is belief in god reasonable? is there an “awful waste of space”?
TRANSCRIPT
Is Belief in God Reasonable?
Is there an “awful waste of space”?
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Outline
Science defined Science points to a supernatural Cause of
the Universe
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Empirical vs. Forensic Science
Empirical Forensic
Studies Present Studies Past
Repeatable Unrepeatable
How things work How things began
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Empirical vs. Forensic Science
Empirical Forensic
How do living things work?
How did life arise on Earth?
Studies Regularities Studies Singularities
How does the universe work?
How did the universe start?
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Cosmological Argument
1. Everything that has a beginning had a cause.
2. The universe had a beginning.
3. Therefore the universe had a cause.
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Francis Bacon, the Father of Modern Science Wrote:
“True knowledge is knowledge by causes.”[1]
[1]Francis Bacon, The New Organon (1620), 121.
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David Hume Wrote:
“I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that something could arise without a cause.”[1]
[1] David Hume, in J. Y. T. Greig, ed., The Letters of David Hume, 2 vols., 1:187.
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The Universe had a Beginning:
This is significant, because in the past most scientists believed the universe was eternal.
However, the “big bang” reveals that matter, space, and time all had a beginning making it clear that the universe is not eternal.
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Evidence for a Beginning:
Second Law of Thermodynamics Universe is expanding Radiation echo from the Big Bang
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Visual History of the Universe
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The Agnostic Scientist Robert Jastrow Writes:
“That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact [by the discovery of the moment of creation, the ‘big bang’].”[1]
[1] “A Scientist Caught Between Two Faiths,” interview by Bill Durbin in Christianity Today, August 6, 1982.
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The Anthropic Principle:
The universe appears to have been designed for humans to live in.
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Some “Fine-Tuning” Examples:
Gravitational force
Electromagnetic force it is “just right” to hold atoms together.
Expansion rate of the universe the right speed to prevent the universe from collapsing.
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“A Waste of Space”?
If the universe’s mass was slightly lower, gravity would not be strong enough to slow the universe’s expansion.
The universe would instead expand too fast to allow galaxies, stars, or planets to form.
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Jupiter—The Guardian
Jupiter’s gravity draws comets and asteroids towards itself away from earth.
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The Privileged Planet By: Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W.
Richards
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The Argument:
“The conditions allowing for intelligent life on Earth also make our planet strangely well suited for viewing and analyzing the universe.”
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Earth’s Atmosphere:
Just thick enough to enable us to breathe and to prevent us from being burned up by cosmic rays.
It is not too thick as to prevent humans from viewing the universe from Earth’s surface.
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Earth’s Atmosphere:
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The Moon:
The moon is large enough to stabilize the Earth’s tilt on its axis.
Otherwise, Earth would generate varying wind patterns that would carry rain all over the planet.
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The Moon and Discoveries:
The moon is just large enough to block the Sun’s bright photosphere.
It is small enough to avoid blocking the Sun’s chromosphere during a total solar eclipse.
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A Perfect Solar Eclipse:
Occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, totally obscuring Earth's view of the Sun.
The moon and the star (i.e. the Sun) must appear to be about the same size in order for an observer on the planet to see a perfect solar eclipse.
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Best Possible Time:
The moon is moving slowly away from Earth.
The Sun is getting larger. These two processes should end total
solar eclipses in about 250 million years.
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Our Ideal Location:
Our solar system lies between several spiral “arms” of the Milky Way galaxy.
Dust from the spiral “arms” does not block our view of space.
The solar system is far away from the galaxy’s bulge, so the light from the bulge does not constantly light up Earth’s sky.
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What is the Cause Like?
Supernatural Timeless (Eternal) Immaterial Since the Cause created nature, time, space, and
matter, the Cause must be outside of time, space, and matter.
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The Cause is Intelligent:
It “fine-tuned” so many aspects of the universe.
It gave humans a good view of the universe.
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Which Religion?
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Time Had a Beginning:
2 Timothy 1:9 “This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.”
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The Universe had a Beginning:
Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth.”
Isaiah 45:18 “For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it; he did not create it a chaos, he formed it to be inhabited.”
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The Universe is Expanding:
Isaiah 40:22 “It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to live in;”
Jeremiah 51:15 “It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens.”
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The Universe has Laws:
Job 38:31-33 “Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades, or loose the cords of Orion? Can you lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season, or can you guide the Bear with its children? Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth?”
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Humans Have a Unique Discovery Platform:
Psalm 19:1 “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the skies proclaim his handiwork.”
Romans 1:20 “Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.”
