Is God Just a Human Invention? And Seventeen Other Questions Raised by the New Atheists

by Sean McDowell

Let’s consider two key problems for Hume’s position.

First, Hume speaks of the “uniform” experience against miracles. But such a way of thinking is g...

Now of course we must agree with Hume that if there is absolutely “uniform experience” against miracles, if in other words they have never happened, why then they never have. Unfortunately we know the experience against them to be uniform only if we know that all the reports of them are false. And we can know all the reports to be false only if we know already that miracles have never occurred. In fact, we are arguing in a circle.

Second, Hume’s critique of miracles says we should never believe the improbable.

Hume’s “In Fact” Objection Hume gives four “facts” which he believes discount the rationality of believing in a miracle.

later.*

“Did Early Christianity Borrow from Pagan Mythology?”

while naturalism challenges resurrection, so too resurrection challenges naturalism.

Some of the world’s greatest intellectuals and people from all walks of life have testified to the strength of the case for Jesus’ resurrection, including novelist Anne Rice (who has sold over 100 million books worldwide), lawyer Simon Greenleaf (one of the greatest authorities on legal procedure), professor Thomas Arnold (former chair of modern history at Oxford University), and magician Andre Kole (one of the greatest illusionists of our time). They all examined the evidence closely and came to the same conclusion—Jesus rose from the grave.

The death of Jesus is on such solid historical ground that John Dominic Crossan, the liberal Jesus Seminar scholar says, “Jesus’ death by execution under Pontius Pilate is as sure as anything historical can ever be.”

Since the inception of the list, more than eight hundred PhD-holding scientists from institutions such as MIT, Cambridge, Princeton, and UCLA have made their dissent known. Many world-class scientists doubt Darwin’s evolutionary theory—and for good reason.

design (ID).*

A majority of Americans now reject Darwin’s theory in favor of intelligent design. In a 2009 Zogby poll, 52 percent agreed that “the development of life was guided by intelligent design.” “In Darwin Anniversary Year, New Zogby Poll Reveals Majority Support for Intelligent Design,” June 30, 2009, available at www.evolutionnews.org/2009/06/in_darwin_anniversary_year_new.html.

Surprisingly, many evolutionists admit that the world looks designed.

Darwinists have proposed various explanations for how this little motor came about. All such explanations try to make plausible how systems simpler than the flagellum might have evolved into a flagellum. But systems simpler than a flagellum don’t work as a flagellum, so if they evolved into a flagellum, they must have started off doing something else. But what?

Let’s look closely at a few of the most common evidences the New Atheists offer in support of evolution.

Claiming that HIV or bacterial mutations provide evidence for macroevolution is a leap of faith far beyond the available evidence.

We agree that homology makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. But here’s the catch: it also makes sense from the perspective of design.

the biogeographic distribution of species is not the result of new biological information appearing in a particular species, which is what macroevolution requires, but the shuffling or elimination of preexisting genetic information.

While Darwin’s theory can explain minor biological adaptations within existing organisms, it cannot explain how mockingbirds—or any other organism—first appeared. In other words, evolution can explain the survival of the fittest, but not the arrival.

Living systems bear unmistakable signs of design, even if such design is, or appears to be, imperfect. Product designers and engineers know that perfect design does not exist.

But as it turns out, numerous examples have been found in which pseudogenes provide an important function in the cell.

Of equal concern, however, is that evolution has become more than a scientific theory—it has become the prime justification for the naturalistic worldview.

He aimed to reduce every aspect of human behavior—whether relationships, art, morality, language, or religion—to its animal origins.

Darwinism leaves no room—anywhere—for a higher intelligence or purpose. In fact, intelligence is the by-product of evolution, not the guiding force that produced it.

“I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition.”23 After considering evidence for design in the cosmos and in biological organisms, Jefferson concluded, “It is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion.”24 Jefferson based his convictions on the empirical evidence of nature, not on religious authority.

