in his books and articles in which we may envision him struggling not to mention God while using metaphors that strongly suggest that he had God in mind. Recall that Hoyle was led to conclude that some super-intellect had “monkeyed with the physics, as well as the chemistry and biology” when confronted with the exquisite fine-tuning of the carbon making process in stellar nucleosynthesis. One wonders how the intelligent aliens who supposedly seeded our planet with life were somehow able to get inside the stars to “monkey” with the triple-alpha process. Who was that super intellect? Hoyle’s colleague, Chandra Wickramasinghe, was more forthcoming about God. He wrote: “From my earliest training as a scientist, I was very strongly brainwashed to believe science cannot be consistent with any kind of deliberate creation. That notion has been painfully shed. At the moment I can’t find any rational argument to knock down the view that argues for conversion to God . . . Now we realize the only logical answer to life is creation—and not accidental random shuffling.”178 The more scientists allow themselves to break free of their materialism to ponder deep metaphysical questions the more likely they are to come to the same conclusion.

THE RNA WORLD HYPOTHESIS The difficulties of OoL research does not mean that science must throw up its hands. God did not make his creation undecipherable; he wants us to discover all that is discoverable. We have noted that there are many theories of abiogenesis, but two have emerged as the major contenders: the RNA world (the current favorite) and metabolism-first hypotheses. RNA 177 178

In Korthof, G., 2006, np. In Seckbach, J., and Gordon, R., 2009. pp. 343-344.

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is the universal replicator, and chemists have been able to synthesize its various components in the lab. The synthesis of RNA components in the lab requires intelligent chemists to control reaction rates, and to know and select the right component in the right order for each reaction. Chemists take the fact that they can synthesize some of RNA’s components in the lab and deduce from it that given enough time nature can do the same thing. Unlike chemists, however, nature is not intelligent and cannot think ahead, but it would nevertheless require the same control, order, and selectivity, and know what the end product should be. Crucially, nature would have to keep the bits and pieces that are posited to end up as an RNA molecule away from water because water is “inherently toxic to polymers (e.g., RNA) necessary for life.” Even the RNA monomers (the bases) have problems because water transforms them into different monomers, thus destroying the information carried by RNA.179 DNA, RNA, and proteins work as an interdependent unit, with DNA storing information, RNA reading and conveying it, and protein doing the necessary enzymatic work. We know that DNA requires enzymes (proteins) to replicate, but these enzymes can only be synthesized by DNA; neither can exist without the other. To get this going, left-handed amino acids would have to have lined up just right to produce the enzyme at the same time and at the same place that the right-handed nucleic acids arranged themselves with the right information. Then these two complex molecules must have somehow joined hands to form a functioning, inseparable, irreducible whole. The probability of this occurring without intelligent guidance is almost beyond calculation. OoL researchers know that the DNA/RNA/protein system is far too complex to have arrived spontaneously as a system, so they attempt to determine which came first. RNA first proponents go back to the idea of a primordial soup in which free-floating nucleic acids fortuitously came together in just the right order to form an RNA molecule.

179

Neveu, M., Kim, H., and Benner, S. 2013, p. 394.

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Many thought this would solve the chicken-or-egg problem since RNA can store genetic information and self-replicate like DNA and perform the required enzymatic activity of proteins. But biochemist Harold Bernhardt points out that RNA is too complex to have arisen prebiotically and that RNA is inherently unstable. He states that the best ribozyme replicase (a molecule that catalyzes its own replication) created so far in the lab is about 190 nucleotides in length: “far too long a sequence to have arisen through any conceivable process of random assembly.” Additionally, there is no way to know whether such a replicase ribozyme existed naturally in early environments. He notes that it requires between 1014 and 1016 randomized RNA molecules “as a starting point for the isolation of ribozymic and/or binding activity in in vitro selection experiments, completely divorced from the probable prebiotic situation.”180 There are so many insurmountable difficulties in this area “happy accidents” are evoked with frequency. The self-replication of RNA is the cornerstone of the RNA hypothesis, but no one has been able to achieve this in the lab. The RNA hypothesis is said to solve the chicken-or-egg problem since it is claimed RNA can function both as a molecule carrying genetic information and as a catalyst promoting its own replication. This gene/enzyme double-duty presents something of a paradox because the two roles require contradictory properties. An enzyme, being a protein, must fold and be reactive or it is useless, while a genetic molecule carrying information must not do either because it would lose information. Furthermore, the efficiency and fidelity of replication must be sufficient to produce viable copies at a rate exceeding the rate of decomposition of the parent molecule, which presents a major problem given the inherent instability of RNA. Robertson and Joyce call it a myth that “a small RNA molecule that arises de novo and can replicate efficiently and with high fidelity under plausible prebiotic conditions. Not only is such a notion unrealistic in light of current understanding of prebiotic chemistry, but it should strain the credulity of even an optimist’s view of RNA’s catalytic potential.”181 180 181

Bernhardt, H. 2012, p. 7. Robertson, M., and Joyce, G., 2012. p. 7.

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The underlying premise of all OoL research is that life is just a matter of getting the physics and chemistry right, after which biology will take over. While life must be consistent with the laws of physics and chemistry it cannot be derived from them. The incredible complexity of life runs on the information content of DNA, but there is no information without an interpreter. Just as the information on a DVD disk needs a DVD player to convert the tracks into images and sounds, the information contained in the genes must have the cellular machinery to transcribe the message into a protein. One without the other would be totally useless because they function as a unit. Andrew McIntosh, a thermodynamics expert, writes of the irreducible complexity “involved in creating the DNa/mrNa/ ribosome/amino acid/protein/DNA-polymerase connections. All of these functioning parts are needed to make the basic forms of living cells to work…It is against the known principles of thermodynamics in physics and chemistry for this to happen spontaneously.”182 Even granting the existence of self-replicating RNA surrounded by all the right L-amino acids, it cannot make a protein unaided by all the other necessary cellular components since RNA contains only raw information. A blueprint cannot make anything without the “workers” in the cell who understand it and can assemble what it codes for.

THE METABOLISM-FIRST HYPOTHESIS Metabolism is the mechanism by which living things circumvent the second law by harvesting outside energy (food, water, sunlight) from the environment. Metabolism refers to all chemical processes (millions of chemical reactions) that occur in your cells that enable all living things to grow and thrive. It converts the food into energy to fuel cellular processes, such as building proteins and nucleic acids, and a method of eliminating cellular waste. David Abel notes that: “Metabolism is the most highly integrated, holistic, conglomerate of organized formal functions known to

182

McIntosh, A. 2009, p. 370.

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science. How did life get so organized and goal-oriented out of an inanimate prebiotic environment that could care less about function or useful work? Chance and necessity cannot pursue function, let alone such an extraordinary degree of cooperative work.”183 To do such work there must be a lipid membrane boundary between the cell and the outside world. It is not enough to possess a protective membrane like the simple plastic bag you brought the goldfish home in. The membrane must be sufficiently complex to both allow vital elements to enter the cell and then its products to exit; this is called “compartmentalization.” The importance of compartmentalization implies that the cell would have to come before metabolism. After all, what is the point of metabolism unless you have a compartmentalized organism for it to sustain? As noted, this membrane is far from a simple sac holding together the contents of the cell. It is a double-layered lipid/protein membrane of great complexity. The cell’s membrane acts as castle walls with multiple drawbridges that selectively allow the entry of resources required by the castle’s residents and the exit of things needed outside the walls, and many other things it takes whole books to describe. Metabolism-first theory was animated by the problems of the RNA world hypothesis. To get around these problems, the metabolism-first hypothesis proposes the spontaneous formation of simple molecules, such as the compound formed from carbon dioxide and water, triggered life. Such a primitive cell is assumed to have contained proteins (ignoring the difficulties involved in making them) which possessed a crude nongenomic replication capacity (whatever that could be), and subsequent evolution processes somehow led to the accumulation of simple organic molecules that could serve as catalysts for more complex molecules containing RNA and DNA. Organic chemist Addy Prost says of the metabolism first model that it runs up against that pesky second law again: “How would metabolic cycles form spontaneously from simple molecular entities, and, more importantly, how would they maintain themselves over time? We run yet again into that thermodynamic brick wall.”184 183 184

Abel, D. 2011, p. 123. Pross, A. 2012, p. 107.

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Research by Vasas, Szathmáry, and Santos showed that metabolic systems such as those proposed by metabolism-first proponents are unable to retain information (no genome) about their composition to allow them to evolve toward a metabolic pathway. In other words, they do not contain hereditary information by which they could pass on their composition to progeny. Commenting on both the RNA and metabolism first scenarios, they maintain that, “Both schools acknowledge that a critical requirement for primitive evolvable systems (in the Darwinian sense) is to solve the problems of information storage and reliable information transmission.”185 Problems such as these are why many OoL are beginning to argue for topdown causation in the form of abstract information: “the key distinction between the origin of life and other ‘emergent’ transitions is the onset of distributed information control, enabling context-dependent causation, where an abstract and non-physical systemic entity (algorithmic information) effectively becomes a causal agent capable of manipulating its material substrate.”186

INFORMATION: THE RECIPE FOR LIFE A third a hypothesis for the OoL is the “information first.” Arguing that information holds the key to the mystery of life’s nature and origin, theoretical physicist and astrobiologist Sara Walker and astrophysicist Paul Davies state that “Although it is notoriously hard to identify precisely what makes life so distinctive and remarkable there is general agreement that its informational aspect is one key property, and perhaps the key property. The manner in which information flows through and between cells and sub-cellular structures is quite unlike anything else observed in nature.”187 Walker and Davies see life as emerging from a phase transition from bottom-up reductionist chemistry to top-down information flow and management in the causal structure: “The origin of life may thus be 185

Vasas, V., Szathmáry, E., and Santos, M., 2010, p. 1470. Walker, S., and Davies, P. 2013, p. 7. 187 Ibid, p. 1. 186

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identified when information gains top-down causal efficacy over the matter that instantiates it.”188 The problem some see with this is that information is an abstraction, and abstractions are not usually seen as causal agents. However, energy is also abstract, and we all accept energy as a causal factor. Although energy is defined as the ability of a physical system to do work on another, we infer its obvious existence by its effects, but we do not know what the essence of energy is. Information is like this in biology; it transfers knowledge of what to do from one living system to another without us being able to say specifically what it is. Information is, of course abstract, and is always created by intelligence and thus by a mind. Only a mind of infinite wisdom could create the information necessary to make life. In a later paper, Walker and Davies appear to agree. They developed a model in which they talk of the fine-tuning of information and note that if the pathway from chemistry to life is the result of “fixed dynamical laws, then (our analysis suggests) those laws must be selected with extraordinary care and precision, which is tantamount to intelligent design: it states that ‘life’ is ‘written into’ the laws of physics ab initio [“from the beginning”]. There is no evidence at all that the actual known laws of physics possess this almost miraculous property.”189 Every living thing is a system composed of many thousands of separate parts that are interdependent in their functions. All molecules and cells in an organism are in an information- rich cooperative relationships with all other molecules and cells by sending and receiving information on which they must act or else it all breaks down. Information transfer can only occur when both sender and receiver are “intelligent” enough to know what the information entails. Take the marvelous machinery of the Krebs cycle, the cellular respiration system by which glucose is broken down in the presence of oxygen to produce cellular energy. Every movement we make and breath we take induces a series of complicated chemical reactions involving electrons changing a series of enzymatic molecules into others. If you have ever seen a schematic image of the Krebs cycle 188 189

Walker, S., and Davies, P. 2016, p. 8. Ibid, pp. 5-6.

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you will appreciate its marvelous complexity designed to make life possible. It is difficult to imagine how this system could have been cobbled together piecemeal by molecular tinkering, for from where did animals get the energy to move and breathe before it came online? Each stage in the Krebs cycle involves messages that command “do this!” While the carriers of information are material (transformative chemical reactions in the Krebs cycle or the paper and ink of a book) the information (its meaning) itself is not. Information may be described as symbolically encoded messages, or set of instructions, for carrying out a specific task or eliciting a specific response. The DNA/RNA protein synthesizing system is a set of recognizable abstract grammatical symbols that have been taken and put together as words to construct a syntactically correct sentence. The DNA is a natural code that possesses a set of abstract symbols (the base letters: AGCT) with syntactic rules. Sets of letters do not by themselves necessarily convey meaning; meaning is determined by the natural language of a system. For instance, physicist Hubert Yockey points out that the phrase: “‘O singe fort’ has no meaning in English, although each is an English word, yet in German it means ‘O sing on,’ and in French it means ‘O strong monkey.’”190 DNA is a specific language with its own meanings, just as English, French, and German are. To mean something in the language of DNA the sequence of nucleotides must have explicit specificity for a meaningful message. This means that the sequence of letters must form a syntactically correct sentence. The RNA codons are instructions for specific amino acids and their specific sequence, and that message requires a reply on the part of the receiver. When ribosomes read the instructions from the messenger RNA, they respond by forming bonds between specific amino acids to make the specified protein. The totality of these processes results in a living, functioning organism like you and me. Werner Gitt observes that the question of “‘How did life originate?” is inextricably linked to the question “Where did the information contained in all those base sequences in the genetic code come from?” He continues: “Anybody who wants to make

190

Yockey, H. 2005, p. 6.

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meaningful statements about the origin of life would be forced to explain how the information originated. All evolutionary views are fundamentally unable to answer this crucial question.”191 So, abstract information is the fundamental aspect of life. John Lennox is not surprised, and states: “This proposal, that information be regarded as a fundamental quantity, has profound implications for our understanding of the universe. But it is not new, it has been around for centuries. ‘In the beginning was the Word...all were made by Him.”192 There was a lot of optimism after the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment that it would be relatively easy to kick-start life in the lab, but it has slowly faded to pessimism. Even Urey admitted that while he believes in abiogenesis, he does not do so by dint of evidence, but by faith: “All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it, the more we feel that it is too complex to have evolved anywhere. But we believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this planet. It is just that its complexity is so great, that it is hard for us to imagine that it did.”193 Science has gained an immense amount of chemical and biological knowledge in its search for the OoL, and that is a big plus. Many thousands of biologists and chemists have spent millions of hours experimenting and calculating since Miller-Urey, and this has resulted in a clearer understanding of the immensity of the problem rather than its solution. This does not mean that scientists must stop trying to discover natural explanations for the OoL. Regardless of an individual scientist’s religious convictions, he or she cannot stop and conclude that God did it. We know that He did by “devising the rules of the game,” as Nobel laureate physicist Erwin Schrodinger said. But Schrodinger also said that God left it up to science “to discover or to deduce.”194

191

Gitt, W., Compton, B. and Fernandez, J., 2011, p.169. Lennox, J. 2009, p.177. 193 In Persaud, C. 2007, p. 84. 194 In Moore, W. 2015, p. 348. 192

Chapter 9

THE LANGUAGE OF LIFE DECODING THE BOOK OF LIFE The genome is God’s construction manual for every living thing. It provides the instructions for building proteins, which are the very complicated structures that build us. Scientists have been struggling to unlock the secrets of genetics ever since Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel formulated the earliest of rules of heredity in the 1850s-1860s. There have been many advances since then, with a major advance being the completion of the $2.7 billion Human Genome Project in 2000 that succeeded in sequencing the entire human genome. At the ceremony honoring this amazing scientific accomplishment, former President Bill Clinton remarked: Today’s announcement represents more than just an epoch-making triumph of science and reason. After all, when Galileo discovered he could use the tools of mathematics and mechanics to understand the motion of celestial bodies, he felt, in the words of one eminent researcher, that he had learned the language in which God created the universe. Today we are learning the language in which God created life. We are

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The task of the Human Genome Project was to read and attempt to decipher the genome’s miraculous genetic code. This required the pooled wisdom of more than a thousand scientists from six nations. Could this exquisite magnum opus that requires such brain power to read and decipher have arisen fortuitously from ancient sludge by atoms bumping around in the night? We wouldn’t expect that of a two-page instruction manual of how to assemble a child’s bicycle, never mind one on how to assemble a being made in God’s image to last three score years and ten. This universal code book with its immense information content reads, interprets, and edits itself (try getting the bicycle manual to do that!) is a perfect code from any point of view, and is remarkably compelling evidence of a Divine Designer.

GENES AND THE PROTEIN MAKING PROCESS Your body consists of trillions of cells inside of which—with some exceptions such as red blood cells—is a factory for making proteins. Thousands of proteins are constantly being made for everything you need to keep alive and kicking, and the information needed to make them are carried on specific segments of DNA called genes. We inherit two forms of a gene—one from each parent—called alleles that are located at the same position on a specific chromosome. These alleles help to determine certain traits and behaviors by coding for different levels of a protein product. These gene products, such as neurotransmitters, thus have a lot to do with how we behave or feel, but they do not cause us to behave or feel one way or another, they facilitate our behavior and our feelings. The relevant protein products of genes produce tendencies or dispositions to respond to the environments in one way rather than in another; they do not

195

Clinton, W. 2000, np.

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determine those responses. God would never have designed a life-giving system that determined human behavior because He endowed us free will so that we may freely come to know him. DNA consists of two strings of nucleotides tightly wrapped around a protein core called a histone and twisted around each other to form the familiar double helix ladder. Each nucleotide is built from a sugar and phosphate backbone and a base (the rungs). There are four different bases: adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C), and guanine (G), that bond in specific ways: C can only pair with G, and A can only pair with T. There are approximately 3 billion base pairs in the human genome, and a gene is a group of adjacent base pairs that code for the manufacture of a protein. While we have approximately 21,000 genes in the information storage system we call the genome, only about two percent of our DNA codes for proteins; many other segments regulate the behavior of the coding DNA. DNA’s information content is enormous; Clark and Pazdernik tell us that: “If the sequence were typed onto paper, at about 3,000 letters per page, it would fill 1 million pages of text.”196 Our genes are our genes that work for us. A heating system serves as a useful analogy for the genome’s responsiveness to our needs. Your thermostat senses when the ambient temperature in your house is below the desired setting and activates the furnace to restore the temperature to where you want it. The body’s nerve impulses, from sensory organs to the brain, may be thought of as a set of physiological thermostats that sense and transmit information about the state of your internal or external environment. When these nerves impulses sense that something is wrong, the “furnace” in the nucleus of the cell kicks on to begin to manufacture proteins that may put it right. To begin this process, an enzyme called DNA helicase goes to work unzipping the double-stranded DNA into two single strands. An enzyme called RNA polymerase then binds to the promoter region of a gene to signal the DNA to unwind so the bases on the DNA strand can be read to make a strand of messenger RNA (mRNA). This

196

Clark, D. and Pazdernik, N. 2009, p. 239.

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process of copying the instructions on the DNA onto mRNA to make a protein is called transcription. Uracil is substituted for thymine as the base complementary to adenine at this time. When the RNA polymerase crosses a stop sequence on the gene, the mRNA strand is complete and detaches from the DNA. The DNA double helix is then reconstituted by the billions of free-floating nucleotides in the nucleus and the mRNA begins its journey to the protein factory where the message is translated and the specified protein made. DNA polymerases add nucleotides to a growing DNA strand at an astounding 50 nucleotides per second. Because the environment in the nucleus differs from that of the cell’s cytoplasm, these environments are walled off by a double membrane with channels allowing for the passage of mRNA called the nuclear pore complex that recognizes and controls information flow. The mRNA is tagged by proteins to direct it toward the particular pore it must use to enter the cell’s cytoplasm. The top of Figure 9.1 illustrates transcription and the bottom half illustrates translation. The instructions are transmitted to the cell by mRNA in the form of a triplet of bases (e.g., CAA, AGC, CCU, etc.) called codons. Codons can be thought of as three letter words that correspond to the word for a particular amino acid, the building blocks of proteins. There are hundreds of different amino acids found in nature, but only 20 are used to make the proteins found in living things. Codons are four bases conveyed in units of three, so there are 4 x 4 x 4 = 64 possible arrangements of them. Transfer RNA (tRNA) reads the message and picks up and transports the appropriate sets of amino acids that complement the codons, called anticodons, on the mRNA strand. Codon and anticodon are then slotted into place by yet another form of RNA called ribosomal RNA (rRNA). This rRNA is responsible for joining the correct sequence of amino acids amino acids together to make a complete protein chain. This process of changing information from the language of RNA into the language of amino acids is called translation.

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Figure 9.1. The making of a protein.

Translation completes the flow of genetic information; the next step is to get the amino acid chain to fold into the 3D shape it needs to fit into a protein’s receptor “lock.” Proteins must be folded in very specific ways (see the complexity of the folds in the top half of Figure 9.1) if they are to fit into their receptors and function. On rare occasions mistakes are made in which they fold the wrong way. To counter this, the cell has a quality control system by which the protein is inspected, and if defective it is either repaired or stripped down to its component parts for reuse. Errors in the protein folding process not caught and rectified by the cell’s elaborate surveillance system occur at about one error per 10 billion nucleotides.

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Every protein requires the right amino acids to function as intended, which requires genes to specify the correct sequence of hundreds of amino acids before the folding takes place. There are four stages by which a chain of amino acids fold to become a functioning protein: primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary; fancy names for first, second, third and fourth. The primary stage is the precise sequence of amino acids held together by their peptide bonds that will fold them. In the secondary stage, the protein begins to fold up via various kinds of hydrogen bonds. Each amino acid interacts with the others and either twists into a corkscrew-like “alpha helix” or takes the shape of a folded “beta sheet.” Certain proteins called chaperones act as catalysts facilitating the correct assembly, but do not constitute a part of the assembled product. During the tertiary stage the protein folded into its precise 3-dimensional structure specific to its function. This requires a number of forces working to produce interactions of groups of amino acids, with thermodynamics providing the stabilizing force on the protein by adjusting it to its stable state because the protein is fighting nature’s tendency toward disorder. In the quaternary stage, a number of amino acid chains from the tertiary structures fold together into a “global” quaternary structure—the association of several protein chain subunits into a closely packed arrangement. Proteins must contain the information to proceed to the only place where it can connect; that is, to a receptor whose shape complements that of the protein. In the Journal of Theoretical Biology, biochemists Denton, Marshall, and Legge emphasize the incredibly complexity of protein folding and wonder how it could have evolved piecemeal: It is more than anything else the complex hierarchic structure of the folds—their being composed of clearly defined substructures and submotifs combined together into what appear seemingly to be irregular complex hierarchic wholes, the sort of order which is so characteristic of that of a machine or artifact—which conveys the irresistible feeling that such forms could not possibly be natural or lawful” [my emphasis]197

197

Denton, M., Marshall, C., and Legge, M. 2002, p.339.

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They go on to say that the self-organizing structures are governed by a rich “vocabulary of words” (information). They do not speculate on whom or what is responsible for imparting that information in the cell, but we know that lifeless atoms cannot write their own information-conveying software.

Figure 9.2. Major parts of the human cell.

An article touting a new IBM computer capable of more than one quadrillion (that’s 1,000 trillion) operations per second called Blue Gene noted that protein folding holds the key to understanding the basics of how life works. “The scientific community considers protein folding one of the most significant ‘grand challenges’—a fundamental problem in science or engineering.” It also stated that: “Blue Gene’s massive computing power will initially be used to model the folding of human proteins, making this fundamental study of biology the company’s first computing ‘grand

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challenge.’“198 A New York Times article quotes a researcher in IBM’s computational biology center as saying that if everything goes as planned it will take “Blue Gene about a year to simulate on the computer the folding of a single protein. How long does it take the body to fold one? Less than a second. It is absolutely amazing the complexity of the problem and the simplicity with which the body does it every day.”199 If it takes a computer with such awesome computing power a year to simulate what our bodies do millions of times every day, how much more awesome must be the Mind be that created the whole wonderous system?

THE WONDERS OF THE HUMAN CELL Life always comes from life, and the basic building block of life is the cell. The cell, many times smaller than the period at the end of this sentence, is a marvel of design. Cells are super-efficient factories that make copies of themselves and contain thousands of living entities. There are over 200 different kinds of cells in our body that perform different tasks; some are brain cells, others make bone, muscle, and hair, and others make red or white blood cells. Sadly, cells must die (about 300 million every minute) in a form of programmed cell death known as apoptosis. This is a normal part of cellular development by which enzymes destroy the DNA in the nucleus, and the debris is cleaned up by scavenging vacuum cleaners called macrophages. The information in DNA must be stored, transcribed, and translated, and then the output of all this activity must be inspected, packaged, and sent to its proper destination. This activity requires an awful lot of hardware packaged in this absolute marvel of precision atomic engineering. There is no point in getting bogged down in details that take the mind off the big picture, and the big take-away picture I want to paint here is a sense of wonder at the marvelous design and stunning complexity of the cell. Science writer Bill Bryson captures it fairly well in just four 198 199

IBM. 1999, np. Lohr, S. 1999, np.

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sentences when he writes: “Every cell in nature is a thing of wonder. Even the simplest are far beyond the limits of human ingenuity. To build the most basic yeast cell, for example, you would have to miniaturize about the same number of components as are found in a Boeing 777 jetliner and fit them into a sphere just 5 microns [that’s 0.00019685 inches] across; then somehow you would have to persuade that sphere to reproduce.”200 To accomplish the goal of keeping its host alive requires that the cell work on a myriad of subordinate molecular goals that somehow collectively “know” what those ultimate goals are. The cell is a hive of non-stop chemical activity with everything needed to supervise, plan, construct, package, and transport the protein products we need to live contained in them. As is the case with any factory, the cell has many structures required to fulfill its purpose (see Figure 9.2). The cytoskeleton is the structural foundation of the cell that determines its shape, and which also constitutes the assembly conduit directing the organelles and other substances around the cell. The nucleus is the control center from which the boss sends out instructions about what proteins are needed at the present time, and the ribosomes are the workers that build them on the assembly line. The nucleolus, which occupies about 25% of the volume of the nucleus, is mainly involved in the production of subunits which together form ribosomes. The Golgi apparatus bundles proteins and lipids as they are synthesized, and the lipid molecules that form the cell’s membrane serve as security guards that monitor which substances are allowed in and out of the cell through which entrance or exit. The factory floor is the cytoplasm and the vacuoles are a kind of warehouse that stores the nutrients a cell needs, as well as storing waste products waiting disposal, thus protecting the cell from contamination. The endoplasmic reticulum is part of the quality control mechanism that inspects the finished product to ensure that only correctly folded proteins are sent to their final destinations, and the lysosomes are the janitorial staff that break down waste in the cell and discard it.

200

Bryson, B. 2003. p. 372.

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The energy required for the cells to function comes from over 1,000 organelles per cell called mitochondria. Mitochondria use cellular oxygen to convert chemical energy from food in the cell via a complex process into adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondria have their own separate genomes and multiply automatically when their cells need more energy. ATP’s energy is stored in chemical bonds which can be opened and the energy redeemed. Cells are thus systems within systems within systems. It would seem logical that all of these parts would have to arrive on the scene as a whole unit to be functional. If a protein evolved first, how did it arrange itself without the ribosomes; where was the ATP to energize the process? What if it needed repair and there was no repair mechanism? If the repair mechanism evolved first, what would have been its purpose if there was nothing to repair? There are many chicken-or-egg questions such as these to keep biologists in business for generations. The cell is a perfect example of specified irreducible complexity. It is a complex system that requires all its interacting parts to be in place for it to function. Is there intelligence behind all that information contained in the DNA? I have a book of matches in front of me that tells me to “Close cover. Keep away from children.” No one doubts that the simple information content consisting of 29 letters arranged in orderly sequence is the product of an intelligent mind. How likely is it that the human genome’s 3 billion-plus letters arranged in orderly fashion, and conveying immensely more complex information, is not the product of a mind with infinite intelligence? Francis Collins, head of the government’s Human Genome Project at the time of the first completion of human genome sequencing, calls DNA the “language of God,” and offers its mindboggling complexity as a compelling argument for the reality of God. 201 The amazingly complex and exquisitely orchestrated process of protein making is driven by information, but from a materialist point of view, this elegantly designed process is the result of multiple chance events cooperating with the laws of physics and chemistry. Yet biologists are at a loss to reconcile the information-driven, chemically-indeterminate nature

201

Collins, F. 2006.

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of DNA. However, science must look for natural explanations regardless of an individual scientist’s religious convictions; it cannot stop and conclude that God did it. We know that He did, but He leaves it up to science to discover how.

JUNK GENES: ICONS OF EVOLUTION A long-standing icon of evolution is the existence of “junk” DNA in the human Genome. This DNA was so-called because 98% of it does not code for proteins. These non-coding regions of the DNA were formerly thought of as genetic “fossils” that once did something useful but now don’t, and was taken as strong support for the random purposelessness of the evolutionary process. At the same time, it argued against an intelligent Creator since no designer worth his salt would leave such garbage floating around doing nothing in his creation. The decade-long project called the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE), a consortium of 442 researchers from 32 different institutions around the world, put an end to such thinking. After five years of lab work and the equivalent of 300 years of computer time, ENCODE found that 80% of the human genome serves some biochemical function in regulating when, how, and where a gene is activated, with the promise of new technology finding function for the remainder. Ewan Birney, the lead researcher of ENCODE, said: “By carefully piecing together a simply staggering variety of data, we’ve shown that the human genome is simply alive with switches, turning our genes on and off and controlling when and where proteins are produced.”202 The Encode project has identified about 10,000 stretches of DNA containing non-protein coding genes that make a variety of RNA molecules required to regulate the actions of the protein-coding genes. As Stephen Hall remarked: “The ENCODE project has revealed a landscape that is absolutely teeming with important genetic elements—a landscape that used to be dismissed as ‘junk DNA.’”203 This was not good news for 202 203

National Institute of Heath. 2012. Hall, S. 2012, np.

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some, and a donnybrook ensued between supporters and detractors of ENCODE. In a 2013 lecture, Dan Graur, who is a virulent critic of ENCODE because of its implications, said that if our genomes are devoid of junk DNA: “then a long, undirected evolutionary process, cannot explain the human genome. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, then all DNA, or as much as possible, is expected to exhibit function. If ENCODE is right, then Evolution is wrong.”204 Molecular biologist Jonathan Wells comments on Graur’s attitude: “In other words: ‘If ENCODE is right, then evolution is wrong.’ But for Graur, evolution can’t be wrong. His solution to the problem? “Kill ENCODE.”205 Geneticist Nessa Carey scorns the notion of calling non-coding DNA “junk” simply because it is not responsible for this one task. She asks us to imagine visiting a car factory in which only two people (the 2% proteincoding genes) were involved in building a shiny car and 98% percent (the percentage of non-coding genes) just sitting around idly doing nothing. It would be ridiculous to think that only two people were needed to run the factory, and it is ridiculous to think this way about the genome. She writes of cars being the endpoint of the factory as proteins are the endpoints of the genome, and that neither could be produced and coordinated without the “junk.” She says that while two people can build a car just as twopercent of the genome builds proteins, but neither can sustain the whole process alone. Just as two people cannot sustain a successful car brand, neither can the other 98 if no cars are made to sell: “The whole organization only works when all the components are in place. And so it is with our genomes.”206 Carey is arguing the genome is an irreducibly complex molecular system of multiple interdependent parts that requires all components to be in place in order for the system to function. Transposons or “jumping genes” that make up about a quarter of the human genome were long considered a particularly junky part of the genome. Transposons are short sections of DNA that “jump” around and insert themselves into new DNA sites, most notably in the early embryo 204

Graur, D. 2013, np. Wells, J. 2017, p.130. 206 Carey, N. 2015, p. 3. 205

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when cells are dividing vigorously. Transposons used to be considered worse than junk. They were considered as parasites because they apparently jumped around randomly playing havoc. New research shows that they don’t jump around randomly, but rather exhibit various levels of preference for insertion at specific loci within the genome. They are guided by a balancing act that allows low but essential expression for both increasing propagation and reducing deleterious effects on cell function. Other research finds that it is actually a critical regulator of the first stages of embryonic development. In fact, a key transposon was found to be an enhancer of a gene called Sox9, which is critical for male sex development such that deleting it in mice results in a chromosomal XY male becomes a female with ovaries instead of testes. “Junk” gene researchers express their shock with their unexpected results because the genome was supposed to have been cobbled together over eons of time and not designed. From an anthropic point of view, however, such results were expected. In 1998—before the Human Genome Project was completed and before ENCODE—intelligent design proponent William Dembski predicted that “junk” genes had a function: “On an evolutionary view we expect a lot of useless DNA. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, we expect DNA, as much as possible, to exhibit function.”207 Dembski made this prediction on the basis of simple anthropic design logic; that is, any information processing system such as the genome cannot function if it contains a preponderance of useless parts.

EPIGENETICS The human genome is not a “genetic blueprint;” a phrase which connotes a simple one-to-one mapping from design to the finished product. “Genetic blueprint” implies a predetermined form waiting only for a developmental process to make it apparent, like a negative in a darkroom waiting to become a photograph. People are not machines that are

207

In Meyer, S. 2009, p. 407.

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assembled according to instructions on a blueprint; rather, they are organic beings that develop gradually over time, and a fixed genome has no way of anticipating the future demands of organisms. The genome has the ability to generate emergent properties and complex features without having to go back to the drawing board. The developmental circumstances that the emerging person encounters will affect the functioning of its genome by altering the process of genetic transcription and by wiring and rewiring its brain in ways only God Almighty could predict. Thus, there is a new focus on gene regulation in response to environmental challenges goes beyond the regulation inherent in DNA sequences. The science of epigenetics (the prefix “epi” means “above” or “beyond”) explores these regulatory processes. Epigenetics refers to genomic processes that alter gene activity in different ways without changing the DNA sequence. It can be viewed as providing the software by which organisms respond genetically to their environments without changing the DNA hardware. Think of two people reading the same book and coming to different conclusions. Both are looking at the same “hardware,” just as the DNA has the same sequence, but their “software” forged by individual developmental experiences, lead them to different conclusions, just as epigenetic processes lead to differential gene expression. DNA provides only the information to be transcribed into mRNA which has to be translated by tRNA that carries the amino acids to rRNA for assembly into a protein. Epigenetic modifications of DNA affect the ability of the DNA code to be read and translated into proteins by making the code accessible or inaccessible. Epigenetics plays a huge part in the biology of all organisms. It is the mechanism by which our trillions of cells containing identical DNA code express different parts of it to become any of hundreds of different cell types, such as muscle, eyes, liver, and brain cells. If we think of the genome as an orchestra, with genetic polymorphisms (a different allele that occupies that gene’s locus within a population) capable of producing a variety of music, then epigenetics is the conductor governing the dynamics of the performance: “The epigenetic ‘conductor’ controls when and what ‘instruments’ (genes) are to be activated and when they are to be silenced,

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and when they are activated, the gusto with which they may be played and what other instruments will accompany, augment, and modify the ‘music’ they make.”208

Figure 9.3. Methylation and Acetylation (histone modification).

Epigenetic regulation of genetic activity is accomplished by two main processes: DNA methylation and histone acetylation. Methylation may be permanent or semi-permanent (it is retained during cell replication); acetylation is transient. DNA methylation occurs when an enzyme called DNA methyltransferase attaches a methyl group of atoms to a cytosine base. The initial process of reading the DNA code for a protein is carried out in the cell nucleus by the enzyme RNA polymerase (RNAP). When a signal is received to manufacture a protein, RNAP runs along the DNA 208

Walsh, A. 2009, p. 51.

