12. Some Final Issues
What Does God Have
to Do with This?
A theist Frank Zindler asks what are we to do with the Wizard of Oz once
. we realize that there is no Oz?' In terms of Jesus' resurrection, one could
argue, "What are we to do with the risen Son of God once we realize that there
is no God?" If God does not exist, neither does his son. All talk about a risen
Son of God is ridiculous.
"If atheism is true, then Jesus did not rise."
The resurrection of Jesus would actually provide strong evidence for the existence of God. Therefore, to have an effective argument against the resurrection of Jesus, the atheist must first successfully tear down the evidence for Jesus' resurrection and then present strong reasons why God does not exist. Unless and until he does both of these, this argument is ineffective as a refutation of Jesus' resurrection.
We have seen that there simply are no compelling arguments against the resurrection of Jesus. But what about arguments against the existence of God? Space does not permit us to go into great detail regarding all the arguments for and against God's existence that have developed over the millennia. However, we will look briefly at the major contemporary argument that is used by atheists to bring into question the Judeo-Christian concept of God. This line of reasoning revolves around the problem of evil:
If God is all-good, he would prefer a world where no evil exists to one where it does. If God is all-powerful, he could create such a world. If he would prefer such a world and could create it, why do we have evil in our world? Perhaps he is willing but unable and, therefore, not allpowerful. Perhaps he is able but unwilling and, therefore, not all-good. Either way, an all-good and all-powerful God does not exist.'
Only a few of the problems with this argument can be mentioned here. First, this argument does not call into question God's existence. Rather it could question only his character and power. Atheism does not necessarily follow from this argument. The only conclusion for consideration is that an all-good and allpowerful God does not exist. Even if the argument is sound, there still might be a Creator of the universe who loves us but who is not omnipotent. Therefore, this also fails to rule out the resurrection of the Son of God.
Second, it may be that we currently live in the best of all possible worlds where free beings are involved.' God cannot accomplish logical absurdities. Is it possible for God to create a married bachelor in the strictest sense of these terms? Can God "smell the color nine"' or draw a square circle? If God is unable to accomplish logically contradictory actions, this does not limit his omnipotence. But how does this relate to the problem of evil? Perhaps it is logically impossible to have a world in which all free beings always freely choose to live righteously. As long as there is a reasonable possibility, one cannot claim that the matter has been decided.' We may very well live in a world that has an optimized balance of the greatest amount of good with a minimal amount of evil. Thus, evil does not render impossible the existence of an all-good and all-powerful God.
Third, some defenses that have been proposed rely upon natural law and the inability to propose a better state of affairs than the one in which we find ourselves. One variation of this argument concentrates on the "soul-making" aspects of suffering. It sometimes seems that this is the optimal way to grow as human beings.'
Fourth, if the Bible is correct, God did create a world where no evil existed. Humans chose to do evil and evil usually carries with it certain consequences. Therefore, God is not responsible for the evil in the world; human beings are.' Could he rid the world of all evil tonight at midnight? If he did, which of us would be left at 12:01? Or how many of us would push a button to eliminate all of our pain and suffering if, by so doing, we also eliminated all of our free choices? It is interesting to see how God has dealt with the problem of our evil. He sent his Son to take the sins of the world on himself, to die for those sins, to rise from the dead, and to offer eternal life to everyone who comes to him in belief and repentance.
We have briefly looked at what is currently the most popular argument for atheism. It is fraught with problems, only some of which we have mentioned. Now let us look at some of the arguments in favorof the existence of God, since these also frustrate arguments against Jesus' resurrection based on God's nonexistence.
Evidence is strong that God exists
Let us look briefly at two major arguments (other than Jesus' resurrection) that are advanced by theists in support of the existence of God.' Antony Flew, regarded by many professional philosophers as one of the twentieth century's most influential atheist philosophers, once stated the following regarding Jesus' resurrection: "Certainly given some beliefs about God, the occurrence of the resurrection does become enormously more likely."" Why? In Flew's mind, the philosophy of naturalism discussed in chapter 8 provides the major tension to Jesus' resurrection. Naturalism is true if God does not exist and false if he does. If naturalism is false, then there would be no reason to dismiss Jesus' resurrection since the evidence for this event is strong. Therefore, although arguments for God's existence are not necessary in order to establish Jesus' resurrection, a strong case for God's existence does render Jesus' resurrection more likely, especially since the known facts strongly support it.
