SR Blog

Atheists pride themselves on utilizing the scientific method to disprove the existence of God.  Many, if not most, also use this method to try to discredit the idea that there is a Designer of the universe.  Dr. Theodore Drange is one such atheist.  He is quite adamant that there is an alternative explanation to the evident design of and within the universe.  In his book, “Nonbelief and Evil” (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998), Dr. Drange takes to task in Appendix F the Fine-Tuning Argument (FTA), which may be also known as the Anthropic Principle or the Teleological Argument or Argument from Design.  Come take a look at how atheism supposedly disproves Intelligent Design using the scientific method.  This will be quite interesting and fun.

So that we are on the same page, below is a simplistic and typical version of the Design Argument.  Granted, there are multiple variations of the argument, one of which Drange supplies in Appendix F, but the following syllogism simplistically but fairly describes the overall design argument:

1.    Wherever design (i.e., specified complexity) is evidenced, then a designer is inferred.

2.    Throughout the universe, specified complexity can be proven by the scientific method (i.e., gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to the specific principles of reasoning).

3.    Therefore, a Designer of the universe exists (God).

To be fair, it is quite clear that the argument is based on the Principle of Causality, which is the idea that every effect has a cause.  But to flatly disprove the above syllogism, one must first disprove the first principle of causality.  Yet to do that, you gotta first cause the disproof!  That’s why it’s called a “first principle” because it is self-evident.  Nonetheless, back to Dr. Drange and his reasons…

There are two reasons that Drange rejects the Design Argument: (1) The Inadequacy Objection, and (2) The Alternate-explanations Objection.  With respect to inadequacy, Drange writes that the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving, eternal Being is not a good explanation for why there is specified complexity in the universe.  Why so?  According to Drange, “First, it [the syllogism] does not supply any information about how God is supposed to have created anything or how he is supposed to have ‘fine-tuned’ the physical constants of the universe” (p. 380, emphasis his).  In other words, unless Drange knows how something works or comes into being, the cause of the existence cannot be ascertained!  Really?  Question: if you don’t know how a nuclear reactor generates power, does that mean that the nuclear reactor does not exist?  Or do you have to understand how a nuclear reactor works and is put together before you turn on your TV or use the microwave?  Of course not.  If anything, you take for granted that the nuclear reactor is designed in a safe manner so that you can safely enjoy watching “Toy Story 3” on your 65” LCD while eating your microwave popcorn.

Here’s another reason: “…creation out of nothing…is an idea that conflicts with the conservation laws of modern physics” (Ibid.).  In other words, he is basing his complaint on the 1st Law of Thermodynamics.  But his complaint is actually based on his own worldview of atheism and not the scientific method.  Why is this so?  The atheist will claim that the 1st Law states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains the same over time, and as a consequent, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. (To be fair, most people have heard the Law this way.)  But this phrasing is incorrect; saying that energy cannot be created nor destroyed is a philosophical statement, not an empirical one.  A better phrasing of the 1st Law of Thermodynamics could be this: “The amount of actual energy in the universe remains constant” (Norman Geisler, “Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics” [Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999], 724, s.v. “Thermodynamics, Laws of”; emphasis his).  The reason this alternate statement is actually more accurate is because it is based on the scientific method, the very method that atheists demand the world use.  It is true that we can verify that matter and energy convert to each other ala Einstein’s famous formula (e.g., E=mc2), but the Law is actually silent on whether energy can be created or destroyed.  In other words, both the theist and the atheist must still account for the initial creation of energy and matter.  The 1st Law does not apply to the creation or destruction of energy at all in this case.  This is a classic case of a red herring fallacy – diverting attention to an irrelevant fact.