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strand reading the recipe for that protein. A methyl group attached to the cytosine base acts as a roadblock preventing the RNAP from running further up the DNA—no transcription order, no protein. This is illustrated in the main portion of Figure 9.3. The opposite effect is illustrated in the inserts of Figure 9.3 describing acetylation or histone modification. Acetylation involves enzymes called histone acetyltransferases (HATs) transferring an acetyl group of atoms that bind to the amino acid lysine tail of the histone (the protein cores around which the DNA is tightly wrapped). This reduces lysine’s attraction to the DNA’s negatively charged phosphate backbone. The reduced electrostatic charge loosens the chromatin enabling the RNAP to more easily read the gene. At the completion of transcription, another group of enzymes called histone deacetylases (HDACs) removes acetyl groups and reinstates the electrostatic attraction, thus repressing chromatin activity. Acetylation is therefore a short-term modification. The take-away lesson is that genes have an epigenetic memory in the sense that what you do and experience in life affects the way your genome functions. This memory extends to your parents and grandparents because epigenetic markers are heritable. So once again we are converging on the notion that the fundamental currency of the universe is information. Information assembles and directs the development of both the physical universe and its biological inhabitants.

Chapter 10

BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION: MICRO AND MACRO DISSENT FROM DARWINISM This chapter moves from the abiotic “arrival of the fittest” to the Darwinian “survival of the fittest.” The former is a deep mystery, but the latter is seen as settled science. Scientists who work within the modern synthesis of genetics and evolutionary biology are referred to as ‘neoDarwinists.’ They seem to take it for granted that neoDarwinism is as lawlike as the laws of physics, but this is far from true. Bernard Wood, a committed evolutionist, states that the theory is so widely accepted because images everywhere from textbooks to cereal boxes of a straight line from fish, to retile, to some knuckle-dragging ape-like creature, to a graceful human striding toward the future. Wood writes: “Our progress from ape to human looks so smooth, so tidy. It’s such a beguiling image that even the experts are loath to let it go. But it is an illusion.”209 Sir Fred Hoyle had some serious problems with Darwinism. In his Mathematics of Evolution, he writes that Darwinists have replaced God, and believe “that rabbits had been created by sludge, by methods too complex for us to calculate and by methods likely enough involving 209

Wood, B. 2002, p. 44.

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improbable happenings. Improbable happenings replace miracles and sludge replaced God.”210 Hoyle explains in mathematical terms why so many Darwinian claims are outside the realm of possibility. He knew that small-scale changes within a species occur (microevolution); his argument is with large-scale evolution (macroevolution). H0yle argued that species can only adapt within narrow limits; that is, they produce variation only within their kind. In other words, rabbits cannot become rhinos, even at their prodigious reproduction rate. Hoyle concludes that the extrapolation from micro to macro evolution has led us into a deep scientific bog. Another dissenter is Nobel laureate physicist Robert Laughlin notes that the theory of macroevolution is ideological because it cannot be tested and because it tends to prevent thinking rather than stimulating it. He calls it an “anti-theory” used to paint over embarrassing findings and to legitimize questionable ones: “Your protein defies the laws of mass action? Evolution did it! Your complicated mess of chemical reactions turns into a chicken? Evolution! The human brain works on logical principles no computer can emulate? Evolution is the cause!”211 Theodosius Dobzhansky, a giant of 20th century biology, made the oftquoted statement that “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”212 Dobzhansky was both a Christian and an evolutionist who believed that science does not preclude evolution having either an author or an ultimate goal: An Alpha and an Omega. If neoDarwinism is “settled science” disputed only by religious fundamentalist, how do we account for the more than well over 1,000 doctoral level scientists, mostly biologists, who signed a statement expressing their skepticism of it? The Scientific Dissent from Darwinism statement reads: “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.” No doubt a lot more scientists would sign a statement affirming their belief in Darwinism, but head counts do not settle scientific issues. I mention the Dissent simply to show that neoDarwinian 210

Hoyle, F. 1999, p. 3. Laughlin, T., 2005, pp. 168-169. 212 Dobzhansky, T., 1973, p. 125. 211

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theory is not in the same scientific league as theories in physics and chemistry.

CHARLES DARWIN: ATHEISM, FIRST CAUSE, NATURAL SELECTION, AND TELEOLOGY Arch atheist Richard Dawkins credits Charles Darwin with making it intellectually respectable to be an atheist. However, Darwin never called himself an atheist. In fact, he was a firm believer in God, as the following passage, written 33 years after the publication of his masterpiece, The Origin of Species, shows: Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.213

In an 1879 letter to a friend, Darwin denied that a belief in evolution logically leads to atheism “It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist & an evolutionist.” Darwin admitted that his level of belief often fluctuates, but: “In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God.”214 If he was alive today, we might call Darwin a theistic evolutionist. That is, he wholeheartedly believed in his “descent with modification” theory, but also that the laws of nature that allowed for this stemmed from an Ultimate Cause. He wrote in The Origin of Species that, “To my mind it accords

213 214

Darwin, C., 1892, p. 61. Darwin, C., 1879.

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better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual.”215 Darwin’s “secondary causes” are the natural properties of matter granted the power by the Creator to produce changes without requiring His micromanagement. These causes are secondary to the primary causes immanent in the laws of nature from the very beginning of the universe. Contrary to Darwin, Richard Dawkins views natural selection as a random process devoid of purpose: “Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process...which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all.”216 Dawkins is at odds with his hero, who did see a purpose and a goal in evolution. As Darwin put it in the penultimate page of The Origin of Species: “Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of equal inappreciable length. And as natural selection solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.”217 Darwin was a believer in an end, purpose, or goal of evolution. In another letter to a friend, Darwin wrote: “If we consider the whole universe, the mind refuses to look at it as the outcome of chance—that is, without design or purpose.”218 Evolution occurs via the selection of favorable genetic variants that increase the “fitness” (a quantitative evaluation of a particular phenotype gauged by its number of offspring relative to other phenotypes in a breeding population). The idea behind natural selection is that populations of plants and animals grow until they strain the ability of the environment to support all members. This results in a struggle for existence in which only the fittest survive. Individuals within populations exhibit variation

215

Darwin, C., 1982, p. 458. Dawkins, R., 2006, p. 9. 217 Darwin, C., 1982, p.459. 218 Ibid, p.459. 216

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with respect to phenotype (disease resistance, color, size, speed, cunning, etc.) that aid in the struggle. For natural selection to work there must be phenotypic trait variation in a breeding population that has consistent fitness differences among phenotypes, and the trait(s) must be heritable. Certain trait variants sometimes confer an edge on organisms in the struggle for survival in prevailing environmental conditions. Organisms with traits that are better suited to their environment will reproduce more and thus increase the proportion of the population with those traits. The arrival of advantageous traits is the result of a genetic mutation the cell’s repair mechanism failed to catch. Most mutations are neutral, but many others are harmful in that they reduce fitness of an organism. However, if a beneficial mutation arises that increases its carriers’ reproductive success, and if it proves sufficiently advantageous, the allele underlying the trait will arrive at “fixation.” Fixation occurs when an advantageous mutant allele arises in a population and completely replaces the other allele after a certain number of generations.

NECESSITY AND INFORMATION NeoDarwinists maintain that the accumulation of small quantitative genetic changes within a species, eventually results in the large qualitative changes and a totally new species, and look to chance and necessity to explain macroevolution. The chance half of the equation means that there just happens to be an allele in a mating population that just happens to be advantageous in a particular environment at a particular time. The necessity half is the process of natural selection that generates order in the genome by preserving the useful and eliminating the harmful. Without this winnowing process, mutation would yield only disorganization and extinction because of the many harmful mutations. The term “necessity” implies that something is predestined and could not be otherwise, such as the fact that apples always fall downwards from the tree. Necessity is based on the belief that life is nothing more than complicated chemistry. If the laws of chemistry and physics work on molecules in nature to produce

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speciation, they must also work in the lab to produce simpler changes, but they don’t. The issue is again one of information. George Williams notes that evolutionary biologists fail to realize that they work with two incommensurable domains: information and matter. He notes that genes are packages of information, and that although DNA is the material medium that specifies a gene, it is not the message. DNA is a communication system written in code.219 The three-letter code for the amino acid arginine is AGC, but AGC is not arginine; it is the instructions for making it. There are no laws of physics or chemistry that say those three letters must code for that particular amino acid. Physicist Vincent Bauchau informs us that the laws that govern the physical and chemical properties of DNA do not determine the sequence on a string of DNA: “If it was so, the string could not contain any information. For DNA to work as a carrier of genetic information, it was necessary that this molecule acquire the capability to change its sequence arbitrarily...there is nothing from chemistry or physics that can be used to derive the function of DNA. This function is irreducible.”220 Physicist Hubert Yockey likewise informs us that the principles of biology are not reducible to the laws of physics and chemistry because even to construct the simplest organism requires more genetic information “than the information content of these laws. The existence of a genome and the genetic code divides living organisms from nonliving matter. There is nothing in the physico-chemical world that remotely resembles reactions being determined by a sequence and codes between sequences.”221 Thus we see two remarkable things about the DNA code: (1) It has the ability to change itself in response to environmental conditions—this is a necessary requirement for microevolution to occur, and (2) the information content in the genome is far greater than the information content of physicochemical laws. The DNA code is information, and information is non-material. It depends on matter and energy for storage and movement, 219

Williams, G. 1992, p. 11. Bauchau, V., 2006, p. 36. 221 Yockey, H., 2005, p. 2. 220

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but it is not defined by the biochemistry of the molecules used for these purposes. Rather, it is the information that defines the operations of the matter. DNA is a molecule beyond what we normally think of as a chemical model because it is far too complex to have arisen from chance or necessity: “Was it perhaps the power, thinking, and will of a supreme being that created this self-replicating basis for life...How do we define something that can stretch, split along its middle, and clone itself—as a chemical molecule or as a living thing?”222 DNA is not a simple one-to-one single-direction code like a computer’s binary code; it is unfathomably more complex. It turns out that the genome is bidirectional in that it relays different messages when read in opposite directions so that multiple sets of instructions can be embedded in DNA overlap. This means is that the nucleotide sequence on the end portion of one gene overlaps a second sequence, and that the letters of the first sequence have a different meaning than they have on the second. A sequence of nucleotides can thus code for more than one gene product by using different reading frames. Stephen Meyer makes an analogy with spy codes. A spy message read one way by an enemy might be about mundane goings-on down on the farm, but a friendly reader in possession of the key would read it as intended. Within the cell the RNA, proteins, and enzymes work together to access, identify, and transcribe these messages within messages. Thus: “The presence of these genes imbedded within genes (messages within messages) further enhances the information-storage density of the genome and underscores how the genome is organized to enhance its capacity to store information.”223 A team of geneticists noted that the: “Maintenance of dual-coding regions is evolutionarily costly and their occurrence by chance is statistically improbable,” and then say that dual overlapping protein coding is “virtually impossible by chance.”224 Placing the adverb “virtually” before the adjective “impossible” allows them to avoid charges of advocating intelligent design, and to think that maybe, just maybe, the 222

Aczel, A. 1998, p. 88. Meyer, S. 2009, p. 463. 224 Chung, W., Wadhawan, S. et al. 2007. 223

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codes somehow wrote themselves by atoms bumping into each other. Think of the brain power that has to go into writing a spy’s encrypted message. The spy has to use standard language so that both friend and foe can understand it, and both the manifest and hidden messages must convey real meaning. If the manifest message did not it would arouse the enemy’s suspicion, but if the encrypted message did not convey real meaning, it would be useless. Of course, there is no intention to deceive in the genome; Meyer’s analogy is just his way of revealing the ingenuity of the code that allows its “readers” (the ribosomal molecules) to understand multiple messages backwards and forwards. The ability of DNA to convey information relies on its freedom from chemical determinism, since if it were not free of this restraint its information conveying capacity would be destroyed. Because the information content of DNA is not reducible to the laws of physics or chemistry, the information content of DNA does not originate from such laws any more than the information in a newspaper originates from the chemistry of paper and ink: “Instead, the genetic code functions as a higher-level constraint distinct from the laws of physics and chemistry, much like a grammatical convention in a human language.”225 Meyer provides an illustration showing that no chemical bonds exist between the bases along the longitudinal axis of the helix where the genetic information is stored (the bases are hydrogen bonded horizontally), and that identical bonds link all the nucleotide bases to the sugar-phosphate backbone of the double-helix. In a further analogy, Meyer points out that magnetic letters on a metal surface can be combined and recombined to form any sequence. The laws of physics determine that magnetic letters placed closely to a metal surface determines that they will stick, but there is no law of attraction that determines their arrangement into a meaningful sequence. Likewise, there are no laws of chemistry that dictate the arrangement of DNA bases to form a meaningful biological sentence. The four bases attach to any site on the DNA backbone with equal facility because the same chemical bond occurs

225

Meyer, S. 2009, p. 240.

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between the any of the bases and the backbone regardless of which base it is; there is no chemical affinity for one rather than another. This means that bonding affinities do not account for the sequencing of the bases. Two features of DNA show that its self-organizing properties are not explained by the way its nucleotide bases are arranged: “(1) There are no bonds between bases along the information-bearing axis of the molecule and (2) there are no differential affinities between the backbone and the specific bases that could account for variations in sequence.”226 It is chemically possible for the letters in DNA molecules to be arranged in a large number of ways, but if chemical determinism governed the DNA molecule there would be only one kind. Deterministic natural laws—by definition—will always produce the same result, so the arrangement of DNA bases would be the same each time. That they do not strongly implies the specified complexity of DNA.

MACROEVOLUTION AND THE PROBLEM OF TIME At a 2016 Royal Society Meeting in London, biologist Gerd Muller accused Darwinists of excluding the “big questions.” He concedes that microevolutionary theory performs very well, and has provided abundant tests and predictions that have been well confirmed. If evolutionary explanations would be confined to this level, he explains, there would be no controversy. However, he chides evolutionists for habitually taking the success of small-scale evolution as the “explanation of all evolutionary phenomena,” and points out that “a wealth of evolutionary phenomena remains excluded. For instance, the theory largely avoids the question of how the complex organizations of organismal structure, physiology, development or behavior—whose variation it describes—actually arise in evolution.”227 Nowhere in the neoDarwinian literature have I found a discussion of how many small accumulations would be necessary for the

226 227

Ibid, p. 244. Müller, G, 2017, p. 3.

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almost incalculably complex differences that exist between a bacterium and a Beethoven. Time is a huge impediment to macroevolution. For instance, molecular biologists Gauger and Axe’s experiments with the evolutionary divergence of enzymes involved introducing directed mutations to determine how long it would take to make a conversion with the required minimum of seven nucleotide substitutions. They estimated that it would take 1030 generations to get a paralogous (different but descending from the same ancestor) protein with a new fold (recall that the way a protein folds gives it its shape and function). This is a timescale way beyond life on Earth.228 In other words, enzymes cannot be reconfigured through a gradual process of mutation and selection because 1030 generations, even if a generation lasted one second, would take far more time to realize than all the seconds (about 1025) that have ticked by since the Big Bang. Enzymes are important biomolecules; they catalyze all biochemical reactions in living things. A study by two biochemists/biophysicists showed that without a particular enzyme, the catalytic reaction essential in creating the building blocks of DNA and RNA would take an astounding 78 million years. They remark on another enzyme that is essential for the biosynthesis of hemoglobin and chlorophyll: “Now we’ve found a reaction that –again, in the absence of an enzyme—is almost 30 times slower than that [78 million years]. Its half-life—the time it takes for half the substance to be consumed—is 2.3 billion years, about half the age of the Earth. Enzymes can make that reaction happen in milliseconds.” Despite these astounding findings, the authors retain their Darwinian pedigree by remarking that: “It makes you wonder how natural selection operated in such a way as to produce a protein that got off the ground as a primitive catalyst for such an extraordinarily slow reaction.”229 It certainly does make you wonder. John Sanford and his colleagues developed mathematical models to determine “the waiting time” to form a specified string of nucleotides in a hominid population of 10,000 individuals by the mutation/selection 228 229

Gauger, A., and Axe, D., 2011, p.13. Wolfenden, R. 2008.

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process under ideal conditions. They note that genetic changes from some hypothesized primordial entity existing millions of years ago to homo sapiens would require millions of positive mutations. Many lines of evidence indicate that to get nucleotide strings of moderate length by trial and error would take more time than the age of the universe. The researchers conclude: “In small populations the waiting time problem appears to be profound, and deserves very careful examination. To the extent that waiting time is a serious problem for classic neo-Darwinian theory, it is only reasonable that we begin to examine alternative models regarding how biological information arises.”230 Another OoL researcher calculated how long it would take for life to kick-start itself from random amino acids banging up against one another to make a protein: “Imagine that every cubic quarter-inch of ocean in the world contains ten billion precellular ribosomes. Imagine that each ribosome produces proteins at ten trials per minute (about the speed that a working ribosome in a bacterial cell manufactures proteins). Even then, it would take about 10450 years to probably make one useful protein.”231 Again, this is way beyond the age of the universe.

MUTATIONS AND DEVOLUTION Genetic mutilations are the holy grail of natural selection, but what do the experiments show? John Lennox observes that experiments of selective breeding with many thousands of generations of fruit flies (they live a maximum of 50 days) produce nothing but weird fruit flies with features that are maladaptive rather than adaptive. Moreover, they quickly achieve genetic homeostasis; that is, their gene pool runs out of variation capacity. He also notes that studies of 30,000 generations of E. coli (equivalent of about a million human years) produces harmful devolutionary results, losing many of the building blocks of RNA, rather than beneficial evolutionary results. Biochemist Michael Behe notes that, “The lesson of 230 231

Sanford, J., Brewer, W., et al., 2015, p. 27. Klyce, B. (nd).

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E. coli is that it’s easier for evolution to break things up than to make things.”232 Relatively simple organisms such as bacteria have an easier shot at gaining favorable mutations than humans because they reproduce far more rapidly and have exponentially larger populations. Bacteria do evolve adaptations that make them resistant to antibiotics, but these are adaptations “within kind,” and no new body parts have evolved to make them other than what they were when they first arrived on the living landscape about 3.5 billion years ago. Populations of mammals did become much larger after the dinosaurs were no longer around to feast on them, so mutation rates would have gotten much greater. However, evolution requires adaptive mutations, not maladaptive ones, and the latter are many times more common. Thus, while elevated mutation rates help advantageous traits to spread through a population faster, it also hurts by increasing mutation load and thus decreasing overall fitness. In the journal BIO-Complexity, three microbiologists note that of the hundreds of different amino acids that distinguish enzymes with different functions, if more than the tiniest fraction are important for making the enzymes different, “then it may be effectively impossible for undirected mutations to stumble upon the right combinations for functional conversions… The problem for evolutionary explanations is that the very special circumstances needed to achieve even weak conversions in the lab translate into highly unrealistic evolutionary scenarios.”233 This is just the difficulty of the mutation and natural selection of lowly enzymes or unrealistically small strings of nucleotides. How about the millions of such mutations, with intermediary mutations more likely to be maladaptive than adaptive, required to go from Hoyle’s “sludge” to the intellectual genius of Fred Hoyle himself? This becomes exponentially unlikely when we realize that to produce a new phenotypic trait such as an arm or an eye in accordance with neoDarwinian scenarios requires genetic innovation to control metabolic pathways, and such innovation requires countless

232 233

In Lennox, J., 2010, p. 110. Reeves, M., Gauger, A., & Axe, D., 2014. pp. 10-11.

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coordinated sequences of enzymatic steps, not innovation in one isolated enzymatic function. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig sums up the results in the literature of mutation research in in the 20th century by concluding: In accord with the law of recurrent variation, mutants in every species thoroughly examined (from pea to man) − whether naturally occurring, experimentally induced, or accidentally brought about − happen in a large, but nevertheless limited spectrum of phenotypes with either losses of functions or neutral deviations. Yet, in the absence of the generation of new genes and novel gene reaction chains with entirely new functions, mutations cannot transform an original species into an entirely new one. This conclusion agrees with all the experiences and results of mutation research of the recurrent variation taken together as well as with the laws of probability. Thus, the law of recurrent variation implies that genetically properly defined species have real boundaries that cannot be abolished or transgressed by accidental mutations. 234

MACROEVOLUTION, SPECIATION, AND THE CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION At the heart of macroevolution is speciation, the formation of new and distinct species. Species are groups of interbreeding animals that cannot reproduce with animals not of their kind. That is, they are genetically distinct from other species. It is easy to demonstrate local adaptations within a species, but all but impossible to demonstrate speciation. You wouldn’t think so, however, if you read the following statement from a booklet produced by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS): “A particularly compelling example of speciation involves the 13 species of finches studied by Darwin on the Galápagos Islands, now known as Darwin’s finches.”235 The fact that finches remained finches and can interbreed, notwithstanding, none of these so-called “species” are distinct; 234 235

Lönnig, W. 2005, p. 64. Ayala, F., et al., 1999, p. 10.

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they simply vary in small morphological differences within their kind called ectomorphs. Thus, the NAS was pushing a fiction on us that they knew to be false, which led Phillip Johnson to write, “When our leading scientists have to resort to the sort of distortion that would land a stock promoter in jail, you know they are in trouble.”236 If speciation was true, we should find many transitional fossils between species, but we do not. Nils Nilsson, an evolutionist at Lund University in Sweden, expresses his disappointment that his life’s work for the search of transitional forms: “My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for more than 40 years have completely failed… The fossil material is now so complete that it has been possible to construct new classes, and the lack of transitional series cannot be explained as being due to scarcity of material. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled.”237 Paleontologist Stephen J. Gould admitted that it is a “trade secret” of paleontology that fossils that could plausibly be considered transitional forms are exceedingly rare, and adds: “The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches…in any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the gradual transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and ‘fully formed.’“238 Gould was arguing against Darwinian gradualism and for his own theory of punctuated equilibrium. This theory holds that mating populations are at evolutionary equilibrium for many generations, and that this stasis is occasionally punctuated by rapid bursts of change. Gould’s theory is more consistent with the fossil record than Darwinism, but he did not specify a mechanism for this notion of punctuated equilibrium. However, recent work has proposed that a molecule called Hsp90 (heat shock protein 90) encourages long-term species stasis by acting as a genetic chaperone, some of which may have undergone mutation. When Hsp90 is compromised, the proteins it chaperones release their mutations. Of course, only advantageous mutations are useful. One study 236

Johnson, P., 1999. In Nitardy, C., 2012, p. 60. 238 Gould, S, 1977, p. 14. 237

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demonstrated this, finding results that sounds more like devolution than evolution. The researchers used fruit flies and induced a drastic change in their climate. After a few generations of trying to adapt to the new condition, the researchers found a menagerie of insect monsters: “When the genetic variations usually suppressed by Hsp90 began to express themselves, major changes developed in the insects’ body plans. Some insects began to sprout weird limbs from different wings, some thickveined wings, others deformed eyes or legs.”239 Punctuated equilibrium was largely an effort to explain the conundrum of the Cambrian explosion. It is described as an explosion because after waiting for animals to arrive on the planet for three billion years, they seemed to arrive all at once about 540 million years ago with no ancestral fossils to be found in the geological record. The Cambrian conundrum was recognized by Darwin and the problem posed to his theory by the sudden appearance of numerous animal forms with no ancestors to be found in the fossil record. He wrote, “If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life all at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of descent with slow modification.”240 The problem he noted in 1859 is still with us. Biologists Peterson, Dietrich, and McPeek note that the Cambrian explosion changed the Earth’s biota in profound and fundamental ways. The Earth’s biota was essentially static for billions of years and then—bang! —we have: “a dynamic and awesomely complex system whose origin seems to defy explanation.... numerous animal phyla with very distinct body plans arrive on the scene in a geological blink of the eye, with little or no warning of what is to come in rocks that predate this interval of time.”241 Not only did these body plans arrive abruptly, their basic form has remained the same, as marine paleontologist Jeffrey Levinton informs us: “Evolutionary biology’s deepest paradox concerns this strange discontinuity. Why haven’t new animal body plans continued to crawl out of the evolutionary cauldron during the past hundreds of millions of years? 239

ABCScience, 1998. Darwin, C., 1982, p. 309. 241 Peterson, K., Dietrich, M., and McPeek, M., 2009. p. 736. 240

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Why are the ancient body plans so stable?”242 Levinton appears to see this as a big problem for macroevolution because at the species level, microevolution continues unabated without altering basic body plans. Peterson, Dietrich, and McPeek echo Levington’s puzzlement in the conclusion of their article: “Thus, elucidating the materialistic basis of the Cambrian explosion has become more elusive, not less, the more we know about the event itself, and cannot be explained away by coupling extinction of intermediates with long stretches of geologic time, despite the contrary claims of some modern neo-Darwinists.”243

THE TREE OF LIFE The “tree of life” is another iconic image of evolution. It is a metaphor Darwin used to describe the relationships between organisms, both living and extinct, to show that all life descended from a common source. Darwin admitted that the data available at the time did not support his theory, but was optimistic that future data would because he believed that the number of intermediate varieties must be “truly enormous.” Having said that, he later asks: “Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.”244 However, 165 years later, after many thousands of paleontologists and anthropologists have spent hundreds of thousands of hours searching at hundreds of geological sites around the world, we still lack true intermediate varieties. Of course, Homo sapiens did not arrive full-blown at the Cambrian, but our appearance was very abrupt according to the dean of evolutionary biology, Ernst Mayr: “How can we explain this seeming saltation [sudden appearance of new genetic characters]? Not having any 242

Levinton, J. 1992, p. 84. Peterson, K., Dietrich, M., and McPeek, M., 2009. p. 736. 244 Darwin, C. 1982, p. 292. 243

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fossils that can serve as missing links, we have to fall back on the timehonored method of historical science, the construction of a historical narrative.”245 The historical narrative is to take the odd tooth or bone fragment and assume them to be transitional evidence for the large, unbridged gaps in the fossil record. Having failed to demonstrate a tree of life from the fossil record, scientists swung from the bone tree to the gene tree. The branch of molecular biology that concerns itself with the tree of life is known as molecular systematics. Molecular systematics scientists use genomic molecules from a number of species and examine the nucleotide sequences to determine how closely they are related. The basic idea is that the more closely related two species are, the more closely their genomic material will match. The ultimate goal is to construct a tree of common ancestry of all species down to the roots. It is a grand idea, but despite huge amounts of data, conflicting versions of the tree are common. One suit of genes reveals one tree, while another suit of genes reveals a quite different tree; trees using DNA produce different results from trees using RNA, and trees using microRNA (microRNA is important in gene regulation. It binds with messenger RNA and either destroys or preserves it for later translation) suggest something else again. Some trees place humans in the same lineage as elephants; other in a lineage leading to worms, and other trees reveal that half of our genes have one evolutionary history and the other half a different evolutionary history.246 We also see data fudging when things don’t go as planned: “because those genes produced phylogenies at odds with conventional wisdom.”247 Given these many difficulties, many have concluded that it has been a fool’s errand. Evolutionary biologist Eric Bapteste, for instance, notes that: “For a long time the holy grail was to build a tree of life”…A few years ago it looked as though the grail was within reach. But today the project lies in tatters, torn to pieces by an onslaught of negative evidence.”248

245

Mayr, E. 2004, p. 198. Maxmen, A. 2011. 247 Rokas, A., & Carroll, S. 2006, p. 1902. 248 In Ebifegha, M. 2009, p. 36. 246

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Then we have morphologists who attempt to reconcile molecule-based phylogenetic trees with phylogenetic trees based upon morphology (the branch of biology that deals with the form and structure of organisms). A trio of morphologists surveyed the many attempts to do this, and wrote: “As morphologists with high hopes of molecular systematics, we end this survey with our hopes dampened. Congruence between molecular phylogenies is as elusive as it is in morphology and as it is between molecules and morphology.”249 None of this means that biologists have given up on testing neoDarwinism, nor should they. The more they learn about the wonders of creation, the more evidence we accumulate for his existence that we bring to the attention of our atheist friends.

249

Patterson, C., Williams, D., and Humphries, C. 1993, p. 179.

Chapter 11

INTELLIGENT DESIGN AND THEISTIC EVOLUTION INTELLIGENT DESIGN Intelligent Design (ID) is a scientific endeavor that claims that the existence of an intelligent cause of the universe and of the development of life is a testable hypothesis. ID does not explicitly align itself with Christianity, but it is obvious to their readers that most proponents of ID believe in a designer God. There are atheist and agnostic ID scientists, thus a belief in God is not necessary for a belief in ID. Michael Behe notes: “The conclusion that something was designed can be made quite independently of knowledge of the designer. As a matter of procedure, the design must first be apprehended before there can be any further question about the designer.”250 Of course, you don’t have to be a believer in God to recognize when something is contingent, complex, and specified; that is, designed. We have seen that many prominent atheist scientists have argued for the intelligent design of life given the astronomical improbability of a naturalistic origin. They locate this intelligence in areas other than the creative work of a personal God, such as in intelligent aliens

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Behe, M. 1996, p. 197.

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or within a sentient universe (pantheism: “All is god,” “My god is nature”), but it is ID nonetheless. It is safe to say that most scientists are not enamored with design arguments. Physicist Nathan Aviezer views ID as God of the gaps reasoning. He asserts that: “The religious person never invokes the supernatural as the explanation of and physical phenomenon… the framework in which God interacts with the physical world is within the laws of nature.”251 Aviezer is apparently unaware that this is precisely the operating assumption of all ID scientists, whose whole enterprise is to use the tools of science to look for evidence of ID. ID is often called pseudoscience, but it always remains within the same framework that Aviezer identifies, and you will never see “Then a miracle occurs” in their equations. ID is also accused of being a science-stopper by its critics who have bought their own fiction that ID is a God of the gaps theory. But ID is no more science-stopper than noting that space shuttles or the Large Hadron Collider are intelligently designed. If we came across these things on Mars, we would know that some intelligence made them, and if we wanted to know how they worked, we would have to reverse engineer them in the way ID scientists challenge their peers to do. Aviezer’s primary target is microbiologist Michael Behe’s claim of the irreducibly complex design of the bacterial flagellum, a whip-like appendage that allows these organisms to navigate through their environment. Behe has been studying the flagellum for decades using standard scientific methods. Self-proclaimed atheist and philosopher of science Bradley Monton avers that Behe’s irreducible complexity argument is not a God of the gaps argument because Behe is not arguing that the flagellum could not possibly arise naturalistically, but rather he is: “giving positive reasons that the sequence of events that would have to happen for irreducibly complex systems like the bacterial flagellum to arise via an undesigned process is an improbable sequence, and hence the design hypothesis should be taken seriously.”252 If it can be shown that it arose via an undesigned process, so be it. What ID will have done is to 251 252

Aviezer, N. 2010, p 8. Monton, B. 2009, p. 115.

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motivate scientists to undergo the research to demonstrate it. This is not a science stopper. Other secular scientists have defended ID after giving it serious thought. A notable example is a task force of nine distinguished scholars formed by the president of Baylor University to assess the scientific legitimacy of William Dembski’s ID work. This extraordinary step was taken in response to faculty animosity when Dembski became the director of the newly formed Michael Polanyi Center, which was devoted to studying ID. His censorious critics are among those who have ruled ID “pseudoscience,” but the committee of scholars concluded that “research on the logical structure of mathematical arguments for intelligent design have a legitimate claim to a place in the current discussions of the relations of religion and science.”253 ID theorists’ concept of design is that anything that is contingent, complex, and specified, and not the result of necessity or chance, is designed. For something, such as protein making, to be both complex and specific, it must conform to the functional requirements of a system. The way amino acids are arranged according to the information contained in DNA fit this requirement. The amino acid chains generated in labs are contingent (their existence depends on the aim of the experimenters) and complex (having a complex arrangements of atoms). However, lab made chains are complex and specified only because they were guided by intelligence to ensure that they formed chains consistent with their reaction rates. Yet naturally occurring chains of amino acids are assumed to be the product of unintelligent design. William Dembski lays out the method of how to discover hallmarks of ID. He notes that there are three causal mechanisms that bring about any effect: natural law, chance, and design. To attribute ID to a phenomenon it is first necessary to rule out natural law (necessity) and one with an extraordinarily low probability (chance). Dembski notes that the simplest explanations are those that appeal to natural laws because: writes: “they admit no contingency, claiming things always happen that way.”

253

In Olasky, M. and Perry, J. 2005, p. 197.

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Explanations involving chance are more complicated because: “they admit contingency but one characterized by probability.” The most complicated explanations appeal to design, because: “they admit contingency but not one characterized by probability.”254 Otherwise stated, the thing to be explained depends on something other than natural law for its existence, but it does not depend on chance given its enormous improbability. Phenomena that are not the result of natural law or chance means that their existence is contingent on conscious purposeful choice, like lab-made amino acids, space shuttles, or hadron colliders. These objects are contingent in that they didn’t have to exist according to any law of physics. We rule out chance next because we know that such specified complexities we see in lab-made products, space shuttles, or colliders are the products of highly intelligent beings. Knowing this, of course, tells us nothing about the specifics of their assembly. Claiming that they are the product of ID is not an explanation of how these things were built; it is merely a conclusion based on what we know about reality. That obvious reality is that all things that are not just random clumps of “stuff” are designed by intelligent agents for a purpose. ID is also accused of making no falsifiable predictions, which is strongly denied by ID scientists. In his magisterial book Signature in the Cell, Stephen Meyer says that ID theory “merely claims to detect the action of some intelligent cause (with power at least the equivalent to those we know from experience) and affirms this because we know from experience that only conscious, intelligent agents produce large amounts of specified information.”255 Meyer lists a number of hypotheses in Signature in the Cell that can be derived from ID theory, including the possibility of someone effectively demonstrating that “large amounts of functionally specified information do arise from purely chemical and physical antecedents.”256 Such a demonstration would falsify one of ID’s hypotheses, but as we have seen, there is an emerging consensus that complex specified information such as that contained in DNA cannot arise 254

Dembski, W. 1998, p. 100. Meyer, S., 2009, pp. 428-429. 256 Ibid, p. 429. 255

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from the laws of physics and chemistry. A design inference in ID theory is thus not triggered by any phenomenon that we cannot explain, but rather from what we know about cause and effect. It is triggered when an event defies probability and when it conforms to a meaningful complex specified functional pattern, such as the DNA code. As noted earlier, directed by the anthropic logic of ID theory, William Dembski correctly predicted that function would be found for what geneticists called junk DNA a decade before it was found they were wrong. ID has been soundly criticized for being anti-evolution, which Dembski strongly denies: “Intelligent design does not claim that living things came together suddenly in their present form through the efforts of a supernatural creator.”257 ID recognizes natural selection as the only reasonable scientific explanation for the all the lifeforms we see around us. In fact, ID uses the same principle that Charles Darwin adopted for explaining historical (evolutionary) phenomena. That is, when trying to explain past events, scientists first identify causes known to produce the effect at present and then extrapolate that cause to past events on the reasonable assumption that if it works now, it worked then. In other words, because we observe that natural selection can produce small changes in a relatively short period of time today, Darwin extrapolated from this to conclude that it could produce large-scale changes over long periods of time. Thus natural selection was “causally adequate” to produce not only variation within species but entirely new species.258 The value of the ID enterprise is that it challenges Darwinism to account in naturalist terms for the unimaginable amount of information required to get life going in the first place. Non-ID science seems to content itself by saying, as Richard Dawkins did in The God Delusion, that it was “a lucky chance.” Luck is not a scientific concept, nor an explanation. It is unfortunate that many scientists think that ID proponents believe the act of creation froze everything in place as it exists today with no evolutionary changes. No one denies that evolution takes place at the micro level “within kind:’’ it is macroevolution with which ID has issues. Nobel 257 258

Dembski, W. 2006, p. 314. Meyer, S. 2009, p. 160.

