06 Sep Following The Evidence #18
“There is not much to choose between men. They are all a hotchpotch of greatness and littleness, of virtue and vice, of nobility and baseness. Some have more strength of character, or more opportunity, and so in one direction or another give their instincts freer play, but potentially they are the same.” ― SOMERSET W. MAUGHAM “The Summing Up”
Everybody worships, the only choice we get is what to worship. Even though Karl Marx, for example, condemned the illusion of religion, his followers, ironically, worshipped Marxism. For much of the 20th century and in many countries like Russia and China, Marxism was the historical successor of Christianity claiming to show the faithful the one correct path to a new heaven on Earth. Christianity did not disappear in these countries, but reappeared disguised as a secular religion. Despite many attacks and persecutions, true Christianity flourished “underground” in these countries.
Evolutionary atheism makes a number of propositions that have to be accepted by faith, e.g. that something (the universe) came from nothing, non-living matter evolved into living cells by unpredictable chemistry, complex specified information arose without intelligence, morality arose by natural selection, etc. Evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; many scientists have accepted it, and many are prepared to ‘bend’ their observations to fit in with it. H.S. Lipson, FRS Professor of Physics, University of Manchester, UK. Said “If you don’t want to believe in a God then you have to bend the evidence.”
As scientific knowledge has increased, researchers have not been able to confirm basic assumptions of the evolutionary theory—and, in fact, some have been outright refuted. While studying science at University I was both assaulted with evolutionary assumptions and baffled by the complexity of life. Since my stint at University in the early 1970’s the discoveries in science are mind boggling and if it was complex then, today the evidence surrounding e.g., the biochemistry of the cell leaves me in awe of the Divine.
Three major scientific discoveries contradict the expectations of scientific atheists and point us instead in a distinctly God-friendly direction.
First, the Big Bang. Discoveries in observational astronomy and developments in theoretical physics have revealed that the universe had a beginning. This is contrary to the expectations of scientific materialists, who long portrayed the universe as eternal and self-existent and, therefore, in no need of an external creator.
This evidence for a beginning has instead confirmed the expectations of theists (Believers in God), to affirm a transcendent creator beyond space and time as the best explanation for the origin of our finite universe.
Second, fine-tuning. We live in what Australian physicist Luke Barnes calls an extremely “Fortunate Universe,” where fundamental laws and physical parameters have somehow been “fine-tuned” with just the right strengths and values to make life possible. The incredible odds against this happening by chance has led even agnostic and atheistic physicists to marvel. As British physicist Paul Davies has exclaimed, “the impression of design is overwhelming.” Atheist physicist George Greenstein expresses similar cognitive dissonance: “The thought insistently arises that some supernatural…Agency, must be involved…”
Third, the complexity of life. Molecular biology has revealed the presence in living cells of an exquisite world of informational nano-technology — digital code in DNA and RNA; tiny, intricately-constructed molecular machines, a complex, information storage, transmission and processing system that resembles, but vastly exceeds, our most advanced digital high-technology.
Not what anyone would expect to see as the result of blind materialistic processes.
Dawkins himself may have conceded as much when he confessed on twitter: “Animations like this, especially Part 2, knock me sideways with wonder at the miniaturized intricacy of the data-processing machinery in the living cell. And with admiration for the science that has worked it all out.”
Check out the animation he was talking about here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjPcT1uUZiE&t=10s
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