True Horizon

On August 1, Francis Collins stepped down as the head of the Human Genome Project, a position in which he has served since 1993. Collins is a proud Christian who, even though he supports the Darwinian idea of common descent, has been a strong voice in the debate about the relationship between faith and science. We owe him a debt of gratitude, not just for his incredible leadership in the quest to decipher DNA, but for his defense of the Christian worldview as being intellectually viable in a culture that has been led to believe that science has rendered it impotent.

The end of Collins’ tenure reminded me of a recent article in Touchstone magazine that I read recently. The piece referred to an interview with Collins and Richard Dawkins that was published in Time magazine in November, 2006. That interview contained an exchange between the two that I think is worthy of comment. While considering the beginning of the universe and the possibility that a supernatural creator could have been responsible for it, we get the following:

DAWKINS: … We are profoundly ignorant of these matters. We need to work on them. But to suddenly say the answer is God–it’s that that seems to me to close off the discussion.

TIME: Could the answer be God?

DAWKINS: There could be something incredibly grand and incomprehensible and beyond our present understanding.

COLLINS: That’s God.

DAWKINS: Yes. But it could be any of a billion Gods. It could be God of the Martians or of the inhabitants of Alpha Centauri. The chance of its being a particular God, Yahweh, the God of Jesus, is vanishingly small–at the least, the onus is on you to demonstrate why you think that’s the case … we were talking about the origins of the universe and the physical constants, I provided what I thought were cogent arguments against a supernatural intelligent designer. But it does seem to me to be a worthy idea. Refutable–but nevertheless grand and big enough to be worthy of respect. I don’t see the Olympian gods or Jesus coming down and dying on the Cross as worthy of that grandeur. They strike me as parochial. If there is a God, it’s going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.

today I want to address one simple point. My next post will cover Dawkins’ assertion in general. The simple point is this …

Dawkins goes on, from the above quote, to dismiss the idea that the improbability of 6 physical constants (gravity being one, not sure of the other five he admits to) of the universe being “tweeked” exactly right for life to be possible is not very convincing to him. Apparently both Dawkins — and Collins, who never corrected him on it — are unaware that in 1961 there were two of these constants in play. By the 1970s, scientists had identified the six to which Dawkins appears to refer. The chart (provided by Reasons To Believe’s, Hugh Ross) below shows how the number of design features in the universe has grown over the years …

That’s right, as of two years ago astronomer Hugh Ross has identified 676! While improbability does not constitute an airtight argument, at some point such astronomical improbabilities would seem to approach an impossibility. In this case, Ross has calculated the probability at one chance in 10 to the 556th power — that’s a one, with 556 zeros after it — that the constants that define our universe would be just the way they are or life would not exist anywhere.

By way of comparison, there are estimated to be 10 the the 80th power atoms in the entire known universe. Mathematicians consider one chance in 10 to the 50th power to constitute an impossibility.

Dawkins would undoubtedly reply that no matter how improbable something is, that improbability does not mean it couldn’t happen. Fair enough. You be the judge of whose view is more reasonable.

More on Dawkins’ comment next time …

Apples to Oranges

Sam Harris despises religion — so much so that he has blinded himself to an intellectually honest assessment about the differences between them. To put that claim in context, Harris (as discussed earlier here), misunderstands the concept of condemnation to hell and, because of that misunderstanding, believes his in-your-face his chest beating has some force behind it when he says:

The fact that my continuous and public rejection of Christianity does not worry me in the least should suggest to you just how inadequate I think your reasons for being a Christian are.

His serious delusion regarding the public impact of his own views aside, Harris’ taunt (p. 4) rings hollow. I can only speak for myself of course, but it seems that Harris fails to realize that we Christians don’t hold our view based on the popularity or reputation of those who may, or may not, share it with us. To be honest, most Christians had never heard of Sam Harris before his book hit the stores. But this kind of misunderstanding on his part leads him to make what can only be described as completely baseless associations like this:

Assertion:(p. 6-7)

Every devout Muslim has the same reasons for being a Muslim that you have for being a Christian. And yet you do not find their reasons compelling. The Koran repeatedly declares that it is the perfect word of the creator of the universe … The burden is upon them to prove that their beliefs about God and Muhammad are valid. They have not done this. They cannot do this. Muslims are not making claims about reality that can be corroborated

Understand that the way you view Islam is precisely the way devout Muslims view Christianity. And it is the way I view all religions.

