Category Archives: Existence of God

Existence of God, Science and God

Is the Multiverse Hypothesis Scientific Or Not? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

One of the most powerful arguments for God’s existence is the fine tuning argument.  Rather than rehearse it here, please read Wintery Knight’s presentation of the argument.  Many atheist scholars acknowledge the persuasiveness of this argument (e.g., philosopher Peter Millican did as much in his recent debate with William Lane Craig), although not granting its conclusion.

The most common escape hatch that atheists scurry through when confronted with this argument is to offer the multiverse hypothesis.  This hypothesis, some of them argue, is much more plausible than the God hypothesis because it is a scientific explanation for the fine tuning of the universe for life.  What is this hypothesis and is it scientific?

In the August 2011 issue of Scientific American the world-renowned cosmologist George F. R. Ellis weighs in to explain exactly what the multiverse is.  First, Ellis clarifies what cosmologists mean by the term “multiverse.”

The word “multiverse” has different meanings. Astronomers are able to see out to a distance of about 42 billion light-years, our cosmic visual horizon. We have no reason to suspect the universe stops there. Beyond it could be many—even infinitely many—domains much like the one we see. Each has a different initial distribution of matter, but the same laws of physics operate in all. Nearly all cosmologists today (including me) accept this type of multiverse, which Max Tegmark calls “level 1.”

The level 1 multiverse refers to what lies outside our visual horizon.  This “multiverse” contains the same laws of physics as the universe we can observe, and it is really just an extension of our universe.  I find the term “multiverse” to be misleading in this case, but I don’t get to choose the names for scientific theories.  As Ellis says, the level 1 multiverse is not controversial.  But this is not the notion of the multiverse that atheists invoke to avoid the conclusion of the fine tuning argument. 

Ellis continues:

Yet some go further. They suggest completely different kinds of universes, with different physics, different histories, maybe different numbers of spatial dimensions. Most will be sterile, although some will be teeming with life.  A chief proponent of this “level 2” multiverse is Alexander Vilenkin, who paints a dramatic picture of an infinite set of universes with an infinite number of galaxies, an infinite number of planets and an infinite number of people with your name who are reading this article.

If there truly are an infinite set of universes, argue some atheists, then it seems that at least one would have the life-permitting fine tuning of our universe.  Therefore, there is no need to posit a Designer of our universe at all.  The level 2 multiverse virtually guarantees that our universe would exist, as it guarantees that every other kind of conceivable universe exists.

In part 2 of this series, we will look at what is wrong with the level 2 multiverse hypothesis.

Existence of God, Philosophy, Science and God

Can the Mind Be Explained by Physics?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Some naturalists are betting on it, because ultimately physical laws, in their worldview, have to explain everything.  For the naturalist, there is nothing but physical reality which is governed by physical laws.  That being the case, everything, including the human mind, must be reduced to the purely physical and mechanistic.

Philosophers have pointed out serious problems with this attempt to reduce the mind to physics.  In a fascinating discussion of the origins of modern science, philosopher Richard Swinburne explains that mental states have been purposefully excluded by scientists because mental states were not seen as anything that science could measure or investigate.  Here is Swinburne:

Thermodynamics was conceived with the laws of temperature exchange; and temperature was supposed to be a property inherent in an object.  The felt hotness of a hot body is indeed qualitatively distinct from particle velocities and collisions.  The reduction was achieved by distinguishing between the underlying cause of the hotness (the motion of the molecules) and the sensations which the motion of molecules cause in observers. . . .  But this reduction has been achieved at the price of separating off the [sensation] from its causes, and only explaining the latter.  All reduction from one science to another dealing with apparently very disparate properties has been achieved by this device of denying that the apparent properties (i.e., the ‘secondary qualities’ of colour, heat, sound, taste, etc.) with which one science dealt belonged to the physical world at all.  It siphoned them off to the world of the mental.

But then, when you come to face the problem of the sensations themselves, you cannot do this.  If you are to explain the sensations themselves, you cannot distinguish between them and their underlying causes and only explain the latter.  In fact the enormous success of science in producing an integrated physico-chemistry has been achieved at the expense of separating off from the physical world colours, smells, and tastes, and regarding them as purely private sensory phenomena.  The very success of science in achieving its vast integrations in physics and chemistry is the very thing which has made apparently impossible any final success in integrating the world of mind into the world of physics.

