Atheism: Is it a plausible world view?
In this article we will be exploring the very foundation of all evolutionary, materialist and skeptical thinking and/or philosophy. I truly believe that if you debunk the evolutionary theory (it has already been debunked, but because of philosophical presuppositions it is clung to with religious fervor) you destroy atheism. But materialism, skepticism, and the atheistic world view, disguised as "science" has crept into our classrooms and has harvested more then just pseudo-science. It has led to such philosophies as "free-thinking" etc. To totally blow materialism out of the water and put that corpse to rest for all-time, one must pull the foundation out from under it. That foundation is called atheism. If you destroy atheism, then "free-thought," skepticism, etc, will follow in its demise. Let’s begin by defining some terms.
Atheism is defined as "the view that there are no gods. A widely used sense denotes merely not believing in God and is consistent with agnosticism. A stricter sense denotes a belief that there is no God; THIS USE HAS BECOME THE STANDARD ONE. In the Apology Socrates is accused of atheism for not believing in the Athenian gods. Some distinguish between theoretical atheism and practical atheism. A theoretical atheist is one who self-consciously denies the existence of a supreme being, whereas a practical atheist may believe that a supreme being exists but lives as though there were no god." (The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd Edition, Robert Audi, General Editor, emphasis mine)
Agnosticism is defined as, "(a) term invented by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1869 to denote the philosophical and religious attitude of those who claim that metaphysical ideas can be neither proved nor disproved. Huxley wrote, ‘I neither affirm nor deny the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing it, but on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it. I have no a priori objection to the doctrine.’
"Agnosticism is a form of skepticism applied to metaphysics, especially theism. The position is sometimes attributed to Kant, who held that we cannot have knowledge of God or immortality but we must be content with faith. AGNOSTICISM SHOULD NOT BE CONFUSED WITH ATHEISM, THE BELIEF THAT NO GOD EXISTS." (Ibid, emphasis mine)
So we can see the general consensus that atheism and agnosticism are in severe contrast. I see many professing atheists using arguments such as "you will never know this side of the grave," etc, to back up their belief. But one must not, as we have noted, confuse the two. An atheist should give arguments to back up their belief in atheism, not confuse it with agnosticism. If one can only use such an argument then they are not really an atheist, but a fence-sitting agnostic. Madeline O’ Hare was quoted in the Saturday Evening Post as saying, "Agnostics are just atheists without guts, because they are afraid to speak up." I guess I could add that they could be theists without guts. I am not saying that agnostics are idiots, what I am saying is that it is very easy to be an agnostic and just throw up your hands. "We will never know I guess." If I had a lazy brain I might just say that and leave it alone. But I think one can find rational answers to this world we live in if they put a little work in it.
The Cosmological Argument
The argument for God’s existence in the area of cosmology is very discernable as far as I am concerned. It is obvious, if you have a complex machine, you have a designer. If I told you that my TV evolved out of nothing on my coffee table you would laugh. How good does it sound then if one proposes that a living cell, thousands upon thousands of times more complex than any TV ever built by man could have evolved by itself? I don’t have to see the designer to know that he exists, but I still know it was designed. To render atheism a useless and futile cause one must pull the foundation out from under it. The theory of evolution has collapsed and the further science, paleontology and microbiology advance, the further Neo-Darwinism will be buried. Not every evolutionist is an atheist, but every atheist is an evolutionist. Some may argue that that is patently false but every theory that I know of that is being tossed around today would fall into 1 of 4 categories: 1) The universe is an illusion 2) The universe created itself 3) The universe is self-existent and eternal all by itself 4) The universe was created by a timeless, changeless, Supreme Being. It is either or, there is no viable fifth option. Let’s examine these four and see which one comes out on top.
Could the universe be an illusion? R.C Sproul, in his Not a Chance, totally demolishes all naturalistic theories. If the universe is an illusion, the illusion must somehow be accounted for. If it’s a false illusion then it isn’t really an illusion at all. If it’s a true illusion then someone or something must exist to have an illusion. If this is the case then that which is having the illusion must a) be self-created, self-existent, or b) caused by something ultimately self-existent, so therefore, everything is not an illusion. Moreover, if we assume the illusion is absolute and nothing really exists, including those having the illusion, then there is really no question of origins to answer. But if something exists, then whatever exists must either be self-created, self-existent, or created by something that is self-existent. As Rene Descartes stated, "Sometimes I doubt my own existence, but who is there to do the doubting? I doubt, therefore I am." The hypothesis that the universe is an illusion is pathetic and those who propagate it should not be taken seriously. Could the universe have created itself?
The problem with this "option" (atheists will either prescribe to this one or the next one) is that it is self-contradictory and self-defeating. Just think about it, for the universe to have created itself, it would have required it’s existence before it really existed! For something to come from nothing, it must in essence "create itself." It must exist before it existed. It is self-contradictory and self-defeating. An entity CAN be self-existent and not violate logic, but it CANNOT be self-created. (We will go over theories relative to this option in detail) As we will see later, discoveries of modern cosmology undermine this theory. Anthony Kenny of Oxford University comments, "A proponent of the [Big Bang] theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that ... the universe came from nothing and by nothing." (Anthony Kenny, The Five Ways: St. Thomas Aquinas’ Proofs of God’s Existence, p. 66) But out of nothing, nothing comes. Unless the atheist can prove that the universe is self-existent, eternal, and infinite he has a big problem. Big Bang cosmology tells us exactly what the Christian has been saying all these years, "The universe had a beginning and it came out of nothing."
Can the universe be self-existent and eternal? Many atheistic publications over the past fifty or so years have tried over and over again to make the universe into an infinite "entity." This has been utterly demolished by scientific observation. How did the universe exist forever and then in do time create life, what it had not done forever? Some of the mental gymnastics that they perform to get around this are quite amusing. To posit a series of in fieri causes (for example your parents are an in fieri cause of you) leads to self-contradiction, as we will discuss. Whatever "caused" the universe has to be a cause in esse, meaning it was not caused. It was the first cause, the unmoved first mover as Aquinas puts it. Father Joyce states it very well in saying that a supporter of the infinite series of in fieri causes wants us to believe "although each link in a suspended chain is prevented from falling simply because it is attached to the one above it, yet if only the chain be long enough, it will, taken as a whole, need no support, but will hang loose in the air suspended from nothing." (Joyce, Principles of Natural Theology, p.67-68) I fail to see the logic in that. How can an unsupported chain support itself without an ultimate unsupported support? What the supporter of atheism must prove conclusively is that an infinite number of in fieri causes can bring the universe into being.
Paul Edwards attempts to undermine the cosmological argument in stating:
"If Harry Truman’s father had never lived, Harry Truman and Margaret Truman would never have been born. If A had never existed, none of the subsequent members of the series would have come into existence. But it is precisely A that the believers in the infinite series is "taking away." For in maintaining that the series is infinite he is denying that it has the first member, he is denying that there is such a thing as a first cause; he is, in other words, denying the existence of A. Since without A, Z could not have existed, his position implies that Z does not exist now; and that is plainly false… Suppose Captain Spaulding had said, ‘I am the greatest explorer who ever lived,’ and somebody replied, ‘No, you are not.’ This answer would be denying that the Captain possessed the exalted attribute he had claimed for himself, but it would not be denying his existence… the believer in the INFINITE SERIES is not ‘taking A away.’ He is taking away the privileged status of A; he is taking away its "first causeness." (Critiques of God, p.45-46, Peter A. Angeles, ed., emphasis mine)
Read any atheistic publican and they basically argue the same way. "Look at that watch, so wonderfully intricate, it must have had a great designer. Look at that great man that designed the watch. He is so wonderfully designed, he must have had even greater designer. Look at the God that designed the man that designed the watch. He is so powerful and wonderful, He must have had an even greater designer." And the arguments go on ad nauseam.
What Mr. Edwards is saying in essence is that he does not deny the existence of "god," (God?) he is simply stating that "god" is not the original cause of causes. First of all, that is no argument for atheism in any sense. Second of all, I see no rational scientific reason to accept an infinite series of in fieri causes for the existence of the universe. This view of an infinite number of causes is riddled with problems.
This theory also leads to self-contradiction. For the universe to be infinite and eternal, all the past events in the universe’s history must be infinite. But that leads to self-contradiction. If you take infinity minus infinity what do you get? Infinity is just an idea and has no empirical grounding in science whatsoever. The atheist might attempt to go the route of infinite mathematics to cloud the issue. This however, won’t work either.
Let’s use this as a starter. If you take a whole (4/4) and subtract a part of it (1/4) can you ever have the whole left over? Obviously not, but the person who appeals to an actual infinite in math is asking us to do that.
This is self-contradictory as we have seen but to solidify the case further let’s envisage all of the natural numbers minus all of the odd numbers. What do we have left? We still have infinity (all of the even numbers). What we have done in essence is subtract part of the whole and we still have the whole! Try this in a calculus class and see how far you get. Another good example is given by J.P. Moreland (Scaling the Secular City, p. 23) showing that an actual infinite doesn’t exist in reality.
Suppose we have a library full of an infinite amount of black books and an infinite amount of red books. Let us now remove all of the black books from this library. What has occurred here is that we have removed all of the black books from the library but we haven’t actually changed the amount of books in it because we still have an infinite amount of red books. Let us also suppose that each book has an infinite amount of pages in it. There would be just as many pages in the first book as there are in the whole library! I could remove all the black books and still have the same amount of books and pages in the library. What the supporter of an infinite series (i.e. Paul Edwards, Gordon Stein, George Smith) is asking us to do is subtract a part from a whole and still have the whole! Is this sound mathematics? I think not.
Then you have Bertrand Russell’s famous example of the slowest writer in the world, Tristam Shandy. (Ibid) Mr. Shandy writes so slowly that it takes him a year to write about one day of his life. If he lives an actual infinite amount of days eventually he will be able to complete this momentous task. This is a worthless analogy because it seems the farther time moves on the further behind he gets.
Furthermore, pertaining to an actual infinite we should ask: Are all parts of the cosmos self-existent and eternal or only some parts? If we say all parts, that includes ourselves and every single man-made item that exists. Cars, watches, chairs, plates, computers, etc, and all people were undoubtedly brought into existence at some finite point in time. If we say only certain parts of the cosmos are self-existent and that they created other parts, we have essentially transferred the attributes of a transcendent God to the self-existent, eternal parts of the universe and thereby rejected our own assumption of materialism. Moreover, it is not rational to believe that matter created life. If there ever was a "time" when nothing existed, what would exist now? Clearly, nothing would ever exist, unless we argue that something can come from nothing, which as we noted earlier is purely based in metaphysical propositions and has no empirical basis. As Sproul points out pertaining to the logical possibility of a self-existent, transcendent being and the necessity of it:
"There must be a self-existent being of some sort somewhere, or nothing would or could exist. A self-existent being is both logically and ontologically necessary… We have labored the logical necessity of such a being. Yet it is also necessary ontologically. An ontologically necessary being is a being who cannot not be. It is proven by the law of the impossibility of the contrary. A self-existent being, by his very nature must be eternal. It has no antecedent cause; else it would not be self-existent. It would be contingent." (Sproul, Not a Chance, p. 185-186)
So of the four possibilities of the universe, only one comes out as a rational explanation. There is a Supreme Being that is the cause of this grand universe we live in. "Chance" and "time" are not entities in and of themselves and can offer us nothing pertaining to the origin of the universe. Matter does not have the ability to bounce itself into an awareness of it’s own existence and produce pizza parlors, bowling alleys, and hair salons. A Supreme Being that has always been could choose to create a universe in a finite time period just like a man sitting from eternity could choose to stand up.
Moreover, Gilson states:
"From the fact that there exists a first mover who is not moved from outside, it does not follow that an absolutely immovable first mover exists. This is why Aristotle says that the formula ‘an unmoved first mover’ can be taken in two senses. First, it can signify an absolutely immovable first mover; if we take it to mean this, our conclusion stands. Secondly, it can signify that this first mover is not moved from outside but that it can mover itself, and consequently is not absolutely immovable. But is this first mover which moves itself moved in its entirely by its entire self? Then we fall again into the preceding difficulties, namely, that the same being is instructing and instructed, in potency and act at the same time and under the same relation. But if we say, on the contrary, that only one part of this being is moving, while the other part alone is moved, then we reach our conclusion: there exists a mover which is only mover, that is, which moves without being moved." (Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 63)
It was objected that the infinite number analogies I gave are flawed because I was comparing "real number math with infinite number math." The semantic terms employed are quite curious, it begs the question: Isn't infinite math based in reality and aren't infinite numbers real constructs? From the terms above one would think not. The following was given to object: "If you take a whole (0/0) and subtract a part of it (0/0) can you ever have the whole (0/0) left over?" This example is dead in the water because you essentially (and logically) have nothing to begin with and you're not taking anything away, you begin and end with the same result without doing anything in between. One objector devised a calculus problem which the final infinite was ½ the beginning infinite, which again begs the question. By definition you cannot add anything from an infinite, because an infinite is by definition without end and limitless. Infinity+2 is illogical because an infinite is without end. I suppose the best question to ask is this: Is your infinite with or without bounds? If it is without bounds then it's the same thing, if it doesn't have bounds then you've just pulled an imaginary integer out of your nether regions.
