I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (12 page)

But forget eternity for a minute. Consider the temporal implications of religious teachings around the world. In Saudi Arabia, some schoolchildren are being taught that Jews are pigs and that non-Muslims (infidels) should be killed (while, thankfully, a majority of Muslims do not believe that non-Muslims should be killed, militant Muslims teach that type of
Jihad
straight from the Qur’an
⁸
). Is it really true that there’s a God up there by the name of Allah who wants Muslims to kill all nonMuslims (which probably includes you)? Does this religious “truth” matter? It does when those kids grow up to fly planes into buildings and blow themselves up in populated areas. Wouldn’t it be better to teach them the religious truth that God wants them to love their neighbor?

The Saudis may be teaching that Jews are pigs, but in our country, by means of a one-sided biology curriculum, we teach kids that there’s really no difference between
any
human being and a pig. After all, if we’re merely the product of blind naturalistic forces—if no deity created us with any special significance—then we are nothing more than pigs with big brains. Does this religious (atheistic) “truth” matter? It does when kids carry out its implications. Instead of good citizens who see people made in the image of God, we are producing criminals who see no meaning or value in human life. Ideas have consequences.

On the positive side, Mother Teresa helped improve conditions in India by challenging the religious beliefs of many in the Hindu culture. The Hindu belief in karma and reincarnation leads many Hindus to ignore the cries of the suffering. Why? Because they believe that those who suffer deserve their plight for doing something wrong in a previous life. So, if you help suffering people, you are interfering with their karma. Mother Teresa taught Hindus in India the Christian principles of caring for the poor and suffering. Does that religious idea matter? Ask the millions whose lives she touched. Does the religious teaching of karma matter? Ask the millions still suffering.

The bottom line is this: regardless of what the real truth is concerning religion and morality, our lives are greatly affected by it today and perhaps even in eternity. Those who cavalierly say, “So what? Who cares about truth in morality and religion?” are ignoring reality and are blindly skating on thin ice. We owe it to ourselves and others to find the real truth, and then act on it. So let’s get started with the question, “Does God exist?”

S
UMMARY

1. People often get their beliefs from their parents, friends, childhood religion, or culture. Sometimes they simply formulate their beliefs on the basis of their feelings alone. While such beliefs could be true, it’s also possible they may not be. The only way to be reasonably certain is to test beliefs by the evidence. And that is done by utilizing sound philosophical principles including those found in logic and science.
⁹

2. Logic tells us that opposites cannot be true at the same time in the same sense. Logic is part of reality itself, and is thus the same in America, India, and everywhere in the universe.

3. By use of the Road Runner tactic, we can see that Hume is not skeptical about skepticism, and Kant is not agnostic about agnosticism. Therefore, their views defeat themselves. It is possible to know truths about God.

4. Many truths about God can be known by his effects, which we can observe. Through many observations (induction) we can draw reasonable conclusions (deductions) about the existence and nature of God (which we will do in subsequent chapters).

5. Truth in morality and religion has temporal and maybe even eternal consequences. Apathy and ignorance can be fatal. What you don’t know, or don’t care to know,
can
hurt you.

6. So why should anyone believe anything at all? Because they have evidence to support those beliefs, and because beliefs have consequences.

Chapters 3–7
will cover:

1. Truth about reality is knowable.

2. The opposite of true is false.

3. It is true that the theistic God exists. This is evidenced
by the:

a. Beginning of the universe (Cosmological
Argument)

b. Design of the universe (Teleological Argument/
Anthropic Principle)

c. Design of life (Teleological Argument)
d. Moral Law (Moral Argument)

4. If God exists, then miracles are possible.

5. Miracles can be used to confirm a message from God (i.e., as acts of God to confirm a word from God).

6. The New Testament is historically reliable. This is evidenced by:

a. Early testimony

b. Eyewitness testimony

c. Uninvented (authentic) testimony

d. Eyewitnesses who were not deceived

7. The New Testament says Jesus claimed to be God.

8. Jesus’ claim to be God was miraculously confirmed by:

a. His fulfillment of many prophecies about himself;

b. His sinless life and miraculous deeds;

c. His prediction and accomplishment of his resurrection.

9. Therefore, Jesus is God.

10. Whatever Jesus (who is God) teaches is true.

11. Jesus taught that the Bible is the Word of God.

12. Therefore, it is true that the Bible is the Word of God (and anything opposed to it is false).

3

In the Beginning
There Was a Great
SURGE

“Science without religion is lame; religion without science
is blind.”

—ALBERT EINSTEIN

“I
RRITATING
” F
ACTS

It was 1916 and Albert Einstein didn’t like where his calculations were leading him. If his theory of General Relativity was true, it meant that the universe was not eternal but had a beginning. Einstein’s calculations indeed were revealing a definite beginning to all time, all matter, and all space. This flew in the face of his belief that the universe was static and eternal.

Einstein later called his discovery “irritating.” He wanted the universe to be self-existent—not reliant on any outside cause—but the universe appeared to be one giant effect. In fact, Einstein so disliked the implications of General Relativity—a theory that is now proven accurate to five decimal places—that he introduced a cosmological constant (which some have since called a “fudge factor”) into his equations in order to show that the universe is static and to avoid an absolute beginning.

But Einstein’s fudge factor didn’t fudge for long. In 1919, British cosmologist Arthur Eddington conducted an experiment during a solar eclipse which confirmed that General Relativity was indeed true—the universe wasn’t static but had a beginning. Like Einstein, Eddington wasn’t happy with the implications. He later wrote, “Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of nature is repugnant to me. . . . I should like to find a genuine loophole.”
¹

By 1922, Russian mathematician Alexander Friedmann had officially exposed Einstein’s fudge factor as an algebraic error. (Incredibly, in his quest to avoid a beginning, the great Einstein had divided by zero—something even schoolchildren know is a no-no!) Meanwhile, Dutch astronomer Willem de Sitter had found that General Relativity required the universe to be expanding. And in 1927, the expanding of the universe was actually observed by astronomer Edwin Hubble (namesake of the space telescope).

