truth and evidences

So, we’re back on an every-other-week schedule for the Truth & Evidences series, currently looking at some various things that in existence, and discussing their origin – such as the origin of life, the origin of the physical universe … and next, the origin of morality.

My sister-in-law made an interesting point the other day. Some things are things that we decide or choose – for instance, whether I feel like vanilla or chocolate ice cream. Some things, on the other hand, are not decided, but rather they are discovered – for instance, that 1+1=2. No one decided that, it just IS. And things that simply ARE, and yet show order, organization, and purpose, we have to ask ourselves – what is their origin?

But asking “where did it come from?” presumes that is does exist. Does morality, in fact, exist? Basically, the question of whether morality exists is asking this: is there right and is there wrong? If even one thing exists that IS, in fact, absolutely and universally wrong, then a universal moral standard exists. And if a universal moral standard exists, then we have to ask where it came from.

We won’t be getting into every aspect of this today, but rather just beginning to think about the topic, and look at it in more detail over the next few posts in this series.

Consider this quote C. S. Lewis,

The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something — some Real Morality — for them to be true about. The reason why your idea of New York can be truer or less true than mine is that New York is a real place, existing quite apart from what either of us thinks. If when each of us said ‘New York’ each means merely ‘The town I am imagining in my own head’, how could one of us have truer ideas than the other? There would be no question of truth or falsehood at all.

Is there anything that is absolutely wrong? For instance, does the statement, “racism is wrong”, actually have any meaning? Were Hitler’s actions toward the Jews wrong, or is it merely a relative question of opinion? I would argue that, yes, there is an absolute right and wrong – some standard which is universal and absolute.

The other view is that everything is relative – that there is no absolute right or wrong. One might point out “situation ethics” questions … such as “Suppose you were in a life boat with four people – you, an old man, a young woman, and young child. The lifeboat is sinking because there is only enough room for three people. What do you do?” Because some people struggle or disagree with what to do in such a situation, some conclude that there is no absolute moral standard. However, the fact that people struggle with how to handle such a situation points, rather, to the fact that they have a sense of right or wrong – that there is a standard and they are trying to determine which course of action is most in alignment with it. If there really is no right and wrong, no moral standard, then you could answer, “Just toss them all overboard, and keep the whole boat for yourself. Or better yet, keep one or two, but kill them and use them for food.” And if there is no absolute right and wrong, then no one has any right claim to such an answer is wrong any more than they could claim that a preference for vanilla is better than a preference chocolate. That is, if there is no absolute.

There are a number of things to consider on this topic. Over the next few posts in the series, we’ll be looking at different aspects of it – does a moral standard exist? Or is everything just relative? And if it DOES exist, what is its origin?

Well, our timeline has definitely been a little different in Boston than I had expected, but I did mention wanting to start back up the Truth & Evidences series during October … and, hey, there are a couple hours left. :)

Since its been a couple months since I took a break from the series during the craziness of moving, this post will just be a recap, and then I’ll plan to continue this series every other Wednesday, Lord willing, as we were doing earlier.

The topic of this series of posts is a discussion of whether there is actual or absolute truth in religion, is there only one truth, or whether everything is just relative? Does faith need evidence? If there is truth, what is it? Is there actually a God? If so, how can we know who he is?

Here is what we have discussed in the posts from the series so far.
The first few posts were on whether there is absolute truth or not, and the role of faith:

1. Truth: Is it just a matter of faith?

2. Is there absolute truth?

3. Are some things false?

And the next posts were on some evidences to support faith in the existence of a deity:

4. Every Effect Has a Cause

5. The Problem of Nothing

6. Design Requires a Designer

7. The First Life

8. Macro-Evolution vs. Micro-Evolution

… and we’ll be continuing on evidences for the existence of deity, and then moving into the question of even if we accept that SOME deity exists, how can we know anything more specifically about that deity? I hope you’ll join me for the series, and as always, feel free to comment or contact me privately, as you wish. :)

I almost started off by referencing “last week’s post” … but since I’m now on the every-other-week schedule for Wednesdays while we are in the process of moving, I guess it was actually two weeks ago! Anyway, in the previous post from this Truth & Evidences series we talked about the problems of where life could have come from in the first place if it didn’t come from a Designer. (If you’re new to this series, you can click here to see that post, or you can click here to see a list of all the previous posts from this series.)

Today we’re going to set aside the problem of how that first cell could have originated and look at the problems associated with getting from some simple life to the amazing and diverse amounts of life we have today. This is what Darwin’s theory of evolution is proposed to explain.

