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Annie Hall – The Opening Scene [HD]

Manhattan

Francis Schaeffer two months before he died said if he was talking to a gentleman he was sitting next to on an airplane about Christ he wouldn’t start off quoting Bible verses. Schaeffer asserted:

I would go back rather to their dilemma if they hold the modern worldview of the final reality only being energy, etc., I would start with that. I would begin as I stress in the book THE GOD WHO IS THERE about their own [humanist] prophets who really show where their view goes. For instance, Jacques Monod, Nobel Prize winner from France, in his book NECESSITY AND CHANCE said there is no way to tell the OUGHT from the IS. In other words, you live in a totally silent universe. 

The men like Monod and Sartre or whoever the man might know that is his [humanist] prophet and they point out quite properly and conclusively what life is like, not just that there is no meaningfulness in life but everyone according to modern man is just living out some kind of game plan. It may be knocking 1/10th of a second off a downhill ski run or making one more million dollars. But all you are doing is making a game plan within the mix of a meaningless situation. WOODY ALLEN exploits this very strongly in his films. He really lives it. I feel for that man, and he has expressed it so thoroughly in ANNIE HALL and MANHATTAN and so on.

According to the Humanist worldview Jacques Monod the universe is silent about values and therefore his good friend Woody Allen demonstrated this very fact so well in his 1989 movie CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS. In other words, if we can’t get our values from the Bible then  the answer is MIGHT MAKES RIGHT!!!!

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The question now becomes do you want to know if there is a God or not? Are you willing to examine the same evidence that I provided to the world’s leading atheistic philosopher in 1994 (Antony Flew)? Here some are links below that examine the subjects that Antony Flew studied before he switched from away from atheism, followed by the sermon by Adrian Rogers that I provided to Antony Flew and he said he enjoyed listening to.

Former atheist Antony Flew: “Although I was once sharply critical of the argument to design, I have since come to see that, when correctly formulated, this argument constitutes a persuasive case for the existence of God!”

Former atheist Antony Flew said, “I was particularly impressed with Gerry Schroeder’s point-by-point refutation of what I call the MONKEY THEOREM!”

Why the world’s most famous atheist (Antony Flew) now believes in God by James A. Beverley

BP)–Antony Flew, a legendary British philosopher and atheist, has changed his mind about the existence of God in light of recent scientific evidence.Flew –

Former Atheist Antony Flew noted that Evolutionists failed to show “Where did a living, self-reproducing organism come from in the first place?”

Former atheist Antony Flew pointed out that natural selection can’t explain the origin of first life and in every other case, information necessarily points to an intelligent source!

Related posts:

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Four Fearsome Factors

Romans 1:16–20

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Is God a righteous God? Is God a just God? Is God fair to let a person die and go to Hell who has never even once heard the name of Jesus? You’ll have to admit that’s a good question, isn’t it?

God is righteous, and God is just. And there is no other way to Heaven apart from Jesus Christ. Don’t get the sentimental idea that all the world religions are somehow connected. Oh, no. Jesus Christ said, in John chapter 14, verse 6: “I am the way, the truth, and the life”—now listen to this—and “no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). Now, if somebody can come some other way, then what does that make Jesus? That makes Jesus a liar. And, if Jesus Christ is a liar, not only is He not their Savior, He’s not my Savior, because a liar is nobody’s Savior. And, what did the apostles say in Acts chapter 4, verse 12, when they said this: “Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is no other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved?” (Acts 4:12).

This puts us on the horns of a major dilemma. Can a righteous, a good, a loving, a holy God let a man die and go to Hell who never once heard the name of Jesus? How are we going to answer that question? Well, the Apostle Paul is going to answer it for us in Romans chapter 1. So, I pray that you will listen and listen carefully, because we don’t have to be ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Notice how Paul begins in verse 16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ” (Romans 1:16). And, look up here, and let me give you a good look at a man who also is not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. I’ve been preaching it now for 20 years. The more I preach it, the more I marvel at it, the more I thank God for it, the more I stand by it, the more I believe in it. “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; for it”—the gospel—“is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth;”

Read vv. 17–20

Now, what about those who’ve never heard the gospel, those who are lost, who’ve never heard the gospel? Is God just? Is God righteous? Is God good?

Is God loving if He could let such an one go to hell? I want to write four things upon your heart, this morning. I want to give you four factors that will help you to understand this, and put it all together.

I. The Revelation Factor

Factor number one is the revelation factor. All men have some light.

I want you to imagine that the end of time has come, that time we know as the final judgment, and I want you to see out there what we would call the heathen—those who have never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. The accusation is made, the indictment is given: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness … of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18). The heathen, the pagans, they say, “Your Honor, not guilty, not guilty! We never heard the gospel, we never knew how to be saved; we are innocent by reason of ignorance. We never heard, we never knew.” And, the Apostle Paul becomes the prosecuting attorney. And, the Apostle Paul says to the Father, “Your Honor, I will prove that they are guilty; I will prove that they are not innocent because of ignorance. I will show that they cannot say they’ve never had a fair and an equal chance. And, I call two witnesses to testify against these who say they never knew, they never heard.

Witness number one: Will you take the stand? Witness number one: Give the court your name.” He says, “My name is Creation.” “Oh, Creation, you’re the witness that God exists?” “Yes, I am the witness that God exists.”

vv. 19-20

Creation testifies to the fact of God. Psalm 19, verse 1 says: “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). Now, if you have a creation, you have to have a Creator, and the Bible says that the Creator is clearly seen by the things that are made. When I see a piano, here, and it’s finely tuned, I know that somebody crafted it. When I see a watch that runs with precision, I say that somebody crafted that watch. When I see a building put together in symmetry and balance and purpose, I say that there is an architect. And, when I see this mighty universe put together, when I see creation, I say Creator. When I see order and system, I say intelligence. When I see design, I know there’s a Designer!

That’s the reason the Bible says: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Psalm 14:1). Because, witness number one is creation.

But then, Creation steps down from the witness stand, and the Apostle Paul says, “Now I call my second witness. Would you take the stand? Will you tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” “I will.” “Will you give your name?” Witness number two says, “My name is Conscience.” So, there are two witnesses. Number one is Creation; that is, the outward, objective witness. The second is Conscience; that is, the inward, subjective witness.

v. 19

Unto them is Creation, in them is Conscience.

2:14-15    “For when the Gentiles”—now, another word for Gentiles is pagan, or those who’ve never heard the gospel—“For when the Gentiles, who have not the law”—the law here means the Old Testament law—“For when the Gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves; who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another” (Romans 2:14–15).

So, there are two witnesses that all pagans, all heathen, and all the people on all the face of the Earth have. One is the outward objective witness called Creation. The other is the inward subjective witness called Conscience. There is a built-in knowledge of God. It’s a God shaped void inside of us put in us by our Creator.

ill.–Augustine said the soul of man is restless until it finds its rest in God. God made man to serve him, to know him, and until he does, he’s like a round peg in a square hole, or he is out of fellowship.

Now, what is an atheist? There’s no real intellectual atheist. Atheists are not atheists because of intellectual problems; they’re atheists because of moral problems. “Ah,” you say, “but I know some brilliant people who are atheists.” Well, so what? I know some brilliant people who are not. You say, “Well, I know some foolish people who believe in God.” Well, I know everybody who doesn’t believe is foolish. You see, it’s not a matter of intelligence. The Bible says in v. 22 “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22). Why? Because, you see, all of us have a God-consciousness. It is not a matter of intellectualism; it is a matter of morality. “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Psalm 14:1).

An atheist is somebody who has the idea of God that makes him uncomfortable, so he says, “If I can get rid of this idea of God, I can get rid of this uncomfortable feeling.” But, he really doesn’t get rid of it, not down deep. He’s like the man who bought a new boomerang and killed himself trying to throw the old one away. The idea of God is still there; and, the more he tries to get rid of it subconsciously, the more he knows that God exists, because down in his heart is that conscience.

“Me thinks thou dost protest too much” wrote Shakespeare in Hamlet.  Have you noticed how adamantly so called atheists make their point.  They harp on it so continuously because they are forever trying to convince themselves…and they are so threatened by the truth that they cannot just drop it and step away. They are very defensive about it. Too much…they give away how deeply plagued they are with it all. It’s like those who blast Sarah Palin day in and day out.  If she’s really the ‘nothing’ that they claim, they should be able to walk away from it after they say their peace.  But they are deeply threatened by what she represents, and they have to fight that battle everyday because it won’t go away in their conscience!

So, what is the first factor? It is the revelation factor. All men have some light.

John 1:9 
That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

You can’t get around that. “[Christ is] the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (John 1:9). Two witnesses, Creation and Conscience, testify that the heathen, the pagans, no matter who they are or where they are, have some light. I didn’t say all light, just some.

II. The Refusal Factor

Now, here’s the second proposition. The first factor is the revelation factor. The second factor is the refusal factor. And, what is this factor? Light refused increases darkness.

vv. 21-22

“Because, when they knew God”—that is, they know by creation and conscience that God exists—“they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened” (Romans 1:21). Darkened. All men have some light. But light refused increases darkness. Now, you see, you cannot just simply take light or truth and put it on ice. You cannot put truth in your pocket and say, “That’s very interesting, I’ll spend it some day if I need it.” No, when God gives you light, when creation and conscience speak to the heart of any pagan or any individual anywhere on the face of this earth, when God gives him some light, if he does not glorify God, if he does not believe in God, if he does not trust God, he does not remain stationary; he begins to regress and he loses even the light that he has. His foolish heart will be darkened.

