A just-right universe for us

I have been blogging on a book that our class at church will be reading together--I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Geisler and Turek. For this entry I want to cover what is probably my favorite section of the whole book. It involves the argument from design, also called the teleological argument. It looks like this: every design had a designer; the universe has highly complex design; therefore, the universe had a designer. In the last few years science has uncovered so much evidence of complexity in the universe that argues powerfully for the existence of God.

For one thing, the universe is specifically organized to enable life to exist on earth. Think about just the solar system--no other place is able to sustain life. We live, like Goldilocks, in a just-right position, neither too hot (Venus) or too cold (Mars).We have around us scores of improbable and interdependent life-supporting conditions that make earth a perfect home in a hostile universe. These highly precise environmental conditions go by the term "anthropic principle." The universe looks fine-tuned to support human life here on earth.

What are some of these conditions that are exactly right? I'll just list some, skipping the details, but the book explains each more fully: the percent of oxygen in the atmosphere, the transparency of our atmosphere, the moon-Earth gravitational interaction, the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, the gravitational force in the universe, the expansion rate of the universe, the velocity of light, the level of water vapor in the atmosphere, the precise location of Jupiter in the solar system, the thickness of the Earth's crust, the rotation of the earth, the tilt of the Earth's axis, the rate of lightning in the atmosphere, seismic activity on the earth. There are something like 122 of these conditions both on earth and throughout the universe that have to be precisely right for us to exist.

The authors quote a Nobel Laureate, Arno Penzias, who has this to say after examining the conditions like the ones in the previous paragraph: "Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan."

The skeptic's response comes in several flavors. One popular one today is called the Multiple Universe Theory. This theory says there actually is an infinite number of universes in existence, so it's no wonder that at least one looks like the one that we are in. There are significant problems with this explanation. First, there is no evidence for it. Secondly, an infinite number of finite things like universes is an actual impossibility. Third, even if there were other universes, they would need fine-tuning to get started just as ours did.

This chapter in Geisler and Turek's book discusses design of the universe, but there is much more to this design argument. The other area of design that is so powerful today has to do with the microscopic level. Design that went unnoticed in Darwin's day is being revealed in exiting ways. I'll cover those in the next blog.

The Cosmological Argument for God

I want to return to an important book called I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Geisler and Turek. The first couple of chapters dealt with arguments for the existence of truth. The authors move to a new chapter in which they attempt to prove that God exists. Their first argument is called the Cosmological Argument.

t\They start with a story of Albert Einstein. It was in 1916 when Einstein's calculations revealed the universe had a definite beginning. This upset Einstein as well as other physicists who wanted the universe to be static and eternal. Why should they care about the beginning of the universe? Because it allowed for God as creator.

Einstein's work hinted at the possibility of God for a simple reason. His theory of General Relativity supported one of the oldest formal arguments for the existence of a theistic God -- the Cosmological Argument. It sounds complicated but it's very simple. In logical form, the argument looks like this: everything that had a beginning had a cause; the universe had a beginning; therefore, the universe had a cause. This cause came to be called the Big Bang.

The authors give five reasons to prove the universe had a beginning with this Big Bang. First, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, also called the Law of Entropy, says that nature tends to bring things to disorder. We see that the universe still has some order left with some usable energy, so the universe cannot be eternal. Secondly, we have found over the last 75 years that the universe is expanding; if we could watch a video recording of the history of the universe in reverse, we would see everything in the universe collapsing back to point. Another piece of scientific evidence is the cosmic background radiation, which is actually light and heat left over from the initial explosion of the Big Bang. A fourth clue was the discovery of slight variations in the temperature of the cosmic background radiation. These temperature ripples enabled matter to congregate by gravitational attraction into galaxies. A fifth supporting fact is Einstein's theory of General Relativity, which shows that time, space, and matter are interdependent; you can't have one without the others. This theory demands an absolute beginning for all three.

The book contains an interesting quotation from Robert Jastrow, the director of Mount Wilson and founder of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies. He is an agnostic when it comes to religious matters, so this is not someone in the camp of Christianity. He writes, "Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy." In other words, Genesis seems to give a good picture of the Big Bang.