The scientific evidence points to an Intelligent Designer of the universe and life
Before determining whether our universe and life itself are products of an intelligent Designer, we must ask, "How do we recognize when something has been designed?" Philosopher and mathematician William Dembski offers two criteria for identifying design. First, the thing under consideration must be so complex that it is extremely unlikely to have occurred by chance. Second, the thing under consideration must exhibit a sort of pattern that is normally associated with a cause that possesses intelligence. Dembski refers to these criteria as specified complexity.10
If we were to drive out into the country and pass by a cornfield with its neat and numerous rows, we would be justified in concluding that the field was the result of a designer. Why? Because the cornfield meets the two criteria for identifying design. First, although the design of the rows is simple to the eye, it is complex in that it is extremely unlikely to have occurred by chance. Our background knowledge tells us that, given wild seeds and the wind, the undirected processes of nature would produce a field of mixed plants and there would be no neat arrangement. This sort of pattern of rows and pure corn is what we might expect only if an intelligent source is present.
What distinguishes our cornfield from the neat surf lines on the beach produced from the receding tide and the complex combination of dust particles within a whirlwind at a given moment? Natural causes can produce these; thus, they aren't complex. Therefore, both are disqualified from being the result of the actions of an intelligent or personal agent. The specific combination of dust particles in a whirlwind doesn't meet the second criteria either, since the particular combination of dust particles is quite arbitrary. It has no functional difference than if a slightly different combination had occurred. Thus no pattern is present that we might normally associate with design.
Dembski adds that we already use specified complexity in various scientific disciplines in order to identify when an intelligent cause is present. Two examples are forensic science and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). By searching for certain types of patterns normally associated with an intelligent cause, detectives can many times determine if a personal agent was involved in a crime. Regarding SETI, scientists listen to sounds in space, seeking to identify a sort of pattern that is too complex to be the result of an undirected natural process and that would normally be the product of some sort of intelligence. In the science fiction movie Contact, a scientist discovers a signal from space and identifies a pattern of beats and pauses in it that correspond to a sequence of prime numbers between two and 101. Such a pattern would meet both criteria for identifying something with an intelligent source behind it.
Now that we have an idea of how to identify design, is it possible to conclude scientifically that the universe and life itself are products of an intelligent Designer? Let's look at some examples from astrophysics and molecular biology. In 1965, two Bell Laboratory scientists, Robert W. Wilson and Arno A. Penzias, discovered a blanket of microwave radiation in the center of our universe. This indicated that at some point in the distant past the universe was extremely hot and dense. Moreover, the fact that the universe is expanding outward from that point in the center has led most astronomers to conclude that a massive explosion sent all matter hurtling out through space at some point. We will not discuss here whether what has been called the "Big Bang" actually occurred, but if it did, the theistic implications are tremendous." It would almost be a fingerprint of the Creator.12 With the acceptance of the Big Bang, some scientists jumped to the conclusion that the idea of a Creator God was no longer needed to explain the origin of the universe, since it currently appears that the universe began with a bang.
In the years that followed the development of the theory of an expanding universe, further research in astrophysics revealed that certain conditions would have to be present for the possibility of life to exist. These conditions are referred to as cosmic constants. These conditions must be present within an extremely narrow margin. Given any composition of matter outside these extremely narrow parameters, no life could be produced. Based on this observation, Donald Page, a Nobel Prize winning astronomer, calculated that given all of the possible ways in which the constants could have obtained in a Big Bang, the odds of getting a universe capable of sustaining life is I in 10""1141; that is one chance in ten followed by 1,240 zeros!" Given these odds, it is enormously more probable that, in an undirected "Bang," the constants would not have obtained in favor of life. Thus, the first criterion for specified complexity has been met.
It is only natural to note that vastly improbable events occur all of the time, and ask why the constants indicate design any more than an improbable natural event. Imagine that four people are playing cards. One of them shuffles and deals out all the cards. One person notices that he has been dealt all hearts in the order of ace through king. The next person has been dealt all spades in ace through king order, the next all diamonds, ace through king. The dealer has all clubs in the same order. One of the players asks the dealer, "How did you do that?" The dealer responds by saying, "What do you mean? This happened by pure chance." Although this is remotely possible, the players who have been dealt these cards will not believe the dealer, because there is a strong appearance that the deck has been stacked.
