Defining Terms: Entropy, Heat Death, and the Cosmological Constant

October 15, 2011

Cleaning up a few loose ends with some terms that I used in my Cosmological argument post a few days ago.  Boring, I know, but there is a method to my madness.

Cosmological Constant – a constant term used for the rate of expansion of the universe.  It is based on several factors including the relativistic equations for gravity.

Entropy – Entropy has many different definitions depending on what science you are discussing from statistical mechanics, physical chemistry, or classical thermodynamics.  What I was referring to was associated with classical thermodynamics was  the relationship between heat and mechanical energy or work, and the conversion of one into the other.

Heat Death – after entropy has reached its maximum and zero energy is available,  according to the laws of thermodynamics the material universe is apparently winding down and approaching heat death.

A great example  of entropy and heat death is a cup of hot coffee.    After you load all the ingredients in the coffee maker and press the start button  You have the coffee that is kept hot by the heat element under the pot.  The coffee pot is made to keep the heat a constant by using energy from the plug.    If the coffee maker is unplugged or the coffee is poured into a cup entropy will have reached its maximum.  The coffee comes out of the pot hot, but if you leave the cup of coffee, it is no longer being keep at a constant temperature by energy used in the pot.  Without any usable energy the coffee if left alone with slowly lose heat and cool down to the same temperature of the room or environment that it is in.  The coffee has then reached heat death.

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Posted by John Weldon

Defining Terms: Premise & Conclusion

October 14, 2011

I always try to go back and explain terms that I use to make sure you understand the blog posts.  Perhaps I should do them before I post blogs, but that would require some extra planning and thoughtfulness, that I don’t have.  In a recent post, The Cosmological Argument, I used the following terms:

Premise – A proposition upon which an argument is based or from which a conclusion is drawn.  In logic, it is one of the propositions in a deductive argument.

Conclusion – The result or outcome of an act or process.  In logic it is a reasoned deduction or inference.

These two terms will help you hone your debate and conversation skills with others.  While people may not outright label their debates and discussions with these words, they definitely use them.  Part of your job as a good apologist is to listen to what people are saying and be able to pick out their premises that lead to their conclusions.   Only after you know what their premise and conclusions are will you be able to examine their arguments for truth and coherence.  You may be able to show someone how their faulty conclusion is faulted based on one of their premises.

If you have two opposing conclusions that fit into the law of excluded middle.  (For example, Conclusion 1: God does not exist.  Conclusion 2: God does exist.) one conclusion naturally is wrong.  It is then the task of those in debate or conversation to retrace the premises in the arguments to decide whether the premises or the inferences are true or faulty.  Thus the discussions began.

As always, questions, comments, and discussions welcome.

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Posted by John Weldon

Objections to the Cosmological Argument

October 13, 2011

Talk to the hand!

In my last post I introduced the Cosmological Argument to you and in this post I want to address some objections or questions that may come up from those you share with.  If you missed the Cosmological Argument click here to read it first.

The most likely response to the Cosmological Argument that you may get is a question, “Who made God?”   This is a key question in Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion.    Apologist Sean McDowell notes “While rhetorically powerful, this objection misses the point of the argument.  The claim is not that everything has a cause.  Rather, everything that begins to exist has a cause.”  Think about it, if God was caused, then you would have an infinite regress without a beginning.  Remember our conclusion from the last post.

Since the universe is physical, finite in space, has a beginning, and slowly running out of energy we can then say the cause had to be outside the physical, (i.e. non-physical) infinite, timeless, changeless, and powerful.  Sounds a little like the God the Bible describes.

While this doesn’t point to a particular God, like that of the Bible, the character traits that are given this creator/beginner are the same as the God of the Bible.  God is non-physical, infinite, timeless, changeless, and powerful.  This type of being does not need a cause.

Another objection you might hear from someone is that the universe caused itself to come into existence without the aid of anything outside itself.  This is as it sounds, absurd.  It that were possible, why wouldn’t other things come into existence all by themselves also?  Why don’t we have people or basketballs randomly appearing in the universe?  The laws of nature cannot explain how this might be, this is the ultimate magicians rabbit out of the hat trick.