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laureate physicist Charles Townes views the belief that ID is anti-evolution as “totally illogical” because scientifically ID is eminently plausible. He notes that: “This is a very special universe: it’s remarkable that it came out just this way...I do believe…that God has a continuing influence— certainly his laws guide how the universe was built. Now, that design could include evolution perfectly well. Evolution is here, and intelligent design is here, and they’re both consistent.”259 ID scientists investigate biological patterns that show signs of intelligence, direction and purpose. It takes the mind-boggling improbabilities of life forming from non-life as powerful signs of intelligence, and places special emphasis on the irreducible and specified complexity of DNA, the cell, and other biological features. As geneticist and physician Joseph Kuhn notes, ID investigates: “Irreducibly complex systems involving thousands of interrelated specifically coded enzymes” … and “At an absolute minimum, the inconceivable self-formation of DNA and the inability to explain the incredible information contained in DNA represent fatal defects in the concept of mutation and natural selection to account for the origin of life and the origin of DNA.”260 ID is not a science-stopper, but rather a science-mover because it challenges others to show that something they allege is designed could be the result of natural law or chance. In his acclaimed book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel, said that ID should be taken seriously and deserves our gratitude for challenging a scientific worldview that he considers to be entirely ideological.261 Nagel got hammered mercilessly for his defense of ID because to challenge Darwinism borders on sacrilege for many scientists. Yet, in an article on Nagel’s book and its critics, Michael Choroser wrote: “The odd thing is, however, that for all of this academic high dudgeon, there actually are

259

In Powell, B. 2005. Kuhn, J. 2012, p 46. 261 Nagel, T. 2012. 260

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scientists—respected ones, Nobel Prize-winning ones—who are saying exactly what Nagel said, and have been saying it for decades.”262 ID’s arguments have attracted many former Darwinists, including Gunter Bechly, an eminent German paleontological evolutionary biologist. Bechly, who was then an atheist and the leading evolutionist in Germany, was chosen in 2009 to organize a museum exhibit in Stuttgart to celebrate the bicentennial of Darwin’s birth. Among the many exhibits on display, Bechly featured an old-fashioned weight scale showing a dozen antiDarwinian books in one pan and Darwin’s Origin of Species in the other. Naturally, Darwin’s book left the combined weight of the other books dangling helplessly in the wind. This powerful visual symbol was designed to show that all contrary evidence is impotent against the weight of Darwinism. But then Bechly decided to read those swaying books and began to have gnawing doubts about his commitment to Darwinism. The upshot was that he rejected Darwinism. He now proclaims that he is a theist who strongly opposes atheism and ontological materialism/naturalism, and that: “I have not become a theist in spite of being a scientist but because of it. My ‘conversion’ was based on a critical evaluation of empirical data and philosophical arguments, following the evidence wherever it leads. I am skeptical of the Neodarwinian theory of macroevolution and support Intelligent Design theory for purely scientific reasons.”263 Bechly is an open-minded scientist who follows the data where they lead instead of blindly adhering to ideological orthodoxy.

THOU SHALT NOT BLASPHEME DARWIN OR CAUSE THY CHILDREN TO THINK OF GOD With so many secular scientists, including Nobel laureates, pointing out flaws in Darwinian macroevolution, one might wonder why their voices are not heard in our schools. Yet, these explanatory deficiencies are not only ignored, they are explicitly forbidden in our schools. Why? Phillip 262 263

Choroser, M. 2013, np. Bechly, G. nd, np.

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Johnson provides a wry answer given by Chinese paleontologist Jun Yaun Chan: “In China we can criticize Darwin but not the government. In America you can criticize the government but not Darwin.”264 Johnson was commenting about the brouhaha that followed the Kansas Board of Educations’ decision to omit macroevolution from the curriculum and to include ID. A number of scientific and secularist organizations filed suit against the board, and after a series of hearings federal judge John Jones ruled against the board in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005). Jones’ ruling stated that ID is not science, and that to require it in school would be in violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. There are two glaring objections to Jones’ ruling. First, he went beyond law to say that articles that question macroevolution, published by both ID proponents and non-proponents in peer-reviewed scientific journals, is not science. Second, the establishment clause he found to be violated forbids only the United States Congress from establishing a national religion, as its wording plainly states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Jones’ ruling is tantamount to equating the Kansas Board’s decision with Congress doing just that. Granted, Jones’ decision was made in accordance with the Supreme Court’s belief that any reference to God should be purged, not from just our schools, but from the public square entirely. The Supreme Court has managed to use the establishment clause to eviscerate the free exercise clause that forbids Congress from prohibiting the free exercise of religion (I have documented this in my book Religious Liberty and Public Accommodation Laws). On the other hand, in Elk Grove Unified School District et al. v. Newdow et al. (2004) the Supreme Court ruled that religion also includes nontheistic belief systems. By this logic, a school that teaches Darwinism must also permit teaching of intelligent design if it is to maintain religious neutrality. Because Elk Grove was decided a year before Kitzmiller, Jones ignored legal precedent, although calling non-theistic belief systems religious is a stretch, but a stretch made by the highest court in the land. It was also made

264

Johnson, P. 1999, np.

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by French physician and microbiologist Pierre-Paul Grassé, who asserts that Darwinism is indeed a non-theistic religion: “Directed by all-powerful selection, chance becomes a sort of providence, which, under the cover of atheism, is not named but which is secretly worshipped.”265 The courts in the United States evidently find it acceptable for schools to inculcate only a naturalist and atheistic worldview as fact at the expense of the intellectual excitement of give and take of contending views. Immunologist Scott Todd tells us that a priori commitment to naturalism is why ID is excluded for the academy, despite evidence to the contrary: “it should be made clear in the classroom that science, including evolution, has not disproved God’s existence…:”Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic” [my emphasis].266 This means that any scientific evidence against macroevolution cannot be construed as evidence for ID, because ID is ruled out by fiat. Accordingly, even if Darwinism was completely overturned by naturalistic science, it would still have to seek out some other non-designed, non-purposive, explanation of the existence of life because God is strictly off limits.

THEISTIC EVOLUTION Intelligent design is not the only alternative to a secular non-theistic view of life and its progress. Its major opponent is theistic evolution (TE), also sometimes known as Creative Evolution. Proponents of TE hold the belief that God created all living things using the process of evolution in ways that conform to secular scientific accounts. TE accepts both micro and macroevolution, but unlike secular accounts, it denies that they are undirected and purposeless. Unlike ID, TE is not a scientific theory; rather, it is a view articulating how evolutionary theory relates to Christian belief and interpretation. Also, unlike ID, whose scientists are officially silent on the question of who or what that designer is, TE explicitly, rather than 265 266

Grassé, P. 1977, p. 107. Todd, S. 1999, p. 423.

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implicitly, embraces theism. In common with ID, there are many flavors of TE containing different theological, scientific and philosophical commitments, so what is said about one TE scientists is not necessarily true of all of them. The TE view presents a creative self-organizing universe containing laws that have made possible the existence of intelligent beings. It does not require a God who tinkers with his creation, but rather a God who allows the continuous unfolding of properties invested in nature from the moment of creation. God gives the material universe, so to speak, the same kind of freedom that He gives the immaterial human mind. As Darwin himself noted, there is a grandeur in the idea of everything that exists emerging gradually from nothing but laws formulated by God’s divine action. I do not see that ID’s claim that the existence of an intelligent cause of the universe and of the development of life are testable scientific hypotheses constitutes any denial of this. TE is not saying that nature acts independently of God’s direction, only independently of His direct and immediate control. Famous nineteenth century theologian Charles Kingsley captured the idea of TE nicely when he wrote: “We knew of old that God was so wise that he could make all things: but behold, He is so much wiser than that, that he can make all things make themselves.”267 Swedish theologian Mats Wahlberg takes a swipe at ID saying that humans can create by design, but only God can create thing that are able to create themselves: “If it takes more wisdom to create through an evolutionary process than by hands-ondesign, and if structures created by hand-on-design by humans are expressive of human intent and intelligence, why could not structures created by God in that more wisdom-demanding way reflect divine intent and intelligence?”268 Many scientists associated with TE belong to the BioLogos Foundation established by the geneticist and physician Francis Collins in 2007. TE is accepted as a theological position by all mainstream Protestant denominations and by the Catholic Church, so it must have a strong persuasive punch. 267 268

In Russell, 1985, pp 167-168. Wahlberg, M. 2012, p. 182.

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TE is not something that evolved (if you’ll pardon the language) in response to the challenge of Darwinism; it is something that is been around for centuries. Augustine’s words in Commentary on Genesis (V.4:11; my emphasis), written in the fourth century AD, indicates that what Darwin said was pretty old stuff: “It is therefore, causally that Scripture has said that earth brought forth the crops and trees, in the sense that it received the power of bringing them forth. In the earth from the beginning, in what I might call the roots of time, God created what was to be in times to come.” Then we have Thomas Aquinas’ words written in the thirteenth century in Commentary on Aristoteles’s Physics: “Nature is nothing but the plan of some art, namely a divine one, put into things themselves, by which those things move towards a concrete end: as if the man who builds up a ship could give to the pieces of wood that they could move by themselves to produce the form of the ship.”269 Both Augustine and Aquinas point out that the natural properties of the earth that make crops and trees possible (matter has been granted the power by the Creator to act on other matter without requiring His micromanagement) are secondary to the primary cause immanent in the laws of nature from the very beginning of the universe. There is little difference between them and Darwin on this. They all emphasize primary laws “impressed on matter by the Creator,” and both recognize that the secondary causes of each thing of matter can change “in times to come.” Thus, the logic of TE as it relates to the existence of life goes something like this. Everything evolves. Evolution simply means the gradual development of something from a simple form to a more complex form. The Model-T evolved to become the Taurus, the campfire spit evolved into the microwave rotisserie, and Newton’s concept of gravity has evolved into Einstein’s concept of gravity. We have no argument with the evolution of the universe, do we? From the flash of unimaginable energy spoken into being at the Big Bang (the Word), we had the evolution of fundamental particles, which evolved into protons, neutrons, and electrons, which evolved into atoms of hydrogen and helium. These simple

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Aquinas, T. 1963, p. 124.

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gases then evolved into stars and planets. Our Earth is one of those planets, but it was a barren rock before it evolved to be the complex matrix of life that it is today. Ah! Life, that’s the crux of the matter. TE asks that if God allowed the universe that we observe today to evolve from the pure energy of the Big Bang, why not life? We are after all, and indisputably, in Carl Sagan’s famous saying, “made of star stuff.” For TE scientists, biological evolution is a “disguised friend” of theism because it, like the discoveries of cosmology, is slowly granting us insights of how God made us. If we may crudely analogize the difference between ID and TE as it relates to the marvels of life: the ID the image of God is that of an omniscient engineer methodically planning ahead, putting everything in place and leaving little to chance in a preprogrammed universe. The TE image of God is that He is the supreme architect of the universe who left its material construction to the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology. Just as human builders make mistakes, improvise, and sometimes find “happy accidents” while following architectural blueprints, so do the material builders of the universe while following the laws of nature. TE proponents are unimpressed with the idea of irreducible complexity, and chide ID proponents for limiting God’s reach. Kenneth Miller, a cell biologist and devout Christian, accuses ID of having a narrow view of both the capabilities of nature and of God. He says that ID hobbles God’s “genius by demanding that the material of His creation ought not to be capable of generating complexity. They demean the breadth of His vision by ridiculing the notion that the materials of His world could have evolved into beings with intelligence and self-awareness.”270 Thus, TE accepts a chain of inorganic material events creating complex life, but affirms God’s guiding hand in the process. God’s chosen method of bringing life into existence was the evolutionary process in which He endowed nature with the creative power to organize itself. TE is not just an “Add God and stir” approach to science. Although some TE scientists are content to accept the science and rest content with ruminating on its theological implications, others want to provide an

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Miller, K. 1999, p. 26.

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adequate naturalistic explanation for God’s guiding hand in evolution. Some, such as quantum physicist Amit Goswani, have appealed to quantum mechanics, viewing God operating at the quantum level: “The idea of a God as an agent of downward causation has emerged in quantum physics.”271 Kenneth Miller likes the quantum approach too. He writes: “The indeterminate nature of quantum events would allow a clever and subtle God to influence events in ways that are profound, but scientifically undetectable to us. Those events could include the appearance of mutations, the activation of individual neurons in the brain, and even the survival of individual cells and organisms affected by the chance processes of radioactive decay.”272 The major proponent of this idea is quantum physicist Robert Russell. Russell makes the TE case in his theory of NIODA (non-interventionist objective divine action) in which he sees continuous creation arising indirectly from “God’s direct action of sustaining in existence quantum systems and their properties during both their time evolution and their irreversible interactions.”273 In this view, God acts in nature through these quantum systems, thus avoiding blocking, suspending, or undercutting natural evolutionary processes in which He does not directly intervene. As we have seen, quantum objects are in superposition: in all possible states and in all possible locations as particles and as waves, and are not deterministic. The basic idea is that quantum phenomena affect chemical reactions which affect the genome to produce mutations, and thus evolution. These reactions occur when a wave function collapses. A wave function collapse is said to occur when a wave function, or a superposition of all possible states, randomly reduces to a single particle-like state due to interaction with matter. Russell maintains that God guides creation by quantum collapse, and that small (adaptive) quantum effects have phenotypic consequences that will spread throughout a mating population by what he calls biological amplification—small microevents amplifying into significant macroevents. Of course, we cannot have a genome that divides 271

Goswami, A. 2014, p. 22. Miller, K. 1999, p. 241. 273 Russell, R. 2008, p. 590. 272

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and copies at random. Quantum phenomena may reign in the world of fundamental particles, but at the organism level the workings of its various systems must be predictable. Jeffrey Koperski noted this obvious problem and introduced the notion of a quantum protector. A quantum protector is “a stable state of matter whose behaviour is independent of the goings-on at the quantum level.”274 There are many layers of these protectorates (some were mentioned when we discussed the genome in Chapter 9, such as protein’s quality control and chaperone mechanisms) which function to block biological amplification. However, the biggest problem for NIODA is theological, not scientific. Scientists such as Russell introduce the notion of “special providence,” as opposed to general divine providence, which refers to the creation of the universe and the maintenance of natural laws. Special providence is seen as a way that God acts through the indeterminism of quantum mechanics to guide the natural world in the here-and-now without interfering with the natural order He created. But might we not ask why is it necessary that God’s actions not undercut the regularities of natural processes, and why His works must stay within the limits set down by science? While Russell places God in the driver’s seat, we may ask why God needs the quantum tool, or any tool for that matter, to work His wonders? God is not constrained by the laws of science since they are His laws. NIODA sounds too deistic for my liking, although Russell is very much a theist (he is an ordained minister as well as a physicist) who wants to distance himself from theists who say that God sometimes intervenes and violates the laws of nature. But God never “violates” the laws of nature, he merely suspends them, as in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Oxford philosopher of science and religion Ignacio Silva argues that the NIODA view of God’s activity amounts to a reducing God to a “causeamong-causes” in that He is constrained to work with quantum phenomena: “God is bound by nature to act within the laws of nature.”275 In other words, God is a necessary but not sufficient cause and does not act entirely autonomously. Another way of looking at NIODA, and maybe 274 275

Koperski, 2015, p. 381. Silva, I. 2015, p. 107.

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rescued from the above objection, is physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne’s appeal to kenosis. Kenosis essentially means that God willingly surrenders some of his authority and grants nature the freedom to make itself by natural force as He grants us the power to make of ourselves what we will. Polkinghorne writes: “The play of life is not the performance of a predetermined script, but a self-improvisatory performance by the actors themselves.…God shares the unfolding course of creation with creatures, who have their divinely allowed, but not divinely dictated, roles to play in is fruitful becoming.”276 Polkinghorne’s God is thus a God who is constantly working creatively through the unfolding of the inherent potentialities in nature. You may recall that this is also Darwin’s view that all things unfold through “the laws impressed on matter by the Creator.”277 For TE proponents, this view of evolution is God’s way of maintaining epistemic distance between Himself and His creation. The sudden creation of all life species would have been so obvious that it would jeopardize human autonomy and stifle biological science. TE scientists maintain that while we can see God’s hand in evolution, we have to look long and hard. Philosopher and theologian John Hick avers that this epistemic distance is necessary for humans to voluntarily come to God. Hick writes that, “the reality and presence of God must not be borne in upon men in the coercive way in which their natural environment forces itself upon their attention. The world must be to man, at least to some extent, etsi deus non daretur, “as if there were no God.” God must be a hidden deity, veiled by his creation.”278 Although ID and TE scientists are often at odds, there is a common ground in that there is no real contradiction in seeing evolution both as a God-guided semi-autonomous mechanism, as TE scientists affirm, and the many marvelous designs that ID scientists reveal. Leading TE proponent Francis Collins blurs the distinction between ID and TE when he states in The Language of God, that: “evolution could appear to us to be driven by 276

Polkinghorn, J. 2001, p. 94. Darwin, C. 1982, p. 458. 278 Hick, J. 1977, p. 281. 277

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chance [TE], but from God’s perspective the outcome would be entirely specified [ID]. Thus, God could be completely and intimately involved in the creation of all species, while from our perspective … this would appear a random and undirected process”279 Both ID and TE camps see the Creator’s providential plan and purpose unfolding over time. Whether by direct intervention in which irreducible specified complexity was present at the beginning, or by the unfolding of His laws over time. Although I have concentrated primarily on ID because of its scientific challenge to evolutionary orthodoxy, I do not assert that it is superior to TE in providing a theistic account contrary to atheistic ontological materialism. There are brilliant scientists in both camps, and I cannot presume to be their judge on the matter; I find both positions eminently plausible. There is nothing inherently atheistic about the theory of evolution, although it can be compatible with it, but the existence of TE makes obvious, it is also compatible with theism. As evolutionary paleontologist Stephen J. Gould once wrote: “Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs—and equally compatible with atheism…”280 The reason I have devoted so little space to TE is simply that it accepts mainstream evolutionary accounts but views God as both the efficient cause (the Agent who designed and brought the universe into being) and the final cause (He who stipulated the end or purpose for which it was created). Does it really matter which (or neither) we accept? Whatever science eventually discovers, there is absolutely nothing it could show that would cast doubt that only a Divine Hand could possibly be responsible for the immaterial information coded in the book of life. No one knows how He did it, but by inference to the best explanation tells us that He did. This still leaves open the possibility that, despite its seemingly insuperable problems, macroevolution did proceed from sludge to Shakespeare after all. Let us give the final word to Albertus Magnus, 13th century scientist, philosopher, and theologian: “In studying nature we have not to inquire 279 280

Collins, F. 2006, p. 205. In McGrath, A. 2015, p. 27.

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how God the Creator may, as He freely wills, use His creatures to work miracles and thereby show forth His power; we have rather to inquire what Nature with its immanent causes can naturally bring to pass.”281

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Chapter 12

I AM FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE YOU: THE MOST COMPLEX INFORMATION-PROCESSING SYSTEM IN THE UNIVERSE St. Augustine once noted that: “Men go abroad to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the oceans, at the circular motion of the stars, and pass by themselves without wondering.”282 We often do express admiration and fascination with many natural and man-made objects without ever realizing that we are more worthy of wonder than any of these things. We are stunningly engineered creations of interrelated functionality blessed with the ability to self-repair and to make others of our kind. Psalm 139: 13-15 remarks on how God laid the foundation of our being: “For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.” You are indeed a miracle of divine orchestration; God’s masterpiece; the reason for which He created the universe. 282

In Everard, D. 2012, p.152.

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Without a doubt, the human body is the most advanced structure in the universe. It contains a chemical plant that is far more complex than any built by man. Its interconnected systems are a marvel of biomechanical and biochemical engineering. Your body converts food eat into energy and living tissue that repairs itself, and it does a million other things automatically every minute of every day throughout life. Physicist Werner Gitt notes that the body as the most complex information-processing system in the universe, and relates that if we take the conscious information processes such as thought, speech, and deliberate voluntary movements, combined with unconscious ones (automatic and chemically controlled processes): “this involves the processing of 1024 bits daily. This astronomically high figure is higher by a factor of 1,000,000 than the total human knowledge of 1018 bits stored in all the world’s libraries.”283 Imagine the sheer complexity of anything that has to process 1024 bits of information every day. Even if it was one-millionth of this number, your body would still exceed the complexity of anything a human biochemical engineer could even dream of. There are multiple functional systems within systems in the human body, and the design complexity of any one of them is more than enough to infer a Master biochemical engineer behind it all. Jerry Coyne wrote that: “If anything is true about nature, it is that plants and animals seem intricately and almost perfectly designed for living their lives.”284 The adverb “almost” alerts us to the fact that there are certain parts of our bodies that are sub-optimal. Atheists jump on this to claim that our bodies were cobbled together via trial and error, and that a God would have made everything perfect. There is no such thing as a perfect design of anything, there is only compromise. The design of anything involves conflicting objectives, and the best designs are those with the best compromises. All designs of subsystems are constrained by the goal of optimizing the functioning of the whole because subsystems compete with one another. Take an automobile. You cannot optimize affordability, safety, reliability, performance, gas mileage, and snazzy looks at the same time, because these are conflicting 283 284

Gitt, W. 1996, p. 187. Coyne, J. 2010, p. 1.

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objectives. Auto manufacturers would like to optimize all parts, but must compromise so that the whole is optimized. Your body is like that. As physicist Chet Raymo remarked: “For all of the improvements an engineer might suggest for the human body, the body is still a thing that no engineer could hope to equal. Fabulously resilient. Capable of stunning feats of endurance. Exquisitely attuned to the environment.”285 You began when one of your father’s millions of sperm cells won the frantic race to merge with your mother’s ovulated egg to form a zygote. The zygote contains all the genetic information to enable you to spread out from that microscopic dot to become the complex creature that you are. As one of the only creatures made in God’s image, we are all awesome because we are spiritual beings endowed with a soul as well as physical beings. We are the only objects in the universe that are also subjects who write poetry and symphonies, invent technology to plumb the depths of the cosmos or the tiniest molecule, build cathedrals and spaceships, and seek to know God. It is a miracle that the single-cell zygote develops into an adult human being with 35 to 40 trillion cells, because how do all these rapidly dividing cells know what to become since they all contain the same DNA and thus can potentially become any body part? The undifferentiated stem cells become differentiated because they are exposed to different signals from both inside and outside the cells—chemicals, extracellular proteins, hormones, and neighboring cells—that turn genes on or off. Receptors on the cell surface read these signals and respond appropriately. Genes that are turned on make proteins specific to the body part they will help to make, and once they are differentiated the genes for other parts are forever shut down in those cells. The master regulators of the process of building a body to the correct specification are a group of 39 genes called homeobox, or Hox genes, organized in clusters. Hox gene expression is determined by their position within the cluster and are themselves activated by proteins encoded by earlier genes. When activated, they begin laying out the body’s architecture in orderly fashion along the embryo’s head-to-tail axis. The

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Raymo, C. 2002, np.

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intricacy of it all is truly amazing, for how does the developing child manage to balance all the finely-tuned kinetic, chemical, cellular, and genetic signals involved? Somehow it does, for it is undisputed that a new and distinct human being comes into existence at conception. The zygote contains all the genetic information that is present in the embryo, the fetus, the baby, and the adult man or woman. As such, and contrary to “prochoice” claims, the zygote is as deserving of its life as any person at any other seamless stage of development because life is a journey and we are never complete and are always becoming. Just because I am further along that journey than my son, does that make me more human than he is, or he is more than his son is? How about the human life in a young woman’s womb; is it any less human than she is just because it has not yet taken its first step? The zygote/embryo/fetus is not developing into a human being; it is developing as the human being it already is. The Bible states in a number of places that a human life is always a human being from conception. Jeremiah 1:5 says: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations,” and Psalm 139:16 says: “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” According to passages such as these, God’s eternal mind knows all His creatures before they are physically conceived and that the human body was formed from “unformed substance” according to the model fashioned in God’s mind.

SEX AND ZYGOTES We all know that the zygote marks the beginning of each human life, but few of us realize that the existence of the zygote is one of the deepest mysteries of biology. Zygotes are incredibly improbable because they are cells containing mixtures of two genomes resulting from the sex act of males and females. On a geological time-scale, sexual reproduction is a relative newcomer because reproduction was asexual for eons before sex

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arrived on the scene. Many forms of life propagate themselves asexually (bacteria, archaea), some both sexually and asexually (aphids, plants), but higher forms of life exclusively reproduce sexually. The problem facing biology is why something as time-consuming and energy depleting as sex was substituted when the more efficient asexual reproductive method had been in place for about two billion years prior to its arrival. Nature puts a high premium on genetic fidelity, so asexual reproduction should be the way to go since it transmits the entire parental DNA intact whereas sexual reproduction involves the genetic reshuffling of gametes from male and female genomes. There is also the issue of how the multiple mechanisms involved in sexual reproduction are maintained given the advantages of simple cell division in asexual reproduction. There are many theories, but none are satisfactory. One such theory, metaphorically called the “Red Queen hypothesis,” is taken from Lewis Carroll’s book Through the Looking Glass. In this book, the Red Queen, who has been running with Alice for a long time without getting anywhere, stops and pants: “it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.” The metaphor is used to emphasize that species must continually evolve (“keep running”) to keep pace with the competition in the form of predators and parasites. If a species stops evolving, it loses the competition with species that do not. For example, gazelles either evolve genetic mutations to help them run faster than cheetahs or become extinct. If every gazelle ran faster than every cheetah, however, cheetahs may become extinct, so they would also have to evolve mutations for more speed. Organisms must also obtain mutations that allow them to resist parasites, which is conferred by the constant genetic shuffling and recombination involved in sexual reproduction. The red queen hypothesis describes a process that takes place after sexual reproduction is present, so it hardly satisfies as an explanation of why we have sexual reproduction in the first place. The theory propounded by evolutionary geneticists Gorelick and Heng notes that although the recombination of genes in sexual reproduction produces variety within the species, the primary function of sexual reproduction is to keep the species

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genome intact. That is, at the species level the function of sexual reproduction is to maintain the species’ genome while increasing variation at the individual level. They note that if sex was simply just for increasing genetic diversity it would not have evolved because asexual systems show higher levels of diversity: “In contrast, the increased diversity at the gene level by meiosis [explained below] is secondary, as the combination of genes contributes to new features of existing systems rather than altering the system in a fundamental way.”286 Gorelick and Heng are saying that sexual reproduction applies is a brake to macroevolution while permitting microevolution. This allows for organisms to adapt to their environments in “Red Queen” fashion while still remaining “within kind.” As they put it: “Resynthesis of the function of sex based on the genome theory has drastically changed the way we study sex and evolution, with sexual reproduction as the key that distinguishes between drastic genome alteration mediated macroevolution and gene mutation mediated microevolution.”287 As with the red queen hypothesis, Gorelick and Heng’s theory explains the advantages of sexual reproduction once it is here; but does not explain how it got here. The key to explaining the incredible jump from asexual to sexual reproduction is to explain how meiosis evolved from mitosis, a problem that greatly bothered W.D. Hamilton, who was widely recognized as one of the great biologists of the 20th century. Hamilton wrote that: “if there is one event in the whole evolutionary sequence at which my own mind lets my awe still overcome my instinct to analyse, and where I might concede that there may be a difficulty in seeing a Darwinian gradualism hold sway throughout almost all, it is this event—the initiation of meiosis.”288

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Gorelick, R., & Heng, H. 2011, p. 1089. Ibid. p. 1095. 288 Hamilton, W. 1999, p. 419. 287

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MITOSIS AND MEIOSIS The cells in our bodies are constantly being replaced at different rates, depending on the tissues, and some tissues such as brain cells in the cerebral cortex are thought to never be replaced. There are two forms of cell division: mitosis and meiosis. Mitosis produces two identical diploid cells with all the same genetic information as the parent cell. Meiosis is a more complicated process that keeps many a biologist busy examining minute details all their careers. The first stage of meiosis is regular mitosis that produces a duplicated diploid cell containing all 46 chromosomes. In the next phase, that cell divides again, and then again, to produce four haploid cells containing half (23 chromosomes) the original amount of genetic information of the parent cell. During this process there is a lot of genetic reshuffling, so these genes are not perfect duplications as in mitosis. Meiosis produces only gametes—female eggs and male sperm. Meiosis is alleged to have evolved from mitosis to achieve the miraculous ability to half the chromosomal count to make sexual reproduction by the union of male and female gametes possible. The union of 23 chromosomes from each of male and female gametes provides the zygote with the full complement of 46 chromosomes. How did we get from the efficient and relatively simple one-step process of mitosis to the complexity of meiosis? Wilkins and Holliday confidently write that “meiosis almost certainly evolved from mitosis,” but then admit that it seems impossible because: “[It] has not one but four novel steps: the pairing of homologous chromosomes, the occurrence of extensive recombination between non-sister chromatids [one of two identical threadlike halves of a replicated chromosome] pairing, the suppression of sister-chromatid separation during the first meiotic division, and the absence of chromosome replication during the second meiotic division.”289 They seem to have specified irreducible complexity lurking somewhere in their subconscious minds, but dare not let it reach the surface lest they be accused of supporting intelligent design: “While the

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Wilkins, A. and Holliday, R. 2009, p. 3.

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simultaneous creation of these new features in one step seems impossible, their step-by-step acquisition via selection of separate mutations seems highly problematic, given that the entire sequence is required for reliable production of haploid chromosome sets.”290 Commenting on the process of meiosis and the random assortment of genes that result, biologist Mark Ridley points out that: “You only have to think of sex to see how absurd it is. The ‘sexual’ method of reading a book would be to buy two [male and female] copies, rip the pages out, and make a new copy [the zygote] by combining half the pages from one and half from the other, tossing a coin at each page to decide which original to take the page from and which to throw away [random genetic shuffling].”291 Thus, for sexual reproduction to occur, a slew of ridiculously implausible things must occur. First, males and females had to evolve; either simultaneously, or a single sex evolved in order to evolve the other while somehow still retaining the first. Then that had to evolve the necessary equipment (all the complicated internal and external sex organs) and the necessary materials (sperm and eggs) to fashion an offspring. Meiosis would have to somehow evolve from mitosis to ensure that only 50 percent of each parent’s genetic material is passed on. All this would have had to occur simultaneously because a male isn’t much use without a female (or vice-versa); neither is a penis without a vagina, sperm without eggs, nor the process of meiosis without any of the above. Additionally, the female had to evolve a mechanism to prevent her immune system from destroying the male sperm, which it would otherwise recognize as an invading antigen. None of these individual requisites can just hang around for eons of time for the rest to evolve via Darwinian trial and error.

THE INNATE AND ACQUIRED IMMUNE SYSTEMS When the zygote has become a baby and is ready to be born, it is confronted with a host of alien invaders collectively called antigens; short 290 291

Ibid., p. 3. Ridley, M. 2001, p. 209.

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for antibody-generating. To defend itself against these potential invaders, the child possesses an elaborate communication system that works around the clock that fights off invaders by creating antibodies specific to each antigen called the immune system. The child’s first line of defense is mom herself. While the baby was in her womb, the child developed its innate immune system. The baby’s immune system is further primed during the birthing process when bacteria from mom’s vagina are passed on to the baby, helping to build the colony of “good” bacteria in the gut that contributes to its immunity. After birth, the symbiotic relationship between mother and child—which is better characterized as love—becomes very important. If asked to choose an image to symbolize the beauty of love, it would have to be the bliss on a young mother’s face as she breastfeeds the contented infant snuggled in her arms. This is as close to agape—the unconditional love of God for his children; pure selfless love—that most humans will ever know. The look of pure delight on the mother’s face is the infant’s primordial experience of love—one person taking pleasure in the existence of another. The infant is experiencing warm tactile sensations snuggled in its mother’s arms as it closes its lips around her nipple to drink in the milk of human kindness. This experience not only helps to protect the child from diseases by priming its immune system, it also protects from psychological maladies by sending electrochemical impulses along its neural pathways to create our noblest emotions. Mothers’ milk confers many benefits, not the least of which is its immunological benefits. Although newborns have a certain degree of protection provided by the antibodies circulating in the mother’s system which the fetus receives through the placenta, their immune systems are underdeveloped. Fortunately, newborns receive a 100% safe vaccine in the form of colostrum, mothers “high octane” milk expressed from about day four to about day eight of breastfeeding. After that short period of ingesting this superfood, the infant gets 10 to 14 days of “transitional milk,” which is a blend of colostrum and thinner breast milk. This will eventually be replaced by regular breast milk which contains many chemical compounds important for brain development. This natural formula contains elements

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that support your baby’s immune system such as proteins, fats, and sugars that cannot be duplicated by formula makers. Breast milk also transfers the mother’s developed antibodies to the nursing infant, and since mothers and their babies are typically exposed to the same antigens, the baby is instantly protected. At the chemical level, the effects of breastfeeding are the result of a hormone called oxytocin; the so-called “cuddle chemical.” Placing the newborn at its mothers’ breast induces suckling, which releases oxytocin, which then provokes uterine contractions that help to reduce bleeding and to expel the placenta. Psychologically, breastfeeding combines the panoply of sight, sound, smell, touch, and the tangible evidence in the mother’s arms that affirms her womanhood, and stimulates the release of oxytocin which intensifies the feelings that released it in a felicitous feedback loop. Oxytocin released by breastfeeding reduces mothers’ sensitivity to environmental stressors, which allows for greater sensitivity to the infant. It does this by triggering the release of an “anti-anxiety” molecule brain chemical called gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA). Lactating mothers show significantly fewer stress responses to their infants’ crying and fussing than non-nursing mothers, as determined by skin conductance and cardiac response measures. The oxytocin-generated sense of emotional warmness motivates significantly greater desire to pick up their infants, which increases the bond between mother and child. As an added bonus, the major brain “pleasure center”—the nucleus accumbens—is a major target for oxytocin, so lactating mothers are rewarded by a deep sense of calm pleasure.292 Most of the antigens to which the newborn child is exposed can be handled by the innate immune system. The innate system has receptors on the skin, and around vulnerable areas such as the nose and mouth, that detect and respond to a limited set of antigens. After birth, the child slowly begins to develop its own system; the adaptive immune system. The adaptive system can marshal a large number of immune receptors that generate a vast repertoire of defenses by producing antibodies specific to

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Hiller, J. 2004.