Why does God have to be dragged into this? Couldn't natural forces have produced the universe? Here's the key point -- natural forces, in fact all of nature, were created at the Big Bang. There was no natural world or natural law prior to the Big Bang. Something outside of nature had to do the job, and that's where the term "supernatural" comes into the picture.

At this point, when God is suggested as the Beginner, atheists come up with an age-old question: "Then who made God? If everything needs a cause, that God needs a cause too." But the Law of Causality does not say that everything needs a cause. It says that everything that comes into being needs a cause. God did not come into being. No one made God. He is unmade. As an eternal being, God did not have a beginning, so he didn't need a cause.

What characteristics of God can be seen from the evidence discussed in this chapter? He must be self existent, timeless, non-spatial, and immaterial. He must be unimaginably powerful. He must be supremely intelligent. He must be personal in order to choose to convert a state of nothingness into the time-space-material universe.

The authors end the chapter with a key question: "If there is no God, why is there something rather than nothing?" Good point.

Language abusers and their hypocrisy

I'll get back to blogs on I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist next time, but I wanted to cover something else first that recently appeared in the news. As an English teacher, I'm very interested in the use of language. I follow politics closely, and I was amused to see hypocrisy at work in regards to political rhetoric.

An Arizona Congresswoman was shot a few months back. Liberals blamed it on political language that inflamed her attacker (this was later discovered not to be his motive). They lectured conservatives to tone down their language in the future. How has that worked out? Well, glad you asked. You may have heard the latest--it's an attempt to smear Tea Party Republicans, thanks to liberals using abusive language. How's that for hypocrisy?

According to The Wall Street Journal, at a recent two-hour, closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting, Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) said (referring to the debt-ceiling talks) "We have negotiated with terrorists . . . This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money."

This sort of language is not just happening in Congress. It's become commonplace on the opinion pages of the New York Times, where one editorialist rants:
You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them. These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people. . . . Their goal, they believed, was worth blowing up the country for, if that's what it took. . . . For now, the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests. But rest assured: They'll have them on again soon enough.

But it's not just this one editorial. Others have chimed in with the same message. Last Wednesday Thomas Friedman described the Tea Party as the GOP's "Hezbollah faction." The same day Maureen Dowd approvingly quoted "some Democrats" as describing the Tea Party as "the Republican 'Taliban wing.' "

And it's not just the Times that has launched this vicious talk. Liberal columnist Margaret Carlson said, "There's a nihilist caucus which is, 'Listen, we want to burn the place down.' I mean, they're not, they've strapped explosives to the Capitol and they think they are immune from it." Then there's a cartoon from David Fitzsimmons of the (Tucson) Arizona Daily Star depicting President Obama ordering Navy SEALs to stage a bin Laden-style raid on the House side of the Capitol. This same man took center stage when the Arizona Congresswoman was shot; he was on CNN blaming "the right in Arizona" for "stoking the fire of heated anger and rage" and making the attack "inevitable." Guess it's OK to use vitriolic speech when he wants to argue for his side.

So what's going on here? Simple hypocrisy? No, it's deeper than that. Barack Obama came to power with lefties all aglow. He was going to show liberalism at its finest with his Ivy League credentials, superior attitude, pseudointellectual prattlings, and adherence to lefty ideology. But something funny happened after the inauguration. He has been an utter failure both at winning public support and at managing the affairs of the nation. Obama's failure is the failure of the liberal elite, so they are reacting with desperation and anger. Their ideas, such as they are, are being put to a real-world test and found severely wanting. As a result, their authority is collapsing. Americans need to end this experiment with leftist ideology at the next election.

Can we know the truth?

Here's a second blog covering I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, a book that we will be discussing in a class at our church. The previous blog covered the first chapter which explained that denying absolute truth and its knowability is self-defeating. In this second blog I want to cover the next chapter in the book with the provocative title "Why Should Anyone Believe Anything at All?"

The authors discuss four reasons why people believe what they believe. They include sociological reasons (parents, friends, society, culture), psychological reasons (comfort, peace of mind, meaning, purpose, hope), religious reasons (scripture, pastor/priest, guru, rabbi, imam, church), and philosophical reasons (consistency, coherence, completeness -- best explanation of all the evidence). Of course, the key question is whether each of these reasons are good ones to believe something. Notice how many of the reasons are actually poor, reflecting only subjective preferences rather than logic and evidence.

