Cumulative Case: Universe Level, Galaxy Level, Solar System Level, & Planetary Level
We have been looking at our worldview, one puzzle piece at a time. Today we will be talking about Science and the Bible. Specifically we are going to talk about evolution or naturalism in general today. Which worldview is most logical and reasonable. Naturalism or Christianity. Science and the Bible.
We have talked about worldviews before. There are six most prevalent worldviews: Pantheism, Existentialism, Nihilism, Monotheism, Naturalism and Deism. We discussed how Pantheism, Existentialism, Nihilism don’t really answer the big questions in ways that are livable. Deism while understanding there is a God falls very short when addressing these big questions as well. So that leaves us with the two primary worldviews in the world today. Naturalism and Monotheism.
This reduces our discussion to four worldviews. Naturalism and the three dominate monotheisms: Judaism, Islamic, and Christian. But we have already addressed the monotheistic issues in previous session which are plainly Jesus is either a liar, lunatic or Lord. Since the evidence for the resurrection is pretty convincing, He is Lord. We will stick with the Christian worldview for today’s discussion.
So here we are. The battle of our times is Christianity or Christian worldview versus Naturalism or Evolution or Materialism or Atheistic Worldview.
What we want to do today is look at the evidence and use our logic and reasoning skills. We are going to use Science and the Scientific Method, to judge which worldview provides the more likely answer and which takes more blind faith to believe. This should be a lot of fun.
I am going to use the scale of perspective we used for our design argument for God, that is the teleological argument for God. I want to see which worldview works best at each level of existence. From the Universe level, galaxy level, our solar system level, our planet earth, Life and even sub-atomics scale.
Before we start I want to address something you will hear a lot. This is the classic “god of the gaps” accusation that you hear people throw at Christians. “You just use God as a crutch to explain all the things you don’t understand.” “Just like those ignorant ancient people did before our modern technologies and knowledge that is.”
First, ancient people were not dumb. There are ancient technologies and knowledge that we do not possess today. Despite our so called technological advances. One example is an ancient form of iron that does not rust. We cannot reproduce it. Not even with our modern technologies and knowledge. So don’t fall for this false statement. This is used to shut us up. It is not an argument, it is rather a sound bite. The naturalist uses “time of the gaps” arguments routinely in their hypotheses. Have you ever noticed that time is the universal solution for all things a naturalist don’t understand. Or you might also hear “randomness of the gaps” arguments. If you have enough random processes and enough time then anything is possible. Does this really work? Has any Scientist ever observed this in a lab or in the environment or in the universe. No, No, and resounding No. What we need to ask is Why? Why do they think this?
Here is a simple experiment or object lesson we can call Sticks and Stones. So, what about randomness and time. Here is a bunch of sticks and an avocado. If you don’t know, the pit of an avocado is called a stone. The avocado pit or stone can be used to make a rudimentary ink. So, Okay, if I toss them up in the air over and over again would the disorder become a book. Even if the book was one I wrote. How long would it take the avocado and sticks to form paper and ink? Are there any random processes which could do this, even with infinite time. It would still be impossible because we all know time is the enemy. These things decay. In the world object naturally go from order to disorder, complex to less complex. We know this. We can observe this in our world all the time. Never the opposite, unless a living organism acts on it. Okay, I know the Naturalist will protest, this is not what evolution is at all.
So, okay what about something simpler. If I spread-out the paper and then toss the ink into the air can it ever form any of the words in this book. We might find marks that resemble a letter or two, but we cannot imagine that it would ever randomly form a sentence or even a simple word with more than two letters. In math terms it is impossible, or simply not plausible. The probability of this is 0. To believe this would take a lot of faith. Blind faith, since nothing like this has ever been observed and there is no evidence it is possible. Oh, and time is not on our side. The ink will go bad. The paper with decompose. and if the conditions are not kept perfect both the ink and paper will degrade even faster. This is exactly like chemistry, time is not of any help nor is randomness. Chemistry needs order, control.
What if we make it even simpler. Will a bunch of sticks ever become a piece of paper? The answer is no. Now I can make paper from these sticks. I chop them up, then make a slurry with water. After that I collect the cellulose from the sticks on a screen, dry it, and press it with a little heat from a iron. Boom I have paper. It’s not great paper, but it is paper. This is only a physical change, yet nature cannot and will not ever produce paper from these sticks. Why? No amount of time or randomness will produce design.
So, who needs more faith. God of the gaps or these others. There is no evidence for time of the gaps or randomness of the gaps, but there is evidence for God.
So, they will use this to shutdown conversation, but don’t let them. Our worldview is evidence based; their worldview is desire based. They desire there is no God, so they ignore the evidence and blindly believe in their godless religion.
Now let’s look at the Universe. Go to space.com and watch any of the Hubble or JamesWebb spacce telescope videos. As you watch these just take it the vastness and complexity of the universe. So many stars and galaxies. That is beautiful. Notice how as they zoom in the images stay clear and sharp. It is stunning. There are distant galaxies which can be seen so clearly. They are not fuzzy in the images. That is amazing. Well Scientist are amazed as well. All of our standard theories are failing. Einstein’s relativity, quantum mechanics, light speed and refraction theories are not holding up to the observed reality of the universe.
