Pillar
#2: Evolution is a Fact That Accounts for Origins
Important Note: Before you read
any further I want to define the term “evolution” since the Secular
Fundamentalist media and professors purposely equivocate when using the term so
as to include transitions from one species to another while only providing evidence of transitions within a
species. We have all experienced this "bait and switch" tactic in
highschool and college biology textbooks; for example, pictures of horses in a
circle. The important fact is that they are still horses! EVERYONE believes in
transitions within a species in what some call “micro-evolution”, but
Intelligent Design and Creationists patently deny “macro-evolution” (changes
from one species into another) as the evidence is clearly not only lacking but
missing. In this post I am referring to Macro-evolution as the myth that is
challenged logically by using the tools of faith & reason that all of us
use to grasp reality as noted in my earlier post here. This is the sneaky
tactic that sacrifices logic in order to be clever; thus we have the
equivocation of the term “evolution”. To see some examples from the high-school
and college texts that I mention above please read the post on my One Year
Bible Site by clicking here
So let us begin with a simple
syllogism:
All people are biased,
Scientists are people,
Therefore scientists are biased.
As noted earlier, scientists do
hold certain presuppositions when they approach the topic of origins. This is
not a fault per se, since the origin of the universe is not something that can
be determined empirically so the scientist must start from somewhere. However,
this does become a fault when these assumptions “evolve” into fact, thereby
committing the fallacy known as “begging the question.” These assumptions that serve as a
scientist's starting point should be subject to change because they are a
theory, viewed as reasonable by some, accepted by faith and reason, but not an
empirically verifiable fact. All people have a tendency to be biased, and since
scientists are people, they are not immune to this tendency. For instance, the scientist that is a
theist will assume that God exists, and a scientist that presupposes atheism
starts his or her analysis of the empirical data believing that God does not
exist. Contrary to the logic and
common sense that we are all biased, we have been conditioned by our secular
society into believing that only the theist is biased with his or her
faith. However, the atheist is
equally as biased with his or her faith guiding him or her to look at the data
and insist on only naturalistic and materialistic explanations.
Everything that has a beginning
has a cause,
The universe had a beginning,
Therefore the universe had a
cause.
Recent scientific discoveries in
the field of Astronomy indicate that the four dimensions of our universe:
space, time, matter, and energy, came into being ex nihilo-out of nothing. Given that the universe came into
existence out of nothing, both theists and atheists are together in the realm
of faith when it comes to origins.
This is due to the fact that the cause of our universe lies outside of
the universe itself, the place where empirical science and the known laws of
physics no longer apply. As
Astronomer Robert Jastrow put it when commenting on the Big Bang singularity
and scientific faith in his book God and the Astronomers: "The religious
faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a
beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid and
as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens,
the scientist has lost control. As
usual when faced with trauma, the mind reacts by ignoring the implications. .
.The scientist’s pursuit of the past ends at the moment of creation."[1]
Until the discovery of evidence
that the universe had a beginning, known as the Big Bang, the now defunct
steady-state theory of the universe was the dominant view among
scientists. According to the
steady-state theory of cosmology, the universe expands and new matter is continuously
self-generated at all of the points in space that are left open by the receding
galaxies. The universe was thus
infinitely old and in a steady state, new matter continuously arising in the
space vacated by the receding stellar systems.[2] The problem with this theory is that it relies on the
logical absurdity of self-generation, namely, nothing creating something. The idea of self-generation ignores the
obvious contradiction that no self exists to do the generating. This very notion of being coming into
existence out of non-being goes against one of the first principles of
science—the principle of causality.
The principle of causality teaches that everything that comes to be is
caused by another.[3]
Rewind the universe like a movie
and you come to a point of nothing! Physicist PCW Davies said of the Big Bang
that “It is the coming into existence of ALL material things.” Now what did the
Bible say in the book of Hebrews? “By faith we understand that the Universe was
formed at God’s command so that what is seen was not made out of what was
visible” - Hebrews 11:3. Anthony
Kenny of Oxford University said that “A proponent of the Big bang Theory, at
least if he is an Atheist, must believe that the universe came from nothing and
by nothing.” But the first principle of metaphysics, and all rational thought,
is that “out of nothing, nothing comes!”
Besides the evident logical
fallacy with the steady-state theory itself, the theory officially died in 1965
when two physicists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered a primary piece
of evidence that proved that the universe had a beginning. The two astronomers
discovered a radiation echo in space that was determined to be the sound of the
initial explosion that brought the universe into existence. Penzias and Wilson were rewarded for
their discovery when in 1978 they received the Nobel Prize in physics. As a
result, this discovery placed certain death to the steady-state theory, by
proving that the universe had a beginning. Since the universe had a beginning, and everything that has
a beginning has a cause, then one must conclude that the universe had a
beginner, what one might call, God.
Physicist Robert Wilson expanded on this fact in an interview, “Certainly,
if you are religious, I can’t think of a better theory of the origin of the
universe to match with Genesis”[4]
Now the Secular Fundamentalist
Atheists are inventing new theories like a "multiverse" to avoid the
obvious conclusion. Unfortunately for them Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and
Alexander Vilenkin put forward the BGV Theorem proving that independent of
physics any hypothetical model of the Universe must include a beginning. In view of the fact that the universe
had a beginning, it follows, both logically and scientifically, that it must
have had a Beginner since everything that has a beginning has a cause. This fact has triggered uneasiness
among some in the modern scientific community predisposed to atheism while at
the same time it has triggered others, like Robert Jastrow, to write about the
subject. However, in the field of
science that has moved from a theistic philosophical basis to a purely
atheistic philosophical basis over the past one hundred and fifty years, the
topic of God’s existence has been removed from possibility a priori. Astronomer Robert Jastrow is an example
of an agnostic who wrote about this subject and the reaction among his
colleagues to the new evidence and its obvious conclusions. In his book Jastrow best describes the
sentiment among some in the scientific community of naturalists when he writes,
“When a scientist writes about God, his colleagues assume he is either over the
hill or going bonkers.”[5] So follow the logic here and answer honestly which
view requires more faith:
Why does this matter so much to
the Secular Fundamentalists?
Because as you can see this view
is held with a strong FAITH conviction, and nobody likes an error in his or her
religious thinking being exposed. Furthermore, they cleverly place
"Evolution" in the Reason category, when you can clearly see that it
belongs in the FAITH category. As Norman Geisler & Frank Turek note "I
do not have enough faith to be an atheist"
Building men of virtue in a culture of
vice,
Peter P. Lackey, Jr.
Founder, Man's Ultimate Challenge
"It is essential to a virtue to be about the difficult and the
good" - Thomas
Aquinas
Footnotes:
[1]Robert Jastrow. God and the
Astronomers, 2d ed. (New York / London: W.W. Norton, 1992), 105-106.
[2]William Lane Craig and Quentin
Smith, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology, (New York, Oxford University
Press, 1995), 40.
[3]Geisler, “Causality, Principle
of,” in Apologetics, 121.
[4]Robert Wilson, “Interview with
Robert Wilson,” interview by Fred Hereen (18 May 1994), Show Me God, (Wheeling,
IL: Day Star Publications, 1998), 157.
[5]Ibid., Jastrow, Astronomers, 9.
[6]Hugh Ross, “Anthropic
Principle: A Precise Plan for Humanity,” Facts for Faith, Qtr.1, No. 8 (2002):
29 [emphasis in original].
[7]Ibid., 26.
[8]Michael Behe, Darwin’s black
box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1996), 232-33.
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