Another objection was raised where someone proposed an "infinite number of points" between the numbers 2 and 3 for example. This fails as well because no matter the number of theoretical points between 2 and 3 you still have a concrete beginning and a concrete ending–2.00000 (and so on) to 3.000000000. One person even proposed an infinite number of zeroes after the decimal point to get around the problem but that's silly, you're not changing anything by adding zeroes upon zeroes. Pi (3.14159) is an irrational number, you could go on and on after the decimal point but nobody would suggest that Pi is an infinite. These arguments propagated by the naturalist camp to get around the problem of an actual infinite fail.
Lastly, David Hilbert, one of the greatest mathematicians ever states, "The infinite is nowhere to be found in reality. It neither exists in nature nor provides a legitimate basis for rational thought. The role that remains for the infinite to play is solely that of an idea." (David Hilbert, Philosophy of Mathematics, ed., 1964, p. 139, 141)
Some atheists might attempt to turn around the argument by saying, "How do you know that there was just one first cause. Could there not have been several?" What they are trying to do here is substitute polytheism for monotheism. But notice that it is NOT argument for atheism in any respect, NOR is it an argument against theism. I would recommend asking them if they have abandoned their atheistic, materialistic worldview before moving on. It is pointless to debate a person that fails to concede that they have been defeated in one small point and can only resort to throwing out red herrings.
I will not exhaustively go over the scientific biological arguments for/against atheism as they have already been examined in Fallacies of Evolution: 40 Reasons Evolution Didn’t Occur and More Evolution Fallacies. If the biological naturalistic explanation fails (i.e. abiogenesis) then atheism will fail also. For the statement that "God DOES NOT exist" is just as much a statement that "God does exist." The onus is on the atheist to provide evidence for his viewpoint, but as we will see there is no good evidence for atheism. If one is to persuade anyone to become an atheist they must tear down all the arguments for theism and erect a more convincing case of his own. (For more information demolishing the idea of an actual infinite, see Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, chapter 1)
Big Bang Cosmology and Origins
The absolute origin of the universe has puzzled many great thinkers for centuries. How did everything get here? This leads to the ultimate philosophical questions. Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? What is my purpose? We are going to run down some of the theories that have come and gone in the area of Big Bang cosmology and the theory that still stands it the Standard Model, where the universe STARTS as a singularity. The key word is that it had a start, a beginning if you will. Let’s quickly run down the theories that have gone the way of the Dodo. These theories attempted to get around the fact that the universe had a beginning. If the universe did have a beginning, and it appears that it did, then as Kenny noted, the atheist is in a bit of a quandary. (NOTE: some of this info comes via William Lane Craig in one of his articles. I have also cited many other sources.)
Big Bang: Steady State Model
Sir Fred Hoyle wrote, pertaining to the obvious fact that the universe had a beginning, and was caused by "something" outside of the universe: "This most peculiar situation is taken by many astronomers to represent the origin of the universe. The universe is supposed to have begun at this particular time. From where? The usual answer, surely an unsatisfactory one, is: from nothing!" (Fred Hoyle, Astronomy Today, p. 165)
According to this theory, the universe is in constant isotropic cosmic expansion. What I mean by that is that the universe is receding outwards but new matter replaces the empty void that the receding matter left, ex Nihilo. In a way the universe is constantly recycling itself. If one would extrapolate the universe backwards the density of the universe would NEVER change because the matter and energy simply vanish as new galaxies approach. The discoveries of galactic red shift and the expansion of the universe, etc, (however, there is a growing body of evidence that the universe is DONE expanding, but nonetheless, has expanded) laid the Steady State theory to rest once and for all. This theory also does not account for how the universe in its static density ever got here in the first place! It just starts with the matter essentially already there and continues in this mode of "recycling." The discovery of "background microwave radiation" also contributed to the demise of the Steady State Model. But even background microwave radiation, as noted by Alfven, doesn’t prove the Big Bang at all. (NOTE: for the readers it is necessary for me to explain that I have no problem with the statement that the universe began from a very small, dense, hot beginning. Those who try to make the Big Bang, or better yet, "big expansion" produce galaxies, stars, planets, etc, are just philosophers) Alfven comments pertaining to background microwave radiation: "(the) claim that this radiation lends strong support to hot Big Bang cosmologies is without foundation…" (if we examine the background radiation) "…without any preconceived ideas" there really is no evidence. "Is there any other field of science where such an extrapolation in one jump is accepted without very strong proof." (Alfven, Cosmology: Myth or Science? No. 5 Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy (1984), as cited in Wendell Bird, Origin of Species Revisited, Vol. 1, p. 79, 91, 453) Hoyle comments, "The latest data differ by so much from what theory would suggest as to kill the Big Bang cosmologies. But now, because the scientific world is emotionally attracted to the Big Bang cosmologies, the data are ignored." (Ibid, p. 454) The Steady State Model, in the words of Ivan King, "…has now been laid to rest, as a result of clear-cut observations of how things have changed with time." (King, The Universe Unfolding, p. 462)
The Oscillating Models
The Oscillating Models have a sheer metaphysical appeal, as did the Stead State Theory of Hoyle. The Oscillating Model proposes that the universe explodes and expands and then after a long time the internal gravitational pull of the universe overrides the force of its expansion of it and produces a "Big Crunch." This will go on and on and on, ad infinitum. However, this theory has received a few deathblows itself as it has attempted to avoid the initial singularity and a beginning to the universe. As noted in an AP News Release, (1/9/98): "There are no known physics to cause a collapsing universe to bounce back into a new expansion. The mean mass density of the universe is insufficient to generate enough gravitational attraction to halt and reverse the expansion." Lastly, since entropy (a measure of the disorder that exists in a system) is preserved from cycle to cycle in this particular model, this in turn would generate larger and larger oscillations. The thermodynamic properties of this model imply that the universe did indeed have a beginning, the very thing the creators of this model sought to avoid in the first place! (I. D. Novikov and Ya. B. Zeldovich, "Physical Processes near Cosmological Singularities," Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 11 (1973): p. 401-402; Joseph Silk, The Big Bang, 2d ed., p. 311-312)
Furthermore, the assumption of an eternal universe proposes another problem. If the universe, as well as all matter and energy were eternal, then all the hydrogen would have been used up sometime in the infinite past. The fact that hydrogen still exists rules out the possibility of an eternal universe. (Wendell Bird, Origin of Species Revisited, Vol. 1, p. 452) The proof that the universe in not eternal also destroys the foundation of Hinduism, Buddhism, and the rest of those New Age, far eastern pagan religions. I guess science and religion intersect more than we think.
Vacuum Fluctuation Models
Within the vacuum of the greater "universe-as-a-whole" fluctuations occur that spawn mini-universes such as ours. The relative beginning of ours doesn’t imply a beginning for the greater "universe-as-a-whole." Within a finite point of time there is a possibility that a fluctuation will occur at ever point in space. Given enough time (and we have enough of that according to this model, we have eternity at our disposal) universe will have been spawned at every point in this primordial vacuum and they will begin to coalesce and collide with each other. Unless of course you propose expansion of the very vacuum itself that spawns them. If you do that then you back to the very point you sought to avoid, an absolute origin in a finite period of time.
Chaotic Inflationary Model
This model, proposed by Andrei Linde, seeks to avoid the problems of the Vacuum Fluctuation model. In his model, inflation never ends and the "wider universe as a whole" produces separate domains which continue to recede from each other. Since these separate domains don’t interact, the problem of colliding galaxies that the Vacuum models had is avoided. Linde has the same problems that other models had, avoiding an actual beginning. This model does not address, what, if anything, came before. In fact, Linde even concedes the fact that there was a singularity some time in the past. (Andrei Linde, Dmitri Linde, and Arthur Mezhlumian, "From the Big Bang Theory to the Theory of a Stationary Universe," Physical Review D 49 (1994): 1783-1826)
So I guess that we are back to square one: The universe had a beginning and it came out of nothing. But what materialists don’t like to talk about is what happened prior to this singularity. Evidently the universe is NOT eternal and had a cause. But as we noted earlier, if the universe is not eternal, then what caused it?
Stephen Hawking and the Quantum Gravity Models
One does not have to be versed in quantum physics to appreciate the metaphysical appeal that Hawking pushes. Alexander Vilenkin has called these models exercises in "metaphysical cosmology." (A. Vilenkin, "Birth of Inflationary Universes," Physical Review D 27 (1983): 2854. See J. Hartle and S. Hawking, "Wave Function of the Universe," Physical Review D 28 (1983): 2960-75; A. Vilenkin, "Creation of the Universe from Nothing," Physical Letters 117B (1982): 25-28)
In the Hartle-Hawking model, space-time is "rounded off" prior to Planck Time. (10 -43 seconds) As noted this model has a great metaphysical appeal and Hawking states: "Only if we could picture the universe in terms of imaginary time would there be no singularities . . . When one goes back to the real time in which we live, however, there will still appear to be singularities." (Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 138-139) Hawking further states that the universe "would quite literally be created out of nothing: not just out of the vacuum, but out of absolutely nothing at all, because there is nothing outside the universe." (Hartle and Hawking, "Wave Function of the Universe," p. 2961; Hawking and Penrose, Nature of Space and Time, p. 85)
The very notion of "imaginary time" smacks of metaphysics. If Hawking drops his argument for "imaginary time" then the singularity just simply reappears. Only by cunning mental gymnastics can he avoid the singularity and an absolute beginning of the universe. Hawking further damages his position by saying, "I'm a positivist . . . I don't demand that a theory correspond to reality because I don't know what it is… I take the positivist viewpoint that a physical theory is just a mathematical model and that it is meaningless to ask whether it corresponds to reality." (Hawking and Penrose, Nature of Space and Time, p. 121; Stephen Hawking, "The Objections of an Unashamed Positivist," in The Large, the Small, and the Human, by Roger Penrose, 1997, p. 169) Sounds to me like Mr. Hawking’s arguments are no better (actually far worse) than a Christian saying "goddunnit." Atheists always criticize a debunking of their arguments with that familiar ad hominem. The funny thing is, Hawking blatantly admits that his theory is not grounded in reality. All these quantum gravity models posit "imaginary time" to avoid singularities. So these theories can be tossed out because they are completely grounded in metaphysics, no more nor less.
The Standard Big Bang Model
This standard model describes a universe that came into existence via a singularity a finite time ago. This is the problem for atheists and the like; they don’t like the universe to have a beginning because that implies that someone or something caused it. The standard model provides a creation ex Nihilo. Barrow and Tipler (not Christians by any means) state on page 442 of their book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, "At this singularity, space and time came into existence; literally nothing existed before the singularity, so, if the Universe originated at such a singularity, we would truly have a creation ex Nihilo." In that same book Barrow and Tipler lay out several processes (pertaining to evolution) where the sun would have ceased being a main sequence star before they would have been accomplished. So, evolution, if it did really occur, would literally be proof for the existence of God! (It must be stated that even if biological evolution was a fact, that would hardly prove that atheism is true) Since the universe did indeed have a beginning (I still hear materialists spouting words similar to Sagan the pagan when he said on Cosmos, "The universe is all there is, there ain’t no more.") then nobody can just naively say, "The universe is just there, that’s all," ala Bertrand Russell. Right from the very start the atheist is in an inescapable problem.
Problems Galore
Putting the fact aside that the atheist has not a shred of evidence to posit the universe as the "creator" itself, let’s take a look at if the Big Bang can account for anything AFTER it did it’s dirty deed at the inception of the space/time continuum.
As Dr. Robert Gange (an old-earth creationist and a supporter of the "Big Bang" or "Big Expansion") put it in a debate with Dr. Kent Hovind some years ago: "The Big Bang theory simply says that there was something supernatural… that occurred long ago, that produced space/time, NOT the earth. Not even galaxies, they are trying to make it produce galaxies now. But the actual Big Bang theory says nothing about planet earth, and especially nothing about man. Now I know there are a lot of atheists out there, and I know there are a lot of secular humanists. And what they do is they put on the costume of science, and pretend to speak in the name of science. The problem is, they’re philosophers, they’re not scientists. Scientists don’t say the Big Bang produced the earth, philosophers say that. So we have to understand what science is saying as opposed to all that other stuff that people say science is saying." (Video, Age of the Earth Debate, www.amport.com)
Materialists get themselves into big trouble when they try to finagle the Big Bang into producing the stars, earth, and eventually man. Well, here we are, the product of an explosion.