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the antigens which “remember” or “adapt to” the antigens so they can fight them more efficiently if they invade again. The adaptive immune system is analogous to a society of spatially separate but interrelated families of well-knit sub-systems that is constantly on a war footing. To identify and repel invading antigens, it has an army of spies, commandos, generals, and brigades of fierce soldiers to protect the body from harm. Since invasion can occur at many different sites, these protectors are widely dispersed in the body. A key feature of the adaptive immune system is the ability to recognize self from non-self. Like distinctive uniforms of armies, each cell in your body carries a distinctive molecule marker that identifies it as “self” as opposed to alien cells that have invaded. As previously noted, an exception to this is the foreign male sperm, which the female’s chemistry identifies as a “defector” and accepts it into the fold as friendly. The other exception is the zygote/embryo. Because the zygote/embryo is a new individual with its cells tagged as such, they are “foreign” markers not recognized by its mother’s cells as “self.” To prevent the mother’s immune response from attacking and destroying them, her immune response must be suppressed, but not completely or else her health, and the baby’s, would be in jeopardy. Thus, maternal immune suppression is localized at the implantation site of the uterus. The requirements of infant and mother survival therefore requires a fine-tuned balance that had to come on line simultaneously, and not piecemeal via trial and error. The key players in the immune system are white blood cells, or lymphocytes. White blood cells make up less than one percent of blood content and are made in the bone marrow. When they are manufactured the new recruits travel to the lymph organs where they await orders to sally forth and fight for our survival. In addition to repelling invaders, the mature white blood cells identify and clean out self-cells that are worn out or dead. A type of white blood cell called lymphocytes are important to the immune system. Lymphocytes come in two varieties: T-lymphocytes (T-cells) and B-lymphocytes (B-cells). These chemical warriors can fit every possible organic and inorganic shape of invading antigens via several different mechanisms. T-cells recognize invaders by their “uniforms” (the particular

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surface shape of their molecules). Once recognized, different T-cells have different functions. In some circumstances, the T-cell can kill an invader directly, in others it sends signals to headquarters via chemical messengers called cytokines so the immune system as a whole can decide the most effective weapon(s) to use against the invaders. These weapons include killer T-cells, B- cells, and macrophages. Macrophages (“big eaters”) are giant circulating white blood cells, and are the shock troops of the immune system that reach out and gobble up cells damaged by the invader and release their protein fragments that are then attacked by killer T-cells. When B cells encounter these fragments, it manufactures an antibody protein that attaches itself to them. Each antibody matches a specific antigen in lock-and-key fashion and in doing so marks it for destruction. Once millions of lock-specific antibodies are made, the immune system remembers the invading locks if they encounter them again and can more quickly and efficiently destroy them. All this activity is guided by another type of T-cell called a helper T-cell. The helper T-cell is like the field commander who coordinates the activity of all other cells, and supervises the making of different types of cytokines. When the invaders have been surrounded, pounded, and shredded, there must be a mechanism to tell the good guys to cease fire—to down-regulate the system—lest it continue pouring troops into the fray that may inadvertently attack self-cells. Suppressor T-cells cells perform this task when they perceive lots of enemy wounded and dead around and release their own chemical signals to cease attacking. This is yet another functionally integrated and exquisitely engineered system whose origin scientists struggle to explain. A Google Scholar search (the repository of millions of scholarly articles) typing in “immune system” turned up no less than 2,550,000 results. These articles describe in minute detail everything known about the existing system, but microbiologist Michael Behe notes that: “We can look high or we can look low, in books or in journals, but the result is the same. The scientific literature has no answers to the question of the origin of the immune system.”293

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Behe, M. 1996, p. 138.

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THE CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM: PIPELINE OF LIFE Because our cells depend on blood for survival, the cardiovascular system is the first functioning system babies develop. The blood and blood vessels begin forming about 14 days after conception, and the developing heart tubes start pumping within 21 days. This amazing pump has four chambers, two at the bottom that pump blood carrying oxygen out of the heart, and two at the top that receive the returning blood. Returned blood gets sent to the lungs to collect more oxygen and to drop off carbon dioxide which is then exhaled. With each heartbeat, the heart sends blood around the body’s pipelines (arteries that carry the blood away from the heart and veins that carry it back) which, if laid end-to-end would stretch out from between 60,000 to 100,000 miles. The system is so efficient that every cell in the body is serviced in the process of circulation in an amazing 20 seconds. Surgeon Sherwin Nuland notes that “the cardiac cycle is no more than yet another of those wonders of coordination and timing upon whose flawlessness and predictability all human life depends.”294 He goes on to tell us that this cycle repeats itself at least 2.5 billion times in an average lifetime and pumps a million barrels of blood, and this momentous task relies “on the performance of trillions of chemical reactions during every instant of its function.”295 Blood itself is remarkable stuff, consisting of different types of cells in a protein-rich plasma fluid. The cells transported throughout the body by the plasma are red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. Red cells account for about 45% of the blood’s volume. If we think of the white blood cells as the body’s military, we may think of the red blood cells as the engineers, physicians, craftsmen, and pickup and delivery guys carrying out the mundane tasks of carrying life-giving supplies to cells throughout the body, collecting their wastes, and repairing problems that may arise. Red blood cells contain a protein molecule known as hemoglobin which contains iron (iron gives blood its red color). Iron easily

294 295

Nuland, S. 1997. Ibid, p. 213.

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attracts oxygen, thus the iron in hemoglobin picks up oxygen from the lungs and transports it to the various tissues throughout your body. Unlike the white blood cells that take on all kinds of shapes, all red blood cells are shaped like doughnuts minus a central hole. They are extremely flexible and are able to bend enough to squeeze through the smallest capillary marching in single file. Like their white brothers, red blood cells are also produced in the bone marrow at the rate of about two million per second. They only last for about four months because they expel their nuclei before leaving the marrow and thus cannot clone themselves. As they age and die, they are scavenged by white blood cells and broken up. Their iron content transported back to the bone marrow by a type of protein called transferrin and used again to produce new red blood cells; the waste from the cells is then excreted from the body. Finally, we have the platelets, which are not actually cells but small fragments of large cells called megakaryocytes. Platelets comprise the bulk of the blood and help the blood clotting process. Blood clotting involves an enormously complex series of biochemical processes to ensure that blood clots when and where it needs to, and when it doesn’t. Blood starts clotting when platelets gather at the site of an injury and stick to the lining of the injured blood vessel, forming a platform for coagulation. A protein called fibrin forms a crisscross scaffolding that prevents further bleeding and upon which new tissue forms. There must also be a tightly controlled regulatory system akin to that of the immune system so that the clotting cascade is site specific and does not spread to healthy tissue causing death from heart attacks or strokes. This tight regulation is revealed in studies of so-called “knockout mice” in which researchers inactivate (“knockout”) genes of either the “go” or “stop” phase of the process. Knockout the gene for fibrinogen, the precursor of the “go” protein fibrin, and mice hemorrhage; knockout the gene for another protein called plasminogen, the precursor of plasmin (the “stop” signal) that degrades clots, clots form throughout the circulatory system, and the mice die.296 These genes had to evolve in unison for

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Behe, M. 2001.

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animals to survive, but how would a mindless process know that the body would need both an accelerator and a brake? Only an intelligent designer would know such a thing since, as Fred Hoyle remarked, random unintelligent design only produces random unintelligent results. Attempts to explain the cardiovascular system in Darwinian terms are confronted with many chicken-or-egg dilemmas. The heart and the kidneys require a constant supply of oxygenated blood carried by red blood cells. A specialized hormone called erythropoietin is produced in the kidneys and is required for the proper function of red blood cells, protecting them against destruction and stimulating bone marrow stem cells to increase their production. The kidneys require red blood cells to deliver oxygenated blood, and they help to produce the hormone vital to red blood cells in this perfectly balanced cycle. But which evolved first—kidneys, red blood cells, or erythropoietin; any one part of the system without the others would be useless: “A close examination of this complex network reveals architectural planning and design that can only be comprehended in light of an intelligent Designer. Our extensive knowledge of the human circulatory system is tremendous evidence of the existence of Almighty God.”297 Additionally, the blood is oxygenated in the lungs and without lungs on-line the blood would be useless to the body’s cells since they need to have oxygen and nutrients and their wastes removed.

THE EYES: WINDOWS TO THE WORLD There are numerous other amazing bodily systems I must leave unaddressed, but we cannot leave without briefly addressing the human eye. The eye is such a complex structure that even Charles Darwin saw it as an impediment to his theory: “To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems,

297

Harrub, B. 2005. p. 82.

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I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”298 Eyes are our doors to the wonders of the universe. Photons of light bathe the universe, and we behold its wonders via an array of photoreceptors in the retina linked via the optic nerve. The optic nerve sends the photons all the way to the rear of the brain (occipital lobe) that receives, organizes, and interprets the patterns they generate. There are about 120 million photoreceptors called rods in the retina and some six or seven million cones. Computer engineer John Stevens compares the ability of our eyes to a computer, writing: While today’s digital hardware is extremely impressive, it is clear that the human retina’s real-time performance goes unchallenged. Actually, to simulate 10 milliseconds (ms) of the complete processing of even a single nerve cell from the retina would require the solution of about 500 simultaneous nonlinear differential equations 100 times and would take at least several minutes of processing time on a Cray supercomputer. Keeping in mind that there are 10 million or more such cells interacting with each other in complex ways, it would take a minimum of 100 years of Cray time to simulate what takes place in your eye many times every second.299

Although it is claimed that eyes must have evolved from some primitive light-sensitive patch of brain cells, one must wonder what series of random mutations could reasonably explain the simultaneous origin of the optical system linked to nerves that conduct signals to the back of the brain where photon impulses are converted to images that our minds can comprehend. If a supercomputer that is the product of intelligent design cannot begin to match the performance of the eye, just one of the body’s high-performance organs, how much greater must be the intelligence of the One who created every organ of the body? Biologist Alan Gillen explained it best when he wrote: “No human camera, artificial device, nor computer-enhanced light-sensitive device can match the contrivance of the human eye. Only a master engineer with superior intelligence could manufacture a series of interdependent light sensitive parts and reactions” 298 299

Darwin, C. 1982, p. 217. Stevens, J. 1985, p. 287.

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Yet some are determined to find flaws in the eye’s design. Richard Dawkins, for instance, writes: “Any engineer would naturally assume that the photocells would point towards the light, with their wires leading backwards towards the brain. He would laugh at any suggestion that the photocells might point away from the light, with their wires departing on the side nearest the light.”300 However, research has demonstrated that Dawkins is in error, because what appeared to be “wrong” wiring is exactly what is required for visual acuity. Labin and Riback tell us that Dawkins’ wrong wiring actually improves the resolution of the eye and reduces aberrations: “We also found that the retinal nuclear layers, until now considered a source of distortion, actually improve the decoupling of nearby photoreceptors and thus enhance vision acuity.”301 The body is indeed a wonder of design. As the vessel for the soul, we may think of the body as an ecological system within which all the organs of the body are mutually dependent and harmonize so well that things go right most of the time for our allotted three score years and ten on Earth. As 1 Corinthians 3:16 tells us: “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” Anyone who learns about and ponders the ultimate meaning for our physical existence will find it impossible to believe that this wonder we call the human body with a brain that can think could be cobbled together by a mindless process of natural selection. We may have evolved, but that process was surely a guided one. The greatest cosmologist of the 20th century, Allan Sandage, came to that conclusion himself and crossed the line from his early atheism to become a born-again Christian:” The world is too complicated in all parts and interconnections to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together. Each part of a living thing depends on all its other parts to function. How does each part know? How is each part specified at conception? The more one learns of biochemistry the more unbelievable it becomes unless there is

300 301

Dawkins, R., 1986, p. 93. Labin, A. and Ribak, E. 2010, p. 4.

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Sandage, A. 1985. p.54.

Chapter 13

THE BRAIN: THE LITTLE UNIVERSE WITHIN THE ENCHANTED LOOM The human brain is God’s magnum opus; the most immensely complicated and awe-inspiring entity in the universe. Even the complexity of the genome pales in comparison to this walnut shaped, grapefruit sized, three-pound mass of tofu-like tissue sitting atop your shoulders. The human brain is so complex that we may never completely understand it. As it has been said many times in neuroscience circles: “If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.” Nobel laureate neuroscientist Roger Sperry rhapsodized in awe of the brain’s complexity and mystery when he wrote that: “In the human head there are forces within forces within forces, as in no other cubic half-foot of the universe we know.”303 Another Nobel laureate, physicist Roger Penrose, wrote that while our brains are a tiny part of the cosmos: “But it is the most organized part. Compared to the complexity of the brain, a galaxy is just an inert lump.”304 The brain constitutes only 2% of body mass, but 50 to 60% of our genes are involved in brain development, and 303 304

In Fincher, J. 1982, p. 23. In Holt, J. 2018, p. 178.

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it consumes a voracious 20% of the body’s energy resources. We could exhaust a whole dictionary of metaphors to sing the praises of this enchanted loom because within its buzzing chemical soup and electrical sparks lie our thoughts, memories, desires, emotions, intelligence, and creativity. Everything we do engages the brain as its electro/chemical circuitry captures our genetic dispositions and environmental experiences and blends them into a self-conscious, free-willed human being. It is the temporary home of the conscious rational mind with which humanity reaches to discover its place in the universe and its relationship with God. It is estimated that the brain contains at least a trillion cells, with about 100 billion of them being the neurons that receive sensory input, process it, and facilitate responses to it. The foundation for this organ of unmatched complexity begins three weeks after conception when a sheet of embryonic cells called the neural plate folds and fuses into the neural tube. At his point we can discern the four bulges that will eventually become the central nervous system: forebrain, midbrain, hindbrain, and spinal cord. The neural tube grows and cells differentiate into their assigned tissue parts throughout the first trimester. The organization of brain cells (neurons) requires a series of protein signals that direct waves of migrating cells to their allotted place. Once embedded in their targeted area, neurons develop a means of communicating with other neurons, conducting information by converting environmental input into electrochemical impulses within neural networks. Each neuron has one axon, and numerous dendrites, which are branched extensions of the cell (see Figure 13.1). Axons are coated by a myelin sheath made of cholesterol which acts like insulation around electrical wiring, and in similar fashion serves to amplify nerve impulses and protect the axon from short-circuiting. Myelin is formed from numerous glial cells, which also provide the cells’ physical support and nourishment. Myelinated axons transmit impulses about 100 times faster than unmyelinated axons, and are the brain’s “white matter,” as opposed to its “gray matter,” which consists of cell bodies and unmyelinated axons. The number of branching dendrites varies from neuron to neuron, and each dendrite may have thousands of tiny projections called dendritic spines.

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Dendrites serve as receivers, picking up impulses from neighboring neurons. Axons serve as transmitters sending signals to other neurons, which are then passed on to the next neuron in the chain. There are about 40 different types of neurons that somehow produce the single most important characteristic that distinguishes humans from the rest of the animal kingdom—intelligence. Not only has intelligence enabled humanity to gain dominion over the Earth, it has allowed our species alone to know and love our Creator. How did we come by this wonderful gift? No one can answer this from a strictly materialist perspective because, as physician and geneticist Joseph Kuhn remarks: “The estimation for DNA random mutations that would lead to intelligence in humans is beyond calculation.”305

Figure 13.1. A Neuron and its parts, including a synapse.

Neurons pass their information along the axon in the form of electric signals made possible by the exchange of charged atoms (ions) in and out of the axon’s permeable membrane. Impulses travel down axons like neon 305

Kuhn, J. 2012, p. 44.

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lights flickering on and off until they reach the axon terminal point known as the presynaptic knob. At this point, the message is changed from electrical to chemical neurotransmitters that are stored in tiny packages called vesicles which open up and spill them out into microscopic gaps between the sending and receiving axons. Neurotransmitters cross the synaptic gap to make contact with postsynaptic receptor sites where the message is translated back into electrical form for further transportation or inhibition, depending upon the ratio of excitatory to inhibitory messages it receives. The gap across which the neurotransmitter crosses is about 20-30 nanometers wide, which is about 3,000 times bigger than the width of a human hair. A neuron has the capacity to make many thousands of synaptic connections with other neurons, and the brain’s 100 billion neurons “form over 100 trillion connections with each other—more than all of the Internet connections in the world!”306 After neurotransmitters pass on their messages, excess amounts are pumped back up into the presynaptic knob or degraded by enzymes. This activity takes place at a dazzling pace; a neurotransmitter remains in the synaptic gap for only 1/500 of a second before being transported back to the neuron or degraded by enzymes to prevent signal confusion when the next signal arrives. Neuroscientists have tried to follow the logic of the electrochemical processes in the brain using high performance NEST (neuronal network simulator) computer software. A team led by Markus Diesmann and Abigail Morrison showed just how difficult it is for humans to duplicate even the “simplest” of brain processes. The team created a huge artificial neural network of 1.73 billion nerve cells connected by 10.4 trillion synapses, which is very impressive, although just a tiny fraction of the neurons and synapses the human brain contains. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the researchers were not able to simulate the brain’s activity in real time. “It took 40 minutes with the combined muscle of 82,944 processors [small computer chips that receive input and provide appropriate output like a neuron] in K computer [a supercomputer in Kobe, Japan] to get just 1 second of biological brain processing time. While

306

Weinberger, D., Elvevag, B. and Giedd, J. 2005, p. 5.

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running, the simulation ate up about 1PB [1 petabyte (PB) is equal to 1015 bytes] of system memory as each synapse was modeled individually.307 Forty minutes, almost 83,000 processors, and a quadrillion bytes of memory to get a mere one second of the output that our billions of neurons get in real time day in and day out. These data show why comparing brains to computers—while understandable in some sense since they both process information—is wrong. Neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis considers all analogies of the brain with computers to be “a bunch of hot air.” He remarks that “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it.” His opinion is based on the fact that “the brain’s activity is the result of unpredictable, nonlinear interactions among its multiple billions of cells…You could have all the computer chips ever in the world and you won’t create a consciousness.”308

SYNAPTOGENESIS AND MOTHER LOVE Brain development is the process of creating, strengthening, and discarding connections or “wiring” among neurons; the synapses. Synapses organize the brain by forming pathways among neurons that connect its various parts. Just as the genome is responsive to environmental experience, the brain is far more so. Experience alters the chemistry and synaptic patterns in adults, but it literally organizes the infant brain. The wiring patterns needed for sheer survival, such as brain areas controlling heart rate, breathing, body temperature and balance are present at birth, but subsequent wiring is primarily a matter of experience. The process of wiring the brain is known as synaptogenesis—the creation of synaptic connections between neurons. At the peak of synapse creating, the cerebral cortex of a normal healthy infants may create up to two million synapses per second, and by two years of age they will have approximately 100 trillion. During the first few months of an infant’s life, dendrites proliferate and glial cells wrap around axons to begin the process of myelination. 307 308

Scornavacchi, M. 2015 p. 14. In Regalado, A. 2013.

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Dendrite growth and axon myelination continues throughout life, but proceeds at an explosive rate during infancy and toddlerhood. The brain creates and eliminates synapses throughout life, but creation exceeds elimination in the first two years, after which production and elimination are roughly balanced until adolescence when elimination exceeds production again. In the earliest stages of synaptogenesis, dendrites send out their feelers looking for any available partners. Frequent synaptic couplings establish functional connections between neurons like the establishment of a trail in the wilderness. The more often the trail is trodden, the more distinct it becomes from its surroundings, and the easier it is to follow. Brains are built to store experiences and build on circuit trails already there, which is while trail-blazing is easy for infant and toddler brains, it becomes more difficult as we age. Synapse retention is thus very much a use-dependent process, with only those connections that exchange information most frequently and strongly being preserved. Frequently activated neurons become primed to fire at lower stimulus thresholds once electro-chemical tracks have already been laid down for the impulse to follow. Experiences with strong emotional content are accompanied by especially strong electro-chemical impulses and become more sensitive and responsive to similar stimuli in the future. This process is summed up in neuroscience’s pithy saying: “The neurons that fire together, wire together; those that don’t, won’t.” We want “firing and wiring” patterns to establish neuronal tracks signaling that the world is a loving and friendly place, and this is why a nurturing childhood is so vitally important. Because the brain is the its physical home of the mind during its sojourn on Earth, its correct priming is imperative. We have seen that brain development (synaptogenesis) is use-dependent, and that depends on what it experiences. It is obviously a good thing for it to be primed by experiencing the power of love. Love is a mysteriously powerful force; the noblest, most beautiful, exquisite, and meaningful experience of humanity. By it we are born, through it we are sustained, and for it many sacrifice life itself. Love insulates the child, brings joy to youth, and comfort and sustenance to the aged. Its boundless power cures the sick, raises the fallen,

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comforts the tormented. God created love; the magnetism between male and female; the unending devotion of parents and children, and the active concern for the well-being of our fellow man. God is love; if we are to share in this love, we must have a conscious mind capable of understanding this. He made us to be able to receive His love, and when we grow in Christ we may spread and share that love with others. This is why he made us to try to love as He does. God is indeed love, but as an old Jewish proverb has it: “God cannot always be everywhere, and so He created mothers.” Mothers are our first environment; first in the womb and then at the breast. Mother love is not eros; the kind of love that depends upon the lovable qualities and virtues of the person loved (beautiful, honorable, funny, and so forth), but rather agape, a “giving” love rooted in the relationship between the lover and the loved. A mother’s love for her child is like God’s love for us. God’s love for his creatures is not rooted in our virtue or desert but rather in God’s nature as agape itself. Likewise, a mother’s love is rooted in the knowledge that the little creature in her arms is her child. Humans are born with highly undeveloped brains relative to any other species. Newborn horses, dogs, cats, etc., can walk within hours or days and can fend for themselves not long after. Human babies do not typically walk until they are about one, and they cannot fend for themselves for years. This is why loving nurturing is required during vital periods of synaptogenesis. Just as the infant’s immune system is immature at birth, so is its brain. Both rely on experience for maturity; the immune system requires exposure to antigens and the brain requires input from the social environment. We have seen how mothers contribute to their infants developing a robust immune system; they are no less crucial for their optimal brain development. When mothers breastfeed and cuddle their infants, signals run through its brain to its pleasure centers telling it that all is right with its world. Infants can only “think” with its skin, so its mother is the fountainhead of all satisfactions. Affectionate touching, kissing, cuddling, and rocking are tangible assurances for the infant that it is loved and all is right with the world. The neural tube is formed from the same embryonic tissue making the skin and the brain intimately connected. We

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know that the more infants are picked up and stroked the more abundant their synaptic connections are. This is why tactile stimulation is so important for the infant’s brain development and why mothers have the desire to provide it and receive joy in the process. The expansion of two individual natures by love in this fashion; each enriching the other, was God’s intention. In John 13:34, Jesus commanded us to love one another as He loves us. To love one another as Jesus loves us is a tall order out of human reach, but this does not mean that we should ever stop trying.

BEHAVIORAL ACTIVATING AND INHIBITING SYSTEMS Once we have achieved adult independence and are ready to face the world, the brain has behavioral-balancing systems underlain by the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine. We saw when discussing the immune and blood clotting systems that they must be activated and they must also be deactivated. Likewise, we must be motivated to engage in adaptive behavior, but we must also know not to go beyond moral limits. Unlike the balanced immune and blood clotting systems, the behavioral “stop/go” system is under conscious control. The behavioral stop/go system is facilitated by three interacting systems of emotional/behavioral regulation located within separate brain circuits. The first of these is the behavioral approach system (BAS) designed to motivate us to seek pleasure. Dopamine is the major neurotransmitter that motivates and rewards, and is synthesized primarily in the ventral tegmental area (VTA), the substantia nigra (SN), and the hypothalamus. The VTA and the SN are involved in reward via their connection with the nucleus accumbens a major “pleasure center.” To ensure that we do what is necessary for the continuation of life, God has provided us with a built-in reward system when we do what we have to survive and reproduce (to be “fruitful and multiply”). This reward is a shot of dopamine, and this is why it has been nicknamed the “happy hormone.” The BAS is a general approach mechanism designed to solve the important

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adaptive problem of attaining critical resources, such as food, water, and sex by rewarding us when we partake of them. In the pursuit of our goals, we may encounter dangers that must be avoided. There is usually no time to rationally think about our options when these dangers present themselves, and when all our senses tell us to fight, flee, or freeze. We would have difficulty surviving if we lacked this reflexive visceral early warning system that psychologists label the fight/flee/freeze system (FFFS). The FFFS is part of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), a division of the peripheral nervous system (all nerves that are not part of the central nervous system—the brain and spinal cord). The ANS is also associated with the neurotransmitter/hormones norepinephrine and epinephrine and with brain structures such as the hypothalamus, amygdala, and the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the brain’s chief executive officer. Preventing BAS pleasures from dominating our behavior is the behavioral inhibition system (BIS). The BIS is associated with serotonin and with limbic system structures such as the hippocampus and, amygdala that feed their memory circuits into the PFC. Many of the effects of serotonin have to do with causing the levels of other neurotransmitters to increase or decrease at different brain regions. The BIS is activated by joint activation of the BAS and FFFS; that is, by conflicting approach-avoidance stimuli producing anxiety accompanied by risk assessment and caution. The BIS is thus a system of conflict detection and resolution that inhibits behavior until either the BAS or FFFS is most strongly engaged to determine what the individual considers the most appropriate response given the situation (do I go for the potential reward or not?). The BIS strives for the ideal between desire and prudence and represents the emotional component of moral and social rules. Without the BIS’s stop function, the BAS would run wild, just as the immune system and blood clotting cascade would without their stop signals. Although these behavior-monitoring systems are engaged automatically like the stop/go immune and blood clotting systems, unlike those systems, once activated they come under the conscious control of our minds. The human brain has the capacity to freely monitor its own inputs

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and outputs and to override temptation. Most of us learn to seek our pleasures with temperance and prudence thanks to the BIS. The BIS enables humans to navigate complex human interaction with others in large groups. This so-called “social brain” enables us to seek our own goals with the good sense to know that our goals are best achieved in cooperation while enjoying a good reputation among our fellow humans. If we are to abide by God’s will to love our neighbors as ourselves, we must not act in impulsive ways, or in ways that disregard the legitimate wants, needs, and safety of others. God did not create us incapable of abusing the impulse to pleasure. He created us capable of being moral creatures, but that necessitates creation of humans capable of being immoral. He does not force us in either direction because we are free to determine the direction of our lives ourselves. Like all bodily systems, He implanted the mechanisms of our behavioral approach and inhibition systems to help us to live our lives in accordance with His will, or not.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE MIND The impression gained from discussing the electro-chemical shunting around of molecules is that it fully determines human behavior in bottomup fashion. This is hardly the case. No one has the slightest idea how this configuration of dead atoms that comprise the brain give rise to consciousness. The materialist worldview of the brain is that it is “a computer made of meat,” and the mind to something that emerges from brain activity, but has no independent existence. Humans seem naturally inclined toward materialism because we live in a materialist world, and thus tend to think in terms of space and form and with “stuff” that we can see, hear, taste, and touch. The immaterial realm, on the other hand, is rarely thought about, and when it is, many are inclined to dismiss it. We know that conscious thought and behavior cannot occur without the physical brain, and that the brain’s functioning is changed with drugs and alcohol. The brain and the mind are co-dependent because while we can have a brain without a mind, we cannot have a mind without a brain any

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more than we can see without eyes. But there is a large and growing literature that affirms the existence of a conscious mind as a separate entity. The idea that mind and body are two distinct things with different essential qualities is a position known as mind/body or mind/brain dualism. It is an ancient metaphysical notion, but the most well-known version is that of the 17th century French physician, philosopher, and mathematician Rene Descartes. According to Descartes, we can doubt anything, but the only thing of which we could be absolutely certain of is that we think, as his famous dictum asserts: “Cogito ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”). Descartes said the body is an extended (it occupies space), material but unthinking substance, while the mind is an unextended, immaterial substance (it transcends space), that thinks and knows that it thinks. This is not a popular belief among materialist scientists, but David Chalmers, the dean of consciousness research, argues that the mind does not logically depend entirely on the brain, and thus cannot be reduced to it. Instead, he argues that consciousness supervenes on the brain in some unknown way. He writes: “I resisted mind-body dualism for a long time, but I have now come to the point where I accept it, not just as the only tenable view but as a satisfying view in its own right.... I can comfortably say that I think dualism is very likely true.”309 The configurations of our brain states occur in top-down fashion in response to our goals, beliefs, and desires in a way not captured by bottomup mechanistic descriptions. Think of the process of falling in love. Reductionist accounts describe what goes on in the brain after people are in love; in no way is it a description of why they are in love. The relevance brain activity has for every Romeo and Juliette is not mechanistic, but rather the information in their minds about what each represents to the other. The techniques of neuroscience have provided exciting windows into the human mind, but we cannot transcribe the mind onto chemicals and tissue. Mental and physical events are intimately connected, but to say that the former is nothing but a function of the latter is irresponsible. Just as your car gets you to the next town but does not make you want to go

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Chambers, D. 1996, p. 357.

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there, so does your brain facilitate your mental journeys without making you take them. Likewise, our brains are the vehicles that allow us to function as free agents, providing the mechanisms by which we perceive, emote, think, believe, desire, plan, and worship; we do not work for it, it works for us. Genes and brains are necessary links bridging the environment to mind and behavior, which are properties that emerge from the whole integrated organism. All human actions require a conscious mind which forms intentions and an acting agent to carry them out. The contents of that mind form intentions, and physical brain states reflect those intentions. Minds exercise causal agency. We pick up a spade to dig a hole or strike a computer key to make a letter, all at the instigation of the mind. That this immaterial entity does these things is not such an abstract idea that it may seem. God is a disembodied mind, and since we are created in the image of God, our minds (souls?) are also disembodied after death. The brain is a very complicated piece of biological machinery, but it cannot understand why what it perceives gives rise to an intentional action; only a mind can do that. To neuroscientists who say the mind is a mere epiphenomenon; a by-product of the brain, I say that it is more reasonable to view our minds as our brains’ reason for existence. Just as the lungs exist so that we may breathe, the brain exists so that we may “mind.” When we think of a mathematical equation, musical score, or philosophical argument, it is the meaning we ascribe to those thoughts that are fundamental, not the neural substrates that were recruited to make the meaning possible. It is the conscious mind that organizes the bombardment of external stimuli that gives meaning to the brain’s physical activity. The brain cannot bootstrap itself into meaningful activity by purely internal processes; it must interact with information from outside itself.

MIND AND INFORMATION It is useful to think of mental causation as information. Mental information is stored in the neural structures of the brain as biological

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information is stored in DNA. In their packaged form, both are materially housed. When my thoughts are communicated to other parts of the brain, or outwards to other minds, they are converted from their material substrate to immaterial information. When stored by self or other, they are again embodied in matter. This is roughly analogous to writing on a computer. When I write, what I intend to say precedes the electrical patterns that are engaged within the computer, and then my thoughts become physically embodied and manifested on the screen. The content of the information is not the result of the electrical patterns emanating from the computer because my thoughts preceded the electrical patterns of the computer. When I decide which keys to hit to make manifest on the computer screen the thoughts that “come to mind,” my mental state has acted causally on a material object. Likewise, when I write out a particular thought, I fire up a specific sequence of electrochemical activity in my brain that reflects neural correlates of my mind. If I change my mind to form a different thought, a different sequence of neuronal firing takes place. This is top-down causation by which the physical events in my brain are caused by me; my thoughts are not predetermined by them, even though I need them to think. We cause these brain states in top-down fashion in response to what we are thinking or doing. Every mind state is also a brain state, but mental properties are not reducible to neural properties without remainder. This is the view of Nobel laureate neuroscientist and surgeon Sir John Eccles: “The more we discover scientifically about the brain the more clearly do we distinguish between the brain events and the mental phenomena and the more wonderful do the mental phenomena become. ...There is a fundamental mystery in my personal existence, transcending the biological account of the development of my body and my brain. That belief, of course, is in keeping with the religious concept of the soul and with its special creation by God.”310 Another Nobel laureate, physicist Eugene Wigner, agrees, and says that quantum physics renders materialism logically inconsistent with

310

In Brian, D. 1995, p. 371.

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regard to the human mind: “In view of all this, one may well wonder how materialism, the doctrine that ‘life could be explained by sophisticated combinations of physical and chemical laws,’ could so long be accepted by the majority of scientists. The reason is probably that it is an emotional necessity to exalt the problem to which one wants to devote a lifetime.” Wigner goes on to write of the complexity of the mathematics involved in quantum mechanics: “It is difficult to avoid the impression that a miracle confronts us here quite comparable in its striking nature to the miracle that the human mind can string a thousand arguments together without getting itself into contradictions or the two miracles of the existence of the laws of nature and of the human mind’s capacity to divine them.”

GETTING TO MIND How did we acquire this mind capable of such complex abstract reasoning? How did this three-pound lump of tissue we call a brain develop the capacity to enable us to be subjectively aware that it exists, to invest meaning into its circuitry to what it sees, hears, and touches, and have the intellectual power to probe God’s creation? It is the most difficult problem with which psychologists and neuroscientists have to wrestle, but why should consciousness be such a perversely difficult problem when nothing is more obvious than the fact that we are conscious? As an immaterial abstraction, the mind is a part of the world-as-lived that cannot be reduced to physics and chemistry. This is anathema to the strict materialist notion that only material exists, so for materialists the best way out is to consider consciousness an illusion, as many, quite consciously, have asserted. Nobel laureate physicist Robert Millikan has an answer to the origin of mind: “The most amazing thing in all life, the greatest miracle there is, is the fact that a mind has got here at all, ‘created out of the dust of the earth.’ This is the Bible phrase, and science today can find no better way to describe it—a mind.” Materialists believe that a conscious mind, the highest manifestation of life, is another happy accident simply to be accepted as a brute fact. As

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Stephen Gould put it: “Consciousness, vouchsafed only to our species in the history of life on earth, is the most god-awfully potent evolutionary invention ever developed. Although accidental and unpredictable, it has given Homo sapiens unprecedented power both over the history of our own species and the life of the entire contemporary biosphere”311 How could Gould’s “accident” occur when Darwinists aver that the sole evolutionary “purpose” is the continued existence of life. Natural selection is supposed to select only that which contributes to survival and reproductive success, thus the instincts that serve these twin goals would be all humans need, just like all other species. We have these instincts, but why add a conscious mind to the human repertoire when the rest of creation does quite well without it? Adding mind would seem to be an impediment to the mindless seeking of reproductive success since we approach this imperative with normative rules that prevent most of us from seizing every mating opportunity that presents itself. Why would evolution exert pressures to gift us such an impediment to biological fitness? The human brain is much bigger relative to body size than is necessary to fulfill Darwinian imperatives and is energetically costly to maintain since it consumes a lion’s share of the body’s energy. Much brain energy is expended appreciating abstract reasoning as in mathematics and science, and in the creation and appreciation of music, art, and the beauty of the world. This is a wonderful gift, but it does not afford our species any advantage in raw Darwinian terms. Sir John Polkinghorne, physicist and Anglican priest, has very similar ideas on this: “Human powers of rational comprehension vastly exceed anything that could be simply an evolutionary necessity for survival, or plausibly construed of some sort of collateral spinoff from such a necessity.”312

311 312

Gould, S. 1997, p. ix. In Frankenberry, N. 2008, p. 345.