In the Bible, the opposite of truth is not error; it issin. Now, the error is the baggage that comes with the sin. I’m not saying that a man does not have error if he refuses truth. But, why does he refuse truth? He refuses truth because of the sin that is in his heart.

v. 18        ‘hold the truth in unrighteousness.’

Now, look at the word ‘hold.’ You know what that word hold means? It literally means “who resist the truth, who smother the truth, who hold back the truth.” And, how do they hold back the truth? Not in error, but in unrighteousness. Why does a man not believe in God? Because, to believe in God means that he has to adjust his lifestyle. His lifestyle is his unrighteousness…let’s picture it on his left. Creation and Conscience…here on his right…tell him there’s a God. His lifestyle says, “If I admit that, I’m going to have to change this.” So, he’s in a quandary between the two. If he turns this way, he turns from that; but if he turns this way, he turns from that. So, when he says, “I will resist the truth in unrighteousness,” then, when he turns this way, he gets further from that. And, he goes away into the darkness, and his foolish heart is darkened.

The unbelief is the baggage that comes with his sin. Now, I don’t think it’s more graphically illustrated than in the book of 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12.

        I want you to listen to it. I think it is some of the most terrifying Scripture in all of the Bible. It speaks of the Antichrist who’s coming, and it says: “Even him whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved”—now, listen to verses 11 and 12—“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion” (2 Thessalonians 2:9–11). “Hold it, Pastor, hold it! God doesn’t send anybody delusion.” Well, you’d better go back and read it.  It says that God will send them strong delusion. Well, why on Earth would God send them strong delusion? Well, just continue to read: “That they should believe the lie” (2 Thessalonians 2:11). It gets worse, doesn’t it? God sends delusion. And, why does God send delusion? “That they should believe the lie” (2 Thessalonians 2:11). Well, why would God send a lie? Well, let’s continue to read: “God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all might be damned” (2 Thessalonians 2:11–12). Seems to get worse, doesn’t it? God sends delusion; they believe a lie, that they all might be damned. Why? Why would God do that? Well, continue to read: “That they all might be damned who believed not the truth”—they had the truth, they believed not the truth—“but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2:12). They heard the truth; they knew the truth; they turned from the truth; and they had pleasure in their filthy, dirty, rotten sin! And, God says, “All right, that’s what you want. You want your sin, and with that sin, the baggage is delusion, a lie, and damnation.” You understand it?

Maybe I can illustrate it this way: Here’s a man who comes to Grace on Easter, and we’re taking a love offering for Jesus. He goes away and he says, “Ha! Those Baptists! All they ever talk about is money.” And, he goes away all steamed, hot under the collar. “It’s the last time I’m ever going to go down to that church. All they ever talk about is money, money, money.” That’s a lie. We talk about Jesus here, and we talk about giving to Jesus, and we’re glad to do it. But, you see, this man’s problem is not the truth. He doesn’t stop to ask, “Are we preaching the truth?” That’s not his problem at all. He knows, if he’ll open the Bible and listen to the Spirit of God, that the truth is there. But, the problem is his rotten greed—his greed! That’s why he got so upset to begin with. So, he leaves, and he says, “I am never going back to that church again.” Now, his problem, there, is not between truth and error, but between truth and greed. And so, he chooses his greed. Now, what happens? He’s home on a Sunday morning, several months from now. Somebody knocks at the door. He’s sitting there watching television, reading the sports page, got a six-pack of embalming fluid there, by his side, and he’s unshaven—just sitting there, on Sunday morning—wife and kids are off at church. He’s by himself. There’s a knock at the door. He opens the door and it’s two of Jehovah’s False Witnesses. And, he says, “What do you want?” And, to cut to the chase, “we’re here to tell you there is no Hell.” He says, “Come in, come in.” And, he listens to them. They tell him a lie. He believes a lie. He’s damned, and lost, and on the road to the very Hell he says he doesn’t believe in. Why? “[He] received not the love of the truth” (2 Thessalonians 2:10). “[He] had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2:12). “For this cause God shall send [him] strong delusion, that [he] should believe the lie, that [he] might be damned” (2 Thessalonians 2:11–12).

Now, folks, you listen to me. All people have some light. That’s the revelation factor. The refusal factor is: Light refused increases darkness.

By the way, these people who are in darkness, really think that they are in the light—if you would look in verse 22: “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22). They’re the ones who think we’re the fools. Now, they may have a PhD, but in spiritual things it stands for phenomenal dud. They worship science as a god, rather than worshipping the God of science. They never asked, “How did all of this get here?”  Or they worship themselves, because they don’t want to humble themselves and worship God.

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pt. 2

III. The Reception Factor

All men have some light. That’s the revelation factor. The refusal factor is: light refused increases darkness, “their foolish heart was darkened” (Romans 1:21).

The reception factor is this: Light obeyed increases light. But some may say, “Now Pastor, there’s a flaw in what you’ve been saying thus far. You’ve been saying that no man can go to Heaven apart from Jesus, and neither creation nor conscience tells you about Jesus. And so, when you say that all men have some light, that’s still not enough to save them, according to what you’ve said.” And, you’re absolutely right. Creation and conscience only bring us to the fact of God. But, if a man is not interested in the fact of God, he’s certainly not going to be interested in the way to God. And, God is under no obligation to show any man the way to God who’s not even interested in the fact of God.

So, what is the reception factor? The reception factor is that light obeyed increases light. Light refused increases darkness. Light obeyed increases light.

vv. 16-17

How is the righteousness of God revealed? “From faith to faith”. That’s the revelation factor. God gives you truth. You believe that truth, and God gives you more truth. You see, “unto every one who hath shall be given” (Matthew 25:29). The more you obey the light, the more light you get.

Here’s a man—God speaks to him, thru the witnesses of Creation and Conscience. He says, “God, I want to know You, I need to know You, I believe that You exist.” That’s faith, and he goes from faith to faith. God gives him more light. He says, “I believe that,” and he goes from faith to faith, and he goes stepping in the light until he comes to the Lord Jesus Christ. When a man is ready to receive the gospel, God will get the gospel to that man if he has to wreck an airplane and parachute a missionary in. I believe with all of my heart there’s never been a man who ever lived on the face of this Earth, or a woman who died, without some opportunity to have received Christ, had they lived up to the light that God gave them. While all men don’t have enough light to save them, all men have enough light to damn them. Had they lived up to the light that they had, they would’ve received more light.

You can find illustrations of this in the Bible. What about that Ethiopian eunuch in Acts chapter 8? He’d been to Jerusalem, the most religious city on the face of the Earth. Why had he gone there? He had gone there to worship. He had come all the way from northern Africa, from Ethiopia, in that day when there were no airplanes. He’s traveling now by chariot—can you imagine that—all the way to Jerusalem. And, why had he gone? It was the most religious city on the face of the Earth. He was seeking for God. But, the wells of religion were dry. He’s coming back. He’s reading the prophet Isaiah. He’s trying to understand. Do you know what God does for this man who’s living up to the light that he has? God goes down to Samaria. He gets a preacher named Philip who’s in the middle of a big revival campaign. He says, “Son, leave that revival campaign. I want you to go out in the desert. I’ve got one man out there, and I want you to tell him how to be saved.” You remember that story in Acts chapter 8? That Ethiopian eunuch, that “opportunity on wheels,” got saved, and God brought a missionary to that man to tell him how to be saved (Acts 8). And very cool, when done, God whisked him away…he vanished!

There was another man in Acts chapter 10; his name was Cornelius. The Bible says he was a Gentile, he was not of the household of Israel. But, Cornelius, an army officer, had a hunger to know God. He looked up in the starry heavens, one night, perhaps, as a private on sentry duty, and he said, “Oh, that didn’t just happen. O God, whoever You are, wherever You are, whatever You are, I want to know You.” And, God gave Cornelius a vision. And then, God got Simon Peter over here in the house of Simon the tanner, and said, “Simon Peter, I want you to go over there. There’s a man named Cornelius. I have spoken to him in a vision. You go tell him and his house how to be saved.” And God got the two together (Acts 10).

When you obey the light that you have, God will give you more light. Now, I want to say this to all of those of you who are saved: The reason that some of us don’t understand the Bible any more than we do is that we have not been living up to the light that God is already giving us. Why should God show you morein the Word of God until you obey what you already know? Isn’t that a good question? Some have never submitted to believer’s baptism. They know what the Bible teaches. But they say, “Well, I’ve got a forty dollar hairdo I don’t want to mess up.” And then later, they’re reading a passage of Scripture, and they’re saying, “I wonder why I don’t understand this. God show me what this means.” God says, “Why should I show you what that means? You haven’t obeyed what I’ve already showed you?” “Unto every one who hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away from him” (Matthew 25:29). What I’m trying to say is: Light obeyed increases light. And, if you want to understand the part of the Bible you don’t understand, begin to obey the part you do understand, and you’ll understand what you didn’t understand.

