The Essentials of Apologetics Why God (Part 2)

H o p e
ForThe
Hurting
A Study in 1 Peter
www.confidentchristians.org
Why God…?
An Intelligent Cause

The Essentials of Apologetics – Why God: An Intelligent Cause
IntroductionDo we recognize intelligence when we see it?

Something from the Wind, Rain, and Time?

Something from Water and Erosion?

Just Lines Formed by Natural Means on a Cave Wall?

• No reasonable person would conclude Mt. Rushmore, an arrowhead or
a cave painting happened by natural means alone.
• We know how to differentiate an intelligent cause vs. a natural cause.
We Instinctively Recognize Marks of Intelligence

• Central principle in forensic science
is the Principe of Uniformity.
• The principle states that causes and
effects in the past are like causes
and effects observed today.
• By the Principle of Uniformity, we
assume that an intelligent effect is
the result of an intelligent cause.
How Do We Recognize Intelligence?

• Every agent acts for an end, even
natural agents.
• Now what acts for an end
manifests intelligence.
• But natural agents have no
intelligence of their own.
• Therefore, they are directed to
their end by some Intelligence.
- Thomas Aquinas
Famed Catholic Theologian
How Do We Recognize Intelligence?

The Difference Between Natural and Intelligent Agents
• Aquina‟s first premise is simply the self-evident principle of finality.
• The second premise states that all things move to some end.
• The third premise says whatever lacks intelligence must be directed by
intelligence, as an arrow is towards a target.
• The conclusion follows that all things are directed by some intelligence.

Identifying Intelligence at the Right Level
• Is a fully robotic auto assembly line not a work of intelligence simply
because no humans are present?
• No, the intelligence is just one step removed.
• The same can be said of the many biological micro-machines present in life.

Avoiding the False Dilemma
• Atheists oftentimes present the false dilemma of (1) Science or (2) God.
• Such a thing is like asking: why and how does the car robotics factory exist?
(1) The laws of physics, engineering, and chance, or (2) A designer?
• Everyone understands the fallacy of such a question. There is a difference
at which level intelligence is introduced.
• There is also a difference between agency (a designer) and mechanism
(various scientific laws and methods).

The Design ArgumentA Look at the Teleological Argument for God

The Teleological Argument for God
The teleological (telos, from the Greek word “design” ) argument for God says
that the universe and humankind exhibit marks of intelligence and design.
• Behind every complex design is a designer.
• The universe has a complex design.
• Therefore, the universe has a designer.

Key Question to be Answered
Does the universe and life exhibit design?

Atheists Answer, “Yes, but…”
“Living objects . . . look
designed, they look
overwhelmingly as though
they‟re designed. Biology is
the study of complicated
things which give the
impression of having been
designed for a purpose.”
– Richard Dawkins
Biologist

“It seems to me that Richard Dawkins
constantly overlooks the fact that Darwin
himself, in the fourteenth chapter of The
Origin of Species, pointed out that his
whole argument began with a being which
already possessed reproductive powers.
This is the creature the evolution of which
a truly comprehensive theory of evolution
must give some account. Darwin himself
was well aware that he had not produced
such an account. It now seems to me that
the findings of more than fifty years of
DNA research have provided materials for
a new and enormously powerful argument
to design.”
-Anthony Flew
Former outspoken atheist

Atheists Answer, “Yes, but…”
“Biologists must constantly
keep in mind that what they
see was not designed, but
rather evolved.”
– Francis Crick
Co-Discoverer of DNA

“Darwinian biologists must
keep repeating that
reminder to themselves
because otherwise they
might become conscious of
the reality that is staring
them in the face and trying
to get their attention.”
– Phillip Johnson
Berkley Law Professor

Two Key Pieces of Evidence for an Intelligent Designer
1. The Fine Tuning Argument (or Anthropic Principle).
2. Specified Complexity.

The Fine Tuning Argument
• Sometimes called “The Goldilocks Effect” and “Anticipatory Design”.
• Purposes that the fundamental constants and quantities of nature fall into
an exquisitely narrow range of values which render our universe life-
permitting.
• States that if these constants and quantities were altered by even a hair‟s
breadth, the delicate balance would be upset and life could not exist.
• Argues that the naturalist proposal of time + matter + change is insufficient
to explain the conditions we find that support life.

A Few Examples of Fine Tuning
• Oxygen currently makes up 21 percent of the atmosphere. Were it 25 percent, fires would
erupt everywhere and if it were 15 percent, humans would suffocate.
• If gravity was altered by 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000001
percent, the sun would not exist and the moon would crash into earth.
• If the centrifugal force of planetary movements did not precisely balance the gravitational
forces, nothing could be held in orbit around the sun.
• If the universe was expanding at a rate one millionth more slowly than it is, the
temperature on earth would be 10,000 degrees.
• If Jupiter was not exactly where it is, earth would be bombarded by space material that
would threaten life on the planet.

A Few Examples of Fine Tuning
• If the thickness of the earth‟s crust was greater, too much oxygen would be transferred to
the crust to support life, and if it were thinner, volcanic and tectonic activity would make
life impossible.
• The axis of the earth is set so carefully that, if it were altered ever so slightly, surface
temperatures of the earth would be far too great.
• If water vapor levels in the atmosphere were greater than they are now, a runaway
greenhouse effect would cause temperatures to rise far too high on the planet – life would
die out. And if they were less, an insufficient greenhouse effect would make the earth too
cold to support life.

