Response to Rae

I recently received a comment from a Christian reader named Rae. The comment was in response to my creationism refuted post. Rae's comments seem summarize a very typical response to scientist's explanations for the origin of the universe. I thought i would post his comment together with my response for you all to read. Please feel free to reference the original post about creationism if you like, though it is not necessary to follow the debate. Comments are welcome and encouraged. :)

Rae's comment:
I am a believer in God. Here are my thoughts: We are both making basic foundational assumptions. Mine, of course, is that no matter how it was made, the universe was created by a more supreme being. Science, then, would attempt to continually discover more about what was made and how it works. Your basic assumption is that all can be explained through naturalistic means. The problem is that no matter how many naturalistic theories are formed to explain the existence of our universe, something exists - which shouldn't if there is no outside influence. What I mean is this: Okay, what if there is a parent universe, or something outside this universe that spawned it? And maybe there is something beyond that which spawned it. Even if at the very beginning of the chain that "something" which eventually caused this universe is found to be infinite, that "something" contains ingredients. Whether that is matter or some unknown substance is irrelevant. Those ingredients exist. How? Why? Science can never answer how or why at that point. (Not that science usually answers the question "why?") So I am going to conclude that it is logical to believe that a Supreme Being who humans can't fully understand and who is outside of that which contains these "ingredients", outside of nature, caused this universe and everything in it. I don't believe that God created parent universes and so on, but that is because I, for now, have no reason to believe he did. It sounds like those theories are not scientific but instead are purely philosophical, and absolutely based on the assumption that all can be explained through naturalistic means. You may believe I am filling in the gaps with "God" (I disagree), but I believe you are just filling in the gaps with "We'll know later." I also need to add that there seems to be much more evidence outside of this topic that points to a Creator, and when all is put together and considered, belief in God is, I think, quite plausible. For example: the Bible is by far the most historically sound document in existence. To reject the events that occurred, specifically the events surrounding Christ and the resurrection, you must reject it on means other than the historicity of the Bible, which is being confirmed more and more as we learn and discover new information about the past. And I know that is not what this debate is about, but my point is if the resurrection can't be refuted, than it is absolutely logical to start with the basic assumption that God created the universe. With that, I respect your views and thank you for taking the time to read mine! My Response:

Ok Rae, I don't think that I will be able to persuade you into thinking that a natural explanation is more plausible than supernatural. BUT I will try.

I will start with this, which has already been addressed to Barry. Belief with justification by evidence is not the same as belief without justification or evidence. I believe that unanswered questions will have natural explanations because that is what has happened over and over and over throughout the history of human understanding. I believe events have natural causes, because the evidence supports that idea.

Please remember Rae, that any understanding of cause and effect in our world is founded completely on natural, explainable hypotheses supported with observation and evidence. Imagine the massive wealth of understanding about the observed events in this universe: ALL accepted explanations are entirely naturally based. Humanity has observed the confirmation of that fact over and over throughout the history of science. Yet here you are, suddenly reaching the next frontier of knowledge and expecting a different result? How is that logical at all? It cannot be. Furthermore, I do not think it is logical for you to conclude that a supernatural force must exist outside of nature which is the cause of any event. Over and over we have learned that things have natural causes, why would it be logical to expect a different result that conflicts with the past observations? It is not a valid conclusion because science has never observed a supernatural cause and scientists have no data or evidence to suggest such an existence is even possible.


Granted, I know that I cannot prove that god does not exist, but hopefully at this point I have clarified why “God did it” is not a logical alternative hypothesis to explain issues that “Scientist cannot yet explain”.
It is acceptable to believe that all problems have a solution. It is acceptable to say: “I do not know the answer to this problem.” It is not acceptable to say: “The solution to this problem is a supernatural concept, which I have no evidence to support.” It conclusion, I say history, observable and documented evidence compiled by over two hundred years of research lends credibility to the concept that these problems have natural solutions. There is no data, research and or observable evidence which supports the notion of a supernatural anything. Rae, you are more than welcome to try and prove the existence the supernatural if you like, I will gladly comment on your thoughts.

