Apologetics

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September 23, 2010

The origin of life is not a lottery

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science
[50] Comments 

In a previous post I argued that chance cannot account for the origin of the first living cell because the odds are too low to have any reasonable chance of being met.  The odds of a single, functional protein forming by chance is 1 in 10164.  That’s 1 chance in 100 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion.  But the simplest life form would need at least 250 different proteins, lowering the odds to 1 in 1041,000!

While the numbers appear staggering, many people will immediately raise the “lottery objection”: Just as the odds of winning the lottery are low, and yet people win the lottery all the time, so too the odds of forming life by chance may be low, but that doesn’t mean it is impossible.  While I understand the analogy, are the lottery and the OOL truly analogous?  No, not by a long shot.

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September 17, 2010

Same-Sex Marriage: Answering the “Childless Couples” Objection

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Same-sex Marriage
[26] Comments 

Whenever I make my case against same-sex marriage to a same-sex marriage proponent, invariably they will raise a particular objection to my argument.  The objection is so common that I want to devote a lengthy blog post to rebutting it.  But before I do, let me briefly summarize my argument against same-sex marriage:

The primary reason human governments across time and cultures have chosen to regulate, privilege, and encourage one particular kind of human relationship over all others is because they have a vested interest in what that kind of relationship can produce: socialized children to perpetuate society.  Apart from that, there is no reason for the government to meddle itself in personal, sexual relationships. They are not interested in promoting friendships or romantic love; they are interested in social self-preservation. They are interested in producing a new generation of responsible, socialized citizens to replace the existing generation. Optimal socialization involves both natural parents, so the state is interested in keeping the natural parents together as well. That is why marriage comes with legal responsibilities, and until recently, was difficult to dissolve.

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September 16, 2010

“I just believe in one less god than you”

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Tactics
[18] Comments 

In recent days I have noticed several of the “new atheists” employing a clever and rhetorically effective soundbite while evangelizing for atheism.  Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens come to the top of my mind, but no one has encapsulated this sound bite better than Stephen Roberts: “I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

I consider myself a fairly seasoned apologist, but I must admit that this little rhetorical gem stopped me dead in my tracks.  “How in the world should I respond to that?”, I thought.  Fortunately for me, others have been thinking about this as well.  Michael Patton has done a good job formulating the beginning of a response already.  I would encourage you to read his thoughts on the matter.  He even takes on the claim that belief in God is like belief in Santa Clause, so you get a “two-fer.”

I think my first response would be that the atheist’s claim that “I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one less god than you” is a misuse of language.  To be an atheist means one does not believe in the existence of any God or gods, so it would be inappropriate to call Christians “atheists.”  The claim is rhetorically effective, however, because it makes it sound as if the Christian and atheist differ in only one minor detail (the Christian denies all gods but one, while the atheist denies all gods).  Nothing could be further from the truth.  A world in which even one deity exists is a radically different from a world in which no divine being(s) exists.

How would you respond to the claim?

 

September 14, 2010

Logic, Reason, and Philosophy are Intellectual and Spiritual Goods

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Logic, Philosophy, Thinking
[12] Comments 

Many Christians have a negative connotation of the words reason, logic, and philosophy.  Their negativity is not altogether unfounded.  After all, there’s been more than a few individuals who have rejected Christianity on the grounds that it is irrational and illogical.  And we’ve all known or heard of someone who studied philosophy only to lose their Christian faith.  The problem in all of these cases, however, is not reason, logic, or philosophy, but rather the improper use of reason, logic, and philosophy.  Indeed, all of us use reason and logic, and all of us subscribe to a particular philosophy even if we are unaware of it.  It is inescapable.  Reason and logic are God-given tools that allow us to think and obtain knowledge.  Logic and reason help us to order our thoughts, and enhance our ability to discern truth from error.  We can’t think without them, although we can misuse or abuse them in the process of thinking.  And that, I think, is where the real problem lies: the abuse of reason and logic.