Now, often a person might say, “I don’t believe in evolution”, or of course on the other side – that they do. But really, it’s not all that straightforward. There is more than one kind of evolution, micro-evolution and macro-evolution. I certainly do believe in micro-evolution. Macro-evolution is the one I don’t buy. Here’s the basic difference:

There can certainly be changes within a gene pool – breeders use this to their advantage all the time. But in the end, it may be bigger, smaller, lighter, darker, faster, stronger – but, as in the above example, it is still a sheep. You may be familiar with Darwin’s finches:

On the Galapagos Islands, Darwin discovered these birds, and how their different beaks were adapted to the different tasks each bird needed – some better for cracking seeds, some better for needling insects out of small holes. This was significant in Darwin’s description of natural selection – that animals that best suited for survival were able to generate offspring and pass along their genes. The thing is, though, this is an excellent example of micro-evolution. They are all still finches. It wasn’t that some were observed to have developed a turtle shell or were half-reptile. It was just micro-evolution.

It is the same thing with the experiments scientists do with fruit flies, where they can get a fruit fly to grow extra legs, or have a third wing, and so forth. They are certainly changes … but they are still just fruit flies. And usually not very healthy ones, at that.

Micro-evolution does not prove macro-evolution. You might see some very convincing artists’ renditions of the steps between species, but an artist’s rendition is not proof. We often hear about “the missing link” – but it’s not as if we have the full steps from each species to the next, and there is just ONE piece missing. The missing links are countless. Here is an interesting quote from Gary Parker:

In most people’s minds, fossils and Evolution go hand in hand. In reality, fossils are a great embarrassment to Evolutionary theory and offer strong support for the concept of Creation. If Evolution were true, we should find literally millions of fossils that show how one kind of life slowly and gradually changed to another kind of life. But missing links are the trade secret, in a sense, of paleontology. The point is, the links are still missing. What we really find are gaps that sharpen up the boundaries between kinds. It’s those gaps which provide us with the evidence of Creation of separate kinds. As a matter of fact, there are gaps between each of the major kinds of plants and animals. Transition forms are missing by the millions. What we do find are separate and complex kinds, pointing to Creation.

But what about those photographs we see of a series of skulls leading up from apes to man? Those are actual bones, not just drawings – don’t those show the process of evolution? I’m sure we’ve all seen those charts – with the ape skull on the left and the “modern man” skull on the right, and the in between skulls of neanderthals and so forth. One of the basic problems with this is the very limited definition of “modern man”. Usually what is shown is a very European skull, kind of light bulb shaped. However that is not what all “modern man” skulls look like. For instance, in my family we have very oblong skulls, as you typically see shown in the in-between stages of evolution in those charts. In fact, my dad has measured his skull, and according to the ratios given by scientists for neanderthal skulls, his skull fits into that category. My skull is much the same shape as his .. more oblong and football shaped with a sloping back forehead, I guess I should measure mine! Maybe I would be classified as a neanderthal, too. And the fact is, there is a HUGE variety in skulls of the modern man, vastly different that the European light-bulb shape shown at the end of the chart. Imagine if my skull or my dad’s skull, or some of the many other diverse shapes of skulls were shown at the end of that chart – it wouldn’t look like such a smooth transition any more, would it? If we can have neanderthal skulls today .. why couldn’t mankind have also had neanderthal skulls in the past?

Changes in appearance within one species (micro-evolution) is a completely different thing than changes from one species into something different (macro-evolution). Micro-evolution does not prove macro-evolution.

Leave your thoughts and comments below, I love to hear from you!

We’ve talked before in the Truth and Evidences series about how anything at all could have come into existence. Today, in particular, we’re going to be looking at the first life.

My dad still has my fourth grade science book. It is a clear example of how scientists try to break the rules of science to try to explain their views. On one page it talks about how “spontaneous generation” has been disproven – how people used to think that mice actually came from dirty clothes, or that flies came from dead meat. And the book explained how through the experiments of Louis Pastuer, that spontaneous generation (life coming from non-life) was disproven. Life, it said, could not come from non-life; life can only come from life. That was the end of the chapter. Turn the page, and a new chapter began: ‘Where did the first life come from?’ the new chapter asked. And it’s answer? Scientists are unsure, but many suggest that the first life did in fact come from non-life.

That is what my fourth grade science book taught my class about science. It showed the observable scientific evidence (that life can only come from life), and then it tossed it out the window in the conclusions.

Often people just lean on evolution to somehow bridge this gap. But Darwin’s theory of evolution attempts to explain how we could have such a variety of life from a common ancestor, but offers no good explanation on the origin of that first cell. And really, in Darwin’s time, scientists did not realize just how complex the cell is. Have the further discoveries and research of science made the origin of the first cell easier or harder to overlook? Just how complex is the “simple cell”?

To put it in the words of the scientist W. H. Thorpe, “The most elementary type of cell constitutes a ‘mechanism’ unimaginably more complex than any machine yet thought up, let alone constructed, by man.” There are a simply astounding number of things going on in a cell. Here is a description of the complexity of the cell, by biochemist Michael Denton:

To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity.

