True and Reasonable Faith Theistic Proofs

Third Session

Dr. Richard Spencer

June, 2015

Review

– Faith and Reason work together in every worldview

– We use our reason in service of truth, not as the final judge

– Belief becomes knowledge with sufficient warrant; Christianity is fully warranted

• We discussed four essential principles of knowledge:

– The law of noncontradiction

– The law of causality

– The basic (but not infallible) reliability of sense perception

– The analogical use of language (we are made in God’s image and can think his thoughts after him)

Outline • Epistemology

– How do we decide what is true?

– Faith and reason

• Rationality; belief, knowledge and warrant

– When does belief become knowledge?

– Is belief in Christianity reasonable?

• What is the foundation of proper Christian faith?

• What good are theistic “proofs”?

• Classic Theistic Proofs

• Other Theistic Proofs

• Modern evidence for the Christian worldview

• Apologetics

Thomas Aquinas

• We looked at Thomas Aquinas’ first three proofs for the existence of God from his Summa Theologica

1. Unmoved mover

2. First cause

3. Necessary being

These are all forms of the Cosmological Argument (i.e., because the cosmos exists, there must be a cause) and are based on the impossibility of an actual infinity of causes

• We then looked at William Lane Craig’s formulation of the Cosmological argument …

Basic Cosmological Argument

• William Lane Craig expresses the kalaam Cosmological Argument as a syllogism:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause

2. The universe began to exist

3. Therefore, the universe has a cause

• We’ve argued that the premises are true and we therefore conclude that the universe must have a cause

• This argument is solid and easy to remember, but we can deduce even more about the cause …

What Can We Say About this Cause?

• The cause must be sufficient to produce the effect:

– The cause must be eternal and self existent (or the first cause in the sequence must be)

– The cause must be amazingly powerful

– The cause must be unimaginably wise and knowledgeable

• Craig also argues that the cause must also be personal

– If the cause is eternal, then the effect would also be eternal unless the cause is able to decide when to bring the effect into existence. But only volitional beings make conscious choices

– The fine tuning of our universe also supports the idea that the cause is personal and had a definite purpose and plan (which gets into the Teleological Argument)

Fine Tuning

• For life to exist, there are dozens of key features of the laws of physics that must be precisely the way they are (sometimes called the anthropic coincidences). Let’s examine just four:

1. The strong nuclear force holds atomic nuclei together. If it were 10% weaker we would only have hydrogen, if it varied ±2% the distribution of elements would not support life.

2. The cosmological constant is the energy density of space and describes how much space itself affects the expansion of the universe. It is on the order of 10-122 ! If it were much larger the universe would be expanding so quickly that life would be impossible.

Fine Tuning

3. Life requires three “large” spatial dimensions. Fewer and you can’t have complex physical structures (think of drawing complex connections on a piece of paper – the lines must cross each other). With more than three dimensions forces drop off too rapidly with distance to have stable orbits (for electrons, planets, etc.).

4. The quantum nature of our universe is essential to life. For example, if electrons were not restricted to discrete energy levels, they would radiate energy as they circle the nucleus and, continually losing energy, would collapse into the nucleus and destroy the atom.

• There are many more “coincidences” and the net effect is impressive, e.g., see The Fingerprint of God by Hugh Ross, or

Modern Physics and Ancient Faith by Stephen Barr

Objections to the Fine Tuning Argument

• Stephen Barr, in Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, does a good job of addressing the common objections, I only want to mention one, the so-called Weak Anthropic Principle

• This principle states that there are many universes (or many “domains” in one), perhaps infinitely many, and that we just happen to be in the one that produced life

• This objection is extremely weak, but it is an example of what I said earlier; the atheist’s god of the gaps is infinity!

• Barr writes …

Infinity: the Atheist’s god of the Gaps

It is a very curious circumstance that materialists, in an effort to avoid what Laplace called the unnecessary hypothesis of God, are frequently driven to hypothesize the existence of an infinity of unobservable entities. … It seems that to abolish one unobservable God, it takes an infinite number of unobservable substitutes.

Stephen Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, University of Notre Dame Press, 2003, pp 156-157

Now Let’s Return to Thomas Aquinas

• Thomas Aquinas gave five proofs for the existence of God in his Summa Theologica

1. Unmoved mover

2. First cause

3. Necessary being

These first three are all forms of the Cosmological Argument (i.e., because the cosmos exists, there must be a cause) and are based on the impossibility of an actual infinity of causes

4. Degrees of goodness (The Moral Argument)

5. Teleological (having to do with the purpose, or end of creation)

4. Degrees of Goodness

• Aquinas argued:

– Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble, and the like. … There is then, something which is truest, something best, something noblest, and, consequently, something which is most being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being … Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection. And this we call God.