The old question: “If god created the universe, then what created god?” is usually answered in a similar fashion to your comment “God does not need a creator, because he “has no ingredients”, or “God exists outside time and existence”. But these are simply word play answers and have no real meaning. Both of those concepts are unjustified notions which are not supported by evidence. To make such a claim valid one must prove that a thing can exist outside of time, or that a thing can exist with no ingredients. I could very well propose the concept of a non-thinking, indifferent super-force, with no ingredients, which exist outside of time. I could also say that this force caused of all the matter in our universe to exist. This super-force caused our matter and universe in a way that was accidental, like a by-product of its existence outside of time. I could suggest that when the by-product of this super-force (matter) was created, it was actually the big bang. This super-force, being non-intelligent, was not aware of what it has caused and had no further influence, so after the big gang all of matter ran a natural course which can be explained through natural processes which are documented and observed by science.

WOW! What an interesting concept, seems to have the all same “clutch” arguments as your god argument. Yet, I’m willing to bet it sounded ridiculous. It should, its totally unjustified word play, yet you and everyone on the planet cannot prove my theory false. Should we be inclined to accept it a plausible explanation for the origin of matter? My position is that we should not.


It can’t be proven wrong so…..“That means there’s a chance!” (A chance it’s true)
Your right Rae, but that is not how humans decide what to believe in any other area of life.

For ex: You cannot possibly prove that there are not fairies at the bottom of my garden, but you can prove that the PROBABILITY of that being true is slim, and that is based on the observations and evidence, which give no reason to conclude that fairies are real.
A satellite could fall from the sky and crush you as you leave for work. It’s possible, but so unlikely to happen, so based on the probability that it won’t, you don’t think twice about it when you step outside. When someone IS afraid to go outside because they are scared of falling satellites or garden fairies, we call them crazy or neurotic. Because unjustified beliefs are a characteristic of an irrational person.

So Rae, with all due respect, do you still feel your beliefs in god are justified by some evidence or observable data, or any testable concept? Because before we talk about the bible or resurrection we must first establish whether or not the notion of GOD is a plausible concept. I look forward to your reply.

Creationism Refuted....Again: Star Distances

As i have mentioned before i am making it my personal mission to combat the pseudo science of creationism. Though creationism is not an excepted theory in the scientific community, it is widely excepted in society amongst the religious. While i would not try to dictate what an individual chooses to believe, i would like to help keep information available to atheist and agnostics who might encounter similar twisted logic in in their daily lives and conversations. I would like to repeat that i do not wish do dictate what one should believe. However when such beliefs as creationism try to "move in" on what my children are taught in school i draw the line.

Christians who employ Christian science to justify their beliefs cross over to a slightly different plain of argument then someone who simply chooses belief based on blind faith. Blind faith, does not need justification to the believer, Christian science on the other hand attempts uses the sciences to prove that events in scripture are true and provable, thus they feel they have justified their belief in Christianity. If your not familiar, with creationism or creation theory, I'll give you a short summary.

Everything in the bible, including genesis is a literal account of history. God created the earth in six days, the great flood, Noah's ark, the Earth and universe are only 6000 years old,etc.. What creation theory really creates is a whole list of inconsistency's with accepted ideas about our world. For example when did the dinosaurs live? must have been with humans if the earth is only 6000 years old, what about the rock dating that goes back billions of years? Christian science attempts to answer these questions by reevaluating the evidence.

My refutation of creationism for this post (there are many others!!) is a concept that occurred to me after watching a show about astronomy. It is an example of evidence for the true age of the universe that cannot be viewed in any other manor than a solid contradiction of the young earth theory (another name for creation theory).

The proof about the age of our universe is found in star distances. The basic concept is that we have identified that certain stars have a known distance of billions of light years away. All light, including light emitted from stars has a fixed speed that it can travel. That speed is 299,792,458 meters per second. For many practical purposes, the speed of light is so great that it can be regarded to travel instantaneously. However, the finite speed of light becomes noticeable when applied to very long distances. Like in the case of distant stars. When a star is said to be a million miles away, that means that light from that star will take one million of our earth years to reach our eye. When you look at the night sky, you are basically looking deep into history. To drive the point home image this: If a star that is known to be a million light years away, burned out at the exact second you read this, it would take one million years for that star to vanish from our perspective on earth.