Again, the problem is not in the head; the problem is in the heart. One of the greatest promises in all of the Bible is in John chapter 7, verse 17. They were wondering about Jesus Christ: “Who is Jesus Christ?” The Pharisees were testing Him, taunting Him, picking at Him, and Jesus, said: “My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me”—and then, Jesus gave this challenge. He said—“If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself” (John 7:16–17). Do you will to do the will of God? Then, you’ll know.

Listen to this story I heard Dr. Adrian Rogers share:

“When I was in the Space Center, down at Merritt Island, I was in my office, one day, and a man came up in a big Cadillac, parked his car, came in, and said, “Mr. Rogers, I need to talk with you.” He was one of the big shots out at the Space Center, helping to put a man on the moon. I said to him, “Well, what do you want to talk about?” He said, “I want to talk about my wife. She wants to commit suicide, and I don’t want her to.” Well, I thought that was nice—he didn’t want her to commit suicide. So, he said, “Would you talk with my wife?” I said, “Well, I will if you’ll come with her.” So, the two of them came and sat down, and I said, “Tell me, lady, what your problems are.” And, her problems were this man! This man was a liar. He was a drunkard. He was an adulterer. He was a gambler. He was a blasphemer. A wife abuser. I mean, he was rotten. And, that’s mildly put. And so, I just stopped talking to her, and I started talking to him. I said, “Sir, I want to ask you a question. Are you a Christian?” He laughed a scornful laugh, and said, “No! I’m not a Christian; I’m an atheist.” I said, “Oh, an atheist.” I said, “An atheist is a man who says there’s no God and he knows there’s no God. Do you know there’s no God?” And, he said, “Yes.” I said, “Well, that’s interesting.” I said, “Of all there is to know, how much do you know? Do you know half of everything there is to know?” He said, “Of course not.” “But, you said you know there’s no God. Wouldn’t you have to admit the possibility that God might exist in that half of the knowledge you don’t have?” “Well,” he said, “okay, you got me. I’m not an atheist, I’m an agnostic.” I didn’t tell him the Latin equivalent of agnostic is ignoramus. It’s the same word in Latin or Greek: agnostic in Greek, Latin ignoramus. It means just, “I don’t know, I’m ignorant.” I said, “That’s just a fancy word for a doubter. Are you a doubter?” He said, “Yes, and a big one.” I said, “I don’t care what size; I want to know what kind.” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, there are two kinds of doubters: There are honest doubters and dishonest doubters. Which kind are you?” He said, “Well, what’s the difference?” I said, “An honest doubter doesn’t know, but he wants to know, and therefore he investigates. A dishonest doubter doesn’t know because he doesn’t want to know. And, he can’t find God for the same reason a thief can’t find a policeman. Jesus said, ‘They hate the light, and they will not come to the light, because their deeds are evil’” (John 3:20). He said, “Well…” I said, “Sir, would you like to find out whether you’re an honest doubter or a dishonest doubter?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Would you sign this statement: ‘God, I don’t know whether You exist or not. I don’t know whether the Bible is Your Word or not. I don’t know whether Jesus Christ is Your Son or not. I don’t know, but I want to know. And, because I want to know, I will make an honest investigation. And, because it is an honest investigation, I will follow the results of that investigation wherever they lead me, regardless of the cost?’” I said, “Would you sign that statement?” He said, “I’d like to be honest.” I said, “Wonderful!” I gave him an assignment. I said, “I want you to begin to read the gospel of John. He said, “But, I don’t believe.” I said, “That’s all right. You just make an honest investigation. You say to God, ‘God, I don’t know whether this is Your Word or not. If this is Your Word, show me, and I’ll make up my mind before the fact that I will obey You, only if you show me this is Your Word and speak to my heart.’” He said, “That’s fair enough.” What happened? In a few weeks, he came back, said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God,” got on his knees like a little child and wept his way to the arms of Jesus. That was many, many years ago. I got a letter from him a while back. He’s up in Bangor, Maine now. He has a tape ministry and is teaching the Bible. And, this is what he said to me: He said, “Mr. Rogers, I want to thank you for spending time with this general in the devil’s army.”

Where was that man’s problem? He thought his problem was intellectual. His problem was his will. When a man surrenders his will, God will speak to him. Light obeyed increases light. Live up to the light that you have and God will give you more light.

IV. The Reckoning Factor

When God comes to judge us, what is God going to judge us by? Do you think that God is going to judge us by the sin that we’ve committed? No! God is going to judge us by the light that we’ve rejected.

2:5, 11

He’s just simply saying that God knows how much light you have. Many of us have far more light than other people. Not because you necessarily sought it; you just happen to live in America where there’s a church on every street corner. There are Bibles everywhere. And, it’s not so much because you sought it; it’s just simply by the providence of God that you have more light than others. Now, what is God going to do? God is going to hold you accountable more so than the person who’s never heard.

Luke 12:48 
But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.

It would be bad enough for the pagan in darkest Africa to die and go to Hell, who never heard the name of Jesus, who refused to live up to the light that even he did have. But, how much more for a person who would sit in an auditorium like this, air-conditioned, with a Bible in their hand, hear a preacher tear his heart out and beg people to be saved, and say “no.” If I had to go to Hell, I’d much rather go to Hell as a pagan never having heard the name of Jesus than to go to Hell from GBC, from a service like this.

Listen to me: The burning question is not, “What is God going to do with the heathen who never heard?” The burning question is, “What is God going to do with you who heard the gospel of Jesus?” You’ve heard the message that Jesus died in agony and blood upon the cross, and you said “no” to the Lord Jesus. Do you know what our Lord said? Our Lord said to a soul winner, “When you go out soul winning, you knock on a door and the people won’t hear you”—He said—“shake the dust off your shoes. Shake the dust off your shoes” (Matthew 10:14). Well, why would He do that? God says, “Because, there’s coming a judgment, and in that day, in that judgment, you may stand before God and say, ‘O God, O God, have mercy. I didn’t have a chance.’” And God can say, “Officer, would you bring the evidence into the court?” “What is that evidence?” “Would you look at that, sir?” “What is that?” “That’s the dust off Jerry’s shoes. Those are the shoes he was wearing when he preached the gospel to you.”

        And, Jesus said to Capernaum, His headquarter city, It would be better for Sodom and Gomorrah in the judgment than for that city where He preached and taught, and yet, they turned their back on Him and never received Him. All men have some light. Light refused increases darkness. Light obeyed increases light. And, men are judged according to the light that they have.

Related posts:

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Has the Multiverse Replaced God?

William Lane Craig

Several years ago I spoke with Robin Collins, a Christian philosopher who specializes in cosmology, just after his return from a conference on science and theology sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation. “Bill,” he said to me, “When these scientists talk about the multiverse, that’s actually their way of talking about theology! It’s their way of doing metaphysics without using the G– word!”

Indeed, I suspect for many in our contemporary culture the multiverse serves as a sort of God surrogate. The multiverse serves the role of a creator and designer of the universe. It explains why the universe came into being and why the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent, interactive life. It is thus a sort of substitute deity…….

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Has the Multiverse Replaced God?

William Lane Craig

Several years ago I spoke with Robin Collins, a Christian philosopher who specializes in cosmology, just after his return from a conference on science and theology sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation. “Bill,” he said to me, “When these scientists talk about the multiverse, that’s actually their way of talking about theology! It’s their way of doing metaphysics without using the G– word!”

Indeed, I suspect for many in our contemporary culture the multiverse serves as a sort of God surrogate. The multiverse serves the role of a creator and designer of the universe. It explains why the universe came into being and why the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent, interactive life. It is thus a sort of substitute deity……..

In 1994…Arvind Borde and Alexander Vilenkin showed that any spacetime eternally inflating toward the future cannot be “geodesically complete” in the past, that is to say, there must have existed at some point in the indefinite past an initial singularity. Hence, the multiverse scenario cannot be past eternal. They write,

In response, Linde concurred with the conclusion of Borde and Vilenkin: there must have been a Big Bang singularity at some point in the past. [12]

……Roger Penrose calculates that the odds of our universe’s low entropy condition obtaining by chance alone are on the order of 1:10^10(123), an inconceivable number. [25] The probability that our solar system should suddenly form by the random collision of particles is 1:10¹⁰⁽⁶⁰⁾. (Penrose calls it “utter chicken feed” by comparison.)

Conclusion

In conclusion the multiverse hypothesis does nothing to eliminate the need for a creator and designer of the universe. Whether or not a multiverse exists, one needs a transcendent, personal creator and designer of the cosmos.

