Moral Relativism and God

Many people I speak with believe that morals are relative.  That is, that what's right and wrong varies depending on the person, culture, or situation.  What may be right for you in your situation may not be right for me in mine, or vice-versa.  This is such a common viewpoint that the preponderance of people that say they believe it may make one think that it's actually true.  After all, so many people can't be wrong about that, can they?

I would like to suggest that virtually nobody is a pure relativist.  Here's how we know this:  everyone says things like, "You shouldn't do that", or "He's wrong for saying that."  Even the most adamant moral relativist utters statements like this from time to time.  Often those statements are in the direction of Christians or other religious people - "He shouldn't be so judgmental!"  Moral relativists are often the first people in line to criticize moral objectivists.

But how can a moral relativist be critical of moral objectivists?  How can a person who claims to believe in moral relativism criticize someone else's morals?  It happens all the time.  It shows that such a person truly isn't a moral relativist, and here's why.  In order for Jack to criticize Bob, there needs to be a standard of morals that exists by which both Jack and Bob are bound.  If morals are truly relative, then all Jack can say to Bob is, "Well, I wouldn't do that, but if it fits your moral code, then by all means, have at it."  But that's not what Jack says to Bob.  Jack says, "You shouldn't do that."  And the minute he says that, he's pointing to a moral standard that applies to both Jack and Bob.

If Jack believes that there's a moral standard that applies to anyone else, then Jack is no longer a moral relativist.  He's a moral objectivist.

And we see this when it comes to individuals and when it comes to cultures.  It's easy to say that what's right for one culture isn't necessarily right for another, but then we can simply apply the Nazi test.  Were the Nazis justified in the slaughter of six million Jews?  After all, their culture said it was okay.  Or were the Americans justified in their enslavement of millions of Africans?  After all, their culture said it was okay.  Or are cultures today justified in their sex trafficking of minors?  After all, their culture says it is okay.

In all these cases the majority of so-called moral relativists would say that these cultures were/are not justified.  Buy why?  Because there's some larger moral standard at work here that binds all cultures to it.  And the self-proclaimed moral relativist knows it.

So we all believe in objective morality.  It's the only way we can ever say that something is "good" or "right" or "noble" or "wrong" or "evil" or "unjust".  It's the only way to place any sort of value statement on anything.  But what does this have to do with God?

If we all believe in moral objectivity (even though many people incorrectly claim they don't), where does moral objectivity come from?  Can it come from the individual?  No.  No individual can set the moral standard for everyone else.  What about society?  No.  The same principle applies.  Which culture's moral code is the truly "right" one?  We can vote on laws and rules but that doesn't mean that those laws and rules are objectively morally right (or wrong).  True objective morality must originate outside people.

But can it come from amoral nature?  No.  How can objective morality arise from amoral matter?  How can electrons produce genuine, objective "goodness"?  There must be a moral agent that is the source for objective morality, and if it isn't humanity, what is it?  Such a being has to exist independent of the material world.  In order for objective morality to exist, an objective moral lawgiver must exist, independent of the material universe.  Who could such a moral lawgiver be?  Well, like with the two previous posts, this isn't "proof" of God's existence, but it is important evidence suggesting it.

The Existence of Life on Earth: Evidence for God

In my previous post, I talked about how the existence of the universe itself is strong evidence for a Creator that transcends time and space. In this post, we'll look at how the existence of life on earth is also evidence for a Creator. Like in the previous post, I will deal with some science here, but entire volumes could be written (and have been written) on this subject in a much more detailed and technical fashion, so please consider this to be just a basic overview of the material.

Life exists on earth when at one point it did not. The question is: how did it get here? Either life arose by purely materialistic means or it was the product of some creative force. Nobel-prize winning scientist Christian de Duve writes,

"The thesis that the origin of life was highly improbable is demonstrably false. Life did not arise in a single shot. Only a miracle could have done so. If life appeared by way of scientifically explainable events, it must have followed a very long succession of chemical steps leading to the formation of increasingly complex molecular assemblages. Being chemical, those steps must have been strongly deterministic and reproducible, imposed by the physical and chemical conditions under which they took place."

De Duve states the options in a straightforward manner. Either life is deterministic, according to laws of physics and chemistry, or it is the result of a miracle. He offers a test to see which of these two choices is the most likely. If the origin of life is deterministic, then it should be possible to reproduce these steps in a lab, under the conditions supposedly existing at the time of the origin of life. In other words, we ought to be able to create life over and over again, if life began by normal chemical processes. In fact, for more than 60 years, scientists have been trying to solve the puzzle of how life began.