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September 9, 2010

Stephen Hawking Puts God on Unemployment

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Cosmological Argument, Science, Theism
[13] Comments 

Some of you may have seen a news article circulating every major news outlet.  With provocative titles such as “God did not create the universe, says Hawking,” and “Why God Did Not Create the Universe,” one would expect to find some new scientific discovery/argument proving that the universe is capable of creating itself – no God needed.  After reading the articles, however, that expectation will quickly turn into disappointment.

Stephen Hawking is probably the most famous physicist alive.  While he is clearly a brilliant man, his case for the sufficiency of natural processes to account for the origin of the universe is truly embarrassing.  Consider the following claim: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.  Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.  It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.”

Where to begin!  First, while Hawking is attempting to explain how something could come from nothing, he only explains how something (the universe) comes from something else (physical laws, namely gravity).  True nothingness is the absence of any and all existents, including physical laws.  So from whence come the physical laws?

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September 9, 2010

Miracles and the Laws of Nature

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Philosophy, Science, Theology
[7] Comments 

Many non-theists object to the concept of miracles on the grounds that miracles would require a violation of the laws of nature.  They reason as follows:

P1  The laws of nature cannot be violated
P2  A miracle would violate the laws of nature
C    Miracles are not possible

Both premises of this argument are flawed, and for the same reason: the laws of nature are construed as mind-independent, physical realities possessing causal properties.  I think this conception of natural laws is mistaken.

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September 2, 2010

Deep Thought of the Day

Posted by Jason Dulle under Philosophy, Quote of the Day, Thinking
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 “Nothing happens that is not possible.”–Ellis Potter

 

August 31, 2010

Obama’s Stem Cell Policy Temporarily Thwarted

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Bioethics, Politics, Stem Cell Research
[6] Comments 

Catching up on the news….

Last year (March 9, 20010) President Obama signed an Executive Order overturning President Bush’s stem cell policy that allowed federal funding for stem cell research on stem cell lines created prior to August 9, 2001, but not after.  President Obama wished to expand federal funding to include stem cell lines created after August 9, 2001.

Ironically, two days after issuing his EO, President Obama signed into law the annual appropriations bill which included the Dickey-Wicker amendment.  This amendment, which has appeared in every appropriations bill since 1996, specifically prohibits the use of federal funds for research that involves the destruction of human embryos.  The amendment reads:

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August 26, 2010

Ranking American’s Moral Values

Posted by Jason Dulle under Abortion, Apologetics, Bioethics, Capital Punishment, Cloning, Euthanasia, Homosexuality, Relativism, Sin, Social, Statistics, Stem Cell Research
[5] Comments 

In May of this year Gallup polled Americans to determine what behaviors they found morally acceptable and unacceptable.  Sixteen behaviors were evaluated, and here are the results:

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August 21, 2010

The religious views of scientists

Posted by Jason Dulle under Science, Statistics
[3] Comments 

Elaine Howard Ecklund has written a book titled Science vs Religion: What Scientists Really Think.  A summary of her research findings was published in USA Today (July 19, 2010): “Myths Widen the Science-Religion Divide.”

Ecklund surveyed 1,700 natural and social scientists and conducted interviews with 275 of them.  She found that: (more…)

 

August 17, 2010

Argentina legalizes same-sex marriage

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Politics, Same-sex Marriage
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Catching up on old news….  Argentina legalized same-sex marriage July 15, 2010.  They are the first country in Latin America to do so.  The legal recognition of same-sex unions as “marriage” continues to spread.

