Today's Main Matter

I apologize for running a bit behind on my blog postings, as I am preparing for today's enormous opportunity.  I am getting myself ready for an encounter, on the air, with my atheist counterpart, Jim Corbett this very afternoon.  The two of us will field questions from people who call into the radio program, "Sound Living."  The theme for the hour will be, "Does God Exist: Where Do the Facts of Science and History, and the Insights of Human Experience Point?"

We will be on KSER Radio (Independent Public Broadcasting) FM 90.7, today, Friday January 25, from 4 to 5 pm.  The program also streams live on the internet.  I invite you to listen in.

Answers to Young-Earth Charges

Once critics of the old-earth position move away from the analysis of the text of Genesis and turn their attention to the scientific claims of secularism, the primary challenges they pose turn out to number four.  First, they charge that the secular view of the cosmos is based on assumptions rather than on factual scientific evidence.   Their second charge is that the advancement of Big Bang cosmology is motivated by atheism. They thirdly charge that a so-called big bang indicates the non-existence of God, thereby supporting atheism in opposition to the biblical belief that God is creator (Genesis 1:1).  The fourth charge is that belief in Big Bang cosmology is the equivalent to belief in Darwinian evolution.

The first challenge is demonstrably false.  A review of my blogs alone will show that Big Bang cosmology is not based on abstractions, but on actual observations of the history of the expansion of the universe.  Images detected through the wide array of radio and optical telescopes give visual view of this history.  Mathematical measurements pertaining to distances and the speed of stellar objects are subject to relentless testing of a kind that becomes increasingly refined over time.  As a result of these studies the scientific community has arrived at virtual certainty that the universe began and continues to expand from out of a Big Bang beginning.  With respect to the age of the universe, the assumptions all lie on exactly the opposite (young-earth) side of the debate.  Cosmologist acknowledge no data whatsoever (because no such data exists) that would indicate the universe is young.  It is instead the young-earth position that is grounded entirely on assumptions (all of which are tied to their interpretation of the Bible).  It should be added, in light of the challenges of the hard scientific data, that “young-earthers” (I never intend this term as an insult) are effectively approving the notion that God’s creative activity willfully contradicts the testimony of nature.  Yet if such testimony is finally determined not to be a correct indicator of God’s power (contrary to Romans 1:18f), then on what grounds are people ultimately to be judged from nature for not believing in Him (Romans 1:18)?

As for the second and third challenges, it should firstly be stated that the notion of an absolute beginning of the universe out of nothing (Hawking’s “zero-volume” singularity) logically demands a transcendent and personal Creator of all things who exists outside the cosmos.  There is no rational way to argue that the Big Bang supports atheism.  Nothingness, after all, allows not even the possibility of a natural cause of the universe.  Now, young-earthers may be troubled by the notion that the cosmos is billions of years old.  But it is actually atheism that is discredited by the fact that the universe had a beginning at all.  Histories on the development of Big Bang cosmology reveal that Albert Einstein initially resisted the Big Bang on the grounds that it threatened his earlier assumption that the universe was eternal.  It was only after he became convinced of the Big Bang that he renounced atheism and came to believe in God.  Significantly, as I have earlier noted, famous out-spoken atheist Antony Flew also came to renounce his atheism, in part, from conceding the reality of the Big Bang.

As for the third challenge, young earthers give the strong impression from their literature that the successful discrediting of Darwinism logically undermines the notion that the earth (and cosmos) is old.  Yet the scientific dating of the cosmos has nothing at all to do with Darwinian evolution.  The age of the universe is calculated by the distance across the cosmos factored by the light travel times.  Fossils are irrelevant to the matter.  As I recently stated, I personally doubt Darwinism on scientific grounds.  Yet I still find the standard dating of the earth at 4.6 billion years to be inescapable in light of a whole host of scientific facts.  While young-earthers happen to find this amount of time to be in conflict with their interpretation of Genesis, that number is in reality far more threatening to the Darwinian position.  Francis Crick considered this time-frame to be so tiny in comparison to the actual requirements for the origin of the first life on earth (by his reckoning), he posed the theory (“directed panspermia”) that the first (primitive) life to appear on earth must instead have been transported across space from another planet.  Such a proposal as his represents a tacit admission of the utter bankruptcy of Darwinism in light of the Big Bang timeframe.