Then comes the question about logic. In our society today there is skepticism about logic. Some suggest we should consider using Eastern logic rather than Western logic. What difference do people suggest there is in these two types of logic? Some say in the East people use both-and logic while in the West it is either-or logic. But notice the word choices here -- skeptics tell us there are two types of logic, but they present them as either-or choices. That means they are actually using Western logic alone in attempting to suggest there are two types of logic. That's self-refuting. The authors point out, as result, there really is no such thing as different kinds of logic to discover the truth. There's only one type: we have to use it; it's built into the universe.

Many Americans today are involved in such self-defeating arguments because of one man -- David Hume. He believed that all meaningful ideas were either true by definition or must be based on sense experience. So, according to him, propositions were only meaningful if the claim involved abstract reasoning like a math equation, or the truth claim could be verified through one of the five senses. If he is correct, then any book talking about God is meaningless. His two conditions became the basis nearly two hundred years later for a brand of philosophy called Logical Positivism, which became popular in university philosophy departments by the mid--1960s.

But the authors point out that Hume's statements are self-refuting. Why? The claim that something can only be meaningful if it's verified by the five senses or true by definition cannot be proven through one of those two methods. Now it's true that claims that are empirically verifiable or true by definition are meaningful, but these claims don't comprise all meaningful statements as Hume contended.

One other person has brought a lot of skepticism about truth to the world -- Immanuel Kant. He said there was no way to know anything about the real world because the structure of our senses and our mind forms all sense data, so we never really know the thing in itself. We only know the thing as it appears to us after our mind and senses have form it. That sounds powerful, but once again there is a simple response. Kant claims we can't know the real world, but he claims to know something about it. So, once again, his argument is self-refuting.

The authors then go on to ask how one can know truth. They say it begins with the self-evident laws of logic called first principles. One is the law of non-contradiction, which says contradictory claims cannot both be true at the same time in the same sense. Another is the law of the excluded middle, which tells us that something either is or is not; there are no third alternatives. For example, either Jesus rose from the dead or he did not. We also learn truth through induction, observing the world around us and then drawing general conclusions from those observations.

Can observation and induction help us know something about God? Yes, according to Geisler and Turek. God may be invisible, but we can observe the effects of God just as we cannot observe gravity but can observe its effects. Much of the rest of their book discusses some of these effects of God that we can observe in the universe, but since that covers a lot of territory, I'll save that for a future blog.

Does truth exist?

This fall a class at our church is going to go through a terrific book called I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek. The book follows a four-step progression: truth exists, God exists, miracles are possible, the New Testament is reliable. Each of these steps leads to the next. I'd like to cover some of the material in the next few blogs, starting with the idea that truth about reality is knowable.

The authors begin by defining truth. They say it is simply telling it like it is, or that which corresponds to its object, or that which describes an actual state of affairs. Contrary to what is being taught in many public schools, the authors claim truth is not relative but absolute, meaning it is true for all people at all times and all places. By definition all truth claims are absolute, narrow, and exclusive. There are those who say Christians, for example, are narrow-minded people because they believe they have the truth. But atheists believe their point is true, which makes them just as narrow-minded. Any truth claim is exclusive, so it does no good to complain that one group thinks it is correct; all people think they have truth when it comes to a worldview.

Several other things can be said about truth as well. Truth is discovered, not invented. It is true for all people, no matter what culture. Even though our beliefs about truth may change, truth itself is unchanging. Beliefs cannot change the fact even if they are sincerely held.

But today we have the assertion that there is no truth. However, when we look at that statement, we see that it is self-defeating because it claims to be true in all cases and therefore defeats itself. It's much like hearing someone say, "I can't speak a word of English"--that's self-defeating too.Those who believe in relativism make many self-defeating statements like that -- "all truth is relative," "there are no absolutes," "it's true for you but not for me." So complete agnosticism or skepticism is self-defeating because it claims truth cannot be known but then claims that its view is true.

