Category: Science and faith

The fine-tuning just got finer

Here is a link to the latest from Reasons to Believe (reasons.org).

Some scientists have maintained that the water habitable zone[1] is wide because even if a planet is farther from its star, more carbon dioxide can keep the planet warm enough for ice to melt.  This new study shows that above very strict limits, CO2 becomes toxic to oxygen-breathing animals.  The water habitable zone just got much, much, smaller.  There is much more.  Treat yourself.  Here it is:

https://www.reasons.org/explore/blogs/todays-new-reason-to-believe/read/todays-new-reason-to-believe/2019/07/01/complex-life-s-narrow-requirements-for-atmospheric-gases

The “fine-tuning of the universe” for complex life gets finer and finer the more we learn about nature.  The bottom line: it was very, very hard to create a universe in which even one earthlike planet could exist.  It would not happen by accident in a trillion, trillion, trillion years.

[1] Water habitable zone: The range of distances from its star within which a planet must be located in order for the temperature to be mild enough for liquid water to exist on the surface of the planet.

The Shrinking Habitable Zone

Otis Graf is a member of Reasons to Believe’s Apologetics Community.  He recently posted a message which deserves to be known to everyone.

I have written often about “the fine-tuning of the universe” (see joshualetter/blog, “The Existence of God – Four Philosophical Arguments,” June 28, 2018 post, chapter II).  Otis presents yet more evidence that our hospitable planet could not have occurred anywhere in the universe by chance, not even once.  Here is Otis’ message, with almost no editing.

A team of five scientists from NASA and several universities has, for the first time, shown that most exoplanets that were thought to be potentially habitable are, in fact, toxic to complex life.  Here, “complex” means oxygen-dependent multicellular life.

Here is the popular article which is a news release from Univ. California Riverside: “New study dramatically narrows the search for advanced life in the universe.  Toxic gases limit the types of life we could find on habitable worlds.”  Here is the paper that was published in the Astrophysical Journal.  “A Limited Habitable Zone for Complex Life”

It turns out that for Sun-like stars, most of the “traditional habitable zone” [where water can exist in liquid form] is ruled out because those regions require poisonous concentrations of CO2 in order to remain warm enough to host liquid surface water.  The smaller M dwarf stars will produce atmospheres of toxic carbon monoxide.

The search for intelligent life (SETI) takes a particularly hard hit from this research.  This is a conclusion from the published paper:

One implication is that we may not expect to find remotely detectable signs of intelligent life (“technosignatures”) on planets orbiting late M dwarfs or on potentially habitable planets near the outer edge of their HZs. These CO2 and CO limits should be considered in future targeted SETI searches.

The paper’s authors even invoke anthropic reasoning: “More broadly, limitations on complex life by CO2 and CO may partially address why we find ourselves near the inner edge of the HZ of a G-dwarf star rather than near the center or toward the outer edge of the HZ around one of the much more numerous M-dwarf stars.”

In the UC news release, the lead author of the paper is quoted as saying this:

I think showing how rare and special our planet is only enhances the case for protecting it.  As far as we know, Earth is the only planet in the universe that can sustain human life.

That sums it up.  Earth really is an Improbable Planet.

Otis Graf

Houston, TX

And remember: there are not one but eleven known habitable zones.  For advanced life to be possible, its planet must be in all eleven HZ’s at the same time and must remain there for a long, long time. See https://www.reasons.org/explore/blogs/todays-new-reason-to-believe/read/todays-new-reason-to-believe/2019/03/04/tiny-habitable-zones-for-complex-life.

 

 

Lennox on Divine Aseity and the Trinity

John Lennox is another of my favorite Christian apologists.  He is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and an Emeritus Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science at Green Templeton College, Oxford University.

In this 2011 film clip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIknACeeS0g), which is just over 10 minutes long, Dr. Lennox discusses the question, If God created the universe, then who created God? and the question, How can God be a triunity?