For further study of these matters I urge your own exploration of www.reasons.org

Am I Fighting an Unnecessary Battle?

In my last blog I well-nigh promised I would address the theological contradictions that follow from the young-earth position on creation.  But I have the uneasy feeling that my motives for the present agenda may be perceived as harmful to the Christian cause and counter-productive to the call for Christian unity.  For these reasons I post-pone the promised theme until next time.  It is important now to clarify my goals in making the present distinctions about the age of the earth.  Is my challenge to the young-earth position reflective of a spirit of intolerance on my part?  Am I intent on dividing the Church of Christ?  The fact is, I do not challenge the sincerity of young-earth Christians in their love for Christ and the Holy Scriptures.  And I do not question their status as Children of God in Jesus Christ.  At bottom the reason I am pursuing the present challenge is because of my desire to advance the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I seek both the salvation of the souls of individuals and the reformation of our culture under the Lordship of the Triune God (2 Corinthians 10:5).  So I humbly lay out the reasons that ground my motives.

First of all, the authority of the Bible is at stake over where Christians fall on the age of the earth.  Of course young-earth Christians will vigorously disagree with my perspective on this matter.  But at the very least, turning the key to resolving this divide must involve the careful study of what the Bible itself actually says.  Each side of this divide is telling our world a different story.  Each side must therefore take special care that our own ducks are actually lined up in a row. 

I sincerely wish I could say that the young-earth position is demonstrating the kind of careful study I am advocating.  But as a whole I find the young-earth position is fueled more by theological assumptions than by careful exegetical study of the actual biblical text.  I have often sought serious engagement with holders of their position only to be met with a refusal to even consider a fresh and non-prejudicial second look at Genesis 1.   

In my recent blog dated January 24 I laid out the extensive case, on the basis of the first chapters of Genesis, why the author (Moses) cannot have intended literal 24-hour days.  If my position is wrong, then I am misrepresenting the Holy Scriptures to our world.  On the other hand, if my position is indeed correct, then it is young-earth creationists who are misrepresenting the Bible to our world.  Countless people today dismiss the Bible out-of-hand because they find it impossible to reconcile a young earth with the demonstrated age of the universe in terms of billions of years.  Yet it is not only the world “out there” that is being lost.  We are also losing our own children within the Church who, in their intellectual development, are being forced into the choice of either faith in God or trust in the legitimacy of the scientific exploration of the world we believe God has made.   For this reason we must be extremely careful that we are faithfully representing God’s revealed Word and not insisting on a view of nature that God has never imposed.

Yet the stakes in this question involve not only the potential misrepresentation of the Bible.  They also potentially nullify the most powerful empirical (accessible to the senses) case of all for the existence of God.  In my previous blogs I have begun to write of the powerful and extensive case for the existence of God in the Big Bang.  Young-earth creationists effectively (rather, ineffectively) demand that people ignore the witness of nature, namely, that the universe had an absolute beginning out of nothing, in favor of their young-earth paradigm which has absolutely no facts to support it.  In their rebuttal young-earth creationists will appeal to the shortfalls of Darwinism as proof that the world is young.  I happen to share many (not all) of their objections to Darwinism.  But at bottom, the undermining of Darwinism is entirely irrelevant to the question of the age of the universe.  The two matters are not logically related.

I cited Romans 1:18-20 in my previous blog.  Contrary to the inclinations of young-earth creationists, the Bible does not demand that people turn away from either reason or the rigorous study of the natural world.  To the contrary, it calls all people to think even more clearly, just exactly where the powerful testimony of nature that is right in front of every face, actually points.  And that is in the direction of the Maker of heaven and earth.

Does the Bible Dismiss or Diminish the Testimony of Nature?