The first real attempt to produce proteins from inorganic matter took place in 1951 when Stanley Miller electronically charged an "atmosphere" consisting of methane, hydrogen, ammonia, and water. This atmosphere, proposed in 1924 by Russian biochemist A.I. Oparin, is called a reducing atmosphere. After a week or experimentation, Miller was pleased to find some amino acids, as well as some other building blocks of proteins, in the bottom of his apparatus. This experiment was hailed as a major break-through, because for the first time, we had been able to synthesize amino acids from inorganic compounds.

Unfortunately, this approach has several problems. The first involves the presupposed reducing atmosphere. Oparin believed that life could not begin naturally in an atmosphere containing free oxygen. As it turns out, he was correct. The chemical reactions necessary to produce amino acids always break down in the presence of free oxygen. If, therefore, free oxygen was present in the early atmosphere, then that would immediately kill the theory. It is curious to note that over the past ten years or so, much doubt has arisen over the validity of Oparin’s reducing atmosphere. Stanley Fox, who succeeded Miller, wrote, "The Urey-Miller experiment yielded amino acids under conditions then believed to be early geological. This belief has not stood the test of time."

The reason is simple. If free oxygen did not exist in the early atmosphere, then no ozone layer would have formed. Without an ozone layer, massive amounts of ultraviolet radiation would have poured down on the earth. Now, an H2O molecule is fairly easily split. The ultraviolet light would have broken that molecule up, creating hydrogen and - you guessed it - a lone, or "free" oxygen atom. John Horgan wrote in the February 1991 Scientific American that, "doubts have grown about …Miller’s assumptions regarding the atmosphere. Laboratory experiments and computerized reconstructions of the atmosphere by James C.G. Walker of the University of Michigan and others suggest that ultraviolet radiation from the sun, which today is blocked by atmospheric ozone, would have destroyed hydrogen-based molecules in the atmosphere. Free hydrogen would have escaped into space." And, Horgan didn’t add, free oxygen would have remained in the atmosphere, thus throwing a monkey wrench into any natural origin of life process. So the reducing atmosphere required for the natural formation of life is highly questionable.

A second problem is that the kind of amino acids formed were insufficient for creating life. There are two types of amino acids, and their difference is subtle but important. Amino acids are three-dimensional molecules that take a particular chemical structure, called chirality. That is, they are arranged in certain three dimensional forms which reflect polarized light in different directions. The two kinds of amino acids are called dextro-rotary and laevo-rotary, or D- and L- type acids. Chemically, there is no difference between the two. The only difference is their three-dimensional configuration, seen only as light is passed through them. Why is this an important difference? It has to do with the connecting together of such acids. Try putting a left-handed glove on your right hand. It doesn’t fit together. Similarly, a D- amino acid does not "fit" with a L- amino acid. They cannot combine effectively. In fact, the introduction of even a single D- amino acid will render all L- amino acids useless.

As it so happens, all life-giving proteins exhibit L- amino acids only. It is unknown as to why there aren’t any D- amino acid chains used in the proteins of life, and for now it is unimportant. What we need to remember is that life employs strictly L- amino acids in forming proteins necessary for life. There is no natural process that would favor one form over another, since there is no difference, chemically speaking, between the two. Chemist A.E. Wilder-Smith wrote, "In order to obtain life-supporting protoplasm and vital proteins, a source of optically pure L- amino acids must be available. Mixtures of L- and D- forms do not provide this satisfactory source. Lightning and chance can, on principle, never produce only pure laevo-rotary forms; They produce racemates only - exactly 50% D- and exactly 50% L- forms - and are therefore unsuitable for life’s proteins."

Until we can discover a way to produce long chains of purely L- amino acids by chance, then there is positively no reason to believe that life arose naturally. There has been some recent research on meteorites that suggests that polarized ultraviolet may lead to favoring one form (L) over the other (D), but that research is hardly conclusive at this point. Reading articles on the subject, we see a lot of equivocal language: This "may" have occurred...it "seems" like...it "could" be the case.... That sort of thing.

The theory that life arose through these amino acids has not advanced very far despite its initial early promises from the Miller-Urey experiment. That has led some researchers to prefer a model whereby nucleic acids came first. DNA is far too complex on its own to have come into existence by the random assemblage of molecules, so scientists prefer an "RNA-world" hypothesis. That, too, has fallen on very hard times, and a recent article in Scientific American by Robert Shapiro has taken this view to task. Here are some quotes of his from that article (found here: Feb 2007 Scientific American):

"Probability calculations could be made, but I prefer a variation on a much-used analogy. Picture a gorilla (very long arms are needed) at an immense keyboard connected to a word processor. The keyboard contains not only the symbols used in English and European languages but also a huge excess drawn from every other known language and all of the symbol sets stored in a typical computer. The chances for the spontaneous assembly of a replicator in the pool I described above can be compared to those of the gorilla composing, in English, a coherent recipe for the preparation of chili con carne. With similar considerations in mind Gerald F. Joyce of the Scripps Research Institute and Leslie Orgel of the Salk Institute concluded that the spontaneous appearance of RNA chains on the lifeless Earth "would have been a near miracle." I would extend this conclusion to all of the proposed RNA substitutes that I mentioned above."

