THREE ROUTES TO GOD IN LIGHT OF CREATION
Paul Arveson
January 13, 2013
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ROUTE 2: NATURAL THEOLOGY
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ROMANS 1:16-19 (RSV)
• “For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the
power of God for salvation to every one who has
faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in
it the righteousness of God is revealed through
faith for faith; as it is written, ‘The righteous shall
live by faith.’
• For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
against all ungodliness and wickedness of men
who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For
what can be known about God is plain to them,
because God has shown it to them.”
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ROMANS 1:20-23
(RSV)
• “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible
nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has
been clearly perceived in the things that have
been made. So they are without excuse; for
although they knew God they did not honor him as
God or give thanks to him, but they became futile
in their thinking and their senseless minds were
darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became
fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal
God for images resembling moral man or birds or
animals or reptiles.”
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ROMANS 1: THERE IS A UNIVERSAL WITNESS
• Question: “What about people in remote places
who have not heard the Gospel? How can they be
saved?”
• Paul’s answer:
• God has not left them without a witness. They can
clearly perceive God’s existence from the things that
have been made.
• But they suppress the truth because of their
wickedness, to escape judgment.
• They knew God but did not honor him as God, but
replaced the true God with idols.
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FEATURES OF NATURE THAT MAY OFFER
EVIDENCE FOR GOD (NATURAL THEOLOGY)
• Beauty and order in nature
• Earth at the center of creation
• Gaps in scientific explanations
• Cosmology: the Big Bang
• Life on earth implies stringent constraints on physics
• Biological Complexity: Intelligent Design
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16TH CENTURY SCHOLASTIC VIEW OF UNIVERSE
Aristotle
Ptolemy
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THE BIBLICAL REVELATION SUPPORTS AN
EARTH-CENTERED UNIVERSE
• “The world also is established, that it cannot be
moved”
• Psalm 93:1, 96:10
• “Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it
should not be removed forever.”
• Psalm 104:5
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COPERNICAN SOLAR SYSTEM (1543)
Copernicus
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GALILEO’S DISCOVERIES SUPPORTED
COPERNICUS
• Discovered moons orbiting Jupiter, like a
solar system
• Discovered phases of Venus
Galileo
c. 1620
• Consistent with a sun-centered system
• Conclusion: the earth moves!
• And we are not in the center of creation!
• Conflict with Scholastics and some in
the Church
• Placed under house arrest
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SOME OTHER REVEALED TEXTS
SAY THAT THE EARTH MOVES
• "Who moves the earth from its place…"
• - Job 9:6
• "He looks on the earth, and it trembles..."
• - Psalm 104:32
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INTERPRETING THE BIBLE
• 1. What is the main message of the Bible?
• - Moral redemption
• 2. What is the context of the passage?
• Author, date, cultural environment, history etc.
• 3. What is the literary genre of the context?
• Narrative, poetry, proverb, psalm (song), parable…
• “The Bible was written to show us how to go to
heaven, not how the heavens go.”
• Galileo, quoting Cardinal Baronius (1598)
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THE TWO BOOKS OF GOD
Father
Son
The Word
The World
(Special Revelation)
(General Revelation)
Cloud barrier
Theology
CONFLICT
Science
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DEISM
God
The World
Theology
Science
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NEWTON’S ARGUMENT FOR GOD
Isaac Newton
(1642-1726)
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WHAT HAPPENED TO GOD?
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THE “GOD OF THE GAPS”
God
The World
(General Revelation)
Theology
Science
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“GOD OF THE GAPS”
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CONSEQUENCE OF CLOSING THE “GAPS”
The World
Theology
Science
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THE END OF THE “ENLIGHTENMENT”
The World
Theology Science
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MODERN COSMOLOGY: THE “BIG BANG”
• The entire physical universe began as point in
spacetime of infinite temperature and density
about 13.7 billion years ago.
• A point is a “singularity”; physical theories break
down near the beginning, so physics before 10-43
second is unknown.