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MIND AND LANGUAGE: WHAT PURPOSE? A conscious, self-aware, and intelligent mind has no immediate Darwinian advantage, the proof being that no other species has been similarly blessed. It must, therefore, have some other purpose. Gould was right to say that it has given us “unprecedented power both over the history of our own species and the life of the entire contemporary biosphere,” but I bet he didn’t realize that his words agree with Genesis 1-28: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” All animals have a rudimentary form of conscious awareness. They are aware of dangers, food sources, and mating opportunities, but they are not aware that they are aware. Being purely instinctual creatures, they are constrained to act in accordance with their genetic makeup; adapted to their environments, but incapable of creating their environments. Because humans have a life of the mind, they have escaped the captivity of mere instinctive responses to sensory perceptions from their environments. We enjoy an inner world that demands we impose order on the content of our sensory perceptions and think beyond them. Humans actively create their environments through their ability to think rationally and to communicate their thoughts to others rather than simply adapting to their environments. Language is a powerful externalizer of our thoughts, and the words that give them voice can have a powerful influence over others for good or ill. Animals are able to communicate their intentions through sounds and gestures, but such communication is a far cry from the fine nuances of language. Language is so central to our lives that we tend not to spend any time thinking about it. All the approximately 7000 languages linguists have cataloged contain a universal grammar capable of generating the rules of any specific language. There are so many factors involved in language that evolutionists have difficulty explaining it in a manner consistent with the accretion of beneficial variants because the distance between humans and

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other primates in communication abilities is vast. Neurolinguist Elizabeth Bates suggests that this vast distance leads two options, neither of which is palatable to neoDarwinists. She asserts that there are only two possible explanations for the existence of the basic structural principles of language: “either Universal Grammar was endowed to us directly by the Creator, or else our species has undergone a mutation of unprecedented magnitude, a cognitive equivalent of the Big Bang.”313 A linguistic Big Bang would mean that language with all the bodily structures that make it possible exploded on the scene instantaneously, and that defies the Darwinian notion of the slow accretion of beneficial mutations. Thus, we are left with the first position: we were endowed “directly by the Creator” with this great gift. A team of eight distinguished scientists in evolutionary biology, computer and information engineering, anthropology, and linguistics reviewed efforts to understand the evolution of language and concluded that it will probably always remain a mystery. They note that there is a “richness of ideas about the problem” but that richness is matched” by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved.”314 Yet human language is innate; we learn it effortlessly. “Learn” is not perhaps the right word. Children learn math and other subjects with some difficulty, but they develop language; they breathe it in as if by osmosis. Darwinists may be perplexed about language, but the Bible tell us that consciousness, mind, intellect, and language are gifts of God given so that we may hear, speak, and understand His word: “The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: he wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned (Isaiah 50:4). The capacity to find meaning and to experience God is impossible without the faculties of consciousness and language. We think about God with our minds and speak to him with our tongues; that is, we communicate with Him. Communication is a two-way exercise, but can we expect an 313 314

In Johnson, J. and Potter, J. 2005, p. 87. Hauser, M. et al., 2014, p. 1.

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omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God, so far above us to bother to communicate with us? After all, He is not only our master, He is also our maker. He is thus immeasurably greater than us, but is the wholly “other”? Christians believe in a personal God and that we are made in His image, so to many theologians this implies at least some essential similarity with humankind. Perhaps this similarity lies in thought. Johnson and Potter view the gift of language as necessary for our communion with God, and express the idea most persuasively that this is the characteristic that God shares with us that we may understand Him: God is conceived of as a communicator—whether in the form of the revealed word of God, the Ten Commandments, or his presence in religious experiences. Many theists have always believed that God created humanity in his image and that he desires ultimate communion with virtuous souls in some sort of afterlife existence. How would this be possible unless the terms of human thought—a language of thought— have some intrinsic similarity to divine thought? And how could there be meaningful communion without some medium for communication?”315

315

Johnson, J. and Potter, J. 2005, p. 92.

Chapter 14

THE SECULAR BENEFITS OF CHRISTIANITY HAPPINESS AND ATHEISM Christianity is not only good for the soul; it is good for that abstraction we call society. Perhaps an atheist friend you are with may have read some of the so-called “new atheist” books telling him that “religion poisons everything.” This may well be true of some religions, but certainly not Christianity. These new atheists are surely aware of the widespread pain and misery pervading countries that have embraced an atheistic worldview, but they want to turn their own countries in the same direction. Richard Dawkins was instrumental in a £100,000 campaign to litter London’s buses with the slogan “There probably is no God, so relax and enjoy life,” The message within the message is that people are happier without God. If Dawkins is right, atheists should be the happiest of people, but this is a huge fiction. As Mary Kenny wrote: “Far from relaxing and enjoying life, most atheists I have encountered are gloomy blighters with a depressing and nihilistic message that there is no purpose to life so where’s the point of anything?”316 Kenny was right. Figures published by Britain’s Office for National Statistics Well-Being found that atheists report lower levels of happiness, 316

Kenny, M. 2008, np.

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life satisfaction, and feeling of self-worth than religious people. Practicing Christians and Jews topped the list on all indicators of well-being.317 Another British study comparing Christians with national norms on a number of health and well-being indicators found that evangelicals score higher on all of them, and concluded: “In general, the faith and values and the disciplined lifestyles reported by evangelicals appear to be beneficial to health and well-being. This could well be enhanced by their strong sense of purpose and belonging to God, stable families, and caring faith communities”318 Yet another British study concluded that: “Religious people seem to have a greater purpose in life, which is why they are happier. Looking at the research evidence, it seems that those who celebrate the Christian meaning of Christmas are on the whole likely to be happier.”319 Challenge your friend to find just one study concluding that atheists are happier than practicing Christians; I guarantee that he or she won’t be able to. On this side of the pond; a Pew Research Center study found that people who say they pray every day and attend religious services each week: “are more engaged with their extended families, more likely to volunteer, more involved in their communities and generally happier with the way things are going in their lives.” The study also found that 65% of religious people donated money, time or goods to help the poor in the past week compared with 41% of the less religious, and 40% of the highly religious said they were “very happy” compared to 29% of the less religious.320 Data from the General Social Survey and the 2005 World Values Survey were combined in one study that concluded: “Results from both data sets support prior research by showing a positive association between happiness and both political conservatism and religiosity. Importantly, it was found that political conservatism and religiosity interact in predicting happiness levels. Specifically, the current results suggest that religiosity has a greater effect on happiness for more

317

Bingham, J., 2016. Smith, G., 2017, p. 11. 319 University of Warwick, News and Events, 2003. 320 Pew Research Center, 2016. 318

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politically conservative individuals compared to more politically liberal individuals.”321 Atheists, in general, are indeed Kenny’s “gloomy blighters.” In his The Myth of Sisyphus, atheist philosopher Albert Camus explored the absurdity of (an atheist) life. The opening lines of his book are: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”322 If there is no purpose in life other than indulging in one’s passions, as Camus advised people to do to the fullest extent possible, the sense of the ultimate meaninglessness of it all can lead to unhappiness and clinical-level depression. Psychiatrist Julia Kristeva agreed, writing that: “The depressed person is a radical, sullen atheist.”323 Being depressed may lead to thoughts that life is not worth living and suicide. As one psychiatric study reported: Religiously unaffiliated subjects had significantly more lifetime suicide attempts and more first-degree relatives who committed suicide than subjects who endorsed a religious affiliation. … subjects with no religious affiliation perceived fewer reasons for living, particularly fewer moral objections to suicide. In terms of clinical. characteristics, religiously unaffiliated subjects had more lifetime impulsivity, aggression, and past substance use disorder.324

Another study examining the relationship between church attendance and suicidal thoughts in a Canadian Community Health Survey concluded: “Results suggest that religious attendance is associated with decreased suicide attempts in the general population and in those with a mental illness independent of the effects of social supports.”325 Of course, there are degrees of atheism, ranging from atheists who can peacefully coexist with theists, to antitheists who actively seek to destroy theism. A study of people

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Bixter, M. 2015, p. 7. Camus, A. 1955, p.3. 323 Kristeva, J. 989, p. 5. 324 Dervic, K., et al., 2004, p. 2303. 325 Rasic, D., et al., 2009, p. 32. 322

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belonging to atheist/skeptical/freethinking groups found that, compared to other non-believers, antitheists scored lowest on all measures of personal growth and highest on measures of maladjustment. They are highly narcissistic, have few trusting relationships with others, and are more closed-minded. They have the highest anger when people challenge their views, and the lowest on agreeableness (they lack compassion, are uncooperative, and unfriendly).326 These are the folks associated with the new atheist movement. Contrast this dismal picture of the antitheist personality with the personality and mental health of theists found in a comprehensive review of religiosity and mental health. The conclusions of this review are quite the opposite of the new atheist claim that “religion poisons everything.” The authors found that daily spiritual experiences (DSE) are associated with a wide range of healthy physical (increased energy), psychological (less depression and greater feelings of self-efficacy), and behavioral (volunteering, charitable giving) outcomes. Additionally: “DSE is also associated with greater pain tolerance, fewer days spent in long-term care after hospitalization, better self-rated health, and better physical health perceptions in those with chronic illness. Furthermore, changes in DSE during treatment for alcohol and drug disorders have been associated with a greater likelihood of abstinence, increased prosocial behaviors, and reduced narcissistic behaviors.”327 This is augmented by a Pew Research study comparing atheist and Christian relationships, which found that 37% of atheists never marry as opposed to 17% of Christians—a “gloomy blighter” is not a pleasant person to be around. Whichever comes first— atheist or “gloomy blighter”—it is undeniable that people who wish others a Merry Christmas in the true spirit of that day are far happier eating their Christmas pudding than atheists just going through the motions and mumbling their politically correct “Happy holidays.” The futile search for happiness and ultimate meaning within an atheist framework is given voice by none other than famous atheist Bertrand Russell who, astonishingly, agreed that only God can cure the loneliness 326 327

Silver, C. 2013, p. 197. Koenig, H., Pearce, M., Nelson, B., & Erkanli, A. 2016, p. 1764.

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of the heart. He relates his feelings after visiting the sick wife of a colleague: Suddenly the ground seemed to give away beneath me, and I found myself in quite another region. Within five minutes I went through some such reflections as the following: the loneliness of the human soul is unendurable; nothing can penetrate it except the highest intensity of the sort of love that religious teachers have preached; whatever does not spring from this motive is harmful, or at best useless. 328

ATHEISM AND ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR In God is Not Great, new atheist Christopher Hitchens trashes claims that Christianity promotes prosocial behavior: “In fact, if a proper statistical inquiry could ever be made, I am sure the evidence would be the other way [i.e., atheists commit fewer antisocial acts than Christians].”329 As with many other claims in that book, Hitchens did not do his homework. There are literally hundreds of “proper statistical inquiries” on the matter that prove him to be egregiously wrong. In an examination of 113 studies linking attendance at religious services to criminal offending and illegal drug use, the authors concluded that: “attending religious services is the best documented correlate of [the prevention of] crime.”330 In an updated review of 270 published studies, the authors conclude: “our updated systematic review suggests the beneficial relationship between religion and crime is not simply a function of religion’s constraining function or what it discourages—opposing drug use, violence, or delinquent behavior—but also through what it encourages—promoting prosocial behaviors.”331 A study of almost 184,000 young men and women concluded that: “Results indicate that the protective relationship between religiosity and criminal behaviors such as drug selling and theft is 328

In Sullivan, A. 2018. Hitchens, C. 2007, p. 13. 330 Ellis, L. and Walsh, A., 2000, p. 205. 331 Johnson, B. and Jang, S. 2011, p. 129. 329

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consistent across gender as well as across the developmental periods of adolescence and young adulthood. This study provides support for the validity of the invariance hypothesis as the protective effect of religiosity on criminal behavior was consistently observed across important sociodemographic differences.”332 Christianity provides moral training without which antisocial and immoral behavior is rampant. The scourge of out-of-wedlock births is an engine driving all kinds of antisocial behavior. In some communities, almost three out of every four births are illegitimate. As a probation/parole officer working the projects, I had a first-hand glimpse of the behavioral and moral chaos reigning in those areas. Growing up in a fatherless home increases the probability of being reared in an unstable home by single, poor, and often isolated mothers who do not provide any moral values, and who generally fail to monitor their children’s behavior. The sad legacy of growing up in a fatherless home is starkly evidenced by the below statistics: Eighty-five percent of youth in prison have an absent father, 71% of high school dropouts are fatherless, 90% of homeless and runaway children have an absent father and fatherless children and youth exhibit higher levels of depression and suicide, delinquency, promiscuity and teen pregnancy, behavioral problems and illicit and licit substance abuse, diminished self-concepts, and are more likely to be victims of exploitation and abuse.333

CHRISTIANITY AND LOVING FAMILIES Richard Dawkins obviously does not believe in the old saying “The family that prays together, stays together” because he has infamously stated many times that teaching Christian values and morality to children is child abuse. Like Hitchens, Dawkins ignores the evidence. All available

332 333

Salas-Wright, C. Vaughn, M. and Maynard, B. 2014, p. 673. Kruk, E., 2012, p. 49.

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evidence points to the exact opposite conclusion. A study of children aged 8 through 12 concluded: “Children who were more spiritual were happier. …The personal (i.e., meaning and value in one’s own life) and communal (quality and depth of inter-personal relationships) domains of spirituality were particularly good predictors of children’s happiness.”334 Religious families monitor their children’s behavior and provide them with moral guidance in the context of warmth and caring in God. Both parents and children in religious households rate the quality of their relationships with one another significantly higher than do parents and children in nonreligious households. A review of relevant research noted that: “The tendency of religious beliefs to place great value on children increases parental motivation to spend time and energy on their children. Not only are religious parents less likely to abuse or yell at their children but they are also more likely to hug and praise them often and to display better parent functioning.”335 We have noted the positive effects on children growing up in an intact home, and studies have found that marriages in which both spouses attend church regularly are 240% less likely to end in divorce than marriages in neither spouse attends a place of worship.336 More than 6 decades of studies show that religious commitment is the best predictor of stability and happiness in marriage.337 Religious families are not only more likely to stay together, they are happier and healthier than secular families. A stable marriage is positively associated with better physical, mental, and emotional health of parents and children. A strong and stable marriage is strongly related to religious practices such as church attendance and living one’s faith. A national study of over 30,000 individuals found that the more husbands attended religious services the happier their wives were with the level of affection, understanding, and quality time spent with them. 338 Another national study of over 9,000 respondents concluded: “It appears that the influence of religion in fostering early parent–child ties noted in 334

Holder, M., Coleman, and Wallace, J. 2010. p.131. Dollahite, D. and Thatcher, J., 2005, p. 5. 336 Call, V. and Heaton, T., 1997. 337 Wilcox, B., 2004. 338 King, V., Ledwell, M., and Pearce-Morris, J., 2013. 335

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prior research extends throughout the life course, influencing ties between adult children and their parents.”339 If this is defined as child abuse they had better revise the dictionaries.

CHARITABLE GIVING The love of God for man, and the love of man for God, must be manifested in an active concern for others made palpable by charitable giving of time, money, and blood. No other religious or secular body has ever been more forceful in pushing the idea of helping the unfortunate as Christianity: “From the wellspring of Christian compassion, our Western civilization has drawn its inspiration, and its sense of duty, for feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, looking after the homeless, clothing the naked, tending the sick and visiting the prisoner.”340 The historical record shows that many pagan cultures saw helping the sick and needy as a sign of human weakness while Christians helped people in the belief serving the sick and needy also serves God. Alvin Schmidt writes that: “Christianity filled the pagan void that largely ignored the sick and dying, especially during pestilences. In so doing, it ‘established the principle that to help the sick and needy is a sign of strength not weakness.’’341 According to the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers: “the Catholic Church manages 26% of healthcare facilities in the world”... the Church has 117,000 health care facilities, including hospitals, clinics, orphanages, as well as “18,000 pharmacies and 512 centers for the care of those with leprosy.”342 Catholic Charities USA Is the largest private provider of welfare services of all types (food, housing, medical attention, counseling, disaster relief, and so on) in the nation. It serves millions of people each year regardless of their religious, social, sexual orientation, or economic backgrounds. Many other Christian and

339

Ellis, M., Vinson, D., and Ewigman, B., 1999. In Schmidt, A., 2004, pp. 147-148. 341 Schmidt, A. 2001, p.153. 342 Catholic News Agency. 2017. 340

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Jewish denominations cater to all kinds of people in need—the homeless, the sick, the addicted, the mentally disturbed, the parolee, and so forth. These faith-based programs contribute heavily to the relative well-being of the people they serve. When was the last time you heard of any such atheist-or humanist-based programs? Upon noting that Norwich, England, topped the table for “no religious belief” in the British census, D.J. Taylor wrote: “my godless city is full of Christian charity. … “But it would be difficult to deny that, first, the church is still making its presence felt here in the Great Eastern Land, and, second, were you take it out of Norwich, or any other similarly sized city, you would create a gaping hole that no government agency—and certainly not the British Humanist Association—would ever be able to fill.”343 It should not surprise us to find that practicing Christians live up to the “Love thy neighbor” command far more than atheists. A national sample of 12,100 adults indicated “strongly that more frequent church attendance and greater participation in religious activities increase the levels and likelihood of both religious and/or secular giving”344 David Campbell and Robert Putnam provide a sweeping book-length look at contemporary American religion, laying out reasons why practicing Christians make better neighbors and citizens than their secular counterparts. For instance, 40% of church attenders regularly volunteered to help the poor and elderly, compared with 15% of their secular counterparts. This was true for all kinds of services as well as for giving money, donating blood, or extending help to individuals experiencing hard times.345 Columnist George Will summarized the situation bluntly: “America is largely divided between religious givers and secular nongivers.”346 Far from “poisoning everything,” Christianity is the antidote for the poison in the world’s bloodstream. The evidence for this is so overwhelming that it is sheer dishonesty for people like Hitchens and Dawkins to act as though it doesn’t exist. Challenge your atheist friends to produce just one peer reviewed

343

Taylor, D. 2012, np. Forbes, K., & Zampelli, E., 2013, p. 2487. 345 Campbell, D. & Putnam, R. 2010, np. 346 Will, G. 2008, np. 344

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article that concludes that Christians are more depressed, less healthy, more criminal, and less charitable than atheists. You will wait a long time.

FREEDOM AND CHRISTIANITY Among the many debts we owe to Christianity are freedom and democracy. Only Christianity champions the individual conscience against the state, which over the centuries paved the way for social, civil, and political rights. The stirring phrases of the Declaration of Independence bespeaks of the Christian origins of the freedoms found in that document and to whom we should give thanks: “We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Alexander Hamilton said it well in 1775: “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”347 If anyone should doubt the idea that Christianity is the font of freedom, point them to Freedom House’s annual survey of freedom in the world. In its 2021 Freedom in the World Index, 82 of 195 nations (42%) are designated as “free,” and all but 5 (Japan, Mongolia, South Korea, Tunisia, and Taiwan) are Christian nations.348 Japan and South Korea have been heavily influenced by American political ideals, and perhaps the same can be said of Taiwan to some extent. That 77 out of 82 (93.9%) of the world’s free nations are Christian speaks volumes. The only nations that have a Christian majority population and designated unfree are those scarred by socialism, such as Cuba and Venezuela. The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights is so obviously based on Judeo/Christian principles that some Muslim states refused to sign it because it conflicts with sharia law, which is completely devoid of 347 348

Hamilton, A. 1788, np. Freedom House. 2021.

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any notion of human rights.349 Atheist philosopher Jurgen Habermas acknowledges that the idea of universal human rights took root only in the Judeo/Christian tradition: “Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. The individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love.”350 What tangible benefits have these Judeo/Christian values conferred on peoples living in accordance with them? Historian and sociologist of religion Rodney Stark, the world’s foremost scholar of the impact of Christianity on the world, unambiguously draws a straight line from Christianity to political, civic, and social equality, freedom, capitalism, and science: To put it simply, Christianity created Western societies. Without a theology committed to reason, progress, and moral equality, today the entire world would be about where non-European societies were in, say, 1800: A world with many astrologers and alchemists, but no scientists. A world of despots, lacking universities, banks, factories, eyeglasses, chimneys, and pianos. A world where many infants do not live to the age of five, and many women die in childbirth—a world truly living in “dark ages.”351

Western scholars are not alone in this observation. David Aikman cites the words of a research team from the Chinese Academy of Social Science appointed by the government to investigate the secret of Western success. The team looked at historical, political, economic, military, and cultural perspectives and concluded: “But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and 349

Mayer, A. 1993. Habermas, J. 2006, p. 149. 351 Stark, R. 2006, p. 19. 350

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cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.”352 That report couldn’t have gone over too well in atheist China. None of these secular benefits were envisioned by the early Christians, but values and beliefs have latent consequences. The belief that God is a God of reason who wants us to get to know him through his creation shapes motives, and motives produce actions that evolve over time. It is only when the effects of these actions are manifest that we can start tracing them back to motives, and then back further to ideas, values and beliefs. Think of the idea of human equality as stated by St. Paul in Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” Paul was not calling for voting booths or bicameral parliaments; he meant that regardless of what secular distinctions might exist, all people are God’s creations and equally deserving of His love. Christianity has thus conferred many benefits to all, including atheists, living in Christian nations. Unfortunately, Western nations are becoming ever more secularized. Can we hold on to the benefits of Christianity without respecting its moral values? Very few scholars believe that we can, and neither did George Washington. In his farewell address to the nation upon leaving his second term as President of the United States, he stressed the idea that freedom and justice requires a moral foundation of service and love that only Judeo-Christian values can supply: Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness-these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens...Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined

352

Aikman, D. 2012, p. 5.

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education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.353

Over the past 60 years, the United States has slowly rejected God and denied him space in the public square. Abraham Lincoln once wrote: “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” Lincoln’s words were intended to support the moral role of Christianity in schools because of his belief that “The only assurance of our nation’s safety is to lay our foundation in morality and religion.”354 The United States Supreme Court has removed any vestige of Christianity from our schools and public spaces, and we have been on a moral free-fall ever since. The freedom of thought and religious liberty enshrined in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights recognizes that, in the domain of moral conscience, there is a power higher than the state that grants us these inalienable rights. We will not be able to freely exercise these rights if we fail to recognize that there is a higher power than the state, as G. K. Chesterton noted many years ago: Once abolish the God, and the Government becomes the God. The fact is written all across human history. ...There [Russia] the Government is the God, and all the more the God, because it proclaims aloud in accents of thunder, like every other God worth worshipping, the one essential commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” The truth is that Irreligion is the opium of the people. Wherever the people do not believe in something beyond the world, they will worship the world. But, above all, they will worship the strongest thing in the world.355

The truth of Chesterton’s words is written in the blood of the 20th century when Godless state worship washed the world in tears, and we ignore the lessons of history at our peril. Thomas Jefferson warned us of 353

Washington, G., 1796. Federer, 1994, p. 392. 355 Chesterton, G., 2001, p. 57. 354

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the fate awaiting nations that give God his walking papers: “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?”356 The takeaway lesson is that if we value freedom and a just society, we must value its Christian origins and acknowledge that without God we will become slaves of the state. If the state is all-powerful, then we look to it to provide all our needs in an earthy utopia in exchange for subservience. Utopia is unattainable on earth, but the yoke of subservience is difficult to cast off once applied. And it will be applied, because all governments are administered by flawed human beings whose power will assuredly expand and corrupt unless intermediary institutions have the power to place limits on them. The free and independent institution of religion is a bulwark against state power, while at the same time aiding the state’s effectiveness by providing it with moral principles and a moral conscience. A state without a moral conscience cannot long endure. Pope John Paul II noted: “if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power. As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.”357 Even agnostics such as historians Will and Ariel Durant developed an understanding and respect for religion and knew of its value to society: “It has conferred meaning and dignity upon the lowliest existence, and through its sacraments has made for stability by transforming human covenants into solemn relationships with God...There is no significant example in history… of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.358 In an earlier work, Will Durant echoed the fears of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln regarding a nation’s fate when it abandons God:

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In Coates, 2012, np. Pope John Paul II, 2000, np. 358 Durant, W. and Durant, A., 1968, p. 43 and p. 51. 357

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The intellectual classes abandon the ancient theology and—after some hesitation—the moral code allied with it; literature and philosophy become anticlerical. The movement of liberation rises to an exuberant worship of reason, and falls to a paralyzing disillusionment with every dogma and every idea. Conduct, deprived of its religious supports, deteriorates into epicurean chaos; and life itself, shorn of consoling faith, becomes a burden alike to conscious poverty and to weary wealth. In the end a society and its religion tend to fall together, like body and soul, in a harmonious death.359

CHRISTIANITY, SLAVERY, AND WAR What about Christianity and the odious practice of slavery? Atheists love to point out biblical passages that appear to condone slavery, but that word does not have the same connotations in the Bible that we associate with the Antebellum South, or elsewhere in the world. The practice of slavery in ancient Israel was akin to the American colonial practice of indentured servitude whereby someone sold their labor for a specified period as a form of debt repayment. In biblical Israel, a person could sell themselves to serve a master for six years, after which time the person was to be set free. As Deuteronomy 15:13–14 commands the master: “And when you let him go free from you, you shall not let him go empty-handed. You shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your winepress. As the LORD your God has blessed you, you shall give to him.” Israelite slaves were thus debt-servants, not abused chattel deprived of all freedom and rights. They were not people captured and sold, but rather people who sold their labor as a voluntary act. The practice of slavery in the United States clearly violated many Old Testament laws, as well as the spirit of Christianity. Admittedly, American slave owners used biblical passages to justify their loathsome behavior, but they ignored cultural and biblical context, as well as the ethics of Christianity. Christian nations, such as the U.S. and 359

Durant, W., 1935, p. 71.

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the U.K. profited by slavery and/or the slave trade. Charles Darwin rebuked both countries for this, but he also noted that they sacrificed much to end it: “It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty: but it is a consolation to reflect that we have made a greater sacrifice than ever made by any nation to expiate our sin.”360 This was written shortly after Britain freed all colonial slaves at a cost of £20 million, the equivalent of over £2 billion today, and was 37% of the government’s revenue in 1831. In addition, there was an immense cost in lives and money associated with the 50-year patrol of Royal Navy warships that intercepting over 1,600 slave ships and liberated over 150,000 slaves.361 The sacrifice of lives and resources entailed in this effort was driven by a robust abolition campaign spearheaded by a coalition of British churches founded on Christian morality and its ethic of the brotherhood of all humanity. There were no abolitionist movements anywhere in the world that were not founded on Christian convictions; not one. Atheists also use the religious wars that plagued Europe during the 17th century to make absurd claims such as Dawkins’ that: “Religious wars really are fought in the name of religion, and they have been horribly frequent in history.”362 Sam Harris also boldly states that religion is “the most prolific source of violence in our history.”363 Dawkins and Harris may be decent scientists, but they are lousy historians, Robin Schumacher takes them both to the woodshed with Philip and Axelrod’s three-volume Encyclopedia of Wars as his rod. The Encyclopedia lists 1,763 wars waged over the course of human history. Schumacher states: “Of those wars, the authors categorize 123 as being religious in nature, which is astonishingly low. However, when one subtracts out those waged in the name of Islam (66), the percentage is cut by more than half to 3.23%.”364

360

In Richerson, P. & Boyd, R., 2010, p. 565. Sherwood, M. 2007. 362 Dawkins, R., 2006, p. 316. 363 Harris, S. 2005, p. 27. 364 Schmacher, R., 2012. 361

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Nevertheless, Christians must honestly admit the violence committed in the name of Christ, while soundly condemning it as the antithesis of Christian love. Christ does not wish to rule the Earth by military conquest: there is no universal caliphate to be won by violence in Christian theology. Christianity seeks no sway over Caesar and is more than content to possess the ultimate truth rather than the satisfaction of earthly power. As Jesus said to Pontius Pilate, who adjudicated on His trial and crucifixion: “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight.” (John 18:36). The religious wars for supremacy in Christendom fought in God’s name were contrary to His commands. Although there are also examples of Christian rulers forcing conquered subjects to accept Christianity, Jesus and His disciples won converts through loving words and deeds, and never counseled violence as a way to make others accept Christ. Forced conversion is anathema to Christianity because God wants people to accept Him voluntarily. Jesus was the great peacemaker who counseled His followers to turn the other cheek and to win over their non-believers rationally and with love. An atheist counter to this is: “What about the crusades”? Atheists delight in emphasizing the massacres of Muslims and Jews by rampaging crusaders. There is no justification for such barbarity, but they down-play the primacy, longevity, and barbarity of the on-going Muslim “crusades.” Muslims launched their own crusades (jihads) against the West 365 years earlier than the first Christian crusade launched in 1095. Islamic armies began the conquest of Persia in 634, only two years after Mohammed’s death, and went on to subjugate over half of what used to be Christendom from Egypt to Spain. They plundered the Churches of St. Peter and St. Paul in Rome in 846; a full 249 years before the first Crusade. The Crusades were “counter jihads” to stop further Muslim expansion across formerly Christian areas. Historian Bernard Lewis makes it clear that the purpose of the crusades was to recover lost Christian lands. He goes on to note in this connection that: “it may be recalled that when the Crusaders arrived in the Levant not much more than four centuries had passed since the Arab Muslim conquerors had wrested these lands from Christendom—less than half the time from the Crusades to the present day- and that a substantial

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proportion of the population of these lands, perhaps even a majority, was still Christian.”365 This chapter has provided the briefest of insights into the bounty of benefits that Christianity has provided Western societies. As the Chinese Academy of Social Science report noted earlier, it has made them the most powerful, successful, prosperous, and freest the world has ever seen. Without continuing to abide by the Christian values, beliefs, and attitudes, however, they cannot long endure. The “Jeffersonian maxim” states that: “government is best which governs least, because its people discipline themselves.”366 Democratic governments provide a wide space for personal freedom, but they also require equally high standards of moral self-governance. But how are people able to discipline themselves without the sound basis of objective morality supplied by God’s laws? To be virtuous it is necessary to curtail our natural appetites and inclinations. Benjamin Franklin noted that: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters”367 Religious liberty is the foundation stone of all free societies, which is why James Madison said it is was: “enshrined it in our Constitution, and so etched in our national consciousness, a principled and practical commitment to that liberty that has helped us to remain a free society ever since.”368 If God’s laws continue to be delegitimized by the courts in the United States, it will engender resentment and disrespect among those who live their lives by them. Consequently, the government will be delegitimized in the eyes of Christians, which then compromises respect for the law. President Calvin Coolidge warned of this in his speech in the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence; when he remarked that our rights “have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. …Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish.”369 365

Lewis, B. 1993, p. 12. In Peterson, M. 1960, p. 79. 367 In Boyack, C, 2012, p. 235. 368 In Levin, 2010, p. 30. 369 In Dyer, J., 2015, p. 118. 366

Chapter 15

PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACHES TO GOD THE VALUE OF PHILOSOPHY Philosophers have always thought about ultimate purpose and meaning, but in the first half of the twentieth century, science tended to make many, perhaps most, philosophers lean toward atheism. It simply wasn’t cool to be a theistic philosopher back then. Things began to change in the latter part of the century as science advanced. According to a Time Magazine article, many philosophers are turning their considerable brain power towards the heavens again: In a quiet revolution in thought and argument that hardly anyone could have foreseen only two decades ago, God is making a comeback. Most intriguingly, this is happening not among theologians or ordinary believers—most of whom never accepted for a moment that he was in any serious trouble—but in the crisp, intellectual circles of academic philosophers, where the consensus had long banished the Almighty from fruitful discourse.370

Philosophy claims all knowledge as her domain, so she fusses around at the periphery of everything from physics to theology. Philosophers 370

Time Editorial 1980, np.

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retain a child-like curiosity about all things (philosophy means “love of wisdom”), and they were pondering many centuries ago the same kinds of questions that modern scientists and theologians ask. They contemplated these questions relying only on their rational faculties unaided by any of the marvelous accoutrements with which modern science is blessed. Philosophy may not enjoy the same prestige that science does, but it has a valuable role to play in keeping our minds on a logical track, synthesizing knowledge, and holding before us the continuity of thought bequeathed to us by the great minds of the past. Albert Einstein noted that philosophical insight is “the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth.” Most of the great theologians of the past were philosophers in practice, if not profession, and some of them such as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and René Descartes, put most modern philosophers to shame. Philosophers argue for the autonomy of philosophical explanations relative to scientific explanations. They maintain that philosophical analyses in general should be a priori, that is, logically established by deductive reasoning independent of empirical investigation. Logic is great, but it doesn’t necessarily “prove” anything. Logic argues from something already accepted as true (a premise) and says that if the premise is correct and the conclusion deduced from it is logically coherent, the conclusion is reasonable. The problem is that the major premise in a deductive argument must be self-evidently true if the conclusion that follows is to be considered logically valid. However, even if the major premise is self-evidently true, the logical argument may be destroyed if an erroneous minor premise is snuck into it. This is the mistake that Alan Lightman made in our discussion of the multiverse when he argued that the multiverse offers an explanation of the fine-tuning, and thus we have no need of a Designer. If we put his argument into a formal logical arrangement, it may go something like this: A. The universe has many fine-tuned parameters that cannot be the product of necessity and chance.

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B. This provides evidence for design, and design implies a designer that theists call God. C. We cannot accept this on philosophical grounds (“No Divine Foot in the door”). D. Therefore, we must posit trillions of other universes of which one (ours) has to have the “just right” parameters to allow for intelligent life to emerge—pure luck. In this syllogism, B follows logically from A. However, C cannot be logically deduced from B. C sneaks in as a minor premise, which Lightman treats as a major premise from which he deduces D. But C doesn’t follow from A and B, and it is therefore logically incoherent. C is an example of what philosophers call a background assumption which can cause problems for arguments based purely on formal logic. Lightman engages physics because it is a physics issue, but his argument is philosophical, and even dogmatic. After all, he did say that his multiverse position is something we must believe. Philosophers will have none of this kind of dogmatism.

PLATO AND ARISTOTLE There is not much said in philosophy that hasn’t been said before by the fathers of Western philosophy; Plato and his star pupil, Aristotle. Being born centuries before Christ, Plato (429?-347 BC) was obviously not a Christian, but he provides a foundation for an innate, intuitive knowledge of God in his theory of the Forms. For Plato, everything in the world we perceive with our senses is imperfect, unreliable, and subject to change, but behind this imperfect, unreliable and changing world of appearances is a perfect world of permanence and reliability he calls the Forms. No one has seen perfect love, justice, or truth, nor has anyone seen a perfect horse, triangle, or house, but if we can conceive the Form of any of these perfections in the mind, then they must exist. So it is with God. Marsilio Ficino says of Plato:

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Plato often described how contemplation of the Forms of Truth, Beauty, and Moral Virtue, may elevate the mind to ascend to God. Truth, beauty, and moral virtue, as we perceive them, are flawed manifestations of their Forms. By contemplating on their imperfect nature, however, we may be pushed to a higher level to contemplate their perfect Form. For instance, when we are awed by the beauty of someone or some beautiful thing (or some truth or virtue), we may be led to consider the Form of Beauty (or Truth or Virtue) itself, or the perfect essence of what all things deemed beautiful, truthful, or virtuous have in common. Unlike our everyday experiences of particular instantiations of beauty, truth, and moral virtue, the Form of these things are eternal, changeless, and perfect. Taken together, this triad of Forms constitute the Form of the Good (some have called this God with an extra ‘o’). The Good for Plato is the transcendent God, the highest and most perfect being imaginable. However, Plato was not committed to monotheism and did not think of God as a personal God. Plato says that a god called the Demiurge, fashioned a universe from the eternal Forms. The Demiurge provides order and purpose to the universe, but he is limited by the imperfections inherent in material, which is why everything we see and experience is only a pale reflection of their essence contained in their Forms existing in the mind of God. The Demiurge is a fabricator, not a creator, and is subordinate to what Plato called the “One.” The One is a being so perfect and powerful that it is impossible to imagine a more perfect and powerful being—He is the Form of these things. The One had to be the self-existent first cause, otherwise we would be faced with an infinite regress of causes. 371

Ficino, M. 2001, p. 9.

