The Failure of Dr. Peter Atkins to Back Up His Claim that “God
Isn’t Necessary”
In Dr. Peter Atkins’ separate
debates with Drs. William Lane Craig and Hugh Ross, he conceded that he cannot
actually "prove" the non-existence
of God. Instead he proclaimed that no god
of any conception is needed to account for the existence of the
cosmos. Yet in so doing, Atkins, the self-acclaimed
guardian of scientism ineptly exposed his own vulnerability
to refutation by means of the very same intellectual foundation that he claims
to champion in his relentless disparagement of "religion."
Empirical evidence, which by definition pertains to data that is perceivable, measurable, testable, and reviewable, convincingly indi-cates that the physical cosmos came into existence out of a “zero… volume beginning." Renowned physicist Dr. Paul Davies writes, "If we extrapolate [backwards into the past in regard to the ongoing expanding of the cosmos] we reach a point when all distances…have shrunk to zero…For this reason cosmologists think of the initial singularity as the beginning of the universe.” Furthermore he says, "On this view the Big Bang (BB) represents the creation event…not only of all matter and energy in the universe, but also space and time itself." Indeed, other leading physicists have further tightened the certitude of the beginning of the universe out of nothing. Even conjectures that prior to the BB, other “powers” caused it, lack valid rational backing since, prior to the BB no data at all is accessible to anyone.
This body of facts in and of itself
renders the notion of an atheistically-caused beginning of the universe to be conceptually impossible. The
grounds for this stricture is framed solely by scientific limitations that are distinct from religious dogma. For example, in order for given events to
qualify as scientific they must necessarily
entail (1) physical entities that interact with each other (2) by forces that propel (or impel) them (3)
within spatial regions (4) over a duration of time. All of these factors were nonexistent prior to the zero-volume
beginning that kicked off the creation of the cosmos. In light of this privation of the four
factors prior to that beginning instant, there was simply no conceptual
aspect of existence to draw on through which any scientific event could conceivably have occurred. Consequently, the causer of the events that
followed after the BB moment must have had a super-natural
existence.
Yet having begun this paper with a focus on the impossibility of a materialist account for existence, I will now lay out a positive case for the BB creation of the cosmos...
You may continue this article of the same title which also includes a visual illustration of the BB plus my footnotes at my website: www.christianityontheoffense. com/articles
