The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God (Case for ... Series)
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people have to choose between science and faith, between evolution and the Bible,
Stephen Self
Only because of an unwarranted literalistic exegesis
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That you can interpret the Bible any way you darn well please,
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And God has told us how to live. If we ignore him — well, then the whole world’s in for a whole lot of trouble.”
Stephen Self
Actually Jesus assures us of trouble if we DO follow him
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when relativism and situational ethics were starting to create a quicksand of morality,
Stephen Self
Second mention of situation ethics
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if the origin of life can be explained solely through natural processes, then God was out of a job! After all, there was no need for a deity if living organisms could emerge by themselves out of the primordial soup
Stephen Self
But God is at work in natural processes. Nature is not God's rival
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fish were transformed into amphibians, amphibians into reptiles, and reptiles into birds and mammals,
Stephen Self
Nope. "Transformed into" is Lamarckian evolution
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was thoroughly convinced that Darwin had explained away any need for God.
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Not everyone, however, believes that Darwinian evolutionary theory and God are incompatible. There are some scientists and theologians who see no conflict between believing in the doctrines of Darwin and the doctrines of Christianity.
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environmental necessity, not God, made the species.”
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“All scientific knowledge,” said no less an authority than the National Academy of Sciences, “is, in principle, subject to change as new evidence becomes available.”
Stephen Self
Einstein's "tyranny of facts"
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Neo-Darwinism claims these modifications are the result of natural selection acting on random genetic mutations.”
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“Science, you might say, has discovered that our existence is infinitely improbable, and hence a miracle.”
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“Berra’s Blunder?” I asked. “What’s that?” “Phillip Johnson coined that term based on a book that was written by a biologist named Tim Berra in 1990. Berra compared the fossil record to a series of automobile models,
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“Far from demonstrating his point, the illustration shows that a designer could have been involved,” Wells said. “These successive models of the Corvette are based on plans drawn up by engineers, so there’s intelligence at work to guide and implement the process.
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neither the developmental pathway explanation nor the similar gene explanation really accounts for homology.”
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The important point is that similarity by itself doesn’t distinguish between design and Darwinism.”
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while the rocks have continually yielded new and exciting and even bizarre forms of life . . . what they have never yielded is any of Darwin’s myriads of transitional forms.
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If fully naturalistic models are correct, then theism becomes an unnecessary hypothesis.
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“To make NOMA work, its advocates have to water down science or faith, or both.
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NOMA says religion must confine its claims to matters of morality and values. But the Bible clearly portrays Jesus’ appearances as being actual historical events. Christianity hinges on the conviction that they really occurred.
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Now, there might be some religions that can fit comfortably with NOMA. But biblical Christianity — because it’s built not just on faith, but on facts — simply cannot.”
Stephen Self
Seems to confuse the substance and interpretation
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“You can invoke neither time nor space nor matter nor energy nor the laws of nature to explain the origin of the universe. General relativity points to the need for a cause that transcends those domains.
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Taken together, the Big Bang and general relativity provide a scientific description of what Christians call creatio ex nihilo —
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we’re made in God’s image. “We have the capacity for self-reflection, for representational art, for language, for creativity.
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“The cause of the universe must transcend matter, space, and time, which were brought into existence with the Big Bang. The Judeo-Christian God has precisely this attribute of transcendence.
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“The fine-tuning of the physical laws and constants of the universe and the precise configuration of its initial conditions, dating back to the very origin of the universe itself, suggest the need for a cause that’s intelligent. Theism affirms the existence of an entity that’s not only transcendent but intelligent as well
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a topic called “disteleology,” which refers to apparent poor design in the biological and physical world.
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We never see things coming into being uncaused out of nothing. Nobody worries that while he’s away at work, say, a horse might pop into being, uncaused, out of nothing, in his living room, and be there defiling the carpet. We don’t worry about those kinds of things, because they never happen.