One last objection to the Cosmological Argument might be to the premise that the universe does not have a beginning.  Someone may want to challenge your statement that you make on a beginning.  They may point out that the recent work of Stephen Hawking, a brilliant Astrophysicist and mathematician.   Hawking says that the beginning of the universe can be avoided because time has been rounded off at the final moments before the Big Bang Singularity.  The way that Hawking got this to work in mathematical equations was with the use of imaginary numbers combined with Einsteins equations.  Unfortunately these numbers do not work out when you replace the imaginary numbers with real numbers in real life.  “But if the universe can be eternal and uncaused,” as Sean McDowell states “then why can’t God?”   What is most unreasonable is to suppose that the universe arose, uncaused from nothing.

As always, questions, comments, discussions are welcome.  If you can think of any other objects feel free to post them in a comment.

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Posted by John Weldon

Starting at the Beginning

October 12, 2011

It’s time to start looking at the evidence and reasons for having a Christian worldview.  Before you can look at the Bible and Evidence that supports Christianity, we need to step back and look at the evidence  and reasons that point to the existence of a God or gods first.  After we show support for the existence of a God, then we will move toward the evidence for Christianity.    A good place to start would be at the beginning.

As Christians we know the universe and the world had a beginning.  The first verse in the Bible says “In [the] Beginning God created [the] heavens and [the] earth” – Genesis 1:1.  (I put accents around the word “the”  because in the Hebrew language,  in which it was written in there was not a definite article.  It is added to make it easier to read.)  So we believe according to the Bible that the universe had a beginning.  According to the law of non-contradiction, the universe either had a beginning or it did not, both cannot be correct.  So, is there any evidence or reasons that we can point to that support the claim in the Bible?  There are!

The first argument we will look at is called the Cosmological Argument or also know as the Argument for a Creator or The First Cause.  It is also called the Kalām Cosmological Argument, because it is related to Islamic theologians of the Kalām tradition in Medieval times.  The origins of the Cosmological argument go all the way back to Aristotle in which he called it The Prime Mover. I’m sure he wasn’t the first to think about the beginning though, just the earliest we can trace back in writings.  Thomas Aquinas who lived in the 3rd century wrote extensively about it in Summa Theologica, perhaps his greatest work.

The Cosmological Argument is a philosophical argument that is based on the Principal of Causality and states the following 4 premises and conclusions:

  1. Premise: Everything that has a beginning has a cause.
  2. Premise: The universe had  a beginning.
  3. Conclusion: The universe had a cause.
  4. Conclusion: The cause of the universe is a personal, uncaused, non-physical being, we call God.

Think about cause and effect that you learned about in school.  Every Effect that happens had a cause that made it come to be.  If you imagine a row of domino’s that are lined up one in front of the other.  You push the first domino down and it falls into the next domino in the row, which in turn causes the second domino to fall on the 3rd domino in the row, and so on and so on.   If you were to look at the reverse order of the domino’s you can trace back each effect to a cause before it.  For example, What caused the 10th domino to fall, it was pushed by the 9th Domino.   What caused the 9th Domino to fall?  It was pushed by the 8th Domino.  You can trace them all the way back to the first domino.  What caused the first domino to fall?  We can see it wasn’t another domino.  What or Who caused the first domino to fall?  In the example, the person did.  Whenever you are tracing back a line of cause and effect relationships and an effect cannot be explained by a “what” it must be a “who” that caused it.

Now if we look at our two premises from above and examine them we will see how solid the Cosmological argument is.  Premise 1: Everything that has a beginning has a cause.  We have never observed something that began that did not have a cause in the history of modern man.  Anyone would be crazy not to accept that premise.  The second premise is a little harder, but we do have scientific evidence for premise 2: The universe had a beginning.  Here are the details.