Drange also objects to the Design Argument because creation out of nothing is “hard to understand” (Drange, 380) and that the concept of God and His action are “incomprehensible” (Ibid., 381).  In other words, only those things which Drange himself can understand and comprehend are the things that are actually true.  This is quite an arrogant statement, to say the least!  How would you feel if I said something like that to you?  Wouldn’t you think that I’m a conceited, haughty, egotistical, big-headed and proud person to claim that something is true only if I could understand it?  I’m sure your high school math or science teacher would choke if you said that to him or her.  Rather, something is true because it corresponds to reality, not because I, you or even Drange understand it.

Here’s another interesting comment from Drange: if God is supposed to be all-loving, then “Why didn’t he set up evolution in a way [that] would cause less suffering to the organisms involved with it” (Ibid.)?  Even when Drange allows the possibility of God’s existence, he vehemently refuses to give up on his naturalistic worldview of evolution.  Where in the entire Bible does it say that God used evolution?  He goes on to say that “God could have arranged things so that the initial conditions on the planet earth were more stable and more conducive to the well-being” of man (Drange, 381-82).  By this statement, Drange now sets himself up as wiser than God by saying that his way of evolving the world would have been better than God’s (assuming God indeed did use evolution).  If that were the case, then Drange’s eternality, infinity, aseity and pure actuality (as the scientific method demands) would have allowed him the opportunity to do just that.  But because Drange had a beginning (i.e., was born), he is not, in fact, the beginner much less the “evolver” of creation.  Atheistic arrogance again rears its ugly head.

Drange’s second objection of alternate-explanations is equally dogmatic and non-scientific.  He writes, “it strikes me as possible that there should be some physical explanation for why our universe had to have the particular combination that it has” (Ibid., 382, emphasis his).  In other words, the answer must be physical, not supernatural.  And why does he claim his statement true?  “It may be that scientists of the future will discover such an explanation” (Ibid., emphasis mine).  Note well that he said “will discover.”  So much for the scientific method in substantiating an assertion based on observable, empirical and measurable evidence (i.e., the scientific method).

Another alternate explanation is chance.  Drange claims that “…the combination of physical constants that we observe in our universe is sheer coincidence” (Ibid.).  To his credit, at least he admits that there is specified complexity in the universe.  But to attribute that specified complexity to chance?  Again, where is the scientific method to substantiate his claim of chance?  Technically speaking, the universe we have today is the ONLY chance we have ever had.  Even flipping a coin has two sides.

Drange also takes to task the Anthropic Principle, which is the belief that our one and only, observable universe was specifically designed to sustain life as we know it.  His reason for rejecting this idea?  “Assuming that other combinations of physical constants are physically possible, I see no reason to believe that all of them would result in a universe with less variety and complexity than our universe” (Ibid., 383, emphasis mine).  Again, Drange is assuming (not proving) that other variations of our universe’s specified complexity could sustain life as we know it.  Go figure!  Moreover, with respect to the scientific method, his own words are self-condemning: “There is no way for our science, at its present stage, to extrapolate that sort of information [other combinatorial possibilities] from what we know” (Ibid.).  Yep, no scientific method here either.

Since space is short, one final comment is in order (pun intended).  Even though Drange is dogmatic in his beliefs, he still allows for the remote possibility that Mind or Intelligence may exist in a separate universe from ours even though he expresses it in an illogical fashion.  He writes,

Theists themselves believe that since God existed prior to our universe, it is thus possible for mind or intelligence to exist apart from the physical constants of our particular universe.  Therefore, they should concede the possibility that some other combination of physical constants could, over time, produce a universe that contains mind or intelligence…” (Ibid.)

This is an amazing statement!  Read it again slowly and ask yourself this question: if God (intelligence or mind) exists prior to the creation of the universe, then how in the world did the “physical constants, over time, [subsequently] produce a universe that contains mind or intelligence”?!  This is an ontological fallacy – either God existed prior to the universe and produced matter (the physical constants) or the physical constants existed prior to “mind or intelligence” and produced some other kind of universe, but not both (cf. The Law of Non-Contradiction).  The dogmatic atheist is chasing his own tail; he can’t even decide which came first – God or matter – so he illogically tries to combine both to possibly create order in his argument--but “no dice” here.