• This is a form of the moral argument, let’s look at more modern statements of it

Modern Moral Argument

• The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a lengthy section on the moral argument

• All such arguments have a similar form, which can be expressed as follows:

1. There are objective moral facts.

2. God provides the best explanation of the existence of objective moral facts.

3. Therefore, (probably) God exists.

• Let’s look at several examples

Modern Moral Arguments

• One class of argument (Divine Command Theories) is based on the following reasoning:

“We know how human laws come into existence. They are enacted by legislatures (or absolute monarchs in some countries) who have the authority to pass such laws. How then should the existence of moral laws be explained? It seems plausible to many to hold that they must be similarly grounded in some appropriate moral authority”

• The general form of these arguments is:

1. There are objective moral obligations.

2. If there are objective moral obligations, there is a God who explains these obligations.

3. There is a God.

Modern Moral Arguments

• A second class of arguments is based on the idea

“… that God is necessary to explain human awareness of moral truth (or moral knowledge, if one believes that this moral awareness amounts to knowledge).”

• The general form of these arguments is:

1. Humans possess objective moral knowledge.

2. Probably, if God does not exist, humans would not possess objective moral knowledge.

3. Probably, God exists.

Modern Moral Arguments

• A third class of arguments is based on the idea that human beings possess intrinsic dignity or worth

• The general form of these arguments is:

1. Human persons have a special kind of intrinsic value that we call dignity.

2. The only (or best) explanation of the fact that humans possess dignity is that they are created by a supremely good God in God's own image.

3. Probably there is a supremely good God.

Modern Moral Arguments

• A final argument is made on practical grounds: “Kant argues that the end that moral actions aim at is the ‘highest good,’ which is a world in which both moral virtue and happiness are maximized, with happiness contingent on virtue. For Kant ‘ought implies can,’ and so if I have an obligation to seek the highest good, then I must believe that it is possible to achieve such an end. However, I must seek the highest good only by acting in accordance with morality; no shortcuts to happiness are permissible. This seems to require that I believe that acting in accordance with morality will be causally efficacious in achieving the highest good. However, it is reasonable to believe that moral actions will be causally efficacious in this way only if the laws of causality are set up in such a way that these laws are conducive to the efficacy of moral action. … If a person believes that the natural world is simply a non-moral machine with no moral purposiveness then that person would have no reason to believe that moral action could succeed because there is no a priori reason to think moral action will achieve the highest good and little empirical reason to believe this either. Kant thus concludes that a moral agent must ‘postulate’ the existence of God as a rational presupposition of the moral life.”

Moral Argument Summary

• Almost everyone will agree that some things are inherently wrong, not just illegal

• If this belief is true, it implies the existence of a being with authority to establish and enforce those laws

• Our own consciences, especially when they condemn our thoughts, bear testimony to God and his law

Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them. Romans 2:14-15

Thomas Aquinas

• Thomas Aquinas gave five proofs for the existence of God in his Summa Theologica

1. Unmoved mover

2. First cause

3. Necessary being

These first three are all forms of the Cosmological Argument (i.e., because the cosmos exists, there must be a cause) and are based on the impossibility of an actual infinity of causes

4. Degrees of goodness (The Moral Argument)

5. Teleological (having to do with the purpose, or end of creation)

5. Teleological Argument

• Aquinas argued:

– We see that things which lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. … Now whatever lacks knowledge cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed … Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are ordered to their end; and this being we call God.

• The argument is that the universe appears designed to meet a particular purpose; let’s again take this up in a more modern form

5. Teleological Argument

• Perhaps the most famous teleological argument, or argument from design, is from Bishop Paley (1743-1805), an English clergyman and philosopher

Paley’s Watchmaker Argument

In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: … But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone? … For this reason, and for no other, [that is to say] that, when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose ... the inference, we think, is inevitable; that the watch must have had a maker ... Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.

—William Paley, Natural Theology (1802)

Paley’s Watchmaker Argument

• Paley went on to address the most common objections to his argument: 1. That we don’t know how to make such an object, nor do we know

anyone who does

2. That the watch is sometimes wrong and seldom exactly correct

3. That there might be parts whose function we don’t understand, or that might even appear to be unnecessary

4. Nor “would any man in his senses think the existence of the watch, with its various machinery, accounted for, by being told that it was one out of possible combinations of material forms”

5. That there is some “principle of order” that explains how the parts are arranged

6. That the watch is not proof of design, it just has the appearance

7. That it is the result of the action of natural laws

8. That we don’t fully understand the watch (and therefore can’t claim it is proof of design)

5. Teleological Argument

• G.K. Chesterton wrote, “one elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot” Orthodoxy, pp 106-107

• The online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states:

Design-type arguments are largely unproblematic when based upon things nature clearly could not or would not produce (e.g., most human artifacts), or when the intelligent agency is itself ‘natural’ (human, alien, etc.).

