From: Neil Womack on 11 March 1999Allan,
Snow! SNOW!! In the middle of March! There is a God, and He hates me! :) Just kidding.
Okay, let's get serious. Let me respond to a couple of your comments.
In your last response, you said, "Just as I cannot prove empirically that there is a God..." to which I say, "Thank you", because you've just answered the question I posed to you in my very first letter, which was "What evidence do you have to prove to me that your God is the one true faith over the thousands of other religions around the world claiming the exact same thing?"
My argument remains intact because, as I said, we are physical creatures with purely physical faculties of perception, and we MUST have empirical evidence in order to be sure of anything as truth (I stated that in my last letter, but it seems you dismissed that rather valid point by calling them "philosophical word games" as you seem to do with a lot of other valid points). To finish your sentence, you continued, "...you, by this same standard, cannot prove that there is no God." Yeah, and you can't prove there's not an invisible genie in the light switch that actually causes the light to come on instead of electricity. He's there. You can't "prove" he's not just because you can't see him. See where I'm going with this? Using this kind of reasoning allows you to "prove" (by your standard) any metaphysical claim whatsoever. First off, arguments of proof are positive; you can't "prove" a negative. You can only provide evidence to negate a positive statement. But I better not go off on any "philosophical word games" here, or else you might just miss my point.
And then you state I have a bias. Of course, I agree with you that we both do. Your bias is that, as you said, you use a religious schema to view the world, interpreting everything in a religious light. My bias is this: when someone says "I know what truth is", I say, "Prove it." And I admit I've been giving you a hard time, probably more than you deserve, and that I am a big skeptic. I don't beleive ANYTHING that anyone tells me until I have some kind of empirical evidence. It's a bit positivistic, I admit, but I'd rather err on the side of caution.
Don't give me metaphysical claim or "faith" mumbo-jumbo, give me cold, hard facts with predictive validity. The inherent nature of religion prevents this, as religions themselves acknowledge, which is why we are told to 'believe' instead of being given empirical evidence to back up any claims of "truth". You state that I'm a big adherent to Darwinism. I merely mentioned evolution and you automatically augmented my statements with all sorts of other ideas. Natural selection, as a process, is entirely reasonable. That's the process I agree with; it takes place in different forms everywhere, even outside of strictly biological circles. Just look at capitalism. Anyway, Darwin's arguments about other things are not so solid, but hey, that's science, and science thrives on being proved wrong. As you said, he was a victim of the lack of scientific advancement of the day.
But now that science has forced religion to acknowledge the reality of microevolution, (the same way it did with the heliocentric theory), you want to split up the processes into two groups, micro and macro. Fine. It seems that no matter what scientific theory (not truth!) I propose to you, you find any little tiny point to nit-pick at, to try and argue that everything I say is invalid, ignoring the point that I made that science is (and always will be) a "work in progress". You'll never give in because you won't be absolutely satisfied in your beliefs unless 100% of everything makes sense. Science does not allow that because it depends on the faculties of human beings, not "truth" of myths. You just might have to live with the fact that we're not going to know the secrets of the universe in this lifetime.
Well, if you want to try and say that macroevolution is false, that's your opinion. But you are going to have a very hard time defending your claim. You are going to have to explain why there were dinosaurs (which were never mentioned in the Bible because, wouldn't you know it, humans, the species that wrote it, didn't even know there were such things back when they wrote it).
Second, you are going to have to explain why chimpanzees are 99% genetically identical to human beings, if they are a completely unrelated species instead of a biological ancestor as science proclaims. You might also want to throw in a small explanation for why primates are, by an overwhelming margin, our closest genetic and biological likenesses.
Third, you are going to have to explain why there existed the australopithecines (both africanus and afarensis), Cro-Magnon and Neandertal man. The latter two exhibited definite signs of some level of abstract thought higher than other animals (aside from the homo sapiens that came latter, or, in the case of the Neandertal, existed simultaneously with). They had tools, clothing, and lived in small groups, much like tribes (all based on empirical evidence, like burial and placement of bodies, and the existence of said tools).
