Apologetics: The Basics
Session 5 – God Exists, Part 2
Four Points
- Truth is knowable
- God exists
- The New Testament is historically reliable
- Jesus proved he is God
Proof is legal-historical proof (CSLewis, etc)
Ontological Argument: because we conceive of God, God must exist
Moral Argument: if you believe anything is absolutely wrong, God must exist
Cosmological Argument: if you believe in the law of cause and effect, God must exist
*** there are other arguments that some very smart people like even BETTER than these…for example, the philosophical argument that we are more than just physical beings ***
Evidence forces the skeptic into a corner…covered in the next session
Point Two – God Exists
Design Argument
- A design requires a Designer
- The universe has been designed
- Therefore, there must be a Designer
Five Arguments from Design
1-3 covered later…so we will go thru them very quickly
- Origin of Life
- Tiny Machines
- Supernatural Communication
- Universe Creation Design
- Life Supporting Planet Design
Design Argument #1 – Origin of Life
Chemicals/Molecules to Amino Acids (20 of 80, chirality) to Proteins
= Impossible by chance alone
FOR EVEN ONE PROTEIN
The simplest one cell life still requires MORE THAN 300 PROTEINS
Plus many other things like…Lipids And Complex Sugars and Carbohydrates
and Nucleic Acids and…
All assembling in a micro-sized environment, and somehow protected from the
very hostile environment by a complex membrane covering
Never having been exposed to Ultra-violet rays, OR water,
OR atmospheric oxygen…
Only scratching the surface…
- Super-RNA doesn’t work
- Deep sea thermal vents don’t work
- Chemical attraction properties don’t work
Not a ‘chance’ for first life to develop by chance
…the hope is to discover some scientific ‘law of attraction’
THE DATA leads to the only possible conclusion (because God is NOT an option)…
Panspermia…(Francis Crick)…first life came from outer space on solar winds
Also known as the…well it couldn’t possibly have happened here theory…
1960s the odds of creating the first life by chance calculated at 1 in 10(40,000)
The Origin of Life may be the most intractable problem a committed Naturalist faces…
Design Argument #2 – Tiny Machines
Cells are filled with inter-dependent molecular ‘machines’ that 1. Cannot be built by natural processes and 2. Depend on other of these same machines to produce a cells minimal functionality
*** there are many, many of these kinds of ‘machines’ ***
*** see Michael Behe – Darwin’s Black Box ***
Design Argument #3 – Supernatural Communication
Specified, Complex information is ALWAYS from an intelligent source
- Examples:
- “Marry Me” in the clouds
- Mt Rushmore
- sand formation
- the Rosetta Stone
The SETI Program: The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence
Looking for a single understandable communication…
(Contact, Jodie Foster, 20 prime numbers)
DNA…is not a single communication with specified complexity…it is an entire language complete with punctuation.
Where does this incredibly complex information come from?
“We are not saying DNA is like a message. Rather, DNA is a message.”– Hupert Yockey
“…one is driven to the conclusion [from micro-biology], inescapably, that living systems could not have been generated by random processes, within a finite time scale, in a finite universe.”
– Chandra Wickramasinghe
*** Stephen Meyer – Signature in the Cell ***
*** Mike Behe = Darwin’s Black Box ***
*** illustramedia.com ***
Know What You Believe
Know Why You Believe It