And:

"Nobel Laureate Christian de Duve has called for "a rejection of improbabilities so incommensurably high that they can only be called miracles, phenomena that fall outside the scope of scientific inquiry." DNA, RNA, proteins and other elaborate large molecules must then be set aside as participants in the origin of life. Inanimate nature provides us with a variety of mixtures of small molecules, whose behavior is governed by scientific laws, rather than by human intervention."

And:

"The analogy that comes to mind is that of a golfer, who having played a golf ball through an 18-hole course, then assumed that the ball could also play itself around the course in his absence. He had demonstrated the possibility of the event; it was only necessary to presume that some combination of natural forces (earthquakes, winds, tornadoes and floods, for example) could produce the same result, given enough time. No physical law need be broken for spontaneous RNA formation to happen, but the chances against it are so immense, that the suggestion implies that the non-living world had an innate desire to generate RNA. The majority of origin-of-life scientists who still support the RNA-first theory either accept this concept (implicitly, if not explicitly) or feel that the immensely unfavorable odds were simply overcome by good luck."

Here's the long story short: there have been some exciting advances in biogenesis research. But too often those exciting discoveries have led to a conclusion that is unwarranted - that we have a solution for the problem of the origin of life.  We don't.  And we're not even remotely close.  Again, as in the case with the existence of the universe, this doesn't constitute proof of God's existence, but it is highly suggestive.  The immense complexity and sheer number of things that had to go right under just the precise conditions in order for life to exist are staggering.  Our scientific research should continue.  But when the leading scientists in the field are using analogies like a golfer playing a round of golf and then looking to tell how his round went in purely naturalistic terms, or a gorilla typing out recipes, then it would appear that deDuve's challenge - at least at this point in our research - has been answered.  We do not have reproducible steps by which life arose.  That leaves the miraculous as the best current option.  

The Existence of the Universe: Evidence for God

In 1687 Sir Isaac Newton published the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, in which he laid out the mathematical principles behind how bodies move about in space and time.  He also developed the laws of gravity, all of which paved the way for the modern era of physics and cosmology.  

Newton’s law of gravity was straightforward:  any two bodies will be attracted to each other.  The greater the mass, the greater the attraction.  An apple falls to the ground not because it must move “down”, but because gravity attracts the two bodies to each other.  Since the earth is far more massive than the apple, it does not move towards the apple; rather, the apple moves towards the earth.  The effect we see is that it “falls” to the earth.

Newton’s law of gravity applies to every single body in the universe, including stars and galaxies.  Newton asked himself why the universe does not collapse in on itself.  After all, every single star should be attracted to each other by gravity.  Why hasn’t this attraction pulled all the stars together?  

Albert Einstein’s equations of general relativity showed that there was an actual beginning to all space, matter, energy, and even time.  His predictions were substantiated in 1929, when Edwin Hubble made the discovery that the universe is indeed expanding. Hubble viewed what is called the “red shift” of stars.  Light is both a wave and a particle.  As a wave, it has a certain frequency, just like sound.  Low frequency light appears to us to be red, while high frequency is blue.  Hubble, by analyzing the electromagnetic spectrum of the light of the stars, determined that the stars’ light were moving from bluish to reddish, indicating a lower frequency.  

Now when a wave exhibits lower and lower frequency, that means that the object causing the wave is moving away (Doppler Effect).  You recognize this whenever a car passes you.  The increase in pitch is nothing more than the increase in frequency of the sound waves as the car gets closer, and the decrease in pitch after the car passes you is the decrease in frequency of the sound waves.  Similarly, when stars move away, the frequency decreases. 

Hubble recognized that the stars all over the universe are moving away from each other (and us) at tremendous speeds.  In 1992, the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) confirmed Hubble’s discovery.  In fact, the universe is expanding, but it is doing so at an ever decreasing rate.  These facts lead us to two inferences.

First, if you trace the expansion back in time, you can easily see that there must have been a point from which the expansion began.  That is, at some point, the universe existed as nothing more than an infinitesimal point (a mathematical point).  A mathematical point, if you recall, has no volume, no surface area - it is literally nothing.  The late astronomer Carl Sagan wrote,

Ten or twenty billion years ago, something happened - the Big Bang, the event that began our universe.  Why it happened is the greatest mystery we know.  That it happened is reasonably clear.  All the matter and energy now in the universe was concentrated at extremely high density - a kind of cosmic egg, reminiscent of the creation myths of many cultures - perhaps into a mathematical point with no dimensions at all.^,

Second, the expansion happened at a much more rapid pace than it does now, since the expansion rate is decreasing presently.  There is one, and only one, phenomenon that exhibits both expansion and deceleration - an explosion.  When a hand grenade explodes, the casing of the grenade expands outward.  By way of contrast, an implosion is when something “expands” inward.  Not only does the grenade casing expand outward, but it does so at an ever decreasing rate.  Initially, the velocity of the shrapnel is very fast, but over time (granted, it is a very small amount of time) the rate decreases.