The authors have tried to establish that truth can be known. But what about other religious beliefs? Can they all be true? No, since they are mutually exclusive -- they teach opposites. So much for the new definition of tolerance, which now means we have to accept every belief as true. Some people will bring up the parable of the blind men and the elephant in which six blind men feel a different part of the elephant and reach a different conclusion about the object in front of them. We are told that no single religion has the truth since we are all like the blind men. This sounds okay until we think about the story a little further. Somebody in the story seems to have an objective perspective since they can see that the blind people are mistaken. So apparently people can see the truth, and this parable does not support religious pluralism.

Well, that's the first section of I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. There's more that examines the possibility of truth, but I'll save that for a future blog.

FDR--a revised opinion

Not too long ago I read The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes, in which she tackles the ongoing adoration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. When Barack Obama was elected, we heard many comparing him to FDR, a person who supposedly rescued the country through massive government policies. But her book challenges this, and now there's a new one that backs up her points -- New Deal or Raw Deal by Burton Folsom. His overall point is that Roosevelt's economic policies were a disaster because they prolonged the depression and made the United States economically backward compared with other nations during the 1930s.

His statistics are eye-opening. In 1929 the United States unemployment rate was the lowest in the world. Even in 1932, right in the middle of the Great Depression, unemployment was 25%; we ranked 8th out of 16 developed countries. But by 1938, by which time we had had nearly two terms of Roosevelt's programs, unemployment was near 20% and we ranked 13th of those same 16 nations. You don't hear that information from those who defend FDR by saying this was a world-wide problem. That may have been true when the Great Depression started, but it was our problem long after other nations with different economic policies had shaken it off.

Folsom does more than tackle economic problems connected to Roosevelt's time in office. He also indicts him for morally corrupting the office of the President. It was FDR who used the Justice Department to prosecute his political opponents. For example, FDR went after Andrew Mellon even though prosecutors said the case was flimsy. It was Roosevelt who demanded they go ahead and try to destroy this man. He used the IRS the same way. He used federal recovery programs which were supposed to help the entire country for blatant partisan purposes by employing people from certain states as payoffs for supporting him. Finally in 1939 the disgusted U.S. Congress rebelled and enacted legislation barring federal workers from such political activity.

Why is this book important today? President Obama and the Democrats love stimulus packages and government intervention in the economy much as Roosevelt did. However, they do not remember or they do not care that FDR's record on economic issues was so terrible. Somehow FDR had the magic touch, which enabled him to win election after election despite his failures at home. But it is certainly questionable that Barack Obama has the same touch. When we think about all the things he has done wrong over the past couple of years, it's no wonder his approval rating is so low. Obama is like FDR with his counterproductive economic policies, but he seems to be unlike him as far as his ability to reach out and connect with the American people.

Obama's shabby record here at home

Last time I focused on the foreign problems that President Obama has brought the United States. But for this blog I wanted to save the really horrific for last--the utter disaster he has been for our country on the domestic front.

Let's start with the recent news about our credit rating. Friday's downgrade by Standard & Poor's of U.S. long-term debt to AA+ from AAA will be the first of many such humiliations if the Democrats don't change their economic and fiscal policies.

Then there's the federal budget deficit. According to The Wall Street Journal, the deficit is estimated to come in at around 11% of GDP in 2011, up from about 3% in 2008. Wow, we thought the Bush administration did a poor job with spending (and it did).

Of course, this has led to a huge jump in the federal debt. Under the Obama administration it has grown to $14.3 trillion this month from $10.7 trillion at the end of 2008. He has added more debt more quickly than any other President in history. Quite an accomplishment.

How is our dollar doing these days? Thanks to Obama's policies it has lost almost half its value against gold since Aug. 2008.

Every time I fill up with gas, I'm reminded of another failure of this administration.The average retail price of a gallon of gas hovered near the $1.80 mark when Mr. Obama was inaugurated. It has since more than doubled.

I am grateful to have a job, but many Americans don't share my good fortune, thanks to this administration. In November 2008, president-elect Obama promised he would create 2.5 million jobs by 2011. By October 2010 the economy had shed 3.3 million jobs.

We can't forget ObamaCare, an unpopular program rammed through Congress. It's full of exceptions for certain states and powerful companies, it will increase our expenses (it was sold as a money saver), and it will end up rationing our health care.