There are several examples in history that are especially glaring where certain Christians usurped the authority of science in the name of protecting their own peculiar interpretation of the Bible.  The treatment of Galileo stands as the most infamous example of such abuse by Christians, while the inquisitions, for similar reasons, brought far more intense suffering to far more people.  While today’s blog is primarily concerned with the errors of Christians, I hasten to add that this inclination toward the self-protection of a given pet idea is not singly a Christian problem, or even a religious one.  It is a human problem that is sourced in the dark reality of sin.  Sin, which has been identified as “the great ‘I’  disease” (as in “Me, Myself, and I”), tends to identify truth according to our own self-serving purposes.  The very principles of the scientific method are set into place for the purpose of withstanding this very tendency, in the face of temptation for research grants, tenure, general reputation, the wish for a certain outcome, or for the almighty dollar, when scientists are doing their research (consider the premise of my enduringly favorite movie, “The Fugitive”).  The goal of working toward objectivity must begin with the personal self-recognition that we are all sinners.  The denial of the reality of our sin has led to the most horrific consequences.  Most tragically for example, it has been atheistic governments of the last hundred years (who by definition dismiss the judgment of any standard above them) that murdered over 100 million of their very own people who were perceived to threaten the will of the state.  And we might add that the Soviet state in particular, in their nationalistic attempt to defend the Darwinian foundations of totalitarianism, insisted that universities and scientific laboratories embrace Ernst Haeckel’s false and utterly repudiated “recapitulation theory.”

With respect to the relation between the scientific view of the natural history of the world on the one hand, and the text of the first chapter of Genesis on the other, certain Christians seek to maintain their interpretation of the creation days as 24-hour periods by casting doubt on the testimony of nature as received through the scientific method.  To the extent that the findings of science are perceived to conflict with their young-earth, 24-hour-day, interpretation, they dismiss the scientific view out of hand.  Their reasons are numerous.  In my next blog I will address both the logical and the theological challenges to their dismissive posture.  Today I wish to consider the more fundamental question, is it true that the Bible itself urges a dismissive attitude toward the testimony of nature?  Does the Bible ask of faith that it pit belief in God Almighty against science and reason?

I find no biblical warrant whatsoever for, in the name of faith, doubting or resisting the testimony of nature.  Notice that the condition I just highlighted is “in the name of faith.”  There are scientific reasons why scientific research is never content with the present state of knowledge.  There will in this respect always be certain falsehoods to be corrected and more to learn.  But as for the Bible, we are given full permission to receive the testimony of nature as a correct witness of God’s handiwork.  Notice this invitation in the one place in the Bible where this question of nature and faith is most explicitly addressed:

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth.  For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them.  Ever since the creation of the world His invisible nature, namely, His eternal power and deity has been clearly perceived in the things He has made.  So they are without excuse.”  (The Apostle Paul in Romans 1:18f).  As I state in my essay, “The Biblical Demand to Take Another Look,”

Nature testifies to the existence of a Creator, and humans are held accountable (v. 18, 20) for the conclusions drawn about God from nature.

Nature is not deceptive, but tells the truth about God’s power (v.18,19).

The suggestion that nature is unreliable testimony diminishes human culpability (“so they are without excuse”) for its disbelief in God (v.20).  Notice the five sets of words in the above quotation that are highlighted in boldface.

The refusal to test the claims of Scripture against the reality of nature is not biblical.

 

What Does the Bible Actually Say About the Days of Genesis One?

The primary criticism leveled against “day-age” interpreters of the creation periods of Genesis one, is that we are compromising with the current atheistic fad of Darwinian theory.  My previous blogs have lain out a host of reasons why this criticism is not valid.  So I believe it is time to turn the question of interpretation back onto the young-earth (24-hour-creation-day) creationist camp to reconcile their interpretation of the creation days with the actual text of the Bible.  The fundamental question therefore is, what does the Bible actually say?

As a day-age creationist myself, I do agree with my detractors on five counts.  First, I too believe the heavens and the earth were created out of nothing by God.  Second, I agree that God the Creator is intelligent and all-powerful, and that He can create any way He so wishes.  Third, I too believe that God did not create the universe in its present form in an instant, but used the duration of time to complete His creative activity.  Even young-earth creationists believe God did His work in six days.  Fourth, I too do not believe in Darwinism; neither do I embrace theistic evolution.  Fifth, I agree with 24-hour-day creationists that the Bible is God’s inerrant and revealed word, including the text of Genesis 1.  So when I challenge the young-earth (24-hour-creation-day) view of Genesis, I am NOT criticizing the Bible.  I am instead reverently upholding it.  And I am calling them to accountability to the very Scriptures we together believe in.