• [11]A. Borde and A. Vilenkin, “Eternal Inflation and the Initial Singularity,” Physical Review Letters 72 (1994): 3305, 3307.
• [12]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. Linde has since tried to suggest a way to escape the conclusion of a beginning (“Inflation and String Cosmology,” arXiv:hep-th/0503195v1 (24 Mar 2005), p. 13. But he does not succeed in extending past spacetime paths to infinity, which is a necessary condition of the universe’s having no beginning.
• [15]Audrey Mithani and Alexander Vilenkin, “Did the universe have a beginning?” ArXiv 1204.4658v1 [hep-th] 20 April 2012. Cf. his statement “There are no models at this time that provide a satisfactory model for a universe without a beginning” (A. Vilenkin, “Did the Universe Have a Beginning?” lecture at Cambridge University, 2012). Specifically, Vilenkin closed the door on three models attempting to avert the implication of his theorem: eternal inflation, a cyclic universe, and an “emergent” universe which exists for eternity as a static seed before expanding.
• [16]Lisa Grossman, “Why physicists can’t avoid a creation event,” New Scientist 11 January 2012.
• [22]See Leonard Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design (New York: Little, Brown, & Co., 2006). Susskind apparently believes that the discovery of the cosmic landscape undercuts the argument for design, when in fact precisely the opposite is true. Susskind doesn’t seem to appreciate that the 10⁵⁰⁰ worlds in the cosmic landscape are not real but merely possible universes consistent with M-Theory. To find purchase for the anthropic principle mentioned by Hawking as the third alternative, one needs a plurality of real universes, which string theory alone does not provide.
• [25]Roger Penrose, The Road to Reality (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), pp. 762-5. Penrose concludes that anthropic explanations are so “impotent” that it is actually “misconceived” to appeal to them to explain the special features of the universe

Several years ago I spoke with Robin Collins, a Christian philosopher who specializes in cosmology, just after his return from a conference on science and theology sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation. “Bill,” he said to me, “When these scientists talk about the multiverse, that’s actually their way of talking about theology! It’s their way of doing metaphysics without using the G– word!”

Indeed, I suspect for many in our contemporary culture the multiverse serves as a sort of God surrogate. The multiverse serves the role of a creator and designer of the universe. It explains why the universe came into being and why the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent, interactive life. It is thus a sort of substitute deity.

What is the multiverse? The term comes from inflationary cosmology, which is often employed to defend the view that our universe is but one domain (or “pocket universe”) within a vastly larger universe, or multiverse. In an attempt to explain the astonishing large-scale smoothness of the universe, certain theorists proposed that a split second after the Big Bang singularity, the universe underwent a phase of super-rapid, or inflationary, expansion which served to push the inhomogeneities out beyond our event horizon. According to inflationary theory, our universe exists in a true vacuum state with an energy density that is nearly zero. But some theorists hypothesize that it is just a bubble of true vacuum in a wider false vacuum state with a very high energy density. If we hypothesize that the conditions determining the energy density and evolution of the false vacuum state were just right, then the false vacuum will expand so rapidly that, as it decays into bubbles of true vacuum, the “bubble universes” formed in this sea of false vacuum, though themselves expanding at enormous rates, will not be able to keep up with the expansion of the false vacuum and so will find themselves increasingly separated with time (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Bubbles of true vacuum in a sea of false vacuum. As the inflating false vacuum decays, bubbles of true vacuum form in the false vacuum, each constituting an expanding universe. Though rapidly expanding, the bubbles will not coalesce because the false vacuum continues to expand at an even more rapid rate.

Moreover, each bubble is subdivided into domains bounded by event horizons, each domain constituting an observable universe. Observers internal to such a universe will observe it to be open and infinite, even though externally the bubble universe is finite and geometrically closed. The wider, encompassing false vacuum filled with these bubbles is referred to as the multiverse. Despite the fact that the multiverse is itself finite and geometrically closed, the false vacuum will, according to the theory, go on expanding forever. New bubbles of true vacuum will continue to form in the space between the bubble universes and become themselves isolated worlds. Our expanding universe is but one of an indefinite number of mini-universes conceived within the womb of the greater Mother Universe.

Now, of course, the existence of a multiverse is not inconsistent with theism. God could have created a multiverse if he wanted to. Indeed, I think we’ll see that the best hope of those who want to believe in the multiverse is theism. The best bet for thinking that a multiverse exists is if God exists.

But does belief in a multiverse render God unnecessary? Now in one sense the answer is obviously not. A multiverse does not provide a foundation for objective moral values or love you or save you from sin. But the claim is that the multiverse renders God unnecessary with respect to the creation and design of the universe. So the multiverse is significant as a defeater for cosmological and teleological arguments for God’s existence. The question is whether the natural theologian can make a case for God as the creator and designer of the universe in the face of the multiverse hypothesis.

Cosmological Argument

Let’s talk first about arguments for God as the creator of the universe. One version of the cosmological argument attempts to prove that God brought the universe into being at some time in the finite past. The kalam cosmological argument originated in the attempts of Christian thinkers to rebut Aristotle’s doctrine of the eternity of the universe and was developed by medieval Islamic theologians into an argument for the existence of God. [1] Let’s look at the formulation of this argument by al-Gha-zalı- (1058-1111). He reasons, “Every being which begins has a cause for its beginning; now the world is a being which begins; therefore, it possesses a cause for its beginning.” [2]

We can summarize Ghazali’s reasoning in three simple steps:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

2. The universe began to exist.

3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

During the middle ages, before the birth of modern science, people had no scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe. Ghazali presented ingenious philosophical arguments for why the past had to be finite. During the 20^th century with Albert Einstein’s discovery of the general theory of relativity and its application to cosmology dramatic empirical evidence surfaced for the beginning of the universe.

The empirical evidence for the beginning of the universe comes from what is undoubtedly one of the most exciting and rapidly developing fields of science today: astronomy and astrophysics. Prior to the 1920s, scientists had always assumed that the universe was stationary and eternal. Tremors of the impending earthquake that would topple this traditional cosmology were first felt in 1917, when Albert Einstein made a cosmological application of his newly discovered gravitational theory, the General Theory of Relativity. To his chagrin, Einstein found that the General theory would not permit an eternal, static model of the universe unless he fudged the equations in order to offset the gravitational effect of matter. As a result, Einstein’s universe was balanced on a razor’s edge, and the least perturbation—even the transport of matter from one part of the universe to another—would cause the universe either to implode or to expand. By taking this feature of Einstein’s model seriously, the Russian mathematician Alexander Friedman and the Belgian astronomer Georges Lemaître were able to formulate independently in the 1920s solutions to his equations which predicted an expanding universe.

The monumental significance of the Friedman-Lemaître model lay in its historization of the universe. As one commentator has remarked, up to this time the idea of the expansion of the universe “was absolutely beyond comprehension. Throughout all of human history the universe was regarded as fixed and immutable and the idea that it might actually be changing was inconceivable.” [3] But if the Friedman-Lemaître model were correct, the universe could no longer be adequately treated as a static entity existing, in effect, timelessly. Rather the universe has a history, and time will not be matter of indifference for our investigation of the cosmos.

In 1929 the American astronomer Edwin Hubble showed that the light from distant galaxies is systematically shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. This red-shift was taken to be a Doppler effect indicating that the light sources were receding in the line of sight. Incredibly, what Hubble had discovered was the expansion of the universe predicted by Friedman and Lemaître on the basis of Einstein’s General theory. It was a veritable turning point in the history of science. John Wheeler exclaims, “Of all the great predictions that science has ever made over the centuries, was there ever one greater than this, to predict, and predict correctly, and predict against all expectation a phenomenon so fantastic as the expansion of the universe?”  [4]

According to the Friedman-Lemaître model, as time proceeds, the distances separating the galaxies become greater. It’s important to appreciate that the model does not describe the expansion of the material content of the universe into a pre-existing, empty space, but rather the expansion of space itself. The galaxies are conceived to be at rest with respect to space but to recede progressively from one another as space itself expands or stretches, just as buttons glued to the surface of a balloon will recede from one another as the balloon inflates. As the universe expands, it becomes less and less dense. This has the astonishing implication that as one reverses the expansion and extrapolates back in time, the universe becomes progressively denser until one arrives at a state of infinite density at some point in the finite past. This state represents a singularity at which space-time curvature, along with temperature, pressure, and density, becomes infinite. It therefore constitutes an edge or boundary to space-time itself. P. C. W. Davies comments,

If we extrapolate this prediction to its extreme, we reach a point when all distances in the universe have shrunk to zero. An initial cosmological singularity therefore forms a past temporal extremity to the universe. We cannot continue physical reasoning, or even the concept of spacetime, through such an extremity. For this reason most cosmologists think of the initial singularity as the beginning of the universe. On this view the big bang represents the creation event; the creation not only of all the matter and energy in the universe, but also of spacetime itself.  [5]

The term “Big Bang,” originally a derisive expression coined by Fred Hoyle to characterize the beginning of the universe predicted by the Friedman-Lemaître model, is thus potentially misleading, since the expansion cannot be visualized from the outside (there being no “outside,” just as there is no “before” with respect to the Big Bang).

The standard Big Bang model, as the Friedman-Lemaître model came to be called, thus describes a universe which is not eternal in the past, but which came into being a finite time ago. Moreover, —and this deserves underscoring—the origin it posits is an absolute origin out of nothing. For not only all matter and energy, but space and time themselves come into being at the initial cosmological singularity. As physicists John Barrow and Frank Tipler emphasize, “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.” [6] Thus, we may graphically represent space-time as a cone (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2: Conical Representation of Standard Model Space-Time. Space and time begin at the initial cosmological singularity, before which literally nothing exists.