Incidentally, I debated Dr. Drange over email for well over a year in 2005-06.  He was even kind enough to help me with some of my seminary logic course exercises, to teach me how to logically think for which I am most grateful.  But here’s the irony – the logic skills he helped me learn several years ago are the very same skills I use to critique his atheistic arguments.  Now some would say that I am being harsh with Drange as well as the atheist in general.  You may be right, but if Drange can use 392 pages to assert (1) that God does not exist, and (2) that the Gospel is not true, then I think a few paragraphs to prove his non-use of the scientific method and logic fallacies is certainly warranted.

Lastly, refer back to the Design Argument syllogism.  To disprove the conclusion, a person must disprove one or both of the premises.  Either the Principle of Causality is untrue or specified complexity does not exist or maybe even both.  Whatever you rationally choose, I’m sure that you will base it on some order of thought (i.e., design).  Otherwise, your decision is just chaos and chance.  And why would any rational and reasonable person regard a decision based on chaos and chance as credible?  I wouldn’t.  Would you?

By David Diaz Sonnen

There is some overlap between a classic creationist and a theistic evolutionist.  The classic creationist believes that God created matter ex nihilo (out of nothing)-living things as well as human beings.  In contrast, the theistic evolutionist believes that God created matter ex nihilo and quite possibly the first life forms (e.g., plants), his view is distinct with respect to the creation of man.  To be clear, a theistic evolutionist is certainly capable of believing in subsequent miracles to the ex nihilo event such as the Virgin Birth or even the Resurrection, but when it comes to the origin of man, the theistic evolutionist and the creationist diverge completely.

There are two kinds of theistic evolutionists.  The first is the minimal theistic evolutionist who believes that aside from the creation of the cosmos and the creation of first life, “every other living thing, including human beings [emphasis mine], emerged by natural processes that God had ordained from the beginning” (Norman Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (BECA), [Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1999], 233).  The second is the maximal theistic evolutionist which believes that “after the initial creation of matter and life, all animal organisms, including the human body [emphasis mine], evolved by natural laws God established from the very beginning” (Ibid.).  In contrast to the minimalist, the maximalist believes God created the soul as a distinct act of creation but nature developed and evolved the body that the soul was to eventually inhabit (incidentally, a view held by many traditional Roman Catholics of the last century or so).

Interestingly, theistic evolution is quite similar to deistic evolution which believes that there were no further supernatural acts in nature other than the initial ex nihilo event.  That is, the deistic evolutionist believes that God used an evolutionary process to produce life forms and human beings.  In other words, God is the primary Cause of matter and maybe even first life forms but nature (and not God) is the cause of human beings.  Without question, the presuppositions of evolution (of whatever kind) are firmly rooted in atheism and agnosticism.  With all this said, this is why I find Theistic Evolution so peculiar – two worldviews (e.g., theism and atheism) are merged to form a new one (e.g., theistic evolution).  Is this even possible?  I suggest not…by any stretch.

Much can be said in support for denying evolution itself such as the anthropic principle which is the belief that “science itself has proven, as a hard fact, that this universe was made, was designed, for man to live in.  It’s a very theistic result.” (R. Jastrow, “A Scientist Caught between Two Faiths: Interview with Robert Jastrow,” Christianity Today, 6 August 1982, p. 17 quoted in BECA, 27).  Specified complexity in molecular biology is also firm foundation for rejecting evolution in favor of a grand Designer.  But what has probably not been considered by most theists is how a worldview, such as theistic evolution, impacts negatively on the theistic foundation of the divine attributes – God’s very nature (pun intended).  So, what are the consequences of a theist holding evolutionist beliefs?  Consider the following implications if theistic evolution is true.