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Aristotle (384-322 BC), Plato’s prize pupil, was an inductive empiricist as opposed to Plato’s deductive rationalism. Aristotle’s God was purely deistic who simply imbued all things with order and purpose. He believed that it is from the fact that all things seek divine perfection that we can come to know Plato’s Forms. Since God is the highest being, He knows universals prior to their instantiation in the material of the universe. Since he is the unmoved mover, he must be changeless, immaterial, and perfect. Being perfect, God is unchanging since he cannot become more perfect. He is the Form of the Good which always is and has no becoming. Everything else in existence is always changing; that is, in a state of becoming. We can perceive and understand this through our senses; God can only be known through reason. Since he is immutable (only material things change) and perfect, He must be eternal. Additionally, a being that imparts causal relationships among things existing in nature must be uncaused itself, and must exist necessarily. Although Aristotle’s god is not a personal god, he has perfect knowledge. He is the ultimate philosopher, and the goal of every philosopher is perfect contemplation of the worthiest things. Since Aristotle’s god is the highest of beings, he must engage in perfect contemplation of the worthiest object that exists, which is himself. This god is conceptualized as a perfect being, and a perfect being can only think perfect thoughts. Thus, the only thoughts worthy of a perfect being would be thoughts of itself. Aristotle’s god thus is unable to think of us, because such thoughts would be unworthy. It appears from this that Aristotle saw his supreme being as pure nous, or mind, but some have claimed “that Aristotle takes both ‘the Good’ and nous to be names of the essence of God.”372 This would mean that he invested his god with virtue, but virtue has to be directed at a being beyond oneself, so perhaps Aristotle had some inkling of a personal god.

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ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENTS: ST. ANSELM Ontological arguments are arguments about the state of being or existing, especially with the being and existence of God. Ontological arguments are conceptual in the sense that they take as self-evident that God exists and that we can deduce that fact from the very nature of God. This is analogous to saying that we can deduce from the propositions that constitute the concept of motherhood that every mother is female. This is self-evident, and it would be logically impossible to believe otherwise. Of course, conceptual claims do not usually suffice to prove existential claims. Propositions constituting the concept of motherhood already entail the proposition that every mother is a female, and that is true empirically as well as conceptually. There is no secondary proposition entailed in the concept of God analogous to the proposition of femaleness. Nevertheless, ontological arguments attempt to establish the reality of the existence of God from the abstract concept of Him that we have in our minds. Although it may be argued that both Plato and Aristotle offered ontological arguments for God, St. Anselm (1033-1109 AD), the Archbishop of Canterbury, offered the original ontological argument based on the Christian concept of God. Anselm proposes to show how the supposition that God does not exist leads to a contradiction, and then concludes that God must therefore exist. Anselm’s syntax is ancient and difficult to follow, so I will put it in my own words, which I hope an expert on the matter will find faithful to Anselm. The ontological argument goes like this: God is by definition a being which none greater can be imagined. If God exists only as an idea in the mind but not in reality, then we can imagine a being who is greater. But we cannot imagine a being greater than God; to suppose that we can is contradictory, since our idea of God is the idea of the most perfect being of all. So, if God exists as an idea in the mind, then He necessarily exists in reality. The ontological argument is unique to God. We cannot make the same argument about the concept of a perfect house, car, person, nation, or anything else. For instance, when a king with unlimited resources decides to build the “perfect” palace, he has a conceptual notion of what that is and

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may declare that such a perfect palace exists because he cannot imagine a greater one (say Louis XIV’s Versailles). The problem with this is that a perfect palace is something that can exist only as an idea in the mind, not in reality, because no matter how grand the palace, we can always imagine one that is grander. Why? Because the idea of a perfect palace does not contain the conceptually maximal qualities that the concept of God does. There is no intrinsic maximum involved in the concept of a perfect palace because new and better features can always be added. However, it is conceptually impossible to imagine a being with all the “omni” properties—omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent—of a maximally great being who created the universe. The properties contained in the concept of God contain intrinsic maximums beyond which it is impossible to go; perfect unlimited knowledge, unlimited power, and unlimited love.

RENÉ DESCARTES As a great mathematician and philosopher, René Descartes (15961650 AD) was a rationalist who demanded proofs deduced from a priori certainty. The a priori cannot come from the senses because the senses can deceive us, as can our beliefs. He even considered the possibility of an evil demon (for the sake of argument) who was purposely deceiving him. He began his search for certainty by doubting everything, and then goes on to defeat this radical skepticism and to show how we can have certain knowledge. Descartes begins with his own existence. He reasoned that even if everything he believed is false and the demon was deceiving him, he must exist to be doubting. Doubting is thinking, and one must exist to think. Thus, the Cogito, or thinking, supplies direct and certain knowledge of his own existence because thought requires a thinker. Even the evil demon could not deceive someone who doesn’t exist. This is the basis for Descartes’ famous pronouncement: Cogito, ergo sum. The Cogito supplied Descartes with the foundation from which to deduce what other truths are certain, including the existence of God. By

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reflecting on the idea of God, he argues, we can know that God exists, because a wise, truthful, just, and good God would not allow us to be deceived about our own existence or the existence of the external world. Thus, if I’m not deceived when I think of myself or of the outside world, I cannot be deceived when I think of God. Descartes’ argument is ontological, yet it differs from Anselm’s in important ways. Anselm’s argument proceeds from the definition of God as a being greater than which cannot be conceived, while Descartes’ argument is based on innate ideas and the doctrine of clear and distinct perception. For Descartes, God’s existence is known directly from the fact that existence is contained in the clear and distinct idea of a supremely perfect Being. But, if the mere fact that I can produce from my thought the idea of something entails that everything that I clearly and distinctly perceive to belong to that thing really does belong to it, is not this a possible basis for another argument to prove the existence of God? Certainly, the idea of God, or a supremely perfect being, is one that I find within me just as surely as the idea of any shape or number. And my understanding that it belongs to his nature that he always exists is no less clear and distinct than is the case when I prove of any shape or number that some property belongs to its nature.373

Descartes further reasoned that he could not exist with the idea of God if God did not exist. He notes that he did not create himself and hasn’t always existed. A long series of causes led to his existence, but the ultimate cause, that which provided him with the idea of God, had to be God Himself; the necessary being who has always existed. Having arrived at the idea that God is a necessary being, Descartes went on to elaborate what that entails. He says that anything that exists necessarily exists by necessity of its own nature, and notes that there are qualities, or an essence, that a necessary thing must have or else it would not be that thing. For instance, he argued that the essence of a triangle is that it is a three-sided figure with internal angles that sum to 180 degrees. To say that God does not exist is 373

Descartes, R. 1996, p.45.

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like saying a triangle does not have these qualities. Triangles and mathematical entities exist by necessity of their own nature; nothing else caused them to exist. Just like the existence of a triangle cannot be decoupled from our concept of a triangle, the existence of God cannot be separated from our concept of God.

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 AD), friar, priest, Doctor (teacher) of the Church, and philosopher, is perhaps Christianity’s greatest theologian. Aquinas was critical of Anselm’s ontological argument because although he acknowledged that the concept of God signifies a being than which nothing greater can be thought, he denied that we can prove God’s existence from it. Aquinas argued that Anselm’s major premise assumes that we can know the nature of God, but we mere mortals cannot presume to know the nature of God. Only God can know His nature, Aquinas reasoned, so only God can use an ontological argument that begins with God’s nature. Einstein agreed with Aquinas on this, stating: “The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions. How can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?”374 Although it is true that the nature of God the Creator, the transcendent, the self-existent, may be unknowable to man’s puny intellect, we can know something of his power by knowing what he has created, and knowing God incarnate in the Redeeming Christ. Following Jesus Christ is humanity’s way of knowing God. Aquinas rested his arguments for God’s existence in what we know from our experiences of the natural world. In other words, Anselm begins with the innate concept of perfection and deduces God from that, while Aquinas anchors his proofs in rational understanding of things we perceive with our senses, such as change and cause. Aquinas’ strategy is to begin with an observed feature of the universe and by thinking rationally about

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this feature, he logically deduces the existence of God. Anselm’s strategy was Platonic rationalism, while Aquinas’ was Aristotelian empiricism. Aquinas provided his famous Five Ways, or arguments, in his Summa Theologica by which we can come to an understanding of God’s existence and power by reasoning from physical, rather than metaphysical facts. None of these ways require us to engage in the kind of mental gymnastics that the ontological argument demands. The five arguments are presented below. 1. The Argument from Motion: The argument from motion is an argument about change; things moving from a potential state to an actual state. The potential is something that does not exist as yet; it requires something else to actualize it. Whatever actualizes that potential must be actualized by something else, and that something else must itself be actualized. This chain cannot be infinitely long, so there must exist some unchanged and unchanging thing that puts in motion all change. This points to the need for a power capable of causing all the changes in the universe from the beginning of time. We call this power God, the Unmoved Mover; the Changeless One. 2. The Argument from Causality: This argument is similar to the Kalam argument we met in Chapter 4. Everything that begins to exist has a cause beyond itself because nothing can logically be the cause of itself. Everything, in turn, has its own cause stretching far into the past. But this chain of cause and effect cannot logically go on forever, so there must be an uncaused thing that causes all other things. Unless we assume there is a first uncaused cause— which logically there must be—we will be bedeviled by the problem of infinite regress again. This uncaused cause First Cause is God. Aquinas’ The first and second ways seem identical at first blush, but they are subtly different. The first way reasons from change in nature to an unchanged God, while the second way reasons from cause in nature to an uncaused God.

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3. The Argument from Contingency: Nothing in the universe needs to exist in and of itself. Contingent things that exist will always eventually cease to exist through death, destruction, or decay. Thus, a contingent being is not necessary since it owes its existence to other contingent beings. A necessary being owes its existence only to itself. If there has been an infinite amount of past time (Aquinas believed in the Aristotelian notion of a past eternal universe), then all things would have ceased to exist long ago. The fact that anything at all exists now, means there must be One that cannot cease to exist; One that is non-contingent and must necessarily exist, and that is God, the Necessary Being. 4. The Argument from Perfection: Everyone makes comparative judgements in their lives about all kinds of things. Every human trait we call good—morality, health, virtue, love, and so on—is measured by some standard. These things are measured in degrees, which implies that there is some ultimate standard by which we may judge them. Thus, there must be some absolute standard of perfection by (like Plato’s Forms) which we may judge these traits; that is, if degrees of perfection exist, then something maximally perfect exists. There must be some ultimate standard by which the “good” is derived, and that standard is God, the Ultimate Perfection. 5. The Argument from Purpose: This may be called the teleological or design argument. That is, everything that exists, animate and inanimate, appears to fulfill some purposeful role. The regularities observed around us are evidence of purpose or intention. Inanimate matter does not have intelligence or purpose, so the purposes and functions they exhibit must originate in an intelligent entity that devised their purpose via the laws of nature. We call this intelligent entity God, the Grand Designer and Law Giver. It is important to note that for Aquinas one’s faith in God is supported by evidence and reason or else he would not have bothered to formulate his Five Ways. However, he was adamant that faith does not come from

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evidence from the physical universe or reasoned arguments but through God’s grace. He believed that knowledge of God comes from natural theology (the book of God’s works) and from revelation (the book of God’s words), but revelation is more necessary to faith. He asserted that this is so because we cannot reason our way to Christian doctrines such as the Trinity and the virgin birth. Only the light of faith grants us the ability to understand these doctrines, but as we mentioned in Chapter 1, the Bible tells us to come to know God through our minds as well. It is only through reasonable arguments that we can hope to win over unbelievers. Note below how one very famous atheist philosopher came to acknowledge a Creator God through science. In 2004, Anthony Flew shocked the atheist world by announcing he had come to believe in God. It was as if Pope Francis announced that he had become a Muslim, because Flew was atheism’s pope; a man who had written many books and articles advocating it for 50 years. In an interview with Benjamin Wiker, Flew pointed to two decisive factors that led him to his decision. One was the increasing number of noted scientists who affirm that there has to be a Super Intelligence behind the complexity of the universe, and the other was the amazing complexity of DNA and the implausibility of a non-intelligent source of the origin of life. He further noted: I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so. With every passing year, the more that was discovered about the richness and inherent intelligence of life, the less it seemed likely that a chemical soup could magically generate the genetic code. The difference between life and non-life, it became apparent to me, was ontological and not chemical.375

Flew’s book, There is a God, traces his intellectual journey from atheism following evidence wherever it led him. Flew tells us that in his youth he was a “hotly energetic left-wing socialist” (an affliction that many 375

Wiker, B. 2005, np.

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suffer in their youth), but abandoned it in his thirties.376 Abandoning this Godless creed is the first step toward abandoning atheism, since atheism and socialism are evil twins. After he did so he became a vigorous defender of the free market, and much later, came to accept God. Unfortunately Flew came to know God only as the impersonal Creator, but he never quite got to know Him as the personal Father. Thus, natural theology can only go so far.

THE MORAL ARGUMENT The moral argument for God comes in many varieties. Editing out the nuances and the qualifiers, the general argument may be summarized as: “If God does not exist, then objective moral values cannot exist, but objective moral values do exist, therefore, God exists.” Both theists and atheists accept the idea that existence of objective moral values entail the existence of a moral law-giver we call God. Atheist philosopher J. L. Mackie notes that “if there are objective values, they make the existence of a god more probable than it would have been without them. Thus, we have a defensible argument from morality to the existence of a god.”377 There are many atheists who subscribe to the universality of human rights, care about justice, value the good, and denounce evil, but they cannot provide the ultimate justification necessary for a universal objective morality by which good and evil are clearly delineated and understood. Without God, we do not have an objective basis by which to make moral judgments, and we are left with moral relativism that asserts “good” and “bad” depend on culture or on whom you ask. If morality is not objective, how can we in good conscience condemn evil practices if “evil” is only a subjective judgment? Philosophy aside, most people have an intuitive notion that belief in God is central to morality and that atheism is antithetical to it. Psychologists have tested this intuition, typically asking subjects to judge 376 377

Flew, A., & Varghese, R. 2009, p.33. Mackie, J. 1982, p.116.

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a variety of criminal and immoral acts as more representative of Christians or atheists. Participants, even atheist participants, always judge each act as more representative of atheists than of Christians. One such study concluded that: “The present findings, combined with previous research...suggest that it is specifically immoral negative actions that are seen as representative of atheists, consistent with other evidence suggesting that many view belief in God as a prerequisite for morality.”378 Of course, there are atheists of excellent moral character, and there are some who call themselves Christians who are not. As Romans 2:15 put it: “They [those who are not followers of Christ] show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.” This verse is saying that those who do not have the written law have the law planted within them (they are made in God’s image also) in the form of conscience to morally direct them. Romans 2:13 points out that a person without the written who follows conscience is a better person than those who have it but do not follow it: “For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.” Nevertheless, as a worldview atheism can provide no basis for affirming objective moral values. It is a cynical pessimistic outlook that views human beings as mere byproducts of pitiless nature that have evolved on an insignificant rocky planet circling around in a hostile, mindless, and accidental universe. Richard Dawkins put the atheistic view well when he said, “there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference…We are machines for propagating DNA. . . It is every living object’s sole reason for being.”379 Why in this view should we think that human beings have any more moral worth than cockroaches? Atheist philosopher Joel Marks agrees with Dawkins’ assessment and sees it as pointing to the conclusion that there is no morality: “The long and the short of it is that I became convinced that atheism implies amorality; and since I am an atheist, I must therefore 378 379

Gervais, W. 2014, p. 7. In Craig, W. and Meister, C., 2010, p. 18.

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embrace amorality.” He notes that what he calls “soft atheists” believe that a person can be an atheist and still believe in morality. He continues: “So was I [a softie], until I experienced my shocking epiphany that the religious fundamentalists are correct: without God, there is no morality.”380 The 19th century arch-atheist German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche believed that without God, all is permissible. Nietzsche considered love “the greatest danger” and morality as humanity’s greatest weakness. He taught that humanity can only become free if it rejects the idea of the divine, arguing that good and evil are social constructs that lead to the development of a conscience that inhibits the greatness of the strong. Nietzsche believed that we must get rid of our false morality, and to do this we have to abandon Christianity. Nietzsche believed that happiness lay only in maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. He did not want to be judged in the pursuit of this, so he thought it best to get rid of the judge. If the judge is dead, then all is permissible. If God is dead, meaning, morality, and reason die with him, and all that is left are the relentless drives and desires of Nietzsche’s ubermensch (“supermen”): When one gives up Christian belief one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality… Christianity is a system, a consistently thought out and complete view of things. If one breaks out of it a fundamental idea, the belief in God, one thereby breaks the whole thing to pieces: one has nothing of any consequence left in one’s hand… Christian morality is a command: its origin is transcendental… it possesses truth only if God is truth – it stands or falls with the belief in God (my emphasis).381

ATHEISM, MORALITY, AND HISTORY Confined to the philosopher’s mind, the argument from morality is not an overly strong one, but viewed through the historian’s lens it is very

380 381

Marks, J. 2012, p.2. Nietzsche, F. and Hollingdale, R. 1990, pp. 80-81.

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powerful. Nietzschean philosophy becomes a nightmare when it is adopted wholesale by nations. The atheism of the former Soviet Union, China, and Nazi Germany, splattered the 20th century with the blood and tears of millions. Militant atheists turn a blind eye to the historical record and the cruel legacy of atheism because it is a gigantic black hole in the center of their world view that they know will suck them in if they get too close to it. The legacy of atheism has left an indelible blotch on the soul of humanity, resulting in the death of over 100 million people in the 20th century, with many more millions more plodding through a life of meaninglessness and degradation waiting only for death and oblivion. Karl Marx knew that if socialism is to be successful the people must be spiritually disarmed by ridding a country of its two epicenters of morality—religion and the family. Marx wrote: “Once the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the heavenly family, the former must be destroyed in theory and in practice.”382 After the Russian Revolution the Soviet Union destroyed thousands of churches and killed or imprisoned many thousands of priests. It then declared the state to be officially atheist and went after Marx’s earthly family by legitimizing offspring of the unmarried, made divorce available on demand, and encouraging free love as the “essence of communist living.”383 This atheistic agenda threw morality out of the window and Ivan’s abandoned their Natasha’s from Riga to Vladivostok. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn noted that when he was a child, he recalled hearing people say that the reason that Russia was experiencing vile oppression and many great disasters was because it had forgotten God. He remarked that if he “were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”384 Similar efforts to kill Christianity and the family took place during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. During that insane decade, Red Guards 382

In Jal. M., 2010, p. 136. Hazard, J., Butler, W. & Maggs, P., 1977, p. 470. 384 Solzhenitsyn, A., 2006, p. 577. 383

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destroyed hundreds of churches and imprisoned or killed thousands of priests, ministers, and Christians. Atheism was proclaimed the official religion, and the family marked for destruction. People were told that they had no right to love their children, parents, and other relatives, and friendship networks had to be dismantled because “they ruined one’s subsistence and well-being.”385 In response to the current surge in Christianity in China, politician Zhu Weiqun has stated that the Communist Party should “unambiguously promote Marxist atheism to society,” describing it as “the nations’ mainstream ideology,” and the party should seek to “strengthen propaganda education about a scientific worldview, including atheism.”386 The upshot of China’s persecution of Christians is that: “Today’s China is plagued by widespread mistrust and loneliness, as well as pervasive corruption and greed.”387 Although Nazi Germany was never “officially” atheist, atheism was firmly rooted in Adolf Hitler’s psyche. It is well known that he was an admirer of Nietzsche’s philosophy, but it is not so well known that he was also a fan of Marx. In a 1941 speech, Hitler stated that “basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same.”388 Hitler acknowledged his debt to Marx when he said: “I have learned a great deal from Marxism as I do not hesitate to admit … The whole of National Socialism is based on it.”389 It is thus no surprise that when Hitler became chancellor in 1933, he began to de-Christianize Germany and move it toward a pagan world of “religion of race and blood.” The Nazis could not overly antagonize religious Germans during the war, but Nazi documents show that after their expected victory, they would attack Christianity the way they attacked Judaism. A Nuremberg War Crimes indictment reads in part: The Nazi conspirators, by promoting beliefs and practices incompatible with Christian teaching, sought to subvert the influence of the Churches over the people and in particular over the youth of 385

Xu, Q., 2014, p., 142. In Hewitt, D. 2016, np. 387 Melchior, J. 2014, np. 388 In Pipes, R. 2011, p. 259. 389 In Muravchik, J. 2003, p. 164. 386

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The American Humanist Association’s motto, “Good without God,’’ assumes that atheism can supply society with moral foundations. But as history has repeatedly shown, “Good without God” will only last as long as society has a cadre of people nourished on Judeo-Christian values remaining on Earth; after they have gone to their reward and we have only citizens raised in a society that has given God the boot, watch out! Surely the tragic legacies of the Soviet Union, China, and Nazi Germany bear strong witness to this. Your atheist friend might say that this can’t happen in an atheist America. But the America you and he know was founded on firm Christian principles; remove that firm foundation and America will become no different from those other nations—people are people. Former Speaker of the House, Robert Winthrop, knew this when he said: “Men…must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the Word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible, or by the bayonet.”391

390 391

Hulme, C. and Salter, M., 2001, p. 5. Winthrop, R., 1852, p. 172.

Chapter 16

THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST: THE EVENT THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING THE BEDROCK OF CHRISTIANITY Two-thousand years ago an explosive event took place that reframed human history—the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. No other event has had such an impact on the lives of so many people around the world. It is a miraculous event that many people just cannot believe, and even practicing Christians find it difficult to comprehend and defend it. But the Resurrection of Christ is the bedrock of Christianity; without it there is no Christianity. Paul himself said as much in Corinthians 15:14-17: “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.” Because the Resurrection is at the heart of Christianity, it has been singled out for special attacks by its enemies. In verses 20-22, Paul emphatically tells us that Jesus did rise from the dead because he was a personal witness to it Christ. But we didn’t witness

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the risen Christ, so why should we believe the Resurrection? Millions of people in the ancient world did not witness the event either, and we assume that they would be just as skeptical and dismissive as you or I about a story of a dead person rising to life from the grave. There must have been something very special about the message, because it spread quickly, and with unreasonable success, across the ancient Roman world. Unlike the spread of Islam by the sword, Christianity spread by the power of persuasion alone. It lacked any political or military power, indeed, it prevailed against the violent military power of Rome. It all started with a small group of impoverished and disempowered Jews in Jerusalem and quickly spread to Jews and gentiles alike throughout the Roman Empire. Examination of the Resurrection is a weighty scholarly enterprise. Typing “Resurrection of Jesus” into Google Scholar spits out 265,000 articles and books. Among the many books on the subject, N. T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God, runs 817 pages, and William Lane Craig’s The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus, contains 678 pages. The Resurrection is an historical event, and the validation of historical events to everyone’s satisfaction is a lot more difficult than validating scientific hypotheses. This is because history is not repeatable, and concerns itself with the particular or the unique in messy human affairs rather than with generalizations about the predicable natural world. Historians base their conclusions on a variety of data sources, such as written and oral accounts of events and archeological findings. These data are subjected to what they call “source criticism,” and are accepted or rejected based on general consensus. After scrutinizing all data regarding an event, just like scientists, historians then reason to the best explanation. If all available data converge to agree as to the event’s actual occurrence, historians consider it proven “beyond a reasonable doubt.” As C. Behan McCullagh describes this process: “if the scope and strength of an explanation are very great, so that it explains a large number and variety of facts, many more than any competing explanation, then it is likely to be true.”392 Thus, an explanation is considered likely true to the extent that it

392

C. B. McCullagh, 1984, p. 26.

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gathers more facts under its umbrella (its scope) and has the ability to effectively explain the matter in question without the need for further suppositions (its strength) than competing explanations. Unlike finding consensus among scientists, arriving at consensus on historical matters may take many decades, or even centuries.

THE MINIMAL FACTS OF THE RESURRECTION Gary Habermas outlines a “minimal facts” approach to Jesus’ death and Resurrection that are agreed upon by virtually all scholars of the event: “(1) Jesus died due to the process of crucifixion. (2) Very soon afterwards, Jesus’ disciples had experiences that they believed were appearances of the resurrected Jesus. (3) Just a few years later, Saul of Tarsus also experienced what he thought was a post-Resurrection appearance of the risen Jesus.”393 As the number of events relating to the Resurrection rises, the level of agreement sinks. However, the majority of critical scholars view the conversion of James, Jesus’ skeptical brother, as one of the major proofs of the Resurrection, and between two-thirds and three-quarters of the scholars “favor the tomb being empty for other than natural reasons [e.g., Jesus’ body was stolen].”394 The Resurrection of Christ has been shown time and again to be a better explanation for each of these core facts than any other, both individually and as a coherent whole. That is, it has greater explanatory scope and greater explanatory power than alternative explanations. Any naturalistic alternative theory of the Resurrection has to explain away all the agreed upon facts, at least present a plausible alternative to them, and explain other historical facts, such as the conversions of James and Paul and the rapid growth of Christianity. Just like scientists, historians specialize in limited areas such as colonial America, French intellectual history, the Ming Dynasty, and so I limit the discussion to historians who specialize in the Middle East during the period of Jesus Christ’s ministry. 393 394

G. Habermas, 2012, p. 21. Ibid., p. 22.

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Of course, it is not only Christian historians and theologians who have come to affirm the Resurrection as an historical fact. Pinchas Lapide, an orthodox Jewish rabbi, theologian, and Israeli historian wrote a booklength defense of the reality of the Resurrection. I noted in Chapter 1 that God maintains an epistemic distance from us and cannot be proven with absolute scientific certainty. Likewise: “Lapide emphasizes throughout that the Resurrection, like any experience of God, can be grasped only by faith. It can never be proved conclusively. The reason is summed up pithily in the words of Edward Schweizer when he speaks of God ‘renouncing anything that would compel men to believe’. Or as Karl Jaspers puts it, ‘a proven God is no God.’“395 Then we have Rudolf Bultmann, one of the most renowned skeptics of the New Testament in the 20th century, writing: “The Christian fellowship was convinced that Jesus had done miracles and they told many stories of miracles about him.... But there can be no doubt that Jesus did such deeds, which were, in his and his contemporaries’ understanding, miracles; that is to say, events that were the result of supernatural divine causality. Doubtless he healed the sick and cast out demons.”396

THE RESURRECTION AND MIRACLES Despite the weight of the historical evidence supporting the Resurrection, the greatest barrier to belief, even among those conversant with the historical data, is that the resurrection of the dead defies the normal course of events. By definition, miracles are abnormal and nonreproducible, so they cannot be proved or disproved by science, but science is not the only way of knowing, and there is strong historical evidence for the Resurrection as good as, or better than, the evidence for almost any event in ancient history.397 Resurrection skeptic Steven Davis, for instance, tells us that believers in the Resurrection stress the unity of agreement 395

K. Kennedy, 1985, p.441. In Crenshaw, S., 2009, p. 75. 397 Green, M., 1984. 396

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among New Testament writers that Jesus rose from the dead, and that certain facts surrounding the Resurrection are not denied by competent historical scholarship. He also notes the inability of any viable naturalistic explanation for the facts, and concludes his list of facts by writing: “The most plausible explanation of these facts—so believers in the Resurrection will argue—is that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead and show himself to the disciples. It does not seem sensible to claim that the Christian Church, a spiritual movement whose vitality changed the world, was started by charlatans or dupes.”398 Despite this seeming endorsement of the Resurrection, Davis then attempts to debunk it: “What are the chances that a man dead for three days would live again? In short, the non-believer will claim that even if the believer’s arguments are strong and even if nonbelievers can’t say for sure what did happen, by far the most sensible position is to deny that the Resurrection occurred.”399 Davis also says that even if the probability that the Resurrection occurred is 99%, its occurrence still has to be rejected because in the realm of human experience, dead men do not naturally rise from the grave, and I agree with him 100%; dead people don’t “naturally” rise from the grave. But Davis’ conclusion (the Resurrection did not happen) is already decided for him by deduction from his premise (dead men don’t rise again). Davis is basically saying if one admits to the historicity of the Resurrection, one is admitting that miracles occur. Miracles are said to violate the laws of nature and our uniform experience of those laws, and thus, they must be ruled out a priori. I agree with William Lane Craig’s defense of miracles, however, when he notes: “an event cannot be ruled out simply because it does not accord with the regular pattern of events.”400 Craig wants us to abandon the centuries-old concept of miracles as “violations” of nature: “The proper course would be to abandon the incoherent notion of miracle as a ‘violation of a law of nature’ in favor of ‘an event which is naturally impossible.’”401 In other words, the

398

Davis, S., 1984, pp. 152-153. Ibid, p. 154. 400 Craig, W., 1985, p. 480. 401 Ibid., p. 486. 399

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Resurrection lies “outside the productive capacity of natural causes,”402 and if an “event is naturally impossible… it requires a supernatural cause.”403 Craig is saying that the laws of nature describe what will happen in a particular case assuming that there are no intervening supernatural factors. This view is echoed by Mackie: “The laws of nature … describe the ways in which the world—including, of course, human beings—works when left to itself, when not interfered with. A miracle occurs when the world is not left to itself, when something distinct from the natural order as a whole intrudes into it.”404 God gave us the laws of nature, and it is His prerogative to intervene in those laws. If you believe in God, you should have no trouble believing in miracles, and will have no need of detailed historical evidence. After all, if He has the power to create the universe, it is child’s play to raise a man from the dead. If there is no God, the Resurrection is utterly impossible, but the fact—historically authenticated better than almost any other event in antiquity—that it did occur is yet another proof of His power.

THE EMPTY TOMB: THE CONSPIRACY AND “SWOON”THEORIES All theories offered as alternatives to the Resurrection story are motivated by the “impossibility of miracles” notion. Most of these alternatives were thoroughly discredited soon after they were posited in the scholarly community, but we still see them bandied about on atheist websites. This is why the apologist must have at least a minimal knowledge of them. We begin with the empty tomb discovered by Mary Magdalene on the Sunday following Jesus’ death on the cross. Significantly, the Jewish authorities did not deny the empty tomb. When the Roman guards informed members of the Sanhedrin (the Jewish high courts that had condemned Jesus) of the empty tomb they attempted to explain it away by 402

Ibid., p. 487. Ibid., p. 485. 404 Mackie, J., 1982, pp. 19–20. 403

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claiming that the disciples had stolen the body. As Matthew 28: 11-15 tells it: While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.

Indeed, a letter circulating in the Jewish community was recorded by Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with Trypho (a Jewish rabbi) in about 165 AD which read: “[A] godless and lawless heresy had sprung from one Jesus, a Galilean deceiver, whom we crucified, but his disciples stole him by night from the tomb, where he was laid when unfastened from the cross, and now deceive men by asserting that he has risen from the dead and ascended to heaven.”405 The Jewish response to the empty tomb is itself is proof from a hostile source that the tomb was indeed empty. If the tomb had not been empty, it would have been easy for the Jewish leadership to retrieve the body and parade it around Jerusalem, thus squelching the nascent Christian movement for all time. After all, having witnessed the risen Christ, it was in that very city that the apostles began preaching the message. If the tomb had not been empty, the apostles’ Resurrection proclamation could not be maintained for a single hour. William Lane Craig adds to this the evidence of the rapid appearance of the Gospels in Jerusalem: The Gospels were written in such a temporal and geographical proximity to the events they record that it would have been almost impossible to fabricate events.... The fact that the disciples were able to

405

In Butt, M., 2002, np.

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The notion that the disciples stole Jesus’ body is known as the conspiracy theory. This hypothesis neglects to tell us how or why the disciples in their hour of despair, confusion, and doubt would get around the Roman guards to steal the body. Certainly, a rabble of fishermen and tax collectors were no match for trained and well-armed Roman legionnaires. If the guards were asleep (a very serious charge for a Roman soldier), how could the disciples have rolled away the massive stone sealing the tomb and taken Jesus’ body without waking them? Remember, the guards identified the disciples as the thieves, so why was there no evidence of a struggle with them? Most tellingly, why would the guards have to explain anything at all if the tomb was not empty? If the authorities had any evidence that the disciples had stolen the body, why were they not arrested immediately and placed on trial? What would be the disciples’ motive for stealing the body anyway? Why would they risk their lives for such a fiction? After Jesus’ ignominious death, His dispirited and frightened followers scattered lest they be subjected to the same fate. They could have gone back to their normal lives, thankful to have escaped from Jerusalem with their lives, and returned to Torah-based religious observance. They clearly did not do that; instead, they went about the Jewish and pagan lands preaching that the risen Jesus was the Messiah. The disciples firmly believed in the risen Christ for they had seen him, as did many others. The transformation of the lives of the disciples from a group of disheartened men (remember, even Peter denied Christ three times), the fact that they risked their lives on their conviction, and the fact that the authorities could have easily falsified their claim if it was false, thoroughly discredits the conspiracy hypothesis.

406

Craig, W., 2008, p. 341.

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Another theory of the empty tomb is that Jesus had not died on the cross, but rather He passed out (“swooned”) and was resuscitated in the tomb. This incredible swoon theory assumes that a man who suffered the grotesque torture of a skin-tearing flogging, six-inch spikes driven into His hands and feet, hung on a cross until He could no longer pull Himself up to breathe, and had a spear thrust into His side from which “blood and water” flowed, could be resuscitated. His Roman executioners knew that He died because they did not break His legs, which was the usual culmination of crucifixion. His executioners who would have faced death themselves if they had not made certain Jesus was dead. After being laid in His tomb, Jesus was embalmed in spice and wrapped in a weighty shroud. A still living man would not survive such treatment. If He did survive, how would He have been able to roll the huge stone, weighing as much as 2,000 pounds, away and then escape the Roman guards? Further, when he appeared to the disciples, it was not as a bloody mess, but rather a wholesome body with clean wounds that he invited them to inspect. It was medically impossible for Jesus to have survived His ordeal. As a detailed and gruesomely illustrated article in the Journal of the American Medical Association put it: Clearly, the weight of historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead before the wound to his side was inflicted and supports the traditional view that the spear, thrust between his right ribs, probably perforated not only the right lung but also the pericardium and heart and thereby ensured his death. Accordingly, interpretations based on the assumption that Jesus did not die on the cross appear to be at odds with modern medical knowledge.”407

THE LEGEND THEORY Another theory is that the Resurrection is myth, a mere legend invented by the apostles. If the disciples invented a legend, they didn’t do a very 407

Edwards, W., Gabel, W., & Hosmer, F. 1986, p. 1460.