I think it is interesting that he points out how much easier it would be for us to see everything going on in a cell if it was the size of a city. Think about how small the cell is. Its incredibly small size does not decrease it’s complexity, it amplifies it. Look at industries today – at how HUGE computers used to be – at how huge cell phones used to be. It has taken a lot of research and advances in technology to keep making machines smaller and smaller, and yet highly capable. Now think again of how small a cell is — and that it is more complex than any computer made by man. How does it make sense that the more complex and amazing is the one we assume “just happened”?

But isn’t all you need just the ingredients and enough time and chance?

The jump from simply having the ingredients to having the final product is a HUGE one, especially when talking about something complex. If you take a squirrel, put it in a blender and turn it on high … you’ve got all the ingredients for a squirrel. Anyone feel very confident about getting an actual squirrel out of it?

But what about time? Isn’t all you need just to add millions of years of “chance” to make something completely implausible to become something likely?

First of all, we’re not talking about rolling some dice a bunch of times, where there are a finite number of possibilities, and each is just as likely as the next. We’re talking about the beginning of life, a completely unique and incredibly complicated event. For instance, just looking at one component of the cell: DNA … it’s not just that there have to be a bunch of letters lined up – they have to be lined up in a very precise order to form a complicated coded message. It’s both highly complex and highly specific. It’s not simply things changing – it’s the arranging of things into MORE order, and into HIGHER complexity. Suppose you poured out a bottle of glitter on the beach and then set the container on the ground, and waited for each and every speck to be guided back into the bottle by natural means (carried by the wind, etc.). Let’s say you sit there for an hour. Are the chances getting better as time goes by .. or worse? How about a year? How about a million years – is the glitter more gathered or more scattered by now? Really, the extra time amplifies the unlikelihood. The more time that passes, the more the second law of thermodynamics takes its toll.

Just as you can see in my fourth grade science book, scientists are not always objective or answer according to what is observable in science – often their responses are tainted with conclusions they have already arrived at, regardless of the evidence. This is how a book can say it is scientifically proven that life can only come from life on one page, and then on the next try to justify that life came from non-life. Or, as another example, I think it is interesting to note this quote by Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA: “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.” Because when you look at it, the natural reaction is to see design. Why should we ignore that??

Leave your thoughts and comments below. :)

Do any of you check out NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day? I remember discovering it several years ago – it’s really pretty neat. All the images/video I’ll be using in this post are from there, used with permission. You can click any image to go to the NASA page – you might just enjoy browsing around there, it is simply incredible! For instance, the image below – at first glance I thought it wasn’t a photo, I thought it must be an artist’s rendering of deep space. It is in fact a image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of the Orion Nebula. As to thinking it was by an artist … well, that’s exactly what we’re going to be talking about in this part of the Truth & Evidences series.

Beautiful, isn’t it? It’s awesome. And I mean that in the true “awe inspiring” way, not just the “Hey, how does pizza for dinner sound?” kind of way.

I’d like to consider three “layers” to this image. One is the simple text on top. One is the way/technology by which this image was captured. And one is what the image is actually a picture of – the Orion Nebula. Which, if any, of these happened by chance?

Let’s take the first (and simplest) layer: the text. Did erosion and mutations of the image file happen to leave blank white pixels in the lower right hand corner, which just happened to shape into letters of the alphabet, which just happened to be arranged in the proper order to spell words, which just happened to be the words that are the title of this post? Is that too much of a stretch? Or did a graphic designer (me! *waves*) purposefully choose and layout those words to be there? Well, let’s stay open-minded about that one, and move on to the second “layer” – how the image was taken. Did a camera just accidentally get dropped into space and happen to travel exactly where it needed to be, capture the image, and random gravitational pulls and solar winds just happened to bring it back to earth, where it somehow managed to arrive safely and was then discovered by NASA scientists? Or, was carefully designed technology called the Hubble Space Telescope’s ACS (Advanced Camera for Surveys) and the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla 2.2 meter telescope used to build this image, which is a mosaic containing a billion pixels at full resolution and reveals about 3,000 stars? Which is the more reasonable explanation? Ok, now let’s consider the third layer – what it is actually an image of, the Orion Nebula. Was this made by some random explosion caused by energy that just accidentally happened to some matter, which came out of nothing in the first place? Or was a intelligent design involved in this third layer too? Which layer is the most amazing, the most complex? And yet, which layer is it that many would encourage us to see as just an accident?

Now, maybe the Orion Nebula seems a little … well, nebulous. A little hard to grasp exactly how amazing it is. So let’s look at some things closer to home, and see if they show evidence of a designer (like we would easily admit the other aspects of the image do, even down to something as simple as the text I added to the image).