• The established laws of physics apply after this,
and all of the space, time and matter of the
universe began to unfold.
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EVIDENCE FOR THE “BIG BANG”
• Expansion of the universe (Lemaitre, Hubble)
• Cosmic background radiation
• Penzias & Wilson, 1965
• COBE satellite, 1989
• Convergence of physics theories
• Einstein, Gamow, Weinberg, Fang Lizhi etc.
• Temperature variations in the background
radiation
• WMAP satellite, 2003-2010
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ROBERT JASTROW, NASA ASTROPHYSICIST
• "For the scientist who has lived by his
faith in the power of reason, the story
ends like a bad dream. He has scaled
the mountain of ignorance; he is about
to conquer the highest peak; as he
pulls himself over the final rock, he is
greeted by a band of theologians who
have been sitting there for centuries."
• -- "God and the Astronomers", 1978,
Presentation at AAAS
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LATEST RESULTS OF 9-YEAR OBSERVATIONS OF
COSMIC PARAMETERS (DEC. 2012)
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THE UNIVERSE APPEARS “FINELY TUNED”
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AN INHABITABLE UNIVERSE REQUIRES
“FINE TUNING” OF MANY PHYSICAL PARAMETERS
“The universe is a put-up job.” -- Fred Hoyle
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DR. BILL PHILLIPS ON THE “PUT-UP JOB”
May 20, 2010 at Gaithersburg Methodist Church
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WHY FINE TUNING?
• A reference from the Bible:
• “For thus says the Lord, who created the
heavens
• He is God!
• who formed the earth and made it
• He established it;
• He did not create it a chaos,
• He formed it to be inhabited!”
• Isaiah 45:18
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PALEY’S WATCH
• “Every indication of contrivance,
every manifestation of design,
which existed in the watch, exists
in the works of nature; with the
difference, on the side of nature, of
being greater or more, and that in
a degree which exceeds all
computation.”
• — William Paley, Natural Theology
(1802)
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PHILLIP JOHNSON
• "I therefore put the following simple
proposition on the table for discussion: God
is our true Creator. I am not speaking of a
God who is known only by faith and is
invisible to reason, or who acted
undetectably behind some naturalistic
evolutionary process that was to all
appearances mindless and purposeless.
That kind of talk is about the human
imagination, not the reality of God. I speak
of a God who acted openly and who left his
fingerprints all over the evidence."
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BILL DEMBSKI’S “SPECIFIED COMPLEXITY”
• A specified pattern is one that admits short
descriptions, whereas a complex pattern is
one that is unlikely to occur by chance.
Dembski argues that it is impossible for
specified complexity to exist in patterns
displayed by configurations formed by
unguided processes.
• The fact that specified complex patterns
can be found in living things indicates
some kind of guidance in their formation,
which is indicative of intelligence.
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MICHAEL BEHE’S “IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY”
• An irreducibly complex system is one "composed
of several well-matched, interacting parts that
contribute to the basic function, wherein the
removal of any one of the parts causes the system
to effectively cease functioning."
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A GNAT
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GNAT’S ANTENNA 1000X
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MNEMIOPSIS LEIDYI (CTENOPHORA)
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MILKWEED SEEDS
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TRYPTOPHAN METABOLISM IN YEAST
HTTP://WWW.BIO.DAVIDSON.EDU/COURSES/GENOMICS/2002/CUBRE/PROJECT3.HTML
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BACTERIAL FLAGELLUM
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FORMATION OF BACTERIAL FLAGELLUM
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HUMAN GLYOXALASE ENZYME
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CRITIQUES OF NATURAL THEOLOGY
• Critique of Design arguments
• Critique of “Gaps” in natural explanations
• Critiques of the Big Bang as evidence for God
• Critiques of Fine Tuning as evidence for God
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ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL EXAMPLE OF DESIGN
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HAWKING’S FIRST ARGUMENT AGAINST GOD
• Hawking proposed a theory that removes
the singularity at the beginning.