In spite of their laudable motives to defend the Bible, the young-earth interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis fundamentally contradicts what the passage in question actually conveys.  Consider the following challenges to their 24-hour-day position:

Genesis 1:1 states that on the first creation day “God created the heavens and the earth.”  Not only does this passage include the heavens as well as the earth, but by naming it first, verse 1 gives priority to the heavens over the earth.  Genesis 1:1 is part of the first creation day, and not a heading like the title of a chapter in a book.  We know this both because verse 2 begins with the word “and,” and also because it assumes the earth is already in existence.  If 1:1 had actually been a heading, there would indeed be no reference within the narrative that follows, to the actual creation of either the heavens or the earth. 

The appearance of the “two lights” later on day four is not conveyed by the Hebrew word," bara,” which means created by God (implying out of nothing, as in 1:1).  It is instead conveyed by weaker words that suggest the sun and moon, already existent from Day One, finally became visible from the surface when the dark gaseous atmosphere finally cleared.  This interpretation reconciles Day Four with the opening declaration of Day One.  The notion that the two lights were created on Day Four is irreconcilable with the declaration of 1:1. 

If the sun was not in existence on day 1, as young-earth-creationists argue, then it is meaningless for the text to apply the term “day” to any of the first four creation days in a literal sense. The primary definition of a 24-hour cycle is one complete rotation of the earth with respect to the sun.  No Sun, no rotation, and no “day” by normal definitions. 

The repeated stanza, “…and there was evening and there was morning,” is not an indicator of 24-hour days.  For one thing it cannot function as a kind of bracket that encloses both ends of a day.  The grammar doesn’t allow it.  And while a Hebrew day does begin at evening, it does not close at morning.  Neither does morning continue until the evening.  Hebrew days to the contrary are always measured from evening to evening (Leviticus 23:32).  And although the Bible occasionally uses phrases such as “from morning to evening” to express duration, it does not use the “evening and morning” phrase as a means to express a normal 24-hour day. 

The meaning of day (yom in Hebrew) in the Biblical languages covered an array of ideas, much as “day” is used in modern English.  But Biblical Hebrew had a far, far, smaller vocabulary than does modern English.  Therefore even more so, the words used in the Old Testament had to cover a large range of meanings from daylight, to a literal day, to an era or an aeon. 

The very first usage of the word yom, in Genesis 1:5, applied to the period of daylight hours only, not a 24 hour day. 

The creation days, almost without exception, lacked the accompanying definite article, “the.”  Words without such an article are understood to be indefinite.  However, the seventh day is accompanied with a definite article, even though that day is never brought to a close. 

On Day Three the entire life-cycles of trees in 1:11,12, from germination out of the ground all the way to the bearing of fruit, suggests this day was longer than 24 hours long. 

The extensive list of activities accomplished by Adam over a given passage of time (1:27 and ch. 2) on Day Six, suggest it was not 24 hours duration. 

In the single verse at the close of the creation narrative, Genesis 2:4, the duration of creation is described both in terms of “generations,” (2:4a) and as all having happened on one day (2:4b).

For a much fuller treatment of these matters in a manner that is thoroughly documented, please write to me for a copy of my essay, “The Biblical Demand to Take Another Look: Ten Compelling Exegetical Reasons the Days of Creation are Non-24-Hour.”

 