Even so, the complexity of cards doesn't compare to the complexities of the universe. When it comes to the origin of the universe, it appears that the deck was stacked in order for life to occur. It is not that one configuration of the universe isn't just as improbable as another. But, given undirected processes, a life-prohibiting universe is astronomically more probable than a life-permitting one. Agnostic physicist Robert Jastrow of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies calls the life-permitting constants of the universe "the most theistic result ever to come out of science."" Paul Davies, a Templeton laureate and prominent physicist moved from promoting atheism in 1983,15 to conceding in 1984 that "the laws [of physics] ... seem themselves to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design," 16 to in 1988 saying that there "is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all. The impression of design is overwhelming.""
With the turn of the twenty-first century and more years of research and understanding, the data pointing to an intelligent Designer has only increased. Astrophysicist Hugh Ross explains that more cosmic constants are still being discovered. In 1998, Ross listed twenty-nine constants that pertained to specific values in the universe and forty-five additional constants related to planet, moon, star, and galaxy relationships" In June 2002, Ross updated the list to forty-five constants pertaining to specific values in the universe,'`-' and 118 constants related to planet, moon, star, and galaxy relationships.2°
Arno Penzias, a Nobel laureate in physics and one of the two scientists who in 1965 discovered the strong evidence in favor of the Big Bang, comments, "astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan."" A recent paper entitled "Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant" by physicists Lisa Dyson, Matthew Kleban, and Leonard Susskind of Stanford University and MIT concludes that, aside from assistance from an unknown agent outside the universe, the appearance of life in the universe requires "statistically miraculous events" and is incomprehensibly unlikely. It is not as though one threw a deck of cards into the air and they fell onto the floor into the only arrangement that would make life possible. It is more as though one threw a deck of cards into the air and they landed as a tidy and perfectly balanced house of cards.
Thus, the second criterion of specified complexity has been met. The universe exhibits a pattern that speaks of an intelligent cause. The three scientists just mentioned do not consider the possibility of a Creator. Rather they suggest that there is something fundamentally incorrect with the physics used by scientists today.22 While we can and should be open to future discoveries that would change our current understanding of physics, it is safe to say that what we have been discovering within astrophysics since 1965 certainly points to an intelligent Designer as the external agent who fine-tuned the universe so that life might appear.
The constants in our universe are more at home in a designed universe than in one that exists by chance.23 If an intelligent Designer created the universe, we expect such a balance of forces. On the other hand, if the universe is the result of undirected natural processes, the odds that it will possess such a strong appearance of design are incomprehensibly unlikely. Thus, the most reasonable explanation for the appearance of design in the universe is that an intelligent Designer exists. While it is admitted that this does not conclusively prove the existence of God, it is certainly a "face card" in the hand dealt to the one who believes that God exists.
Some of the more recent results of molecular biology have likewise impressed many scientists and philosophers that there must be an intelligent Designer behind life. The odds against life forming by chance chemical evolutionary scenarios have brought a new argument to the table for an intelligent Designer that skeptics have been unable to answer adequately to date.
The cell once was viewed as a very simple entity, containing fluid and a small dot in the middle called the nucleus. However, with the advent of the electron microscope, scientists can now look deep into the cell, and what they have discovered has left them in awe. Each cell is like a city, with a city hall, a transportation department, a hospital, a fire department, and a police department. Mechanisms within the cell act to fulfill their individual purposes and all work interdependently. Some excellent studies are available to explain this work of monumentally complex organization.24 Here we will just introduce one very important component of cellular design, DNA. DNA is contained in the nucleus. Of many amino acids in the body, only twenty types are useful for life. Of those, only four types are found in DNA. These are arranged in an extremely complex pattern that tells the rest of the cell what to do. These instructions amount to a blueprint for the entire organism, determining eye color, hair color, athletic capabilities, natural intelligence, and even vulnerability to specific diseases.
This complexity poses a significant challenge to anyone proposing that undirected processes of nature are responsible for such complexity. This complexity is discovered on one of the most basic levels of life. Given the maximum estimated age of our Earth, 4.5 billion years, there was little time for chemical evolution to produce the type of complex and functioning information we observe in DNA. Consider the words of Flew who writes, "Indeed, again and so far as I know, no one has yet produced a plausible conjecture as to how any of these complex molecules might have evolved from simple entities.°25 Francis Crick is one of the two scientists who discovered DNA. Crick is an atheist. Yet, having observed the complexity of DNA, Crick estimates the odds that intelligent life exists on the Earth as the result of nondirected processes to be around 1:102`"' Thus, the first criterion of specified complexity is met. DNA is too complex to have occurred by chance.
