As a pastor, I tend to run in more than one religious circle. I have pastor friends that I went to school with. I have mentors that have been pastors for decades. I’m even a part of online groups of pastors. Being in so many groups of pastors, the topic of “the good ol’ days” resurfaces every so often.
It used to be that everybody went to church. People naturally migrated toward church, and much of what the pastor did was to ensure that all the programs ran smoothly. In those days the phrase “the Bible says so” carried much weight. However, the good ol’ days are gone.
I was reading an article the other day that addressed this topic. It explained how “the Bible says so” doesn’t hold the same sway that it used to. Our modern society doesn’t hold the Bible in the same regard as they did in the good ol’ days. As such, we as Christians, if we’re going to convince our society to follow Christ, must do so on their level. We can’t point to the Bible as the word of God until we’ve convinced them that it is the word of God.
Our current apologetic series is looking to do just that. Through the tools of this world, science, logic, and rationalism, we are seeking to demonstrate that God is who he says he is whether you choose to believe it or not. Up to this point we’ve discussed whether truth exists and have begun to present evidence in support of a theistic god. As we continue with part two, we are looking to answer the question, “Does God Exist?”
As we begin to look at the teleological argument, the argument from design, we begin by taking a walk. Say you’re taking a hike through the woods, maybe you’re going to your tree stand on the opening day of deer season. As you’re walking along you a diamond studded Rolex on the ground. Question, if you found this watch on the ground, would you think it was made by natural law? Would you think that the elements came together just right to produce this watch? No. Every watch implies a watchmaker. It turns out that the universe and life are both a lot more designed than a watch. We just finished talking about how the universe came into existence out of nothing, so we’ll pick up from there.
As we showed last week, even atheistic scientists agree that everything in the universe (space, time, and matter) came into existence out of nothing in an event known as the Big Bang (for this discussion we’ll assume the Big Bang is true, but we’ll discuss possible origins further in a future series). As we will see, not only did everything explode into being out of nothing, it did so with extreme precision. This is called the anthropic principle, coming from the Greek word anthropos, meaning “human.” It observes that the universe appears to be highly fine-tuned for human life to exist here on earth or even at all.
Stephen Hawking, British theoretical physicist, states, “If the expansion rate of the universe was different by one part in a thousand, million, million a second after the big bang, the universe would have collapsed back on itself or never developed galaxies.” If you change the expansion rate, even by that miniscule amount, we wouldn’t be here.
It’s not only the expansion rate, but also the gravitational force. If the gravitational force in the universe was altered by 1 part in 1040, the sun would not exist and the moon would crash into earth or sheer off into space. That is extreme precision. However, 1 part in 1040 can be hard to imagine. I don’t have room to write it here, but 1040 is a one followed by forty zeros.
To give you an idea of the magnitude of 1040, the total land area of the Midwest totals 821,732mi2. If you were to take dimes and stack them all across the Midwest up to the height of the moon, you would need 1.8 * 1026 dimes. That’s quite a ways from 1040. If you were to keep adding dimes until each pile across the entire area of the Midwest reached the sun, you’d still only have 7.06 * 1028. Maybe we’re going too small here. If we stacked dimes across the entire area of the United States (3.797 million mi2) up to the height of the nearest star (Alpha Centauri) approximately 4.37 light years away, we would still only have 2.48 * 1034 dimes.
Imagine, if you will, that we stretched a tape measurer across the entire known universe, past all the stars and past all the galaxies (by the way, that’s a long way). Now, imagine that the force of gravity is set at a particular inch mark on that tape measurer (Yes, I know that gravity isn’t measured in inches. This is just to give you an idea of scale.). If you were to move that mark one inch in either direction, we wouldn’t be here today.
There are only three possibilities for the force of gravity being exactly where it is. First is physical necessity; it needed to be there. Truth is, it doesn’t need to be there. The force of gravity could be any number of places long that tape measurer. The second possibility is chance. This isn’t really a reason. Scientists typically use the word chance when they don’t have an explanation. I find it hard to believe that we were so lucky that we beat the odds of 1 in 1040. Finally, the third possibility is design; somebody put it there. Once again, science doesn’t say anything, scientists do. You need to look at the evidence and come up with the most reasonable explanation.
There’s even a habitability argument in regards to our planet. We live on earth, the third rock from the sun. We live in what is called the Goldilocks Zone, it’s not too hot and it’s not too cold. Any closer and we’d burn up and farther away and we’d freeze. The axial tilt, 23.5°. Change that slightly and we wouldn’t exist. Earth’s rotation, 24 hours. Change that slightly and we wouldn’t exist. The size and distance of the moon from us. Change that slightly and we wouldn’t exist.
We tend to think that we’re all big and impressive cruising around the sun on this planet, but when you take a look at the size of earth compared to the planets in our solar system, we’re tiny. Take it one step further and compare us to our sun and we’re but a speck. However, as large and impressive as our sun may be, it’s nothing compared to the star Betelgeuse which isn’t even the largest star we’ve discovered. The heavens are awesome!