 

August 13, 2010

There is no scientific evidence for God?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Science
[16] Comments 

Atheists love to assert that there is no scientific evidence for the existence of God.  I have a couple of thoughts on this.  First, how do they come to this conclusion?  Generally speaking, this conclusion follows from their definition of science.  They define science as the search for naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena.  If science is defined so as to a priori exclude agent causation as a valid explanation for any natural phenomenon, then it is no surprise that “science” will never yield any evidence for the existence of God.  It can’t by definition.  To put it in the form an argument, the atheist reasons as follows:

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August 13, 2010

Certainty and Deductive Arguments

Posted by Jason Dulle under Logic, Philosophy, Thinking
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It is often believed that valid/sound deductive arguments can provide certainty.  This is not quite true.  The conclusion of a valid/sound deductive argument is certain in the sense that it follows necessarily from the premises.  It does not mean, however, that the conclusion is certainly true.  Why?  The premises are usually contingent truths discovered inductively, and thus the veracity of the logically certain conclusion depends on the veracity of the probabilistic premises.  The more confidence we have in the truth of the premises, however, the more confidence we can have in the veracity of the conclusion.

 

August 5, 2010

Prop 8 declared unconstitutional

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Politics, Same-sex Marriage
[16] Comments 

In November 2008, five months after the CA Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, the people of CA passed a constitutional amendment (52% to 48% ) to define marriage as a union between men and women only.  The constitutionality of the law was challenged, and the CA Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutional (it’s hard to say something in the constitution is not constitutional!).  That decision was appealed, and a federal judge just ruled yesterday that the constitutional amendment violates the U.S. Constitution.  Anyone surprised?  This is the way the gay agenda is always advanced: through the courts.  Why?  Because the democratic process isn’t working in their favor.

I have not read the judge’s decision, but I’ve read the decision of other courts who have made similar rulings and the legal rationale is usually the same.  I don’t buy the legal rationale one bit.  I do find it interesting that the judge who ruled on this gay happens to be gay.  That fact itself doesn’t necessarily mean he let his own personal biases or political agenda influence his decision, but only a fool would think it played no part at all.

The decision will be appealed.  And to whom will the case go?  None other than the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the most liberal appellate court in the nation.  I wonder how they’ll vote!?!  There’s no question in my mind that they’ll upheld the decision of the federal judge and this will be appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.  We’ll have to wait to see what happens.

 

August 2, 2010

Homicide: Justified in the Name of Feminism

Posted by Jason Dulle under Abortion, Apologetics, Bioethics
[2] Comments 

Antonia Senior wrote a short piece for The Times (London) on abortion titled “Yes, abortion is killing.  But it’s the lesser evil.”  Just as the title suggests, Senior admits that abortion kills a human being—and even that this is evil—but thinks this evil is justified to prevent the greater evil of women being unable to control their reproduction (which, on her view, is what allows women to be equal to men in society).

She ends her essay in the following manner: “The nearly 200,000 aborted babies in the UK each year are the lesser evil, no matter how you define life, or death, for that matter. If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too.”  Do you hear what she is saying?  Feminism (or at least her understanding of it) justifies homicide.  Oh how dark the heart of mankind is!

 

July 28, 2010

Court Upholds University’s Decision to Boot Christian Student for not Counseling Homosexuals

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Homosexuality, Political Incorrectness
[7] Comments 

In a situation almost identical to the one I described yesterday, Julea Ward was booted from the counseling program at Eastern Michigan University because she refused to counsel gay persons on matters of homosexuality due to her religious convictions.  The case went to court, and a federal judge ruled on behalf of the university!!  This is quite scary.  We are living in a country in which the academy is actively discriminating against those with certain moral convictions and it is being approved by the justice system.  Talk about calling evil “good” and good “evil.”