• Bill Dembski and others have written extensively and persuasively that it is perfectly possible and rational to infer design in biological systems as well; let’s take a look at a few arguments

Argument from Design: Abiogenesis

• The origin of life is one of the strongest of all arguments for the existence of God; how can you get living organisms from inanimate chemicals?

• Stephen Meyer’s book Signature in the Cell is a great book about the origin of life

• After Darwin’s theory came out (1859) most scientists thought the origin of life would be relatively easy to explain because cells were thought to be fairly simple:

Cells were viewed as “homogeneous and structureless globules of protoplasm,”32 amorphous sacs of chemical jelly, not intricate structures manifesting the appearance of design. Meyer, pg 44

32 Ernst Haeckel, The Wonders of Life, 1905, pg 135

Argument from Design: Abiogenesis

• But we now know that cells are amazingly complicated biological factories comprising many intricate parts using hundreds of specialized proteins

• Each protein is fabricated in response to instructions stored in the DNA of the cell

• Proteins are strands of amino acids that fold into specific shapes (necessary to perform their function)

• There are 20 different amino acids used by proteins

• A small protein might have, for example, a sequence of 150 amino acids

• The vast majority of amino-acid sequences that are possible do not form functioning proteins

Build a Protein

• If amino acids combine with one-another at random to form a sequence, how likely is it that we will obtain a functional protein?

• Stephen Meyer calculates this probability and finds that it is roughly 1 in 10164 (pg 212)

• But this number is meaningless unless we know how many chances there might be to create this protein

• Consider the Powerball lottery as an example

Powerball Lottery

• To win the Powerball lottery you have to pick five white balls correctly (out of 59 – the order doesn’t matter) and one red ball (out of 35)

– You have slightly less than 1 chance in 5 million of correctly picking the five white balls and 1 chance in 35 of getting the right red ball, so you have less than 1 chance in 175 million of winning the grand prize

– But, if they sell 90 million distinct tickets, the odds are better than 50/50 that someone will win!

• So, having one chance makes winning extremely unlikely, but having 90 million distinct chances makes it more probable than not

Build a Protein

• Now let’s return to considering the protein; how many chances might there be?

• The absolute maximum number of chances for anything to happen in this universe can be given an upper bound; Bill Dembski calls this bound the probabilistic resources of the universe

Probabilistic Resources of the Universe

• So, how many “chances” does the universe have for combining things?

– There are about 1080 particles in the observable universe

– Particles cannot interact faster than 1043 times a second

– The age of the universe is less than 1018 seconds

– Therefore, it is physically impossible to have more than 1080 X 1043 X 1018 = 10141 chances for any physical event to have occurred (a HUGE overestimate!)

– The National Research Council uses 1094 as the upper bound for determining if cryptography systems are secure

– Others have estimated this bound to be 1050

Build a Protein

• Let’s be ridiculously generous and say you get 10141 chances to form a functional protein

• Since the chances of getting a functional protein are 1 in 10164, even using this extremely generous number of chances we find there is only 1 chance in 1023 that a single functional protein could be formed by random combinations in the age of the universe

• That is more than 3 million times less likely than winning the Powerball Lottery twice in a row while buying 1 ticket each time!

• But one protein does not make a living cell …

The Origin of Life

• One protein is useless! It would be like being given one bolt, but not having a washer, or a nut, or anything to bolt together!

• Stephen Meyer says (on page 213):

– If we assume that a minimally complex cell needs at least 250 proteins of, on average, 150 amino acids and that the probability of producing just one such protein is 1 in 10164 as calculated above, then the probability of producing all the necessary proteins needed to service a minimally complex cell is 1 in 10164 multiplied by itself 250 times, or 1 in 1041,000.

• This estimate is way too small, because you would need specific proteins for a functional cell

The Origin of Life

• 1 chance in 1041,000 is like winning the Powerball Lottery more than 4,500 times in a row while buying only 1 ticket each time!

• And this is still just one cell, not life, and certainly not multiple organisms capable of then competing with one another and reproducing, which is required for evolution to start working

• We can’t mathematically say there is zero chance, but we might as well