Sunday, December 28, 2014
Lee Strobel
According to his video, The Case for a Creator Full Documentary, Lee Strobel is a science oriented thinker who converted from theism to atheism upon learning of Darwin's theory of evolution and seeing an experiment showing that life could be created by natural causes in nature. Upon later learning that the experiment was flawed and that there was some information missing from Darwin's tree of life, Strobel concluded that there were too many parameters that had to align just perfectly for life to have occurred randomly in the universe, and that it had to be created by design. For him, this proved that there must be a God that designed the universe. He now teaches this as scientific proof of the existence of God.
This is a condensed summary of his reasoning:
- Anything that is complex has to have a creator unless it can be proven that it can evolve in nature or was created by man himself.
- Life is very complex and we can't prove that it could have evolved naturally, therefore it had to have a creator.
- That creator must transcend nature else it would also have to have a creator. It must be God.
Okay, what does this explain? What is God? God is outside of nature. He has no identity. He is everything and anything, maybe nature itself. In other words, the universe and life are so complex that they had to have been designed by a creator. But this is where science is dropped. He doesn't go on to reason that God must be a trillion trillion trillion trillion times more complex than the universe itself, so how did He come into existence? No. At that point they say that it was never intended for us to know. They now combine this "scientific" proof with writings of man, the Bible, to make it fit. They (I say they because Strobel is not the only one) have now used scientific laws of nature and reasoning to prove that there are no laws of nature and reasoning. Because we can't explain everything we can't really explain anything. We will have to count on revelations from some unknowable anomaly for truth and understanding.
From another view he says:
- From everything we can observe using Hubble's telescopes the universe is expanding from a central point, therefore the universe must have come from a big bang. If this is true, something outside of nature and the universe must have created the big bang.
- It must be God.
This reaches the same conclusion. All is wrapped up in a neat stopping point. We can only know what we were intended to know.
Here is where I would suggest reading a good book on logic and reasoning: The Art of Reasoning by David Kelly.
My thinking on the first sequence above would be:
- We do not understand everything and likely never will because the universe is so vast and eternal, but we have senses and reason that we (humans) must use to identify that which exists and how best to live our lives.
- Life is certainly complex, but the best explanation we have of how it came about is Darwin's theory of evolution. There are parts of this that we don't understand but the evidence is overwhelming that there is a branching tree of life.
- If we ever find evidence of a better explanation we will certainly modify the theory. Even to say that we were not meant to know everything presupposes that we were created with certain intentions. We can't presuppose the thing that we are trying to prove.
Now the universe:
- By definition the universe is everything. Nothing can be outside the universe.
- The universe has no shape. If it did it would have to have an outside. If it had an outside it wouldn't contain everything.
- By the same reasoning there cannot be multiple universes; they would all have to be within The Universe.
- The universe has always existed. If not there would have to be some point in time when there was nothing. But time is just a measurement of movement. If there is nothing there can be no time, so time is within the universe. Also if there was nothing the universe would have to have been created by nothing. If created by God, then either God is nothing or God was always within the universe.
- Our observation of an expanding universe is really just our observation of some part of the universe expanding.
Over the years I have learned that any argument for/against God will eventually boil down to whether you believe in the primacy of consciousness or the primacy of existence. If you believe that consciousness came before existence you will live by faith and never "accept" your mind and reason as valid. That is actually the point where the discussion should begin. That way it can be over very quickly. So far I have never been able to convert an adult Christian to the primacy of existence, and probably never will. I expect the converse of that is also true.
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On Sun, Jan 4, 2015 at 8:15 PM, _____ wrote:
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On Sun, Jan 4, 2015 at 8:15 PM, _____ wrote:
Discoveries in astronomy have shown beyond a reasonable doubt that the universe did, in fact, have a beginning. There was a single moment of creation. . . . .
I gave my counter to the above in my earlier reply. Either you understand and agree with what I said or you don't. If you believe the above statement then you believe that there is something outside of existence that created existence. In other words, some immaterial consciousness existed before anything else and created it. That is called the primacy of consciousness. If that is true, then reality is truly unknowable and reason is useless. without reason I would have no way to counter their claims, so there is no need for me to read further. For astronomers to KNOW the above they would have to somehow know how something was created from nothing. That in itself is a contradiction. Now if scientists are later able to find the entire history of the universe and beyond spelled out in DNA, we will know much more than we do now. But it would also prove that their definition of "universe" as they now use it is wrong.
I have chosen to trust my own senses and reasoning and use them to the best of my mortal ability. Which means I accept that my consciousness is part of my material being and will cease to exist when my brain does. Consciousness is the means for identifying that which exists. This is called the primacy of existence. Existence exists, then life, then consciousness as a part of life. If this is not true, then reason is not really possible. There is no need nor is it possible to use reason to prove that there is no reason.
You might want to argue that some consciousness could have created everything in such a way that reason and logic apply only within our little universe, but if that is true we are still unable to know anything outside our universe so why not use our mind and senses to the best of our ability to live within our universe?
Keep in mind that there are only two possible ways for man to settle differences. One is reason and the other is force. If we deny reason and logic as our means of dealing with each other the only alternative is faith and force (religion and wars.) That is what is destroying the world today. In the good ole USA neither the left nor the right believe in reason. Their religion is Statism and their God is the state.