Now, you tell me, is it "reasonable" to believe God made Adam and Eve the first humans? Tell me, did he try out a couple of "models" of humans, allowing them to form their own culture, before scrapping them in favor of the more intelligent "Homo Sapiens"? Or is it more "reasonable" to assume that, by natural selection, the homo sapiens, with their higher levels of abstract thought, were better survivors, effectively out-surviving the Neandertals? Remember, Humans did not evolve from the Neandertal, just from a common ancestor (this, of course, backed up by empirical DNA evidence).
On a side note, I find something very disturbing about a God who professes to be all-loving, yet punishes his creations with sin and death simply because they wanted to have knowledge. I assume God wanted us to live in ignorance for eternity in the Garden of Eden? But I digress, that's just me rambling again...
I find something quite disturbing about your train of thought. First you claim I am playing by one set of rules and you another, and you claim this is unfair. Personally, I have no idea what in the world you are talking about. But if I may guess, I would say you bring it on yourself. You seem to find it perfectly "reasonable" to accept one out of 11,000 possible doctrines (that's the number of religions in the world) as the "one true faith" strictly by using "faith". Now you're talking to someone who won't accept anything on "faith"; I ask you for cold hard emprirical facts to back up your claims, you can give none.
Now who's playing by a different set of rules? You want ME to give you "one true thing about macroevolution", effectively trying to force me to give empirical evidence, yet you can give none yourself. So my argument is invalid if there's no evidence (which I already mentioned above anyway), but your argument, devoid of evidence, is still okay? Is that fair?
I find it interesting that you say that God has left his fingerprints all over the world. Using your reasoning, I could say the same thing about fairies. "They created the world, left their mark, and no one can disprove it!" Is that "reasonable"? Is it more "reasonable" if I write a book about it claiming its truth? Neither of us would think so. Of course, you probably wouldn't take the time to see your own religion from an outsider's perspective. Your reasoning allows for the universe to be created by anything, be it one or many entities, yet you insist that the God you believe in is "the one". What I find most disturbing is that you're willing to ignore the next few million years of human evolution and our potential to understand the universe in your insistence that we already know the "truth". I can't help but think that the people living 100,000 years from now will look at our present cultural beliefs in the same mythical fashion we see the gods of the ancient Romans or Greeks.
The conclusions about "objective reality" I speak of come from removing the human element from the universal equation: if humans never were, would there be "good" and "evil"? No. The concept would not exist. It's the conclusions you arrive at from subtracting human culture from our perception. Would there be "God" without humans? And by that I mean the entity alluded to by religious doctrine, not some unknown creator entity? Well, that's what's up for debate. I would say no, you would say yes. But here's a couple of points to consider:
--The existence of a God can NEVER be proven (as you stated) --Humans are biological entities.I said before, and I'll say it again: I'm jumping to no conclusions. I would not say your belief that a creator (or unifying force, or what have you) exists is unreasonable, only that the belief in YOUR creator is. I only rely on what empirical evidence tells me, because when you rely on humans to tell you (especially those with political interest, which about sums up those resoponsible for recording history and passing it on for the last five thousand years), you are going to get a very manipulated version of what "truth" is, especially in a historical context, as with your religion. Religion served Abraham and Moses as political tools to control people, not theological ones. The easiest way to get people to play the social control game is to threaten them with divine punishment (that, as you so nicely pointed out, cannot be "disproven"). It is manipulation of behavior through fear of the unknown. Simple minds, as I said it in the last letter, have nothing to do with Occam's Razor. That refers to parsimony in scientific explanation. Rather, a simple mind is one who gives faith and trust in human nature and all the ugliness and trappings associated with it, remaining completely ignorant of the political, cultural, social, and psychological dimensions that have shaped religious beliefs all over the world, including yours. They believe in it because they are taken by its glamour, and they accept all the rationalizations that go with it as "reasons" their faith is the "one true faith". I can speak about that comfortably, because, for about 17 or 18 years of my life, I tried to reason just like you, because I sincerely believed as you do. In fact, I remember USING some of the arguements you've been using. Then I saw that most of my arguments ran in circles, and I dropped it. A "reasonable" thing to do, I thought.