The following is a video, also from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, showing what it looks like to fly over the earth at night. It’s breathtakingly beautiful – but the thing I want to point out specifically is all the lightning which you are looking down on in the video:


Did you know that the rate of lightning on earth must be in a specific balance? Too much, and there would be greater fire damage. Not enough, and there would be too little nitrogen fixing in the soil. We just “happen” to fall in that happy area in between.

This beautiful photo is also from NASA, and is a shot of Jupiter over the city of Ephesus.

Did you know that without Jupiter we would get pummeled with space debris? Jupiter’s greater gravitational pull and position in relation to the solar system causes it to pull in space material, offering us, in essence, a shield. How fortunate, eh?

But perhaps those still aren’t specific enough. Then consider our oxygen supply. Our air is about 20.95% oxygen. We need this amount to live. If it were 15%, humans would suffocate. If it were 25%, fires and explosions would be a huge problem. Also, if earth’s crust was too thick, there would be too much oxygen transferred to it, and we would suffocate – but if it was too thin volcanic activity would make the earth unlivable. Also, we have the proper balance of carbon dioxide. With too much, the greenhouse effect would become too strong and temperatures would become to high to survive. Too low, and plants wouldn’t be able to complete photosynthesis, and we would suffocate. Again, in all these things we “happen” to sit in that happy middle.

The list goes on and on. Astrophysicist Hugh Ross has compiled a list, and has worked on calculating the chance that a planet could just randomly and accidentally (that is, with no Designer) happen to have all these traits which allow life. His conclusion was that the chance was 1 out of 10^138. That number is 10 with 138 zeros after it. Numbers that large are too large to even fully comprehend. Just how big is that number? Well, to give you a sense of scale … the number of *atoms* in the observable *universe* is estimated by scientists to be around 10^80 (10 followed by 80 zeros). That is HUGE.

You wouldn’t assume that the text in the first image just happened by chance, and yet that is so relatively simple — how much more complex and perfectly poised is our world. Which of the two is more reasonable to believe just happened by random chance?

Just because we see and experience our world everyday doesn’t mean it’s “ordinary”, or that all the amazing aspects of it are to be taken for granted.
Leave your thoughts and comments below. :)

What is nothing? It is not what is inside an empty shoebox … that is still something. There is air, dust particles, heat, etc. in there. Nothing is not just a tiny bit of something. Nothing is not any thing. Nothing is no thing.

Last week, in the Truth & Evidences series, we talked about how the material universe had a beginning, and the scientific evidences there are for that. In the past, scientists thought that perhaps the universe was eternal, but as more and more scientific data has come to light, it points more and more to the fact that the universe did, in fact, have a definite beginning. We also talked about that every effect has a cause. What we didn’t really get into very much, though, was the questions that arise from putting the two together: The universe had a beginning, and every effect has a cause. So what was that first cause? What was before the beginning of the universe?

There are, obviously, different ideas that people have to these questions. And it comes back to the question of “nothing” which I mentioned above. Before the universe began, there was no universe. Not just a little bit of the universe, like mathematical points, or a ball of energy or quantum fluxuations … otherwise, that wasn’t the beginning of the universe because whenever THAT piece of the universe came into existence would have been the beginning. For instance even if for argument sake you granted that the Big Bang came from a ball of energy, you still have to explain where that ball of energy came from, what the actual beginning was. So what was before the universe? Nothing? Or something?

What comes from nothing? Nothing comes from nothing. This is simply a fact.

We’ll take a look at the different options. One is to say, “Yeah, I know nothing comes from nothing … but I think in the very beginning there was nothing, and then suddenly there was something. Something came from nothing.” The problems with this are self evident, in that it directly contradicts the known science of causality, yet many have claimed this, even within the scientific community. With quotes like this: Edward P. Tyron, professor of physics Hunter College & CUNY, said, “In 1973, I proposed that our Universe had been created spontaneously from nothing” (New Scientist, vol. 101, 3/8/’84 p. 14) … or Paul C. Davies, in “What hath COBE Wrought?” Sky and Telescope r(Jan. 1993) p.4, “Quantum events do not need well-defined prior causes; they can be regarded as spontaneous fluctuations. It is then possible to imagine the universe coming into being from nothing entirely spontaneously, without violating any laws.”