On such a model the universe originates ex nihilo in the sense that at the initial singularity it is true that There is no earlier space-time point or it is false that Something existed prior to the singularity.

Now such a conclusion is profoundly disturbing for anyone who ponders it. For the question cannot be suppressed: Why did the universe come into being? Sir Arthur Eddington, contemplating the beginning of the universe, opined that the expansion of the universe was so preposterous and incredible that “I feel almost an indignation that anyone should believe in it —except myself.” [7] He finally felt forced to conclude, “The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural.” [8] The problem of the origin of the universe, in the words of one astrophysical team, thus “involves a certain metaphysical aspect which may be either appealing or revolting.” [9]

Revolted by the metaphysical implications of the standard model, some theorists have sought to formulate nonstandard models to avoid the beginning of the universe. The postulation of a multiverse is one of the most celebrated. The Russian cosmologist Andrei Linde has championed the idea that inflation is future eternal. That is to say, in Linde’s model inflation never ends: each inflating bubble of the universe when it reaches a certain volume gives rise via inflation to another domain, and so on, ad infinitum. Linde’s model thus has an infinite future.

But Linde is troubled at the prospect of an absolute beginning. He writes, “The most difficult aspect of this problem is not the existence of the singularity itself, but the question of what was before the singularity . . . This problem lies somewhere at the boundary between physics and metaphysics.” [10] Linde therefore proposed that inflation is not only endless, but beginningless. Every domain in the universe is the product of inflation in another domain, so that the singularity is averted and with it as well the question of what came before (or, more accurately, what caused it). Our observable universe turns out to be but one bubble in a wider, eternal multiverse of worlds. Thus, the eternal, uncaused multiverse is the creator of our universe.

In 1994, however, Arvind Borde and Alexander Vilenkin showed that any spacetime eternally inflating toward the future cannot be “geodesically complete” in the past, that is to say, there must have existed at some point in the indefinite past an initial singularity. Hence, the multiverse scenario cannot be past eternal. They write,

A model in which the inflationary phase has no end . . . naturally leads to this question: Can this model also be extended to the infinite past, avoiding in this way the problem of the initial singularity?

. . . this is in fact not possible in future-eternal inflationary spacetimes as long as they obey some reasonable physical conditions: such models must necessarily possess initial singularities.

. . . the fact that inflationary spacetimes are past incomplete forces one to address the question of what, if anything, came before. [11]

In response, Linde concurred with the conclusion of Borde and Vilenkin: there must have been a Big Bang singularity at some point in the past. [12]

In 2003 Borde and Vilenkin in co-operation with Alan Guth, the father of inflationary cosmology, were able to strengthen their conclusion by crafting a new theorem independent of the assumption of the so-called “weak energy condition,” which partisans of past-eternal inflation might have denied in an effort to save their theory. [13] The new theorem, in Vilenkin’s words, “appears to close that door completely.” [14] The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem proves that classical space-time, under a single, very general condition, cannot be extended to past infinity but must reach a boundary at some time in the finite past. Now either there was something on the other side of that boundary or not. If not, then that boundary just is the beginning of the universe. If there was something on the other side, then it will be a region described by the yet to be discovered theory of quantum gravity. In that case, Vilenkin says, it will be the beginning of the universe. Either way, the universe began to exist.

In 2012 in Cambridge at a conference celebrating the 70^th birthday of Stephen Hawking, Vilenkin delivered a paper which surveys current cosmology with respect to the question, “Did the Universe Have a Beginning?” He argued that “none of these scenarios can actually be past-eternal.” [15] He concluded, “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.” [16]  Now that’s a remarkable statement. Vilenkin does not say merely that the evidence for a beginning outweighs the evidence against a beginning. Rather he says that all the evidence we have says that the universe has a beginning. Vilenkin pulls no punches:

It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning. [17]

Thus multiverse models, like their predecessors, fail to avert the beginning predicted by the Standard Model. Far from eliminating the need for a creator, the multiverse itself requires a creator to bring it into being.

Teleological Argument

But what about the need for the designer of the universe? Perhaps the oldest and most popular of all the arguments for the existence of God is the teleological argument. The ancient Greek philosophers were impressed with the order that pervades the cosmos, and many of them ascribed that order to the work of an intelligent mind who fashioned the universe. The heavens in constant revolution across the sky were especially awesome to the ancients. Plato’s Academy lavished extensive time and thought on the study of astronomy because, Plato believed, it was the science that would awaken man to his divine destiny. According to Plato, there are two things that “lead men to believe in the gods”: the argument based on the soul, and the argument “from the order of the motion of the stars, and of all things under the dominion of the mind which ordered the universe.” [18] Plato employed both of these arguments to refute atheism and concluded that there must be a “best soul” who is the “maker and father of all,” the “King,” who ordered the primordial chaos into the rational cosmos we observe today. [19]

Thought to have been demolished by the critiques of Hume and Kant, the teleological argument for God’s existence has come roaring back into prominence in recent years. The scientific community has been stunned by its discovery of how complex and sensitive a nexus of initial conditions must be given in order for the universe even to permit the origin and evolution of intelligent life. Undoubtedly, it is this discovery which has most served to re-open the books on the teleological argument. The discovery of the cosmic fine-tuning for intelligent life has led many scientists to conclude that such a delicate balance of physical constants and quantities as is requisite for life cannot be dismissed as mere coincidence but cries out for some sort of explanation.

What is meant by “fine-tuning”? The physical laws of nature, when given mathematical expression, contain various constants (such as the gravitational constant) whose values are not determined by the laws themselves; a universe governed by such laws might be characterized by any of a wide range of values for these constants. In addition to these constants, moreover, there are certain arbitrary physical quantities, such as the entropy level, which are simply put into the universe as boundary conditions on which the laws of nature operate. They are therefore also independent of the laws. By “fine-tuning” one means that small deviations from the actual values of the constants and quantities in question would render the universe life-prohibiting or, alternatively, that the range of life-permitting values is exquisitely narrow in comparison with the range of assumable values.

In a sense more easy to discern than to articulate this fine-tuning of the universe seems to manifest the presence of a designing intelligence. The inference to design is best thought of, not as an instance of reasoning by analogy (as it is often portrayed), but as a case of inference to the best explanation. [20] The key to detecting design is to eliminate the competing explanations of physical necessity and chance. Accordingly, a teleological argument appealing to cosmic fine-tuning might be formulated as follows:

1. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.

2. It is not due to physical necessity or chance.

3. Therefore, it is due to design.

Consider first the hypothesis of physical necessity. A few years ago Stephen Hawking addressed this question at a cosmology conference at the University of California, Davis. Notice the alternative answers which he identifies to the question he poses:

Does string theory, or M theory, predict the distinctive features of our universe, like a spatially flat four dimensional expanding universe with small fluctuations, and the standard model of particle physics? Most physicists would rather believe string theory uniquely predicts the universe, than the alternatives. These are that the initial state of the universe, is prescribed by an outside agency, code named God. Or that there are many universes, and our universe is picked out by the anthropic principle. [21]

These represent precisely the three alternatives laid out in premiss (1). Hawking argues that the first alternative, physical necessity, is a vain hope: “M theory cannot predict the parameters of the standard model. Obviously, the values of the parameters we measure must be compatible with the development of life. . . . But within the anthropically allowed range, the parameters can have any values. So much for string theory predicting the fine structure constant.” He wrapped up by saying,

even when we understand the ultimate theory, it won’t tell us much about how the universe began. It cannot predict the dimensions of spacetime, the gauge group, or other parameters of the low energy effective theory. . . . It won’t determine how this energy is divided between conventional matter, and a cosmological constant, or quintessence. . . . So to come back to the question. . . Does string theory predict the state of the universe? The answer is that it does not. It allows a vast landscape of possible universes, in which we occupy an anthropically permitted location.

In fact, this idea of a “cosmic landscape” predicted by string theory has become something of a phenom in its own right. [22] It turns out that string theory allows around 10⁵⁰⁰ different universes governed by the present laws of nature, so that the theory does not at all render the observed values of the constants and quantities physically necessary. Moreover, even though there may be a huge number of possible universes lying within the life-permitting region of the cosmic landscape, nevertheless that life-permitting region will be unfathomably tiny compared to the entire landscape, so that a randomly thrown dart would have no meaningful chance of striking a life-permitting universe.

What, then, of the alternative of chance? Some theorists have tried to support the chance hypothesis by appeal to the so-called Anthropic Principle. As formulated by Barrow and Tipler, the Anthropic Principle states that any observed properties of the universe which may at first appear astonishingly improbable can only be seen in their true perspective after we have accounted for the fact that certain properties could never be observed by us, since we can only observe properties which are compatible with our own existence. The Anthropic Principle can only legitimately be employed, however, in conjunction with a Many Worlds Hypothesis, according to which a World Ensemble of concrete universes exists, actualizing a wide range of possibilities. The Many Worlds Hypothesis is essentially an effort on the part of partisans of the chance hypothesis to multiply their probabilistic resources in order to reduce the improbability of the occurrence of fine-tuning.

