Isaiah 45:18 (New International Version)
18 For this is what the LORD says— 
      
he who created the heavens, 
    he is God; 
      
he who fashioned and made the earth, 
       he founded it; 
      
he did not create it to be empty, 
       but formed it to be inhabited— 
      
he says: 
       "I am the LORD, 
       and there is no other.

These are the notes from May 5, 2008

read nathanson story

Genesis 11:3
They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

We're going to talk briefly about some of the alternative salvations that people (naturalists in particular) move toward when they will not allow for God.

All mankind is searching for redemption. We know that there is a rottenness at the core of our being. We long for meaning and purpose in life. Each belief system (or worldview) has its own versions of these things.

Big Bang

Microwave radiation

Stephen Hawking "What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary."

What is he right about? What is he wrong about?

If we believe there is no God, our understanding of our place in the universe and our purpose will be very different from one who does believe in a personal deity.

Dawkins quote

What is the implication?

Does the Big Bang rule out the need for a God?
What is your understanding of the theory?
What aspects are accepted by the scientific community?
What aspects are still disputed?

Before Planck time, the laws of physics break down. 5.4 x 10-44 s Another kind of physics must have been acting at that time.
Gravity in particular would cease to operate so scientists coined the term quantum gravity but such a theory has so far escaped us.

Science is able to describe things but not explain them. Explanations involve why more than just descriptions. Theories that don't require explanations tend to be the ones accepted by science. That's why explanations like steady state cosmology were popular before 20th century evidence for the big bang was found.

Stead state cosmology has since been given up on. It was the theory that the universe was generating matter as space expanded such that it counterbalanced the expansion.

Nearly all cosmologists now believe the universe had a beginning.

Since the expansion of the universe is pretty much agreed upon, scientists who still won't allow for God look for other theories.

One physicist put forward an idea that the universe might have exploded like the big bang, slowed due to gravitation to a near stop, then a hypothetical "anti-gravity" would hold it there for some period, then it would be allowed to expand again. As evidence increased the believed age of the universe, this theory was discarded.

Colossians 1
16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Still one more is that the universe keeps having big bangs followed by big squeezes. It has its own flaws but even if true, it still doesn't answer the question of an ultimate cause, it just postpones it.

A little science fiction

In Show Me God, the author writes a short fictional story about an extraordinary astronomical phenomenon. As it is discovered, the scientists realized it was very similar to a television broadcast signal but was being generated form somewhere outside the solar system. First they tried the NTSC standard TV they had around and that didn't work. Converting to PAL did however.

The images that followed were shocking. They were lines of Hebrew text. The first line of which said "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Each day, a new page of text appeared from Genesis.
Some scientists said it was a hoax perpetrated by aliens. Jewish scholars pointed out that the text followed the order they were familiar with, not the order in the Christian Bible. Some were upset that the message was so religious (and not their religion) but for many, it prompted the ultimate Bible study.

The transmission ended with the end of the Old Testament. The world replied with "What does this mean? What do you expect us to do with this message?" In less than an hour, a new signal appeared - the New Testament in Greek. Christians argued about whether the text recieved supported their various positions. Many people decided to follow Jesus through this occurrence - but many also decided to use the "infinite monkeys typing on infinite typewriters" approach to say that this occurrence was bound to happen in one of the infinite alternate universes.

People claim "if only God would show himself" but the point is that just like not everyone believed when Jesus came, not everyone would believe if he reached out to us through a miraculous TV signal from a pulsar.

Features of universe:
Note: I am trying not to be as technical as these notes could be.
Reason 1) I only have a cursory understanding of these concepts
Reason 2) Even a cursory understanding is enough to understand the points
Reason 3) You can check into these issues yourselves.

Isaiah 45:18
18 For this is what the LORD says— 

he who created the heavens, 

he is God; 

he who fashioned and made the earth, 

he founded it; 

he did not create it to be empty, 

but formed it to be inhabited— 

he says: 

"I am the LORD, 

and there is no other.

1) Existence of elements necessary for life.
Scientists (Sir Fred Hoyle and others) found that carbon generation occurs through a rather improbable process involving helium, beryllium and the "resonance" of carbon. Resonance is the amount of excitement in the nucleus of an atom. Basically, the universe should contain a far smaller amount of carbon than it does.

Hoyle wrote "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The number one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."
- Nov 1981, Engineering and Science

2) Ratio of proton to electron mass

Proton is 1836 times heavier than an electron. If it were much different, molecules needed for life would not form, there would be no life, and no physicists around to wonder how it got that way.

3) Relative strengths of gravitation, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces.