UPDATE 1/27/12: The Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed this decision, and sent the case back to the lower court. They wrote: “A university cannot compel a student to alter or violate her belief systems based on a phantom policy as the price for obtaining a degree…. Why treat Ward differently? That her conflict arose from religious convictions is not a good answer; that her conflict arose from religious convictions for which the department at times showed little tolerance is a worse answer. … Ward was willing to work with all clients and to respect the school’s affirmation directives in doing so. That is why she asked to refer gay and lesbian clients (and some heterosexual clients) if the conversation required her to affirm their sexual practices. What more could the rule require? Surely, for example, the ban on discrimination against clients based on their religion (1) does not require a Muslim counselor to tell a Jewish client that his religious beliefs are correct if the conversation takes a turn in that direction and (2) does not require an atheist counselor to tell a person of faith that there is a God if the client is wrestling with faith-based issues. Tolerance is a two-way street. Otherwise, the rule mandates orthodoxy, not anti-discrimination.”  Good for them!

 

July 28, 2010

How do you know that life evolved if you don’t know how life evolved?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Evolution, Science
[2] Comments 

Darwinists routinely put forth the fossil record as the best, most objective evidence for evolution (common descent).  They find it so compelling that they think it proves evolution happened, even if they cannot be sure of the mechanism by which it happened.  As Jerry Coyne writes in Why Evolution is True, “[T]he issue is not whether macroevolutionary change happens – we already know from the fossil record that it does – but whether it was caused by natural selection, and whether selection can build complex features and organisms.”[1]

Critics of Darwinism have often responded by asking a rhetorical question: “How do you that life evolved if you do not know how life evolved?”  In the absence of a plausible mechanism to propel macroevolutionary changes in organisms, how can Darwinists be so sure that organisms have experienced macroevolutionary changes?  As Sean McDowell wrote:

I am amazed at how frequently Darwinists admit that there is debate about HOW life evolved but not THAT life evolved. … If there is debate about the how of evolution, then what right do Darwinists have to claim that we evolved with such confidence…? Evolution is a theory specifically about how life developed. The significant debate (and lack of evidence) for the mechanism of evolution undermines the theory itself.[2]

On the face of it this line of reasoning is compelling.  I myself found it persuasive for quite some time.  When I came to examine the logic a little more deeply, however, I found the response to be fallacious.  To see the fallacy let me spell out the response in syllogistic form:

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July 28, 2010

Student Forced to Undergo Remediation Program for Beliefs about Homosexuality

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Homosexuality, Political Incorrectness
[4] Comments 

Jennifer Keeton is a graduate student at Augusta State University in Georgia.  She is enrolled in the school counseling program, but has been told she will be expelled from the program unless she changes her beliefs about homosexuality and gender identity.  Apparently, a remediation program was suggested to help her alter her beliefs.  Welcome to the new America.  While I support the right of homosexuals to be treated fairly in this country, the gay rights agenda will result in Christians being treated unfairly because of our disagreement with homosexuality.  This is just the start.

Update 7/2/12: Keeton lost a court appeal.

 

July 14, 2010

Ignorance and Confidence

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Epistemology, Thinking
[4] Comments 

Charles Darwin wrote, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much who positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”

While Chuck and I don’t see eye-to-eye on much, this quote resonated with me.  I have experienced the truth of what he said both in my own life, and observed it in others’.  Indeed, the truth Darwin captured here reaches farther than the sciences; it extends to virtually all areas of knowledge.

While not original to me, I have often said that the more I learn the more I realize I don’t know.  Sometimes this means the solving of one problem leads to other problems I was previously unaware of—winning one battle only to start five more.  Other times this means that in my attempt to solve a problem, the problem is exacerbated, because I come to realize that the question is much more difficult and the answer much less apparent than I had originally thought.

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June 16, 2010

Spanish Clinic in Hot Water for Treating Same-Sex Attraction

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Homosexuality, Political Incorrectness
[4] Comments 

A clinic in Spain is offering homosexuals treatment to “cure” their same-sex attraction.  The Spanish government is now investigating the clinic.  If they are found guilty of offering treatments to cure homosexuals, they could be fined.  Why?  Apparently because it goes against the country’s pro-homosexual agenda.  As Spanish gay rights leader, Antonio Guirado commented, “You cannot treat something that is not an illness.”

So much can be said here.  

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