First, theistic evolution denies God’s goodness.  To attribute the creation of man (which in itself is a good thing since God created to manifest His goodness) to a natural process or law is to demean the goodness that God exhibited in creating man.  In other words, if God directly created man (cf. Gen. 1:26, 27; 9:6) and goodness is associated with that event, then to say that something other than God created man is to actually assign that goodness to something or someone else!  Now some would argue that it was God’s natural laws that evolved man and based on this God should and is still to be credited with goodness.  But where in all of Scripture does it say that God did not directly create Adam?  Without question, the theist must admit that Scripture affirms that God directly created Adam thus confirming that God did not use some process or law to evolve man from a “goo to you.”  So, how can a theist, even a theistic evolutionist, deny that God can act miraculously in creating man given the ex nihilo event?  If the theistic evolutionist admits one miracle (e.g., ex nihilo event) and possibly a second miracle (e.g., initial plant life), mustn’t he also admit the possibility of God displaying His goodness when He directly created man?  Surely he must to be consistent with his foundational worldview - theism.

Second, the theistic evolutionist also denigrates God’s glory and majesty.  If man was created in order to magnify and glorify his Creator, then theistic evolution demands that man was created to magnify and glorify nature (i.e., man’s creator).  But the Psalmist wrote, “Come, let us worship and bow down.  Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker” (Ps. 95:6).  Surely David didn’t mean that the Maker was nature, did he?!  Besides, didn’t the Almighty say through Moses that the believer should not worship or serve any likeness in heaven or earth or the seas (cf. Exod. 20:3:5)?  In other words, if the creature was created to magnify and glorify the Creator, then theistic evolution demands that man magnify and glorify nature – something clearly contrary to the 10 Commandments!  Even if the theistic evolutionist asserts that glory is not taken away from God because of the use of natural laws to evolve man, the actual result is that the theistic evolutionist has elevated “Mother Nature” to the level of God.  Yet God said through Isaiah, “I am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another [to include nature], nor my praise to graven images” (Isa. 42:6).  The theistic evolutionist must resolve this critical issue to be consistent.

Third, theistic evolution impugns God’s righteousness; it makes Him out to be a liar.  Why is this true?  Either God is telling the truth via Scripture or He is not.  Either God lied when He said He directly made Adam and Eve or He lied.  And if God lied, He is not righteous.  In fact, the logical consequence is that God is actually evil because He lied about how man came into being.

Fourth and from a philosophical perspective, theistic evolution is incoherent.  Why is this true?  It is true that “You cain’t give what you ain’t got.”  If God created matter and even the first life forms, then how is it philosophically possible that a plant or even an animal can subsequently “give” rationality or even a conscience to something else?  Again, if nature did not have rationality or morality to begin with, then it is impossible for nature to give rationality or morality to humanity.  Now an evolutionist would say that rationality and even morality came about in the evolving process, but the evolutionist has yet to prove this assertion.  As a matter of fact, the evolutionist has yet to even prove that one species can evolve into a completely different species much less with rationality.  Is micro-evolution true?  Yes, it is.  But has macro-evolution been proven?  “By no means,”… much less macro-evolution with rationality and conscience in tow.