Stephen Meyer explains how significant this finding was for Jefferson’s view of human rights: The “ultimate cause” and “fabricator of all things” that Jefferson invoked was also responsible for the “design” of life’s endlessly diverse forms as well as the manifestly special endowments of human beings. Moreover, because the evidence of “Nature’s God” was publicly accessible to all and did not depend upon a special appeal to religious authority, Jefferson believed that it provided a basis in reason for the protection of individual liberty. Thus, the Declaration of Independence asserted that humans are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.”25

Even with the state of knowledge back then, it quickly became clear to me that material forces such as natural selection had limited creative power and could not adequately account for the complexity and diversity of life.

The sense that unintelligent evolution can’t work and that intelligent design is an indispensable requirement for life has served as a ballast in my Christian walk,

does the big bang undermine or support the biblical doctrine of creation?

‘Who made God?’”13 While rhetorically powerful, this objection misses the point of the argument. The claim is not that everything has a cause. Rather, everything that begins to exist has a cause.

If God was caused by something else, then that thing would also need a cause, and we would have an infinite regress without a beginning. Yet if there was no beginning, then nothing could exist. The regression only stops with something that is self-existing. This thing cannot be physical because physical matter itself began to exist. A supernatural being is the best explanation of the first cause.

If matter began to exist at the moment of creation, then the matter’s cause must be nonphysical, or spiritual. Since space itself came into existence at the big bang, space’s cause must be spaceless. Since time began at the moment of the big bang, time’s cause must be timeless. Since change is a product of time, time’s cause must also be changeless. Given the immensity of energy and matter that comprises the universe, energy and matter’s cause must be unimaginably powerful.

Paul Draper is an agnostic philosopher who has thought deeply about the kalam argument. While he admits that this argument doesn’t get all the way to the Christian God, he recognizes that accepting its conclusions does require the rejection of naturalism.17 The kalam argument leads to accepting a supernatural cause of the universe, and naturalism rejects anything outside the natural world.

In God and the Astronomers, agnostic astronomer Robert Jastrow considers whether the big bang points toward a cosmic designer. He closed his book with these famous words, which also seem fitting for the conclusion of this chapter: “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 mountains 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.”18

evidence embedded in the cosmological argument tells us that the Creator is more than just some “Higher Power.”

Realizing that I owe my existence to God, the Creator of the universe, I must take seriously the possibility that God is part of my world, and hence part of my life—regardless of what I may think or prefer.

Chance can explain certain events in the universe. It can explain an occasional lucky roll in Vegas. But can chance explain a hand of four aces at every deal in a poker game? Clearly not. What about deeply improbable events in the universe such as the origin of life?

As Harvard biologist Andy Knoll said, “We don’t know how life started on this planet. We don’t know exactly when it started, we don’t know under what circumstances.”

Skeptics often like to claim that as science progresses the gaps of scientific knowledge diminish. But this is incorrect. The more we learn about the universe, the wider the “gaps” often become. This is particularly true in the study of the origin of life. The more we have learned about the nature of life, the greater the problem of its origin has become.

As we will see, the complexity of even the simplest cell not only poses an unbelievably difficult hurdle for atheism, but it points strongly toward the existence of an immaterial Mind.

TECHNOLOGY AND INFORMATION IN THE CELL

According to geneticist Michael Denton, even the smallest bacterial cell, which weighs less than a trillionth of a gram, is “a veritable microminiaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of 100 thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world.”

Nearly every feature of our own advanced technology can be found in the cell.

Richard Dawkins writes, “Apart from differences in jargon, the pages of a molecular-biology journal might be interchanged with those of a computer-engineering journal.”

With the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, scientists learned that information is basic to life.

In a single cell, the DNA contains the informational equivalent of roughly eight thousand books.

But DNA does not just store information. In combination with other cellular systems, it also processes information. Hence Bill Gates likens DNA to a computer program, though far more advanced than any software humans have invented.

This is why Arizona State University physicist Paul Davies says, “Life is more than just complex chemical reactions. The cell is also an information storing, processing and replicating system. We need to explain the origin of this information, and the way in which the information processing machinery came to exist.”12

COULD LIFE HAVE BEGUN BY CHANCE?