Often to make this sort of claim, quantum mechanics is brought up. However, to call on this to justify something coming from nothing – there are a number of big problems with what they are trying to do here. The most major problem is this, pointed out by astrophysicist David Darling:

“What is a big deal – the biggest deal of all – is how you get something out of nothing. Don’t let the cosmologists try to kid you on this one. They have got no clue either – despite the fact that they are doing a pretty good job of convincing themselves and others that this is really not a problem. ‘In the beginning,’ they will say there was nothing – no time, space, matter or energy. Then there was a quantum fluctuation from which …’ Whoa! Stop right there. You see what I mean? First there is nothing, then there is something. And the cosmologists try to bridge the two with a quantum flutter, a tremor of uncertainty that sparks it all off. Then they are away before you know it, they have pulled a hundred billion galaxies out of their quantum hats … You cannot fudge this by appealing to quantum mechanics. Either there is nothing to begin with, in which case there is no quantum vacuum, no pre-geometric dust, no time in which anything can happen, no physical laws that can effect a change from nothingness into somethingness; or there is something, in which case that needs explaining.” (“On Creating Something from Nothing,” New Scientist, vol. 151 (Sept. 14, 1996) p.49)

So there’s option 1 – you can claim something came from nothing. It goes against so many basic laws of science, and therefore requires quite a bit of faith, as we’ve talked about before, but there you have it.

Option 2 is that there was something came from something, not something from nothing. But what was this something?

Again, within this we can propose a couple of options. One is the supernatural. That before the universe began, there was nothing physical, nothing of the universe, nothing that can be quantified by science, but that something existed beyond the laws of science (which is the definition of supernatural). That is to say, God. Of course, the first question that gets asked is, “Well, but where did God come from? If every effect has a cause, what was God’s cause?” But the law of causality applies to the physical realm, not to the supernatural realm. By the definition of supernatural, it is not controlled by the laws of nature. (Which is different than breaking the rules of science, it is beyond the rules of science.) God would be the original cause, as eternal, not needing a cause. He would be the one who created science, and the rules of the universe, rather than the other way around. In fact, an astronomer named Robert Jastrow, who was a leading scientist as NASA, and self proclaimed as “an agnostic, and not a believer”, said, “astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover. That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.”

The other option of something-came-from something is that someone might say, “Well, if you can argue an eternal God, why can’t I argue an eternal ball of energy or other eternal element of the universe?” You could argue that. But if you argue something physical, something bound by the rules of science, then it must follow the rules of science, and the eternal existence of the universe (even some element of it) is simply not what science shows us, as we discussed last week.

The fact is, any of these three options take some faith to hold. We can’t go back and simply watch and see what happened. Option 1 is that something came from nothing. Option 2a is that something came from something, with that something being an eternal supernatural force (God). Option 2b is that something came from something, with that something being an eternal physical force. All three require faith to believe in them. What we have to ask ourselves is this – which is the most reasonable?
To break the laws of science in an attempt to explain it by science (either by nothing becoming something or an eternal element of the universe)
Or to believe in something beyond the laws of science (the existence of God)?

I believe the second is the much more reasonable conclusion. Again, this is not the end all argument to the existence of God. This is but one piece of the puzzle. Also, we haven’t defined at all who and what God is, except that he would have to be eternal. We’ll be looking at both of those (additional arguments of the existence of God as well as who/what he is) in the future.

Well, so far in the truth and evidences series we’ve discussed that truth exists, and that we can’t dismiss truth as just being a matter of faith. We’ve also talked about that if truth exists, then it’s opposite is false – and since different worldviews have contradicting claims, then they can’t all be true. And last week we talked about the difference between disagreeing with a viewpoint because of a lack of foundation for it, verses disagreeing with a viewpoint simply because it is not convenient. So far we largely been establishing the nature of truth, but haven’t really been getting into a discussion of what that truth actually is. But now that we’ve laid all that groundwork, we can start in on that. :)

Here is the assertion, and over the next few weeks we’ll be looking at the evidences for it:
A theistic God exists.

The first point I want to look at is this – every effect has a cause. This is a basic scientific fact of the material universe. If you have a cup of water, that water didn’t just suddenly “appear” in the cup, it came from somewhere. If you run into something, it’s not that an object suddenly materialized out of nowhere (although it may seem that way walking around in the dark!). If you dog comes home smelling like a skunk, that smell came from somewhere (hint: probably a skunk.). If you have a book, someone wrote it. If you’re in a dark room and suddenly it becomes light, then there must be a source for that light. If there is an effect, there is a cause.

The universe exists. Matter exists, energy exists. This is an effect. It must have had a cause.

But what about the idea that the universe is eternal? That it just always will continue to be, and always has been? That it didn’t need an original cause – it’s just always been there?

This idea has a mountain of scientific evidence against it. When Einstein was discovering the fact that the universe is expanding, not static, he didn’t like that idea. He said “This circumstance of an expanding universe is irritating.” In fact, he tried to come up with a mathematical “fudge factor” of the “Cosmological Constant” to try and fit the results to what he thought they should be .. but shortly after, Edwin Hubble was able to show from observation that the universe was in fact expanding, and Einstein then accepted it. Einstein later admitted that the Cosmological Constant was the “biggest blunder” of his life.

But why would the fact that the universe was expanding be irritating? For the universe to be eternal, it would need to be static. But if the universe is expanding, just imagine watching that in rewind. What does it go back to?