Now if the Many Worlds Hypothesis is to commend itself as a plausible hypothesis, then some plausible mechanism for generating the many worlds needs to be identified. This is where the multiverse enters the picture. Inflation will generate the many worlds which are necessary for the self-selection effect of the anthropic principle to come into play.

Now one problem for the multiverse explanation is that, as we have seen, the BGV theorem requires that the multiverse be finite in the past and have a beginning. Since the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem requires that the multiverse itself cannot be extended into the infinite past, there can be only as many bubble universes now in existence as have formed in the false vacuum since the multiverse’s inception at its boundary in the finite past. Given the incomprehensible improbability of the constants’ and quantities’ all falling randomly into the life-permitting range, it may well be highly improbable that a life-permitting universe should have decayed this soon out of the false vacuum. In that case the sting of fine-tuning has not been removed.

Moreover the multiverse had better not require fine-tuning itself in order to generate the many worlds, otherwise the fine-tuning problem has not been eliminated but just kicked upstairs. The whole multiverse scenario depends on the hypothesis of future-eternal inflation, which in turn is based upon the existence of certain primordial scalar fields which govern inflation. Although Vilenkin observes that “Inflation is eternal in practically all models suggested so far,” [23] he also admits, “Another important question is whether or not such scalar fields really exist in nature. Unfortunately, we don’t know. There is no direct evidence for their existence.” [24] This lack of evidence ought to temper the confidence with which the Many Worlds Hypothesis is put forward.

Wholly apart from its speculative nature, however, the Many Worlds Hypothesis faces a potentially lethal problem. Simply stated, if our universe is but one member of an infinite World Ensemble of randomly varying universes, then it is overwhelmingly more probable that we should be observing a much different universe than that which we in fact observe. Roger Penrose calculates that the odds of our universe’s low entropy condition obtaining by chance alone are on the order of 1:10^10(123), an inconceivable number. [25] The probability that our solar system should suddenly form by the random collision of particles is 1:10¹⁰⁽⁶⁰⁾. (Penrose calls it “utter chicken feed” by comparison.) Thus, it is inconceivably more probable that our solar system should suddenly form by the random collision of particles than that a finely-tuned universe should exist. So if our universe were just a random member of a World Ensemble, it is inconceivably more probable that we should be observing an island of order no larger than our solar system. For there are far more observable universes in the World Ensemble in which our solar system comes to be instantaneously through the accidental collision of particles than universes which are finely-tuned for intelligent life. Indeed, the most probable observable universe is one in which a single brain fluctuates into existence out of the quantum vacuum and observes its otherwise empty world. Observable universes like those are just much more plenteous in the World Ensemble than worlds like ours and, therefore, ought to be observed by us. Since we do not have such observations, that fact strongly disconfirms the multiverse hypothesis. On atheism, at least, it is therefore highly probable that there is no World Ensemble. Since the alternative of chance stands or falls with the Many Worlds Hypothesis, that explanation is seen to be very implausible.

It therefore seems that the fine-tuning of the universe is plausibly due neither to physical necessity nor to chance. It follows that the fine-tuning is therefore due to design. For that reason, as I said earlier, the best hope for the multiverse hypothesis is theism: God could have created a World Ensemble brimming with deliberately finely tuned worlds.

Conclusion

In conclusion the multiverse hypothesis does nothing to eliminate the need for a creator and designer of the universe. Whether or not a multiverse exists, one needs a transcendent, personal creator and designer of the cosmos.

• [1]“Kala-m” is the Arabic word for speech and came to denote a statement of theological doctrine and ultimately the whole movement of medieval Islamic theology.
• [2]Al-Gha-zalı-, Kitab al-Iqtisad fi’l-I’tiqad, cited in S. de Beaurecueil, “Gazzali et S. Thomas d’Aquin: Essai sur la preuve de l’existence de Dieu proposée dans l’Iqtisad et sa comparaison avec les ‘voies’ Thomiste,” Bulletin de l’Institut Francais d’Archaeologie Orientale 46 (1947): 203.
• [3]Gregory L. Naber, Spacetime and Singularities: an Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 126-27.
• [4]John A. Wheeler, “Beyond the Hole,” in Some Strangeness in the Proportion, ed. Harry Woolf (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1980), p. 354.
• [5]P. C. W. Davies, “Spacetime Singularities in Cosmology,” in The Study of Time III, ed. J. T. Fraser (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1978), pp. 78-9.
• [6]John Barrow and Frank Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 442.
• [7]Arthur Eddington, The Expanding Universe (New York: Macmillan, 1933), p. 124.
• [8]Ibid., p. 178.
• [9]Hubert Reeves, Jean Audouze, William A. Fowler, and David N. Schramm, “On the Origin of Light Elements,” Astrophysical Journal 179 (1973): 912.
• [10]Linde, “Inflationary Universe,” p. 976.
• [11]A. Borde and A. Vilenkin, “Eternal Inflation and the Initial Singularity,” Physical Review Letters 72 (1994): 3305, 3307.
• [12]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. Linde has since tried to suggest a way to escape the conclusion of a beginning (“Inflation and String Cosmology,” arXiv:hep-th/0503195v1 (24 Mar 2005), p. 13. But he does not succeed in extending past spacetime paths to infinity, which is a necessary condition of the universe’s having no beginning.
• [13]Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin, “Inflation Is Not Past-Eternal,” http://arXiv:gr-qc/0110012v1 (1 Oct 2001): 4. The article was updated in January 2003.
• [14]Alexander Vilenkin, “Quantum Cosmology and Eternal Inflation,” http://arXiv:gr-qc/0204061v1 (18 April 2002): 10.
• [15]Audrey Mithani and Alexander Vilenkin, “Did the universe have a beginning?” ArXiv 1204.4658v1 [hep-th] 20 April 2012. Cf. his statement “There are no models at this time that provide a satisfactory model for a universe without a beginning” (A. Vilenkin, “Did the Universe Have a Beginning?” lecture at Cambridge University, 2012). Specifically, Vilenkin closed the door on three models attempting to avert the implication of his theorem: eternal inflation, a cyclic universe, and an “emergent” universe which exists for eternity as a static seed before expanding.
• [16]Lisa Grossman, “Why physicists can’t avoid a creation event,” New Scientist 11 January 2012.
• [17]Alex Vilenkin, Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), p. 176.
• [18]Plato, Laws 12.966e.
• [19]Plato, Laws 10.893b-899c; idem Timaeus.
• [20]See Peter Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation (London: Routledge, 1991).
• [21]S. W. Hawking, “Cosmology from the Top Down,” paper presented at the Davis Cosmic Inflation Meeting, U. C. Davis, May 29, 2003.
• [22]See Leonard Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design (New York: Little, Brown, & Co., 2006). Susskind apparently believes that the discovery of the cosmic landscape undercuts the argument for design, when in fact precisely the opposite is true. Susskind doesn’t seem to appreciate that the 10⁵⁰⁰ worlds in the cosmic landscape are not real but merely possible universes consistent with M-Theory. To find purchase for the anthropic principle mentioned by Hawking as the third alternative, one needs a plurality of real universes, which string theory alone does not provide.
• [23]Vilenkin, Many Worlds in One, p. 214.
• [24]Ibid., p. 61.
• [25]Roger Penrose, The Road to Reality (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), pp. 762-5. Penrose concludes that anthropic explanations are so “impotent” that it is actually “misconceived” to appeal to them to explain the special features of the universe

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John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 2)

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John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 1)

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Adrian Rogers: “Why I believe the Bible is true”

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The Old Testament is Filled with Fulfilled Prophecy by Jim Wallace

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Evidence for the Bible

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The Bible is an extraordinary work of literature, and it makes some astonishing claims. It records the details of the creation of the universe, the origin of life, the moral law of God, the history of man’s rebellion against God, and the historical details of God’s work of redemption for all who trust in His Son. Moreover, the Bible claims to be God’s revelation to mankind. If true, this has implications for all aspects of life: how we should live, why we exist, what happens when we die, and what our meaning and purpose is. But how do we know if the claims of the Bible are true?

Some Typical Answers

A number of Christians have tried to answer this question. Unfortunately, not all of those answers have been as cogent as we might hope. Some answers make very little sense at all. Others have some merit but fall short of proving the truth of the Bible with certainty. Let’s consider some of the arguments that have been put forth by Christians.

A Subjective Standard

Some Christians have argued for the truth of the Scriptures by pointing to the changes in their own lives that belief in the God who inspired the Bible has induced. Receiving Jesus as Lord is a life-changing experience that brings great joy. A believer is a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). However, this change does not in and of itself prove the Bible is true. People might experience positive feelings and changes by believing in a position that happens to be false.

At best, a changed life shows consistency with the Scriptures. We would expect a difference in attitudes and actions given that the Bible is true. Although giving a testimony is certainly acceptable, a changed life does not (by itself) demonstrate the truth of the Scriptures. Even an atheist might argue that his belief in atheism produces feelings of inner peace or satisfaction. This does not mean that his position is true.

