-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
For those not familiar with William Lane Craig (WLC), he is a Christian apologist and a Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. He debates atheists and he usually wins. He doesn’t win on the merits of his arguments but he is a skilled debater, while his opponents are not.
Natural selection must also be incorrect then. Hmmmm, does the medical community know that the concern over antibiotic resistant bacteria is baseless? Will they start handing out antibiotics like candy again when they do?
Tootie:
I assume you mean: evolution, as postulated by Darwin, isn’t true.
Common descent is a scientific fact. Multiple, independent sources of data support common descent through consilience. There can be no accommodation between science and religion. In the final analysis, there will always be some conflicting, irresolvable concepts.
“Of course, evolution, as Darwin suggested, isn’t true.”
ROFLMAO
Yeah. That’s why he wrote a book outlining the process of natural selection and the foundation of evolutionary biology called “On the Origin of Species”.
Tootie, you only think you like science.
Science doesn’t say there needs to be a creator, nor is there any sign of a personal God in the world about us. It’s fascinating and awe-inspiring, and even terrifying in its immensity.
Take the size of the visible universe. These are figures as known according to the state of astronomical instruments at present:
170,000,000,000 galaxies (1.7E11)
Typical galaxy size: 1,000 to 100,000 parsecs (1E3 – 1E5)
Typical distance between galaxies: of the order of millions of parsecs.
A parsec is the distance at which the orbit of the earth around the sun from equinox to equinox subtends an angle of one second of arc (1/360th of a degree, or 1/2000th of the width of the moon as seen from the equator).
Contents of a galaxy: from 10,000,000 stars to 100,000,000,000,000 stars (1E7 – 1E14).
We’re beginning to find that planets are quite common, although we’ve only very recently begun to discover planets like Earth because their effects on their stars can only be detected by the most sensitive equipment.
Now the people of the ancient world, who wrote the bible, were not stupid, but they lacked our equipment and our centuries of observations and careful checking.
So they didn’t know that stars are suns. They also observed nebulae (cloudy, fuzzy regions of the night sky, some of which are galaxies) but didn’t appreciate what they are.
Observing the sun, the moon and the planets, the ancients generally failed to appreciate their size and distance. Lacking knowledge of gravity they didn’t know what held the stars and planets in place and usually envisioned an arrangement of crystal spheres.
That is pretty much the universe as described in Genesis. It is a universe built with earth at its center, and with humans as the pinnacle of creation.
In reality Earth is an insignificant ball of rock and liquid water orbiting a humdrum star, one of 100s of billions in the backwaters of a medium sized galaxy out of billions.
Humans, it’s pretty clear, aren’t the pinnacle of creation. This is the planet of the bacteria which ruled the world before plants, animals fungi and whatnot involved and will still rule the world after the last multiple-celled life form is extinct.
In fact humans are quite new even among the animals. There is fossil evidence of animal life going back more than 500 million years, and the first human-like primates only emerged in the past 5 or 10 million years. Modern humans are even newer, and we’re only the survivors of a larger family of hominids; the others are extinct. We’ll probably become extinct too, it’s the way of life. Animals will continue to evolve but the hominid line may well die out completely.
Now you may be able to square this with the bible, but I don’t think I could do so without acknowledging that the bible got it wrong because the people who wrote it didn’t know what we do.
The thing about someone like William Lane Craig (if you watch the whole 7+ mins of the vid) is that no matter how well dressed it is, no matter how much philosophical gloss you put on it, it always comes back to the same thing; I know I’m right because I know I’m right and that means my ghod is the real one. It’s all about “me”. How vain.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQZmCJUSC6g&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]
NAL:
Yes, you have it correct, that would rightly be the logic of it if evolution were true.
Of course, evolution, as Darwin suggested, isn’t true.
Tootie,
If evolution, i.e. common descent, is true, then:
1) No Adam & Eve
2) No Adam & Eve, no original sin
3) No original sin, no need for atonement through Jesus’ death.
Tony;
I’m not out to prove anything in the bible is scienctific. But I know that science often confirms the bible.
I don’t need science to believe, and I love science even though I’m a believer. And I don’t let cranks try to suggest that I don’t appreciate science, because as far as I’m concerned science is just about discovering how God did things.
Archeology FINALLY caught up with the bible and discovered the Hittites. And it finally discovered Sodom and Gomorrah.
Modern Archeological research confirms the biblical account of the ancient world of the Patriarchs. It’s accuracy is phenomenal. And there are many other confirmations about history.
Seculars don’t “own” science. And modern science was built on the shoulders of brilliant scientists who loved God as much as they loved discovering the mysteries of His creation.
The virgin birth is no stranger to me than the idea that by excellerating particles to the speed of light a particle can be in two places at once.
I’m thinking that may be how God’s spirit can dwell in me (and billions of others) and reside in Heaven at the same time.
God must be one fast dude.
This is all for my amusement. I play with these ideas because they are exciting, amazing, profound, and full of awe and wonder. And I had a HUGE crush on my seventh-grade science teacher.
It’s pure fun and fancy for me to consider my God along with the newest scientific discoveries.
I relish science within the framework of faith, you do not. You appear crazy to me and I appear crazy to you.
That’s okay.
