Category Archives: Atheist Pseudo-Science

The Great Alien Computer Simulation

Atheist Pseudo-Science, ,

Sometimes you find something so preposterous, so deliciously inane, you almost burst out laughing. A few weeks ago I came across such an item.

I subscribe to a daily email summarizing the news. One small item, buried in a list at the end of one day’s summary, was that some scientists think we are living in a computer simulation. It appears Elon Musk shares this view, and of course everyone knows that anything Elon Musk says must be true (that’s a joke, folks).

The item included a link to an article: “How to Test If We’re Living In a Computer Simulation.”

According to the article, a variety of factors suggest we live in a computer simulation.

  • The laws and constants of physics are set exactly right for stars, planets, and life to exist.
  • Particles can be connected outside of space and time (quantum entanglement)
  • At the most fundamental level, the universe is entirely mathematical, and particles as we know them melt into probabilities; they don’t exist until you observe or measure them.

There’s more, but I’ll stop there. According to the article, this suggests we are living in a computer simulation of an extremely advanced alien civilization.

What’s amazing, to me, is that all of this is powerful evidence of God, and the writer of the article appears to have no clue. I explain this evidence in my 2014 book, Counting To God, particularly Chapters 8 (Fine -Tuning) and 14 (A Foundation of Thought).

According to the article, the scientific evidence that there is a mind behind the universe, and that we live in the creation of that mind, is being increasingly accepted. The author seems to think this is a new idea. Not so. Two thousand years ago it was written: “In Him we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:28. As I suggested in Chapter 14 of Counting to God, we live in the mind of God. The universe is mental, not physical.

It is sad that so many cannot see the overwhelming scientific evidence for God. Advanced alien civilization? Seriously? Where did that come from, why does that exist? It’s utter nonsense. But with advanced aliens these people don’t have to do what God asks us to do. They don’t have to go to church, pray, or read the Bible. They can make up their own moral codes.

I suspect we are going to see more of this theory, the Great Alien Computer Simulation theory. More and more top biologists are realizing that Darwin’s theory on the origin of species is nonsense. The theory that random mutations in the coding of life built the most advanced technology in the universe – technology such as the human brain and butterflies navigating by the Earth’s magnetic field – is a perverted joke. I suspect that, as Darwin fades, the Great Alien Computer Simulation theory will grow. Perhaps it won’t be long before the pendulum shifts, and people are forced to admit life was designed. At that point only the Great Alien Computer Simulation Theory will allow people to deny God.

Thanks for reading. I hope to get back to posting more frequently. There is much to share.

I’m working on a third book, a book I am co-writing with an experienced author, a work of fiction about a rich man who gets terminal cancer and finds God. I’ve tweaked my second book, Proofs of God, and hope to come out with a new version of that book next year.

Please share the Good News that science has found God. Friends don’t let friends stay atheists.

Doug Ell

Why Darwin’s Theory Doesn’t Work

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A new study found that 54% of Americans accept Darwin’s theory, and believe human beings descended from earlier species of animals. This is not surprising given our society’s hostility to God. But it is contrary to modern science. In this post I will try to explain, as simply as I can, why modern science shows Darwin’s theory doesn’t work.

“Survival of the fittest” is not a force; it’s the self-evident statement that the organisms most likely to survive (the “fittest”) usually do survive. Big deal. There is no “search” button; there is nothing in Darwin’s theory that builds complex structures when needed.

We know from modern science that all creatures have very complex systems. We know from modern science that these systems are built from, and operated according to, code. Human beings have 3.2 billion “letters” of DNA code. In 2012, scientists studying human DNA found it contains four million switches to turn the systems in our body on and off. Each “switch” is complex code.

Mutations can and do occur anywhere in DNA. Over 99.99% of mutations are harmful or have no immediate effect. Mutations pop up in DNA at random, like typos in the text of a book.

