January 2025 – Wisdom From the Word

Apologetics Part 4

The Fine-Tuning Argument

In looking at the Fine-Tuning argument we begin with the two scriptures I referenced for the Teleological Argument. Yet we dig a little deeper.

³ All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. John 1:3 (NKJV)

² has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; ³ who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, Hebrews 1:2–3 (NKJV)

The phrase we are zeroing in on is, “upholding all things by the word of His power.” While some translations say ‘powerful word’ or something similar the NKJV, ESV and NASB all correctly use the literal phrase in Greek, ‘word of His power.’ It is the continual release of Jesus power through His spoken word that both created and sustains the universe. As Paul put it under the inspiration of the Spirit.

¹⁶ For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. Colossians 1:16 (NKJV)

Jesus is the source and sustainer.

Now to look at the Fine Tuning Argument using an analogy. Imagine I hand you what looks like a puzzle box but there is no picture on the cover of what the puzzle is supposed to look like and when you open it you find random pieces of cardboard with no rhyme or reason and no pictures on them. I assure you that if you simply put the pieces in the box, shake it vigorously and dump it on the table the puzzle will form and there will be a clear picture. Instead of shaking the box you might be tempted to tell me to give my head a shake since what I have proposed is ridiculous. Which of course is true. If we want a puzzle to put together, we need a picture that tells us what it will look like and pieces cut with interlocking shapes so that when they are put together, they will reflect the picture on the box.

Now we consider the universe. The generally accepted theory for the beginning and creation of the universe is the Big Bang model. Whether one believes in the concept of a singularity or the idea that everything came from nothing, the basic concept is that matter exploded and expanded and time, space and matter now exist. The big question is whether the universe could have been created by a random unintentional explosion and planets just happened to form or whether a divine intelligence was behind it all.

This takes us to the cosmological constants. In brief, if the constants were different, if the universe had expanded more quickly or slowly than it did then the planets would never have formed or it would have collapsed back on itself. Even atheist Stephen Hawking acknowledged the importance of fine tuning, noting, “The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron …. The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.”[1] On their website, using a conservative approach, the Discovery Institute provides a list of 22 fine tuning parameters (List of Fine-Tuning Parameters | Discovery Institute).

One argument some present in seeking to refute the idea of a fine-tuned universe is the idea of the multiverse. The theory being that there are multiple universes and we just happen to live in the one that supports life as we know it. The problems of course are many. First, we have zero evidence for other universes. Next, for any other universe to exist it would be subject to the same cosmological constants to exist and last, where is this universe generating machine? It isn’t a tenable position.

Another term that highlights fine-tuning is the ‘Goldilocks Zone’ is a term used by some to describe where we live, earth. The term is drawn from the children’s story where things needed to be ‘just right’ for Goldilocks. If earth were closer to or farther from the sun all of our water would either freeze or evaporate. We can thus conclude that we are simply ‘lucky’ to have the orbit we do around the sun or we can conclude that Jesus ‘upholds all things by the word of His power.’ I choose the latter.

[1] A Brief History of Time, Hawking, Stephen, p. 125

Apologetics Part 3

The Teleological (Design) Argument

Imagine something with me for a moment. It is summer and my car is very dirty, I go to the hardware store and when I return to the parking lot, I find the phrase ‘wash me’ written in the dust on the back window. In telling you about this incident I comment and say, “Isn’t it strange how the wind spelled ‘wash me’ on my back window while I was in the store.” Would your first thought be that I was being rational and logical? I think not.

Yet many evolutionists would have us place our faith in something incredibly more complex than my strange assertion about ‘wash me.’ We now look at design. An early proponent of the design argument was philosopher and clergyman William Paley. In the late 18^th century he used the analogy of divine watchmaker and compared the regular workings of the solar system to the coordinated and designed movements of a clock or watch. Which led to atheist Richard Dawkins 20^th century work, The Blind Watchmaker. We will come to Dawkins shortly.

We begin our review of design with a couple of quotes from Stephen Jay Gould, an ardent evolutionist whose quotes are readily available on the internet. He said the following, “The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualist accounts of evolution.” He also said, “Charles Darwin viewed the fossil record more as an embarrassment than as an aid to his theory.” Obviously Gould responded by repudiating evolution right? No, he simply came up with new theories that he could also not prove.