Response: To put it is nicely as I can, Harris’ complete ignorance about the nature of religion in general, and the relationship between Christianity and Islam in particular, is stunning.

(Read on …)

Just a quick blurb to point out a couple of recent articles that should cause the naturalistic science folks to have “some ’splainin’ to do.” These kinds of things pop up every once in a while and it is interesting to consider the explanations they offer for discoveries like these.

For instance, yesterday The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science announced the recent discovery of:

a primitive single-celled microbe that answers to the name of Monosiga brevicollis [that] has a leg up on animals composed of billions of cells. It commands a signaling network more elaborate and diverse than found in any multicellular organism …

This treasure trove of diverse and novel tyrosine kinases took the study’s lead author … by surprise since it was long thought that tyrosine kinases are restricted to multicellular animals where they handle communication between cells.

When the only paradigm by which the scientists are allowed to consider finds like this is the naturalistic paradigm, those who study them are constantly surprised — and they should be. Pure mechanistic processes cannot account for information rich systems like this one. While they cavalierly mention the ability of cells to “communicate with each other,” it is easy to forget the blatantly obvious mystery that goes with having purely physical systems which have obtained such an ability.

The naturalistic paradigm demands that first life was a simple, single-celled organism that later evolved to complex, multi-cellular organisms. But here we have a highly complex, single-celled organism that seems to be capable of assembling a sensor structure meant to handle complex, widespread communication issues. How so? A candid scientist weighs in on that question:

With all this new information, one obvious question remains unanswered: what is a single-celled organism doing with all this communications gear? “We don’t have a clue!”

At least they admit it. But what some cosmologists won’t admit is the incredible fine-tuning that had to go into the universe just to allow us to exist at all. This article, which just posted on Space.com, addresses why cosmologists keep being blown away by how unique the Earth actually is in its uncanny and unmatched ability to support and sustain complex life.

I don’t have the room of the time now to start listing all the factors that have to be “just right” to allow us to be here. But I would suggest two books that address these issues in eye-opening depth. The first is Rare Earth, by paleontologist Peter Ward and astronomer Donald Brownlee. The authors make the case that it is entirely possible that we are on the only complex life sustaining planet in the universe. And though they (rightly) offer no theological inferences in their book, one doesn’t have to use their imagination too much to see them.

Less trapped by their worldview, authors Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards, in their bestseller, Privileged Planet are not only comfortable with making such a claim to divine design of our home planet, they take it a step further. They make a strong case that the factors which allow us to be here also do double duty as factors that allow us the ability and viewpoint from which we can discover how unique we really are in the universe. The correlation will shock you — especially when you consider that there is no reason for it to be that way.

I would recommend either (preferably both) books for some enjoyable summer beach reading. The stars and galaxies you look up at on vacation this summer may awe you even more after having done so.

[Editor’s Note: This would also serve a dual, and not insignificant role, in diverting you from the temptation to pick a book from the Oprah’s Book Club List. Nothing intentional … I’m just sayin’]

Assertion: (3-4) “… atheists and agnostics are not organized and therefore exert almost zero influence. Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority.

Response: First, this is a self-serving assertion. Dawkins implies that those who reject atheism do so only because they are a mindless crowd that bows to the altar of religious authority in blind adherence to a faith they have not taken under serious intellectual consideration. Though this may be true of some, it does not hold for those who are happy to debate Dawkins on these issues. Dawkins refuses to engage those kinds of theists on the grounds that doing so would offer undeserved legitimacy to their nonsensical arguments. But if their arguments are so nonsensical, it would seem that Dawkins would be eager to embarrass them in debate. Surely this would serve to galvanize his atheist brethren into the organized group he seeks to form. His refusal to do so seems a bit hypocritical, especially while he touts his own ability to “think independently” over against the mindless, groupthink tendencies of those silly religious opponents.