Other than the things I've listed, Obama has been a smashing success on the home front. He makes me yearn for Jimmy Carter, which is hard to do, considering the ineptness of the toothy one. Let's continue the comparison of Obama to Carter by making both a one-term President.

The failures of Barack Obama (Jimmy Carter 2.0)

OK, I was bored and started thinking of ways Barack Obama has been a huge disappointment. Here are some, starting with foreign affairs. If I have time and don't get too discouraged, I'll switch to domestic disappointments.

First, there's the Arab world. Wasn't he going to get the angry Muslims on our side after repeated abject apologies for being an American? How has that worked out? Well, according to The Wall Street Journal, not so well--this year, Zogby International found that 5% of Egyptians had a favorable view of the U.S. In 2008, when George W. Bush was president, it was 9%. When will we learn that tyrants and crazies respect strength and resolve, not groveling?

How about trade with the world? Bill Clinton signed Nafta in 1994, which helps facilitate nearly $2 trillion in the trade of goods and services between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. George W. Bush helped get free trade agreements all across the world, from Australia to Singapore to Morocco to Bahrain. Number of these agreements signed by the current president: zero.

Then there's Libya. Obama entered this rebellion with the goal to remove the tyrant Gadhafi. Weeks later, the Libyan strongman is still there, and NATO looks like the Marx brothers. That will be seen by the rest of the world as a failure of Western resolve. Gadhafi will loom as a new threat to spread terrorism to the West.

What other stellar jobs has he been involved with? He has mistreated our ally Israel, he has repeatedly snubbed our best ally England, he failed to back Iranian protestors, he has allowed Afghanistan to spiral out of control, he urges North Korea to act better and get involved in multi-party talks (fat chance), he has been rebuffed by Putin when he attempted to set up better relations with Russia, he has not been able to put a halt to Iranian nuclear enrichment, he has allowed Chavez of Venezuela to build up connections with Iran. And so it goes.

His failure to pursue American interests, his inability to proclaim American exceptionalism, his belief that we are a nation in decline which must be gently guided down the path of senility--all these have disappointed me and so many others. But these failures are eclipsed by his domestic disasters, which I'll try to cover next time. We need a change in 2012.

Another blow to the global warming crowd

If you've read my blogs over time, you know I occasionally take on the global warming fanatics. It all started when I read State of Fear, a book by Michael Crichton in which he challenged the hysterical pronouncements of Al Gore and others like him. My belief is that there may be global warming, but it probably isn't the fault of the human race and there is little we can do about it even if it is our fault, short of going back to living in caves. It always struck me that the global warming proponents wanted the U. S. to become another third-world entity, run by those who knew best. And guess who that would be.


Over the weekend I read something featured on Drudge Report that confirmed my suspicions. Did you see it? The title was "NASA Blows Gaping Holes in the Global Warming Hypothesis." Here's a brief explanation of what NASA has discovered.


Keep in mind that the alarmists always use scientific findings to "prove" their shrill pronouncements. Never mind that these evidences, when examined closely, turn out to be bogus or inaccurate. Remember Climategate?


Well, science has turned against them. In the journal Remote Sensing, research scientists at the University of Alabama (UA) in Huntsville have suggested that global warming is not occuring at the rapid rate shown by model-based forecasts. Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the UA’s Earth System Science Center, and his colleague Dr. Danny Braswell claim data from NASA’s Terra satellite shows that when the climate warms, Earth’s atmosphere is apparently more efficient at releasing energy to space than models used to forecast climate change have been programmed to “believe."


So, here's the bottom line: NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted.


What about the future, so filled with dire warnings, according to the patron saint of global warming, Al Gore? The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed. In addition, the NASA satellite data show the atmosphere begins shedding heat into space long before United Nations computer models predicted.


Applied to long-term climate change, the research might indicate that the climate is less sensitive to warming due to increased carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere than climate modellers have theorized. A major underpinning of global warming theory is that the slight warming caused by enhanced greenhouse gases should change cloud cover in ways that cause additional warming, which would be a positive feedback cycle. Apparently, this is not happening.


Since this new data comes from NASA, people will have to treat it seriously. If we avoid a headlong rush to embrace all the restrictions urged by the alarmists, maybe we can avoid ruining our economy and sending us all back to the 17th century.