Another anthropic principle states that the average distance between stars in our galaxy is 30 trillion miles. That distance is needed for the earth to exist in its present life supporting position. 30 trillion miles, how far is that? Far. As the space shuttle orbits the earth, it travels around 18,000 mph. That’s five miles per second. If you were to travel at five miles per second from our sun to another star an average of 30 trillion miles away, it would take 201,450 years. If you hopped in that space shuttle at the time of Christ and began that journey, you’d barely be one hundredth of the way there. The heavens are awesome! According to scientists, the number of stars out there is equivalent to the number of grains of sand on all the beaches on all the earth. To go from one star to another star travelling at five miles per second would take over 200,000 years.
“To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One. “Lift your eyes and look at the heavens; Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.” – Isaiah 40:25-26
Do you want to know who God is? Many Christians have the wrong idea of God. We think he’s just some big angel. God is not a big angel. If you want to know who God is, remove all limits from your mind. That’s God. If he’s an ounce of any attribute he’s infinite in it. If he’s an ounce of love, he’s infinite love. If he’s an ounce of justice, he’s infinite justice. He is the unchangeable standard by which everything is measured.
Psalm 103:11 says, “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him.” How high are the heavens above the earth? Stars as numerous as the grains of sand on all the beaches on all the earth, 200,000 years at five miles per second between those stars? From our perspective, infinite. And that’s the point.
Not only can you get a sense of the design by looking through a telescope, you can see the same thing looking through a microscope. To see elements of design, we need look no further than the single-celled amoeba, something Darwinists say we all evolved from (or at least something like it). Have you heard of “from the goo to you via the zoo?” This is the goo.
In order to show what we mean by that, we need look no further than your breakfast table. Suppose you come down to breakfast one morning to find the box of Alpha Bits cereal knocked over on the table and in the mess you find the words, “TAKE OUT THE GARBAGE – MOM.” Would you think that this message had occurred by accident? No. You understand that the message needs to have a mind behind it.
Suppose you’re out walking on the beach and find written in the sand, “Tom Loves Shelly.” Do you think that the crabs came out of the water and wrote that? Do you think the waves spelled it out? No. You’re going to say that Tom or Shelly or some other intelligent being was involved.
If simple messages like that require an intelligence, then what about the message found in our DNA? DNA is the four letter genetic alphabet that all living things have. I have DNA. You have DNA. Heck, a banana has DNA. The human genome is 3 billion letters long, and all of it is in the right order. How did it get that way? Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who is not a Christian, says, “DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.”
People say that mutations can explain the complexity of DNA. First of all, you need functional code to begin with before it can even begin to mutate. Second, what do you think would happen if we started randomly adding or changing the code in Microsoft Office? I doubt it would even be functional.
If a message like, “TAKE OUT THE GARBAGE – MOM,” requires intelligence behind it, what about DNA? It’s the same kind of thing. In fact, how much DNA is in an amoeba, the simple life form (or something similar) from which Darwinists think we evolved? According to renowned atheist Richard Dawkins, the amount of information contained within a single amoeba is equivalent to 1,000 volumes of an encyclopedia. It seems that the first life requires an intelligent cause.
Surely, some will look at this claim and call it a God of the Gaps argument. They’ll insist that we will find a natural cause for this one day. That’s fine. We can keep looking, but this is not a God of the Gaps argument. We’re not arguing from what we don’t know. We’re arguing from what we do know.
When you see “TAKE OUT THE GARBAGE – MOM,” it’s not just that you lack a natural explanation for it. It’s that “TAKE OUT THE GARBAGE – MOM,” is positively, empirically verifiable evidence for an intelligent being. When you see the message in DNA, it should tell you that there is an intelligent being behind it. To believe that the DNA information contained with a simple amoeba came together by chance is like saying that the library of congress come together as a result of an explosion in a printing shop.
We’ve looked at the cosmological argument and the teleological argument, now we’ll turn to the moral argument. It says that if there is one thing objectively morally wrong in the world, there must be a God. Why? Because for there to be an objective moral law, there must be a lawgiver.
I love my wife, and when you love someone and are married to them, you tend to put up with their weird quirks. She puts up with my technophilia and the strange philosophical discussions I like to have. On the other hand, I endure her love for World War II era stories, particularly those of the holocaust.
We’ve all heard the stories of the atrocities that happened to the Jews. In April of 1945, the Allies liberated the Buchenwald Concentration camp near Weimar, Germany. They went through the front gate, looked to the right and saw the crematorium. They looked into the courtyard of the crematorium and this is what they saw.
If there is no God, the atrocities that took place are all just a matter of opinion. We all understand that these events were objectively, morally wrong. It’s not just a matter of opinion, yours against Hitler’s. If that’s the case, there must be a source, an authoritative, moral standard that establishes this as being wrong. That’s what we mean by God’s nature.