Second, this is an almost comical assertion in the places where it counts — like the halls of academia or the scientific establishment. Yes, there are pockets of theistic sympathizers but if the atheistic (either in theory or in practice) core of academia shows us anything it is that it will not allow independent (i.e. non-naturalistic) thought a place at the table. Just ask those proponents of Intelligent Design who cannot be published, have been denied tenure, or have actually lost their jobs for bucking that system. In that milieu the only way to survive is to bow at the altar of either methodological or philosophical naturalism because that is where all authority is concentrated. No independent thinking allowed there.

The final Evolution as Mythology post is up (here). Please take the time to read it. This has been a fantastic series of articles by some serious experts and each is definitely worth taking the time to read. I will offer a quick summary here but that alone does not do this series of articles justice. This is the kind of information every serious Christian should have stored in the immediate access area of their brain. If you can remember nothing else, remember these three points:

Evolution is no different from any other myth

A myth may be true or false, but its principle characteristic is that it validates the thinking, practices, and ideals of a culture. Evolution explains our existence within the framework of our modern culture of naturalism, which has no need for a god. A myth cannot be proved, or disproved, with the technology of the culture; a myth requires faith.

In this case, it requires faith to buy into the unrepeatable requirement for abiogenesis, the elusive wishfulness that goes with panspermia (of any variety), or the baseless assertion of macro-Evolution is a “fact.” Like any other myth, Evolution requires the true believer to suspend disbelief in order to accept it.

Evolution is not falsifiable

… and therefore disqualifies itself as a scientific theory.

For a theory to be considered scientific, it must be possible to devise a controlled test such that a negative result proves the theory false. But no such test exists for evolution because it is based on unrepeatable, once-in-a-lifetime random occurrences that can therefore “explain” anything.

By definition, Evolution cannot predict future results and its theorists use circular reasoning to morph it into anything they need it to be. Want it to be gradualistic? Ignore the actual fossil evidence and demand that a vast majority of the fossil evidence must have been destroyed. Want it to attempt to explain the fossil evidence? Adopt punctuated equilibrium even if doing so requires Evolution to act exactly opposite the way the actual theory is proposed. Indeed, the only way the actual scientific evidence supports Evolution is if one assumes the theory is true before he/she evaluates the evidence in question.

View Evolution as a Religion

… some scientists are beginning to view Darwinism in the same way others view religion. After all, it has a prophet (Charles Darwin), a priesthood, and a secret body of knowledge. Science historian Marjorie Grene says, “It is as a religion of science that Darwinism chiefly held, and holds, men’s minds… . Darwinian theory has itself become an orthodoxy preached by its adherents with religious fervor, and doubted, they feel, only by a few muddlers imperfect in scientific faith.”

This is a point that we must hammer home again and again. While the “new atheists” and their ilk demean the religious faithful as an army of mind-numbed regurgitators of thoughtless dogma; they are in fact, practicing the same kind of religion under a different name. It is ironic that those who doubt Darwinism are the only ones who seem capable of engaging their minds enough to recognize its flaws.

Many scientists rightly tire of arguing with thoughtless Christians who reject science as a godless enterprise in which the “Pure In Faith” have no reason to engage. It is a sad truth that too many Christians choose that view. But for those who have no fear of any aspect of God’s revelation to man, science is an exciting looking glass that lets us peer into the order and intricacy of the Creator’s beautiful mind. It reveals his character and the depth of love he must have for us to create so elaborate a place for us to live and discover him. There is no justification for avoiding a discovery like that. We kid ourselves if we deny it; just as the Evolutionists kid themselves in constructing the elaborate myth they need to remove the Creator from view.

Evolution may be man-made myth. But, as C. S. Lewis said, Christianity is the myth come true.