1. The universe is winding down.  The cosmological constant (the expansion rate of the universe) shows us that the universe is gradually getting bigger and spreading out further and further from itself.  It is slowing down to a point of entropy.  (where all energy will equalize and come to rest, think of coffee cooling off in a mug slowly over time or a coin that is tossed and eventually comes to rest.)  If you follow the motion of the stars and galaxies backward they lead to a point where they all come together at a starting point.  Common sense would tell you that in order for the universe to wind down, it must have been first wound up by something or someone.

2. Philosophically, if there were no beginning of the universe, then we would not be here in the present.  Imagine a number line and trying to count to 0 from a negative infinity.  You can’t do it.

3. The natural sciences have a problem when it comes to matter.  Where did matter come from?  No matter how you back up the tape of time and divide and section the physical material world, you always have the same problem as you did before, where did that matter come from, what caused the matter to ‘be’?  You can look at atomic and sub-atomic particles and still ask where they came from.

Even the Big Bang Singularity states that there was a beginning of the universe.  Darwinian evolutionists know this and they are frantically looking for a way around the scientific evidence that they have now.  Steven Hawking, in his latest book, The Grand Design, has come up with a theory where the universe has no beginning.  Unfortunately, it is all done on mathematical models and imaginary numbers, and doesn’t pan out in the real world.  It even involves alternate universes and mini-universes!    It really goes to show you that they would rather accept a theory of the absurd, one like Hawking’s, rather than to accepted the Divine “foot in the door” evidence of a creator.   They so desperately want the universe to not have a cause, because they know the evidence of a cause will shut the door on their atheistic view of the universe.  I will come back to Hawking’s theory and others in a future post.

The Cosmological Argument gives us 5 specific traits of the first cause of the universe.  Since the universe is physical, finite in space, has a beginning, and slowly running out of energy we can then say the cause had to be outside the physical, (i.e. non-physical) infinite, timeless, changeless, and powerful.  Sounds a little like the God the Bible describes.

My next post will discuss some objections about the Cosmological Argument.  In the next weeks we will look at other arguments that point to a theistic worldview.  As always, questions, comments, discussions welcome.

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Posted by John Weldon

A Biblical Base for Apologetics

October 11, 2011

Years ago my brother who is also in ministry said something to me that stuck with me.  I didn’t really understand at that point what he was trying to tell me, but over the last few years I’ve seen just how important his advice is when it comes to engaging others with your worldview.  Tim, (my brother) said that when you talk and share with others and deal with questions about the universe and the existence of God, you always need to do it from a Biblical base.

Sharing from a Biblical base means that you align your illustrations, words, and actions with the Bible within the conversations you have with people.  The reason you do this is to show the coherence of the Biblical worldview to any situation or information we come across.  Let me clarify that I am not saying you should  bias your opinion of the evidence to reach a Biblical conclusion.  That would be a wrong approach and could also be faulty logic called Begging the question or Circular reasoning.

For example, lets say that  a conversation with your hairdresser or barber comes up because he makes the statement, “There is a lot of evil out there in the world.”  This will open up for you to share with them about what the Bible says about evil.  You can use questions like “Do you know what the Bible says about evil?” or statements like “the Bible says that there is a lot of  evil inside of us all too.”  These are great transitions into opportunities to share the real gospel of Jesus.

Even if you are dealing with the question of the existence of God, before even talking about evidence for Jesus or the Bible you can use the Bible to show how it lines up with the understood knowledge of the universe.   For example, scriptures that point to the earth being round (Isa 40:22) or that the earth is hung on nothing in space. (Job 26:7)

The reason you always need to talk and debate from a Biblical worldview is so that others see how the Bible is unique and is really  the best coherent “lens” in which we see our world.  You can use the Bible to compliment the evidence and reasons for your believe and worldview.  Areas like morals, ethics, truths of life, evil, and leadership are just a few of the subjects you can relate the Bible to.

As always questions, comments, and discussions welcome.

