Little, Big

I did two things today. Okay I did a lot of things today, but two of them are relevant to this post.

The first is that I looked at "The Human Body Book" with my kids. There were various things they were interested in, but one of the most interesting things, to me, was the innards of a cell. You know what's in a cell? A whole lot of junk, that's what. It varies depending on cell type, but the picture of a generalized cell we looked at looks like a huge aquarium teeming with a couple dozen forms of life. You have parts for nutrient absorption, cell reproduction, moving substances through the cytoplasm (cell goo), sugar/fat digestion and energy production, material/water storage and transport, structural support, protein assembly, substance flow control, plus the control center in the middle and various other pieces that make this whole thing work. Its like a factory more complicated than any I've seen. And we've got a gazillion of these things working together in our bodies.

The second is that I took the dog on a walk at night and looked up at the stars (and maybe one planet, it was really bright). I saw maybe a couple of dozen stars, billions of miles away, shining brightly in the depths of space. Its estimated that there are 100 billion stars in our galaxy, and maybe the same number of galaxies. Let's say those estimates are off by a factor of 100, each. That would still be 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 stars. I don't know about your universe, but in mine, that's a lot of freaking stars.

Then I thought of something. Okay I thought of a lot of things, but one of them is relevant to this post.

In ages past, people didn't know about the complexity of the cell. It wasn't that long ago that people didn't even know what a cell was. It wasn't that long ago either that people didn't know how vast the universe was. Yet many believed in God.

Now we live in a time when people can see small things so much more than ever before and large things so much more than ever before. These are the very things that point to God's existence. The complexity of the human body and the vastness of the universe is so great, it is a huge testimony to the vastness and glory of God himself. And what do some so called "brilliant minds" do with it? They try use the very evidence of God's existence to say that he could not possibly exist.

"Yes, this vast universe just popped into existence from nothing! And life too! This incredibly complex system called life just popped into existence from nothing too! And the little complex things grew into more and more and more complex things until one day they grew into something that had enough of a brain to think about its own existence and say 'There is no God'".

Rubbish.

If with greater revelation comes greater accountability, how much more accountable are we today, knowing the enormity of God's creation? I think much, but that's just one man's opinion.

Grace and Peace

Intelligent Design

Today I heard about William Dembski and a work he published called The Design Inference. The basic concept is that if something cannot be explained by a law, and is too statistically unlikely to be explained by chance, then it must have been designed. Dembski says that life itself is such a highly unlikely event that conforms to a discernible pattern, so therefore it, by itself, is evidence of intelligent design.

I completely agree.

Apparently Dembski has been criticized in the past for this by folks who say that if a given event happens with low probability and confroms to a discernible pattern, there are two possible reasons for it: 1) intelligent design or 2) necessity.

That argument does really debunk anything; it just offers another option. Fine, let's roll with it. I'm assuming this argument is for natural selection, but we're not there yet. First of all, I don't see how necessity explains anything about how the universe came from nothing or how life could come from inorganic matter. What necessity could there possibly be here? What about humans specifically then? Necessity could explain our physical bodies and some thought processes, but how could it possibly explain why we have the ability to discover the laws of the universe in which we live and even have this argument?

I am more than star dust, and the evidence for it is that I have the ability to realize it.

Man And The Monkey

I heard this on Bob Dutko today and thought it was great.

Imagine if you put a man and a monkey in a room with paint and canvas and lock the door. You hire the best security experts in the world to make sure no one goes in and no one comes out. Then you come back 10 hours later and open the door. The man and the monkey are still there, and the canvas has been painted. The painting is a good knock off of the Mona Lisa.

Who painted it? Unless your a nut or messing with me, you would say "the man, of course".

Prove it.

Its not a trick. You can't. All you can really do is look at the evidence before you and come to the most logical conclusion based on that evidence.

The same is true with the existence of God. Many who don't believe in God say that those of us who do are being illogical. I disagree. With the evidence before me, I find that the most logical conclusion based on that evidence is that God exists, and that it takes a much larger leap of faith to believe in a universe that exists without God.

Rom 1:19-20 says "For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse."

God has indeed given us plenty of evidence for His existence; we just have to open our hearts, open our minds, and pay attention.

Creation: Blog and Universe

I have a blog now, scary. So out of the millions things to write about in the first post, I will write about this argument I heard on the Bob Dutko show today that I liked (the gist of it anyway):

You have three options for the creation of the universe:

1) The universe is eternal.
2) The universe was created some time in the past without any supernatural event.
3) The universe was created some time in the past with a supernatural event.

#1 violates the second law of thermodynamics. It cannot have lasted forever or it would have used up all the energy available for work. The universe must have been created with a lot of usable energy and is now running down.

See http://www.answersingenesis.org/Docs/370.asp for more.

#2 violates the first law of thermodynamics. It cannot have been created from nothing.

See http://www.direct.ca/trinity/1law.html for more.

#3 is left, where some supernatural event happened outside the bounds of these laws that caused space-time and matter to be created. In the face of that, I'll say it was God. If you don't want to say it was God, then what do you say caused this supernatural event?