Are you serious about this, Tootie? Virgin birth?
Science isn’t about reading stuff in some ancient book and then trying to prove that it could all have happened. Josh McDowell fails.
Oh gosh. This is weird. I was just reading and reading about this very subject all weekend (because I’m trying to understand Mike Spindell, a very nice man).
Anyway. Josh McDowell, author of “Evidence That Demands a Verdict” (volumes 1 and 2) puts it this way. And I hope I get this right.
Until Einstein, it was difficult to claim scientifically that supernatural events (miracles) would be scientifically logical because Newton’s laws were extremely rigid.
Then along came Einstein and blew a whole lot of it out of the water such that since the laws of the universe themselves were not as static as we thought, then it would be possible for God to do things in an unusual way (seemingly against the laws of nature (i.e. natural laws). Ergo it might be possible to raise the dead or walk on water because the rules are not what we thought.
It is interesting that you don’t hear people mock Christianity much anymore for the virgin birth. Why is that? Well, perhaps because we have test tube babies and artificial insemination (sp?). I’m not saying this is how God arranged the virgin birth. But what I AM saying is that birth without sexual intercourse (as we have mostly understood it for thousands of years) IS clearly possible.
Now, this simple fact could still keep the issue of the virgin birth within the realm of the supernatural (because we don’t really know how it was done and Einstein proves Newton’s rigid universive is not what we thought). Or the virgin birth really does follow the more strict laws of physics and so forth and we just don’t know precisely how it worked.
Same also with raising the dead. Low and behold, doctors really do that to some degree these days. They do it ever so quickly (usually pumping folks with meds, whacking the chest and physically pumping the heart, or using electrical shock, etc.). But by most measures from the past, the person has died and is brought back. I’m not sure about how brain function works into this little rabbit trail of thought, but the basic priciple is still awesome. And it speaks to bringing back from the dead, or most certainly, from the near dead.
And who knows. Someday doctors may go further and further back into the death of a person and bring them forward after longer and longer lengths of time of being dead. I’m thinking of cyronics at this point and also how sucessful some resuscitations already are when the body is at very cold temps.
And is any of this not also what a God able to create so unfathomable a universe might easily do (and then some?) Clearly, if you believe what Einstein implies (that the unbelievable is possible) this is not so much a stretch.
Then again all of it (God’s “miracles”) still seems to still be math and physics based (in my mind).
So is it both: natural and supernatural? A unified theory of sorts. LOL
I’m reminded of a New Testament scripture in which Jesus tells a disciple that the disciple would be surprised that one day he could move mountains.
I’m now thinking: bull-dozers and TNT. But I’m also thinking Christ could just zap it.
Also note that the first cause doesn’t really get us anywhere. If you’re going to say that there has to be at least one uncaused cause, you might as well say that the uncaused cause is the universe. By saying that, you’re removing an unnecessary entity without any adverse consequence to the argument.
It has always seemed to me that the assumption of first cause is a serious problem for all cosmological arguments.
I wouldn’t even agree that it depends on one’s interpretation of space-time (Einsteinian or Neo-Lorenzian) but rather because the causal assumption breaks down in the face of quantum theory’s very successful description of the world without recourse to determinism and causality. One interpretation of that is that the universe might well exist simply because it is impossible for it to not exist.
Let me expand on that.
All things have a cause, therefore there is a (single) cause for all things.
is of the form
all x have a y therefore there is a y for all x
The truth depends on the operator, it is not self evident. Counter examples:
All brothers have a sibling, therefore there is a (single) sibling for all brothers.
All paints have a color, therefore there is a (single) color for all paints.
All voters vote for a candidate, therefore there is a single candidate that all voters vote for.
Actually in prepositional logic the formulation
everything has a cause
therefore there is a cause for everything is not provable.
It superficially sound correct but assumes among other things that everything has a unique cause and that you can trace causes back but the whole prime mover argument is not provable.
Like many arguments for the existence of god, it only sounds plausible.
Chan “I make up meanings to words to meet my faulty premise” L.,
Oh yeah. We’re just like peas in a pod.
Except for the blatant fact I’m not a Christian let alone a Christian apologist.
Seriously, your obsession with me is becoming pathological.
Bubbha:
you should like Craig, he is on your side.
http://www.biola.edu/registrar/iresearch/
Maybe Craig should try on some big boy pants and start debating people with skills.
Say . . . like those you find here.
Why debate with atheists who make up a tiny proportion of the spectrum of belief, when he could debate the divinity of Jesus Christ with the entire non-Christian spectrum?
Atheists aren’t much fun to debate with. We lack faith in personal gods of the kind most religions deal in, and we’re a bit dubious about the notion of creator gods that sometimes turn up in philosophy. We stand up in front of the audience, take a pop at the absurdity of religious faith, point at a few scientific findings that contradict common religious notions, and sit down.
By contrast, a Christian and a Zoroastrian, say, can have a long and rich debate in which many common cultural points arise. Both sides would learn something, and as an atheist I’m quite confident that both sides would emerge with a better appreciation of why they believe what they believe.
So why do Christian apologists nearly always seem to choose a debate with atheists or agnostics?
And the story goes on….maybe he’s a GOP operative….