In other words, from pure nothingness, the universe exploded into existence.  But there is still one more interesting feature about this explosion into existence.  One of the fundamental properties of the universe is that we have one dimension of time.  Time moves inexorably forward.  Yet the Big Bang demonstrates that time once did not exist.  Physicists Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose demonstrated in the early 1970's that the creation of time was in fact one of the consequences of the Big Bang theory.  Now, when it is shown that time itself actually began, that leads to some very interesting conclusions. 

At some point this essay was in your hands.  That means that it once was not in your hands.  In other words, there existed such a situation that this paper simply did not reside in your hands.  Now let us look at that from the perspective of the Big Bang.  If time actually began at the Big Bang, then it once was the case that time itself did not exist.  What are the implications of the non-existence of time?  It means that the creation event that began the universe originated beyond the boundaries of time - that it what theologians call transcendence.  Hawking writes,

Many people do not like the idea that time had a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention (The Catholic Church, on the other hand, seized on the big bang model and in 1951 officially pronounced it to be in accordance with the Bible).  There were therefore a number of attempts to avoid the conclusion that there had been a big bang.

Notice what Hawking is saying.  The Big Bang demonstrates scientifically that the universe - time, space, matter, and energy - literally began in an instant from nothing.  This scientific data squares with the Christian concept of creation ex nihlo (out of nothing), as well as the existence of a transcendent Creator.  Furthermore, many people, because they did not feel comfortable with the theological implications, attempted to elude the Big Bang theory altogether.  The data, however, is simply too strong to escape the Big Bang.  But couldn't it be possible for the universe to have just come into existence randomly?  That could allow such skeptics a way out.  Unfortunately for them, no such mechanism exists whereby an entire universe can just "pop" into existence from pure nothingness on its own.

And there is still more.  Suppose, for example, that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the universe did happen to randomly come into existence.  What would that universe look like?  Here we must discuss the nature of the universe.  Does it exhibit order or disorder?  In 1961 physicist Robert Dicke recognized that life is possible in the universe only because of the special relationships between certain cosmological parameters.  This is called the Anthropic Principle.  Modern astrophysicist Hugh Ross has expanded on this theme.  There are some 44 parameters, such as the expansion rate of the universe, the velocity of light, the ratio of electron to proton mass, the decay rate of protons, and many more.  Interestingly, if any of these parameters were off by even a tiny bit (some of the parameters are precise to one part in 10 billion), then life would be impossible in the universe. Here are a few examples:

 The force of gravity

if larger:  stars would be too hot and would burn up too quickly and too unevenly

     if smaller:  stars would remain so cool that nuclear fusion would never ignite, hence no heavy element production

 The mass density of the universe

     if larger:  too much deuterium from the big bang; hence stars would burn too rapidly

if smaller:  there would be insufficient helium from the big bang; hence there would be too few heavy elements forming

 Uniformity of radiation

     if smoother:  stars, star clusters, and galaxies would never have formed

     if coarser:  the universe would by now be mostly black holes and empty space

 Polarity of the water molecule

     if greater:  the heat of fusion and vaporization would be too great for life to exist

     if smaller:  the heat of fusion and vaporization would be too small for life to  exist; liquid water would become too inferior a solvent for life chemistry to proceed; ice would not float, leading to a runaway freeze-up

But, quite obviously, life does indeed exist.  The likelihood that all these precise parameters happened by chance is effectively nil.  Ross has calculated that the odds of life arising by purely natural processes are less than 1 in 10^{100,000,000,000}.  That is 10 to the power of 100 billion (or, 10 multiplied by itself 100 billion times).  To put it in perspective, there are “only” 10⁸⁰ elementary particles (protons, electrons, quarks, etc.) in the entire universe. The number 10^{100,000,000,000} is so big that it would take 15,000 Bibles just to write it out longhand!

Does the universe display order or disorder?  The answer is self-evident.  It exhibits not only small degrees of order; it exhibits unfathomable degrees of order.  

But what is the nature of an explosion?  Here is a simple experiment to try.  Place a stack of TNT next to a garage, then light it.  What happens?  Will the pieces disperse and form an organized structure, or will it result in complete disorganization and chaos?  Clearly, an explosion results in disorder, not order.  So how could an explosion have created a universe of such intricate order?  These facts have led many astrophysicists to the same conclusion made by Paul Davies, who conceded, "the impression of design is overwhelming."  And cosmologist Bernard Carr wrote,

One would have to conclude either that the features of the universe invoked in support of the Anthropic Principle are only coincidences or that the universe was indeed tailor-made for life.  I will leave it to the theologians to ascertain the identity of the tailor!"