The same is true when you look at the Second Law of Thermodynamics – entropy is always increasing. (Entropy is the amount of disorder in a closed system – basically it describes that naturally everything falls apart over time … as my apartment can too often be used to illustrate;) When Tim, my husband was in college (and Tim loves this science stuff, I really should see if he will write one of these posts) his professor was teaching a particularly fascinating lesson on entropy. He taught that class every year, but his excitement was evident: “There is more entropy in the universe now than there was when I taught this class last year!” He became even more enthusiastic: “There is more entropy now that WHEN I STARTED THIS SENTENCE!” It certainly is mind boggling to think about. There was less entropy when he began his sentence. There was less entropy when he taught the year before. What about the year before that? Less entropy. What about a hundred years before that? Less entropy. This is where Tim’s mind was going. So Tim raised his hand and posed this question to his professor, “So, was there ever a time when there was 0 entropy?” The professor smiled at Tim, knowing what Tim was getting at – the beginning. The original cause. But he wouldn’t didn’t give an answer, he just said, “I’m not the person to ask about that.”

There are also signs that scientists stated should exist if there was some sort of explosive origin to the universe rather than an eternal static universe, such cosmic background radiation as well as ripples to the background radiation – and sure enough, later scientists discovered these did in fact exist, and with such accuracy, fitting what would be expected if the universe did have a beginning, as to be amazing. For the sake of not making this post any longer that it already is, I’m not going to go into all of that here, but if you need more information on it, you can let me know.

But science points to the fact that the universe had a beginning. Every effect has a cause – and since the universe exists there must have been a cause. But what was that cause?

Some scientists try to say that at the beginning there were “just” mathematical points or or “just” a ball of condensed matter or “just” energy or “just” something else. But if that is the case – then that is not really the beginning. Where did those mathematical points come from? What caused that ball of energy? Before the beginning there could not have been any time, energy, matter. To grant any of that existing at the beginning just points out that it is not actually the beginning, because you still have to answer where that came from – back to when the actual beginning was.

Of course, this begs the question, “But if you’re saying God existed, where did he begin? If everything must have a cause, what caused God?” We’ll look at this, as well as some other arguments and explanations given for the original cause next week.

Leave your thoughts and comments below! :)

Hello people … well, I guess we know each other pretty well now, eh? So I’ll tell you .. I almost decided not to put up this post today. As I am writing this (Tuesday evening), I am wrapped up in cover and have a mug of tea in hand – I have just not been feeling very well today. Because of this, I feel like I don’t have the full focus I like to have when dealing with such an important topic as what we’ve been discussing on Wednesdays. I want you all to know that I don’t write these things lightly, but I write them with much prayer, study and thought. So I thought about just skipping this Wednesday entirely, but instead I decided I could go ahead and write a truncated post with just one simple point … and then go relax with my tea. We’re all friends here, right? I can talk to you with messy sick-day hair and under blankets, eh? :)

So here is the one simple point: you can’t make or force someone else to believe something.

Even if it is the truth, you can’t force someone else to accept a belief. We all have free will and make our own choices, right or wrong. A person might be presented with a point, and upon examining the evidence come to the conclusion it is correct. Or a person may be presented with a viewpoint and choose to believe it simply because they want it to be true, without examining any evidence. Or a person may be presented with a viewpoint and not believe it because they do not see enough evidence to believe it. On the other hand, a person may be presented with a great deal of evidence, and they may see that the conclusion makes sense – and yet make the decision to not accept it anyway. For instance, if you meet someone who says they don’t believe in God because it means they would have to change their life … that’s not really an argument for whether God exists or not, that’s an argument for whether or not that person personally chooses to believe in God or not. They may or may not have examined the evidence … but in the end, their reason to not believe isn’t based on that, it’s based on their own conscious choice that they don’t WANT to believe. Similarly a person may hold a certain belief or viewpoint not so much because they feel the evidence is the most reasonable, but because they simply WANT to believe it.

So as we move forward in the series, and look at some different evidences, realize that there are a couple ways to accept or reject a viewpoint. It is one thing for someone to reject a point because there is insufficient evidence. But it is something different entirely to reject something simply because it is inconvenient or uncomfortable. You can’t force someone to have faith in something – it is the job of each one of us to keep an open mind (as we talked about before) – not so that we just believe anything and everything – but so that when we do come across the truth on any topic, we accept it, even if it is not convenient to our wants and wishes.

Alrighty, well there is today’s post. I’m going to go relax and enjoy some tea now. Thanks for spending time with me … even when I’m not feeling great. :) Leave your thoughts and comments below, I always love to hear from you!