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If quantum physical laws operate within the domain described by quantum physics, you can’t legitimately use quantum physics to explain the origin of that domain itself. You need something transcendent that’s beyond that domain in order to explain how the entire domain came into being.
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the idea of an actual infinity is just conceptual; it exists only in our minds. Working within certain rules, mathematicians can deal with infinite quantities and infinite numbers in the conceptual realm. However—and here’s the point — it’s not descriptive of what can happen in the real world.”
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“Even atheist Kai Nielsen said, ‘Suppose you suddenly hear a loud bang . . . and you ask me, “What made that bang?” and I reply, “Nothing, it just happened.” You would not accept that.’
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They don’t see how you can say the Creator could be ‘uncaused.’ For instance, atheist George Smith says, ‘If everything must have a cause, how did god become exempt?’
Stephen Self
Because God is causality itself, or rather the power of causality
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“What’s Ockham’s razor?” “It’s a scientific principle that says we should not multiply causes beyond what’s necessary to explain the effect. Since one Creator is sufficient to explain the effect, you would be unwarranted in going beyond the evidence to posit a plurality.”
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there cannot be a scientific explanation of the first state of the universe. Since it’s the first state, it simply cannot be explained in terms of earlier initial conditions and natural laws leading up to it. So if there is an explanation of the first state of the universe, it has to be a personal explanation —that is, an agent who has volition to create it.
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“How do you explain, then, the origin of a finite universe from a timeless cause? I can only think of one explanation: that the cause of the universe is a personal agent who has freedom of will. He can create a new effect without any antecedent determining conditions.
Stephen Self
That is true libertarian free will
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every effect must have its cause; there is no First Cause. . . . This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover.
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When actress Shirley MacLaine asked Hawking whether he believes God created the universe, he replied simply, “No.”41 He told the BBC: “We are such insignificant creatures on a minor planet of a very average star in the outer suburbs of one of a hundred thousand million galaxies. So it is difficult to believe in a God that would care about us or even notice our existence.”
Stephen Self
God.specializes in noticing those least likely to be noticed
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Let us just explain how you can receive Christ as your personal savior.’ We described how she could pray to ask God to forgive her wrongdoing and to receive Jesus as her forgiver and leader.
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if ours is the only universe —and there are no scientific data proving any others exist — then the fine tuning is “genuine evidence . . . that God is real.”
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Twelve dials, twelve different factors — all optimally set for life.
Stephen Self
But the universe isn't optimally biophilic
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To modify a phrase from philosopher Fred Dretske: these are inflationary times, and the cost of atheism has just gone up.”
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“In physics, we see an uncanny degree of harmony, symmetry, and proportionality. And we see something that I call ‘discoverability.’ By that, I mean that the laws of nature seem to have been carefully arranged so that they can be discovered by beings with our level of intelligence.
Stephen Self
This is like Ratzinger's argument for God from intelligibility
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‘sometimes nature seems more beautiful than strictly necessary.’
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Think of the classical conception of God —he is the greatest possible being, and therefore a being with perfect aesthetic sensibility.
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The “coincidences” that allow the fundamental properties of matter to yield a habitable environment are so improbable, so far-fetched, so elegantly orchestrated, that they require a divine explanation. In other words, the momentary abrogation of the laws of nature in a sudden, visible, and direct way — what we usually call a “miracle” — obviously points toward an all-powerful deity.
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the Drake Equation, an attempt by astronomer Frank Drake to quantify the number of civilizations that might exist in our galaxy.
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“What if it is utterly unique: the only planet with animals in this galaxy or even in the visible universe . . . ?”12 Their book, Rare Earth, marshals evidence from a wide range of scientific disciplines to build its case that “not only intelligent life, but even the simplest of animal life, is exceedingly rare in our galaxy and in the universe.”
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we raise the question of whether the universe has been literally designed for discovery.”
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carbon, which serves as the core atom of the information-carrying structural molecules of life.
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Earth’s orbit is almost a perfect circle.
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