Bear No Burden that Doesn't Belong to You

“The fool says in her heart “There is no God.” -- Psalm 14:1

Several brute facts demand an explanation.  First, our universe, all matter and energy, space and time, came into existence out of absolute nothingness in the Big Bang.  Where could this all possibly have come from?  The second fact is that the Big Bang was not a chaotic beginning, but an extremely finely-tuned one.  That our cosmos continues existing to this very day, and that we earthlings are here to observe and comment on it, is an extremely improbable reality.  The natural odds are that this explosion should have either very quickly collapsed back onto itself in utter, useless, chaos, or dissipated so completely that there would be no matter at all.  Yet the fact of the matter is, the degree of precision required for our habitable universe (where humans are able to live) did indeed prevail.  We are speaking of a high level of precision across a whole range of parameters.  Some have illustrated this reality through the analogy of an electronic control box containing numerous dials on its face.  Every dial is required to be precisely set in order to achieve its expected goal.  Even one miss-set knob will nullify the entire necessary outcome.  On an imaginary box called “Make a Universe,” the analogy continues, are numerous dials variously labeled, “correct total mass,” “rate of expansion,” “strength of the strong nuclear force (inside the atom),” “strength of the weak nuclear force (inside the atom),” “electro-magnetic strength,” “strength of gravity,” “speed of light,” and so-on and so-on.  Should any one of these dials have been set different than they actually were, by even the slightest amount, we would not be here doing what we do today.  And I have only begun to unpack the extremely complex reality of the creation of the universe.  It should also be noted that nothing I have said so far is controversial within the scientific community.  The data is all observable, measurable, and almost unanimously agreed upon.  This is not speculation, but the conclusion of repeated (indeed repeatable) public scientific analysis.

When Christians who pay attention to these matters consider the facts, we judge that they lead to but one conclusion.  The brute facts of cosmology point to the existence of the God of the Bible.  Psalm 19:1 states, and rightly so, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament proclaims His handiwork.”  Now to our belief in “God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,” skeptics will typically reply with the following rejoinders: “Prove the existence of your silly god!  You can’t!  We decry your superstitious beliefs in a non-existent god, and will, for our part, take the intellectual high road of science and reason instead.”  Their working premise, whether stated outright or not, is that belief in a supernatural creator is superstition, while narrowing one’s focus to scientific facts alone is the mark of a rational thinker.  Now in actual fact, Christianity has no issue whatsoever with either facts or reason.  Christian faith never pits itself against either of these.  Nevertheless the public perception is that belief in God loses the debate under the bar of science and reason.

This is no time for Christians to be on the defense on these matters.  Our proper response is to turn their challenges right back onto them.  The facts of science, simply put, say that the universe began out of nothing, and that it did so with the kind of precision that mindless nature could never muster.  That demands an explanation, including from them.  It is not rationally valid for “skeptics,” as they so call themselves, to resist faith in God until Christians provide proof.  At the present moment they too are exercising faith in a position that is currently utterly without foundation.  The burden is on them, not us, to account for the above truths.  

Interestingly, Antony Flew, one-time leader and spokesman for atheism, earlier in his life published an essay titled “The Presumption of Atheism.” He there argued that the burden of proof is rightly shouldered on the believer in God.  However, about a decade ago Dr. Flew changed his mind, renounced his atheism, and came to believe in God.  In his recent autobiography titled, “There Is a God,” in which he described the intellectual details of his conversion, he wrote that the two most influential factors leading to his new position included intelligent design and Big Bang cosmology.  As for the latter, Flew stated that the reality Big Bang beginning of the universe has now overthrown the premise of his earlier essay, and that the burden of proof is no longer on the believer in God, but the atheist.               

Still Not Enough Planets, part II

The list continues from my previous blog of those physical requirements that allow a planet to be habitable for intelligent life:

To shield harmful radiation from the Galaxy core, our sun must be shielded from the core by gas clouds.

The sun must be neither too close to the core and its harmful radiation…

...nor too far from the core, which would prevent the reception of radiation that is necessary for life’s existence.

Our sun must lie outside the galaxy arms, though not too far from them.

Our sun must orbit the galaxy core at the same rate as both the neighboring arms and stars so that collisions will be avoided.

It must not lie above (or below) the orbital plane in such a way that radiation from the galaxy core would hit it directly (much like getting hit by a squirt gun while stealing a peak over the top of your friend’s fence).

For gravitational stability purposes our sun must be a single star.  80% of known stars exist as doubles in gravitational relationship with either other.

It is required that we be neither too far from, nor too close to, (the variation allowable within just a few percentage points).

It is necessary that our planet have very close to a 365 day rotation cycle.

For stability purposes it is necessary that there are neighboring planets revolving around our sun in the same plane as our own planet.

For our protection from harmful debris we need a “Jupiter” kind of planet of such a size that its gravitational power draws harmful asteroids and meteors away from us and into its own sphere.