Those who oppose such conclusions have tried one of several courses.  First, perhaps the universe has always "bounced" from one Big Bang cycle to the next, for all of eternity.  If this is the case, then there would be no need to invoke a supernatural agent as the cause of it all.  But is this a legitimate possibility?  The answer is a resounding no, for the following reason:  The second law of thermodynamics tells us that systems move from order to disorder, unless there is an input of energy.  In any machine, the amount of energy output cannot be more than the energy input.  There are, after all, no perfect machines.  Any machine, therefore, costs more to operate, in terms of energy usage, than it produces.  The more efficient the machine, the better this ratio becomes.  

Now, if our universe is a perfect machine, than the "bouncing", or "oscillating" universe model could work.  However, even if the universe were 99.9% efficient, then eventually, the universe would stop bouncing.  Astrophysicists have calculated that the universe is not only not a perfectly efficient machine, it is far inferior to even the human body.  Therefore, the universe simply cannot have been oscillating through one Big Bang cycle after another forever.  This only pushes the problem back a step, because at some point, the universe must have actually begun from nothing.

A second option is one that renowned astronomer Carl Sagan tried:  

If the general picture of an expanding universe and a Big Bang is correct, we must then confront still more difficult questions.  What were conditions like at the time of the Big Bang?  What happened before that?  Was there a tiny universe, devoid of all matter, and then the matter suddenly created from nothing?  How does that happen?  In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing.  But this is mere temporizing.  If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must of course ask next where God comes from.  And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and decide that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question.  Or, if we say that God has always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed?

The problem with Sagan's reasoning is twofold.  First, his very own field - cosmology - has demonstrated that the universe actually began from nothing.  To say, "why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed" is not particularly helpful, and it does not change the facts.  He knew that the universe has not always existed.  Second, he presumed that God is of the same "stuff" as the physical universe.  But such is not the case.  If space, time, energy, and matter actually began at the Big Bang, then the God who did the creating is not of the same "stuff", and is therefore not necessarily subject to the same laws of nature.  The physical universe was caused, but God certainly need not be.

A third option is one that is more common today, and it is the idea of what is called a multiverse.  A multiverse is essentially the existence of multiple, or even an infinite number of, universes.  The idea goes like this.

The odds of a universe arising by pure chance that would be of such nature that it could support life are vanishingly small – if there is only one chance to do it.  But what if there were more opportunities?  What if new universes are continually being spawned?  Given enough chances, even the most unlikely scenario would eventually arise.  In order to win the incredible odds and get a universe that “works” (i.e., supports life), you might need an almost infinite – yes, perhaps an actual infinite – number of universes.  And some, in fact, have proposed such a thing.

While it may solve the problem of a creator, a multiverse presents numerous other problems.  First, it is untestable.  A multiverse, by definition, is something beyond our own universe.  If it was connected to ours, then it would simply be part of our universe and not something else.  And scientists agree that anything beyond our universe is beyond our ability to test.

Second, a multiverse would require a more fundamental set of physical laws which spawns new universes.  Think of a seemingly random set of 1,000 letters.  How did they get there?  If there is a program that says to produce 1,000 letters at random, the letters could be produced.  Consider this explanation by Max Tegmark, of MIT:  

A skeptic worries about all the information necessary to specify all those unseen worlds. But an entire ensemble is often much simpler than one of its members. This principle can be stated more formally using the notion of algorithmic information content. The algorithmic information content in a number is, roughly speaking, the length of the shortest computer program that will produce that number as output. For example, consider the set of all integers. Which is simpler, the whole set or just one number? Naively, you might think that a single number is simpler, but the entire set can be generated by quite a trivial computer program, whereas a single number can be hugely long.

Do you see what the problem is here?  An algorithm is a program that is designed.  It may be simple, but it is nonetheless orderly.  To solve the problem of an incredibly orderly physical universe by proposing a larger, orderly, physical multiverse that has the capacity to produce ours is to beg the question of the origin of the multiverse.  The argument hasn’t advanced at all.

A third problem with the multiverse idea has to do with the concept of an actual infinite number of universes.  Physicist Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University argues that, “With an infinite number of universes, all possible arrangements of space, matter and time will occur an infinite number of times.”

Now, let’s think for a moment what this means.  Vilenkin writes, “A striking consequence of the new picture of the world is that there should be an infinity of regions with histories absolutely identical to ours.  That's right, scores of your duplicates are now reading copies of this article. They live on planets exactly like Earth, with all its mountains, cities, trees and butterflies. There should also be regions where histories are somewhat different from ours, with all possible variations.”  