First, let’s deal with the statement that the "laws of physics break down at a singularity." I have heard this statement enough times that it comes out my ears. It seems that they are all reading from the same script. Why should we accept the "fact" that the universe breaks down at a singularity? As Narlikar and Padmanabhan point out: "… it is IMPOSSIBLE for matter to come into existence without violating energy conservation. It is customary to water down this difficulty by statements like ‘the laws of physics break down at a singularity’; however the essential truth remains the same… " (Narlikar and Padmanabhan, "Creation-Field Cosmology: A Possible Solution to Singularity, Horizon, and Flatness Problems," Physical Review, Vol. 32, emphasis mine) Can anyone explain why this pseudo-law is true, void of mental gymnastics? Duane Gish states pertaining to the cosmic egg in Creation Scientists Answer (p.155-156):
"Why should it have been there at all? The First Law (of Thermodynamics) tells us that the total quantity of energy in the universe is a constant. If one holds to the belief that these natural laws are all there is and all there ever has been, then it must be accepted that the cosmic egg could not have come into being from nothing. If even a single atom cannot come into being from nothing, surely the matter and energy equivalent to that presently existing in the universe could not have come into being from nothing. Where did all this mass/energy come from? How long did it sit there before it exploded? What caused it to explode? But why worry about these little problems while playing games? And all of this is just a game. George Abell tells us, "We are playing games—cosmology is the best sport of all, because it is the ultimate game."
This gobbledygook that the "universe breaks down at a singularity" is a philosophical statement, NOT a scientific one. Shifting gears a bit back to what Dr. Gange stated about those who attempt to make the Big Bang produce galaxies, etc.
"Simply put, a compacted universe was the ultimate black hole, and black holes may not be exploding today and certainly do not produce galaxies, stars, planets, and other complexity. Moreover, the problem that the expansion must be incredibly ‘tuned to an accuracy of 1 part in 10 to the 50th power’ is summarized by Lake: ‘What we find from this is that the initial data (expansion rate and density), specified at a time 10 to the negative 39 seconds after the Big Bang, have to be tuned to an accuracy of 1 part in 10 to the 50th power, even though p is so poorly know today…’ Leslie affirms the need for a precise expansion rate: ‘… Reduction by one part in a million million at an initial stage would seemingly have led to re-collapse in under 100,000 years and before temperatures had fallen below 10,000 degrees. Equivalently tiny increases would have had similarly huge results. Even as matters stand it is hard to see how galaxies could have formed in a universe which is flying apart so fast—and an early speed increase by one-thousandth would quickly have led to a thousand-fold increase. (b) Again, very slight reductions in the smoothness with which matter is distributed… would apparently have multiplied the primeval heat billions of times with disastrous effect." (as cited in Wendell T. Bird, Origin of Species Revisited, p. 460; Science, Vol. 224, p. 675, 678)
Fred Hoyle damages the Big Bang theory further by saying:
"This persistent weakness has haunted the Big Bang theory ever since the 1930s. It can probably be understood most easily by thinking to begin with of what happens when a bomb explode. After detonation, fragments are thrown into the air, moving with essentially uniform motion. As is well known in physics, uniform motion is inert, capable in itself of doing nothing. It is only when the fragments of a bomb strike a target—a building for example—that anything happens… But in a single Big Bang there are not targets at all, because the whole universe takes part in the explosion. There is nothing for the expanding material to hit against, and after sufficient expansion, the whole affair should go dead… [E]ven though outward speeds are maintained in a free explosion, internal motions are not. Internal motions die away adiabatically, and the expanding system becomes inert, which is exactly why the Big Bang cosmologies lead to a universe that is dead and done almost from its beginning." (Fred Hoyle, "The Big Bang in Astronomy," p. 92, New Scientist, (1981), p. 521, 523; as cited in Bird, Origin of Species Revisited, p. 417-418)
As Varghese points out in his Cosmos, Bios, Theos on page 11: "No scientific theory, it seems, can bridge the gap between absolute nothingness and a full-fledged universe (or fledgling universes). This ultimate origin question is a metascientific question—one which science can ask but not answer." He states further on page 6:
"That there has to be an explanation is evident to the scientific mind. But it is equally evident that this explanation CANNOT BE VERIFIED OR FALSIFIED with scientific tools if it involves absolute nothingness at any point… Theoreticans at the cutting-edge of cosmology have tried to overcome the obstacles to explanations of the Big Bang in scientific terms by probing the ultimate and the fundamental laws and mechanism behind the processes detected by the experimentalists. The most influential approaches to this level of explanation include the Oscillating Universe hypothesis and the Quantum Gravity, Vacuum Fluctuation, and Inflationary Universe models." (emphasis mine)
Professor Eugene P. Wigner, winner of the Nobel Prize for physics states, "The origin of the universe is a mystery for science, surely for the present. It is a disturbing mystery." (Wigner, "The Origin of the Universe is a Disturbing Mystery for Science," in Cosmos, Bios, Theos, p.131) William Stoeger, a Ph.D. in Astrophysics (Cambridge) states, "In other words, any physical model of the universe—even though it be the definitive unified field theory—will apparently not be able to account intelligently for the existence of the universe by itself." (Ibid, p. 258)
Contrary to the parroted arguments that many use, the basic consensus among those who do the "dirty work" is that they have absolutely no answer. The gap between nothingness and the universe is even greater than the gap between non-living chemicals and life. These are points that many materialists will avoid, and for good reason. THE VERY FOUNDATION of their faith has gaping holes and scientific observation has leveled more than a few deathblows. The universe necessitates a Creator God.
In light of all the problems that atheist might pull out his last trump card and say, "The chances of the universe forming are remote but someone has to win the lottery." You could put a billion billion black balls into a container with one white ball and grabbing any ball is equally improbable, but what are your chances of grabbing the white ball?
I still hear such examples given by the atheistic camp in debates and publications over and over again. The skeptic will stand up and say, "What are the chances of these very people sitting in these very seats at this point in time?" The chances are rather remote but there is a glaring flaw in this analogy.
The people that are here and sitting in these very seats didn’t get there by some blind random process. Joe Q. Public got on a specific plane that left at a scheduled time to arrive at a certain airport. He then got in a cab and specifically arrived at a certain building and then consciously chose to sit in a certain chair. He didn’t randomly get on a plane and choose a random address out of a phone book. His arrival here was planned and designed. So much for that one.
Let’s shift gears now and look at what many great scientific minds are saying about absolute origins. Many atheists, materialists, and agnostics alike poke fun at anyone who believes in a supreme, transcendent, benevolent Creator God. "Anyone who would believe in any ‘god’ is an idiot and has a lazy brain."
Quotable Quotes
"The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God." (Psalm 14:1a) The Hebrew word "nabal" translated "fool," means "stupid, wicked." Those are the exact sentiments of Professor Christian B. Anfinsen, a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Harvard and a Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry. He states, "I think only an idiot can be an atheist." (Varghese, Cosmos, Bios, Theos, p.139) I guess we know what he thinks of Richard Dawkins’ intellect, or lack thereof.
Ulrich J. Becker, Professor at MIT and member of the Research Council of Europe in Geneva, Switzerland states, " How can I exist without a creator? I am not aware of any compelling answer given." (Ibid, p. 29)
Robert A. Naumann, Professor of Chemistry and Physics at Princeton states, "The existence of the universe requires me to conclude that God exists." (Ibid, p. 72)
Professor Roger Gautheret, former Professor of Cell Biology at the Paris Facility of Science and former President of the Academy of Sciences in Paris concludes, "I believe that notions such as infinite space and time, matter, structure, and order which govern the universe suggest the intervention of a spirit which has established the universe and its laws. Reflection on these subjects cannot avoid the notion of God." (Ibid, p. 176)
Dr. Arno Penzias, winner of the Nobel Prize for physics writes, "Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say ‘supernatural’) plan. Thus, the observations of modern science seem to lead to the same conclusions as centuries-old intuition." (Ibid, p. 83)
Lastly, Professor Wolfgang Smith, a Ph.D. in mathematics from Columbia University and Professor of Mathematics at Oregon State University writes, "To me personally nothing is more evident, more certain, than the existence or reality of God. I incline in fact to view that the existence of God constitutes indeed the only absolute certainty, even as he (or it) constitutes, in the final analysis, the only true or absolute Existent… " (Ibid, p. 117)
One could cite many more contemporary scientists, Nobel Prize winners, etc, but I think the point is clear by now. None of these men that were quoted are morons or un-educated by any stretch of the imagination. Some atheists and the like just seek to intimidate whom they are debating and leave it at that. As we have shown however, the arguments from the VERY FOUNDATION of their philosophy are baseless and unfounded.
Now pertaining to this vast and grand universe that we live in, it is commonly cited (and parroted) by skeptics that this universe is billions of light years across and the Milky Way Galaxy alone is 100,000 light years across (and it probably is), therefore, that proves that the universe is billions of years old. This might be better put in a science forum but as the Humanist Manifesto 1933 states:
"In order that RELIGIOUS humanism may be better understood, we, the undersigned, desire to make certain affirmations which we believe the facts of our contemporary life demonstrate… RELIGIOUS HUMANISTS regard the universe as self-existing and not created… Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that HE HAS EMERGED AS A RESULT OF A CONTINUOUS PROCESS." (emphasis mine)
However, new developments in cosmology are again demolishing another one of the atheist’s "security blankets."
Do Billions Of Light Years Mean Billions Of Years?
It was commonly believed for many centuries that the speed of light was indeed constant and unchangeable. This is also important for the age of the universe. If the speed of light is indeed constant and never changes then a star that is a billion light years away would indeed indicate that our universe was indeed at least a billion years old. However, if the speed of light is indeed decaying like everything else around us then nobody can gratuitously assume that the universe is indeed billions of years old. The main reason that an old universe and earth are held to so religiously is because if it were not true then evolution would be impossible. An outright, empirical observation of the non-constancy of light’s speed would be disastrous for atheists.
Here is a relevant link that will help explain what has been happening. Barry Setterfield, a creationist from Australia, has done the majority of this work. What the basic hypothesis is, is that the speed of light was much much faster in the past, therefore it would have gotten here a lot faster obviously. If this is true then billions of light years do not mean billions of years by any means.
An AP News Release, 1/19/01 states that in 3 separate experiments, light was slowed to a speed of 38 MPH, light was sped up from it’s "conventional" speed, and light was stopped cold (although there is still debate whether the individual waves themselves were stopped). This gives us very good reason to believe that the speed of light is not constant and it is indeed decaying. There is a simplified explanation of Setterfield’s work that will help layman not versed in physics grasp what is being shown.
What started it all was the debate about the interpretation of the Doppler red shift. The conventional interpretation was that it showed a clear, unequivocal expansion of the universe. However, observations made by William Tifft, an astronomer from Arizona began to cast doubt on the customary interpretation. Tifft’s work seems to prove that the universe is NOT expanding, but these redshifts exhibit quantised "jumps" and not a "smooth" constant change in the red shift. In the simplified explanation of Setterfield’s work a good analogy is made with a glass of water. The conventional explanation is shown in the analogy of a person pushing a glass of water across a table in a smooth pattern, one-half an inch per second. The second analogy pertains to a quantised red shift, or someone pushing a glass of water across a table in a "jerking" pattern where the glass may move one-half inch one second, not move at all the next and then move three-quarters of an inch the next, etc. That is what would be called a "quantised" jump. Tifft documented heavily that there was a "clumping" effect with the measurements. It was NOT a "smooth" constant change as taught under the conventional explanation. Tifft’s work was challenged and vindicated in 1992 and 1994 by two astronomers, Drs. Guthrie and Napier. As stated in the aforementioned URL:
"So what does this red shift quantisation tell us? It may indicate that some kind of energy 'jumping' is occurring within atomic structures. If the universe has actually finished expanding and is releasing that potential energy into space, then the progressive increase of the energy available to each and every atom at the same time will result in the sudden jumping of the redshift measurements at specific intervals. This is because the pressure of the released energy would be building up simultaneously throughout the universe and thus every atom in the cosmos would also react simultaneously when the energy reached the threshold stage. Thus we would expect to see emitted light undergoing the quantised jumps that Tifft saw as we look back in time/distance into the universe."
It seems that we have good evidence for substantiation of Setterfield’s hypothesis. If the speed of light is changing then that means that either mass or energy is changing according to that famous equation E=mc2. Setterfield has concluded that energy is remaining constant; it is the mass that is changing. When we say "mass" we are not talking about the human body, per se, we are talking about the mass of atomic parts. The "mass" of atomic parts refers to the volume or space that each "particle" takes up. Whether "mass" is pure energy or what not is not important, what is important is that the more it vibrates, the more volume it occupies, therefore, the more "mass" it is considered to have atomically. Setterfield is NOT saying that when mass is increasing that anything is gaining "weight," what he is saying is that the more "jiggle" or "vibration" that there is in the atom, the more volume it occupies, therefore, the more mass it has. So when an atom is moved out of it’s level by incoming energy, and then moves back, the ENERGY DIFFERENCE between where it is and where it is returning to is higher after each quantum jump (a quantum jump is defined as the atom jumping to a new energy level, precipitated by incoming energy that causes it to make this "jump." The interval of time between these "jumps" is called the "quantum interval.") From the aforementioned URL: "It is this energy that is responsible for the emission of light, so the light itself will be emitted at a slightly higher energy, or shorter (bluer) wave-length, with each quantum jump."