For both our stability as a planet and for our tidal cycle, we need our moon to be just the size it is and revolving around our planet at its current duration.

For gravitational reasons, our moon must remain at its current distance from the earth.

For the proper flow of the seasons we need our rotational tilt as a planet to be just what it is, even as it must remain at the speed that it is.

For gravitational reasons our planet must be just the size it actually is, so that it allows water vapor (molecular weight 18) while allowing methane (16) and ammonia (17) to dissipate.

It is necessary that a habitable planet have a radioactive core which produces necessary minerals underground…

...and plate tectonics for the creation both of continents and mountains…

and also earthquakes for the continual recycling of necessary minerals below ground back up onto the surface of the earth.  Apart from plate tectonics a planet is uninhabitable for life.

A magnetic core is required that produces a shield capable of protecting earth from the sun’s harmful radiation.

We have just begun to scratch the surface of the matter.  The point is, the existence of a planet that is capable of being a wonderful home for intelligent life is a matter greater than throwing a couple of factors together.  The scientific community has gathered a total of at least 75 separate requirements for life to exist anywhere in the universe.  The odds in favor of the occurrence of nearly every one of these is very small since they lie within an extremely narrow range of acceptable limits.  The estimated odds for each and every factor (ponder this on your own) all multiply on every one of the other factors.  Astronomer Dr. Hugh Ross has noted that when all of these realities are factored together the result is “Much less than one chance in a hundred thousand, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, exists that even one such planet would occur anywhere in the universe.”  For your consideration I encourage you to check out his website, “Reasons to Believe,” at www.reaasons.org.

Still Not Enough Planets

For the record I do not believe the Bible is decisive about the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe.  Therefore I express no commitment to a personal position on this matter.  God may have His reasons for creating life elsewhere.  And if He has, it may well be outside of His purposes for humans to know anything about it.  He certainly has created other intelligent beings who we call angels.  But of their creation we know almost nothing.  Where I will make a bold commitment, however, is to state that the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe rests completely on the purposive and creative will of the everlasting God of the Holy Bible.  If, and only if, God wills it to be, is the existence of life a possibility anywhere in the universe, including right here on planet Earth.   

The recent discovery of seventeen billion earth-size planets in our own galaxy, according to an Associated Press article appearing in the Everett Herald on January 8, sounds at first so very impressive as to demolish my skeptical position on the possibility of life in outer space.  Especially considering the fact that there are conservatively well over 100 billion galaxies that have existed for almost 13 billion years!

Yet in the final analysis these numbers are woefully inadequate to the task of yielding life by purely naturalistic means.  While the newspaper article concedes that not all planets are “potentially habitable,” it does declare that “the sheer number of earth-sized planets is a welcome starting point in the search for worlds like our own.”  But this amounts to a gross overstatement.  The number of factors that are now understood by the scientific community as a whole to be required in order for advanced life to be viable is becoming increasingly large.  Consider the following partial list of the requirements:

Only 3^rd generation stars, which are aftermath of the explosions of previous generations of stars, are capable of producing “rocky,” that is, solid planets.

Elliptical or irregular galaxies do not produce 3^rd generation stars.  Only spiral galaxies (just 6% of the total galaxies), yield stars capable of producing “rocky” planets.

Spiral galaxies must be nearly symmetrical, unlike a bicycle tire overrun by a car.

Only 2% of 3^rd generation stars produce the sufficient list of elements for the existence of life.

That array must include carbon as the basis for life, plus almost the whole range of naturally occurring elements which our periodic table documents.  Uniquely, our own sun is the after-product of two nearly simultaneous explosions of neighboring supernovas.

For stability purposes alone, the parent star of a life-friendly planet must be just the right size.  Either a little too large or too little and that sun will be too erratic to initiate and maintain advanced life.  Our own sun is the most stable star astronomers have detected.

For the same reason as above, the parent star must be just the right age.

To be continued...