Now imagine random changes, mutations, occurring throughout the 4,000,000 sections of our DNA that are switches. These mutations will degrade the vast majority of those switches. The overall trend will be downward, not upward. All the computer simulations show this, as I noted in this prior blog: https://countingtogod.com/mendels-accountant/

Darwin’s theory imagines that gradual changes to just one switch will eventually result in a better switch. But, even if that occurs (and no one has ever seen that occur), the other switches are being degraded. You can’t just “freeze” one switch, and try to improve that over eons, and pretend that the other switches are not harmed. It’s a simple numbers game; overall mutations degrade systems. Think of typos in the text of a book, or random changes in the programming behind the apps on your smart phone. Not likely to make the system better, and by not likely I mean never if you do the math. I made this point in both of my books. Mutations are a downhill slope. Mutations are like rust spots on the surface of a car. A few won’t slow down the car, but eventually the car will fall apart.

And that’s it! It’s really simple, despite the mindboggling refusal of many “educated” persons to see the obvious. Random changes to complex code, that can and do occur anywhere in the code and have no purpose or pattern, will not get you a better system. They will not build a new kind of animal.

This simple and obvious conclusion is supported by:

  1. The second law of thermodynamics — All systems are running down.
  2. The fossil record – the myriad varieties of “intermediate” organisms predicted by Darwin don’t exist.
  3. Laboratory experiments on bacteria showing a decline in function over tens of thousands of generations.
  4. As noted above, complex computer simulations of the effects of mutations.
  5. The existence of structures like the human brain, so complex that we cannot begin to understand how it works, that could not possibly have arisen from random changes.

Human beings are special. Don’t let anyone claim we are descended from pond scum. God designed us.

Thanks for reading.

Doug Ell

Aliens and Demons

Atheist Pseudo-Science,

I am excited to share powerful evidence for the truth of the Bible. Until a few weeks ago, I did not know this evidence existed.

Our culture is fascinated with aliens, beings who may come from or live on other worlds. Many successful movies – Avatar, Star Wars, etc. – feature aliens. There is even a religion (Scientology) where aliens play a key role. In one poll 80% believed the government is hiding aliens or proof of them, and 50% believed alien abductions are real.

If you know me at all, you know I like facts. What are the facts? Reports of UFOs – unidentified flying objects – date back to ancient times. They were reported by the Romans, have been seen by many in recent decades, and have been detected by radar. Although the majority of sightings can ultimately be explained – Venus is a common culprit – there is overwhelming evidence some UFO sightings are real. Their movements often defy the laws of physics.

There is also overwhelming evidence that something about “alien abductions” is real. Whatever happened, or didn’t happen, many of the victims are horribly traumatized, similar to battlefield victims. Some have scratches or bruises. The stories have common features – the “classic abduction syndrome” involves a capture, an examination with crude medical equipment, a conference with aliens, a tour of some sort of ship, and meetings with beings who either claim to be religious leaders or tell the person abducted that he or she has been “chosen” to spread a religious message. There are hundreds of thousands of alien abduction stories; one poll estimated 4 million people have been abducted. The victims usually claim they have been sexually abused and tormented.

What’s going on? A new movie – Alien Intrusion: Unmasking a Deception – offers answers. This award-winning film was in theatres and is now available on DVD. Once you start watching this movie, it is hard to stop. The movie suggests these “aliens” are demons posing as extraterrestrials. They are spiritual beings from a spiritual dimension, who have the ability to enter our reality. They are deceptive, lying beings.

Consider this astonishing fact – these beings retreat at the name of Jesus. One victim being tortured asked Jesus for help, and the beings screamed in pain. There are hundreds of testimonies like this. There is no other known way to end an abduction experience, or to get these demonic visitations to stop. The rescue by Jesus has been discussed at UFO conferences. This is powerful. If these “aliens” really were from another star system, why would they care in the slightest when the name of a supposedly long-dead religious leader is mentioned? Also, as the film notes, how credible is it to believe that thousands of extraterrestrials would fly millions or billions of light years simply to teach New Age philosophy, deny Christianity, and support the occult? And, if they really were aliens, don’t you think one person at least would have brought back a towel from the washroom?