For instance, you can see all the colors (colors represent different wavelengths not real colors). The colors are mostly due to direction of movement, red and blues together are very difficult to explain with our modern science. And the most remarkable thing is the light itself. As the JamesWebb zooms into outer space further and further, it is not what science predicts. Too many galaxies and they are so orderly. And the most astonishing part is the images of the far off galaxies are sharp and clear, not blurry and non-descript. They appear tight and small instead of diffused light over the vastness of space. How is this possible? I say God has a sense of humor. The deeper we look, the more we understand we don’t know. We don’t have a clue. Forget the multiverse, we can’t even comprehend our universe.
At the universe scale, materialism has no clue. The complexity and diversity is not what would be expected. And there are anomalies that don’t seem to belong. You may hear things like dark-matter, virtual quantum particles and string theories. None of this has any evidence. It cannot be observed and tested, so it’s not science. Science-fiction maybe. Strong faith and belief, no doubt. Religion, well you be the judge. But at least at the universe scale, their beliefs seem less evidential than our Christian world view. A creator of the created. A designer for the beautiful, complex, and systematic, rather that randomness and chance.
If you refuse to entertain a creator, then you are forced into the “I don’t know” group. Materialists have to admit they have no evidence for their worldview, only blind faith and fervent belief that God is not an option. Yet God is the only evidential conclusion.
Let’s look closer. The galaxy scale.
Now we spoke about this before. Galaxies are amazing and complex, and not at all what we would expect. Why more than one kind of galaxy? Why not infinite kinds of galaxies?
Why is there a “goldilocks” inhabitable zone. Why? A designer is why. There is no reason other than life on earth requires it. Why is there only one kind of life? We can guess, wish and wonder. But, the only evidence based theory is God. The other worldviews are not observable or testable. It takes a lot of faith to believe the naturalist worldview at the galaxy scale. Again, high level of design typically means high level of intelligence of the designer. Beauty, complexity, systematic, finely designed from random, mindless processes. Now that takes more faith than I have.
What about the solar system scale. Now it starts to get more observable. Surely the Naturalistic view will do better. I would not hold your breath. There is a habitable zone. Some try to extend it to Mars but clearly, life as we know it is only possible here on earth.
The solar system is perfectly designed for us. We have the galactic vacuum cleaners or gas giant planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus. The two asteroid belts which are effectively shielding the earth from cosmic junk. It is amazing. And remember earth very small in terms of the solar system scale. But perfectly placed.
When you look a a artist depiction of our solar system it is composed of more than just planets, moons, dwarf planets, and asteroids. We also have comets.
Probably the most famous comet is Halley’s Comet. It is a very well known fact that comets have tails. These visible tails are gases and other material being lost to space as the comet approaches the sun. Think about it for a moment. Every time Hally’s Comet approaches the sun it loses the material it is made of. The rates can be 50 metric tons per second. For months and months. Every orbit. So let me ask you, why are comet’s still visible if the solar system was formed billions of years ago. It is crickets from the naturalists on this one. If billions of years was true, then there should be no comets.
This is a problem for the naturalists. Some say comets only formed in the recent past. Why? “Crickets”… just silence from the naturalist.
Some say comets are constantly forming. But it is neither observed nor testable, since there is no evidence of this. And in fact you would expect the phenomenon would actually replenish existing comets but it does not instead comets fade in brightness and size with every orbit. This is simply what we observe, that is the science.
The most mainstream concept that is tossed around out there is a “comet birthing” location somewhere out there. Of course, this is neither observed or is it testable. Let me think we can peer into the vastness of our galaxy and beyond with space telescopes but this has not been seen. Sounds like this theory fails the testable and observable basis for science. I’ll call this atheist wishful science-fiction. Which by the way is not science at all. It is a failed theory which takes blind faith to believe in their godless religion of naturalism.
Let me back up just a little bit for a moment. Remember this pictures for the space telescopes Hubble and JamesWebb. The vastness of space and all the stars and galaxies. Our sun’s life is estimated to be 10 billion years with a remaining 5 billion or so to go. But the universe is said to be 100’s of billions of years old or more. How is that possible? Why do we still have stars. Shouldn’t they burn out. Shouldn’t they have all burned out long ago. Well there are some very imaginative theories. We have observed supernovas which are the destruction of a star but no evidence of star formation has been observed. We have imagined the mechanism but neither observed nor tested it. So, these theories are not supported by the scientific method. Some have proposed a star birthing location, just like the comet birthing. I have to agree. I do believe that there is a source that has birthed everything. In fact, spoke it into existence. That of course is God.
So, which takes more faith to believe, unknown unintelligent random mysterious forces randomly birthing stars and comets, or there is a creator who designs and creates.
Okay let’s get closer to home. Earth. The planetary level of earth is complicated for a naturalist because it is assumed.
They need nature to have naturalism. Material to be a materialist. Without something there is no evolution. The earth is perfect for our specific kind of life. The only kind of life we know of. The only observable and testable life. Why is there only one kind of life, if naturalism is true. I’m not talking about species. I’m talking about types of life. Why only carbon, water based life? The naturalist is “crickets”, total silence.
This is the end of How to Defend your Faith Session 11 (Part 1 of 5) : Science & the Bible (Naturalism vs. Christianity)