But if this is so, the number of sheer contradictions are also infinite.  For example, there would be a universe where the non-existence of the multiverse that spawned it would be true.  Moreover, there would be a world where time would run backward.  There would be a world where all the miraculous things that Biblical skeptics have argued cannot happen (such as Jesus rising from the dead, for example) all do, in fact, happen.  As such, there is literally nothing that would be out of bounds from a scientific or philosophical perspective.  

I have one more thought on the idea of a multiverse, related to this concept of a literal infinite number of combinations of physical laws, and arrangements of matter.  Let me offer a simple illustration to clarify the point.  Imagine a six-sided die.  If you roll numbers 1-5, various universes pop up, all looking a little different.  But if you roll a six, that is the “death roll,” meaning that you’ve hit a combination that kills the entire game.  If you roll the die one time, the odds are good that you’ll hit a number other than six, and the game can continue.  If you roll it six times, it’s even money that one of those rolls will produce a six, but those odds could be beaten and you may not roll a six.  If you roll it a hundred times, the odds shrink that you’ll somehow miss a six, but it’s still possible.  This could continue with more rolls, and as the number of rolls increases, the odds of avoiding the death roll continue to shrink.

But if you roll the die an infinite number of times, you’re guaranteed to hit a six eventually.  But what happens when you hit a six?  The game is over instantly.  And when that happens, you haven’t actually rolled it an infinite number of times; you’ve simply rolled it an awful lot of times, but it is nevertheless a finite number.

If Vilenkin is correct, and the existence of a multiverse necessarily implies an actual infinite number of universes, then eventually, the multiverse will hit the death roll, and the entire game is over; the multiverse will have hit upon a combination of physical laws and arrangements of matter that kills the entire process, and it will stop producing more universes.  But when that happens, there are no more universes being produced.  

The fact that we are here is proof that the death roll has not yet occurred, which proves that there are not a literally infinite number of universes out there.  In fact, there cannot ever be an infinite number of universes because one of those universes would destroy the multiverse outright.  Thus, Vilenkin and the multiverse theory is necessarily wrong, and we are back to the question of what created an orderly, yet finite, universe out of nothing.

Let me sum up what I have learned and attempted to convey.  The universe once was a mathematical point - in other words, it had no volume and no surface area.  From this mathematical point (nothingness), the universe and all its dimensions (time, length, width, and height) exploded into existence, forming an intricately balanced and orderly universe, perfectly fit for life.

That is the science behind the Big Bang.  These are not the conclusions of theistic philosophy.  Those are the raw facts.  Now, let’s take a moment to consider the ramifications of these facts.  First, the universe must have been created by something outside the universe itself.  In other words, the universe, which at one point did not exist, could not therefore have created itself.  This “creator” might or might not have been God, but there had to have been some creative force.  

Second, the creator had to exist outside the boundaries of the universe.  In other words, the creator has to be able to operate outside the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time that is our universe.  This is what transcendence means.

Third, the creator had to be extremely intelligent in order to finely tune the universe with such intricate order.  And fourth, the creator had to be incredibly powerful in order to make this all work.

So we see that the Big Bang itself has pointed us to a creator that is powerful, intelligent, and transcendent.  Christianity has a name for such a creator:  God.  Many scientists, of course, choose to reject this logical conclusion of the data, but they have nothing else to put in the creator’s place.  In conclusion, let me quote astronomer Robert Jastrow, who writes, 

This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians.  They have always accepted the word of the Bible:  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth….For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream.  He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.

The Nature of Faith

In my previous post I advanced the premise that every one of us, without exception, lives by faith.  We believe all kinds of things for which we have no proof.  It amazes me that some would attempt to deny this, because it is true at every level of analysis.  To revisit the plane example, I may be able to cite all kinds of statistics that show that the odds are very low that my plane will crash (which is true), but that does not mean that I know that the particular plane I'm about to board will land safely at the desired destination.  I have statistical evidence that strongly suggests the odds are in my favor of landing safely, but those are just odds - they are not proof or knowledge.  And I then board because I believe that those odds will likely hold true for me on this particular flight.

In other words, I have, in my own mind, good reasons for believing that boarding this plane is a good idea.  Some people are dreadfully afraid of flying, though, and what constitutes enough of a reason to believe for me may not be sufficient for those that simply will not board a plane.  I might think their lack of faith in the airline industry is unfortunate, but nonetheless, they are simply not convinced.  As I said in my last post, we all have our standards, but none of us lives only by absolute knowledge or proof.

