Rematch

Key illustration: DNA. Containing the 3-billion-letter code inside our cells (of four recurring letters, or chemicals actually, the names of which start with these letters), it's a virtual library of instruction manuals for assembling and operating all the cells of the body. A few years ago, one of the world's most famous atheists, Professor Anthony Flew, came to the conclusion that God exists based on DNA evidence. "What I think the DNA material has done," he wrote, "is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce [life], that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together. "It's the enormous complexity of the number of elements and the enormous subtlety of the ways they work together. The meeting of these two parts at the right time by chance is simply minute. It is all a matter of the enormous complexity by which the results were achieved, which looked to me like the work of intelligence" ( There Is a God , 2007, p. 75). In his book The Case for a Creator , former atheist Lee Strobel writes: "The six-feet of DNA coiled inside every one of our body's one-hundred trillion cells contains a four-letter chemical alphabet that spells out precise assembly instructions for all the proteins from which our bodies are made. Cambridge-educated Stephen Meyer demonstrated that no hypothesis has come close to explaining how information got into biological matter by naturalistic means" (2004, p. 282). So there is no logical explanation as to how this incredibly extensive, exquisite code inside the cell could exist without a supremely intelligent Being having designed it. Microsoft founder Bill Gates noted, "DNA is like a software program, only much more complex than anything we've ever devised" ( The Road Ahead , 1996, p. 228). It is absurd to think that nobody designed such a complex code"that it is simply a result of time, chance and mutation. You have not answered where morality originated. Where did you learn morality, now ask him/her where he/she learned morality from....ALL SENSES OF MORALITY LINK TO GOD. The 1st person learned it from God and passed this on to their child. How is knowing that murder, thievery and rape is bad related to survival instincts. You have done a poor job in debunking my arguments and better luck next round. New arguments The Argument from Time and Contingency 1.We notice around us things that come into being and go out of being. A tree, for example, grows from a tiny shoot, flowers brilliantly, then withers and dies. 2.Whatever comes into being or goes out of being does not have to be; nonbeing is a real possibility. 3.Suppose that nothing has to be; that is, that nonbeing is a real possibility for everything. 4.Then right now nothing would exist. For 5.If the universe began to exist, then all being must trace its origin to some past moment before which there existed"literally"nothing at all. But 6.From nothing nothing comes. So 7.The universe could not have begun. 8.But suppose the universe never began. Then, for the infinitely long duration of cosmic history, all being had the built-in possibility not to be. But 9.If in an infinite time that possibility was never realized, then it could not have been a real possibility at all. So 10.There must exist something which has to exist, which cannot not exist. This sort of being is called necessary. 11.Either this necessity belongs to the thing in itself or it is derived from another. If derived from another there must ultimately exist a being whose necessity is not derived, that is, an absolutely necessary being. 12.This absolutely necessary being is God. Question1: Even though you may never in fact step outside your house all day, it was possible for you to do so. Why is it impossible that the universe still happens to exist, even though it was possible for it to go out of existence? Reply: The two cases are not really parallel. To step outside your house on a given day is something that you may or may not choose to do. But if nonbeing is a real possibility for you, then you are the kind of being that cannot last forever. In other words, the possibility of nonbeing must be built-in, "programmed," part of your very constitution, a necessary property. And if all being is like that, then how could anything still exist after the passage of an infinite time? For an infinite time is every bit as long as forever. So being must have what it takes to last forever, that is, to stay in existence for an infinite time. Therefore there must exist within the realm of being something that does not tend to go out of existence. The Kalam Argument The Arabic word kalam literally means "speech," but came to denote a certain type of philosophical theology"a type containing demonstrations that the world could not be infinitely old and must therefore have been created by God. This sort of demonstration has had a long and wide appeal among both Christians and Muslims. Its form is simple and straightforward. 1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause for its coming into being. 2.The universe began to exist. 3.Therefore, the universe has a cause for its coming into being. Grant the first premise. (Most people"outside of asylums and graduate schools would consider it not only true, but certainly and obviously true.) Is the second premise true? Did the universe"the collection of all things bounded by space and time"begin to exist? This premise has recently received powerful support from natural science"from so-called Big Bang Cosmology. But there are philosophical arguments in its favor as well. Can an infinite task ever be done or completed? If, in order to reach a certain end, infinitely many steps had to precede it, could the end ever be reached? Of course not"not even in an infinite time. For an infinite time would be unending, just as the steps would be. In other words, no end would ever be reached. The task would"could"never be completed. But what about the step just before the end? Could that point ever be reached? Well, if the task is really infinite, then an infinity of steps must also have preceded it. And therefore the step just before the end could also never be reached. But then neither could the step just before that one. In fact, no step in the sequence could be reached, because an infinity of steps must always have preceded any step; must always have been gone through one by one before it. The problem comes from supposing that an infinite sequence could ever reach, by temporal succession, any point at all. Now if the universe never began, then it always was. If it always was, then it is infinitely old. If it is infinitely old, then an infinite amount of time would have to have elapsed before (say) today. And so an infinite number of days must have been completed"one day succeeding another, one bit of time being added to what went before"in order for the present day to arrive. But this exactly parallels the problem of an infinite task. If the present day has been reached, then the actually infinite sequence of history has reached this present point: in fact, has been completed up to this point"for at any present point the whole past must already have happened. But an infinite sequence of steps could never have reached this present point"or any point before it. So, either the present day has not been reached, or the process of reaching it was not infinite. But obviously the present day has been reached. So the process of reaching it was not infinite. In other words, the universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe has a cause for its coming into being, a Creator. Question 1: Christians believe they are going to live forever with God. So they believe the future will be endless. How come the past cannot also be endless? Reply: The question really answers itself. Christians believe that their life with God will never end. That means it will never form an actually completed infinite series. In more technical language: an endless future is potentially"but never actually"infinite. This means that although the future will never cease to expand and increase, still its actual extent will always be finite. But that can only be true if all of created reality had a beginning. Question 2: How do we know that the cause of the universe still exists? Maybe it started the universe going and then ceased to be. Reply: Remember that we are seeking for a cause of spatio-temporal being. This cause created the entire universe of space and time. And space and time themselves must be part of that creation. So the cause cannot be another spatio-temporal being. (If it were, all the problems about infinite duration would arise once again.) It must somehow stand outside the limitations and constraints of space and time. It is hard to understand how such a being could "cease" to be. We know how a being within the universe ceases to be: it comes in time to be fatally affected by some agency external to it. But this picture is proper to us, and to all beings limited in some way by space and time. A being not limited in these ways cannot "come" to be or "cease" to be. If it exists at all, it must exist eternally. Question 3: But is this cause God"a he and not a mere it? Reply: Suppose the cause of the universe has existed eternally. Suppose further that this cause is not personal: that it has given rise to the universe, not through any choice, but simply through its being. In that case it is hard to see how the universe could be anything but infinitely old, since all the conditions needed for the being of the universe would exist from all eternity. But the kalam argument has shown that the universe cannot be infinitely old. So the hypothesis of an eternal impersonal cause seems to lead to an inconsistency. Is there a way out? Yes, if the universe is the result of a free personal choice. Then at least we have some wa