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good job. Legends are full of mythical characters and fantastical events, and they certainly do not include material that could easily be refuted. If the narrator(s) of the legend are woven into it, as are the apostles in the Resurrection story, they tend to insert self-congratulatory stories and are free of embarrassing details. Legends evolve over long periods of time; they do not begin and end in a time and place when and where people can check the story out for themselves. The stuff legends are made of is illustrated in the apocryphal Gospel of Peter, written sometime in the 8th or 9th centuries. This manuscript covers Jesus’ trial, death, burial, and Resurrection. Whoever wrote this laid it on really thick, complete with a giant Jesus and a talking cross, as in verses 38 through 42: Therefore, having seen this, the soldiers woke up the centurions and elders, for they were also keeping watch. And while they were describing to them the things they had seen, behold, they saw three men coming out of the tomb, with the two young men supporting the One, and a cross following them. And the head of the two reaching unto to heaven, but the One of whom they led out by the hand, His head reached beyond the heavens. And they heard a voice from heaven asking, “Did you preach to those who sleep?” And a response was heard from the cross saying, “Yes!”

The Gospel accounts of the Resurrection contain no such fantasies. The Gospel accounts are simple eyewitness accounts of an historical event that lack bizarre embellishment. The only event that non-believers would call fantastical is the Resurrection itself, but that occurrence could have been easily refuted if not true. There are no mythical characters in the Gospel accounts. Joseph of Arimathea, who assumed responsibility for Jesus’ burial, was a rich member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, and according to Matthew, Mark, and John, a secret follower of Jesus. Given his status in the community, William Craig notes that “it would be almost inexplicable why Christians would make up a story about a Jewish Sanhedrist who does what is right by Jesus.”408 All other characters in the Gospels were real 408

Craig, W., 2010, p. 224.

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historical figures, still alive when the disciples began preaching, and many still alive when the Gospels were written.409 The testimony of the Resurrection occurred at a time and place when people were able to verify or refute it for themselves, and were invited to do so by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8: For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

Paul is saying to doubters that there are many witnesses to the risen Christ who are still alive and are there to be questioned. He would not have said that if the story was made-up. The apostles were central figures in the Resurrection story, but we see no self-congratulatory stories in their accounts. On the contrary, their accounts contain embarrassing details which refute the notion that the Resurrection is a legend. The Gospels note that on the night Jesus was arrested the disciples fled in fear and stayed behind locked doors, that Paul (Saul) mercilessly persecuted Christians, and that Peter denied Christ three times. No inventors of legends would paint themselves as cowards, tyrants, and hypocrites. They could have left out such embarrassing details, but chose to tell their story exactly as it happened—a clear indication of truth. Another embarrassing fact is that the empty tomb was discovered by women. Women had such low status among the Jews (and in most other cultures at the time) that the testimony of the principal witnesses to the empty tomb would be worthless. If the Gospels were relating a legendary story, their writers would surely have claimed that privilege for

409

Historical evidence reveals that the book of Acts was probably written before AD 64, Luke's writings about AD 62 (Burkett, D. 2002).

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themselves. The recording of this embarrassing fact adds credence to the fact of the empty tomb. If the legend theory was true, it could explain the empty tomb and the postmortem appearance of Jesus, but its Achille’s heel is that it cannot explain how disheartened, confused, and fearful men became determined and courageous overnight after seeing Jesus. Authors of legends do not have such extraordinary transformations, nor are they willing to die for their deceitful stories.

THE HALLUCINATION, CONVERSION DISORDER, AND BEREAVEMENT VISIONS THEORIES Secular theories attempting to provide naturalistic accounts of the Resurrection arose in the 18th and 19th centuries. They have been so thoroughly mauled by the historical data that they have all but disappeared from the scholarly world, if not from the amateurs on the Internet. The only theories still held by some staunch naturalists in the scholarly world are psychological in nature. That is, that the notion that the apostles experienced some sort of psychologically abnormal experience such as hallucinations, conversion disorder, or bereavement visions. However, few proponents of these ideas have an adequate understanding of the underlying clinical mechanisms of these phenomena.410 The first of these theories is the hallucination theory. Hallucinations are rare events that occur in people suffering some kind of preexisting mental problem such as schizophrenia or epilepsy, or caused by drugs, or some sort of bodily deprivation (food, water, sleep). They tend to occur in people full of excited emotional expectations, and certainly not among those experiencing depression, fear, and anxiety, as the apostles did according to the Gospels. The apostles had no expectations of seeing Jesus alive again after His internment because the death and resurrection of a messiah is a thoroughly un-Jewish notion. When Mary Magdalene saw Jesus, she thought He was the gardener, and when the disciples heard the

410

Bergeron, J. & Habermas, G., 2015.

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report of the women about the empty tomb: “their words seemed to them like nonsense” (Luke 24:11). While the disciples discussed the women’s reports the risen Jesus came among them and said “Peace be with you,” and “They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have” (Luke 24:36-39). The skeptical apostles had a difficult time accepting the Resurrection and thought that they were seeing a ghost. It was not until they experienced Jesus fully with all their senses that they accepted the bodily Resurrection. Psychologist Gary Collins notes that: “Hallucinations are individual subjective occurrences. By their very nature only one person can see a given hallucination at a time. They certainly aren’t something which can be seen by a group of people. Neither is it possible that one person could somehow induce a hallucination in somebody else.”411 This is a major obstacle to the hallucination theory, since over a period of 40 days Jesus appeared to numerous people, many of whom became Christians as a result. Furthermore, people routinely deny their hallucinatory experience when others present do not see them, but the apostles maintained their belief that they had seen, touched, spoken and ate with the risen Christ, even under torture and immanent death. Bergeron and Habermas also note that hallucinations are private experiences, and that “collective simultaneous hallucinations, such an explanation is far outside mainstream clinical thought. What are the odds that separate individuals in a group could experience simultaneous and identical psychological phenomena mixed with hallucinations? …the concept of collective-hallucination is not found in peer reviewed medical and psychological literature.”412 Looking at all medical and psychological causes of hallucinations, they note that the apostles were not candidates for them. They further note that:

411 412

In Holding, 2010, p.342. Bergeron, J. & Habermas, 2015, p.161.

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Hallucinations do not change lives so completely as to create radically new beliefs. After seeing Jesus, talking with Him and touching His wounds, contrary to their Jewish faith, hundreds came to believe in His message. If every person among the hundreds—or possibly thousands— who saw Jesus were hallucinating, perhaps we might consider that a miracle in need of a naturalist explanation. The term “conversion” was coined by Sigmund Freud, who believed certain symptoms not explained by organic disease reflect unconscious conflict converting a mental issue, such as repressed guilt, into physical symptoms. The conversion disorder notion was introduced to try to explain the conversion (in the religious sense) of James and Paul, the two disciples that Bergeron and Habermas say were less open to hallucination because they did not venerate Jesus prior to the Resurrection. The conversion theory posits that both men were guilt-ridden and that guilt manifested itself in bodily symptoms. But there is no indication that James suffered any symptoms at all, and although Paul did suffer temporary blindness after Christ appeared to him on the road to Damascus, every indication is that he did not have any guilt whatsoever about his persecution of Christians.414 The conversion disorder hypothesis is nothing more than dodgy psychoanalysis at a distance. Then there is the vision theory. A vision is an image of someone that the person seeing it knows does not presently exist, and a vision is not associated with a mental disorder. On the other hand, hallucinations are experienced as the inability to distinguish what is physically real from what

413 414

Ibid, p. 164. Craig, W., 2010, p. 275).

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is illusionary. There are numerous accounts of people experiencing visions of departed loved ones, but that is evidence that the person in the vision is dead, not alive. This idea is even less plausible than the hallucination hypothesis; would you risk torture and death for something you knew was not real? We’ll give the last word to Bergeron and Habermas on this amateur psychology: “We must conclude, then, that attempts to explain the disciples’ reports of Jesus’ resurrection by subjective, psychiatric hypotheses are fraught with many difficulties. Ultimately, they prove to be clinically implausible and historically unconvincing. The available data point elsewhere and confirm the earliest reports that the disciples’ experiences were not merely psychological but transformative experiences of faith.”415 The transformation of the apostles from cowards to fearless carriers of the message of salvation within a period of days, and their subsequent martyrdom, is a proof you can personally relate to. Would you forsake your previous religious beliefs, leave your job, home, and family to travel around the known world, constantly in danger of derision, arrest, torture, and execution for something you knew to be a lie? Plenty of people have died for what they believe in, but not for something they knew to be false because it was a fiction of their own making. Ten of the original disciples died horribly gruesome deaths for what they knew to be true. If you were one of them and knew what you were preaching was a silly fantasy you and your fellow conspirators made up, wouldn’t you admit it to save yourself from such a fate? Of course you would, but not one of the disciples did. Neither would you risk all on the basis of a hallucination or a vision.

CAN WE TRUST THE NEW TESTAMENT? At this point an atheist might say: “Alright, you have shown that the resurrection hypothesis has more explanatory scope and explanatory power than other hypotheses, and that is requires only one

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Bergeron, J. & Habermas, 2015, p.172.

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presupposition—God—and that all alternative hypotheses accept the Gospel accounts that ‘something’ happened to change human history. However, how do we know that we can trust the New Testament accounts?” One very strong reason is the explosive growth of the Church very shortly after the written documents were distributed. But what about the evidence that we read in the Bible today; how do we know that the original accounts have been accurately transmitted since they were written? Historians look at the reliability of any transmission of documents of the ancient world in two ways. First, they look at the number of existing manuscript copies of the original text, and second, they look at the time gap between the earliest existing manuscripts and the time when the original was written. A text is considered reliable to the extent that the number of existing manuscripts is large and their time gap is short. Obviously, the more original manuscripts there are, and the shorter the time gap between the historical event in question and the writing of them, the better they are able to reconstruct the original.416 As for the time gap criterion, William Albright, regarded as the father of modern archaeology, notes that: “We can already say emphatically that there is no longer any solid basis for dating any book of the New Testament after about A.D. 80, two full generations before the date of between A.D. 130 and 150 given by the more radical New Testament critics of today.”417 Adding to this, Sir Frederick Kenyon, an expert in ancient texts and former director and principal librarian of the British Museum, writes: “The interval then between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.”418 By way of contrast, the time gap for the earliest existing manuscripts of the average ancient author is about 500 years after the events. Remember, the New Testament books 416

Burkett, D. 2002. Albright, W., 1955, p. 136. 418 In McRoberts, K., 2011, p. 97. 417

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were written by eyewitnesses to the events they document. No other ancient document can lay claim to being eyewitness accounts. The New Testament books were written when many of Christ’s Roman and Jewish enemies were still living, which would have prompted their authors to be very careful about the truth of their statements. Any errors appearing in their accounts would have certainly been exposed. In terms of the number of existing manuscripts, the New Testament wins hands down over any other ancient texts. Porter and Pitts note that: “When compared with other works of antiquity, the New Testament has far greater (numerical) and earlier documentation than any other book. Most of the available works of antiquity have only a few manuscripts that attest to their existence, and these are typically much later than their original date of composition, so that it is not uncommon for the earliest manuscript to be dated over nine hundred years after the original composition.”419 Take the works of Plato and Aristotle. Plato’s work has 210 manuscripts, with the earliest copy dated at A.D. 900, or 1,200 years after the events. Aristotle’s work has 1,000 manuscripts also dated 1,200 years after the events. Great ancient historians also suffer in this regard. Herodotus’ work has 109 manuscripts, with the earliest copy dated 1,350 years after the events, and Thucydides’ work has 50 manuscripts with the earliest dated 1,300 years after the events. Homer’s Iliad is second to the New Testament in number and time gap with 1,757 manuscripts, with the earliest dated 400 years from the recorded events. By way of contrast, McDowell and Casey document 21,362 New Testament Greek manuscripts dated between 50 and 100AD, or about 15 to 85 years after the recorded events. This kind of comparative documentation led Frederick Kenyon to remark: “The number of manuscripts of the New Testament, of early translations from it, and of quotations from it in the oldest writers of the Church, is so large that it is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some one or other of these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other ancient book in the world.”420

419 420

Porter, S. & Pitts, A., 2015, p. 50. In Berkhof, L., 1996, p. 159.

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Thus, according to universally accepted criteria for judging the veracity of ancient documents, the New Testament has been accurately transmitted. Historians consider other ancient documents accurately transmitted whose manuscripts are far fewer and far between the date when the earliest existing copy was penned. If skeptics reject the transmitted reliability of the New Testament, according to their own criteria of reliability they must reject all other manuscripts of antiquity because they fail miserably in comparison with the New Testament. There cannot be one standard for secular documents and another for religious documents if the game is to be fair. New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce notes the antiChristian bias and double-standard among biblical critics when he writes: “The evidence for our New Testament writings is ever so much greater than the evidence for many writings of classical authors, the authenticity of which no one dreams of questioning. And if the New Testament were a collection of secular writings, the authenticity would generally be regarded as beyond all doubt.”421 Almost all historians, philosophers, and theologians—Christian, atheist, agnostic, or persons of a non-Christian faith who have seriously studied the events surrounding the Resurrection—agree that something momentous occurred. Some secularist scholars have become Christians because of the evidence they have uncovered, others with the same evidence remain skeptical about the biblical message of the Resurrection because, in their materialist minds, miracles just don’t happen. They ask such questions as if the dead Jesus really did arise from the tomb and was allegedly seen by so many people in Jerusalem and elsewhere, why didn’t he reveal himself to the Sanhedrin and throw off the yoke of Rome? That would have settled the whole matter of God’s existence, and the world would be a better place. Once again, the answer is that God must maintain an epistemic distance from us lest our belief be compelled. God does not want to force belief on us. This cognitive distance between humans and God ensures a free choice to accept God or not. However, there is one piece of physical evidence for the literal truth of the Resurrection that I believe

421

In Brown, M., 2006, p. 43.

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is—dare I say it? —compelling. That evidence is the “silent witness” of the Shroud of Turin.

Chapter 17

THE SHROUD OF TURIN: SILENT WITNESS TO THE RESURRECTION? INTRODUCTION TO THE SHROUD OF TURIN The Shroud of Turin is the most studied artifact in history. It is a piece of ancient linen, 14’3’’ inches long and 3’7’’ wide that bears the front and back images of a naked, bearded, crucified man. It has been subjected to so much scrutiny because many believe it to be the burial cloth of Jesus bearing signs of the Resurrection. Because of its religious significance, skeptics have tried for 125 years to show that is it a medieval forgery. As historian John Walsh put it: “The Shroud is either the most awesome and instructive relic of Christ in existence, or it is one of the most ingenious, most unbelievably clever products of the human mind and hand on record. It is either one or the other; there is no middle ground.”422 Scientists, historians, and art experts have been trying to authenticate the cloth for decades using the most modern technology and techniques from physics, chemistry, biology, botany, medical forensics, and optical image analysis, but the image defies the most sophisticated investigations as to how it was made (see the full-length front and back photograph of the image below). Time Magazine called the image “the riddle of the ages,” and National 422

In Fanti, G. 2012, p. 2506.

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Geographic concluded that it is “one of the most perplexing enigmas of modern times… an extraordinary mystery that has defied every effort at (a natural) solution.” Archeologist William Meacham notes that scientists demand an impossible level of proof for the claim that the Shroud is a first-century burial cloth of a crucified man, and says that it should be subjected to similar tests of authentication as other antient artifacts: “Clearly, authenticity should be judged on criteria no more and no less stringent than those applied in the usual identification of ancient city sites, royal tombs, manuscripts, etc.”423 Tests of authentication have gone way beyond those applied to any other artifact in history. If the Shroud had been any ancient secular artifact, it would have been accepted as authentic beyond a reasonable doubt by virtue of the multitude of studies conducted, even those prior to Meacham’s 1983 article. We should be glad to see it subjected to every possible test of authenticity because the Christian claim is extraordinary, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Figure 17.1. The full front and back of the Shroud (note the faintness of the image).

BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SHROUD There are two historical periods associated with the Shroud, the first being the period between the crucifixion and its first exposition in France in 1357, after which its provenance is well documented. Piecing the story

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Meacham, W. 1983, p. 284.

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together prior to 1357 is an historical detective story based on circumstantial evidence, legend, and early images of Christ in art and on coins. If the Shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Jesus, the gospels tell us that it was found by Peter and John in the empty tomb: “Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed” (John 20: 6-8 NIV). There must have been something truly remarkable about the shroud itself to have had such an instantaneous effect on Peter, and because it was a physical reminder of Jesus and contained his blood, we may assume that the apostles did everything they could to protect, conceal, and preserve it. One of the earliest clues tracing the early history of the Shroud is found th in 4 Century document, The Doctrine of Addai, which is allegedly based on material from the state archives of Edessa. It relates to the foundation of Christianity in Edessa, a semi-autonomous state contained within what is now Turkey, and to King Abgar V, who was dying of leprosy. Abgar had heard about Jesus’ healing powers and sent a letter to Him requesting that He come to Edessa to heal him. Jesus responded that He cannot come, but will send one of his disciples when he can. Thaddaeus (Addai, is the Syriac name for Thaddaeus) went to Edessa to minister to Abgar after Jesus was crucified carrying Jesus’ burial cloth folded and placed in a frame in such a way that only Jesus’ face could be seen. Upon viewing Jesus’ face on the cloth Abgar was instantly healed.424 One can dismiss this as a legend, but there is no other explanation for why Abgar converted to Christianity and lived for another ten years or so, or why Edessa became the first Christian state in history. It is well chronicled that thousands of pilgrims travelled hundreds of miles to see the “Image of Edessa.” One notable thing about the Image of Edessa is that references to it described it as blurred, which also describes the Shroud of Turin. When on display, it was folded so that only the face was visible.

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Green, M. 1969.

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The Shroud of Turin show fold marks consistent with this (see Figure 17.3), making it very likely that the Image of Edessa and the Shroud of Turin are the same cloth. When Ma’nu VI became ruler of Edessa in 57AD, he tried to suppress Christianity, but it continued to thrive. However, Christians wisely hid the Image and nothing further was heard about it for almost 500 years.425 It was found again in a chest in a secret chamber when the church that held it underwent a major renovation following a devastating flood in 525AD. French historian A.M. Dubarle notes that a Syrian hymn celebrating the inauguration of the new cathedral of Edessa, mentions how the marble is comparable to the image made “not by hands;” an obvious reference to the Edessa image: “Its marble is similar to the image that-notby-hands and its walls are harmoniously covered with it. And for its splendor, all clean and all white, it holds light within itself.”426 Dubarle also quotes Germanus I of Constantinople (715-730) as stating: “There is an image of Christ in the city of Edessa, it is not made by the hands of man and is working amazing wonders. The Lord Himself, after imprinting his own image on a soudárion, sent to Abgar, Toparch of the Edessenians’ city, by the intermediary Thaddeus the Apostle, the image which maintains his human physiognomy and healed Abgar’s illness.”427 Edessa later became part of a larger Muslim state after a Persian invasion, but the image remained safely there. Such was the depth of belief in the image as the true likeness of Christ that Byzantine Emperor Lecapenus sent an army of 80,000 men to bring it to Constantinople in 944. The Byzantine general offered the Muslim rulers the return of 200 highranking Muslim prisoners, twelve thousand pieces of silver, and a promise of peace in exchange for the image. Both Christian and Muslim sources relate that Muslims treated the image as a religious icon of the prophet, Jesus, but they did not believe it to be the image of the risen Christ. The Muslims thus viewed the exchange as a bargain, and the image was taken to Constantinople. While in Constantinople, the Shroud was known as the 425

Tribbe, F. 2006. Dubarle, A. M., 1985, pp. 99-100. 427 Ibid, p. 81. 426

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Mandylion, and the great cathedral of Hagia Sophia was supposedly built specifically to house and preserved it.428 Skeptics do not accept this history based on the theory that the Shroud is a medieval artifact made sometime in the 13th or 14th centuries. However, one of the illustrations in the Hungarian Pray Manuscript shows the burial of Christ. This is a significant piece of physical evidence that the Shroud was in Constantinople prior to 1204 because the Pray Manuscript is firmly dated in the early 1190s. The illustration depicts a naked Jesus, hands across the pelvis, with no thumbs visible, being anointed and wrapped in a burial cloth, and bears many similarities to the Shroud. The fabric has a herringbone weave (unknown in medieval Europe) identical to the Shroud, and there are several other things in the illustration that lead many art experts to claim that it is a copy of the Shroud. To account for the similarities, skeptics turn the table around to claim that whoever forged the Shroud copied the illustration from the Pray Manuscript. Such a preposterous notion might be entertained if a person making it could offer some realistic method by which the image got onto the Shroud. The Shroud was allegedly stolen by French and Venetian invaders during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Working in the Vatican archives in 2008, Barbara Frale found documentary evidence that the Knights Templar held custody of the Shroud during the 13th and 14th centuries, and used it in initiation ceremonies.429 Evidence that the Templars held the Shroud is that the first undisputed fact about the Shroud is that it was exhibited in Lirey, France, in 1356 by Geoffrey De Charny, whose ancestors were leaders within the Knights Templar. It was later entrusted to the royal family of Savoy, who brought it to its current location in Turin in 1578. The Shroud has remained there ever since, except for brief periods when it was removed for safekeeping during periods of war. It is not necessary for our purposes to dwell on history any further; there are many fascinating books on the subject for those interested.

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Tribbe, F. 2006. Thavis, J., 2009.

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Figure 17.2. A shroud-like illustration from the Hungarian Pray Manuscript.

NEGATIVES AND POSITIVES The scientific quest to either authenticate or falsify the Shroud as the burial sheet of Jesus began with photographs taken in 1898 by Turin lawyer and amateur photographer, Secondo Pia. Pia was astonished when he viewed the negative on the plate of his photograph. Instead of showing the vague outline of a bearded man, the negative was sharp and detailed, showing the image of a terribly tortured body. This reveals that the Shroud Image as seen down the centuries was etched in a negative form, just like a photographic negative, but on non-photographic linen. Pia’s photographs had created a negative of the “negative” on the Shroud, which mysteriously produced a normal positive image with the correct light and dark contrasts.

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Figure 17.3 contrasts the vague image of the head of the man in the Shroud as seen with the naked eye on the left with what we see viewing the photographic negative on the right.

Positive that looks like a negative.

Negative that looks like a positive.

Figure 17.3. Positive and negative images of the Shroud.

Scientific-quality photographic negatives taken in 1978 and 2002 reveal extraordinary details of contusions and anatomical detail that modern pathologists have described as perfectly consistent with crucifixion.430 The man in the image was crucified in the classical Roman way with wounds that are consistent with gospel accounts of Jesus’ suffering. There are over 100 whip marks on every portion of the body; blood stains forming a circle around the top of his head are consistent with the crown of thorns; severely bruised knees consistent with Jesus falling on the way to his crucifixion; holes and blood stains in wrists and feet consistent with having been caused by large nails, and blood stains around a large side wound consistent with the account of Jesus’ side being pierced by a spear. Furthermore, and compatible with the biblical account, the man

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Maslen, M. & Mitchell, P., 2006.

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in the Shroud did not have broken legs, which was typically done to speed asphyxia and death, as was done to the thieves crucified on either side of Jesus, but not done to Jesus because He was already dead. Many scientists examined enlarged higher quality photos of the Shroud taken after Pia’s, but the Shroud itself was not examined invasively until an international team of scientists led by nuclear physicists Tom D’Muhala and John Jackson formed the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP). In 1978, a STURP team of 52 scientists was granted five days access to the Shroud. Using millions of dollars of sophisticated equipment, STURP scientists studied the Shroud in shifts around the clock for those five days. STURP members included Christians, Jews, atheists, and agnostics, a few saying that with their sophisticated equipment, they “would doubtless prove its spuriousness.”431 STURP continued examining its data and published many of their results in scientific journals and proceedings. In its 1981 final report, STURP wrote: No pigments, paints, dyes or stains have been found on the fibrils. X-ray, fluorescence and microchemistry on the fibrils preclude the possibility of paint being used as a method for creating the image. Ultra Violet and infrared evaluation confirm these studies. Computer image enhancement and analysis by a device known as a VP-8 image analyzer show that the image has unique, three-dimensional information encoded in it. Microchemical evaluation has indicated no evidence of any spices, oils, or any biochemicals known to be produced by the body in life or in death. It is clear that there has been a direct contact of the Shroud with a body, which explains certain features such as scourge marks, as well as the blood. However, while this type of contact might explain some of the features of the torso, it is totally incapable of explaining the image of the face with the high resolution that has been amply demonstrated by photography. We can conclude for now that the Shroud image is that of a real human form of a scourged, crucified man. It is not the product of an artist. The blood stains are composed of hemoglobin and also give a positive test for serum albumin. The image is an ongoing mystery and until further chemical studies are made, perhaps by this group of 431

Tribbe, F. 2005, p.3.

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scientists, or perhaps by some scientists in the future, the problem remains unsolved.432

THE DATING GAME Scientists hate mysteries, so in 1985, experts in radiocarbon, or carbon-14 (14C) dating, met to review protocols regarding radiocarbon dating of the Shroud. They were supposed to cut seven samples from different areas of the cloth. However, in 1988, a single postage stamp-size sample was taken and divided into three subsamples for researchers at the University of Arizona, Oxford University, and the Federal Technical Institute in Switzerland. Much to the surprise of Shroud scientists, these researchers announced that the average of their tests resulted in an age of the Shroud of between 1260 and 1390AD. This was such a surprise given all the other scientific and historical evidence dating it to the first century. If the Shroud is only about 800 years old, then it must be a forgery. Thus, we either have to discard mountains of other evidence or conclude that something was amiss with the carbon dating. Christopher Ramsey, head of the Oxford team that conducted the 1988 dating made this point: “There is a lot of other evidence that suggests to many that the shroud is older than the radiocarbon dates allow, and so further research is certainly needed... to arrive at a coherent history of the shroud which takes into account and explains all of the available scientific and historical information.”433 There is no question as to the scientific pedigree of those who conducted the dating, and nothing is inherently wrong with the 14C testing method. It is the tireless workhorse of archeology and associated sciences that allows scientists to determine the age of any object containing organic material. Ordinary carbon (12C) has six protons and six neutrons, and is thus stable. Carbon-14 has two extra neutrons, and is thus slightly unstable (radioactive). Carbon-14 is constantly being created by the interaction of neutrons created by cosmic rays with nitrogen-14 in the atmosphere. The 432 433

STURP, 1981. In Ramesh, C., 2010, p. 56.

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resulting 14C then combines with atmospheric oxygen to form radioactive carbon dioxide, which is absorbed by plants during photosynthesis. Animals acquire 14C by eating plants, and when animals or plants die, they no longer exchange carbon with the environment. From that point on, the amount of 14C contained in them begins to decrease as it undergoes radioactive decay. Ordinary carbon-12 does not decay, so objects containing carbon can be dated by measuring the 12C/14C ratio. The older the object, the less 14C is detected relative to 12C. Thus, carbon dating measures residual radioactivity. Carbon-14 has a half-life of about 5,730 years; that is, the period after which half of a given sample will have decayed. In other words, after 5,730 years, 50% of the original 14C will remain; after 11,460 years, 25% will remain, and after 17,190 years (three half-lives), 12.5% will remain. One of the neutrons in the 14C atom will eventually become a proton and carbon atom will become an atom of nitrogen-14. Among the problems faced by the scientists dating the Shroud was the cloth sampling. Proper sampling requires that samples be representative of the whole, but the researchers obtained only snippets from the bottom corner of the cloth (the so-called “Reas threads”) and from the backing of the cloth (the so-called “Holland cloth”). The Shroud was damaged by a fire in the Sainte Chapelle, Chambéry, and patched up in 1532 with the Holland cloth. Some have claimed that the fire altered the cloth’s carbon content, leading to false dating. Ray Rogers, a thermal chemist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, was skeptical of theories casting doubt on the 14C dates. According to Philip Ball: “Rogers thought that he would be able to ‘disprove [the] theory in five minutes.’”434 He went about this task using another way of dating plant-based material—the degradation of lignin to vanillin. Lignin is a natural polymer that constitutes the cell walls of dry land plants, and degrades at a known rate over time into vanillin. Where there is lignin in a sample of cloth, it will test positive for vanillin. Rogers tested Reas threads and Holland cloth from the same areas as the 1988 radiocarbon dating study. The medieval threads tested positive for

434

Ball, P. 2005, np.

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vanillin, but the main body of the Shroud does not have any vanillin, indicating a much older age than the known medieval threads tested against it. Rogers concludes: If the shroud had been produced between A.D. 1260 and 1390, as indicated by the radiocarbon analyses, lignin should be easy to detect. A linen produced in A.D. 1260 would have retained about 37% of its vanillin in 1978. The Raes threads, the Holland cloth, and all other medieval linens gave the test for vanillin wherever lignin could be observed on growth nodes. The disappearance of all traces of vanillin from the lignin in the shroud indicates a much older age than the radiocarbon laboratories reported.... A determination of the kinetics of vanillin loss suggests that the shroud is between 1300- and 3000-years old.435

Rogers’ study did not directly address the question of whether the 1532 fire could have altered the Shroud’s carbon content, only that the dated samples are distinct from the main cloth. Another study of the textile weaving and surface contaminants on the same areas by chemists Sue Benford and Joe Marino also shows they are chemically distinct from the main body of the Shroud. They also showed that some of the threads woven into the samples are medieval cotton, and not linen as in the main cloth of the Shroud. If you date two different threads from two different time periods, you will arrive at a date that gives their weighted average. Given the historical evidence that the cloth was mended after the fire of 1532, and if about 60% of the carbon dating sample consisted of threads from the mending, then the Shroud could be dated to the first century AD. Benford and Marino were among the first to suggest that charring caused by the 1532 fire could have increased the carbon content of the cloth.436 Research has shown that compared to non-charred material from the same sample, charring of cellulose material increases its carbon content between 20 and 30%.437 If this is the case with the Shroud, the carbon dating would have 435

Rogers, R, 2005, pp. 191-192. Benford, S., & Marino, J. 2008. 437 Hajaligol, M., Waymack, B., & Kellogg, D. 2001. 436

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been significantly skewed, showing a higher 12C content relative to 14C, and thus a later date. We have to conclude that the medieval dates given for the Shroud must be a function of poor sampling, since the dating technique itself is not in question. I have done enough studies myself to know that “Garbage in, garbage out” has to be the watchword when dealing with samples. For instance, live snails in their shells have been dated to 26,000 years ago; a freshly killed seal to 1,300 years, and a linen handkerchief known to be less than 50 years old was given an age of 350 years.438 The best advice regarding on how we should respond to the 1988 carbon dating is given by archaeologist Eugenia Nitowski, who stated: “In any form of inquiry or scientific discipline, it is the weight of evidence which must be considered conclusive. In archaeology, if there are ten lines of evidence, carbon dating being one of them, and it conflicts with the other nine, there is little hesitation to throw out the carbon date as inaccurate due to unforeseen contamination.”439

THE MYSTERIES OF THE IMAGE The greatest scientific mystery of the Shroud is how the image was imprinted because for more than a century all mechanisms that have been proposed to explain it have failed. In this sense, the 1988 dating results is a positive thing because it provided further stimulus for more scientists to become interested in the Shroud. For instance, the Shroud has been examined extensively by a device called the VP-8 image analyzer and found to contain 3D information. That is, when a photographic negative (really a positive, since the Shroud itself is a negative) is revealed, an accurate three-dimensional representation of the man on the Shroud is seen. Ordinary flat paintings and photographs cannot reveal 3D likenesses without distortion because darkness in 2D images does not correspond correctly to depth. The VP-8 computer analyzer cannot register depth the 438 439

Tribbe, F. 2005, p 275. In Wilson, I. 1991, pp. 178-179.

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way that the human mind visually perceives it. How remarkable is it that the Shroud contains the only flat image in existence that contains perfect 3D information? Of course, the Shroud itself is two-dimensional, and its 3D information is imperceptible without a modern VP-8 analyzer. Many ingenious experiments have been made to duplicate the Shroud’s 3D information with other 2D images without success. If teams of scientists using all sorts of modern technology cannot duplicate the Shroud’s 3D information, what are the chances that a medieval artist could? (See Silverman, 2020, and Tribbe, 2005 for excellent synopses of this research). We see from the positive image (the one that looks like a photographic negative) of the photograph on the left of Figure 17.3, that the image is extremely superficial. The ideal length to view it is 6 to 10 feet; the image disappears as you get closer to it. The image is definitely contained on a linen cloth hand-woven in a manner consistent with the ancient Palestinian weave and is of a man scourged, crowned with thorns. Multiple studies have shown that the image could not have gotten there by paint, dye, or stain. This would show up in chemical analysis, and the cloth shows no clumping or cracking along the Shroud’s fold lines, as it would if some medium was applied to it by a forger. The depth of the image is perfectly uniform throughout; an impossible feat for any painting. Moreover, the discoloration is only on the top one or two fibers (fibrils) of a thread, which amounts to the thickness of about one percent of a single thread, or a discoloration of 0.2 microns of a fiber (1 micron = 0.000039 inches).440 The technology to duplicate this did not exist in medieval times, nor does it exist today. The original STURP team noted that the image on the Shroud could not be explained scientifically, but hypothesized that it must have been caused by an extremely and intense burst of energy from the body wrapped in the Shroud that resulted in the dehydration and oxidation of the cellulose fibers of the linen.441 A number of scientists proposed that an intense burst of ultraviolet light for a very short time produced the image on the Shroud, but physicist Paulo De Lazzaro noted that the UV light necessary to reproduce the 440 441

Fanti, G., & Maggiolo, R. 2004. Fanti, G., 2012.

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image: “exceeds the maximum power released by all ultraviolet light sources available today. The time for such a burst would be shorter than one forty-billionth of a second, and the intensity of the ultra violet light would have to be around several billion watts.”442 Impossible you say, but such unimaginable energy and precision can actually be achieved today. Using a commercially available paper-printed image of the head of the man in the Shroud as a template, a group of French physicists achieved a passable 2D reproduction on a linen sheet using an infrared femtosecond laser.443 Femtosecond lasers deliver infrared pulses power of up to 100 billion watts. If such power were to be applied for even a second, the entire cloth would be instantly vaporized. Each “dark” pixel of the digitized photo was targeted with 20 pulses from the laser for one femtosecond. Try to wrap you your head around this: one femtosecond is a millionth of a billionth of a second. Putting this in perspective; there are many times more femtoseconds in one second than there are seconds in a year. As for the energy; when we talk of 100 billion watts, we are saying that’s enough energy to power one billion 100-watt light bulbs. The making of an image this way is a remarkable feat of science, demonstrating what the STURP team hypothesized in 1981. The French researchers stated that their image resulted in the accelerated dehydration and oxidation of the cellulose fibers of the linen. However, the attained image is only a picture on linen that approximates the extremely superficial depth of the Shroud image. Taking a photograph of the image yields only a negative plate that looks exactly like a negative, and not like the positives produced by negatives of the Shroud. Also, unlike the Shroud, the French image does not contain 3D information. Not to take away anything away from what these scientists have achieved, but the image produced by this marvelous technology is still just an image on linen. The Shroud itself is much more than an image in that it contains 3D information, blood stains, skin debris, hair, ancient pollen, and a bone fragment. There is no combination of physical, chemical, and biological methods known to

442 443

In Longnecker, D. 2015, np. Di Lazzaro, P., Murra, D., Santoni, A., et al., 2010.