What is happening to the universe can be understood with this analogy. Let’s say you stretch out a rubber band as far as you can without breaking it of course. After you turn it loose it begins to relax. This is essentially what is happening to the universe. It has finished expanding and like the rubber band it is relaxing and in turn giving off enormous amounts of energy. This energy that is given off by the universe as it continues to "relax," flips back and forth (on a small scale) between matter and energy. These very tiny bits of matter that "flash" back and forth into and out of existence are referred to as "virtual particles." The more virtual particles that there are, the more energy that there is. Virtual particles cannot be counted but what they are doing can be measured.
As light travels it gets absorbed by whatever it comes into contact with, such as a brick wall, a mirror, a glass, etc. These virtual particles absorb and re-emit the light that they come into contact with. This does not take very long at all but it does on a small-scale SLOW light down. As stated earlier, the more energy that the universe is giving off as it relaxes, the more virtual particles that there are. The more virtual particles that there are, the more light is absorbed, re-emitted, and sent on its way. Combine this with Tifft’s work that shows conclusively that the red shift is not a "smooth" transition but a quantised one, and the energy being given off by the universe, the general trend it that light is indeed slowing down. Now, studies into the decay of the speed of light have a ways to go yet but there is indeed a growing body of evidence from within the own evolutionary camp that light is slowing down.
Now there are 2 major implications at least: 1) Since the speed of light is not constant and is indeed slowing, evolutionists cannot gratuitously assume that billions of light years equal billions of years. In fact, Setterfield’s work gives good evidence of a young universe, which doesn’t sit well with those who have a philosophical presupposition. 2) This evidence will effect one of the icons of the evolutionary theory, the radio-metric dating game.
From the aforementioned URL: "… a faster light speed is indicative of a much faster rate of radio decay. This is because the equivalent of 'c', the speed of light, is in the numerator of every reduced equation for every decay rate. Thus, the faster the speed of light, the higher the rate of decay. The first effect we see, then, is that we need to be very careful about the ages we assign to items which are analyzed this way." (emphasis mine)
Now, rather then look at the empirical evidence and take it at face value, those with philosophical presuppositions will throw out a red herring rather then substantiate their case against the given evidence. Perhaps the question will come up, "Since the radioactive decay was much, much faster in the past, you would have a huge problem with the heat being created." Setterfield has also rebutted this question: "First that the amount of heat radiation in a given volume is lower… Secondly, as explained earlier in this paper, as we go back in time we are also going back to before so much energy was available to the atom. Before each quantum jump, the atom had lower energy than after. So the net effect here is that the earlier in time, the lower the energy of the atom, even though the light speed and therefore the actual rate of decay was faster. This lower energy in the atom thus somewhat reduced the amount of heat released by any given decay process." So there is no problem whatsoever with the heat factor.
Since the speed of light was much faster in the past, the assumption by evolutionists (among other assumptions) that the decay rate has remained static over these mythical billions of years goes down the tubes. Seems that radiometric clocks will be in need of some repair. But I guess even a broken clock is right twice a day.
NOTE: John Stear, on his dubious No Answers in Genesis has attempted to answer the claim that light is slowing down (Originally I had 2 different links here from Stear's site, both are now broken--most of his canned answers are "off site" anway). His site features such great scientific minds as a mailman and Frank Zindler among others. Stear apparently has a case of schizophrenia in his "religious views." Some (I say some because to expose all the misinformation coming out of the Stear camp it would literally fill volumes) of the straw man arguments and pseudo-science of this site are exposed at True Origin. One interesting thing is one of his buddies Ian Plimer stated in his book Telling Lies for God that pi terminates after 5 decimal points. Stear, by aligning himself with people like Plimer make him guilty by association. But that doesn’t surprise me because Stear has not one iota of scientific knowledge. It seems that ad hominem is his best argument. I don’t know who is in charge of quality control at NAIG, but they should be fired. You can find a hilarious list of Plimer’s bloopers at AIG.
All of the links that Mr. Stear parroted say nothing about the observations of Drs. Guthrie or Napier that vindicated Setterfield’s hypothesis. They also say nothing about the experiments of Drs. Hau and Harris and their experiment that slowed light to 38 MPH. There is also not a whisper about William Tifft and his observations, or the experiment, which actually sped light up from its "conventional" speed, which should not surprise anyone at all. In a little play on words for Mr. Stear, "Evolution is not the alternative to creation, misinformation is." In fact, one of Stear’s links refers to a single, isolated observation made in 1987. (Supernova 1987A) Guthrie and Napier vindicated Tifft in 1992 and 1994. Moreover, Setterfield has submitted his upcoming paper to several physics and astronomy journals. They have never been refused because of faulty math and/or physics. In addition, Setterfield (and others 1 2 3) has answered all the criticisms leveled at him. He basically states that all of Stear and Steiger’s parroted info is outdated and old. So I guess it is back to the drawing board for Mr. Stear. Perhaps Plimer, in all of his mathematical prowess could assist him?
Objective Moral Values
The problem ISN’T that the atheist has the wrong values; it is simply that the atheist has no foundation for these values. I am NOT saying that we need to believe in God to be "good," NOR am I saying that we need to believe in God to believe in objective morals. Those are NOT the questions. The question is, if God does not exist, why do objective, absolute morals exist?
If naturalism were true, there wouldn’t really be anything wrong with your raping someone. I don’t think there is a person on this planet that would agree that rape is amoral. For some reason, I never forget this. Many years ago I was listening to a man named George Carlin in one of his pathetic comedy skits and he stated that rape is hilarious. I think it is moral deficiencies such as this that contribute to the moral anarchy that this country is experiencing right now. Hypothetically, if Mr. Carlin was raped and sodomized by a group of thugs after his show he would not think that rape is so hilarious. But honestly, I think that even the majority of humanists and atheists would agree that rape is wrong. If some things are really wrong, then that means that some things are really right. All one needs to do is prove just one case of objective morality and the entire structure of naturalism will come toppling down. If the atheist acknowledges that objective morals do exist, then he has unwittingly rejected his own assumption of naturalism.
Now atheists will try to water-down this difficulty with such nonsense as "humans are a social species," but if evolution were true, what is so special about humans? We are just slime on a planet with one sun. Animals, such as lions congregate in prides. Are they a "social species" also? If we have evolved from lions, tigers, and bears why should we have any objective morality? Do lions or bears have some objective mortality? The answer would be an unequivocal no.
As I stated earlier, if God does not exist, then objective morals do not exist, for God in His perfect holiness would be the standard with which we examine ourselves. If objective morals do not exist then there is really nothing wrong with your raping someone. Rape may not be socially advantageous now and has become passé, but there would still be nothing really wrong with it. Why is rape wrong if naturalism is true?
You could follow Frank Zindler’s "enlightened atheism" but that has a host of problems also. The "enlightened atheist" will temper the pursuit of his unbridled lust as not to offend someone else and they in turn "get you back." The enlightened atheist believes the beer commercial that says, "Go for the gusto." The enlightened atheist (I DO NOT mean this to say that all atheists are rapists and/or all rapists are atheists) will only rape when he is sure that he won’t get caught, unless he doesn’t care if he gets caught then he might as well "go for the gusto" right now. Some people will say that morality is just an adaptation, etc. No more different then gills being an adaptation on fish.
It is worth noting that most atheists would agree with me on this point. If God does not exist, then objective morals do not exist. Richard Taylor (a theist but this will apply nonetheless) writes in his Ethics, Faith, and Reason pages 2-3:
"The modern age, more or less repudiating the idea of a divine lawgiver, has nevertheless tried to retain the ideas of moral right and wrong, not noticing that in casting God aside, they have also abolished the conditions of meaningfulness for moral right and wrong as well.... Thus, even educated persons sometimes declare that such things as war...or the violation of human rights, are ‘morally wrong,’ and they imagine that they have said something true and significant. Educated people do not need to be told, however, that questions such as these have never been answered outside of religion."
Taylor also states in his book that moral rules are "nothing but the customs…that this or that culture adopts over the course of time." (Ibid, p. 57) J.L. Mackie writes, "It is easy to explain this moral sense as a natural product of biological and social evolution." (Mackie, The Miracle of Theism, p. 117-118) Michael Ruse writes, "Morality is a biological adaptation, no less than are hands and feet and teeth. … Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, [ethics] is illusory. … Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction … and any deeper meaning is illusory." (Ruse, The Darwinian Paradigm, p. 262-269) Benito Mussolini for example, often quoted Darwin in catch phrases and believed that war was necessary for "survival of the fittest."
"Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition… If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be the bearers of an objective, immortal truth… then there is nothing more relativistic than fascistic attitudes and activity… From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable." (Mussolini, Diuturna, p. 374-377; as cited in A Refutation of Moral Relativism, Peter Kreeft, p. 18, emphasis mine)
Karl Marx, author of the famous Das Kapital attempted to dedicate his book to Darwin because he gave him a scientifically plausible springboard for atheism and communism. Just think critically about if for a moment, if evolution, and atheism in particular were true, then objective morals would not and cannot exist.
Focusing now specifically on the above quotations, if morals are just "customs," or a "natural product of biological and social evolution," or "illusory" then it just seems that morality is determined by the handful of people that are in power. What if Hitler had succeeded in conquering the world? I suppose his version of "morals" would be the "customs" that we observe today? In 1936 the German Supreme Court "refused to recognize Jews living in Germany as ‘persons’ in the legal sense." (Ernst Fraenkel, The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship, 1941) Therefore, as far as the Nazis were concerned, burning Jewish babies alive wasn’t really wrong.
The atheist cannot fall back on the argument that society determines morality. So we are still left with the dilemma, if God does not exist, then objective morals do not exist. If objective morals do not exist, and I become the person in power for example, then there is really nothing wrong with me crushing all opposition. I can define my own "morals," just like Hitler and Co. did. I constantly hear the statement that "I define my own morals." Well if that is the case then I decide my own morals too and I say it is okay for me to shoot you. What the materialist does here is contradict himself. He denies the existence of absolute morals (some atheists believe in moral absolutes but they still have no foundation for them) but yet would never condone rape. Other than the social consequences that one must face for rape, there is really nothing wrong with it. If I can rape little children and not get caught I have not done anything wrong. Some might find that to be insane and arrogant but if naturalism were true then that would be the case. A mother rat has no qualms about eating her young in the event that she might starve to death. After all, we just descended from dogs and they have no "morals." Animals kill and injure each other all the time and on the evolutionary view that is all we are, animals. Why should we be any different? Why are humans so special? I think that there are very few people out there that would deny the existence of evil. If evil exists in the world doesn’t that prove that God does not exist?
Actually, the exact opposite is true. The existence of evil is actually an argument for God’s existence 1) Evil exists 2) Absolute morals exist 3) Therefore God exists
If evil did not exist how would we know what love is? If there never was any sorrow how would we know what joy is? I am not advocating evil and suffering, nor do I say that I have the answer to them, but one cannot exist without the other. Besides, if God created a world in which human beings have a free will, how does that guarantee that they will always follow divine instruction? So that argument is really a crippled one.
Some materialists argue that "nobody wants to be hurt, nobody enjoys pain, etc," therefore we have a naturalistic foundation for objective morals. Granted, that is true, but that does not substantiate objective moral values under the atheistic view. I have a pet cat and I am sure that it would not enjoy me beating it over the head with a ball bat either. Once again, the argument is not comparing apples to apples. Nothing wants to be hurt, period, unless of course you are a sadomasochist and in that case I have no argumentation. Moreover, any animal will have no qualms about killing another if the assailant benefits from it. It’s "survival of the fittest," that’s all. If I am athletic and fit, and I steal a non-athletic guy’s wife, would that really be wrong? I would not want his inferior gene pool propagating, therefore it would be better for me to seduce her and take her from him. Why not increase and spread my gene pool out amongst a variety of women and thus strengthen the human race? Keep those who are not athletic and fit from siring offspring and thus strengthen the human race. (This is purely hypothetical, just to keep people from writing me ugly letters)
Many skeptics continue to regurgitate this "problem of evil" nonsense without realizing that they lead themselves into self-contradiction when they do it. Here is a good analogy to help pull this down for those who may still be wondering. God did not "create evil" at all. "Evil" is not something tangible that you can grasp like a jar. In the same way that God didn’t create "darkness" either. (Isaiah 45:7) By calling light into being we simply know now that it’s absence is known as "darkness." Just like evil, darkness is not a "thing" that we can touch. Once again, the absence of light shows us darkness. In the same way the absence of "good" shows us "evil." God’s perfection exposes everything else as sinful or evil. With this ultimate ability to do good and have a choice, evil is inevitable. If we were beings programmed to say, "I love you" it would be meaningless fellowship with the Creator. If "love" is possible then " hatred" will be inevitable in some cases. A skeptic could NOT even speak of "evil" in the very sense of the term if "true love" and "good" did not exist at the same time. That is why he unwittingly contradicts himself and drowns in a quagmire of self-defeating arguments. Maybe God should have programmed us and not let us have a free will? I can only shake my head at such ignorance, but then again, ignorance is bliss.