Faith Is Not Thoughtless
Assertion: Dawkins offers into evidence (The God Delusion, pp.16-17) further proof of his assertion that the faithful are unthinking by quoting a letter written to Albert Einstein by the president of a historical society in New Jersey that “so damningly exposes the weakness of the religious mind, it is worth reading twice:”

Response: I fully agree with Dawkins’ critique of the letter in question! When the writer claims that “everyone knows religion is based on Faith, not knowledge,” then goes on to describe how he never admits his religious doubts for fear of “…disturb[ing] and damag[ing] the life and hopes of some fellow human being…,” I am on Dawkins’ side when he says that the letter “drips with intellectual and moral cowardice”(17). It does. The letter writer admits that he is not pursuing the truth. He is pursuing a self-serving piousness that I also believe is intellectually and morally bankrupt. Although the letter writer may represent a large portion of the faith community, he does not represent those who vehemently deny that religion is based on blind faith and not on knowledge.

He does not represent me.

Though the letter writer rolls over and plays dead regarding the reality of the epistemological basis for faith, I do not. He does not represent those who believe that faith is a trust that can comes from knowledge based on evidence. Once again, Mr. Dawkins is cherry-picking his opponents. Doing so relegates him to the same intellectually and morally vacuous position as those he so condescendingly condemns.

Deciphering Dawkins 

As promised earlier, this is the first (of many) rebuttals to the so-called “New Atheists.” I will try to keep them short and sweet, citing a quote or argument from their book(s), complete with a page number for reference. I will then attempt a response. Your comments are welcome …

Assertion: (The God Delusion, p. 4) “…delusion [is] ‘a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence, especially as a symptom of psychiatric disorder’. The first part [of this definition] captures faith perfectly. As to whether it is a symptom of a psychiatric disorder, I am inclined to follow Robert M. Pirsig … when he said, ‘When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.’ … Of course, dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument.”

Response: On what basis does Mr. Dawkins separate himself from the possibility of being likewise deluded? Yes, there are people for whom faith is a blindly accepted belief devoid of the need for evidence. Likewise, there are atheists, apparently like Mr. Dawkins, who fully admit that they could never be convinced of the existence of God, regardless of evidence produced to the contrary. Is it too much to ask that, instead of mischaracterizing the position of his opponents, Mr. Dawkins would instead engage the arguments of those who do not accept their faith blindly? Can Mr. Dawkins offer an example of what amount of evidence it would take to convince him to change his belief? Some like him claim that no amount of evidence would convince them — proving that their atheism is not intellectually based, but rather volitionally or emotionally based.

I would also offer that many who profess atheism could likewise be accused of suffering from a psychological disorder stemming from the absence or abuse of the father figure in their lives (see: Vitz, Faith of the Fatherless). If it is acceptable to see religion as a compensatory psychological disorder, fair play would demand that atheism should also be subjected to the same test.

To piggyback off this post, I have decided to start a series of short responses to the claims of the so-called “New Atheists.” Interestingly, the story I cited (here) about the impact of the September 11th attacks on the faith of some is directly related to a phenomenon that literally sprung to life on 9/12/2001 — the aggressive attack by these new atheists on the concept of God and the legitimacy of religion. Case in point:

… 9/11 seems to belie the notion of an all-loving, all-powerful God. Sam Harris began writing The End of Faith, his best-selling attack on religion, the day after the attacks.

Jonathan Miller, who wrote and narrated a 2004 BBC series on atheism, says that given the hijackers’ militant Islamist theology, 9/11 would have been “inconceivable without religion.”

Harris later wrote a Letter To A Christian Nation — a stinging diatribe about the danger that religion of any kind, but Christianity in particular, poses toward civil society. During the years that have followed we have been treated to several books that take up the banner of atheism with a renewed vigor and a take-no-prisoners attitude.

Christopher Hitchens weighed in with his God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. For a fascinating review of that book go (here) and read what Hitchens’ brother Peter has to say about some of the claims he makes and the source of the scathing attitude Christopher brings to the debate. Hitchens is a hard core atheist who “hates God.” This is not my assessment of his view. It is something he is comfortable proclaiming for himself. It is his belief that religion is the source of most of the problems we have in this world.