How do you know who’s right and who’s wrong, Mother Teresa or Hitler? How do you know who’s better? How do you know anything is better than anything else? If I were to show you two maps of Scotland and ask you which is better, how are you going to know? In order to discover which map is better, you’d need to see a reference, a real, unchanging place called Scotland. If Scotland doesn’t exist, the two maps are meaningless. Since Scotland does exist, we can see that map A, while it’s not perfect, is a better representation of Scotland than map B.
In order to determine which is better, you must have a standard by which to measure the two options. That’s exactly what we do when we compare Mother Teresa and Hitler. Mother Teresa wasn’t the standard. Hitler wasn’t the standard. There is a standard beyond them by which we measure both of them. When we say that Mother Teresa was a better person than Hitler, we’re saying that she measured up to the standard better than did Hitler. If the standard didn’t exist, there’s no way to say which one was better. It’s reduced to nothing more than just a matter of opinion.
If there is no God then what the Nazis did wasn’t really wrong. Atheists will disagree and say that morality is determined by the majority. Whatever the majority decides is morally right. If that’s the case, then what the Nazis did was morally right. In fact, in atheism, there is no morality. Everything is just a matter of opinion. Who says the majority gets to decide? It’s whoever’s in power imposing their relativistic will on everybody else. There’s no standard beyond humanity. We’re just molecules in motion.
If there is no God then there are no human rights. The Declaration of Independence states that all men are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” If there is no creator, where did these rights come from? Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t do anything good because there is no standard of best. In fact, he was going against the cultural consensus which, if the majority makes the rules, could be considered wrong. It’s just all a matter of opinion.
If there is no God, tolerance is no better than intolerance. If there’s one constant in our culture today it’s this idea of tolerance. However, you’ll find that many that are screaming for tolerance are some of the most intolerant people around. By the way, are Christians commanded to be tolerant? No. We’re commanded to be loving. Tolerance says I’ll hold my nose and put up with it, love says reach out and help them. In order to love somebody, quite frequently you can’t tolerate the evil they’re doing. In fact, if you tolerate evil, you’re unloving, not loving. In order to show love you must have courage to stand for the truth even if people won’t like you for it.
If there is no God, religious crusades aren’t wrong. Christopher Hitchens wrote a book titled God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. In his book he talks about the atrocities of the religious crusades. He’s right, the religious crusades were terrible. However, as stated earlier, in atheism, there is no right or wrong. It’s all just a matter of opinion. What’s wrong with religious crusades if there is no God?
I am not saying that atheists can’t be moral. They most certainly can. I’m not saying that atheists can’t know morality. There’s a difference between knowing what’s right and knowing why it’s right. Atheists can’t justify morality. They can theorize how they know that murder is wrong, be it through evolution, society, etc., but atheism provides no immaterial objective standard that establishes why murder is wrong. This is the difference between epistemology (how you know something) and ontology (that something exists).
In this discussion of atheism and morality, people tend to confuse those two things. Just because you know right from wrong doesn’t mean that a standard exists beyond you unless a standard giver is there. I learned my times tables in third grade from Ms. Velazquez. That’s epistemology. However, the times tables existed long before I or Ms. Velazquez ever existed. That’s ontology. Just because I came to know the times tables by my third grade teacher doesn’t explain why the times tables are true. Likewise, we can learn about morality in many different ways, but how do you explain that certain things are really right and other things are really wrong unless something grounds you (a moral agent)?
In summary, from the cosmological argument we can see that the cause behind the universe must be spaceless, timeless, and immaterial. It created material, time, and space, so it can’t be made of material, time, and space. He’s also extremely powerful because he created out of nothing and imbued the universe with every ounce of usable energy we have.
From the teleological argument we can see that he is extremely intelligent. He put this universe together with extreme precision. From the moral argument we see that he is absolutely morally perfect, and he’s also personal. How did we determine that he’s personal from the moral argument? Because you only have a moral obligation to a person. You don’t have a moral obligation to impersonal forces. You don’t sin against gravity every time you fly in an airplane. We also know he’s personal from the cosmological argument, because impersonal forces don’t choose to do anything. To go from a state of nothing to creation, someone had to make a choice, and only persons make choices.
Notice, we have a need for a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, intelligent, moral, and personal creator. This is the God of Biblical Christianity identified without reference to the Bible. We have the God of the Bible, but we haven’t opened the Bible other than to say that this is congruent with the Bible.
Does this mean Christianity is true? No. We have a lot more that we have to look at. All we can say now, if our reasoning is good up to this point, is that if theism is true, it appears that atheism and pantheism are not true based upon the law of noncontradiction. If that’s the case, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam could be true, or some other theism we don’t know about.
If there’s a theistic god out there, how could he communicate to us which one of these, if any, are true? By doing something that only he can do, and that would be a miracle. We’ll dig into this question, “Are Miracles Possible?” next week.