Lastly, theistic evolution attacks God’s omni-sapience (i.e., all-wise) – His wisdom.  Norman Geisler notes that “Wisdom has to do with the ability to choose the right means for the desired ends.”  And as applied to God, “wisdom refers to His unerring ability to choose the best means to accomplish the best ends” (Systematic Theology, God and Creation, vol. 2, [Grand Rapids: Bethany House, 2003], 213).  Now, when we apply an Enthymeme, which is a viably sawed-off syllogism with an implied assertion (Francis H. Parker and Henry B. Veatch, Logic as a Human Instrument [New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959], 322), and a Sorite, which is two or more enthymemes together (Ibid., 325) in a syllogism, we get the following:
1.       Natural law created and evolved man (a theistic evolution claim)
2.       [Evolved man is the result of the best method to create and evolve man] (the implied assertion most evolutionists would agree with; this is called an enthymeme).
3.       Therefore natural law is the best method to create and evolve man (deduced from #1 & #2).
4.       [It is true that there is only one best, not two] (another enthymeme).
5.       If natural law is the best method, then direct creation is not the best method (a sorite and logical deduction from #4).
6.       If direct creation is not the best method, then God’s method is not the best (another sorite).
7.       If God’s method is not the best, then God is not all-wise (another sorite).
Here’s the point: For God to be God, He must act according to His nature; He cannot do or be otherwise.  So, if God is infinite (as a theistic evolutionist would likely agree), then God acted infinitely unwise if He created man directly and not via natural laws.  But as my 16 year old son said, “So if God acts infinitely unwise, then that’s the same as saying He’s stupid.”  I never said my son was eloquent, just direct; but he’s correct.  The phrase “God is unwise” is the implication given by a theistic evolutionist when he claims that the best method for creating man is evolution and not the (actual) method God used – direct creation (Gen. 1:26, 27; 9:6b).  To be sure, the alternative for the theistic evolutionist is to admit either that (1) man is not the best creature or (2) natural law is not the best method.  Otherwise he necessarily implies that God is not all-wise – dangerous ground indeed for any theist.
“O LORD, how many are Your works!  In wisdom You have made them all; The earth is full of Your creatures” (Ps. 104:29; cf. Ps. 136:5; Prov. 3:19; Jer. 10:12; 51:15).  Either God is all-wise or He is not, thanks to the Law of Excluded Middle (Ibid., 74-5).  But here’s the question: are you wise enough to choose wisely regarding God’s omni-sapient nature?
By David Diaz Sonnen

Panspermia – seeds everywhere. Swedish physicist Svante Arrhenius first coined this term when he came to the conclusion that natural selection or processes cannot account for the specified complexities observed in our universe, primarily in protein formation. He was not alone. His colleague, Francis Crick (who first broke the DNA code) and he realized that the there had to be some other explanation for the origination of life on earth other than random chance or the biblical account. So, rather than believe that chance alone is the reason for life on earth or even believe that an eternal Being created a temporal person, they (among a few others) opted for the idea of panspermia, which is the belief that life actually began on earth as the result of some microbial matter arriving on earth from some other universe or region. In other words, since (1) life on earth could not have possibly come from an eternal Being (i.e., God) and (2) life could not have arisen by chance, then, according to these scientists, logically life must have come from some other universe. And so their logic goes.

The logical question must now be asked, how did the life material initially arrive? There are several opinions as to how the bacteria first arrived on earth (to colonize life on earth). Some (e.g., Thomas Gold) speculate that a spaceship from a dying civilization purposely sent its proteins to earth to save itself; maybe even astronauts rather than protein made the trip and “set up shop” on earth. Others (e.g., Crick and Leslie Orgel) speculate that only the genetic material was sent specifically to earth since earth had the “right properties” or conditions to colonize the particular species (anthropic principle maybe?). Still others (e.g., Fred Hoyle, Chandra Wickramasinghe, Arrhenius) claim that these specks of life are being sent throughout the universe without a spaceship, hoping that the proteins will find some capable primordial soup in which to grow. Hoyle wrote,

Life could not have originated here on Earth. Nor does it look as though biological evolution can be explained from within an earthbound theory of life. Genes from outside the Earth are needed to drive the evolutionary process. This much can be consolidated by strictly scientific means, by experiment, observation and calculation (Fred Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe [New York: Hold, Rinehart, and Winston, 1983], 242, quoted in Fred Heeren, Show Me God: What the Message from Space is Telling Us About God [Wheeling, IL: Searchlight Publications, 1995], 183).