Researchers have found that true believers are immune from these “alien” abductions. But only “walk-the-walk” Christians, not people who profess to be Christians but don’t really have faith in Jesus.

Here’s another interesting fact: Over the years, these beings have changed where they claim to come from. In the 1950’s, they usually claimed to come from Venus or Mars or Saturn. Science now tells us those planets are generally barren, and certainly contain no major civilizations. Now these beings claim to be from a different star system or galaxy. However, the laws of physics prohibit faster-than-light travel, and the time and energy required to travel from even the closest star systems is staggering. The stars are just too far apart; the nearest one is over 20 trillion miles away. There are no aliens out there; over the last 50 years at least 60 scientific projects have tried to detect alien signals, and all have failed.

Why are some people abducted and others not? It may depend in part on how willing they are to believe in occult phenomena. UFO devotees are easy prey. Ouija boards, Tarot cards, and voodoo dolls can also open a door to terror.

As the film notes, we need to wake up to the spiritual reality that is going on all around us. There is a battle for human souls. Evil is real, and there are demonic forces at work. I am sure that this nonsense theory of advanced technology from chance events, Darwin’s mathematically ridiculous goo-to-you-via-the-zoo theory of evolution, has succeeded in part because of demonic deceptions.

We have only one hope:

This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

Acts 4:11-12.

Why do “aliens” scream in pain at the name of Jesus? Think about it.

Doug Ell

One, Two, Three, What Are We Marching For?

Atheist Pseudo-Science

I went to college during the Vietnam War. I marched in demonstrations and got tear-gassed on the National Mall, a classic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I have a lot of great memories from those days, and one is of a catchy tune from a band called Country Joe and the Fish. Here is the first verse of the refrain:

And it’s one, two, three,
What are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;

Click here to check out the video from Woodstock if you have a minute.

This coming Saturday, April 14, perhaps one million people worldwide will “March For Science.” And I can’t help asking myself, reminiscent of Country Joe and the Fish, what exactly are they marching for?

The principal website gives some reasons. “I march because science is my favorite subject.” “I march because science makes beer taste better.” (I did not make that up.) “I march because I like turtles,” and so on. These are all fine, but marches are really about sending a political message. What is the political message?

Clearly, one is the environment and climate change. I too want to protect the environment, although I think it worth noting that science does not clearly establish a connection between man-made activities and global warming. Harvard Professor Willie Soon has been viciously attacked just for questioning the connection, and noting studies that man-made carbon particles generally are out of the atmosphere within four years.

Another political reason is to get more funding for science. Not a bad goal, but I don’t think the marchers are asking for an increase in their taxes to pay for that. Not clear whether they want to cut health, social services, veterans pensions, or what.

Beyond that the stated reasons in this year’s website get deliberately vague. “I march because I’m afraid of what happens if we start to confuse strongly held opinions with facts.” A Wikipedia entry states this includes “acceptance of the scientific consensus on evolution.” It appears that last year the principal website was more direct, and stated that “The diversity of life arose by evolution.”

That is political. It’s scientism, not science. It’s naked belief that science can explain everything without God. One of the ironic facts here, as I’ve pointed out before, is that the top biologists worldwide absolutely know that Darwin’s theory of molecules-to-man evolution can’t begin to explain where the fantastic amounts of information arose to build every creature on Earth. You don’t get technology like the human brain by keeping the best mistakes, by a process of mutation. It is also an established fact that there is absolutely no explanation for the origin of life without God. So the truth is that many people will march in support of their strongly held opinion, contrary to science, that Darwin’s theory explains everything and that you don’t need God.

The marchers ignore the over 1,000 Ph.D. scientists who have signed the Dissent From Darwin petition, many at the cost of their careers. The marchers ignore the DNA evidence that we are all descended from a single man and a single woman, exactly as the Bible tells us. I suspect many of the marchers are marching against God.