I will not go into the exact means of how a star distance is determined, but the accuracy of determining star distances is very reliable. It has yet to be discredited and even if the math was slightly wrong it would still put the creation theory out of commission. For creation theory to hold true all stars must be located within 6000 light years from earth, or their light would not have even reached us yet! This dilemma is so damming (pun intended) to creationism that while researching this topic i found it was even addressed in a post at GodAndScience.org of all sites!! The article points out what a debate stopper this concept is for creationist. The article is very well worded so i will not attempt to summarize, and i will end my argument with the words from that very post.

It is extremely evident from astronomy that our Universe is billions of light-years across, and thus that light from distant stars has taken billions of years to reach us. One method of accurately determining star distances uses Cepheid variable stars, which have a known relationship between brightness and pulse rate. This relationship is explained by physics, and verified (calibrated) by measuring all Cepheid variable stars whose distances are close enough to confirm by parallax. Therefore, the actual brightness of a Cepheid variable star can be determined by its pulse rate, regardless of how far away it is. And, of course, if a star's actual brightness and measured (apparent) brightness are known, its distance can be calculated from a simple equation (apparent brightness decreases as one over the distance squared). This and many other methods verify Hubble's law describing the expansion of the Universe, with the beginning between 10 and 20 billion years ago. Attempts by young-Earth proponents to explain these facts have been unavailing. Norman and Setterfield's proposal of decay in the speed of light is easily shown to be invalid (Roberts, Ross, and Stoner all deal with this), as is Humphreys' attempt at a young-Earth cosmology (see Conner and Ross (1999)). Another explanation, that the Universe was created with "appearance of age" is both un-scientific at its core (if all the evidence that we see for age is fabricated, then why even have this debate?), as well as having theological problems with the truthfulness of God, since in that case we are constantly observing events in the cosmos which in fact never occurred (see Brain Teaser: SN1987a for an illustrative example of this point).

Creationism proofs refuted

I have been following the pseudo science of creationism lately. More specifically i have been listening to a Christian talk radio show host by the name of Bob Dutko. Bob is the former Press Secretary for the Christian Coalition of America, who also happens to be the epitome of a fundamental Christian. Another of Bobs claim to fame is his CD collection called Top Ten Proofs. His CD called "Top Ten Proofs of Gods Existence" represent the foundation on which "creation science" is built. In this Series of post i will be refuting each and every one of his proofs. I would like to point out that am not a scientist of any sort, however in the realm of creation science i feel i can hold my ground with just some simple logic and common sense.

Before you read Bobs proof, we need to learn a bit about physics, as it will be referenced in a few paragraphs. If you refer to this link of the 2nd law of thermodynamics you will see something about entropy. If you don't want to link out, here is the just of it. The 2nd law implies simply that the energy in the universe will eventually disperse evenly and be used up. Basically the universe metaphorically is like a spring wound watch. You wind the spring, and it holds energy. When the spring unwinds the energy is used up and the watch eventually comes to a rest. We know the universe is currently full of energy so we obviously haven't reached that point. Also the 2nd law proves that the universe as we know it has could not have always been in existence or it would have run out of energy by now and become dead. This is an excepted theory and proves there was in fact a beginning in which all of the energy in the universe was created. Real scientist would call this: The Big Bang.

Here is Bobs first attempt where he invokes the Laws of Thermodynamics to show proof of God.