Moral relativism doesn’t answer the question of why I should be moral tomorrow. To reiterate, if I come into power and like Hitler decide to wipe out a certain ethnic group then there really isn’t anything wrong with that. But the majority of atheists would cry foul here. But they won’t be able to explain why I’m wrong to do that. Get in your time machine, go back to Nazi Germany and start protesting that it’s wrong to kill Jews. You would get laughed at (and probably executed) because to their culture it was right. There was nothing wrong with doing that according to their government.
In conclusion, if evolution, or better yet, the atheistic worldview were true, there would really be no such thing as objective morals and many eminent thinkers concur with me on that. (Not that I am an eminent thinker) I see no conclusive arguments that give a solid foundation for objective morals under the atheistic worldview. If Hitler had taken over we would have a different set of "customs" or "morals" today. Each to his own I suppose.
Objective Morals: Relativist Objections
The moral relativist might counter and say that the Christian moral view is hideous because it causes guilt. It makes people feel guilty about themselves (yes people still use this argument) and in turn causes depression.
First of all, why are they feeling guilty in the first place? Guilt entails that something wrong was done. Secondly, Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot didn’t feel guilty about their actions; where did that lead their collective societies? Straight down the path to destruction. No society that operates in that fashion will survive very long and I surmise that the United States (and Western culture as a whole) is careening toward that type of culture. We’re not there yet, but we’re getting closer. Wouldn’t you want a guy like Hitler feeling guilty about his actions?
Another oft-repeated objection is "who are you to judge? What gives you the right to judge my actions anyway?" This is self-defeating: The person that says that just contradicted themselves by judging your view of morality; exactly what they don’t want anyone to do!
For the moral relativist to be consistent with their reasoning they must not object to anyone’s moral view for it is their choice and they are entitled to it. If I say it’s ok to steal and I drive off with your car then you can’t object because that is my moral standard: It’s ok for me to steal your car. "Just who are you to impose your moral standards on me and say I cannot steal your wheels!"
The moral relativist, by his own view cannot protest any governmental law because that would be implying that it’s wrong. But if something is wrong, then that entails a lack of perfection. (Also, it would be nice to know what their "yard stick" for perfection is) If we cannot know that truth, nor if there isn’t any truth, then why challenge anyone’s view? Before Roe vs. Wade it would be illegal for the relativist to protest for abortion rights because they would in essence, be judging the law that abortion wasn’t legal.
The relativist might counter with another argument, the argument that society just "conditions" us with these values. If we hadn’t been brought up in a Christian society per se, we wouldn’t have these values. Just like we wouldn’t have certain rules in hockey for example, if we didn’t make them. The rules of hockey weren’t out there waiting to be "discovered," we made them up ourselves.
This dog won’t hunt either. First of all, we learned the rules of hockey, or bowling, or any other sport from society and they’re subjective, but we also learned the "rules" of math from society, however they are not subjective. For example, you can’t stand up in the middle of class and declare that 2+2=5. 2+2=4 whether you like it or not.
Secondly, the very existence of protestors or nonconformists (i.e. those that picket in front of abortion clinics or those that lobby for legalization of marijuana) proves that society doesn’t just program us like robots. If all of our values were instilled in us by society then there would be a total agreement in society but there absolutely is not.
Another twist that might get used is the "you’re saying that it is never ok to lie" argument. Then you’ll probably get the example of a member of the Gestapo knocking on your door and asking you if you have any Jews in your basement. Now, you’ve got Jews in your basement, and since it’s never ok to lie you’ve got to tell the truth and say, "Yes."
This may seem like a strong objection but in all honesty it’s no more convincing then the rest of them. For example, the Ten Commandments not only convey universal truths and commands, but they also focus on motive.
For example, you’re commanded to give alms, but if you’re doing it to "look good" then your motive is incorrect. Jesus would just tell you to put it back in your stingy pocket if you’re not doing it because you want to. It’s great to pray in public and give a great sermon, but if you’re doing it to divert attention to yourself and make yourself "look good" then your motive is incorrect. (See Matthew 23:14, 2 Corinthians 9:7)
So I’m going to lie to the Gestapo and say that I don’t have any Jews in my basement to prevent them from being murdered. My motive was to protect the Jews from being murdered.
You could also follow Hume’s emotivist theory, where the example is given of a lady being murdered. You see the act and feel repulsed by it. You can see facts (the lady being murdered) but you cannot see values (the bad feeling that you get when you witness a murder). Instead of saying, "murder is wrong," it is better put "I hate murder."
This is a strand of strict Empiricism, where the only things that we can trust and can be taken as an objective fact are those that can be verified by our five physical senses. I feel bad when I see a murder, but feeling cannot be verified by the five physical senses. Neither evil, nor good can be tasted, smelled, or touched. Empiricism also has its problems.
The statement that "only things that can be verified by the five physical senses can be trusted" cannot itself be verified empirically! It’s using empiricism to prove empiricism. Saying, "whatever can’t be proved by the scientific method can’t be proved at all" cannot itself be proven by the scientific method! Row, row, row your boat gently in a circle. (For a critique of Hume’s arguments see Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, "Hume, David," and "God, Objections to Proofs for." For further critique of moral relativism see Koukl and Beckwith, Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air and A Refutation of Moral Relativism by Peter Kreeft)
As Wittgenstein said, "To draw a limit to thought, thought must think both sides of that limit." (Ibid, p. 154, emphasis mine)
Pascal’s Wager
Pascal’s Wager is simply stated: If the Christian is right, the atheist (or agnostic) has a lot more to lose (i.e. eternal separation from God) than if the Christian is wrong. For if the Christian is wrong, all he’ll do is be eternal worm dirt. I won’t feel, see, or hear anything and you surely won’t be there to laugh at me if I am wrong. Some might respond by saying:
"There is a lot to lose be believing in a God in either case. You lose the ability to solve your own problems. You lose a lot of time spent in churches or in prayer. You lose the confidence and clear thinking which comes from knowing that you are responsible for your own behavior and actions. Even if there were a God, and you believed in His existence, which religion would you follow? Suppose you believed in God and picked the wrong religion to follow? What would happen to you in an afterlife?" (An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism, (ed.) Gordon Stein, p. 59, emphasis in original)
Let’s examine this statement by Mr. Stein for a minute because it does not answer Pascal’s wager at all. First of all, if going to church makes me happy and praying makes me happy and productive why should I stop? Under the atheistic worldview, I should do whatever makes me feel good (relativism) and if going to church, tithing, and praying make me happy how is that a waste of time?
Moreover, when I’m dead nobody will be there to tell me it was a waste of time. What would be the difference between "wasting" my life going to church and drinking myself into oblivion? Both things would make different people happy.
Stein doesn’t elaborate on how belief in God causes us to "lose the ability to solve [our] own problems." If He didn’t exist and I was solving problems in my life but yet attributed it to God then what would I lose anyway? What repercussions would I receive for this? In 50 or 60 years it won’t matter anyway because I’ll be worm food.
Lastly, asking which religion one is going to follow if God exists is NOT an argument for atheism, NOR is it an argument against theism. Just for the sake of argument, if Islam is the truth and I end up going to hell, Gordon would be right there by my side keeping me company. I fail to see his point here other than alluding to irrelevant issues. (Gordon also throws out the ad hoc assumption that all believers in God can’t solve problems and can’t think clearly. This line of reasoning is as old and as stupid as a theist believing that all atheists are evil because they don’t believe in God.)
Just for the sake of argument if Buddhism (which is essentially agnostic anyway) is the truth I will lose nothing because I have been a "good" person all my life by society’s standards. The same goes for Hinduism. If the Jehovah’s Witnesses speak the truth there is no hell so I need not worry about that. Gordon would either be in the same position as me or in a worse position if theism were true.
The fact of the matter is: Most religions rely on some sort of "good works" to attain "salvation" or some sort of spiritual nirvana. I am a "good" enough person to for most of those religions. Even granting Stein’s irrelevancy to the issue he still doesn’t refute the main premise.
Many atheists will use this type of argument and my simple response is to that is asking them if they’ve dropped their contention for atheism. If I’m wrong about which God it is, then you’re surely wrong also and haven’t accomplished anything.
In short, Pascal’s Wager still stands, Mr. Stein has done nothing but throw out red herrings.
What About Suffering and Hell?
This is one topic I thought good to discuss since it comes up over and over and over and well, you get the point by now. The first thing I would like to point out is that I get a kick out of an atheist walking up to me and lecturing me about how evil God is. "You mean there is such a thing as evil? Where are you getting this idea that something is evil?" The moral relativist has a problem because his worldview entails by definition that there is no such thing as evil. So where is he getting this idea? (See my section on objective morals.) But we’ll allow the relativist to have his cake and eat it too. We’ll let him refrain from belief in a moral standard but yet in the same breath point out how evil God is.
The skeptic will invariably say, "God knew that Adam and Eve would sin and that immeasurable evil and suffering would follow. The Bible’s God must have known every rape, murder, and war that would follow. Since He went ahead and created man anyway, how can He be anything but a monster and/or a sadist?"
This insipid assertion can be dismissed immediately. For if God was really a sadist there would be far more evil and suffering in the world. For example, there would be no joy mixed with pain, it would be all excruciating pain all the time. Sexual intercourse could be absolutely irresistible but extremely painful at the same time. There would be no joy and ecstasy; life would be a complete torment all the time. Instead of giving us the urge to eat because of healthy hunger God could have forced us to eat by the pain of abstention. If God were really a sadist then there would be absolutely no speculation about the subject of aesthetics because everything would be so miserable that aesthetics would not be possible.
In short, if God were rally a sadist the world would be far worse. That assertion is a logical fallacy indeed.
Another oft-asserted statement is, "How can a loving and holy God send part of His crowning creation to suffer eternally in hell?"
A couple of points need to be made here. 1) God does not send anyone to hell, they in essence send themselves. 2) The statements that "God is all-loving" and "some people go to hell" are not contradictory.
One logical fallacy that the atheist engages in is the assumption that since God is all-powerful that He can create a world in which everyone freely chooses to follow Him. Now the very notion that something has a free will gives credence to the fact that not everyone will be saved. It is possible that God could create such a world where everyone would be saved, but would that would not be the case anymore then the possibility that leaves blowing in a parking lot would arrange themselves in such a way as to spell "H-E-L-L-O." It could happen, but is it likely? Moreover, if God eliminated all evil in the world right now where would you be in one second? Furthermore, the statement that God is evil because He knew what would happen is just like walking up to a man who has disobedient children. I could say to him, "You knew that your child might end up in drug use, you knew that they might end up in a juvenile home, why did you have that child?" Or I could say to a single mother in downtown Detroit, "Why did you have this child? There are homeless children all over this city, there are kids addicted to drugs all over this city, why would you have this child?" Such logic is pure stupidity. When anyone has a child there is the possibility that they will shun the well-meaning instruction of the parent(s) and rebel. They could get into drugs, become a criminal, etc, but that probably would not stop anyone from having kids. So the fact that some people will spend eternity separated from God is not problematic.
Here is the point to consider. Picture the most evil, hateful, perverse person that you know or have read about. Would that type of person enjoy "heaven" as it is defined in the Bible? Such a person would not feel right in such a place because of their demeanor. So such "logic" that eternal separation from God is incompatible with an all-loving God flies in the face of rational observation.
Why does God separate Himself from such people? Since the atheist, agnostic, skeptic, or otherwise has knowingly rejected God in this life, God simply gives them what they want, eternal separation from Him. They wanted nothing to do with God in this life, so God gives them what they want. Why would God let them spend eternity in His presence when they did not want that in the first place? They would not enjoy it anyway, since they worked so hard to expel Him from their lives on earth.
Another oft-regurgitated objection is an emotional plea where the skeptic will give you an example of a great person that was a good humanitarian and ask how God could send them to hell. For example, picture all the Jews that were murdered by Hitler’s minions in World War II that died without making Jesus their Saviour. "How could God send those poor people to hell. They were brutally executed. These people were abused and only wanted to survive. They were good for the most part." Most of them were probably outstanding humanitarians by the standards of society. But my friend J.P. Holding answers this objection well: "A person can’t be 99 % good any more than a woman can be 99 % pregnant." The fact is those Jews, even though they were brutally murdered were still sinners and did not have the blood of Christ to cover their sins. This argument is a lame duck, case closed.