If you want to march for better beer, go for it. But please don’t march for the false religion of Scientism, and please don’t march to silence the true science that proves God.

Thanks for reading.

Doug

The Irony of Stephen Hawking

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Stephen Hawking was exceptional. He fought ALS for 55 years, perhaps longer than any other person. Despite being confined to a wheelchair for most of his life, and unable to communicate fully, he made significant contributions to physics.

But Hawking had a blind spot when it came to God. Even though his own discoveries pointed to God, he refused to believe.

He died March 14 at age 76. When he was born, most people thought the universe was eternal – that it had always existed. Hawking helped change that view, helped convince others the universe had a beginning. As I show in Chapter 7 of Counting to God, this now undeniable scientific conclusion points to a first cause, a cause outside of time and space. It points directly to God. Yet Hawking refused to accept his own evidence. In an interview, he stated:

Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation.

But his problem, and the problem of every other Atheist, is that there is no scientific experiment or fact-based theory that can explain a universe created from nothing. One of the most respected laws of physics, the First Law of Thermodynamics, states that mass/energy cannot be created or destroyed. Hawking denied the First Law. He wrote “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.”

Voltaire wrote: “To the living we owe respect, to the dead we owe only the truth.” The truth is Hawking’s statement is one of the most illogical statements ever made. As English mathematician John Lennox pointed out, it is triple nonsense. First, where did gravity come from? “Who put it there? And what was the creative force behind its birth?” Second, how can a law of physics create something from nothing? “The laws of physics can explain how the jet engine works, but someone has to build the thing, put in the fuel and start it up.” Third, what was the torch, the first cause, to start the process? “Who lit it, if not God?”

Hawking’s books sold millions, but many languished unread on coffee tables. It wasn’t just because they were difficult; it was because in key ways they didn’t make sense. Hawking tried to use math and geometry to avoid the question of how time began. He compared asking what happened before the universe was created to asking what’s south of the South Pole. He invented a concept of “imaginary time,” where time has multiple dimensions like the surface of the Earth. But imaginary time is just that, imaginary. It’s cute math to deny God, but without a shred of scientific evidence.

The fine-tuning of the laws of physics, Chapter 8 of Counting to God, was another major problem for Hawking’s Atheism. In his youth, he developed a formula that showed how fine-tuned gravity had to be for the universe to not fly apart and to not collapse on itself. Paul Davies used that formula to compute that the gravitational constant was fine-tuned to at least one part in a number with 60 zeros. Getting that precision by chance is like picking a special, marked marble out of a pile of marbles 100 light years in diameter, big enough to include thousands of stars. Hawking knew that. He wrote:

The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron. . . . The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.

Yes, fine-tuning is a “remarkable fact.” It is also remarkable, and ironic, that Steven Hawking could prove fine-tuning but not accept God.

His story was worthy of a movie, and indeed became one in the award-winning 2014 film The Theory of Everything. But because Hawking rejected God, he missed the true theory of everything. It has three letters: G O D. Only God can explain a universe created from nothing. Only God can explain the fine-tuning of the universe. Only God can explain the enormous amount of information needed to build every living creature.

Thanks for reading. Have a blessed Easter.

Doug

The Glory of the Peacock

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Have you ever seen a peacock? The tail – “train” – opens like a fan, and explodes with colors and patterns. Here’s a short video:

The sight is glorious.

How did the peacock get its tail? The secular world insists all creatures “evolved” by a process of keeping the best mistakes, by mutations that just, “accidentally,” happened to create incredible technology. I’ve shown mathematically why that theory, Darwin’s “goo-to-you” theory of evolution, is nonsense, why mutations only destroy information; they can’t create it.

Darwin knew nothing about DNA and genes, but he did know his theory did not explain the peacock. The oversized, glorious tail of the peacock slows it down. The tail does not help the peacock get food, avoid predators, or otherwise survive. How did such a beautiful tail “evolve” without God? In 1860, a year after he published his theory, Darwin wrote:

“The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!”