We also have what the famous atheist Richard Dawkins said, “Biology is the study of complicated things that have the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Gould was among other things an evolutionary biologist, as is Dawkins. Are their comments above any more credible than my assertion that the wind wrote ‘wash me’ on the window of my vehicle? We will see.

Biochemist Michael Behe, who wrote Darwin’s Black Box, highlighted for us the concepts of irreducible and specified complexity. The black box term comes from the idea that things are happening at a mysterious and unseen level. This of course aligns with scripture, which says the following.

³ All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. John 1:3 (NKJV)

What Behe discovered is that the cells in our body are powered by microscopic machines. Machines he described as follows, “In short, highly sophisticated molecular machines control every cellular process. Thus the details of life are finely calibrated, and the machinery of life enormously complex.”[1] These cellular machines demonstrate specified complexity. An example of specified complexity being our DNA code. DNA has a four-letter alphabet and the instructions contained within the DNA in every cell in our bodies are specific, written out in an ordered manner in this four-letter alphabet (the most well-known advocate of specified complexity is Willam Dembski).

We know that instructions don’t write themselves any more than the wind wrote ‘wash me’ on my car window. As Bill Gates of Microsoft fame said in his book The Road Ahead, “DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.” DNA contains specified complexity pointing to the designer of this complex code.

In addition to specified complexity, we have irreducible complexity. Behe described it in this manner.

“By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional.“[2]

Here Behe directly refutes Darwin’s idea that organisms developed and became more complex through successive slight adaptations. What we have with irreducible complexity is molecular machines that have interdependent parts. One part cannot function without the others, meaning the parts could not have evolved gradually as the organism would then be nonfunctional. We go back to my dirty car. If I have an engine but am waiting for my driveshaft to evolve, I have a useless vehicle. If I want more power and create larger chambers for my pistons but don’t simultaneously include larger pistons I have a non-functional machine. In nature this would have meant creatures unable to survive while they ‘evolved’ the needed parts. In conclusion, what we see in all living creatures, from the single celled amoeba to the human brain, is function written into our DNA, in a word, design. This is a brief overview of the subject but enough to highlight and identify the importance of design. Next, we will look at fine tuning, another reality that points to both design and a designer.

[1] Behe, Michael J.. Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (p. 14). Free Press. Kindle Edition.

[2] Behe, Michael J.. Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (pp. 56-57). Free Press. Kindle Edition.

Apologetics Part 2

The Cosmological Argument

Have you ever wondered why there is something rather than nothing? While I cannot pretend to provide a complete answer to that question, we can answer the question in relation to why the cosmos and we as humanity are here. The Cosmological Argument, or as it is also known, the Kalam Cosmological Argument (Kalam is an Arabic word meaning eternal), is generally stated as a logical syllogism.

Everything that began to exist had a cause.
The Universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe had a cause.

The obvious implication is that the source of the universe was uncaused and since space, time and matter came into being with the creation of the universe the cause must be timeless, spaceless and non-material. Another word for this description is of course God. We see this in the following scriptures.

¹ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1 (NKJV)

²⁸ Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, The Creator of the ends of the earth, Neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. Isaiah 40:28 (NKJV)

³ All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.

John 1:3 (NKJV)

We have in the first four words of scripture an anchor point for everything else we believe. Scripture doesn’t try to prove Yahweh’s existence, it assumes it. While the Cosmological Argument doesn’t get us to Yahweh, it does get us to a supernatural being creating the universe. Scripturally we know that Being is Yahweh.

Currently there are various ideas that seek to avoid the beginning of the universe and the resulting implications. The Steady State theory (an eternal universe) was believed by many scientists in the 20^th century, including Einstein. He built a fudge factor into his theory of relativity to accommodate his belief and when it was scientifically established that the universe was expanding, and thus had a beginning, he acknowledged it as his greatest scientific blunder.

We also have the non-scientific idea of a continually expanding and contracting universe that ignores science. The Second Law of Thermodynamics notes that things tend to move toward a disordered state. Entropy is scientifically well established and our universe is using up energy and heading toward heat death without outside intervention (taking us back to God). Thus, it cannot have been forever expanding and contracting. This idea also has inherent in it the idea of infinite regress. The problem of course is that if we have no starting point it is impossible to ever arrive at today! Another idea is the multiverse theory that posits multiple universes, in spite of the fact that the only one we know of is our current one and ignores the science that any universe that came into existence would be subject to the same fine-tuning parameters as the one we do know exists.