Can Science Verify Everything?
The atheist is grounded in the "fact" that scientific knowledge and empirical observation can verify everything and give us a rational explanation for origins. Is this true? In this section I lay out 5 points that show conclusively that science cannot, and never will be able to verify. Some of these we have already covered, but we will go over them again.
# 1: Metaphysical statements: Science cannot verify metaphysical statements such as the view that there are other minds other than my own, the statement that the external world is really true or the world was created 5 minutes ago with an apparent age. I agree that the external world is really there and I do not agree that the world was created 5 minutes ago with an apparent age but I suppose that they are rational beliefs and science cannot verify or refute them. Super strings are a metaphysical statement and science cannot empirically verify them either as well as any metaphysical statement.
# 2: Objective Morals: We have already covered this one but science cannot verify whether the scientists in the Nazi death camps really did anything wrong. Science cannot verify statements of value such as why being honest and decent is the right thing to do.
# 3: Logic and Math: Science presupposes logic and math so to argue that science can verify them would be circular reasoning.
# 4: Aesthetic statements: Aesthetics are "the branch of philosophy that examines the nature of art and the character of our experience of art and of the natural environment. It emerged as a separate field of philosophy inquiry during the eighteenth century… Questions specific to the field of aesthetics are: Is there a special attitude, the aesthetic attitude, which we should take toward works of art and natural environment, and what is it like? Is there a distinctive type of experience, an aesthetic experience and what is it? Is there a special object of attention that we can call the aesthetic object? Finally, is there a distinctive value, aesthetic value, comparable with moral, epistemic, and religious values?" (The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd Edition, Robert Audi, General Editor)
Why is the Mona Lisa an attractive painting? Why do I get goose bumps when I hear George Beverly Shea sing Amazing Grace? Why did Romeo fall in love with Juliet? These are statements that science cannot verify and/or substantiate.
# 5: Science itself: Science cannot be verified by the scientific method. Science is chalk full of assumptions. The special theory of relativity has its foundation in the assumption that the speed of light is constant in a one-way direction between points "A" and "B." (We have covered this and there is a growing body of evidence that this assumption is patently false)
None of these beliefs can be scientifically proven but in most cases it is rational to accept them. So for one to say that science and the scientific method in and of itself will "prove" everything and give us a foundation for a belief or beliefs is an assumption. As I stated earlier, empiricism itself cannot be verified by the scientific method. If the atheist grants that any of the above statements are true then they have (perhaps) unknowingly rejected materialism.
Bad Design?
This is an argument that also comes up quite often. A pseudo-intellectual thinks of a "better" way something could have been made and if it doesn’t fit his "criteria" it is "bad design," therefore it could not have been designed. This is a logical fallacy in the highest degree.
For example, say you are walking down the street and you find a watch lying on the sidewalk. The band on it is broken, the cover on it is scratched, and it doesn’t keep very good time at all. The watch was still designed even though it does not function very well right now. Nobody in his or her right mind would conclude that the watch was not designed. When the skeptic points out such things as this then just simply ask him if he is rejecting his presupposition to naturalism. Is the atheist saying that he or she knows what an omnipotent being would do when designing something? But to know that one would have to omnipotent. But only God is omnipotent. Are they claiming to be God? But he or she is an atheist. Ergo, God is an atheist? Here are some common, or not so common claims made for bad design.
Atheists are constantly arguing that the human eye is bad design. First of all, I would like to ask them to build me a camera that has the capability of increasing its ability to see 100,000 times when confronted with light or darkness. The best camera by Minolta or any other manufacturer cannot come close. Perhaps the atheist could show me how the human eye, in all its "simplicity" could function effectively without the rods, cones, retina, optic nerve, lens, cornea, etc. The argument goes something like this. The retina on the human eye is backwards. The retina on the eye of a squid is forward. First of all, squids probably don’t have color vision, second of all, they live at great depths where there is not much light so they don’t need an inverted retina, thirdly, the human retina is inverted because if it wasn’t then the toxic and heating effects of light would damage it. The "backwards" retina serves as a "filter" against this. If we had vision likened to a fly we would see all fluorescent lighting and when we watched television it would just be a continual flickering. "I guess God knew we would invent television." Well, yes, but the point is that if your vision was like a fly or a squid we would have numerous problems. If technology ever advances enough to perform surgery on someone to fix this "problem" with our retina then I will volunteer Richard Dawkins to go first and see how it feels to have a "verted" retina. Would you like to be a squid sir?
This is not a commonly cited example of bad design but I thought I would mention it. I almost fell out of my chair when I read it. In a debate against Dr. William Lane Craig, Massimo Pigliucci stated, "Furthermore, there are other questions that a theist that believes in perfect design really has a hard time explaining. Have you ever wondered why people get hemorrhoids? Well, the reason for that is because we have this tendency to walk upright, but we are not very well designed for it, and we paid for that with several consequences, including hemorrhoids and varicose veins. So this ought to lead to the point that if there is a designer it wasn't a good one."
I took immediate objection to this falsehood. First of all, perhaps Dr. Pigliucci could describe a better way for humans to get around? Perhaps we could slither on our bellies like snakes, or burrow into the ground like moles? Walking upright would simply be the best way, I cannot certainly think of any better way. His point about hemorrhoids is patently false also. Mosby’s Medical, Nursing, & Allied Health Dictionary (4th edition) says this about hemorrhoids: "Straining to defecate, constipation, and prolonged sitting contribute to the development of hemorrhoids. The client is counseled in ways to avoid these predisposing factors." Prison inmates are notorious for getting hemorrhoids simply because they sit on metal benches so often. Notice that the aforementioned definition says nothing about walking too much contributing to hemorrhoids. Dr. Pigliucci is either ignorant or lying. One must wonder how such stupid arguments continue to be used. I have to admit though that this one was a new one in the realm of parroted (and refuted) arguments for "bad design."
The atheist makes a few assumptions before he begins his "critique" however. 1) He assumes that if something doesn’t work to his "specifications" it was not designed. Even granting his premise, which I do not, if you remember the example of the broken watch found on the sidewalk, his argument is invalid. 2) He assumes that the creation is static. The Bible is crystal clear that the creation is not static and has changed immensely since the Fall.
In short, the only part that is bad in the "bad design" argument is the argument itself.
The Death of Naturalism
If the atheistic worldview is true then we are basically just prisoners to this gray matter inside our skulls. Many developments in neurology, etc, have contributed to research that the human "mind" is independent and separate from the brain. We are not prisoners to this conglomeration of vessels and tissue inside our noggins. Are the "mind" and the "brain" separate entities?
Before we begin it should be pointed out that the majority of the time that this topic is being discussed the super skeptic will retort: "There is no physical evidence that the soul or the mind exists." This is a curious objection indeed. Asking in this manner is akin to someone telling you that there is an invisible man in the bedroom. They go in the bedroom, come out and proclaim, "I looked all over that room and I didn’t see that invisible man. He’s not in there, if he was I would have seen him." The invisible man (as well as the soul and/or mind) is immaterial by nature. You’re not going to detect them with laboratory instruments. The skeptic could fall back on Hume’s thinking, but as we have seen that doesn’t work either and is a self-defeating premise. Without further ado let’s get down to brass tacks.
John Eccles, Nobel Prize winner for brain research writes:
"If there are bona fide mental events—events that are not themselves physical or material—then the whole program of philosophical materialism collapses. The universe is no longer composed of ‘matter and a void’ but now must make (spaceless) room for (massless) entities (i.e. minds)." (Eccles and Robinson, Wonder, p.54)
If naturalism were true then all these "rational" thoughts that anyone has are just a product of random, purposeless process, if that were so then how can any of these thoughts be considered rational when the source is just random acts? All purposeful acts begin with a thought that does not exist as a physical part of a bodily organ, the brain. Ideas are held in the mind, not the brain. Animals act solely on instinct and need not reason. But Homo sapiens are different. Thoughts such as, "that woman is gorgeous" or thoughts such as truth and/or justice could not originate via stimuli. After years of study on the human brain, Wilder Penfield, renowned neurosurgeon wrote, "The mind is independent of the brain. The brain is a computer, but it is programmed by something that is outside itself, the mind." (as cited in H. Benson and W. Proctor, Your Maximum Mind, p. 46)
Rita Carter, in her Mapping The Mind has a plethora of information on brain research. She even mentions some of Penfield’s work in her book but curiously leaves out some of Penfield’s conclusions as noted in one of the above quotations. Whether this is intentional or not I don’t know. Carter is bent on proving that the "mind" is just a process but it is clear that actions such as love, etc, are not original in the brain but precede the brain. William H. Calvin, Theoretical Neurophysiologist at the University of Washington at Seattle writes:
"Jung said that dreaming goes on continuously but you can’t see it when you’re awake, just as you can’t see the stars in the daylight because it is too bright. Mind is a theory for what goes on, hidden by the glare of waking mental operations that produces our peculiarly human consciousness and versatile intelligence. It suggests that Darwin’s evolutionary process could subconsciously operate in the brain, more quickly than in the weeks-long immune response or the millennia-long species evolution." (Carter, Mapping the Mind, p. 171, emphasis mine)
C.G. Jung, who is alluded to in the above quote certainly believed in a spirit realm independent of this gray matter in our noggins. Jung wrote pertaining to his spirit guide Philemon: "Philemon represented a force which was not myself… It was he who taught me… the reality of psyche… he seemed quite real… I went walking up and down the garden with him… (Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p.183) Jung obviously believed in the "mind" and "spirit" being independent of the brain. We must be careful not to believe everything "spiritual" that somebody talks or writes about such as Betty Eadie’s Embraced By The Light, which is neither biblical or scriptural, for there are a number of frauds out there just looking for attention such as Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn and their shenanigans on stages across the world. But the question remains, a lot of totally sane people have had "spiritual" experiences. Is consciousness "nothing but a process" as some say? Itzhak Fried, of the UCLA Medical School writes:
"Repeatedly throughout history, groups of individuals, usually young men, have violently attacked other members of society often with the approval of and encouragement from, those in authority… notable manifestations of the phenomenon in this century are the killing of Armenians by Turks in 1915-1916, of European Jews during World War II, of Cambodians during the Pol Pot regime and the ethnic killings in Rwanda in the 1990s… these events would not have happened without a distinct transformation in the behaviour of individuals." (Fried, ‘Syndrome E’, The Lancet, 350:9094 (1997), 1845-1847; as cited in Carter, Mapping The Mind, p. 202)
Let’s think about this critically for a moment. If any and all "evil" manifestations were simply a product of some frontal lobe dysfunction then all of Nazi Germany must have had more than a few chemical imbalances. I can see the headlines now: "New research shows that 93 % of government officials in Nazi Germany had dysfunctional frontal lobes." I am NOT denying that some behaviour can be traced to some sort of problem in the brain, but it is obvious from the way that "society" has been acting that there is more to it than chemical imbalances. I guess about half the people in the US are born with brain damage? Seriously, murders per capita, drug arrests, etc, are skyrocketing, not to mention the violence among teens. One need not look any further than Jonesboro, Littleton, and Santana High School in El Cajon, California to see what I mean. Why are children so much more belligerent today than just 20 years ago? There is more to it than biological processes but these authors fail to mention it. There is something going on in the "mind" that is the catalyst for such behaviour. Marilyn Manson is a complete puke but kids follow him in a cultic fashion. Would any self-respecting parent let their child(ren) listen to this garbage? Is he transferring his brain damage to everyone who listens to that crap he calls music? I think not.
There was one very interesting experiment conducted in Carter’s book where the temporal lobe area of the brain was stimulated in a number of patients, including non-religious persons.
"Religious belief and experience are usually regarded as beyond scientific exploration, yet neurologists at the University of San Diego have located an area in the temporal lobe of the brain that appears to produce intense feelings of spiritual transcendence, combined with a sense of some mystical presence. Canadian neuroscientist Michael Persinger, of Laurentian University, has even managed to reproduce such feelings in otherwise unreligious people by stimulating this area. According to Persinger: ‘Typically people report a presence. One time we had a strobe light going and this individual actually saw Christ in the strobe… [another] individual experienced God visiting her. Aftewards we looked at her EEG [electroencephalogram] and there was this classic spike and slow-wave seizure over the temporal lobe at the precise time of the experience—the other parts of the brain were normal.’ The fact that we seem to have a religious hot-spot wired into our brains does not necessarily prove that the spiritual dimension is merely the product of a particular flurry of electrical activity. After all, if God exists, it figures He must have created us with some biological mechanism with which to apprehend Him. Nevertheless, it is easy to see that being able to get your God experience from a well-placed electrode could—at the very least—undermine the precious status such states are accorded by many religions. How believers will cope with what many might see as a threat to their faith is one of many interesting challenges that brain science will throw up in the coming millennium." (Persinger quote from Ian Cotton, ‘Dr. Persinger’s God machine’, Independent on Sunday, 7/2/95, as cited in Carter, Mapping the Mind, p. 13, 19, emphasis mine)
Carter backs off from fully affirming God’s existence, but one must wonder why man is so curiously religious. If religious belief is purely metaphysical then what is the affirmation of it doing within the brain itself? Why in the temporal lobe? Why is there a "religious hot-spot" in the human brain? It is logical and probable that if God exists then He would have designed a biological mechanism for us to acknowledge His presence. It is ironic that Carter even alludes to this.