--Abstract thought, communication, and language are CULTURAL entities.
--Culture is the product of Human beings, hence all language, communication, and abstract thought are the product of human beings.
--There is nothing BIOLOGICAL about a human that requires us to believe in God, have a religion, or attend church.
--Therefore, it is a CULTURAL urge to believe in such things.
--Human beings have incredibly different belief systems depending on the culture they subscribe to. Pacific Islanders do not believe in God, yet they believe in magic. To them Magic is quite real, in the same way Christians believe that God is real. There are thousands of variations on religion and the supernatural throughout the world. Remarkably, there are very few consistencies. Yet all people, of all belief systems, are obviously humans.It seems your argument rests on one thing (besides faith): that there was a design, not just chaos. To which I say, "maybe". I already conceeded the possibility of a creator, you have conceeded to microevolution. But let's look at this, shall we? Where, in the universe, is there design? I know humans have given notions of design to their world, but that means nothing.
The universe IS a chaotic system. Why do you think scientists are so worried that a comet, asteroid, or meteorite might hit Earth? Because the universe is RANDOM. A body could, that. But wait, there's more chaos. Stars collapse, black holes form (as far as we understand by the mathematical evidence), and everything, including light, gets sucked in. Pretty chaotic, if you ask me. Or did God have a reason for making these gigantic gravity traps? I think the thing that would be beneficial is to stop looking at just our little lives on Earth and look at the universe when making a theological claim. We're just a speck, an atom, if you will, in an almost incomprehensibly gigantic universe. I'd be willing to wager that there are hundreds of thousands of lifeforms around the universe, some that are simple, as our algae and bacteria, some probably millions of years into a technological evolution so far beyond us it is unimaginable. When I think in these terms, as I have been the last couple of years, it makes it very hard to believe that there is only us, and that we are God's special creation. Very arrogant, I thought, to assume we are the paramount of existence in the universe. How is one to even begin to analyze the effect of Christ's death in those terms? Did he die for everyone else in the universe, too, or just us? It just makes no sense. It reflects the primitive intellect (compared to those of us today) of the people who wrote our great books from the past, including the holy books of all the religions out there. Yes, there is and end to my ramble. :)
I think we're getting so intent on making our points in our letters that we make way too many in each one. It takes a lot longer to respond to each letter. That's what I was saying about ICQ. But if you don't want to, I understand. I would try to keep it shorter, but I don't want you to think I'm ignoring any of your points, and I'm sure you probably feel the same way about my letters.
On a final note, Allan, I want to apologize if you feel I've offended you. I told you how passionate I get when I debate, and this one's been a big one. I harbor no ill will towards you, as I feel everyone has a right to believe what they want. That's one principle I would fight to the death for. Your dialogue has been educational for me in that a creating entity might not be such a far-fetched idea (although one of many possible explanations), and I hope I have at least gotten you to ask a few questions to yourself regarding your beliefs. Anyway, I can't guarantee a lengthy response next time, as it takes quite a bit of time (as I'm sure you know!) to write these out. But if there are a few points you'd like to go over and examine, let me know. I'm willing to discuss (or argue!) any topic you want.
Take care,
Neil
Reply from Allan Turner on 23 March 1999
Neil,
It's taken me a while to get back to you, but I've been very busy the last two weeks, and besides, it does take a while to respond to what you're saying. I really don't see how we could effectively do this via ICQ, do you?