Lennox tells of an occasion on which he addressed a convention of scientists.  Afterward, a member of the audience approached him and asked whether it was possible that Lennox should actually subscribe to such an irrational doctrine as that of the Trinity.  Instead of answering immediately, Lennox asked him a question of his own.

Do you believe in consciousness?  Energy?  (Yes.)  Do you know what they are?  (No.)  Should I write you off as an intellectual for believing in something you don’t understand?  (No.)  That’s what you were going to do to me five minutes ago.  Why do you believe in them?  (Lennox supplies the answer:) Because of their explanatory power.  A trinity is the only explanation that makes sense of the evidence as Lennox sees it.  God Himself is a fellowship.

What is it that a divine fellowship explains?  Many things, I’m sure; but perhaps principally it answers the question, How can God be love, if in eternity past, prior to creation, there was no one around for Him to love?  The doctrine of the Trinity explains that God has never been alone, but that each Person of the Trinity has eternally been in the most intimate fellowship with the other two Persons.  Thus, the doctrine of the Trinity explains how it is that God is love.

Do yourself a favor and introduce yourself to this wonderful man.  For further reading, see God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (Lion 2009) and God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design is it Anyway? (Lion 2011).

The Existence of God: A Concise Summary

Since publishing my essay on the existence of God, I have wanted to provide a concise summary of the argument.

Why do I do this?  It is because when I see the trees and the stars, realizing the transcendent genius which was required in order to create them, I hear a voice saying to me, “I love you.”

The classic cosmological argument for the existence of God rests on the premise that whatever begins to exist – that is to say, anything which is not past-infinite, anything which is not eternal – must have a cause for its existence.  But even before one considers whether or not to accept that premise, it is useful to observe that there are really only four possible scenarios for the origin of the universe.  This can be clearly seen from the following set of necessary propositions.

Either the universe had a beginning, or it didn’t.

If the universe had a beginning, then either it had a cause or it did not have a cause.

If the universe did have a cause, its cause likewise either had a beginning, or it didn’t.

Those three binary possibilities are exhaustive; that is, there are no other possibilities.  This leads to four possible origin scenarios.

  1. Possible scenario #1.: The universe did not have a beginning; that is, it has always existed.

Modern science has shown this simply not to be the case.  There is a scientific consensus, based on extensive observation, that the universe had a beginning approximately 13.8 billion years ago.

  1. Possible scenario #2.: The universe had a beginning, and it popped into existence out of nothing, uncaused.

This is not logically impossible, but it is implausible because it violates the principles of causation, which affirm that nothing happens without a cause.[1]

  1. Possible scenario #3.: The universe had a beginning, and it was caused by some separate entity which itself also had a beginning.

This too is logically possible, but it entails an infinite regress of non-eternal causes, since one must then ask, what caused the cause, and then, what caused that cause, etc., etc.  If the regression is infinite then it begs the question: how did the regression begin if it did not begin with an eternal cause?  The only way for the regression not to be infinite is for it to come sooner or later to a cause which had no beginning, which is equivalent to the fourth scenario.

  1. Possible scenario #4.: The universe had a beginning, and it was caused by some separate entity which did not itself have a beginning – that is, the cause of the universe was some eternal entity. This is one step from theism. Theism does not entail any of the difficulties inherent in the other possibilities: it has not been falsified empirically, it does not violate the principles of causation, and it does not beg the question.  Thus, theism is truly the only plausible explanation for the existence of the universe.

Scientists believe that all matter and energy, along with space and time themselves, came into existence about 13.8 billion years ago.  If so, and if the universe had a cause, then the cause must have been immaterial, timeless, and immensely powerful.  The Fine-Tuning of the universe shows that the cause was a conscious, purposive Agent of incomprehensible intelligence.  These are some of the attributes which science shows the Creator possesses, to a virtual certainty, and now we have come all the way to theism.  God exists.