If the human mind, in all its incredible complexity evolved from scratch over millions of years then why is there a mechanism within the brain itself to apprehend God’s presence? This buries the evolutionary theory further and shows clearly that "mind" and "body" are separate entities. This also blows the "impersonal" God theory out of the water. An "impersonal" God would not operate in such a manner. The "mind" is totally separate and independent from the brain. Why did typically non-religious people (i.e. atheists) affirm this same thing? They have never professed to believe in God so why would they state the same thing as theists? This flies in the face of those with humanistic and naturalistic presuppositions. As the Scripture states, "Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you." (James 4:8a) If you reject God He will leave you over to your own evil devices. (Romans 1:19-28)
But that isn’t all. In scientific research on infant cognition (the process of learning by inference, reasoning, etc.) it is shown:
"This work showed that children, even three-year olds, understand the difference between desire and belief. They can anticipate people's actions on the basis of desires and beliefs and coordinate the one with the other. At three, it is not difficult for them to know that it is necessary to take beliefs into consideration in order to explain how an organism satisfies its desires. In the course of other, more difficult experiments, the stories were written in such a way that the children could only infer the character's beliefs, which were not explicitly mentioned. Even then, three-year-old children had no problem…We can, therefore, legitimately suppose that, by about two and a half or three years, children already attribute subjective mental states to other people. In order to make decisions about behaviors and responses, they rely on conjectures about the subjective mental states of others… The evidence suggest that children, no matter how young, attribute subjective mental states to their fellow humans. However, a skeptical reader could point out that there is no evidence showing that they possess a naVve psychology before the age of three or four. This is an important objection. But we could counter it by saying that the differences that exist between the newborn and the three-year-old are most probably not due to a learning process, but to growth. The argument bearing on the poverty of the environment applies better here than in any other area. Rather than assuming that families teach babies the concepts of desire, intention, and belief, which we have never succeeded in doing in the laboratory, it seems more practical to think that humans beings, even at their youngest, naturally possess a concept of what a subjective mental state is, and that they use it to characterize themselves and others. Children's games confirm this by showing that they use theories that are natural and thus universal, rather than learned." (Jacques Mehler and Emmanuel Dupoux, What Infants Know: The New Cognitive Science of Early Development [trans. Patsy Southgate], p. 116, 118, 119)
It seems that infant "learning" is not simply just "pre-programming" done by the parent(s)/guardians. Children use universal and natural theories to learn and that is clearly shown by lab observation.
Francis Crick, the discoverer of the molecular structure of DNA is very vocal (along with William James) that "consciousness" is nothing but a process. It is all biological and/or chemical and there is nothing metaphysical there. He states in part:
"The explanation of consciousness is one of the major unsolved problems of modern science. Indeed, the overwhelming question in neurobiology today is the relation between the mind and the brain. In the past the mind (or soul) was regarded as something separate from the brain but interacting with it in some way. But most neuroscientists now believe that all aspects of the mind, including its most puzzling attribute, consciousness or awareness, are likely to be explainable in a more materialistic way as the behaviour of large sets of interacting neurons. As William James, the father of American psychology, said a century ago: consciousness is not a thing but a process… I believe that the only sensible approach is to press the experimental attack until we are confronted with dilemmas that call for new ways of thinking. The major question that neuroscience must answer is as follows: What are the differences between the active neuronal processes in our heads that correlate with consciousness and those that don’t… I hold that the biological usefulness of visual consciousness in humans is to produce the best current interpretation of the visual scene in light of past experience (either of own, or that of our ancestors embodied in our genes) and to make interpretation directly available for a sufficient time to the parts of the brain that contemplate and plan voluntary motor output such as movement or speech… A representation of an object or event will usually consist of representations of many of the relevant aspects of it, which are likely to be distributed over different parts of the visual system. Much neural activity is needed for the brain to construct a representation, most of which is probably unconscious… Consciousness, then, is enriched by visual attention, though attention is not essential for visual consciousness to occur. Attention is either caused by sensory input or by the planning parts of the brain. Visual attention can be directed to a location in the visual field or to one or more moving objects. The exact neural mechanisms that achieve this are still being debated. But in order to interpret visual input the brain must arrive at a coalition of neurons whose firing represents the best interpretation of the visual scene, often in competition with other possible but less likely interpretations." (Carter, Mapping The Mind, p. 204, 205, emphasis mine)
Consciousness may or may not be enriched by visual interaction, but that does nothing to explain the origin of it. Crick assumes that evolution is true, which is no problem for a dogmatic person like him, but even if evolution really occurred it would not disprove the existence of God, nor would it explain how "immaterial consciousness" evolved. As Crick stated above, he will continue to stand firm in his materialistic position until "we are confronted with dilemmas that call for new ways of thinking." I think from some of the quotes preceding Crick’s statement shows that we have a new dilemma that challenges naturalism. Infants have some sort of "consciousness" and it is not related strictly to stimuli producing a conditioned response.
In The Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 3, Issue 2, p. 174 it is shown that: "The brain is an adaptive organ--it changes its structure and patterns CONSTANTLY, as it responds to stimuli from without and from within-- The lifetime of EEG studies by Walter Freeman basically showed that there WERE NO predictable neuroz changes due to stimuli. The same stimulus applied successively made different changes to the brain. The brain adapted its response! This makes the old ‘repeatability’ requirement for experimentation on neural states nearly impossible." (emphasis mine) Similarly in Vol. 2, Issue 1 it is stated: "no one would say we pretty much understand the neurobiological mechanisms of consciousness… [and] we are still in the very early stages of understanding the nervous system." (p. 10, 27, emphasis mine) That is in stark contrast to Crick where he states that all the processes of the brain and the mind can be explained away mechanistically and that there is basic consensus among neurologists that this is true. However, I think Crick has fudged the facts because of his exclusive bias to naturalism. As we can see this in hardly the consensus among those that do the dirty work. We can see this from Jung, Penfield, The Journal of Consciousness Studies, Persinger and a host of others.
J.A. Gray, a psychologist, writes about the recent consensus at a CIBA Conference:
"The consensus was that there is indeed a genuine problem and that problem I think was nearly encapsulated by one the American philosophers there, Tom Nagel, when he said 'What we do not have is a transparent theory of consciousness'. That is to say, the normal standard of scientific explanation is that you have a theory and, if you understand the theory correctly, the theory gives you an account of the phenomena, which is transparent. You can see how the postulates in the theory produce the phenomena that you can measure in an experiment... (The Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 2, Issue 1, p. 7)
Stein, Brailowsky, and Will in their book Brain Repair show that the brain is an adaptive organ. In damaged brains, some areas can pick up the workload from damaged areas--the notion of neuroplacticity. The brain is an adaptive organ. In damaged brains, alternate pathways can be quickly created. There is more to it than Crick and others will admit.
The preceding allusion to Stein’s book may seem to bolster the mechanistic position but the fact that the brain can adapt and other areas can "pick up the slack" from damaged areas shows that it was designed. Each area has its specific purpose, all areas working in perfect unison. Couple that with the fact that "conditioned" responses via stimuli do not work, as well as the research in children that show they use theories that are universal and natural rather than learned. This weakens the materialists’ cause quite a bit. Consciousness is not a "thing" in the physical universe; it is separate from the physical universe. How could a non-physical "entity" or "thing" have come about in a purely mechanistic universe? These are the exact sentiments of Colin McGinn (philosopher):
"If consciousness is not constitutionally spatial, then how could it have had its origin in the spatial world? ...The only ingredients in the pot when consciousness was cooking were particles and fields laid out in space, yet something radically non-spatial got produced...We seem compelled to conclude that something essentially non-spatial emerged from something purely spatial--that the non-spatial is somehow a construction out of the spatial. And this looks more like magic than a predictable unfolding of natural law… There is, on this view, a radical incompleteness in our view of reality, including physical reality... in order to solve the mind-body problem we need, at a minimum, a new conception of space." (The Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 2, Issue 3, p. 223)
Lastly:
"Let's start with the grossly obvious--our personal experience. That I can create radical imaginative structures, move my arm at will, make choices and put them into practice, be influenced to action by things I read, be aware that I am aware, initiate unconscious memory retrieval processes by merely focusing on features of the whole, do pop-psychoanalysis of my friends, have inner-child therapy experiences, feel the difference in my mental functions when I am on antihistamines, and experience paradigm conversions are primary data that must be explained. This data is simply too powerful and impressive to be either denied or explained away via simplistic axioms of reducibility. There is a growing agreement that this data is of a primary, irreducible nature that has forced us to expand our horizons." (Ibid, Vol. 1, Issue 1, p. 9)
I think it is painfully obvious (to the atheist AND agnostic) that the "mind" and "body" are separate. Human actions, desires, thoughts, and inclinations cannot be explained away as purely mechanistic. "Love" is immaterial and cannot be explained away as a biological adaptation, ala Michael Ruse.
Further damaging the atheistic position is an experiment done by the Southern Medical Journal in 1988.
There was a double-blind prayer experiment conducted and recorded by this periodical. What happened was 400 cardiac patients unknowingly participated in this experiment. Of the 400, only 200 were prayed for and the remaining 200 were not. The 200 that were prayed for exhibited substantial improvement. Those that were prayed for were statistically better in 21 out of 26 categories that they were monitored in. Please take note again that they had no idea that this was taking place. The Southern Medical Journal is not a Christian publication by any means. I am not saying that it is pagan, but it is not a Christian publication at all. This experiment went through all the editors, peer review, etc, and they thought it was compelling enough and well documented to be published. This is not some TV evangelist pulling data out of thin air. This is hard evidence done by neutral parties in a medically recognized periodical. (Randolph Byrd, "Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Population," in Southern Medical Journal, Vol. 81, No 7, 7/88, p. 826-829)
This shows us that intercessory-prayer does work. It also shows us that God operates in a personal manner and not an impersonal one. As was shown in Persinger’s experiments and this one, an impersonal God would not operate in such a manner.
Another interesting enigma for the rigid naturalist is placebos. A placebo effect is a case where an ill patient is given sugar or bread pills as treatment for a disease or illness. They don’t know that they are receiving these and as far as they are concerned they are receiving the antidote to their illness. The interesting thing is that in a lot of cases they respond favorably to this "treatment" and their pain/illness diminishes. Even monitored body functions respond favorably and the patient has received nothing to cure the disease. Three Marquette University psychology professors Sheikh, Kunzendorf, and Sheikh state concerning placebos:
"The placebo effect is a rather staggering example of the power of mental states over the body. It differs from imagery in that, as based on expectancy, it does NOT work on children, whereas imagery does… The placebo effect is where a person BELIEVES a medical intervention (e.g. surgery, medicine, ultrasound procedure) was administered, but where it was not, but still responds favorably to the 'fake' treatment! The types of people that respond to 'bread pills' instead of medicine are NOT of a uniform personality type… the ranges of placebo effectiveness varies from 0% to 100%… The key element is expectation, called by various terms: belief, faith, confidence, enthusiasm, response bias, meaning, credibility, transference, anticipation… A patient whose severe cancer pain disappears in response to a placebo not only states verbally that the pain has gone but also shows appropriate changes of blood pressure, heart rate, respiration, gut motility, pupil size, etc. This complete pattern of body and mind alteration differs from some cases of hypnotic suggestion where the verbal report may conflict with autonomic body system changes." (The Science of Consciousness, Max Velmans, (ed.) p. 168, 169, 172, 178 emphasis mine)
If patients are responding favorably to "fake treatments" then what is the naturalist to do? If we are just prisoners to this gray matter in our skulls and everything that we think, do, and say are just a product of random, purposeless processes then why can patients believe that they are being administered correct treatment when they are not, yet they exhibit physical proof of being cured. Not only do they say that there pain has subsided, but as was alluded to in the above citation their monitored bodily functions also improve as if they had been administered real treatment! The naturalistic scenario has no room for belief. Placebos and the fact that they are successful in many cases shows that there is a "mind" that is independent of the "brain." The patient might think, "I have received the antidote, therefore I believe that I will be cured in a short period of time. I ought to feel better because of this." As Sir Arthur Eddington said, "Ought’ takes us outside of chemistry and physics." (Eddington, Nature, p. 345)
Lastly, I would like to focus on hard data for "life-after-death." This data shows life-after-death, NOT in the heaven/hell sense, but provides for a solid undermining of the naturalistic worldview.