Eleven years later Darwin tried to solve the problem. He invented a “theory of sexual selection.” The basic idea was that the peacock’s tail had the value of attracting females (peahens), and therefore had “evolved” without God. In other words, Darwin claimed that peacocks with sexier tails had better luck with the peahens, and passed on their genes to the next generation. It’s a “just-so” story worthy of Kipling, and does nothing to explain how the whole process got started, where the information and technology came from to build the first peacock tail, but it was enough of a fig leaf to satisfy generations of Darwinists that the problem had been solved.

Until a research team tested it. After a seven year study, researchers announced in 2007 that “the peacock’s train is not the object of female sexual preference – contradicting Darwin’s theory of sexual selection.” In other words, females mated with “poor-quality” peacocks as often as with “flashy, high-quality” peacocks. Darwin’s ‘theory of sexual selection’ fails to explain the very thing Darwin concocted it for! More hard scientific evidence (like the rejection of “junk” DNA and the absence of intermediary forms in the fossil record) that Darwin was wrong.

And the colors! Those brilliant, iridescent colors of the peacock don’t come from dyes. They are produced by super small geometric structures of atoms, designed to intensify certain wavelengths of light. To design that structure, and to build the factories to produce and assemble it, is stunning, futuristic technology.

Just like Darwin in 1860, evolutionary biologists today should feel sick looking at the glory of the peacock. A glory that reflects, in a very small way, the glory of God.

Thanks for reading. Please share the good news of true science. Together we can change the world.

Doug

The Finch’s Beak

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I’m working on a new, easier-to-read book about science and God. As one example of how natural selection has never created new kinds of creatures, I discuss the finch’s beak. One of my “test” readers was surprised: “Isn’t that one of the key examples given to support evolution?” She’s right, it is, which shows how distorted the evolutionary literature has become. Let’s look at the real facts about changes in the beaks of finches, and you can decide for yourself.
Finches are smallish birds found in most parts of the world. According to evolutionary myth, Charles Darwin noticed differences in the size of the beaks of species of finches when he visited the Galapagos Islands in 1835. He supposedly concluded that the birds had adapted, by natural selection, to different diets. Then, a mere 24 years later, in 1859, he was inspired by the beaks of finches to conceive and publish his theory of evolution.

Horse manure. As historian of science Frank Sulloway states, “Nothing could be further from the truth.” Darwin never mentioned finches in his 1859 book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (yes, Darwin was a blatant racist). Sulloway writes:

Thus the point of real historical interest is why Darwin, who surely wanted to bolster the text of the Origin with his most convincing scientific evidence, chose to omit any specific reference to a group of birds that he supposedly thought were so important for his evolutionary argument.

The finch myth, the myth that Darwin had an “eureka” moment while studying the beaks of finches, is nonsense. Darwin largely stole the theory of evolution from an 1858 letter written to him by Alfred Russell Wallace. For the story of how Darwin did that, and managed to take credit for the theory ahead of Wallace, I refer you to Tom Wolfe’s recent book The Kingdom of Speech.

Of course, facts don’t stop evolutionists. The National Academy of Science, a Darwin propaganda machine that tries to silence all discussion of design, claims finches are “a particularly compelling example” of the origin of species. The Washington Post (not my favorite newspaper) recently wrote an article on the “iconic Galapagos finches.”

Historical embellishments aside, what are the facts? In the 1970s biologists studied finches on one of the Galapagos Islands during a severe drought. The drought restricted the diet of finches to mostly large, hard-to-crack seeds. 85 percent of the finches perished. The average beak size of the survivors was 5% greater than the average beak size before the drought.