 

Why “Nothing Means Nothing” Means God Almighty (and nothing less)

In the Big Bang everything, all matter, energy, space, and time, came into existence out of nothing.  I am assuming as I write this that readers have perused previous postings where I lay out the evidence supporting this assertion.  I consider that standard definitions are the necessary rule for rational discussion.  By “everything” I mean literally everything that exists, and by “nothing” I mean literal “nothingness,” that is, “nothing what-so-ever.”  Nothingness is an extremely rare commodity.  Indeed nothingness as a commodity (as opposed to an abstract idea) has never, ever, existed except before the beginning of the universe out of nothing.  In fact it is not even linguistically valid to speak of the existence of such nothingness since “nothing,” by definition means “non-existence.”

Quantum particles are not nothing.  The Higgs bosen is not nothing.  Anti-matter is not nothing (it is instead negatively-charged particles opposite positive ones).  Gravity is not nothing and neither are gravitational fields.  And a vacuum emphatically isn't nothing either since it requires both real boundaries and a field.  These are all EXISTENT entities that require someone (or something) else to account for their respective existences.  Famous names in the scientific arena, Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss, to name the most noted ones, have appealed to one or more of the above list of factors as the cause for the existence of the universe.  But in doing so they are mistakenly appealing to already existing entities in order to account for the existence of anything period.  Every such attempt involves the commission of fundamental categorical philosophical errors.  I recommend to you John Lennox’ book, God and Stephen Hawking (Lion Hudson, 2011,) which is an excellent scholarly rebuttal of Hawking’s fallacious assertions.  Lennox, a professor of both mathematics and the philosophy of science at Oxford University, and also a Christian, has debated a number of leading atheists on these matters. 

To expand on what I stated in my very first sentence above, before the Big Bang there was no matter at all to work with.  Neither was there any energy that could be put to work.  Neither was there any space (arena or field) in which a work could have happened.  Nor was there any time whatsoever prior to the Big Bang in which any chain of events could have taken place.  My atheist, debate counter-part stated in our debate on the existence of God this last December 10, that it is more rational to admit we simply don’t know how the universe came into existence out of nothing than it is to appeal to a so-called “god” to account for our universe.  I emphatically disagree.  Apart from the existence of the four categories I just mentioned, there is no potentiality for science to account for our beginning, even in principle.

It is irrational to believe a universe which came to be, did so out of absolute nothingness.  Since that “nothingness,” however, cannot be denied, it is reasonable, and I argue is rationally required, to believe, as the Bible declares, that the everlasting, almighty, and intelligent God brought all things into existence from outside this cosmos by the power of His own word (Hebrews 11:3).   

Cosmology For Everybody

“Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these?”   (Isaiah 40:26a)

When I looked into the mirror yesterday morning I was more horrified than usual by my appearance.  Not only had my face gathered several days of stubble.  My hair length which I had thought the day before was acceptable, I now judged to be out of control.  A pastor must have standards!  Though I was awkwardly hobbling about the house on crutches following my recent foot surgery, I determined to make my way out to our car and drive to my hair stylist to get the needed haircut.  Well I made it, safely.  As always she did a great job!  Indeed my hair stylist is so skilled working with the mop on the top of my head, she is recognized in her vocation as a trained cosmetologist.

Have you wondered why the technical term for a hairdresser, “cosmetologist,” is similar to the term for a scientist who studies stars and galaxies, namely a “cosmologist?”  The reason is because both terms are derived from the ancient Greek word, “cosmos,” which means “an orderly arrangement.”  Now people from across all ages and cultures have appreciated beauty, whether in the natural order or in human beings who go to certain lengths to manage and beautify themselves.  A survey of ancient Greek art (consider the Venus de Milo) shows that their civilization was especially renowned for their consideration of beauty.  And they recognized that the order they perceived looking up into in the heavens was somehow related to the sight of a “heavenly body” (human figure) right here on the ground.  The opposite word for “cosmos” is “chaos.”  And the Greeks knew that when they whether looking upward to the heavens or outward (to the human form), they were not seeing chaos, but intentional orderly arrangements.