When I read what you said at the end of your last reply, it sounded to me like you're ready to quit. But, on your web site, before your second reply, you encourage your readers, saying, “Don't bail on me yet, this is where it really starts to get interesting!” I hope you will heed your own advice. To my way of thinking, now is not the time for you to bail out of this debate.
I'm much more interested in you as a person than I am in topping you in debate. But, without this debate, you're just going to continue in your naturalism, forever looking down your nose at us “ignorant” theists. I've engaged you in this dialogue because I want you to see the reasonableness of theism, and ultimately Christianity. So, although this dialogue has certainly been time-consuming, I don't consider it burdensome.
You have admitted that my arguments for a Creator are reasonable, and that you can now see that “a creating entity might not be such a far-fetched idea.” I'm glad I've gotten you to this point, and I am now ready to proceed to those issues surrounding the Bible. If you are interested in continuing this dialogue, I am willing to show you why I believe it is reasonable to think the Bible is a revelation from God, and not just the product of man, as you claim. If this would be of interest to you, please let me know in your next reply. But now I must turn to answering your last response.
The Unreasonableness Of Your Position
I've demonstrated that your beliefs are not nearly as reasonable as you claim. For example, as a naturalist, you believe that matter is eternal, although there are no known verifiable facts that prove this. You believe that life must have come from non-life, that order arose from chaos, that consciousness evolved from non-consciousness, that the moral came from the non-moral, and that intelligence came from non-intelligence. Although there are no facts anywhere to support these assumptions, you believe them anyway. Notwithstanding, you say, “I don't believe ANYTHING that anyone tells me until I have some kind of empirical evidence.” Neil, in light of the facts stated above, such a statement is audaciously outrageous. You've had line upon line and page after page to "put your money where your mouth is,” and you have declined to do so. All you had to do was tell me just one thing you know to be true about macroevolution, and you wouldn't, or couldn't, do it. Instead, you complain that I unfairly want to play by a “different set of rules.” Not at all. All I wanted was for you to finally admit that YOU didn't have any empirically verifiable evidence for your position. Remember, all I asked for was just ONE thing. Neil, your silence speaks loud and clear. Surely, if you could've, you would've. Such ought to cause a reasonable man to seriously reflect upon the validity of his position.
Furthermore, in my stating of the obvious (viz., that I could not prove empirically that there is a God), you act like I've conceded the debate. I've conceded nothing. This has been my position all along. The strawman you've evidently created in your mind of an idiotic theist who claims he can prove the existence of God empirically is nothing more than a figment of your imagination. No intelligent apologist for theism or Christianity would make such a claim. Experience has taught me that a strawman is seldom as sharp as the real thing. As I said earlier, you've evidently spent too much time tilting at windmills. Hopefully, this dialogue has at least helped you to focus your efforts on the “real thing.”
Clearly Stated
I made it clear in my first reply what my methodology would be. It goes like this: I believe there is ample proof that the God identified in the Bible is the Creator, that the Bible is His divine revelation to man, and that if you and I could agree that belief in God is reasonable, then I would love to discuss with you why I believe the Bible is the Creator's revelation to man. But, not once did I ever suggest these things were empirically verifiable. By empirically verifiable, I mean “capable of being verified or disproved by observation or experiment.” The creation can no more be proven this way than can the so-called “big bang.” Please, Neil, abandon the theistic strawmen you've conjured-up in your mind and concentrate your energy on those of us who know the difference between “reasonable” and “empirically verifiable.”
Most Everything You've Said Presupposes Macroevolution
You say, “I merely mentioned evolution and you automatically augmented my statements with all sorts of other ideas.” Neil, you have mentioned evolution over and over again in this discussion. Many of the arguments you make assume it or include it, so it is central to your worldview. Are you no longer comfortable with it? I am well aware of the tenets of the naturalistic worldview, and I believe I have represented them accurately. But if I have misrepresented you, then show me where and how, and I will be happy to apologize. On the other hand, if you're not willing to defend something, then aren't you at fault for introducing it in the first place?