In the words of Fred Heeren, scientists like Hoyle speculate that these genes “simply ride the stellar winds at thousands of kilometers per second, taking root wherever a planet offers the right conditions” (Heeren, 184). Even today on Yahoo an article appeared claiming “An obscure compound known as pyrophosphite could have been the source of energy that allowed the first life on Earth to form” (Zoe Macintosh, “New Theory of Life’s First Energy Source.” Yahoo News, 12 June 2010, http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100612/sc_livescience/newtheoryforlifesfirstenergysource (accessed 14 June 2010). But the question still remains: how did the life material initially arrive? Maybe the Cyborgs of Star Trek or the sentient machines of The Matrix? Who knows?

What is interesting to note is Hoyle’s first statement that “life could not have originated here on Earth.” Why not? What scientific (measurable and observable) tests did Hoyle conduct to prove that “life could not have originated here on Earth?” This statement must be proven, not merely asserted. But more to the point, Hoyle must explain how life began in that other universe (if one such exists). In other words, Hoyle is begging the question – he claims that life on Earth began because of some starbound protein but he offers no explanation for how life began on THAT planet or star. Isn’t this the fundamental question – how did life begin in general? Hoyle has yet to answer that question – how does life arise in the first place? Moreover, even if we grant that pyrophosphites arrived on earth to form life, the question still remains – where did the pyrophosphites come from? Delaying the question does not answer the question.

But before we throw Hoyle, in particular, completely under the bus, he did bring an enticing fact to the table – his reason for not accepting chance as the reason for the origin of life. Hoyle and Wickramasinghe calculated the odds of all the functional proteins needed to form life as a random, single event as one chance in 1040,000 (that’s 1 with 40,000 zeros behind it). Here’s the interesting part: there are only approximately 1080 atoms in the entire universe! In other words, the chances of life-forming proteins all congregating in the same place by pure chance are less than the number of atoms in the entire universe – a practical impossibility (Heeren, 183). While this does not further the panspermia argument per se, this odds calculation definitely puts a dent in the naturalist’s assertion that life arose out of non-life.

To be fair to Hoyle, however, his viewpoint is rather reasonable given the assumption or presupposition of pantheism. In 1981 Hoyle wrote a book entitled Evolution from Space which argued that

God created first life and then many basic forms of life at various times after that, as indicated by the great gaps in the fossil record. However, the God who intelligently intervened to form these various kinds of life did so from within the universe, not from outside it. For God is the Mind of the universe. God is Nature (Norman Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, [Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1999], 233).

In other words, if God is the universe (i.e., if pantheism is true), then it makes sense that the pantheistic God would send protein from one part of the universe to another part (e.g., Earth) to populate and colonize it (and probably without a spaceship). It is true that originally as an atheist, Hoyle vehemently argued against the biblical creation account. But having to account for the origin of life (whether in this part of the universe or in that part), it seems that Hoyle finally had to opt for pantheism to account for life arising on earth. In the end, however, Hoyle is not necessarily noted for purporting panspermia but for striking a devastating blow against naturalism when he said, “The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way [chance] is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein” (Mark Water, The Bible and Science Made Easy [Alresford, Hampshire, UK: John Hunt Publishing, 2000], 55). To put Hoyle’s statement into context, Water further explains that

A Boeing 747 is a collection of 4.5 million non-flying parts, arranged in an intricate design such that it can fly. A typical cell contains several billion non-living molecules such as proteins, DNA, RNA all arranged in intricate design. A typical cell contains ten million million atoms. Its life depends on the integrated activity of tens or even hundreds of thousands of different proteins (Ibid.).

Here is the interesting part: if Hoyle could admit the practical mathematical impossibility of life arising out of non-life, it is astonishing that he would assert that life must come from the outside our universe (i.e., panspermia) and not from some eternal Being. In other words, the poster child for asserting that life cannot begin by chance is the same person that says it’s quite likely and probable that life in fact came from another universe and made its way to earth by pure chance and survived, all without one shred of scientific evidence. Now THAT takes a lot of faith!

By David Diaz Sonnen