What are the Odds?
• Astrophysicist Hugh Ross has calculated that the odds of all anthropic
constants and quantities (122 at last count) to be in place for any planet in
the universe by luck alone to be one chance in ten with 138 zeros after it.
• This number becomes even more incredible when one realizes there are
only 1070 atoms in the entire universe.
• Mathematicians point out that anything which exceeds 1050 power is the
exact same thing as zero chance.

Possible Explanations for Fine Tuning
• Physical Necessity – not possible
as the cosmological constants
exist outside of the environment.
The constants and quantities
could be different; they don‟t have
to be what they are.
• Chance – exceeds any
mathematical possibility. As for
the multi-verse, no empirical data
exists to confirm its existence.
• Intelligent Designer – best answer
for an appeal to best explanation.
Only ruled out by atheists
because of anti-supernatural
worldview.

“The initial configuration of the
universe” appears to have been
“very carefully chosen.”
– Stephen Hawking
Famed Physicist

“In the absence of an absurdly-
improbable accident, the
observations of modern science
seem to suggest an
underlying, one might
say, supernatural plan.”
– Arno Penzias
Nobel Laureate scientist

The Argument of Specified Complexity
• Argues that nature and life (e.g. human beings) contain the imprint of an
intelligent cause, with evidence such as DNA bearing the marks of a
Designer.
• Purposes that life is encoded with information that demonstrates an
intelligent cause.

The Presence of Information in Life
• Atheists like Darwinist Richard Dawkins admit that the message found in
just the cell nucleus of an amoeba is more than all thirty volumes of the
Encyclopedia Britannica.
• The entire amoeba itself has as much information in its DNA as 1,000
complete sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
• The important thing to understand is that the makeup of these entities is
not random, but instead the information is highly organized.

An Atheist Talks Life and Information
“What lies at the heart of every living
thing is not a fire, warm
breath, nor a „spark of life‟. It is
information, words, instructions….
Think of a billion discrete digital
characters.... If you want to
understand life think about
information technology.”
– Richard Dawkins

The Difference Between Data and Information

"Ask anybody what the physical
world is made of, and you are
likely to be told "matter and
energy." Yet if we have learned
anything from
engineering, biology and
physics, information is just as
crucial an ingredient." –
Scientific American
July 2003

“If you‟re trying to explain an event in the
remote past you should rely on our
knowledge of the cause/effect structure of
the world and you should be looking for a
cause that has the capability or power to
produce the known effect in question. . . .
Darwin‟s mentor Charles Lyell . . . put it
this way: „In investigating the past we
should be looking for causes now in
operation‟. Now as to Information and
intelligence: What is the cause now in
operation of digital information? That is
intelligence. By using Darwin‟s own
principle of reasoning, we can use an
inference to the best explanation:
intelligence produces information.”
- Stephen Meyer

DNA Resembles Software Design
“At first approximation, one can therefore
think of DNA as an instructional script, a
software program, sitting in the nucleus of
the cell. Its coding language has only four
letters (or two bits, in computer terms). A
particular instruction known as a gene, is
made up of hundreds or thousands of
letters of code.”
- Francis Collins

“It is important to understand
that we are not reasoning by
analogy [with DNA]. The
sequence hypothesis applies
directly to the protein and the
genetic text as well as to written
language and therefore the
treatment is mathematically
identical.”
– Herbert Yockey
Non-Theist Biologist

DNA Bears the Mark of an Intelligent Cause
• DNA is mathematically identical to
a language.
• What language has ever risen
without an intelligent cause?
• “Investigations of many organisms,
from bacteria to humans, revealed
that this „genetic code‟, by which
information in DNA and RNA is
translated into protein, is universal
in all known organisms. No tower
of Babel was to be allowed in the
language of life. . . . How deeply
satisfying is the digital elegance of
DNA!” – Francis Collins

“If science is based on
experience, then science tells us that
the message encoded in DNA must
have originated from an intelligent
cause. What kind of intelligent agent
was it? On its own, science cannot
answer this question; it must leave it to
religion and philosophy. But that should
not prevent science from
acknowledging evidences for an
intelligent cause origin wherever they
may exist.”
- Dean Kenyon
Biophysicist

ConclusionsFinal Thoughts

“Is it not to be wondered at that our
archaeologist immediately infers
intelligent origin when faced with a few
simple scratches whereas some
scientists, when faced with the 3.5
billion letter sequence of the human
genome, inform us that it is to be
explained solely in terms of chance
and necessity?”
- John Lennox

Design or Chance?
One Design
One by Chance?

“I think the origins of the laws of
nature and of life and the
Universe point clearly to an
intelligent source. The burden
of proof is on those who argue
to the contrary.”
-Anthony Flew
Former outspoken atheist

For More Information/Presentations
www.powerpointapologist.org
www.confidentchristians.org

For More Apologetics Resources
www.apologetics315.com

The Essentials of Apologetics Why God (Part 2)

More Related Content

What's hot (20)

Similar to The Essentials of Apologetics Why God (Part 2) (20)

More from Robin Schumacher (19)

Recently uploaded (20)

The Essentials of Apologetics Why God (Part 2)

Editor's Notes