Dinosaurs, Chimpanzees, Australopithecines, And Cro-Magnon/Neandertal Man.
You say, “You are going to have to explain why there were dinosaurs (which were never mentioned in the Bible because, wouldn't you know it, humans, the species that wrote it, didn't even know there were such things back when they wrote it).” First of all, you have assumed macroevolution again, believing dinosaurs evolved and became extinct before man arrived on the scene. But, my worldview has dinosaurs and men coexisting. Second, I'm sure you're aware that there are actually cave paintings that depict dinosaur-like creatures. Third, the Bible mentions “behemoth,” “leviathan,” “monsters” (sea and land), and “dragons.” The descriptions of these creatures sound mighty dinosaur-like to me. Fourth, there have been claims of “man tracks” and dinosaur tracks existing in the same strata, although these have been discarded, either rightly or wrongly, by evolutionists. If these are not valid, perhaps such evidence will yet be found. Clearly, then, the existence of dinosaurs, which cannot be denied, does not denigrate my worldview in the least.
Yes, chimpanzees and humans share about ninety-nine percent of the genes that code for proteins. Evolutionists believe such similarities indicate common ancestry. In other words, they believe chimps are just one percent away from being humans. Curiously, this makes chimps genetically closer to humans than they are to other apes. How can this be? This actually represents more of a problem for evolutionists than it does a solution. Comparison of DNA in frogs indicate there are much greater DNA variations among them than there are between the bat and the blue whale; yet the world's three thousand species of frogs are all much more similar than are bats and whales. Why is this? Consequently, there seems little doubt that evolutionary protagonists have made far more of human-chimp DNA similarities than the situation warrants. Nevertheless, similarities, which are believed to indicate common origins, are so absolutely fundamental to what evolutionists are talking about, that they forget to tell us about all the dissimilarities, like chimps having 48 chromosomes while man only has 46, for instance.
On the other hand, the similarities that exist between chimps and humans could just as easily indicate a common Creator, could they not? It seems reasonable to me that a Creator might use similar DNA in two different creatures sharing the same morphology. Furthermore, it seems reasonable to think that some degree of biochemical similarity might be imposed by chimps and humans sharing the same food, atmosphere, minerals, gravity, etc. Therefore, I fail to see in these similarities the knockout blow you suppose.
If we're going to talk about alleged “missing links,” then you should have mentioned Hesperopithecus, Gigantopitecus, Piltdown, Zinjanthropus, Lothagan, Ramapithecus, which at one time or another were all considered to be the “missing link.” But, as far as the australopithicenes go, you mentioned only two of the five species or groupings that are listed in contemporary literature: A. africanus and A. afarensis. So, I'll concentrate on these two. Due to the Leakey party's discovery of ER 1470 and KNM-ER 3733, A. africanus has definitely been eliminated and exposed for the imaginative speculation it always was. It appears that A. africanus is probably ancestral to the chimpanzee. As far as A. afarensis, Donald Johanson and Richard E. Leakey are fighting with each other right now over what it was. Although Johanson et al. argue that australopithicines walked habitually upright, Leakey, the “Golden Boy” of paleoanthropology, argues that “the australopithecines were long-armed, short-legged knuckle-walkers, similar to extant African apes” (R.E.F. Leakey, Nature, Vol. 231, p. 241 (1971). In addition, a living baboon, Theropithecus galada, has a number of dental, mandibular, and facial characteristics that are shared with australopithicines. This is particularly damaging to the dental evidence for a hominid status for this group of fossils. When it is all said and done, I suspect the australopithicenes, whether they habitually walked upright or not, will eventually go the way of all those “missing links” mentioned above. Not only did australopithecines have a brain like an ape, but they also looked like an ape, and probably even walked like an ape. Consequently, I rather imagine he was simply an extinct ape. But, if I were trying to sell a book about Australopithecus afarensis, I'd be more inclined to entitle it, as did Johanson, Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind than I would Lucy: An Extinct Specialized Hominid of Uncertain Phylogeny from the Late Pliocene, wouldn't you?