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Posted by John Weldon

Misconceptions

October 10, 2011

A  few days ago a question was posed to students in a secular student alliance club  at a local high school in my area.   The question was “What will it take for you to believe in the existence of a god?”  Answers begin to come it and last I checked there was 230 comments on the question.  As I read through the answers and discussion that followed I noticed how misconceptions about God, the Bible, and Church can keep many people from having a theistic worldview and from trusting in the Christian worldview.  Here’s what  I mean.

One student answered, “To believe in the existence of an all-powerful god with the general well-being of humans in mind as most universalizing religions do, I would have to see evidence of a world with less… ‘bad’…”  I believe this student has a misunderstanding of why the world is bad.  Perhaps he thinks God is not great enough to create people who are perfect, or that perhaps God is to blame for the bad in the world.  This is clearly a misunderstanding of the free will that God gives us as humans and the sinful nature that we are born with.  God doesn’t create evil, he only makes it possible.  This is a misunderstanding of human nature.

I have already covered the misconception about faith, it you missed it you can click here to read about it.

Another student says “For me to worship that entity in addition to believing it exists, I’d also need evidence of the power of prayer, heaven, or hell”  Among other things, this student is looking at the power of prayer as a possible proof.  What do most people think about prayer?  Is it like a magic genie where God grants you whatever you want?  Do we as Christians push this thought by our words and actions?  We know God answers prayer, but we know that He doesn’t always answer them how we want.  We also know what the Bible says that we pray we must pray in Jesus name and that we must align our requests with the holy scriptures.

A student that I have been talking with recently made this comment, “The holy scriptures that people study today are translations of the originals (which we don’t have) and as we all know, things are always lost in translation.”  he went on to add “the original documents were written centuries after the stories that they depict took place. Doesn’t this make you wonder about the validity of the words that you’re studying?”  This student has received some faulty information that I have seen before.  Unfortunately there are people who want to misrepresent the truth, on both sides of the debate I might add.

There were some great questions and comments made by the students, some of them I could see are genuinely searching God and welcomed any thoughts by the Christians that interacted with them.

So what do you do to clean up the misconceptions?  Here are a few suggestions.  Know what the truth is for yourself.  Do the research, look at the evidence, and be able to communicate with others the evidence in a way that is easy and makes sense.  You should also know what others are saying against the truth and be prepared to respond to it.  Winston Churchill once said “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”   For those who know the truth and yet try to cover it up or repress it, do the most damage.

It is amazing to me how many people have already made up their mind about  the validity of the Bible, but have never read more than a few chapters of it for themselves.  I do understand why some may have difficulties with it.  Miracles for example may be one reason.  In the near weeks we will look at the miracles within the Bible.  Maybe they even read through it once completely, and think that they have a good grasp on it, that might be more dangerous.  I’ve been reading and studying it for about 25 years now and I have much to learn of it myself.

As always questions, comments, and discussions welcome.

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Posted by John Weldon

Witness Online vs Face to Face

October 9, 2011

With the  invention of the internet, chat rooms, Blogs, Facebook, Skype,  and other social media, sharing your faith can be done in a variety of ways including,  not the least of which, still face to face.  I’m not here to stir the debate whether sharing the gospel online is better or worse than sharing it in person.  I view it like missions both near and far, both need to be done, the more you can do to share the Gospel in any way is good.   If you have access to a computer and feel confident in using it to talk with others about what you believe, go for it!  What I do want to point out is the differences between the too and also caution you about over the computer sharing.

BODY LANGUAGE & EMOTION:
When you talk with someone face to face you can look them in the eyes, change the inflection of your voice, body language.  It is easy for you to show someone you really care for them.  You have taken time to visit them, or perhaps give time out of your day.  The old adage that, “people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care” is true.   When you are talking to someone online, there is a loss of body language, emotion, and depending on of you are using Skype or some other video program your voice.  You also have to be careful how you type.  For example, TYPING IN ALL CAPS CAN GIVE THE IMPRESSION THAT YOU ARE YELLING, to many young people online.  Depending on your grammar usage,  it may also be hard to understand what someone types out.