Swinburne’s point is profound.  Modern science was never meant to deal with the mind and its mental states.  Not only that, but its very avoidance of explaining the mind is what has made it so successful.  Naturalists who demand that science explain the mind are asking it to do the impossible.  Maybe the mind is not reducible to physical laws.  Maybe it’s just the opposite – physical laws are ultimately reducible to The Mind.

Atheism, Evil, Pain, and Suffering, Existence of God, General Apologetics, Top Ten Posts of 2010

A Summary of the Craig vs. Tooley Debate at UNCC – #8 Post of 2010

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

On March 24, 2010, Christian philosopher William Lane Craig debated agnostic philosopher Michael Tooley about whether God exists.  I attended the debate and thought I would share a summary with you.

Craig opened with 5 well-known arguments for the existence of God (some of which we’ve presented on TQA in the past – follow the hyperlinks):

  1. cosmological
  2. teleological
  3. moral
  4. resurrection of Jesus
  5. religious experience

Tooley opened with one argument for the improbability of God’s existence: the argument from evil.

Let’s look at this argument more closely.  Tooley defined God as an all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect being.  What he wanted to show is that the existence of this kind of God is improbable because of the existence of evil.

He first catalogued all sorts of evils – the list was quite thorough and even poignant.  Following this shop of horrors, he argued that there are certain kinds of evil where the unknown good properties of that evil (granting that God can bring good out of evil) are outweighed by the bad properties that we know come from evil.  Put another way, he admitted that an all-powerful and all-knowing God could have good reasons for evil, but that we can inductively show that these good reasons cannot outweigh the “bad” from these evils.

His conclusion: since it is improbable that an all-good God could have sufficient good reasons for evil that outweigh the bad associated with evil, then it is is improbable that this all-good God exists.

How did Craig respond?  Craig responded by pointing out that you cannot assign probabilities to the existence of unknown good reasons for evil.  It’s like someone holding a giant bag of marbles and asking you: “What is the probability that, if you reached in, you would pull out a red marble?”  You could not assign a probability because you don’t know if there are any red marbles in there at all!  Tooley, likewise, is somehow claiming to assign probabilities to whether God could have unknown (his word) good reasons for evil.  This is clearly impossible to do with an all-knowing and all-powerful being.

How did Tooley respond to Craig’s arguments for God’s existence?  Well, he didn’t really address the cosmological and teleological arguments, content to let them stand.  He did address the moral argument by claiming that you can have objective moral values without the existence of God – he pointed to several philosophers who have tried to argue this way.

He addressed the argument from the resurrection by saying that all this proves is that the God of the Old Testament exists, and that this God is demonstrably not perfectly moral – he quoted many passages from the OT that seem to indicate an immoral God.

He addressed the argument from religious experience by saying that people from all sorts of religions have religious experiences, so this cannot establish the God of Christianity.

There were, of course, rebuttals given by Craig to Tooley’s critiques, but I won’t go into all of that today.  In the end, here is how they closed.

Tooley claimed that his argument from evil demonstrated that an all-good God is unlikely to exist.

Craig claimed that since Tooley had not addressed the cosmological or teleological arguments, that Tooley was, in effect, admitting that an intelligent, powerful, personal, non-spatial, timeless, creator of the universe exists; he just disputed that this creator was perfectly good.  The fact that Tooley conceded so much in the debate was not lost on the audience.  It was strange that he focused solely on the morality of God.

One final point to mention is the debating style of Michael Tooley.  Tooley is obviously an accomplished and brilliant scholar, but his presentation was extremely difficult to follow.  He presented a host of PowerPoint slides that he read from in rapid-fire fashion.  Since his argument from inductive logic was quite complex (he said as much), I would wager that a very small percentage of the audience could follow it.  That was unfortunate because none of us are served well by failing to understand all sides of a debate.  I have studied these kinds of arguments for many years, and I was barely able to follow his argument; he was just moving way too fast.

In addition, Tooley prepared slides for his rebuttals ahead of the debate and so found himself prepared to refute Craig on points that Craig never introduced.  He relied almost 100% on these prepared slides, again reading from them, line by line.  It was as if he did not want to respond real-time to Craig, and this came across poorly, since Craig did respond real-time to Tooley’s arguments.

Much more could be said about the debate.  If anyone else attended, tell us about what you thought.  We’d love to hear from you.