Some may argue that the airplane example is not analogous to God, that it's an apples-to-oranges comparison.  That's a fair and yet unfair criticism.  It is fair because clearly God is not an airplane.  One (the airplane) is a tangible object with physical characteristics that can be measured, while the other (God) is not.  But we're not discussing whether we have faith in the existence of the airplane versus the existence of God.  We're discussing the nature of faith and proof.  Nobody can prove - until after the fact - that the plane you will board will land safely at the desired destination.  And so you have to make a decision based on whatever information is available to you whether or not you will board the plane.  And that decision must be made before the plane lands at the destination you desire to go to, obviously.  So your decision is based on whatever information and reasons you have without the absolute proof that it will land safely.

When we choose to believe something without proof, that is faith.  The very definition of the word is, "belief that is not based on proof" (see dictionary.com).  But there are varying degrees of faith, and there are certainly different objects of faith.  One may have a little bit of faith (I kind of sort of think that my team will win the game tonight, even though the starting pitcher usually gets clobbered by that other team) or a lot of faith (I'm leaping off this bridge with only a giant rubber band attached to my ankles, trusting that it will keep me from splattering on the ground 250 feet below me).  But the nature of faith itself is the same.

Moreover, the nature of the object of our faith does not change what faith itself is.  I can believe in the love from my mother or I can believe that Siberia is a real place (never having been there) or I can believe that the universe came into existence from nothing in an instantaneous explosion-type event or I can believe in a Creator of the universe or I can believe that Attila the Hun actually crossed the Alps with elephants.  I can believe in all those very different things, and I have very different reasons for believing those things, but none of that changes the nature of what faith is.  We all live by faith, since we all believe many things for which we have no proof.

And that brings me to the question of the existence of God.  Let's assume that each of us possesses a certain amount of knowledge, and we pooled that cumulative knowledge together.  Let's call that amount of knowledge X.  Now let's ask how much total knowledge is possible.  Let's call that Y.  Given that there's so much we don't know about the universe, it's safe to say that X<Y.  By a huge margin.  Here's a picture to demonstrate.  The large circle is Y - the total possible knowledge that could exist - and the small dot is X - the cumulative knowledge of all humans.

Clearly, there's so much more that we don't know than that we do know.  With respect to God, we do not have proof of His existence or proof of His non-existence.  We do not know either way.  So it is entirely possible that outside the current cumulative knowledge (proof) of humans that God exists.  That does not mean that such knowledge will always and forever remain outside the totality of human knowledge.  We must, therefore, leave open the possibility that God exists as a logical necessity.  In other words, if we are intellectually honest, we must conclude that it is possible that God exists.  Simply because God might be outside the realm of our current knowledge is not sufficient reason to conclude that therefore He does not exist.  After all, there are so many things that once were outside the realm of human knowledge that have, over the course of time, become part of the human knowledge database.

And, as an aside, it's not enough to say that if something exists outside our current knowledge that therefore we shouldn't be bothered with it.  There would be no human progress whatsoever if everyone adopted this perspective.  We would not have philosophy, technology, space exploration, medical advances, chemistry, calculus, engineering, air travel, you name it, if we simply said that if we don't know it, its not worth exploring.  Human progress exists in every area because we seek to increase our current knowledge base, which of course means exploring areas where we currently lack knowledge.

So if we are going to be intellectually honest, we ought to agree to several key points:

(1) We all live by faith.  That is, we all believe in things for which we do not have "proof".

(2) Everyone's threshold for believing in certain things is different.  What constitutes sufficient reason to believe for you may be different than it is for me.  This is normal and expected.

(3) The fact that there are wildly different objects of our faith does not change the nature of faith itself.  It may simply mean that for me to believe in A will require better reasons than it would for me to believe in B.

(4) In a sense, we must all be agnostic about God.  That is, His existence may well be outside the knowledge of humans, but since we possess such a tiny percentage of all possible knowledge, God's existence may very well be real, but just outside our current knowledge base.  (the same may be true for Invisible Pink Unicorns or Flying Spaghetti Monsters, but I'm not interested in them right now; if someone wishes to advance an argument for their existence, be my guest)  Thus a hard atheism ("I know God does not exist") is necessarily false.  A soft atheism ("I do not believe God exists") may be valid, and certainly agnosticism ("I don't know whether God exists or not") is valid.  But hard atheism is not.

As we move into potential reasons for believing in God, keep these points in mind.

Looking for "Proof" that God Exists?

As a kid, my buddy Tim and I would often sit outside and stare at the sky and ask deep philosophical questions like, "How big is the universe?", "How did all this get there?", and "Does God exist?"  These are logical questions to ask when observing the stars laid up against the black of night.  

So often when I am discussing these issues with people they respond with something like this:  "I don't live by faith.  I will only believe that which can be proven."  I appreciate the heart behind this sentiment - after all, the idea of God is certainly a big one, with rather large consequences one way or the other - but I must say that at the end of the day, it is an untenable and unrealistic perspective.  Here's why.