If any of them were slightly different, the universe would be incapable of supporting life.
- Physicist Richard Morris "For example, if the electrical forces were much stronger than they are then no element heavier than hydrogen could form...But electrical repulsion cannot be too weak. If it were, protons would combine to easily and the sun ... (assuming that it had somehow managed to exists up to now) would explode like a thermonuclear bomb.
- Astronomer Hugh Ross "If the strong nuclear force were slightly weaker, multi-proton nuclei would not hold together. Hydrogen would be the only element in the universe."
- Richard Morris "Stronger forces would cause all of the primordial hydrogen - not just 25 percent of it - to be synthesized into helium early in the history of the universe. And without hydrogen, the stars could never begin to shine

4) Protein Formation
Fred Hoyle and Charda Wickramasinghe calculated the odds that all the proteins necessary for life would form in one place (Earth) by random events. 10^40,000. Since there are only 10^80 atoms in the universe, they concluded this was an "outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.
Because the facts cannot be explained by random processes on earth, and Hoyle will not accept a biblical explanation, he chose the hypothesis that the seeds of life must have come from other regions in the universe.
Another case where scientists have decided a lot of help from outside is necessary for what we see but they refuse to allow for God. Maybe a beings in a spaceship came here but only their bacteria survived the journey. perhaps genetic material was dropped here purposefully by aliens. Makes for great science fiction stories. It still leaves the question of how life started (in this case the aliens themselves) started in the first place.

5) balance between gravitational force and electromagnetic force
If gravity were altered slightly, all stars would be either red dwarfs or blue giants. Blue giants can't support life but do generate heavy atoms which we need. Red Dwarfs could possibly support life but can't generate heavy elements.

6) Universe started in a low entropy state
What is entropy? - the amount of energy unavailable for work (how disorganized the universe is)
Paul Davies - if the big bang was a random event, the universe should be at high entropy. We have no modern theory to explain why ... our universe somehow got into such an orderly state.... Given A random distribution of gravitating matter, it is overwhelmingly more probable that it will form a black hole than a star or a cloud of dispersed gas.

From "Show Me God" by Fred Heeren (references to quotes available if you want them)

There are two main types of apologetics arguments:
Evidential and Presuppositional

Evidential - provide evidence that supports Christian claims (usually scientific and historical and usually corrects misunderstandings)
Presuppositional - assumes people really do know the existence of God but are suppressing it.

Here is the most popular example of a presuppositional argument.

Imagine you are a young child and another child steals something from you.
What is your reaction?
A. Hey that's mine!
B. He has no right to take what is mine!
C. I guess that just happens since I'm weaker than him, oh well
D. If only I had a better genetic makeup
Why?

Suppose you are with your child and you see a child stealing from another child.
What is your reaction?
⁃ Kid got what he deserved for being weak
⁃ it's wrong to steal
Why?

Commandment - Thou shalt not steal?

Even our modern ideas of rights to property must come from a proper understanding of the moral law. Without it, your "property" could be taken at anytime.

From John DePoe's summary of the Mere Christianity moral argument this is CS Lewis' case for a moral law:

1) Without a universal moral law, all moral disagreements make no sense. We appeal to a universal standard all the time such as in the above examples. When evil happens, murder, rape etc, we know it is evil and don't feel the need to explain why. When people do not understand certain moral values we think there is something seriously wrong with them.

2) Moral judgments would be meaningless. "The Nazis were wrong to murder the Jews". Is this just personal opinion? If there is no moral law, this puts such a statement on par with personal preferences between chocolate and vanilla ice cream. The Nazis happen to prefer their morality and you prefer yours. Neither is inherently better.

Interestingly, CS Lewis hasn't mentioned God yet.

Next what explanation can there be for its existence. We have trouble crediting the universe itself with the existence of moral laws. Collisions of molecules creating ethics seems non-sensical. However, a law Giver makes sense. A law Giver must have the power to create such a law, be good in order to be the standard for the law, and be interested in our behavior. Sound like someone we know?

Therefore, God exists.

Opposition:
What about herd instinct? Our strongest impulse is not always the right thing to do. If someone is drowning we feel an urge to help and urge to remain safe ourselves. Certainly, remaining safe would help ensure the continuation of our genetic line's survival. However, helping the person drowning even at the possible expense of our own life, is the right thing to do.

What about social convention? We often learn morality through social conventions but that does not mean they are the source. How can we say a society is morally improved if the standard is set by that society. If morality comes from convention, it leads to the ridiculous conclusion that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was morally evil since he acted against his society's conventions.

Is the moral law something the individual imposes on himself/herself? Why bother? The person can change them at their convenience (for example: being generally against stealing, except when your bank account hits zero)

Denying the moral law altogether leads to moral relativism where moral distinctions are meaningless. Thus Hitler and Mother Theresa could be equally good or evil which is absurd.

SO:
The other explanations for the universal moral law and the denial of its existence simply do not cut it. A God like the one described in the Bible (not like Zeus or Ra) exists.

Specifics of the law are outlined in the scripture in various places.
Matthew 22:34-40
34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
36 "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37 Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

More notes to follow.