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science that can adequately account for the totality of secrets that the Shroud has revealed over the last 125 years.

BLOOD AND POLLEN EVIDENCE Human type AB+ blood is found on the Shroud and has been extensively studied. DNA has been extracted from the blood, but it is much too contaminated to be of use; hundreds of people have touched the Shroud over the centuries. In a 42-page analysis of the postmortem blood on the Shroud, Adrie van der Hoeven noted that it must have got unto the Shroud before the image was formed because when blood was removed from the image the linen under it was whiter than the surrounding areas. This shows conclusively that the blood was applied first and the discoloration of the fibers on the Shroud came later. van der Hoeven concluded: A medieval artist most probably would not have been able to imprint or paint the realistic-looking pinkish red bloodstains in the right anatomical locations on the cloth before he or she would somehow produce the still not reproduced body image. Besides, the artist would have to have used an ancient and most probably starched and madderdyed fine linen cloth for this implausible procedure. The medievallooking result of the radiocarbon-dating of the Shroud, performed on a single sample cut from a corner of the Shroud in 1988, is not an accurate result as the reported radiocarbon ages of the subsamples were statistically shown to be mutually inconsistent. 444

Using sophisticated optical microscopy and spectroscopy that allows scientists to analyze elements on areas as small as a nanometer (that’s 0.000000039 inches) in diameter with high magnitudes in depth of focus, Lucotte and Thomasset examined microscopic particles from a sticky-tape sample from the Shroud and discovered a small nasal bone/cartilage piece, probably resulting from blunt trauma. Lucotte and Thomasset’s finding 444

van der Hoeven, 2015, p.717.

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points to yet another piece of evidence for the authenticity of the Shroud. The bone/cartilage fragment: “was intensively studied for, colour, thickness, surface morphology and ultrastructure, and for its organic and mineral compositions. Presence of such an osseous [consisting of or turned into bone] remain on the Face adds new substantial material (other than red blood cells, skin debris and one hair, already published) to the knowledge of the Man whose body is imprinted on the Turin Shroud.”445 The species of microscopic pollen found on the Shroud points to its first century provenance. Using sticky tape, criminologist Max Frei extracted samples of pollen from the Shroud, some of which grow exclusively in Israel, indicating that some time in its existence it had been exposed to the air there. Of the 58 pollen specimens on the fabric, 75% were from plants indigenous to Palestine, and only 17 were from plants that are also found in France and Italy.446 The pollen of a particular species of thistle was found in abundance on the cloth near the man’s shoulders. This may have been the thistle from which the biblical crown of thorns was plaited. Pollen grains of this species were also found in the Sudarium of Oviedo, which is believed to be the burial face cloth of Jesus. The Sudarium has been in the Cathedral of Oviedo in Spain since the eighth century, and the first-century origin of the Sudarium is well documented. Furthermore, both the Sudarium and the Shroud contain AB-type blood stains in a similar pattern. In fact, through a method of image comparison known as Polarized Image Overlay Technique it has been found that there are 130 marks of congruence between the Shroud face and the Sudarium (there no image on the Sudarium). Twenty-five points of congruence is usually accepted (as, for example, in fingerprinting) as conclusive proof of identity of origin.447 Botanist Avinoam Danin of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem commented on these findings in the XVI International Botanical Congress that: “There is no way that similar patterns of blood stains, probably of the identical blood type, with the same type of pollen grains, could not be synchronic covering the same 445

Lucotte, G., & Thomasset, T. 2017, p. 20. In Tribbe, F. 2005. 447 Ibid, p. 166. 446

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body...The pollen association and the similarities in the blood stains in the two cloths provide clear evidence that the shroud originated before the eighth century.”448 Investigating the compounds of burial ointments and pollen from the first century Hebrew and medieval funeral practices, botanist M. Boi concluded they could not have come from the medieval era. “Rather, the pollen discovered in this relic [the Shroud] could be from the suggesting that its origins lie in the first century AD. It is not difficult for pollen to stay attached to fibres for a long time, but the attachment can be even stronger when the pollen is combined with greasy botanical substances, such as those applied to the body after death, or those adhering to a burial cloth.”449 Boi then added that this “validates the theory that the corpse kept in the Shroud received a funeral and burial with all the honour and respect that was customary in the Hebrew tradition.”450 Finally, particles of an uncommon variety of limestone have been found on the Shroud’s fibers on feet of the image. The fibers were matched by optical crystallography with samples of limestone from ancient tombs in and near Jerusalem and they matched very closely. This form of limestone is found in limestone caves in and around Israel, but not in Europe.451

WHAT ARE WE TO CONCLUDE? Is the Shroud as the authentic burial cloth of Jesus or an unbelievably clever fake? Assume that it is a painting for a moment; ignoring the fact that this has been entirely ruled out. Because the image disappears as you get closer than six feet to it, the genius who painted it must have had seriously long arms to see what he was painting. He would have to acquire a burial cloth of the right weave type used in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus. He would then have to salt it with pollen found only in what is now Israel,

448

ScienceDaily, 1999, np. Boi, M. 2017, p. 325. 450 Ibid, p. 326. 451 Kohlbeck, J. & Nitowski, E. 1986. 449

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limestone found in caves only in Jerusalem and surrounding areas, place AB+ blood stains in just the right areas, and plant all the other debris on the shroud. Of course, he would have had to have had an electron microscope to see these things. Since he could not see these things, he could not have added them, and why would he? He would have to know about negative images centuries before photography was invented, and paint an image in the finest detail that perfectly reverses all light and dark shading as in a photographic negative. He would then have to paint an anatomically correct tortured body using knowledge of medical pathology unknown before the twentieth century. He would have to paint blood flows that perfectly agreed with details of death by crucifixion that only a trained forensic pathologist would know. Going against the grain of conventional medieval portraits of the crucifixion, he would somehow have to know that the nails went through the wrists rather than the hands. This caused the thumbs to cling tightly to the hand, as illustrated in the Shroud and the Hungarian Pray manuscript. He would have to achieve all this, and more, and then penetrate the cloth only on the top two fibrils of the threads uniformly across the entirety of the image. Impossible? You bet? I take the position that Barrie Schwortz, an orthodox Jew and one of the world’s leading experts on the Shroud, does: “The most plausible explanation to me for the Shroud, both because of the science and my own personal background as a Jew, is that it was the cloth that was used to wrap Jesus’ body.”452 The science of the Shroud has enriched faith for millions, and faith has stimulated the enormous among of scientific work done on the Shroud. Science says the man of the Shroud died a violent death by crucifixion and that all the marks of suffering found on the Shroud correspond exactly with the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ torment, but science can’t tell us that the man was Jesus. Science cannot create a resurrection in the lab, but science has shown conclusively that the image on the Shroud could not possibly have been made by the hand of man. Science may never uncover the totality of the mystery of the Shroud. If it is a material trace of the moment of Resurrection—and I don’t see what else it could possibly

452

In Graves, J. 2015, np.

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be—then it is evidence of a miracle. By definition, a miracle lies beyond the methods of science. Science has been able to say with absolute certainty what the Shroud is not (a man-made forgery), but not what it is at its deepest level; that’s for the theologians.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Anthony Walsh, PhD Professor Emeritus Boise State University Boise, Idaho, USA Email: [email protected]

Anthony Walsh is Professor Emeritus from Boise State University, where he taught statistics, biosocial criminology, and philosophy of law. Before entering academia, he spent 25 years as a marine, police officer, and probation officer. He is the author of 48 other books and 150 articles on topics ranging from genetics to science and religion. He has been featured on TV shows such as “The Phil Donahue Show” and “Nova”, and has been honored with lifetime achievement awards by The Biosocial Criminology Association and the Biopsychosocial Criminology Division of the American Society of Criminology.

INDEX OF NAMES A Abel, David, 122, 133, 134, 303, 327 Aikman, David, 237, 238, 303 Albright, William, 278, 303 Anfinsen, Christian, 9 Anselm, St., 250 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 183, 246, 253, 254, 255, 303 Aristotle, 247, 249, 250, 279, 320 Augustine, St., 183, 191, 246 Aviezer, Nathan, 174

B Bacon, Francis, 14 Bacon, Roger, 25 Bapteste, Eric, 171 Bates, Elizabeth, 225 Bauchau, Vincent, 160, 304 Bechly, Gunter, 179 Behe, Michael, 165, 173, 174, 202 Benford, Sue, 293 Benner, Steven, 127 Bernhardt, Harold, 132 Birney, Ewan, 149

Bohr, Niels, 117 Boi, M., 299 Boscovich, Roger, 25 Brown, Arthur, 15, 80, 280, 305, 325, 328 Bruce, F.F., 125, 280 Bryson, Bill, 146, 147, 305 Bultmann, Rudolf, 266

C Camus, Albert, 229, 306 Carnoy, Jean-Baptiste, 25 Carr, Bernard, 118, 308, 321 Carter, Brandon, 17, 18, 19, 306 Chalmers, David, 219, 306 Choroser, Michael, 178 Cleaver, Gerald, 118 Cliff, Harry, 38 Clinton, Bill, 139, 140, 307 Collins, Francis, 7, 148, 182, 187 Collins, Gary, 275 Collins, Robin, 41 Coolidge, Calvin, 244 Cory, Michael, 89 Coyne, Jerry, 192

334

Index of Names

Craig, William Lane, 38, 52, 54, 258, 264, 267, 269, 270, 272, 276, 308 Crick, Francis, 26, 27, 122, 129, 308

D Danin, Avinoam, 298 Darwin, Charles, 91, 117, 157, 158, 167, 169, 170, 177, 179, 180, 182, 183, 187, 205, 206, 242, 304, 308, 316, 320, 323, 327 Davies, Paul, x, 43, 46, 51, 63, 135 Davis, Steven, 266 Dawkins, Richard, 117, 157, 158, 177, 207, 227, 232, 258 De Charny, Geoffrey, 287 de Duve, Christian, 123 De Lazzaro, Paulo, 295 Dembski, William, 59, 60, 151, 175, 176, 177, 309 Demiurge, 248 Descartes, René, 246, 251 Dingle, Herbert, 113 Dirac, Paul, 111 Dobzhansky, Theodosius, 156 Dubarle, A.M., 286, 310 Durant, Will, 240, 241, 310

E Eccles, John, 221 Eddington, Arthur, 55, 303 Einstein, Albert, x, 3, 6, 7, 13, 19, 34, 41, 44, 49, 50, 64, 109, 113, 117, 183, 246, 253, 310, 311, 316 Ellis, George, 113

F Feynman, Richard, 115

Ficino, Marsilio, 247 Flew, Anthony, 256 Frale, Barbara, 287 Franklin, Benjamin, 244 Frei, Max, 298 Freud, Sigmund, 276

G G. K. Chesterton, 15, 239, 306 Germanus I, 286 Gillen, Alan, 206 Gitt, Werner, 137, 138, 192, 312 Gödel, Kurt, 114 Goswani, Amit, 185 Gould, Stephen J., 168, 188, 223 Grassé, Pierre-Paul, 181 Graur, Dan, 150, 313 Greenstein, George, 23, 51 Gribbin, John, 21, 100 Grossman, Lisa, 89

H Haberma, Jurgen, 237 Habermas, Gary, 265 Hall, Stephen, 149 Hamilton, Alexander, 236 Hamilton, W.D., 196 Harris, Sam, 242 Hartsfield, Tom, 115, 116, 314 Hawking, Stephen, 19, 40, 53, 112, 314, 318 Heile, Frank, 110, 314 Heisenberg, Werner, 15, 89 Hemingway, Mollie Ziegler, 13 Henderson, Lawrence, 89 Hick, John, 187 Higgs, Peter, 37 Hilbert, David, 31, 106 Hitchens, Christopher, 231, 232, 235, 315

Index of Names Hitler, Adolf, 261 Hoyle, Fred, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 52, 55, 128, 129, 130, 155, 156, 166, 205, 315, 317, 324 Hubble, Edwin, 50

J Jammer, Max, 13 Jastrow, Robert, 52, 54, 99 Jean, James, 47 Jefferson, Thomas, 239, 240, 307, 322 Jenkins, Alejandro, 64, 312, 316 Jesus Christ, viii, 7, 8, 216, 238, 243, 253, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 280, 283, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 298, 299, 300, 303, 304, 305, 308, 309, 310, 313, 317, 327, 328 John Paul II, Pope, 240, 322 Johnson, Phillip, 168, 180 Joseph of Arimathea, 272

K Kenny, Mary, 227 Kenyon, Dean, 122, 123, 278, 279, 317 Kenyon, Frederick, 122, 123, 278, 279, 317 King Abgar V, 285 Kingsley, Charles, 182 Koonin, Eugene, 128, 317 Koperski, Jeffrey, 186 Krauss, Lawrence, 39, 100 Kristeva, Julia, 229 Kuhn, Joseph, 178, 211

335

Laughlin, Robert, 156 Lecapenus, Byzantine Emperor, 286 Lemaitre, Georges, 25, 50, 303 Lennox, John, 5, 34, 39, 109, 138, 165 Leslie, John, 18 Lewis, Bernard, 195, 243, 244, 318 Lewontin, Richard, 25 Lightman, Alan, 103, 104, 246, 247, 318 Lincoln, Abraham, 239, 240 Lipton, Peter, 29 Lönnig, Wolf-Ekkehard, 167, 319

M Mackie, J. L., 257 Maddox, John, 54 Madison, James, 244 Magnus, Albertus, 25, 188, 316 Marino, Joe, 293 Marks, Joel, 258 Martyr, Justin, 269 Marx, Karl, 260 Mary Magdalene, 268, 274 Mayr, Ernst, 170, 171 McCullagh, C. Behan, 264, 319 McIntosh, Andrew, 133, 320 McLean, Euan, 38, 39, 319 Meacham, William, 284, 320 Mendel, Gregor, 25, 139 Meyer, Stephen, 30, 161, 176 Miller, Kenneth, 184, 185 Millikan, Robert, 17, 222 Mlodinow, Leonard, 40 Monton, Bradley, 174, 320 Muller, Gerd, 163

N L Lapide, Pinchas, 266

Nagel, Thomas, 12, 178, 307, 320 Newton, Isaac, 25, 39, 49, 109, 111, 183, 318

336

Index of Names

Nicolelis, Miguel, 213 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 259, 261, 321 Nilsson, Nils, 168 Nitowski, Eugenia, 294, 299, 317 Nuland, Sherwin, 203

O Orgel, Leslie, 129

P Page, Don, 113 Pascal, Blaise, 1, 321 Penrose, Roger, 61, 111, 115, 209 Penzias, Arno, 32, 55, 56 Perez, Gilad, 64 Planck, Max, 47 Planinić, Josip, 19 Plato, 106, 247, 248, 249, 250, 255, 279, 320 Politizer, Georges, 54 Polkinghorne, John, 187, 223 Pratt, Wallace, 82, 83, 308, 317 Prost, Addy, 134

R Radford, Tim, 109 Ramsey, Christopher, 291 Raymo, Chet, 193 Rees, Martin, 21, 44 Ridley, Mark, 198 Rogers, Ray, 292 Ross, Hugh, 100 Rovelli, Carlo, 116 Russell, Bertrand, 5, 182, 185, 186, 230, 323 Russell, Robert, 185

S Sagan, Carl, 78, 184 Sandage, Alan, 55, 208, 323 Sandage, Allan, 55, 207, 208, 323 Sanford, John, 164 Schmidt, Alvin, 234, 324 Schrodinger, Erwin, 138, 320 Schumacher, Robin, 242 Schweizer, Edward, 266 Schwortz, Barrie, 300 Shalev, Baruch, 13, 324 Shostak, Seth, 108 Silva, Ignacio, 186 Smalley, Richard, 117 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 260, 325 Sperry, Roger, 209 Stark, Rodney, 237 Steno, Nicolas, 25 Stevens, John, 206 Strauss, Michael, 39 Swindell, Rick, 96

T Taylor, Stuart, 100 Tegmark, Max, 104 Tertullian, Quintus, 25 Thomson, Joseph J., 35 Tipler, Frank, 18, 19, 119, 304, 326 Todd, Scott, 181 Townes, Charles, 178, 322

V van der Hoeven, Adrie, 297, 327

W Wahlberg, Mats, 182

Index of Names Wald, George, 123 Walker, Sara, 135 Walsh, John, 283 Washington, George, 238 Watson, Bruce, 125 Weinberg, Steven, 65, 117 Weiqun, Zhu, 261 Wells, Jonathan, 150 Wheeler, John, 18 Whittaker, Edmund, 32 Wickramasinghe, Chandra, 128, 130 Wigner, Eugene, 221 Williams, George, 160 Williams, Mark, 89

337

Wilson, Robert, 56 Winthrop, Robert, 262 Woit, Peter, 115 Wood, Bernard, 155, 329

Y Yockey, Hubert, 137, 160

Z Zalasiewicz, Jan, 89

INDEX OF TERMS A abduction, 27, 29, 30 abiogenesis, 121, 122, 130, 138 adaptive immune system, 200, 201 adenosine triphosphate (ATP), 94, 98, 148 agape, 199, 215 alleles, 140 American Humanist Association, 262 amino acids, 92, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 131, 133, 137, 142, 144, 152, 165, 166, 175, 176 amygdala, 217 anisotropy, 62 Anthropic Principle, the, 17, 20 anthropic reasoning, 20, 29, 64 antibodies, 199, 200, 202 antigens, 198, 200, 201, 215 antimatter, 57 antisocial behavior, 232 anti-theists, 2 apoptosis, 146 Argument from Causality, the, 254 Argument from Contingency, the, 255 Argument from Motion, the, 254

Argument from Perfection, the, 255 Argument from Purpose, the, 255 aseity of God, 31 asexual reproduction, 195 asphalt problem, 127 astronomical units, 71 atheism, ix, 1, 2, 3, 4, 12, 14, 53, 104, 157, 179, 181, 188, 207, 229, 245, 256, 257, 258, 260, 261, 262, 314 atoms, 22, 27, 35, 36, 38, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 56, 57, 58, 60, 63, 73, 80, 92, 93, 105, 123, 126, 140, 145, 153, 154, 162, 175, 183, 211, 218, 306 autonomic nervous system (ANS), 217 axon(s), 210, 211, 213

B bacterial flagellum, 174 behavioral approach system (BAS), 216, 217 behavioral inhibition system, 217 beryllium (8Be), 22 Big Bang, vii, 25, 30, 32, 40, 49, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 63, 64, 98,

340

Index of Terms

100, 105, 112, 118, 164, 183, 225, 307, 320, 324 Big Bang nucleosynthesis, 58 blood clotting, 204, 216, 217 B-lymphocytes (B-cells), 201 Book of God’s Works, the, ix, 7, 256 bosons, 36, 45 brain, 26, 27, 86, 140, 141, 146, 152, 156, 162, 185, 197, 199, 200, 206, 207, 209, 210, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 245, 311, 323, 325

C Cambrian explosion, 169, 170 capillary action, 86 carbon, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 35, 42, 67, 73, 89, 90, 91, 94, 95, 96, 97, 124, 126, 130, 134, 203, 291, 292, 293, 294 carbon dioxide, 42, 73, 91, 94, 95, 96, 97, 134, 203, 292 carbon-14 (14C) dating, 291 cardiovascular system, 203, 205 category mistake, 33, 34 Catholic Charities USA, 234 cells, 26, 92, 94, 96, 121, 122, 124, 126, 133, 135, 136, 140, 146, 148, 151, 152, 185, 193, 194, 197, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 210, 212, 213 chance, 1, 21, 23, 26, 65, 79, 83, 89, 96, 116, 117, 122, 123, 124, 128, 129, 148, 157, 158, 159, 161, 175, 176, 177, 178, 181, 184, 185, 188, 207, 246, 317 chaperones, 144, 168 chemical determinism, 162, 163 Chinese Academy of Social Science, 237, 244 Chinese Cultural Revolution, 260 chirality problem, 126 chloroplasts, 94

Christian apologetics, 4 Circumstellar Habitable Zone (CHZ), 71, 72 codons, 137, 142 Cogito ergo sum, 219, 251 cognitive dissonance, 11 compartmentalization, 134 consciousness, 19, 123, 213, 218, 219, 222, 225, 244 conspiracy theory, 270 contingency, 114, 175 Copernican Principle, 17, 99 corotation circle, 70 cosmic microwave background, 56, 62, 64, 100 cosmological constant, 50, 64, 310 creation ex nihilo, 32, 55 crusades, 243 cytokines, 202 cytoplasm, 142, 147

D dark energy, 50, 64, 65 Declaration of Independence, 236, 244, 310 deduction, 27, 267 dendrites, 210, 213, 214 deuterium, 46, 58 deuteron, 58 diploid cell, 197 DNA, 3, 80, 86, 92, 97, 122, 124, 126, 127, 128, 131, 132, 133, 134, 137, 140, 141, 142, 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 160, 161, 162, 164, 171, 175, 176, 178, 193, 195, 211, 221, 256, 258, 297, 306, 313, 314, 320 DNA helicase, 141 DNA methylation, 153 DNA overlap, 161 Doctrine of Addai, the, 285

Index of Terms dopamine, 216

E E = MC2, 44 Earth, 36, 40, 41, 42, 46, 61, 63, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 87, 88, 90, 91, 92, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 104, 110, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126, 129, 164, 169, 184, 207, 211, 214, 243, 262, 306, 307, 316, 323, 325, 328, 329 Edessa, 285, 286 electromagnetic force, 22, 37, 42, 43, 44 electromagnetic spectrum, 43, 75, 327 electromagnetism, 40, 45, 57 electron, 35, 36, 45, 46, 57, 58, 300 elementary particles, 36, 37, 60 elements, 35, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 56, 57, 58, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73, 78, 81, 88, 134, 149, 199, 297 elliptical galaxies, 68 Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE), 149, 151, 313, 321 endoplasmic reticulum, 147 entropy, 53, 60, 61, 320 enzyme(s), 93, 96, 128, 131, 132, 141, 146, 153, 154, 161, 164, 166, 178, 212, 312, 328 epigenetics, 152 epinephrine, 217 epistemic distance, 5, 187, 266, 280 erythropoietin, 205 existence of God, ix, 5, 30, 39, 157, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 316

F femtosecond, 296, 310 fermions, 36 fight/flee/freeze system, 217 Final Anthropic Principle (FAP), 19

341

fine-tuned universe, 19, 103 fine-tuning, 20, 38, 39, 41, 46, 60, 63, 64, 89, 99, 103, 104, 113, 117, 118, 130, 136, 246 First Cause, 30, 31, 52, 54, 157, 254 Form of the Good, 248, 249 Freedom in the World Index, 236

G G main-sequence stars, 70 Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ), 69, 70 gamma rays, 42, 73 gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA), 200 general divine providence, 186 general relativity, 41, 113 general theory of relativity, 49, 107 genes, 133, 140, 141, 144, 149, 150, 151, 152, 154, 160, 161, 167, 171, 193, 195, 197, 198, 204, 209, 307 genetic mutation, 159, 195 genome, 7, 135, 139, 140, 141, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 154, 159, 160, 161, 162, 185, 196, 209, 213, 306, 321 geometry of space-time, 63 glial cells, 210, 213, 318 gluon(s), 37, 44 God hypothesis, the, 308 God of the gaps, 174, 318 God-of-the-gaps argument, 34 Golgi apparatus, 147 Gospel of Peter, 272 Grand Tack, 77 gravity, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 49, 50, 51, 57, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 72, 73, 76, 78, 79, 80, 82, 86, 107, 108, 109, 116, 183

H half-life, 164, 292 hallucination theory, 274, 275

342

Index of Terms

haploid cell, 197 happiness, 227, 228, 230, 233, 238, 259, 315, 327 Heisenberg uncertainty principle, 89 heliosphere, 81 helper T-cell, 202 heterochirality, 126 Higgs boson ("God Particle"), 37, 38, 39, 325 Higgs field, 37, 38, 39 histone acetylation, 153 histone acetyltransferases (HATs), 154 histone deacetylases (HDACs), 154 Holland cloth, 292, 293 Holy Spirit, 4 How Great Thou Art, 6 Hox genes, 193 Hsp90 (heat shock protein 90), 168 human body, 92, 127, 192, 193, 194, 207 human eye, 205, 206 Human Genome Project, 139, 140, 148, 151 Hungarian Pray Manuscript, 287, 288 hydrologic cycle, 87 hypothalamus, 216, 217 hypotheses, 20, 28, 29, 30, 96, 110, 115, 130, 176, 182, 264, 277, 304

I imaginary time, 112, 113 induction, 27, 28, 107 inference to the best explanation, 29, 31, 188 infinity, 52, 103, 104, 105, 118 information, v, 3, 19, 121, 122, 126, 127, 131, 132, 133, 135, 136, 137, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 148, 151, 152, 154, 160, 161, 162, 163, 165, 175, 176, 177, 178, 188, 192, 193, 194, 197, 210,

211, 213, 214, 219, 220, 225, 290, 291, 294, 296 infrared femtosecond laser, 296 innate immune system, 199, 200 intellectualizing, 4 intelligent design (ID), vii, 8, 122, 136, 151, 161, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 184, 187, 188, 197, 205, 206, 309, 312, 320, 322, 325 iron, 58, 68, 79, 82, 203, 204 irreducibly complex systems, 174 irregular galaxies, 68 Islam, 242, 264, 318 isotropy, 62

J Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, 77

K K dwarfs, 70, 72 Kalam cosmological argument, 52 kenosis, 187, 322 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 180 Knights Templar, 287 Krebs cycle, 136, 137

L language, x, 3, 22, 63, 83, 113, 114, 137, 139, 142, 148, 162, 183, 224, 225, 226, 316 Large Hadron Collider (LHC), 38, 110, 174 legend theory, 274 leptons, 36 lignin, 292, 293

Index of Terms love, ix, xiii, 2, 6, 7, 9, 12, 19, 27, 93, 117, 199, 211, 214, 215, 216, 218, 219, 231, 234, 237, 238, 241, 243, 246, 247, 251, 255, 259, 260, 261, 315, 322 luminosity, 72, 74 lysosomes, 147

M M dwarfs, 70 macroevolution, 156, 159, 164, 167, 170, 177, 179, 180, 181, 188, 196 macrophages, 146, 202 magnetic shield, 42, 72, 79, 81, 110, 322 Mandylion, 287, 310 materialism, 25, 26, 27, 54, 61, 130, 179, 188, 218, 221, 327 mathematics, 25, 27, 28, 63, 106, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 139, 222, 223, 248 Mathematics in Science, 111 meiosis, 196, 197, 198 messenger RNA (mRNA), 137, 141, 142, 152, 171 metabolism, 86, 121, 130, 134, 135 metabolism-first hypothesis, 134 microevolution, 156, 160, 170, 196 Milky Way, 67, 68, 69, 71, 100, 313 Miller-Urey, 123, 124, 138 Miller-Urey Experiment, 123 mind, 7, 14, 19, 26, 34, 35, 36, 51, 65, 117, 122, 123, 124, 127, 128, 130, 136, 140, 146, 148, 157, 158, 178, 182, 194, 196, 206, 210, 214, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 253, 259, 283, 295, 306, 311, 313, 321, 322, 328 minimal facts, 265, 313 miracle(s), 34, 122, 156, 174, 189, 191, 193, 222, 266, 267, 268, 276, 280, 301, 319 mitochondria, 148

343

mitosis, 196, 197, 198 model-dependent realism, 114 molecular systematics, 171, 172 monomers, 125, 126, 131 Moon, 72, 75, 76, 77, 80, 315, 325 moral argument, 257 Mother Love, 213 mountains, 79, 81, 82, 91, 191, 291 M-Theory, 107, 109, 115 multiverse, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 128, 129, 246, 247, 308, 311, 312, 316, 321, 326 multiverse models, 104 myelination, 213

N National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 56, 57, 59, 63, 70, 73, 74, 108, 320, 321 natural law, 163, 175, 176, 178, 186, 309 natural selection, 116, 117, 130, 156, 158, 159, 164, 165, 166, 177, 178, 205, 207, 324 natural theology, xi, 5, 6, 7, 8, 256, 257 naturalism, 26, 99, 179, 181 Nazi Germany, 260, 261, 262 necessity, 18, 21, 26, 114, 124, 134, 157, 159, 161, 175, 222, 223, 246, 252, 327 neural tube, 210, 215 neurons, 26, 185, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214 neurotransmitters, 27, 140, 212, 216, 217 neutron, 36, 44, 45, 46, 58, 92 New Testament, 266, 267, 277, 278, 279, 280, 305, 322 nitrogen cycle, 93, 312 non-interventionist objective divine action (NIODA), 185, 186, 323 norepinephrine, 217 nuclear fusion, 46, 67

344

Index of Terms

nucleic acids, 86, 92, 131, 133 nucleolus, 147 nucleons, 21, 44, 68 nucleotides, 132, 137, 141, 142, 143, 161, 164, 166 nucleus accumbens, 200, 216 null hypothesis, 29, 30 Nuremberg War Crimes, 261

O occipital lobe, 206 ontological argument, 250, 253, 254 ontological proof, 114 orbital eccentricity, 71 origin of life, 100, 121, 122, 129, 135, 138, 178, 256, 304, 318, 325, 327, 329 Origin of Species, 157, 158, 179 Orion Arm, 70 oxygen, 21, 23, 24, 67, 73, 80, 86, 88, 90, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 123, 124, 126, 136, 148, 203, 204, 205, 292 oxytocin, 200, 315 ozone layer, 80, 124

P panspermia, 128, 129, 308 period of heavy bombardment, 78 periodic table, 35, 45 phase-space, 60, 61 philosophy, x, 1, 13, 14, 26, 55, 115, 229, 239, 241, 246, 247, 260, 261, 305, 309, 315, 318, 331 phosphorus, 67, 97 photons, 22, 37, 56, 58, 68, 73, 94, 95, 206 photosynthesis, 73, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 292, 313, 326 Planck time, 57, 60 planetesimals, 88 plate tectonics, 81, 82, 88, 91, 315, 327

platelets, 203, 204 Polarized Image Overlay Technique, 298 polymerization, 125 polymers, 125, 131 postsynaptic receptor sites, 212 prefrontal cortex, 217 presynaptic knob, 212 primary laws, 183 probability boundary, 60, 79 protein folding, 143, 144, 145 proteins, 86, 92, 122, 124, 125, 127, 128, 131, 132, 133, 134, 139, 140, 141, 142, 144, 145, 147, 149, 150, 152, 161, 165, 168, 193, 200 proton, 35, 36, 44, 45, 46, 58, 92, 292 proton-to-electron mass ratio, 46 punctuated equilibrium, 168

Q quantum collapse, 185 quantum mechanics, 95, 105, 107, 111, 113, 117, 185, 186, 222 quantum protector, 186 quantum theory, 107 quarks, 27, 36, 44, 57, 107

R racemic, 126, 127 radiative zone, 74 radioisotopes, 45 rationality, 8, 11, 13 reaction rates, 127, 131, 175 Reas threads, 292 Recombination Era, 56, 58 red blood cells, 140, 203, 204, 205, 298 Red Queen hypothesis, 195 reducing atmosphere, 124 religious liberty, 239, 318 religious wars, 242, 243

Index of Terms resonance, 22, 23 respiration, 80, 96, 136 resurrection of Jesus Christ, 186 revealed scripture, ix, 7 ribosomal RNA (rRNA), 142, 152 RNA, 3, 97, 124, 125, 126, 128, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 137, 141, 142, 149, 153, 161, 164, 165, 171, 305, 321, 323 RNA polymerase (RNAP), 141, 142, 153, 154 RNA World Hypothesis, 130 Roman Empire, 264 romantic love, 27 Royal Navy, 242 Russian Revolution, 260

S Sanhedrin, 268, 272, 280 science, ix, x, xi, 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 20, 24, 25, 26, 28, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 39, 50, 52, 54, 55, 83, 99, 100, 107, 109, 111, 115, 117, 119, 123, 125, 130, 134, 138, 139, 145, 149, 152, 155, 156, 171, 174, 175, 177, 178, 180, 181, 184, 186, 187, 188, 208,222, 223, 237, 245, 246, 256, 266, 296, 300, 304, 305, 308, 312, 315, 316, 318, 319, 320, 322, 323, 324, 327, 328, 331 Scientific Dissent from Darwinism statement, 156 second law of thermodynamics, 60, 125, 127 secondary causes, 118, 158, 183 Secondo Pia, 288 serotonin, 216, 217 sexual reproduction, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198 Shroud of Turin, viii, 281, 283, 285, 290, 303, 305, 306, 316, 317, 319, 322, 323, 324, 326, 327

345

Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP), 290 singularity, 50 slavery, 241, 242 social brain, 218 soil, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 97, 98 source criticism, 264 speciation, 160, 167, 168 spiral galaxy, 68, 71 standard model, 39 Standard Model of Particle Physics, 35, 36 stellar nucleosynthesis, 21, 24, 58, 130 stomata, 94, 96 strings, 47, 107, 110, 141, 165, 166 Strong Anthropic Principle (SAP), 19 strong force, 22, 23, 38, 43, 44 substantia nigra, 216 Sudarium of Oviedo, 298, 316 suicide, 1, 2, 229, 232, 309 Sun, 40, 41, 42, 53, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 86, 87, 88 super-intellect, 24, 130 Super-intellect, 130 Supernova Cosmology Project, 64 supernovae, 46, 58, 68, 70, 71, 80 superposition, 95, 105, 185 Supreme Court, 180 swoon theory, 271 synaptogenesis, 213, 214, 215

T theistic evolution (TE), vii, 157, 173, 181, 182, 183, 184, 187, 188 theories, 28, 37, 38, 107, 110, 115, 122, 130, 157, 195, 268, 274, 292, 313, 319, 321, 325 thermodynamic equilibrium, 61, 105, 125 T-lymphocytes (T-cells), 201, 202 Transfer RNA (tRNA), 142, 152 transitional forms, 168

346

Index of Terms

translation, 128, 142, 171 tree of life, 170, 171 triple alpha process, 22

U Uncaused Cause, 31 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, 236 United States Supreme Court, 239 unnaturalness, 38 uranium, 45

V vacuoles, 147 vanillin, 292, 293 ventral tegmental area, 216 virtual photons, 42 vision theory, 276

volcanos, 41, 90, 97, 98 VP-8 image analyzer, 290, 294

W water, 20, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 79, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 97, 98, 105, 124, 131, 133, 134, 217, 271, 274, 307, 329 wave function, 185 Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP), 18 weak force, 41, 45, 46 white blood cells, 146, 201, 203, 204 Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, 62, 320

Z zygote, 193, 194, 197, 198, 201