Every single person lives every day by faith.  If faith is "believing something without 100% proof", then we live by faith all the time.  The next time you board an airplane ask yourself this series of questions:  Do I know the pilot personally?  Do I know the mechanics?  Do I know that the pilot is good?  Do I know that he is in good health and will not collapse en route?  Do I know that there are no terrorists that have smuggled bombs on board?  Do I know that my bags will arrive at my destination (haha)?  

The answer to these questions - every single one of them - is no (perhaps you might know the pilot once in a blue moon, but that's rare).  You do not know these things for certain.  And yet you board the plane and entrust people you don't know in a plane that you don't know is in good working order or has enough fuel with your very life and perhaps the lives of your children (if you have any and they are on board with you).  That is a significant risk you are taking.  You are trusting them with your life, but you are doing so without proof.  

What you don't have is proof.  What you do have, however, is sufficient reason to believe.  And there's a huge difference between the two.  It isn't just about airplane rides either.  Do you know that your car has been fixed properly by your mechanic of 20 years?  No.  They sometimes make mistakes.  But you have good reason to believe that he did a fine job, so you feel ok about getting behind the wheel.  Do you know that the person on the other end of the phone that you're giving your personal information to really does work for the insurance company, and that someone else isn't tapping into that phone line?  No.  But you have good reason to believe that it is.

You see my point.  Every day we live by faith, not proof.  Sometimes the situation is small, and sometimes we literally put our lives in the balance based on faith, not proof.  We do so, though, because we have what we believe to be good reasons for doing so.

So why is it any different with God?  Why do we demand 100% proof that God is real when we never - not for a single day in our lives - live with that perspective anywhere else?  It can't just be because the consequences are so big; after all, we put our very lives and the lives of loved ones in taxicabs driven by people with no vowels in their last names in foreign cities and on airplanes flown by people we can't even see.  The stakes don't get any bigger than that, yet we live by faith all the time.

I would encourage you to follow with me over the next handful of posts, because I will attempt to lay out for you what for me are sufficient reasons to believe in God's existence.  I understand that what is sufficient reason for me may not be sufficient reason for you.  Maybe what satisfies me doesn't satisfy you.  That's all well and good.  But please do not think that what you really require is "proof" of God's existence because that is an untenable and unrealistic position, and it is inconsistent with how you live the rest of your life.  

Let us pursue "reasons to believe" together!!

Free Speech?

NBC Connecticut (http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/ACLU-School-Should-Allow-Anti-Gay-T-Shirt-157243065.html) has an article about a Wolcott, CT student that wore a t-shirt to school that featured a rainbow with a slash through it. According to the article, "Seth Groody wore the shirt bearing a rainbow with a slash through it to Wolcott High School on April 20, a day designated to promote awareness of the bullying of gay students, according to the ACLU of Connecticut." The school required him to take the shirt off, prompting the ACLU to file a letter of protest with the school principal.


The facebook link to that article asks the question, "Where do you stand on this? Should a student in Wolcott be allowed to wear a shirt with an anti-gay message to school?" It's an interesting question from a Christian perspective.


On the one hand, surely Christians should be in favor of free speech (and this would qualify). After all, if all inflammatory speech were to be banned, what would that mean for the gospel? The message of Christ is a divisive one, even if proclaimed in love, as it should be. The Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 2:14-17, "14 But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. 15 For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16 to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life." Jesus Himself said in Matthew 10:34, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword."


In other words, the message of Christ, even though He is love and we are to communicate it in love, is divisive and inflammatory. It is inflammatory to those who do not wish to follow Him, so much so that many times Christians are afraid of even saying His name for fear of the reaction.  So if we as Christians believe that divisive or offensive or inflammatory speech should be outlawed, then the most important message one could ever share - the glorious gospel - would be off the table.  We must, therefore, be advocates of free speech.

However, freedom comes with responsibility.  If we are to have freedom of speech, how should we use that freedom?  Paul wrote in Galatians 5:1, "It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery."  That is, we have been freed from the bondage of sin, but we have a responsibility to use that freedom in a way that is good and right and noble, not in a way that dishonors the One who freed us.  If I now have the freedom of speech, I need to use that freedom responsibly and say things that are productive.  Paul put it this way in Ephesians 4:29, "Let no unwholesome talk proceed from your mouths, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear."  

If I am to have freedom of speech, I need to use that freedom to build others up, to speak the truth in love, to help move people towards God, not away from Him.  Whatever one thinks of homosexuality, the t-shirt that Seth Groody wore appears on the surface to not merely be a statement on the morality of homosexuality, but rather about gay and lesbian people.  And yes, there is a difference between the two.  

Christians ought to embrace free speech, even if it means that some offensive things get said.  But we should encourage personal responsibility and proper use of that freedom.