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS:
Building relationships is key in sharing your faith with others.  Often times it will take many conversations with people to get them to understand or trust your worldview.  Relationships can be built both in person and online.  I do believe that they can be built faster in person.

ONLINE INFORMATION:
As you talk to people online one of the advantages is that you can have a lot of information at your fingertips from your personal collection of notes to websites that hold endless amounts of information.  As you may have already discovered, not everything on the internet is true.   I wish  I had a nickel for every time I see a Facebook post telling me to click here if  I don’t want to have to pay for Facebook.  It is so easy to put things online today.  It is also much easier for people to write blogs and articles online rather than in an actual book that can be examined closer by more people.   Knowing your information is key to catching lies and false information on both your view and others.

CUT AND PASTE MEMORY:
How many of your good friends or family members cell phones do you have memorized?  Not many I bet.  Thanks to the great inventions of cell phones, contact lists, and other electronic devices studies have shown that we are not using our minds like we used to use them.  With everything now digital you don’t have to remember many things because most likely you have them in your pocket or on your computer.  Cut and Paste is a great time-saving feature, but it also has its negatives as well.  We might not memorize scriptures as much, if we can just cut and paste them from our favorite website.  The same is true of arguments of apologetics as well.

You also run the risk of overloading the person you are talking with too much information.  You can cut and paste so much information that it can become a turn off, that no one wants to read.  (That’s why  I try to keep these blogs short, easier said than done.)  If you are a slow typist you will also run the risk of losing people’s interests also.

CLOSING THE DEAL:
As you talk to people and began to show them the evidence behind your worldview or beliefs.  You may bring them to a point where they become frustrated and just log off the internet.  While someone can do this in person, it is harder to walk away from a live person.

Got any other ideas or examples that you want to add?  As always, questions, comments, and discussions welcome.  Online or face to face, if you know where to find me.

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Posted by John Weldon

Defining Terms: Begging the Question

October 8, 2011

Image DetailHave you ever heard someone make a statement or make a conclusion that you know is wrong, but you can’t figure out why it wrong?  There are a few reasons why this may be so, but most of the time it stems from a faulty question or statement that leads to a faulty conclusion.

Begging The Question – using the conclusion as one of the premises (or reasons) to reach the conclusion.  When you already claim the conclusion as fact.  This is also called circular reasoning or arguing in a circle.  For example, saying Tom is the most honest guy I know, why because Tom told me, and honest people don’t lie.

One of the most popular ways that Christians use Begging The Question is by quoting 2 Timothy 3:16.  “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,”    While we know from other evidence that we can trust the Bible, using the Bible to prove itself is circular reasoning.

For example saying that evolution is reason that life evolves  is also circular reasoning.  Science must be able to show some physical mechanism of why it does evolve in the first place.  Evolution just is… is not a valid reason or proof.

As always, questions, comments, and discussions welcome.

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Posted by John Weldon

Real Faith: Biblical Not Blind

October 6, 2011

Over a week ago I posted a blog titled Why I believe.  I quickly listed out the reasons that I believe in God and hold the worldview that I do.  The very first item I listed was faith.  I realize that you may think that faith is not objective, but I hope that you will see at the end that it is based on an object.  According to the Bible, faith is a requirement to have a relationship with God and for an eternal life in Heaven.   I have already explained why faith is necessary, but now I want to go back and spend more time on what real faith is and also try to clear up what many people consider of faith as blind faith.

You may have asked, “Why faith?”  Look at the following scripture.  “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” – Ephesians 2:8 [Emphasis added]  It is ‘through faith’ that we are saved ‘by God’s grace’.  The Bible is clear that God requires faith, that is His standard.

Chris Sherrod, a former student minister and friend of mine breaks down faith like this.

Faith has two elements.
1. The person doing the trusting
2. The object that the person is putting their trust in.