The opposite of true is false.
Well, I guess that may seem a little obvious, eh? But it is still important to establish. :) And if you’re wondering why there is an elephant there … well, that comes later in the post. :)

So last Wednesday in the Truth & Evidences series we discussed the fact that absolute truth does exist. And, naturally, the next thing that follows is that the opposite of true is false. But we also want to take a look at this question – are all religions just teaching the same thing, but in different ways? Because since there is absolute truth, and the opposite of true is false … if religions are teaching opposite things, then they can’t all be true – some must be false. But is that the case? Or are all the different religions pretty much the same?

One of the traits of truth is that it’s opposite is false. For instance, it is true for me to say, “I am a woman.” Therefore, it is false for me to say the opposite: “I am a man.” This is pretty self evident. However, is this the kind of difference there is between different religions? Incompatible contradictions? Or is it more along the lines of me saying, “I am a woman”, and then also saying, “I am 27.” Both are true. To be a woman and to be 27 are not opposites, it is possible for both to be true. Is this more what the differences in religion are like – not opposite, but just different truths that can both be true?

Many people would argue “yes” to that question. They point to the fact that most religions have some sort of moral code, some sort of be-nice teaching, and some sense of worship or appreciation of something beyond themselves. But is that all there is to religion? Do various religions have more differences or similarities?

Let’s just pick a question to pose to a variety of religions, and see if they are all pretty much the same.

– What was the origin of the universe?

My goal in this post is not to discuss which, or even if any religion’s answer to this question, is correct (we’ll get to that later), but rather to establish whether or not all religions are pretty much just the same.

So tell me, various religions – what’s the origin of the universe?
According to Taoism, there was a presence before the world existed in material form, but that presence was not a god, and that a series of transformations happened that became the universe. According to Buddhism, the universe never actually had a definite beginning, and will not have a definite end, but rather it is in a perpetual state of flux. According to Christianity, God (Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit) existed before the world, and he created the universe out of nothing. According to Islam, God (Allah, not Jesus) existed before the world, and he created the universe out of nothing. And of course, there are many others that we could go into, but there are a few.

So pretty much the same answer? There was no beginning … there was a beginning but it wasn’t God … it was God … Jesus was there … Jesus was not there. Are they pretty much saying the same thing? No, they are directly contradicting each other. There is an absolute truth on the topic. And since the opposite of true is false – if any one of these is true, then all of the others must necessarily be false. And there are many other explanations put forward to explain the origin of the world as well. But not all religions are just saying the same thing in different ways. You could do this with any number of other questions: What is the penalty if I do wrong? What is man’s purpose in existence? Is there one God or many? What happens after death? Those are not just trivial insignificant questions to be brushed aside. They are fundamental to different religions … and different religions directly contradict others on these, and many other, core issues.

Still, someone might bring up the blind men and the elephant story to argue against this. And this is why there was an elephant at the beginning of the post. :) If you haven’t heard the illustration, it varies some in different tellings, but it goes basically like this – there is an elephant, which represents the idea of “God”. And there are blind men standing around the elephant, each trying to figure out what it is. One man grabs hold of the trunk and says, “It is a tree branch.” Another reaches out and feels the tail and says, “It is a rope.” Another grabs a leg and says, “It is a pillar.” Another feels the side of the elephant and says, “It is a wall.” According to the story, each man had a part of the truth, but they were all still talking about the same elephant.

But the problem with the story is this – there is another point of view in the story than the blind men. There is the person telling the story. And that person realizes that there is one solid and absolute truth: the object in front of the blind men is an elephant. The blind men are not all “equally right” … it is not a rope, or a branch, or a pillar, or a wall – it is an elephant. To claim it is other things is false, because it contradicts the truth – that it is an elephant. And if the blind men continued to explore and learn about the object in front of them, they could come to discover that it was, in fact, an elephant.

In the end, since there is absolute truth, and since all religions are not just saying the same things, then necessarily some religions are false. Now, of course, the question comes – how can we know which are which? A good question, of course, which we will be coming to shortly in this series. :)

Leave your thoughts and comments below, I love to hear from you! :)

Thanks for all the comments on last week’s “truth and evidences” post! I really enjoy and appreciate your feedback, thoughts and responses. :)

So, last week we talked about how truth itself is not a matter of faith, but rather our faith should be based on what we learn to be the truth. This week I want to pose these two questions to consider:
Does absolute truth even exist? Aren’t we just supposed to be open minded and tolerant?

First: Does absolute truth even exist?
This is something which in our society today seems to be highly questioned. Is there such a thing as absolute truth? Is everything, including truth, just relative?

Somehow these questions largely seem to come up in matters of morals and religion, not in everyday life. If you ask your spouse, “Do you have an umbrella?” you don’t expect the answer to be, “Well it depends, since it’s all just relative and there is no one truth on the matter.” No, we expect that there is one answer that is the truth. Either you have an umbrella, or you don’t. But when it comes to matters or religion or morals, people seem much more likely to say, “Well, it depends, since it’s all relative and there is no one truth about it.” Is that a common answer because there is no such thing truth – or because it feels more comfortable to answer that way? We need to establish that choosing to not believe something doesn’t make truth cease to exist.