Looking through the 100-inch telescope at California’s Mount Wilson Observatory, Hubble discovered a “red shift” in the light from every observable galaxy, which meant that those galaxies were moving away from us. In other words, General Relativity was again confirmed—the universe appears to be expanding from a single point in the distant past.
²

In 1929 Einstein made a pilgrimage to Mount Wilson to look through Hubble’s telescope for himself. What he saw was irrefutable. The
observational
evidence showed that the universe was indeed expanding as General Relativity had predicted. With his cosmological constant now completely crushed by the weight of the evidence against it, Einstein could no longer support his wish for an eternal universe. He subsequently described the cosmological constant as “the greatest blunder of my life,” and he redirected his efforts to find the box top to the puzzle of life. Einstein said that he wanted “to know how God created the world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thought, the rest are details.”
³

Although Einstein said that he believed in a pantheistic God (a god that
is
the universe), his comments admitting creation and divine thought better describe a theistic God. And as “irritating” as it may be, his theory of General Relativity stands today as one of the strongest lines of evidence for a theistic God. Indeed, General Relativity supports what is one of the oldest formal arguments for the existence of a theistic God—the Cosmological Argument.

T
HE
C
OSMOLOGICAL
A
RGUMENT
—T
HE
B
EGINNING
OF THE
E
ND FOR
A
THEISM

Don’t be put off by the technical-sounding name: “cosmological” comes from the Greek word
cosmos,
which means “world” or “universe.” That is, the Cosmological Argument is the argument from the beginning of the universe. If the universe had a beginning, then the universe had a cause. In logical form, the argument goes like this:

1. Everything that had a beginning had a cause.

2. The universe had a beginning.

3. Therefore the universe had a cause.

As we showed in the last chapter, for an argument to be true it has to be logically valid, and its premises must be true. This is a valid argument, but are the premises true? Let’s take a look at the premises.

Premise 1—Everything that had a beginning had a cause—is the Law of Causality, which is
the
fundamental principle of science. Without the Law of Causality, science is impossible. In fact, Francis Bacon (the father of modern science) said, “True knowledge is knowledge by causes.”
⁴
In other words, science is a search for causes. That’s what scientists do—they try to discover what caused what.

If there’s one thing we’ve observed about the universe, it’s that things don’t happen without a cause. When a man is driving down the street, a car never appears in front of his car out of nowhere, with no driver or no cause. We know many a police officer has heard this, but it’s just not true. There’s always a driver or some other cause behind that car appearing. Even the great skeptic David Hume could not deny the Law of Causality. He wrote, “I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that something could arise without a cause.”
⁵

In fact, to deny the Law of Causality is to deny rationality. The very process of rational thinking requires us to put together thoughts (the causes) that result in conclusions (the effects). So if anyone ever tells you he doesn’t believe in the Law of Causality, simply ask that person, “What
caused
you to come to that conclusion?”

Since the Law of Causality is well established and undeniable, premise 1 is true. What about premise 2? Did the universe have a beginning? If not, then no cause was needed. If so, then the universe must have had a cause.

Until about the time of Einstein, atheists could comfort themselves with the belief that the universe is eternal, and thus did not need a cause. But since then, five lines of scientific evidence have been discovered that prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the universe did indeed have a beginning. And that beginning was what scientists now call “The Big Bang.” This Big Bang evidence can be easily remembered by the acronym SURGE.

I
N THE
B
EGINNING
T
HERE
W
AS A
G
REAT
SURGE

Every several years or so, the major news magazines—
Time, Newsweek,
and the like—run a cover story about the origin and fate of the universe. “When did the universe begin?” and “When will it end?” are two of the questions investigated in such articles. The fact that the universe had a beginning and will ultimately die is not even up for debate in these reports. Why? Because modern scientists know that a beginning and an ending are demanded by one of the most validated laws in all of nature—the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

S—The Second Law of Thermodynamics

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is the S in our SURGE acronym. Thermodynamics is the study of matter and energy, and the Second Law states, among other things, that the universe is running out of usable energy. With each passing moment, the amount of usable energy in the universe grows smaller, leading scientists to the obvious conclusion that one day all the energy will be gone and the universe will die. Like a running car, the universe will ultimately run out of gas.

You say, “So what? How does that prove that the universe had a beginning?” Well, look at it this way: the
First
Law of Thermodynamics states that the total amount of energy in the universe is constant.
⁶
In other words, the universe has only a finite amount of energy (much as your car has only a finite amount of gas). Now, if your car has only a finite amount of gas (the First Law), and whenever it’s running it continually consumes gas (the Second Law), would your car be running right now if you had started it up an infinitely long time ago? No, of course not. It would be out of gas by now. In the same way, the universe would be out of energy by now if it had been running from all eternity. But here we are—the lights are still on, so the universe must have begun sometime in the finite past. That is, the universe is not eternal—it had a beginning.

A flashlight is another way to think about the universe. If you leave a flashlight on overnight, what’s the intensity of the light in the morning? It is dim, because the batteries have used up most of their energy. Well, the universe is like a dying flashlight. It has only so much energy left to consume. But since the universe still has some battery life left (it’s not quite dead yet), it can’t be eternal—it must have had a beginning—for if it were eternal, the battery would have died by now.