The most famous of all the so-called “missing links” is Neanderthal Man, or Homo neanderthalensis, as he was originally called, pictured for more than a hundred years as a stooped, brutish character with heavy brow ridges and the crudest of habits. This was because the specimens from La Chapelle-aux Saints were deformed from arthritis. Although many skeletal remains of these people are now available and they are classified as fully human Homo sapiens, the brutish image is still a popular one in the public's mind. Even so, it is now believed that if dressed up in a business suit, Neanderthal might even pass as a modern-day paleoanthropologist. (For a rehabilitation of the Neanderthal image, see the cover of the October issue of Science 81 and the May 1989 issue of Discover.) Finally, cave-men, like Cro-Magnon, just like Neanderthal, are also classified as fully human Homo sapiens. So, it seems to me that we either have apes or humans, but no truly verifiable transitional fossils.
In fact, evolutionary scientists are in much disagreement over the fossil evidence. The only thing they are in agreement on is that macroevolution must have occurred. What else can we expect—they're naturalists! Therefore, macroevolution remains the only game in town. But, so far, it's a game being played mostly by faith.
Contrary To What Evolutionists Have Said, Both Evolution And Creation Are Falsifiable
Sometimes evolutionists ask creationists: “Can you produce clear-cut evidence that definitely suggests creation? Can you indicate some material thing that can only be explained by creation?” This is, of course, an unfair demand, and would, as you have learned in this discussion, kill evolution as well as creation. However, I will venture to suggest that a good sign of creation would be the appearance of something without antecedents. If this could be shown to be untrue, then creation would be in serious jeopardy. In syllogistic form, it looks like this:
1. If creation has occurred, we would find no antecedents.This is exactly the evidence of the Cambrian strata. There we find the sudden appearance of animals with no antecedents. Doesn't this suggest creation rather than evolution? If, on the other hand, antecedents are found and substantiated, then the idea of a creation would be defeated. I'm sure your mentioning of australopithicines, Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal man were meant to be the death knell for creation, but you're going to have to come up with something better attested to than these disputed fossils.
2. We find no antecedents.
3. Therefore, creation has occurred.or1. If evolution has occurred, we would find antecedents.
2. We find no antecedents.
3. Therefore, evolution has not occurred.Getting Your Facts Straight
Neil, you need to get your facts straight. You said, “Remember, humans did not evolve from the Neandertal, just from a common ancestor (this, of course, backed up by empirical DNA evidence).” Oh really? The last time I checked “fully human” meant fully human. How is it that Neanderthal is now classified as being fully human, but you're trying to tell me about “empirical DNA evidence” that proves humans and neanderthals are related only through a common ancestor? You then go on to indicate that Neanderthals “exhibited definite signs of some level of abstract thought higher than other animals.” Neil, that's what Homo sapiens usually do. In a discussion of this type, such ignorance seems to be almost inexcusable.
A Different Set Of Rules?
I asked you to tell me just one thing you knew to be true about macroevolution, and you declined, complaining that I was the one changing the rules and being unfair. Sorry, Neil, but that just won't fly. What has happened is that you have finally been forced to engage me on a level playing field, instead of that rigged one you felt so comfortably superior on. Instead of taking it like a man, you're winning like a “spoil-sport.” What you should have done, in my opinion, was to have acknowledged your inability to produce just one single empirically verifiable thing you know to be true about your system, finally admitting that you, like me, have a religion, and that you are operating on faith just like I am.
For someone who can't demonstrate just one thing he knows to be true about his system, it seems rather audacious of you to talk about my arguments being devoid of evidence. You mean, of course, that I can't prove empirically that there is a God. Yes, I've admitted that, but the empirically verifiable data can be explained by my model of Origins just as well, and I think better, than your model. That's the level on which I've been trying to carry out this discussion. It's taken you a while, but I think you're finally beginning to understand this.