Existence of God, Philosophy

A Simple Argument for God’s Existence

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

A couple months ago, we featured a 7 minute audio clip from philosopher Peter Kreeft’s lecture on arguments for God’s existence.  For this post, we are presenting an additional clip from the lecture – this time on the first cause argument for God’s existence.  Again, Kreeft does a wonderful job simplifying the argument so that anyone can understand.  Enjoy!

[audio:https://www.toughquestionsanswered.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Arguments-for-the-Existence-of-God-First-Cause.mp3|titles=The First Cause Argument]
Creation, Existence of God, Science and God

Is Hawking’s Theory about the Creation of the Universe New?

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Stephen Hawking NASA 50th (200804210002HQ)

Post Author: Bill Pratt

I was discussing Hawking’s recent book with a regular blog commenter who mentioned that Hawking’s ideas on the creation of the universe were new and that he hadn’t had time to look into them.  This got me thinking about whether Hawking really was on to some new formulation of physics that had never been published before.

It turns out the answer is “no,” according to physicist Stephen Barr.  In his article, “Much Ado About ‘Nothing’: Stephen Hawking and the Self-Creating Universe,” he traces the genesis of Hawking’s ideas:

The idea that Hawking is now touting is not new—in fact, within the fast-moving world of modern physics it is fairly old. My first introduction to it was reading a very elegant theoretical paper entitled “Creation of Universes from Nothing,” written in 1982 by the noted cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin, who argued that our universe might have arisen by a “quantum fluctuation.”

This idea is sometimes referred to as the quantum creation of the universe. There are different variants, but the basic idea is well-known among particle physicists and cosmologists.

Barr then proceeds to describe the nature of this theory:

Right up front, it must be noted that this idea is extremely speculative, has not yet been formulated in a mathematically rigorous way, and is unable at this point to make any testable predictions. Indeed, it is very hard to imagine how it could ever be tested. It would be more accurate to call these “scenarios” than theories.

Having said this, though, Barr warns readers not to blindly dismiss the idea of quantum creation.  He explains that it is based on applying quantum mechanics to entire universes.  Although quantum mechanics is well understood at a sub-atomic level, Hawking and others are speculating what quantum mechanics might look like at the level of entire universes.

After expanding upon the theory of quantum creation, Barr ultimately comes to this point:

Perhaps my explanations are not really necessary. Even the most casual readers recognize that the cosmological theories put forward by Hawking do not bear upon larger questions that motivate classical views of creation out of nothing. Non-scientists are quick to ask the obvious questions. Why a system obeying quantum mechanics, M-theory, superstring theory, or whatever laws of physics that make scientific speculations possible in the first place? Why not no system at all, with no laws at all, no anything, just blank non-being?

Let’s put Hawking’s theories in perspective.  What exactly can these theories tell us?

Physics scenarios and theories are merely mathematical stories. They may be fictional or describe some reality. And just as the words of a book by themselves can’t tell you whether it’s fact or fiction—let alone have the power to make the world they describe real—so with the equations of a physics scenario. As Hawking once understood, equations may turn out to be an accurate description of some reality, but cannot not confer reality on the things they describe.

Finally, Barr reminds us:

There are two answers to the question: “Why does anything exist rather than nothing at all?” The atheist answers, “There is no explanation.” The theist replies, God. An intelligent case can be made for either answer. But to say that the laws of physics alone answer it is the purest nonsense—as Hawking himself once realized.

Atheism, Creation, Existence of God, Philosophy

Why is Stephen Hawking Wrong about God?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In Stephen Hawking’s latest book, The Grand Design (I haven’t read it yet, but I have read Hawking’s introduction and pre-release interviews), he offers explanations as to why our universe exists and why there is such incredible fine tuning in our universe to support advanced life on earth.  His answer seems to be that the laws of physics are the explanation.  There is no need for God.

Enter Professor John Lennox.  He wrote an excellent piece recently dealing with Hawking’s claims head on.  Lennox begins:

According to Hawking, the laws of physics, not the will of God, provide the real explanation as to how life on Earth came into being. The Big Bang, he argues, was the inevitable consequence of these laws ‘because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.’

Unfortunately, while Hawking’s argument is being hailed as controversial and ground-breaking, it is hardly new.

For years, other scientists have made similar claims, maintaining that the awesome, sophisticated creativity of the world around us can be interpreted solely by reference to physical laws such as gravity.

It is a simplistic approach, yet in our secular age it is one that seems to have resonance with a sceptical public.