While Intelligent Design skeptics may claim there is no evidence of God, the actual scientific evidence for God's existence is overwhelming, scientifically answering the question, "does God exist?".
In science there is a Law of Physics called the 1st Law of Thermodynamics. Within it is a Conservation of Energy Law that states, as a key principle that all energy in a closed system must be conserved. Okay, fancy language, but what does that mean? It means that while energy can convert into matter (physical “stuff”), and matter into energy, however much total “stuff” there is (matter and energy), there can never be an increase in that total amount or a decrease in that total amount. So however much total “stuff” there is in the universe, (matter and energy combined), there can never have been more and never have been less. All it can do is convert to different forms, like matter to energy or energy to matter, but the total amount of all of it has to remain the same.
The “closed system” is a scientific term that refers to a system or an “area” that has no outside influence, like the universe. Now, as believers we know, of course, that God does influence the universe, so many believers would consider the universe an “open system”, (one that does get outside influence), but for the atheist who says there is no God, the universe is all there is, so from their perspective and for the sake of conventional science, the universe would get no outside influence and would therefore be considered a “closed system”.
Back to the 1st Law of Thermodynamics. If it states that you can never have an increase or decrease of energy/matter, which means that matter/energy can not be created from nothingness, how did we get all the matter and energy in the universe? If science is all there is and there is no God, then the 1st Law of Thermodynamics reigns supreme and therefore it would be impossible to have matter and energy in existence right now. Simply put, when you open your eyes and see matter and experience energy, what you see is impossible according to the known Laws of science if, in fact, there is no God. Therefore, science itself says there must be a God.
Plain and simple, matter/energy can not come into existence. It is scientifically impossible, yet here we see everything around us, so how can that be? There are really only 3 possibilities. Option A: Everything came into existence by itself anyway, without the help of God, (even though science has proven that impossible). Option B: Everything in the universe has always existed for all of eternity, (which, by the way is also scientifically impossible as explained in the Top Ten Proofs for God's Existence CD due to something called the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics), or Option C: There must be a God, a Being greater than science, who created the Laws of science and has the ability to disobey them. Not only is a belief in God the only logical conclusion to draw, it's the only one scientifically possible because remember, if there is no God, the first two options are scientifically impossible according to the actual Laws of Physics.

Here is my refutation of his Proof

Bobs proof seems to me like a bit of a word game, and is not the first time such a word game is been employed to persuade people of a flawed concept. It reminds me of one of Zeno's paradoxes, which states that:

Achilles is in a footrace with the tortoise. Achilles allows the tortoise a head start of 100 feet. If we suppose that each racer starts running at some constant speed (one very fast and one very slow), then after some finite time, Achilles will have run 100 feet, bringing him to the tortoise's starting point. During this time, the tortoise has run a much shorter distance, say, 10 feet. It will then take Achilles some further time to run that distance, by which time the tortoise will have advanced farther; and then more time still to reach this third point, while the tortoise moves ahead. Thus, whenever Achilles reaches somewhere the tortoise has been, he still has farther to go. Therefore, because there are an infinite number of points Achilles must reach where the tortoise has already been, he can never overtake the tortoise.

This is as obvious misrepresentation of basic physics, but though its worded cleverly it is very deceiving. If the same tactic is applied to a concept that is not familiar (like thermodynamics) it is even more effective.

So here is my take on the big bang: We know that our universe is a closed system, no energy in, no energy out. We know that the 2nd law of thermodynamics proves that energy in our universe had an initial starting point when it was at its peak energy and is slowly being dispersed through entropy. Bob states that this starting point is where all of the universes energy began. But was it? The truth is that when the universe was formed a closed system was created, however we know nothing about how that energy was trapped into the system. I say trapped, because we don't know, and have no reason to believe that it was created when our "closed system" was formed. This is the root of Bobs word game.

Bob draws his conclusion from three unknown facts.

One: there was no existence prior to the formation of our universe.

Two: energy was created initially in the formation of our universe.

Three: God is the default answer where science has a gap.

In reality these first two concepts are still unknown, and the third is just a short cut to any thought at all. Again the only conclusion we can draw for certain, based on laws of thermodynamics, is that when the universe was created a "closed system" was formed. We know nothing about where that energy came from. (The default answer is not God or fairies or any supernatural entity.) There are still many theories being worked out that could explain how both a "closed system" universe is formed and where it could get its energy. One of such theories is known unofficially as The Parent Universe Theory. Which states the possibility of a parent universe which could spawn smaller daughter universes through black holes. It is also theorised that there is a megaverse out there which sections off smaller "closed systems" stacked with energy. Like air passing through a giant tub of soapy water, and releasing bubbles of trapped air.

If you look at how much is still unknown about the physics of our universe the possibilities for an event that would lead to natural occurring universe could be endless, however a supernatural explanation will more likely be Option #1,000,000,000 and not Option C

And so, Bob Dutko, the creationist, looks at his tiny bubble and says this is all that there is, and god is the cause. The energy in this bubble could not have been created due to the 1st law of thermodynamics, and so on.....

Science however will continue to look outside our tiny bubble and continue to give logical and natural occurring explanations for our reality.