By Faith

When asked how they know that the Bible is true, some Christians have answered, “We know the Bible is true by faith.” While that answer may sound pious, it is not very logical, nor is it a correct application of Scripture. Faith is the confident belief in something that you cannot perceive with your senses (Hebrews 11:1). So when I believe without observation that the earth’s core is molten, I am acting on a type of faith. Likewise, when I believe in God whom I cannot directly see, I am acting on faith. Don’t misunderstand. We should indeed have faith in God and His Word. But the “by faith” response does not actually answer the objection that has been posed—namely, how we know that the Bible is true.

Since faith is a belief in something unseen, the above response is not a good argument. “We know by faith” is the equivalent of saying, “We know by believing.” But clearly, the act of believing in something doesn’t necessarily make it true. A person doesn’t really know something just by believing it. He simply believes it. So the response is essentially, “We believe because we believe.” While it is true that we believe, this answer is totally irrelevant to the question being asked. It is a non-answer. Such a response is not acceptable for a person who is a follower of Christ. The Bible teaches that we are to be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks a reason of the hope that is within us (1 Peter 3:15). Saying that we have faith is not the same as giving a reason for that faith.

Begging the Question

Some have cited 2 Timothy 3:16 as proof that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. This text indicates that all Scripture is inspired by God (or “God-breathed”) and useful for teaching. That is, every writing in the Bible is a revelation from God that can be trusted as factually true. Clearly, if the Bible is given by revelation of the God of truth, then it can be trusted at every point as an accurate depiction. The problem with answering the question this way is that it presupposes that the verse itself is truthful—which is the very claim at issue.

In other words, how do we know that 2 Timothy 3:16 is true? “Well it’s in the Bible,” some might say. But how do we know the Bible is true? “2 Timothy 3:16 assures us that it is.” This is a vicious circular argument. It must first arbitrarily assume the very thing it is trying to prove. Circular reasoning of this type (while technically valid) is not useful in a debate because it does not prove anything beyond what it merely assumes. After all, this type of argument would be equally valid for any other book that claims to be inspired by God. How do we know that book X is inspired by God? “Because it says it is.” But how do we know that what it’s saying is true? “Well, God wouldn’t lie!”

On the other hand, some Christians might go too far the other way—thinking that what the Bible says about itself is utterly irrelevant to the question of its truthfulness or its inspiration from God. This, too, is a mistake. After all, how would we know that a book is inspired by God unless it claimed to be? Think about it: how do you know who wrote a particular book? The book itself usually states who the author is. Most people are willing to accept what a book says about itself unless they have good evidence to the contrary.

So it is quite relevant that the Bible itself claims to be inspired by God. It does claim that all of its assertions are true and useful for teaching. Such statements do prove at least that the writers of the Bible considered it to be not merely their own opinion, but in fact the inerrant Word of God. However, arguing that the Bible must be true solely on the basis that it says so is not a powerful argument. Yes, it is a relevant claim. But we need some additional information if we are to escape a vicious circle.

Textual Consistency and Uniqueness

Another argument for the truthfulness of the Bible concerns its uniqueness and internal consistency. The Bible is remarkably self-consistent, despite having been written by more than 40 different writers over a timespan of about 2,000 years. God’s moral law, man’s rebellion against God’s law, and God’s plan of salvation are the continuing themes throughout the pages of Scripture. This internal consistency is what we would expect if the Bible really is what it claims to be—God’s revelation.

Moreover, the Bible is uniquely authentic among ancient literary works in terms of the number of ancient manuscripts found and the smallness of the timescale between when the work was first written and the oldest extant manuscript (thereby minimizing any possibility of alteration from the original).¹ This indicates that the Bible has been accurately transmitted throughout the ages, far more so than other ancient documents. Few people would doubt that Plato really wrote the works ascribed to him, and yet the Bible is far more authenticated. Such textual criticism shows at least that the Bible (1) is unique in ancient literature and (2) has been accurately transmitted throughout the ages. What we have today is a good representation of the original. No one could consistently argue that the Bible’s authenticity is in doubt unless he is willing to doubt all other works of antiquity (because they are far less substantiated).²

To be sure, this is what we would expect given the premise that the Bible is true. And yet, uniqueness and authenticity to the original do not necessarily prove that the source is true. They simply mean that the Bible is unique and has been accurately transmitted. This is consistent with the claim that the Bible is the Word of God, but it does not decisively prove the claim.

External Evidence

Some Christians have argued for the truth of Scripture on the basis of various lines of external evidence. For example, archaeological discoveries have confirmed many events of the Bible. The excavation of Jericho reveals that the walls of this city did indeed fall as described in the book of Joshua.³ Indeed, some passages of the Bible, which critics once claimed were merely myth, have now been confirmed archeologically. For example, the five cities of the plain described in Genesis 14:2 were once thought by secular scholars to be mythical, but ancient documents have been found that list these cities as part of ancient trade routes.⁴

Archaeology certainly confirms Scripture. Yet it does not prove that the Bible is entirely true. After all, not every claim in Scripture has been confirmed archeologically. The Garden of Eden has never been found, nor has the Tower of Babel or Noah’s Ark (as of the writing of this article). So at best, archaeology demonstrates that some of the Bible is true.

Such consistency is to be expected. Yet, using archaeology in an attempt to prove the Bible seems inappropriate. After all, archaeology is an uncertain science; its findings are inevitably subject to the interpretation and bias of the observer and are sometimes overturned by newer evidence. Archaeology is useful, but fallible. Is it appropriate to use a fallible procedure to judge what claims to be the infallible Word of God? Using the less certain to judge the more certain seems logically flawed. Yes, archaeology can show consistency with Scripture but is not in a position to prove the Bible in any decisive way because archaeology itself is not decisive.

Predictive Prophecy and Divine Insight

A number of passages in the Bible predict future events in great detail—events that were future to the writers but are now in our past. For example, in Daniel 2 a prophecy predicted the next three world empires (up to and including the Roman Empire) and their falls. If the Bible were not inspired by God, how could its mere human writers possibly have known about events in the distant future?⁵

The Bible also touches on matters of science in ways that seem to go beyond what was known to humankind at the time. In Isaiah 40:22 we read about the spreading out (expansion) of the heavens (the universe). Yet secular scientists did not discover such expansion until the 1920s. The spherical nature of the earth and the fact that the earth hangs in space are suggested in Scriptures such as Job 26:10 and Job 26:7 respectively. The book of Job is thought to have been written around 2000 BC—long before the nature of our planet was generally known.

Such evidence is certainly consistent with the claim that the Bible is inspired by God. And some people find such evidence convincing. Yet, persons who tenaciously resist the idea that the Bible is the Word of God have offered their counterarguments to the above examples. They have suggested that the predictive prophetic passages were written after the fact, much later than the text itself would indicate. Examples of apparent scientific insight in the Bible are chalked up to coincidence.

Moreover, there is something inappropriate about using secular science to judge the claims of the Bible. As with archeological claims, what constitutes a scientific fact is often subject to the bias of the interpreter. Some people would claim that particles-to-people evolution is a scientific fact. Although creationists would disagree, we must concede that what some people think is good science does not always coincide with the Bible.

The Bible does show agreement with some of what is commonly accepted as scientific fact. But what is considered scientific fact today might not be tomorrow. We are once again in the embarrassing position of attempting to judge what claims to be infallible revelation from God by the questionable standards of men. Again, how can we judge what claims to be inerrant revelation by a standard that is itself uncertain and ever-changing? This would be like using something we merely suspect to be about three feet long to check whether a yardstick is accurate. Using the less-certain to judge the more-certain just doesn’t make sense. At best, such things merely show consistency.

The Standard of Standards

The above lines of evidence are certainly consistent with the premise that the Bible is true. Many people have no doubt found such evidence quite convincing. Yet, we must admit that none of the above lines of evidence quite proves that the Bible must be the inerrant Word of God. Critics have their counterarguments to all of the above. If we are to know for certain that the Bible is true, we will need a different kind of argument—one that is absolutely conclusive and irrefutable. In all the above cases, we took as an unstated premise that there are certain standards by which we judge how likely something is true. When we stop to consider what these standards are, we will see that the standards themselves are proof that the Bible is true.

Putting it another way, only the Bible can make sense of the standards by which we evaluate whether or not something is true. One such set of standards are the laws of logic. We all know that a true claim cannot contradict another true claim. That would violate a law of logic: the law of non-contradiction. The statements “The light is red” and “The light is not red” cannot both be true at the same time and in the same sense. Laws of logic thus represent a standard by which we can judge certain truth claims. Moreover, all people seem to “know” laws like the law of non-contradiction. We all assume that such laws are the same everywhere and apply at all times without exception. But why is this? How do we know such things?

If we consider the biblical worldview, we find that we can make sense of the laws of logic. The Bible tells us that God’s mind is the standard for all knowledge (Colossians 2:3). Since God upholds the entire universe and since He is beyond time, we would expect that laws of logic apply everywhere in the universe and at all times. There can never be an exception to a law of logic because God’s mind is sovereign over all truth. We can know laws of logic because we are made in God’s image and are thus able to think in a way that is consistent with His nature (Genesis 1:27). So, when we take the Bible as our worldview, we find that laws of logic make sense.