But, as both a scientist and a Christian, I would say that Hawking’s claim is misguided. He asks us to choose between God and the laws of physics, as if they were necessarily in mutual conflict.

But contrary to what Hawking claims, physical laws can never provide a complete explanation of the universe. Laws themselves do not create anything, they are merely a description of what happens under certain conditions.

Lennox then goes on to further explain the mistake that Hawking is making:

What Hawking appears to have done is to confuse law with agency. His call on us to choose between God and physics is a bit like someone demanding that we choose between aeronautical engineer Sir Frank Whittle and the laws of physics to explain the jet engine.

That is a confusion of category. The laws of physics can explain how the jet engine works, but someone had to build the thing, put in the fuel and start it up. The jet could not have been created without the laws of physics on their own  –  but the task of development and creation needed the genius of Whittle as its agent.

Similarly, the laws of physics could never have actually built the universe. Some agency must have been involved.

To use a simple analogy, Isaac Newton’s laws of motion in themselves never sent a snooker ball racing across the green baize. That can only be done by people using a snooker cue and the actions of their own arms.

The rest of Lennox’s article takes on other aspects of Hawking’s arguments and is well worth reading.

*Another response: Alister McGrath has also written a brilliant article addressing Hawking’s book.

Existence of God

Design in the Universe as Evidence of God – Peter Kreeft audio

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Philosopher Peter Kreeft gives a brilliant overview of the argument from design in the audio below.  The audio is excerpted from one of Kreeft’s podcasts where he lectures on five arguments for the existence of God.  I beg you to set aside just 7 minutes to listen to this audio.  You won’t be sorry.

[audio:https://www.toughquestionsanswered.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Arguments-for-the-Existence-of-God-Design.mp3|titles=The Design Argument]
Existence of God

What Explains the Changing of the Universe?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Everything around us is changing, moving from one state to another in time.  My son was less than 5 feet tall two years ago, and now he is greater than 5 feet tall.  The grass in my yard is growing every week so that I have to cut it.  The paint on my house is fading.

Now, all of these things that are changing are moving from one state to another.  What could move a thing from one state to another?  It doesn’t seem like the thing itself could do that, all by itself.

Food, air, and water contribute to my son’s changing height.  The sun and water grow the grass.  The environment acts on the paint to cause it to fade.  My son cannot be the sole explanation for his change, nor can the grass or paint change themselves.  These things all have the potential for change, but there is always something external that acts on that potential to make the change occur.

It doesn’t stop there, though, because food, air, water, the sun, and the environment also need an explanation for why they change.  They cannot actualize their own change either.

So, what we have is a universe full of changing things that each need an explanation for that change.  Said another way, we have a universe full of potentialities, all of which need things to actualize them.

The universe, though, is the sum total of all these changing things.  It is the sum total of all time, space, and matter.  If everything in the universe is changing, then logically the universe is also changing.  What, then, is the explanation for the universe changing?  It cannot change itself, as we’ve seen.  There must be something outside of it, and that something cannot be in time, in space, or material.  The theist responds that God is outside time, space, and matter, and is therefore a great candidate for the explanation of the changing of the universe.

One last thing, if the explanation for the changing of the universe is also changing, then it also needs an explanation.  But Christians have always held that God is unchanging.  Therefore, God is the immaterial, nonspatial, eternal, and unchanging Source of all change.

Here is the argument in a syllogism:

  1. Everything that changes needs an explanation for that change outside of itself.
  2. The universe is changing.
  3. The universe needs an explanation of its change outside of itself.

Note: Credit for this form of the argument goes to Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli in their book, Handbook of Christian Apologetics.

Atheism, Evolution, Existence of God, Intelligent Design, Miracles, Skeptics

Can Science Test for the Supernatural?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Christians believe that a supernatural being can be reasoned to by working backward from effect to cause.  We observe ourselves and we observe the world around us (those are the effects) and we reason that a supernatural cause is the best explanation for the things we observe.  This is how almost all arguments for God’s existence work.

Science can shed additional light on what we observe in the world around us, so in that sense science can be employed in arguments for God’s existence.  For example, science seems to have shown that the universe had a beginning and that the physical laws and constants that govern the universe are fine tuned for advanced life.  Both of these scientific finds are often used in arguments for God’s existence.