The one case that I would like to focus on is the operation done on a 35 year-old by the name of Pam Reynolds. Reynolds had an aneurysm in her brain and was flown to Phoenix, Arizona to have this dangerous operation done. It was the sheer size and location of the aneurysm that made this dangerous. What they did to Pam to make this operation successful is basically insane. By all accepted medical standards, Pam was dead. For more than a half an hour her body temperature had been cooled to a frosty 60 degrees, her heartbeat and breathing stopped, her brain waves flattened, the blood drained from her head, and all of this done on purpose! A Dr. Robert Spetzler pioneered this type of procedure, nicknamed "operation standstill." Dr. Michael Sabom documents this entire operation in his book, Light and Death.
The reason that I picked this particular one is because Mr. Sabom is a doctor, he has documented dozens of these cases, and it is not something that Benny Hinn is pulling out of the air on one of those asinine telethons on TBN. He also wrote Recollections of Death: A Medical Perspective in 1982. But his current work, Light and Death is our focus now.
By all accepted medical standards, Pam Reynolds was as dead as a doornail. As I documented above: She had no brain function (she had flat lined), no blood in her brain, no heartbeat, etc. Now a skeptic might say, "She wasn’t really dead because she is alive today." What would it take for an atheist to believe? Does someone have to sit in a tomb for three days and then walk out? They would still explain that away also. We must not underestimate the hardness of the human heart. They could attempt to equate it with some form of ESP (I do not believe in ESP per se), but the problem there is that all those who allegedly have ESP experiences have functioning brains and hearts!
Dr. Sabom participated in what is called The Atlanta Study, which specifically documents post and near-death experiences. He has also written articles for the Journal of Near-Death Studies. The shocking thing about Pam Reynolds experience (Sabom, Light and Death, p. 37-47) was relayed by Sabom:
"Being close to death, no matter how close, was still a far cry from being dead. Then Pam’s story jostled my certainty. When I first read her operative report at her mother’s home in November 1994, I was incredulous. Who, in their right mind, would eliminate all of a person’s vital signs, chill her body to 60 degrees, drain her blood, and still expect her to live? I really could not believe it! So I phoned the Barrow Neurological Institute and had them fax me their copy of Spetzler’s report along with the operative summaries of the neuroanesthesiologist and cardiac surgeon. Much to my surprise, I found the surgical details of Pam’s story corroborated. Had her surgeons brought her back from the dead? Based on all definitions of death they had done just that… during "standstill" Pam’s brain was found ‘dead’ by all three clinical tests—her electroencephalogram was silent, her brain-stem response was absent, and no blood flowed through her brain. Interestingly, while in this state, she encountered the ‘deepest’ near-death experience of all Atlanta Study participants. The average score for an NDE on Dr. Greyson’s NDE Scale was 15, similar to the 13.3 average I found in the Atlanta Study. Pam’s NDE stood out, however, with an amazing depth of 27… Pam Reynolds… reported the deepest near-death experience of The Atlanta Study at a time when her brain and body were extensively instrumented and monitored." (Ibid, p. 47-49, 184, emphasis Sabom’s)
So we have a uniform medical acceptance that Pam, by all medical standards, was dead! It may seem shocking, and it was to Dr. Sabom, but as he noted he found the details of Pam’s story corroborated. In the surgery "(at 11:00 A.M.) Pam’s core body temperature had fallen 25 degrees… five minutes later (11:05 A.M.), the remaining electrical spasms of Pam’s dying heart were extinguished with massive intravenous doses of potassium chloride. Cardiac arrest was complete. As Pam’s heart arrested, her brain waves flattened into complete electrocerebral silence. Brain stem function weakened as the clicks from the ear speakers produced lower and lower spikes on the monitoring electrogram. Twenty minutes later, (11:20 A.M.) her core body temperature had fallen… (to) 60 degrees… Then, at precisely 11:25 A.M.… the blood was drained from Pam’s body like oil from a car." (Ibid, p. 43)
So at 11:00 her body temperature is a cool 73 degrees, at 11:05 we have cardiac arrest and shortly after she loses brain-stem response. At 11:25 her core body temperature was a lethal 60 degrees and the blood was drained out of her body.
Sabom related details on pages 45-46 about Pam’s recovery. At noon a problem arose. "The heart monitor began to register the disorganized electrical activity of ventricular fibrillation." They eventually got the paddles out and jolted her heart back to life, but not without thinking that they would lose her in a matter of minutes. At 12:32 P.M. Pam’s body temperature was at a life sustaining, albeit subnormal, 89.6 degrees.
Let’s run this down quickly. She was basically brought "back to life" at noon. From 11:05 to noon she had no heart function and her brain-stem response was silent shortly thereafter. So for 55 minutes she has NO brain-stem function and NO heart function. For forty minutes her body temperature was a lethal 60 degrees. For 35 minutes she had NO blood in her brain. By all medical standards she was dead, period. I am NOT claiming that this is a resurrection, but what will follow will show a definite paradox to the mechanistic scenario.
As Dr. Spetzler’s younger assistants took over the closing surgical duties the music in the background began playing rock music. This did not escape Pam’s notice. She relates:
"When I came back (from her NDE), they were playing "Hotel California" and the line was "You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave." I mentioned (later) to Dr. Brown that that was incredibly insensitive and he told me that I needed to sleep more. (laughter). When I regained consciousness, I was still on the respirator." (Ibid, p. 47)
Sabom relates in the following paragraph of the above citation that "Spetzler’s surgical report indicates that at 2:10 P.M. the ‘patient was taken to the recovery room still intubated, but in stable condition."
Now some skeptics will try to make it seem as though Pam’s NDE could have resulted from Temporal lobe seizure. Sabom aptly refuted this in his book. Sabom states that Pam’s "brain wave activity was continuously monitored, and no seizure phenomena were reported. Furthermore, her surgeon, Dr. Robert Spetzler, told me that he ‘has never known of someone having a temporal lobe seizure during this procedure.’ He felt it would be ‘extremely unlikely’ that such a seizure would occur since Pam’s brain had been silenced with massive amounts of ‘barbiturate protection." (Ibid, p. 184, emphasis mine) Sabom writes further:
"Could Pam have heard the intraoperative conversation and then used this to reconstruct and out-of-body experience? At the beginning of the procedure, molded ear speakers were placed in each ear as a test for auditory and brain stem reflexes. These speakers occlude the ear canals and altogether eliminate the possibility of physical hearing… she reports having heard, during her out-of-body experience, ‘something about my veins and arteries being very small. I believe it was a female voice and that it was Dr. Murray, but I’m not sure. She was the cardiologist [sic].’ Dr. Murray was the female cardiovascular surgeon in the case. In her operative report, she had indicated in her section on ‘Findings at the time of surgery" that the right femoral artery and vein were exposed, and the right common femoral artery were quite small… Due to its 4-mm size, it would not accept a # 18 arterial cannula… in order to achieve appropriate flows for bypass, bilateral groin cannulation would be necessary." (Ibid, p. 184-185, emphasis mine)
This leads us to Dr. Sabom’s own dialogue with Reynolds. Sabom relates:
"But was Pam’s visual recollection from her out-of-body experience accurate? When I first interviewed Pam on November 11, 1994, I was unfamiliar with the neurosurgical instruments used in the procedure. As a matter of routine, however, I ask for details… Sabom: Did you see any specifics in the operating room during your experience? Pam: I remember seeing several things in the operating room when I was looking down… I remember the heart-lung machine. I didn’t like the respirator. But there were so many of them in different places and different points in the body. I remember a lot of tools and instruments that I did not readily recognize. Sabom: Were there any details that you had not seen before? Pam: The saw thing that I hated the sound of looked like an electric toothbrush and it had a dent in it, a groove at the top where the saw appeared to go into the handle, but it didn’t… And the saw had interchangeable blades, too, but these blades were in what looked like a socket wrench case… I heard the saw crank up. I didn’t see them use it on my head, but I think I heard it being used on something. It was humming at a relatively high pitch and then all of a sudden it went Brrrrrrrrrr! like that." (Ibid, p. 186, emphasis Sabom’s)
Sabom was skeptical at Pam’s description of the Midas Rex bone saw as an "electric toothbrush" with "interchangeable blades." He thought this was an obvious inaccurate description. He finally went to transcribe Pam’s interview in March 1996 and get to the bottom of this. He relates his findings in this manner:
"I phoned the Midas Rex Company… they sent me a student’s user manual with pictures of the bone saw used by Dr. Spetzler. I was shocked with the accuracy of Pam’s description of the saw as an ‘electric toothbrush’ with ‘interchangeable blades’ and with a ‘socket wrench case’ in which this equipment is kept.’ But Pam’s description of the bone saw having a ‘groove at the top where the saw appeared to go into the handle’ was a bit puzzling. If viewed from the side, the end of the bone saw has an overhanging edge that looks somewhat like a groove. However, it was not located ‘where the saw appeared to go into the handle’ but at the other end. Why had this apparent discrepancy arisen in Pam’s description… the first explanation is that she did not ‘see’ the saw at all, but was describing it from her own best guess of what it would look and sound like… Another possible explanation is that she actually did ‘see’ the saw from a distance, giving a fairly accurate description of the saw, ‘interchangeable blades,’ and case they were stored in, but was not able to precisely ‘see’ the tip of the saw. This saw is quite small and, when being moved around in use, may be very difficult to see accurately." (Ibid, 187-189, emphasis mine)
These objections are logical, one may say that Pam had some description of the saw given to her so her report was accurate, but as we see it was not totally 100 % accurate, probably because the saw is so tiny and operates at a high RPM. Pam also described one of the popular songs that Spetzler’s assistants were listening to and the fact that they had trouble with her veins and arteries. All these events were reported after cessation of brain-stem activity, heart activity, etc. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Sabom, among others has done a lot of research in this area and there are more and more compelling cases where people are describing events, sometimes miles away, for hours after vital signs went down. In closing Sabom writes:
"These are all legitimate questions that continue to becloud the claim of the near-death experiencer that ‘I saw if from the ceiling.’ For some, evidence arising from such cases such as Pam’s will suggest some type of out-of-body experience occurring when death is imminent. For others, the inexactness which arises in the evaluation of these cases will be reason enough to dismiss them as dreams, hallucinations, or fantasies. (Ibid, p. 189)
Closing Comments
I think there is an abundant amount of evidence to demolish the naturalistic worldview. Combine Penfield, Jung, Persinger, Carter, Eccles, Sabom, and a host of others, we get a basic consensus that the "mind" and "body" are independent and separate. Here is a basic synopsis:
No evidence whatsoever that nothing will ever produce anything. For a mechanistic explanation to be plausible in the origin of the universe the materialist must posit a direct violation of all natural laws. But that would be a miracle! But then the materialist will counter with "we know that it happened therefore it isn’t really a miracle." This is just a case of the materialist setting up moving goalposts and he moves them every time to get around the evidence demolishing his position. He will have to move those goalposts fast and hard to get around the cosmological argument.
The argument for design is very sound. The "examples" that materialists give for "bad design" fall flat on their face and have no foundation. The mechanistic worldview to account for complex life is insufficient and riddled with problems.
If the mechanistic worldview is true then there is no foundation for objective morals. If one says "we determine our own morals" then I could just as well be a rapist and say "those are my morals, I decided them on my own, deal with it." Science cannot verify whether Hitler really did anything wrong and if morals are just "biological customs" then if Hitler had taken over we would have the "customs" of Nazi Germany today. But nobody would agree to that. What they engage in is a logical fallacy.
The assumption of the constancy of the speed of light is going down. Even the secular camp is begrudgingly admitting that the speed of light is not constant. Therefore, because a star is a billion light years away it does not mean that it took a billion years for the light to get here, nor does it mean that the universe is at least a billion years old.
Science cannot verify everything. (or even get close)
Suffering, Hell, and evil do not disprove God’s existence; in fact, if God did not exist there would really be no such thing as "evil." Why is being virtuous and kind the right thing to do? Why not just obliterate anyone and anything in my path to self-fulfillment? They know in their heart that this world is designed and created for a purpose. The invisible things of God are clearly manifest in this world. But they are not thankful, and relish their own vain imaginations instead. They turn from God to their own evil desires. (Romans 1:19-32)
I would like to thank Glenn Miller for a lot of valuable information contained in one of his articles. I would also like to thank Dr. Gary Habermas of Liberty University for some citations that he gave me. Dr. Habermas has also done a plethora of research in this area and he could supply an honest-seeker with much more evidence.
"I am the way, the truth, and the life."
-Jesus