But does DNA exhibit a pattern that we would normally associate with an intelligent cause? The functional orderliness of DNA and life itself would seem to require an answer in the affirmative. Consider what else Crick writes when commenting on this functional orderliness present in life: "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved."2e Elsewhere Crick writes, "An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have to be satisfied to get it going."27
Crick is one of many scientists and philosophers who have made statements like these. Thus, even many who don't embrace a belief in God would grant the second criterion of specified complexity. There is a pattern exhibited in DNA that we normally associate with intelligent causation.
In summary, we have observed that fairly recent discoveries in the disciplines of astrophysics and molecular biology have provided a strong foundation for a scientific understanding of the universe and the life it contains to be products of an intelligent Designer. This is referred to in contemporary terms as the 'Intelligent Design Argument" or ID. ID does not argue for any particular God. Nor does it claim anything about the nature of God. It does not even require that the Designer be God. It simply states that the appearance of design in the universe and in life itself is best explained as being the result of a Designer who planned it, rather than the result of natural causes. In relation to our discussion on Jesus' resurrection, evidence for an intelligent Designer is consistent with the existence of God and, thus, provides one more reason for belief in his existence and a further refutation of the arguments against it, removing a philosophical barrier to belief in Jesus' resurrection.
A First Cause is required, given the evidence collected by science
Many astronomers believe that the universe is all there is and that nothing exists outside of it. As we discussed in the previous section, most astronomers today believe that the universe began with a huge explosion that has popularly come to be called the "Big Bang." Astronomers likewise believe that all there was prior to the Big Bang was a small point of incredible density they refer to as the "singularity." However, this singularity did not exist prior to the Big Bang. At that time, nothing existed. So if we were to invite some friends over, make some popcorn, turn on the television, place a special DVD into our player, and watch an actual history of the universe in reverse, starting from today and going all the way back to just moments prior to the Big Bang, what we would see is all of the stars and galaxies simultaneously arriving at a single point, which would then disappear. In the words of the late prominent astronomer Fred Hoyle, the universe was "shrunk down to nothing at all."28 Moreover, most astrophysicists believe that space and time likewise began at the moment of the Big Bang.29 Thus, there was not a place where someone could have witnessed the Big Bang or filmed it for our DVD, since space did not exist prior to the Big Bang. When it happened, everything exploded into existence. In another sense, nothing exploded into everything.
Why does the Big Bang raise serious questions for the atheist's consideration? It seems to require a beginning of the universe and a beginning seems to require a cause of some sort, at least for the vast majority of people who agree that everything that begins to exist has a cause. What then caused the Big Bang?
If nothing existed prior to the Big Bang, not even space or time, then the cause of the Big Bang must be spaceless (i.e., immaterial) and timeless (i.e., infinite or eternal).30 It seems to be impossible to get something from nothing, at least by natural causes.31 And yet, if atheism is true, the Big Bang requires that the universe came out ofnothingand was not caused. This places the atheist in the difficult position of embracing a highly questionable philosophy, since science and all of human experience lead to the conclusion that things do not just come into existence without a cause.
Now there are atheists who disagree. Philosopher Quentin Smith unashamedly asserts, "The fact of the matter is that the most reasonable belief is that we came from nothing, by nothing and for nothing.... We should ... acknowledge our foundation in nothingness and feel awe at the marvelous fact that we have a chance to participate briefly in this incredible sunburst that interrupts without reason the reign of non-being."32 When we read statements like this, our faith may be increased due to the rather ad hoc explanations that skeptics make in order to rationalize the data.33
It seems, then, that the existence of the universe is impossible without an eternal and immaterial cause. Thus, the scientific argument for some sort of first cause looks like this:
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe was caused.34
When we reflect on the nature of the cause, we find that it must be immaterial and timeless. From the nature of the complexity it would seem that the Designer would have to be extremely intelligent. Some would just call this cause God. Although we can't argue this issue further at this point, what we see certainly seems to favor the case for theism over the case for naturalism.
Keep in mind that the above arguments for God do not prove the Christian God. However, the Creator is strikingly consistent with him." Remember what atheist Flew stated: "Certainly given some beliefs about God, the occurrence of the resurrection does become enormously more likely." 16 It appears likely that God exists. Thus, Jesus' resurrection becomes "enormously more likely," since the known facts support the occurrence of such a resurrection anyway.
In a world where God probably exists, there are no good reasons for rejecting the possibility of the Resurrection. It is Jesus' resurrection that reveals that the God apparently disclosed by the philosophical and scientific arguments above is the Christian God, as we will briefly point out in the next chapter.