Those who hold a naturalistic worldview (the natural world is all that exists) seem to be divided on this subject.  Some naturalists deny that science can ever be used to test the existence of God and others affirm that science can test for the supernatural and that those tests have all turned out negative.  Still others, like evolutionary scientist Donald Prothero, appear to hold both views at the same time.  Consider the quotes below from Prothero’s book Evolution.

Prothero first suggests that scientists “cannot consider supernatural events in their hypotheses.”  Why? Because “once you introduce the supernatural to a scientific hypothesis, there is no way to falsify or test it.”  He adds that scientists are not allowed to consider God or miracles (i.e., the supernatural) because they are “completely untestable and outside the realm of science.”  All right, it seems that Prothero is firmly in the camp of those who say that science cannot say anything about the supernatural.

But in the very next paragraph in his book, he completely reverses course.  Prothero explains, “In fact, there have been many scientific tests of supernatural and paranormal explanations of things, including parapsychology, ESP, divination, prophecy, and astrology.  All of these non-scientific ideas have been falsified when subjected to the scrutiny of scientific investigation. . . . Every time the supernatural has been investigated by scientific methods, it has failed the test.”

Huh??  Is your head spinning like mine?  Prothero first claims that science cannot test the supernatural and then he says that science has tested the supernatural.  Which is it?  It can’t be both.

I am not pointing this out to poke fun at Prothero, but because I see some skeptics making this mistake over and over again.  They want to desperately cling to the claim that science can say nothing about the existence of God (so that they can remove science as a tool in the Christian’s evidential toolbox), but they also desperately want to tell people how science has shown that God doesn’t exist (they retain science as a tool for skeptics to nullify the supernatural).  Unfortunately, holding both of these positions at the same time is flatly contradictory.  The skeptic must choose one or the other. Either science can test for the supernatural or it cannot.

I have seen this same mistake made in the intelligent design/evolution debate.  Evolutionists will claim that Michael Behe’s idea of irreducible complexity is non-scientific or scientifically untestable, but these same evolutionists will then produce scientific research they claim scientifically disproves irreducible complexity!  If it’s not scientifically testable, then how are they producing research which scientifically disproves it?

If you’re a Christian talking to a scientific skeptic, watch out for this skeptical two-step.  If you’re a scientific skeptic or naturalist, make up your mind which it is, because you are really confusing me.

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Existence of God, Human Nature, Morality

Are Humans Born with a Common Moral Nature?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

The Bible teaches that we are (see Rom. 2).  Virtually every adult human being seems to have the same basic sense of right and wrong.  We all agree that cowardice is wrong, that love is good, that killing the innocent is wrong.  You will be hard pressed to find a culture that disagrees with these moral values.

Many psychologists, however, have claimed that human babies are born as moral blank slates and that their culture gives them all of their moral direction.  Since cultures vary in significant ways, they argue, so do moral values vary greatly from culture to culture.  Recent research is challenging the standard view of psychology, however.

According to the Daily Mail, recent research done on 6-month olds seems to show that they already have a rudimentary sense of right and wrong.

At the age of six months babies can barely sit up – let along take their first tottering steps, crawl or talk.  But, according to psychologists, they have already developed a sense of moral code – and can tell the difference between good and evil.  An astonishing series of experiments is challenging the views of many psychologists and social scientists that human beings are born as ‘blank slates’ – and that our morality is shaped by our parents and experiences.  Instead, they suggest that the difference between good and bad may be hardwired into the brain at birth.

The article describes a few of the experiments that were run to help the researchers determine that morality may be hardwired into the brain.

As with all new research, caution is warranted.  Whether babies are born with moral values will continue to be hotly debated, but the creative work done by this research team will spur on more work.

Why is this topic important?  As Christians, we believe that God is a moral being, and that he implanted his moral nature within humankind.  This moral nature was corrupted at the Fall, but it still resides within us in a perverted state.

The existence of the same basic moral values within all humans points toward the objective reality of moral laws.  Moral laws point back to a Moral Law-giver, and we believe the Moral Law-giver is God.

If it were true that human beings differed in their basic moral values, that some cultures celebrated rape, that other cultures rewarded cowardice, that still others frowned upon love, we would be hard-pressed to demonstrate a common moral law exists.  In that scenario, it would seem that morality is subjective and random, which would seem to count against the existence of a Moral Law-giver.

What do you think?  Does mankind seem to share basic moral values or do you think basic moral values differ radically from person to person and culture to culture?