The Fairies Example
In responding to my remark about God's fingerprints being all over His creation, you say: “Using your reasoning, I could say the same thing about fairies. 'They created the world, left their mark, and no one can disprove it!' 'Is that reasonable?'” No, it isn't. Fairies are just “one more thing.” Consequently, reason compels me to ask, “Who created the fairies?” On the other hand, God is not merely “one more thing.” The person who believes in God and the person who doesn't do not merely disagree about God. They disagree about the very character of the universe. The believer is convinced that each and every thing exists because of God and God's creative activity. The unbeliever is convinced that natural objects exist “on their own,” without any ultimate reason or purpose for being. In this situation, there are no neutral or “safe” facts that all parties are agreed upon, with one part believing some additional “risky” facts, as in the case of Santa Clause, Fairies, Big Foot, and the Loch Ness Monster. Rather, each side puts forward a certain set of facts and denies its opponents' alleged facts. There is risk on both sides, as I demonstrated in the syllogism above. So, what has been at stake is the reasonableness of your beliefs and my beliefs. Unfortunately, up to this point, you have conducted yourself as if I was the only one under obligation to prove my position. You are wrong! You, just like me, are under obligation to prove your worldview. Because you have consistently refused to do so, you have, in my opinion, miserably failed your system. Even so, you continue to claim that your “argument remains intact.” Neil, get a grip, son! Your principle arguments in this discussion have been ripped to shreds. When you boast that you “only rely on what empirical evidence tells” you, but then you refuse to tell me one thing you know to be true about macroevolution, you're just “whistling past the graveyard,” and you know it.
Design Or Chaos?
You ask, “Where, in the universe, is there design?” EVERYWHERE, is the resounding answer. But not so, according to you. Neil, have you read Behe's book yet? You haven't said one thing about the concept of irreducible complexity that I brought up in my previous response. This concept infers the design I've been talking about, but you ignore it. Even the smallest aspects of biological life have God's fingerprints all over them, but in your epistemological blindness, you refuse to see. You explain it all away by saying “design” is but a human notion, a figment of man's imagination. “Chaos,” you say, is what the universe is really all about. But “chaos” is not just a human notion, Neil? Nevertheless, you attempt to prove that the universe is a chaotic system by mentioning asteroids, meteorites, and black holes, which all occur and operate as the result of certain uniform processes. Pardon me, but this doesn't sound like chaos to me.
The Failures Of A Star Trek Jesus
Yes, as you have pointed out, we live in an “almost incomprehensibly gigantic universe.” You say you are “willing to wager that there are hundreds of thousands of lifeforms around the universe,...some probably millions of years into a technological evolution so far beyond us it is unimaginable.” You go on to say that when you think in these terms, “it makes it very hard to believe that there is only us, and that we are God's special creation.” Then, having created, in your own mind, hundreds of thousands of life forms, you then critique the concept of a Savior by implying that Jesus could not respond to them all. Because you don't think it sensible that Jesus Christ could effectively act in such a universe, then the whole idea of a Savior is nonsense. Neil, such thinking is, itself, absolute nonsense. There is nothing that indicates such a universe exists except within the confines of your own mind. But if it did, then an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God could effectively deal with any and all contingencies arising in such a universe. Needless to say, your imaginations sound mighty delusional to me. But you're the psychology major, aren't you? What do you think?
No Apologies Necessary
As I've already told you, there are no apologies necessary. You have not offended me. I certainly harbor no ill-will toward you either. If I know my heart, I want only what is best for you. Yes, your arrogance is pretty evident, and I think it hurts your cause, but that's something you're going to have to deal with. But being passionate about what you believe in is not a crime nor a sin, as far as I know. So, press your point and continue to give me your best shot, for this is perfectly acceptable to me.