Finally, there is Richard Dawkins, a zoologist and evolutionary biologist who turned from a deep religious belief in his youth to become Darwinism’s (and atheism’s) most vocal proponent. His book, The God Delusion, spent many weeks on the NY Times bestseller list and was instrumental in his being sought out as an interviewee in the Intelligent Design movement’s new documentary film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Some of his answers in that film are shocking to hear — especially when you consider them in contrast to his arguments against intelligent design.

These are not the only atheists who have jumped on the anti-God bandwagon but they are the most popular. Each of them is intelligent, clever, and unapologetic in their disgust for religious ideas. Both Hitchens and Dawkins are arrogantly antagonistic in the way they approach the subject. Hitchens in particular is nasty in debates and frequently resorts to profanity and/or sarcasm to belittle his opponents. Dawkins won’t debate anyone from the ID or Creationist camps (which, in his mind, constitute one-in-the-same thing) because he believes that doing so would lend them credibility they in no way deserve.

Last summer I made it my mission to read each of their books. What struck me as I did so was the utter vacuousness of some of the arguments these guys use. It amazed me how people who are so highly educated and intelligent can be so lacking in their assessments of, and arguments against, spiritual issues. I think this fact shows that their opposition to religious ideas is not as rooted in intellectualism as they would like to believe. Instead it betrays their real problems with religion and God as being volitional and emotional.

With that as a backdrop I intend to begin a regular series of short rebuttals to some of the arguments they pose in their books. I plan to keep these short (as best I can) and to the point. Hopefully these will help offer quick rebuttals to those who may be using the same arguments against you.

[Note: For a lively, in-depth discussion of the so-called “New Atheists” that you can listen to as you drive to work, I suggest Greg Koukl’s, “The New Atheists: Old Arguments, New Attitude.” You can order it from him here.]

Though you may not have known it, and though you will be chastised for saying it, feel free to go here to find out about the myth that Evolution is a scientific theory. It’s not. As Henry, Dyke and Cruze point out …

Science is usually defined by a process called the scientific method. Typically, this includes an observation about a natural phenomenon, a hypothesis formulated to explain it, and a test performed via a controlled experiment. If the test results are not as expected, the hypothesis may be revised and retested (feedback).

The problem(s) with Evolution as a scientific theory is that it is not predictive or falsifiable, at least in the sense that other scientific theories are. Science is the study of natural causes and effects. In other words, the only reason science works is because we observe phenomena, decipher how they occurred, and then, based on those observations, make predictions about how phenomena we observed should operate in the future. If we are correct, the phenomenon we are considering should be repeatable. If not, the theory can be falsified. But, as …

Information theorist Mark Ludwig elaborates, “Darwin’s hypothesis … has the character of unfalsifiable philosophy: it can explain anything and predicts practically nothing… . Darwinism … requires belief… . It has become the scientist’s paradigm, and he is rarely able to admit that it is fragile and charged with philosophy.”

This is because Darwinism, by definition, is built on unpredictable randomness (as opposed to the predictable randomness of something like radioactive decay). In short, Unhindered by the predictability that defines other scientific endeavors, Evolutionists can explain everything they see after the fact, but not before.

“If an animal evolves one way, biologists have a perfectly good explanation; but if it evolves some other way, they have an equally good explanation… . The theory is not … a predictive theory as to what must happen.”

Evolution is a form of mythology based on a level of unwarranted belief that must be in place before the data is analyzed. It is only after the fact that the theory is seen to be at work. The data is fit to the theory instead of the other way around — and that is not the way real science is done.

I saw Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed this past week and, since several friends have asked what I thought of the movie, I decided I would weigh in briefly.

This is a controversial film, no doubt. It’s aim is to expose the blatant bias that exists within the academic and scientific communities against the very idea that someone would suggest there is evidence of design in the universe in general, or in the realm of biological life in particular. Those who have even expressed openness to these ideas have paid a heavy price by being ostracized, denied tenure, and even fired from their jobs for doing so.

Obviously I agree with the claims of ID and have tried to defend them many times here. It is also undeniable that the scientific community has, in some specific cases, mistreated those who subscribe to this notion. There is not a single assertion in the movie that I think is false or even exaggerated. But for me there are two issues at play here: (Read on …)