The interest of ancient peoples in the heavens involved more than the appreciation of its beauty.  In order to journey outside of one’s homeland, a traveler depended on the arrangement of a starry night since, without the consistent arrangement of the thousands of points of light above, there was no way to fix (or even devise) the compass points.   Consequently, absent landmarks, there would have been no means for a traveler to maintain a constant direction over great distances.  Fred Hoyle wrote in his book, Astronomy: A History of Man's Investigation of the Universe. ((Crescent, 1962), p.10f) that the very study of the natural order (scientific investigation across the disciplines) had its beginning with the study of the movements of the stars above.  It appears a fair statement that had there been no “cosmos” to ponder above (Hoyle has readers imagine a world perpetually wrapped in clouds), there would have been too little foundation for any scientific investigation to gain a foot hold. 

Most importantly, this sense of an “orderly arrangement” is not imaginary.  The progress of scientific study increasingly clarifies the truth that nature is not chaos, but a realm of profound order.  Einstein put it this way, “the harmony of natural law…reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection” (Albert Einstein. Ideas and Opinions - The World As I See it. (Bonanza, 1974), p.1994).  Stephen Hawking similarly states, “If the universe is governed by natural laws, which I believe it is, these shouldn’t be arbitrary patchwork, but should fit together into some unified framework” (Stephen Hawking. A Brief History of Time. (Bantam, 1988), p.125). 

References to such noted scientists is not intended to diminish the reflections of the rest of us,  It is to instead encourage our own reflective thinking with the confidence that there is an arranger of all things who is God Almighty, the Creator of the heavens and Earth who has revealed His handiwork in the things that He has made (Psalm 19).

Beginning Before Bethlehem

As a believing Christian, Christmas is my favorite season of the year.  No other occasion on the calendar so inspires my imagination.  I love the lofty themes set forth in John chapter 1, that the Creator of all things (v.1-3) came to earth as a human being (v.14) for the purpose of our salvation (v.29).  While God’s ultimate mission (Luke 19:10) in Jesus Christ was completed later at Golgotha (John 19:30), it began with the incarnation (“enfleshment”) of God the Son (Philippians 2:5-11).

By faith I accept the Christmas narrative according to Luke (2:1-20) as a true description of events that happened in history.  I believe Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and was born of a virgin named Mary, and that she with her betrothed (Joseph) left their hometown of Nazareth in Galilee and went to Bethlehem in Judea in order to fulfill a taxation decree under Caesar Augustus.  And I believe she gave birth to Jesus in a stable “because there was no room for them in the inn.”

Christmas, however, is more than a story.  It is also an expression of the character of God Almighty.  It answers the age-old question of what “god” (or “the gods”) is like.  Is He hostile toward humanity?  Is He indifferent toward us?  Is He righteous or is He just as full of folly as the gods of the Roman pantheon?  Is He holy? And if so, must this mean our doom?  No single passage in the Bible will ever answer all of our questions about God’s nature.  But the first chapter of John does make clear that the God who stretched out the heavens at the beginning of time, in the fullness of time came for our salvation in Jesus Christ (His name literally means “God to the Rescue!”).  Furthermore, in the present time He invites all people to come to Him in faith and without fear (Matthew 11:28, 29).

This is why the Christmas story according to the Bible does not begin at Bethlehem.  Neither does it begin back in Nazareth (Luke 1:26-38).  It begins in heaven with the character of God who, in love, sent His Son into the world in order to bring us salvation from our sin (Romans 5:8).

When I debated on the question, “Does God Exist?” this past December 10, my atheist challenger asked me before the audience why God couldn’t just wipe our sin out of the picture by the wave of his hand!  My reply, that our sin is more serious than we think, did not persuade him.  In retrospect I regret that tactic.  I should have instead argued the point that God, in fact, did send His Son into the world for the very purpose of our rescue.  The historical case for Jesus Christ is enormously powerful, as I have begun to convey in recent blogs.  For the purpose of clarifying the range of evidence in support of the New Testament portrait of Him I encourage you to request a copy of the following two of my essays:  1) "The Prints are Everywhere: The Convergence of Science, History, and Experience, with Biblical Revelation,”  and 2) ”Hoax? Myth? Or Literally True?  The Evidence for Jesus’ Bodily Resurrection.”

For me the claims of the New Testament about Jesus of Nazareth are long ago settled.  What I most wish to convey today is the power of this long-told story to transform your life, as it has my own, in the knowledge of God’s love for the entire world.  And that includes you!