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“This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created heaven and earth….For the scientist who has lived by faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream…
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…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.”[1]
[1] Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers. Second Edition, 106, 107.
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Conclusion:
There is good scientific evidence that indicates it is reasonable to believe God exists.
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Helpful Resources:
Reasons to Believe: www.reasons.org
Creation as Science (2006), by Hugh Ross.
The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery (2004), by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards
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Is the Universe Oscillating?
There is not enough mass in the universe to cause it to stop expanding and then to make it collapse.
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics would prevent an infinite number of “bounces” because the universe would lose energy with each bounce.
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Is the Universe Oscillating?
There would not even be enough energy left in the universe to generate a bounce if the universe did collapse.
There is no known “bounce” mechanism.
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Multiple Universes?
There is no evidence of their existence. Humans could never observe the other
universes. Where did the other universes come from?
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Multiple Universes?
No universe could bring another universe into existence, because these hypothetical universes are believed to be causally unconnected.
See page 138 of The Fingerprint of God by Dr. Hugh Ross for more details.
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Infinite Series of Causes?
An actual infinite series cannot exist.
No matter how many causes there are, one more cause could be added.
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Infinite Series of Causes?
However, it is a contradiction to say there could ever be one more than an infinite.
Nothing is more than infinity, because infinity has no limits.
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Infinite Series of Causes?
There must be a here-and-now ground for a simultaneous series of causes, none of which would otherwise have a ground for its existence.
An ungrounded infinite regress of causes is equal to affirming that the existence in the series arises from nonexistence, since no cause in the series has a real ground for its existence.
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Infinite Series of Causes?
Or, if one cause in the series grounds the existence of the others, then it must be a First Cause, but then the series is not infinite.
Otherwise the cause causes its own existence, while it is causing the existence of everything else in the series. That is impossible.
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Quantum Vacuum Fluctuation?
The quantum vacuum consists of a sea of fluctuating energy.
Particles arise from fluctuations in this energy sea.
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Quantum Fluctuation:
The quantum vacuum and the energy inside the vacuum allegedly cause the particles.
Where does the quantum vacuum itself come from?
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Stephen Hawking’s “Imaginary Time”?
Hawking tries to disprove what most scientists call the singularity—the point in which the space-time universe began by applying “imaginary time” to the universe.
“Imaginary Time” is time measured using imaginary numbers.
Imaginary numbers are “multiples of the square root of –1.”
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Stephen Hawking’s “Imaginary Time”?
Hawking plugs imaginary numbers into equations about the universe.
However, when mathematicians and scientists plug real numbers back into the equation, the reality of the singularity returns.
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Hawking Admits:
“When one goes back to the real time in which we live, however, there will still appear to be singularities.
The poor astronaut who falls into a black hole will still come to a sticky end; only if he lived in imaginary time would he encounter no singularities.”—A Brief History of Time: The Updated and Expanded 10th Anniversary Edition (1988, 1996), p. 144.
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Hawking Also Admits:
“In real time, the universe has a beginning and an end at singularities that form a boundary to space-time and at which the laws of science break down.” —A Brief History of Time: The Updated and Expanded 10th Anniversary Edition (1988, 1996), p. 144.
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The First Law of Thermodynamics Clarified:
Another, more accurate, way to state this law is that “The amount of actual energy in the universe remains constant.”
This says nothing about how the energy came to be in the universe.
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The First Law of Thermodynamics Clarified:
The statement “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed” expresses philosophical dogmatism.
This is a metaphysical pronouncement not supported by observation. As far as we can observe, no new energy is coming into existence, and no actual energy is going out of existence.
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The First Law of Thermodynamics Clarified:
As such, the First Law supports neither a theistic or nontheistic worldview.
It does not claim that energy is eternal, so God is unnecessary.
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The First Law of Thermodynamics Clarified:
But neither does it claim that God has endowed the system with energy at any point.
It simply affirms that right now the actual amount of energy—however long it has been here—is not changing.
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Does Quantum Uncertainty Disprove Causality?
If the uncertainty principle disproved the law of causality, then the uncertainty principle would be self-defeating.
Quantum physics is a part of science and science rests on the law of causality’s validity.
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Does Quantum Uncertainty Disprove Causality?
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle does not prove that the movement of electrons is uncaused.
It only describes our inability to predict their location and speed at any given time.
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Does Quantum Uncertainty Disprove Causality?
The mere fact that we can’t predict something doesn’t mean that something has no cause.
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Does Quantum Uncertainty Disprove Causality?
In fact, quantum scientists acknowledge that we might not be able to predict the simultaneous speed and location of electrons because our very attempts at observing them are the cause of their unpredictable movements!