I want to point out the difference between belief and truth. The truth exists independent of whether there is belief or not. (For instance, the world was round, even when everyone thought it was flat.) Truth doesn’t change when belief changes. (The world didn’t change to being round when people started believing it was round.) Being good and sincere in a belief does not make it necessarily the truth. (I’m sure there were good people who sincerely thought the world was flat.) There can be any number of beliefs, which may vary for any number of reasons. Someone could believe the world was a triangle, or that the world was sitting on the shoulders of a giant, or that it just stretched on forever, if they wanted to. But just because they believed it would not make it true – and it also would not mean that the truth does not exist on the topic. Truth exists independent of whether someone believes it. Any number of beliefs may exist, but that does not mean they are all true.

But for the sake of argument, for the moment, let’s just say there’s no such thing as absolute truth.
Ok, ready?
“There’s no such thing as absolute truth.”

But, wait, there is already a problem.

If you say there is no such thing as absolute truth … is that absolutely true? If so, then you’re contradicting yourself and disproving your point because you’re claiming something doesn’t exist by giving an example of it existing. Or if it’s not absolutely true .. then it’s not aboslutely true, and absolute truth does exist. It’s a self contradictory stance.

The same goes for other similar arguments: “You can’t know truth.” (Then how do you know that?) “Truth does not exist.” (Then is that statement not true?) “Truth is simply relative.” (Is that just a relative truth as well?) “You can’t say one thing is more true than anything else.” (So is what you’re claiming no more true than the opposite – that some things are more true than others?) Truth exists – to even claim otherwise is a contradiction of its own viewpoint.

“But this all sounds very narrow, to say there is absolute truth. Aren’t we all just supposed to be open minded and tolerant?”

These are phrases (open minded and tolerant) which get thrown around so much, I’m afraid they’ve started to lose their meaning! Let’s look at them one at a time, because they are two different items.

Yes, we should be open minded! And before you read any farther – why is it that we should be open minded? Stop and think about it for a second. Isn’t it so that we don’t continue to believe something that is false? So that when we learn something is the truth, we will accept it and not be closed minded to it? For instance, I remember when I was a kid, I thought that your belly button was actually a button you could push to make yourself hungry and make room for seconds. (HA!) When I got older, I discovered that was not the truth. If I had not accepted that truth, I would have been extremely closed minded. I was open minded, and when I realized I was wrong, I changed my belief in the matter. But now suppose that as an adult, I told you that I wouldn’t say whether the belly button was actually a button to push to make room for seconds, or whether it was not, or even if there was a truth about it at all – because I was choosing to stay open minded on the subject. Is that really what open minded means? Should we stay “open minded” about whether the earth is round or flat? The whole point of being open minded is to recognize that our beliefs can be wrong – not that truth doesn’t exist. We stay open minded so that we can recognize the truth when we see it.

But what about being tolerant? What does it mean to be tolerant? Does being tolerant mean that truth does not exist? Actually, to be “tolerant” of something implies there is a difference – if nothing was actually true or false, then there would be no difference. If you tell me the world is round, I’m not “tolerating” your statement, I agree with it. Tolerating is when there is a difference of belief, not a difference of truth. To tolerate someone’s belief is completely different than to be forced to admit their belief is equally true. Again, that’s not tolerating, that’s agreeing. I have actually heard of a group of people in modern time who do believe the earth is flat. Should I be vicious and punch them or throw bricks in their windows because I disagree with them? Obviously not! But does being tolerant mean I have to accept that there is no truth on whether the earth is round or flat? Not at all. In fact, to claim that we should be so “tolerant” of everything to the point that we actually agree with everyone is not tolerant at all. Because you don’t have to tolerate something you already agree with – you just agree with it. Then the one thing left to disagree with is someone who holds that absolute truth does exist. Will they “tolerate” that? No, it is the very thing they are arguing against. So the one thing that they disagree with is the one thing they won’t “tolerate”, if tolerating really means to agree with it everything.

Yes, we should be kind and respect the fact that others have different beliefs. But that does not mean that truth does not exist. And, in fact, being kind sometimes involves pointing out the truth to someone. If I was driving a car in England, and didn’t realize they drove on the other side of the road, I wouldn’t want the passengers to just “tolerate” or be “open minded” about my driving – I would want them to correct me! No, I wouldn’t want to be cussed out or abused, but when done properly, having someone point out the truth is not unloving – in fact, in can be the very opposite.

So to sum up: Contradicting beliefs may exists, but that does not mean truth does not exist. The existence of truth is not dependent on belief. Truth exists – to claim otherwise is self contradictory. Being tolerant and open minded are both reactions to different beliefs, they do not mean that truth does not exist.

Leave you thoughts and comments below. :)