Reason And The Role Of Systematic Consistency
In showing theism to be reasonable, I have tried to apply a test for truth that does not rely only on things empirically verifiable. This test is systematic consistency. By “consistency,” I mean obedience to the laws of logic. Nothing can be true if it is self-contradictory or otherwise illogical. In this discussion, I think I have demonstrated the self-contradictory, illogical, and inconsistent premises of your worldview. In those places I have hit you the hardest, you have said nothing, indicating to me that you recognize the weaknesses of your position. By “systematic,” I mean fitting all the facts of experience. To be true, something must not only be logical, but it must also have the support of facts, whether historical, personal, or scientific. This means that someone may have an airtight logical system, but if it does not explain the facts, we have no reason to regard it as true. Given certain assumptions, macroevolution seems logical, but as I've pointed out in this dialogue, it does not effectively explain the known facts, and we've not even talked about some important things, like the first and second laws of thermodynamics.
In arguing for theism, I have demonstrated it to be systematically consistent (i.e., it is logical and fits the facts of experience). Since theism passes this test for truth, I have shown it to be true, and any reasonable man should believe in it. Yes, it is true that this kind of knowledge is only probable knowledge. Because new facts can always be discovered that might disprove my position, I can only show something to be probably true, and then only to different degrees of probability. For reasonable men and women, this is enough. Therefore, it has been my aim to prove that theism possesses a high degree of probability. I think I have done that. The fact that this type of knowledge cannot be absolutely certain ought not to discourage us, for virtually all our knowledge is based on probability, even the knowledge that other people exist, or that the earth is round.
In making my defense, I have been following the Bible passage that says I should “always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks [me] a reason for the hope that is in [me]” (1 Peter 3:15). For this, I am thankful. As I have attempted to show you, my faith, and the faith of other Christians like me, is not an unreasonable, blind faith
In Conclusion
Neil, I hope you will not “bail out” of this discussion. I am praying (I hope you don't mind) that you will take me up on the offer I made at the beginning of this reply to address the validity or falsehood of the Bible itself. From the things you have said in this debate, I know you are very interested in this subject. In your first e-mail, you quoted from my article True Religion Vs. False Religion where I cite Genesis 1:1 and say, “If one believes this sentence to be divinely inspired truth, then it completely destroys the 'strongholds' of atheism, polytheism, materialism, and pantheism.” Your response was, “It does nothing of the sort.” You then went on to say, “What you are doing is asking someone to believe something for which they have absolutely no evidence whatsoever.” Yes, I did say, “If one believes this sentence...,” and if one does believe this sentence, then all these philosophies are “destroyed.” But, if what you are saying is true, that I am asking folks to believe without any evidence whatsoever, then the next stage of this discussion ought to be right up your alley. If you are correct, and the Bible is just another man-made book, then it ought not to take you very long to demonstrate the unreasonableness of my arguments. In this discussion, you have frequently questioned the uniqueness of Christianity and the Bible in connection with the “11000” religions that are in the world today. But, the Bible is unique, and I'm ready to prove it to you. According to Genesis 1:1, the entire universe came into existence, brand new, a finite time ago, by the creative action of God. This statement reverberates throughout the pages of Scripture. As far as I am aware, no other “holy book” makes such a claim on its own. The concept appears elsewhere only in those books that borrow from the Bible, such as the Koran and the Mormon writings. The importance of this cannot be overstated. Not only does it set Biblical revelation apart from other so-called revelation, but it provides for the supernatural accuracy of Genesis. New scientific support for a hot, big-bang creation event, for the validity of the space-time theorem of general relativity, and the ten-dimensional string theory verifies the Bible's claim for a beginning. In this decade, the final of the twentieth century, astronomers and physicists have established that all of the matter and energy in the universe, and all of the space-time dimensions within which matter and energy are distributed, had a beginning in finite time, just as the Bible declares.
Neil, let's put the Bible to the test. Eternity, if there is such a thing, hangs in the balance. I'll be waiting for your reply.
Sincerely,
Allan Turner
Sadly, no response from Neil was ever received.