Using the “trust fall” example Sherrod explains; “Imagine you are standing on the end of a table and about to fall backwards into the arms of six strong adults waiting below you.  As the ‘faller’ you portray the first element of correct faith – the person doing the trusting.  Obviously for this exercise to work must have enough confidence in the people below you to take some action and actually fall backwards.  But correct faith involves one other element – there must be a trustworthy object that you are placing your faith in waiting there to catch you!  In other words your ‘subjective’ (or personal) faith must be placed in something that is objective. (i.e. outside of you) and trustworthy.”

Sherrod continues, “To understand the importance of the second element, imagine that we alter one feature of our exercise: the group standing below you is now six toddlers!  Would you consider this an important detail that has changed?  Obviously so! Your faith, no matter how genuine or strong, would matter little now because the object of your faith is no longer trustworthy.”

The sincerity of the person doing the trusting really have nothing to do with it.  If I believed that I could jump off my roof while holding an umbrella and float slowly to the ground, the only thing that matters is the object, the umbrella, that I am placing my faith in.  The same can be said of other worldviews.  If Mormonism and Islam are objectively false, it really doesn’t matter how sincere the person’s faith is, it is still objectively false.  Later after establishing the evidence for God I will begin to look at other theistic worldviews and the objects that they place their trust in and compare them to those of the Christian worldview.

There is a misunderstanding by many about the type of  faith that Christians have in God.  Richard Dawkins, in his book The God Delusion seems to see it as a blind faith.   It is a not blind faith.    Blind faith meaning that for no reason or any evidence at all a Christian believes in God.  Similar to me thinking I can fly because it would be really cool and I like superman.  Biblical faith is based on the objective evidence that we do have.  What objective things can we look at?  The universe, human life, conscious thought, The Bible, Historical Jesus.  We will get into these one at a time and look at specific facts, and see where they lead.  The argument boils down to what is acceptable evidence and what is not according to who’s looking at it.

Every single person uses faith that is based on evidence or reason, even if they are not religious in their worldview.   The scientific atheists want to try to separate religious faith from that of scientific faith saying it is a different type of faith, but it is one and the same.  Here are a few examples.  You trust an airplane to fly you safely across the country without crashing, even though you don’t understand all the laws/rules of aviation.  You have faith because you have seen planes fly and more often than not make it safely to their destination.  You trust a pharmacist to put the right kind of medicine in a pill bottle and you take it without question, even though you don’t know everything about medicine and biology.  You have faith because they have proven themselves reliable in the past.  Even in the field of science.  Physicists have never been able to weigh a sub-atomic particle, like a neutrino, it is to small, yet based on all the fundamental laws of physics, mathematics, their reasoning, and deductive skills scientists do believe that a neutrino does have mass.

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands – Psalm 19:1

As always, questions, comments, and discussions welcome.

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Posted by John Weldon

Defining Terms: Law of Non-Contradiction

October 5, 2011

Law of Non-Contradiction –
2 statements are made that contradict each other.  One must be true and the other must be false.  For example: “There is only one God.” and “There are multiple Gods.”  These statements contradict one another and therefore one must be false.

Ravi Zacharias often uses this example:
A husband and wife are going for a walk down the street for a walk together. They meet another couple on their walk and stop to talk to each other.  One of the other people make a statement “”I hear that both of you are pregnant.”   Immediately  together the wife says “yes” and husband says “no.”  The other couple is confused and waiting for an explanation.  Perhaps she is pregnant, and he doesn’t know yet, or perhaps there is a problem in the marriage.  Whatever the reason a woman cannot be both pregnant and not pregnant at the same time.

This law will keep a person honest when it comes to several things in apologetics.  It will also help someone who is hesitant to make a judgment about a position to decide where they stand on it.  For example in future posts we will discuss evidence that the universe had a beginning.  According to the law of non-contradiction  the universe either had a beginning or it did not.  Atheists have motives for not wanting the universe to have a beginning, because ever effect has a cause.  Christians gladly point to God as the first cause.  Even the Big Bang Singularity points to a beginning, even though it is not accepted by many Christians.    That’s why physicists like Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose are continuing to work on other alternative theories about the origin of the universe.

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Posted by John Weldon

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