But if we don’t accept the Bible as true, we are left without a foundation for laws of logic. How could we know (apart from God) that laws of logic work everywhere? After all, none of us have universal knowledge. We have not experienced the future nor have we travelled to distant regions of the universe. Yet we assume that laws of logic will work in the future as they have in the past and that they work in the distant cosmos as they work here. But how could we possibly know that apart from revelation from God?

Arguing that laws of logic have worked in our past experiences is pointless—because that’s not the question. The question is: how can we know that they will work in the future or in regions of space that we have never visited? Only the Christian worldview can make sense of the universal, exception-less, unchanging nature of laws of logic. Apart from the truth revealed in the Bible, we would have no reason to assume that laws of logic apply everywhere at all times, yet we all do assume this. Only the Christian has a good reason to presume the continued reliability of logic. The non-Christian does not have such a reason in his own professed worldview, and so he is being irrational: believing something without a good reason. The unbeliever has only “blind faith” but the Christian’s faith in the Bible makes knowledge possible.

The Foundation of Science

Another standard we use when evaluating certain kinds of claims is the standard of science. The tools of science allow us to describe the predictable, consistent way in which the universe normally behaves. Science allows us to make successful predictions about certain future states. For example, if I mix chemical A with chemical B, I expect to get result C because it has always been that way in the past. This happens the same way every time: if the conditions are the same, I will get the same result. Science is based on an underlying uniformity in nature. But why should there be such uniformity in nature? And how do we know about it?

We all presume that the future will be like the past in terms of the basic operation of nature. This does not mean that Friday will be exactly like Monday—conditions change. But it does mean that things like gravity will work the same on Friday as they have on Monday. With great precision astronomers are able to calculate years in advance the positions of planets, the timing of eclipses, and so on—only because the universe operates in such a consistent way. We all know that (in basic ways) the universe will behave in the future as it has in the past. Science would be impossible without this critical principle. But what is the foundation for this principle?

The Bible provides that foundation. According to the biblical worldview, God has chosen to uphold the universe in a consistent way for our benefit. He has promised us in places such as Genesis 8:22 that the basic cycles of nature will continue to be in the future as they have been in the past. Although specific circumstances change, the basic laws of nature (such as gravity) will continue to work in the future as they have in the past. Interestingly, only God is in a position to tell us on His own authority that this will be true. According to the Bible, God is beyond time,⁶ and so only He knows what the future will be. But we are within time and have not experienced the future. The only way we could know the future will be (in certain ways) like the past is because God has told us in His Word that it will be.

Apart from the Bible, is there any way we could know that the future will be like the past? So far, no one has been able to show how such a belief would make sense apart from Scripture. The only nonbiblical explanations offered have turned out to be faulty. For example, consider the following.

Some people argue that they can know that the future will be like the past on the basis of past experience. That is, in the past, when they had assumed that the future would be like the past, they were right. They then argue that this past success is a good indicator of future success. However, in doing so, they arbitrarily assume the very thing they are supposed to be proving: that the future will be like the past. They commit the logical fallacy of begging the question. Any time we use past experience as an indicator of what will probably happen in the future, we are relying on the belief that the future will be (in basic ways) like the past. So we cannot merely use past experience as our reason for belief that in the future nature will be uniform, unless we already knew by some other way that nature is uniform. If nature were not uniform, then past success would be utterly irrelevant to the future! Only the biblical worldview can provide an escape from this vicious logical circle. And that is another very good reason to believe the Bible is true.

We Already Know the God of the Bible

Since only the Bible can make sense of the standards of knowledge, it may seem perplexing at first that people who deny the Bible are able to have knowledge. We must admit that non-Christians are able to use laws of logic and the methods of science with great success—despite the fact that such procedures only make sense in light of what the Bible teaches. How are we to explain this inconsistency? How is it that people deny the truth of the Bible and yet simultaneously rely upon the truth of the Bible?

The Bible itself gives us the resolution to this paradox. In Romans 1:18–21 the Scriptures teach that God has revealed Himself to everyone. God has “hardwired” knowledge of Himself into every human being, such that we all have inescapable knowledge of God. However, people have rebelled against God—they “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18). People go to great lengths to convince themselves and others that they do not know what, in fact, they must know. They are denying the existence of a God who is rightly angry at them for their rebellion against Him.

But, since all men are made in God’s image, we are able to use the knowledge of logic and uniformity that He has placed within us,⁷ even if we inconsistently deny the God that makes such knowledge possible. So the fact that even unbelievers are able to use logic and science is a proof that the Bible really is true. When we understand the Bible, we find that what it teaches can make sense of those things necessary for science and reasoning. God has designed us so that when believers read His Word, we recognize it as the voice of our Creator (John 10:27). The truth of the Bible is inescapably certain. For if the Bible were not true, we couldn’t know anything at all. It turns out that the worldview delineated by the Bible is the only worldview that can make sense of all those things necessary for knowledge.

Conclusion

The truth of the Bible is obvious to anyone willing to fairly investigate it. The Bible is uniquely self-consistent and extraordinarily authentic. It has changed the lives of millions of people who have placed their faith in Christ. It has been confirmed countless times by archaeology and other sciences. It possesses divine insight into the nature of the universe and has made correct predictions about distant future events with perfect accuracy. When Christians read the Bible, they cannot help but recognize the voice of their Creator. The Bible claims to be the Word of God, and it demonstrates this claim by making knowledge possible. It is the standard of standards. The proof of the Bible is that unless its truth is presupposed, we couldn’t prove anything at all.⁸

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Footnotes

1. See chapters 5 and 12 of Brian Edwards, Nothing but the Truth (Darlington, UK: Evangelical Press, 2006). Back
2. Josh McDowell and Bill Wilson, A Ready Defense (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1993), pp. 42–55. Back
3. Bryant Wood, “The Walls of Jericho,” Creation 21 (2) March–May 1999, pp. 36–40, http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v21/i2/jericho.asp. Back
4. Bryant Wood, “The Discovery of the Sin Cities of Sodom and Gomorrah,” Bible and Spade (Summer 1999), http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2008/04/16/The-Discovery-of-the-Sin-Cities-of-Sodom-and-Gomorrah.aspx. Back
5. Even this begs the question to some degree. A critic could (hypothetically) argue that some people have the ability to perceive distant future events through some as-yet-undiscovered mechanism (be it psychic powers or whatever). The Christian knows better; he knows that God alone declares the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:9–10). But the Christian knows this because it is what the Bible says. So, only by presupposing the truth of the Bible could we cogently argue that only God can know the future. Back
6. E.g., 2 Peter 3:8; Isaiah 46:9–10. Back
7. Babies do not “learn” uniformity in nature. They are born already knowing it. When a baby burns his hand on a candle, he does not quickly do it again because he rightly believes that if he does it again it will hurt again. The baby already knows that the future reflects the past. Back
8. This fact has been recognized and elaborated upon by Christian scholars such as Dr. Cornelius Van Til and Dr. Greg Bahnsen. Back

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I remember an incident back during my Watergate days that illustrates how utterly irrational atheism is. I had approached one of my colleagues to offer spiritual help. He was on his way to prison.

“No thanks,” was his reply. “I’m a rationalist.” He’d decided that God was merely the figment of a pious imagination.

For a time his “rationalism” seemed to work. After his prison term, he went on to a successful business career. He seemed to have it all together—without God.

But years later rumors reached me that my former colleague was reading Christian literature, seeking deeper answers to life. “I can no longer be an atheist,” he wrote to me, “for I cannot get by the question of how life began. The scientific rationales are themselves simply irrational.”

But, of course, my friend came to realize what some of our best scientific minds are telling us: that it is irrational to believe that the universe came into existence through purely natural causes.

In his book Origins, Robert Shapiro describes a set of calculations performed by Yale University physicist Harold Morowitz. Morowitz calculated the probability of generating a single bacterium by chance as 1 chance in 10 to the 100 billionth power: that’s the number 10 followed by 100 billion zeros.

Shapiro concludes that “the improbability involved in generating even one bacterium is so large that it reduces all considerations of time and space to nothingness.” In other words, belief in the random generation of life requires a herculean leap of faith.

It’s no wonder that British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle dismissed the idea of the random origin of life. It is “as ridiculous and improbable as the proposition that a tornado blowing through a junkyard may assemble a Boeing 747.”

Well put. In fact, the onus is on the nonbeliever to provide a credible explanation as to how life could have come into being without God.

Some quite imaginative ideas have been proposed. Francis Crick, the scientist who discovered the double helix structure of DNA, realized the impossibility of such complexity arising on Earth by chance. Crick’s solution? He theorized that DNA had somehow been transported to our planet from elsewhere in the universe.

That, of course, absurd as it is, just moves the problem back a step. The real question is how something as complex as DNA could have developed by chance anywhere in the universe. A world view predicated on the existence of a Creator—far from being irrational sentiment—is actually the only intellectually defensible position. Historian Paul Johnson writes that there has been “an orgy of scientific God-questing . . . books by eminent scientists” disillusioned with the failures of current theories.

So don’t be intimidated by worn-out charges that faith in God is blind and irrational. It’s quite the contrary. Why don’t you share this entire special series with your neighbors?

Atheists can’t be too careful. Like my Watergate pal, when they subject their atheism to rigorous scrutiny—they soon realize that their flight from God is no more rational than a tornado-designed 747.

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