Perhaps Einstein was right when he said, “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.” More pointedly, James Tour, one of the top chemists in the world and a believer, said, “Only a rookie who knows nothing about science would say science takes away from faith. If you really study science, it will bring you closer to God.”

Thus, in coming closer to God we come back to an uncaused first cause, a being not measured in terms of infinite regress but one who has always been, eternal. In their book, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, Geisler and Turek provide the characteristics of this uncaused first cause. They say it must be,

self-existent, timeless, non-spatial, and immaterial (since the First Cause created time, space, and matter, the First Cause must be outside of time, space, and matter). In other words, he is without limits, or infinite; unimaginably powerful, to create the entire universe out of nothing; supremely intelligent, to design the universe with such incredible precision (we’ll see more of this in the next chapter); personal, in order to choose to convert a state of nothingness into the time-space-material universe (an impersonal force has no ability to make choices). These characteristics of the First Cause are exactly the characteristics theists ascribe to God.

A scientist who was an agnostic, but who recognized the implications of his research was astrophysicist Robert Jastrow. A famous quote from his book God and the Astronomers, is below and provides a fitting conclusion to our look at the Cosmological Argument.

At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. 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.

Let’s join them on this highest of peaks.

Apologetics Part 1

I am going to spend some time doing posts on apologetic points that support a scriptural worldview. The idea of apologetics is rooted in the scripture verse below. The word defense is the Greek apologia and means to ‘speak in defense of.’ Everyone who defends a position, even if they are not aware of it, is functioning as an apologist.

¹⁵ But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; 1 Peter 3:15 (NKJV)

Our other term for this series is worldview. When I wrote my book on worldview, I defined it as The lens through which we view and interpret reality. Think of it as a pair of glasses. If you change your prescription what you see changes. Our worldview is the prescription.

Any worldview needs to address four key aspects, origin, meaning, morality, and destiny. We can assess any worldview by assessing how it addresses origin, meaning, morality and destiny. A failure to adequately address these issues highlights a worldview that lacks coherence.

Christianity answers these four questions in a coherent way, while materialism, more specifically scientific materialism, fails in this regard. Science itself aligns well with faith. Let’s take a look at materialism.

Origin – Scientific materialism promotes the idea that we are merely a cosmic accident and holds to the idea of abiogenesis in place of creation. That is, the idea that life began by a lucky accident. Abiogenesis has never been proven, and in fact if one of the many lab experiments were able to produce life from what scientists believe were the conditions early in the life of our planet, they would merely prove that intelligence is required to produce life.

Meaning – In materialism our origin is inconsequential and accidental. There is no inherent meaning in scientific materialism. Given we are assumed to be a cosmic accident we may choose to attach meaning to life or certain activities but there is no inherent meaning.

Morality – Ideas of right and wrong can be derived, but there is no objective standard, merely social constructs.

Destiny – We came from nothing and go to nothing.

When we apply these four points to Christianity, we have a coherent worldview.

Origin – In brief, God is the origin of what we see and of us.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1 NKJV

²⁶ Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Genesis 1:26 (NKJV)

Meaning – Our purpose and meaning are rooted in His calling on our lives.

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. ²⁹For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. ³⁰Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. Romans 8:28-30 NKJV

Morality – Morality is found in what God defines as right and wrong in terms of behaviour.

⁸Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. ⁹For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not bear false witness,” “You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁰Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. Romans 13:8-10 NKJV

Destiny – Our destiny is eternal, heaven with Jesus.

¹⁶For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:16 (NKJV)

Thus, we see that a Christian scriptural worldview is a coherent worldview. A key point is that our natural tendency is to think with our worldview rather than about our worldview. In this series my hope is that you will think about your worldview and how to align it with scripture.

NOTE – I do not have a set number of posts predetermined for this series as I have yet to write them. In the next two posts I will address the Cosmological Argument then the Teleological (Design) Argument. At the end of the series, I will provide a suggested list of books and authors to consider. This series will be a brief overview of each subject not an exhaustive study, as volumes have been written on each area that I will address. My goal is to provide you with some basic material to defend our common faith.