There is another basis for concluding that the Creator is a personal entity.  If that were not the case – if the cause of the universe were some physical state of affairs existing from eternity past, then all of the conditions needed for the universe to come into existence would themselves have existed from eternity past; and if so, then there would have been nothing to prevent those conditions from producing the universe at some time in the infinite past.  And if that had occurred, then because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that in a closed system entropy (disorganization) always increases with time, the universe would already have reached heat death.  It has not done so; therefore, the cause of the universe could not have been a purely physical state of affairs existing from eternity past.

[1] This is the first premise of the cosmological argument.  For a more complete analysis of this premise, see joshualetter.com/blog, June 28, 2018, page 11.

The Author of the Gospel of Luke is “a historian of the first rank”

[The following is an excerpt from “The Evidence for Jesus,” by William Lane Craig (https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/jesus-of-nazareth/the-evidence-for-jesus/).  (Citations deleted).]

The Gospel writers have a proven track record of historical reliability. . . .  I only have time to look at one example: Luke. Luke was the author of a two-part work: the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles.  These are really one work and are separated in our Bibles only because the church grouped the gospels together in the New Testament.  Luke is the gospel writer who writes most self-consciously as an historian.  In the preface to this work he writes:

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed. (Lk. 1.1-4)

This preface is written in classical Greek terminology such as was used by Greek historians; after this Luke switches to a more common Greek.  But he has put his reader on alert that he can write, should he wish to, like the learned historian.  He speaks of his lengthy investigation of the story he’s about to tell and assures us that it is based on eyewitness information and is accordingly the truth.

Now who was this author we call Luke?  He was clearly not an eyewitness to Jesus’s life.  But we discover an important fact about him from the book of Acts.  Beginning in the sixteenth chapter of Acts, when Paul reaches Troas in modern-day Turkey, the author suddenly starts using the first-person plural: “we set sail from Troas to Samothrace,” “we remained in Philippi some days,” “as we were going to the place of prayer,” etc.  The most obvious explanation is that the author had joined Paul on his evangelistic tour of the Mediterranean cities.  In chapter 21 he accompanies Paul back to Palestine and finally to Jerusalem.  What this means is that the author of Luke-Acts was in fact in first hand contact with the eyewitnesses of Jesus’s life and ministry in Jerusalem. . . .

Was the author reliable in getting the facts straight?  The book of Acts enables us to answer that question decisively.  The book of Acts overlaps significantly with secular history of the ancient world, and the historical accuracy of Acts is indisputable.  This has recently been demonstrated anew by Colin Hemer, a classical scholar who turned to New Testament studies, in his book The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History (1990).  Hemer goes through the book of Acts with a fine-toothed comb, pulling out a wealth of historical knowledge, ranging from what would have been common knowledge down to details which only a local person would know.  Again and again Luke’s accuracy is demonstrated: from the sailings of the Alexandrian corn fleet to the coastal terrain of the Mediterranean islands to the peculiar titles of local officials, Luke gets it right.  According to Professor Sherwin-White, “For Acts the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming. Any attempt to reject its basic historicity even in matters of detail must now appear absurd.”  The judgement of Sir William Ramsay, the world-famous archaeologist, still stands: “Luke is a historian of the first rank. . . .   This author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.”  Given Luke’s care and demonstrated reliability as well as his contact with eyewitnesses within the first generation after the events, this author is trustworthy.

“The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus” by Gary Habermas & Michael Licona.

This is FREE at Amazon for Kindle!  (February 22, 2016 update: No, it’s not free, it costs about $14.  But I didn’t lie, it really was free when I downloaded it.  I don’t know what happened.  But it’s still worth the price.)

Habermas is regarded by many as the world’s foremost authority on the Resurrection, and Licona is the author of the definitive The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Nottingham, England: IVP Academic 2010).

Listen, please: if you want to know the truth and can read, then read this: (click here.)

More Exciting Findings Show Earth’s Uniqueness

The Search for Extraterrestrial Life continues.  You’ve all heard of the “habitable zone”  – the narrow range of distances from the host star at which a planet will have liquid water, an essential condition for life?  Well actually it would seem scientists have identified at least eight habitable zones in which a planet must reside in order to harbor advanced life.  Treat yourself to this.