• “So long as the universe had a
beginning, we could suppose it had a
creator. But if the universe is really
completely self-contained, having no
boundary or edge, it would have neither
beginning nor end: it would simply be.
what place, then, for a creator?”
• -- A Brief History of Time, S. Hawking, 1988
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HAWKING’S SECOND ARGUMENT AGAINST GOD
• “Because there is a law such as gravity,
the universe can and will create itself
from nothing. Spontaneous creation is
the reason there is something rather
than nothing, why the universe exists,
why we exist. It is not necessary to
invoke God to light the [match] and set
the universe going.”
• -- The Grand Design, S. Hawking & L.
Mlodinow, 2010
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INTERPRETATIONS OF FINE TUNING
• Einstein wondered: “Did God have any choice in
the values of the physical constants?”
• 1. Theism – God freely and wisely designed the
world so that it could be inhabited, at least on
earth (teleology).
• 2. Necessity - Actually only one set of values is
possible; they all reduce to a mathematical
equation (but we don’t know what it is yet).
• 3. Chance – All possible values of parameters
exist in one universe or another; we are one of the
lucky ones with life (“multiverse”).
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THE “MULTIVERSE”
“Many Worlds”
Science
Theology
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SUMMARY: PROBLEMS WITH DESIGN ARGUMENTS
• Design is an amoral concept
• Why the AIDS virus, parasites, plagues, earthquakes, etc.?
What do these say about the character of the designer?
• Gaps keep getting filled in with physical explanations
• Appear to “kick God out of the universe”
• (Any physical hypothesis is better than theism, because it will
avoid spiritual / moral implications)
• “Intelligent Design” advocates are reluctant to identify
the designer as God
• If not God, who designed the designer?
• “Fine tuning” evidence is intriguing
• But it has multiple interpretations
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QUESTIONS
• Is God really like a “clockmaker” or “designer”?
• Even if there are no gaps in nature, does that
necessarily imply that there is no God?
• Does God want to be discovered by scientists?
• If it requires special instruments and scientific
knowledge to discover God, what about those who
lack these?
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IS NATURAL THEOLOGY EFFECTIVE?
• Does nature contain sufficient evidence for
knowledge of God without reference to the Bible?
• Even if nature provides sufficient evidence to
believe in a creator/designer, is that enough for a
saving knowledge of God?
• Specifically,
what does Christ have to do with it?
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CALVIN’S CONCLUSION
• “In vain for us, therefore, does
Creation exhibit so many bright
lamps lighted up to show forth the
glory of its Author. Though they
beam upon us from every quarter,
they are altogether insufficient of
themselves to lead us into the right
path.”
• -- Institutes of the Christian Religion,
Book 1 Ch. 5
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DOES SCIENCE PROVE THAT GOD EXISTS?
• No. Neither does it prove God does not exist.
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“God seems to prefer a balance of evidence, with
reasons to believe and disbelieve, so a person's
heart and will (not coerced by overwhelming
evidence) can make the decision, and so we can
develop a "living by faith" character with a trust in
God serving as the foundation for all thoughts and
actions of daily living.”
• -- Craig Rusbult, a Christian chemistry professor
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STILL CLIMBING….
EXTRA SLIDES
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THE “ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE”
• The existence of life on earth provides very
stringent constraints on the range of possible
histories of the universe and the laws of physics in
the universe.
• These constraints can serve as a guide to
identifying likely physical laws and histories.
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EXAMPLE OF THE “ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE”
• Why does the universe have to be so large?
• The universe had to be old enough to provide time for
stars to form, produce heavy elements over several
billion years, explode in a supernova, then the resulting
dust had to gather by gravity to form a new star,
• That star, our sun, had to burn steadily for about 4
billion years, without interruption, in order to maintain
liquid water on the earth, in order to support life.
• The long-term stability of temperature on the earth
offers a very stringent constraint on possible histories of
the universe and its physical laws.
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PARAMETER: EXPANSION OF SPACE
DUE TO THE COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT
•  = .00000000000000000000000000001 g/cm3
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