Don’t get too excited. When the rains returned, the average beak size returned to normal. To be clear, there were always finches with larger beaks and finches with smaller beaks. There were finches with larger beaks and finches with smaller beaks before the drought, there were finches with larger beaks and finches with smaller beaks during the drought, and there were finches with larger beaks and finches with smaller beaks after the drought. There was never a new kind of finch. There was no new technology created. There was only a temporary change in the relative sizes of those two populations.

What do you think? A “compelling example” of how new species are created? If you want to learn more about the myth of the finch’s beak, I would refer you to this article by Jonathan Wells. Wells concludes “never in the history of science was so much based by so many on so little.”

No one has ever found any new technology that was created by natural selection. Since 1988, scientists have watched a common type of bacteria “evolve” in the lab, grown in flasks with nutrients the bacteria eat. The bacteria reproduce more than six times a day and there have been over 60,000 generations of bacteria. The main change was that the bacteria turned into couch potatoes, fat bacteria that can’t swim. Because of mutations, errors in coding, some of the technology they used to have no longer works. Because the flasks are shaken, and the bacteria don’t need to swim to get food, the bacteria got fat and more couldn’t swim.

There is also the itsy bitsy scientific fact that, mathematically, the theory of evolution is a disaster. It is nowhere near powerful enough to build new technology. The odds of getting by mutation a new piece of technology, a new functional protein not related to another functional protein, are so hard to overcome that it may never have happened in the history of life on Earth. I give an overview of the science/math on this in pages 105 to 112 and 136 to 138 of Counting To God. Getting dozens of new pieces that work together just right to build new technology, like legs, eyes, ears, bones, or the human brain? Ridiculous almost beyond comprehension.

So the next time someone makes the absurd claim that “evolution is a fact,” you might ask that person to look at the real facts, and you might start with the finch’s beak.

Thanks for reading. Please spread the good news of true science.

The Little Red Wagon That Couldn’t

Atheist Pseudo-Science,

John Sanford is a brilliant geneticist who taught at Cornell and other institutions, and retired wealthy from his over 30 patents. His book “Genetic Entropy” – first published in 2005 and most recently updated in 2014 – is a devastating critique of Darwinian theory. Like me, John Sanford converted from Atheism to Belief because of the evidence of science.

Sanford’s book describes and documents amazing evidence of design. What I liked most, however, was his cute example of why Darwinian theory is nonsense.

Imagine you have a little red wagon, the type a child would pull. Imagine you also have an instruction manual that tells you how to build the wagon from scratch. The manual is complete. It tells you not only how to connect the parts, but how to manufacture each part. So there are instructions for how to manufacture steel and shape it exactly into the steel parts of the wagon. There are instructions for how to manufacture rubber and shape it into the tires of the wagon. There are instructions for how to manufacture red paint and how and where to paint the wagon. And so on, a complete instruction manual.

Now imagine three more things. First, imagine that you (or some other scribe) makes copies of the instructions, but sometimes makes mistakes. So each instruction manual is slightly different, and each is used to build a little red wagon. Second, imagine there is an assembly line in a factory that constantly builds new wagons based on its unique instruction manual for each one. Third, imagine there is a judge who reviews the wagons coming off the assembly line, rejects dysfunctional wagons, and preserves any “good” changes that occur.

We have now created an analogy to mutation and natural selection. The cute little red wagon represents what we might mistakenly call “simple” one-celled life. We now know each cell is like a city, with factories, libraries, transportation systems and so on, but let’s imagine life starting like a little red wagon. The process of random errors in the instruction manual is of course analogous to random mutations in the DNA code of that “simple” cell. The “judge” here represents natural selection. The judge has no control over the mutations, over which coping errors are made and where they occur in the instruction manual. The judge only gets to look at the final product off the assembly line and decide whether it should survive.

Darwin’s theory is that, if you keep doing this, you will eventually get a nice shiny blue tricycle. Yes, somehow, the paint color will switch to blue, the wheels will morph from four to three, the handle will reshape into a steering bar, and so on. I think we all know that is nonsense. What you may easily get is a wagon with a defective wheel. But you are not going to get the front two wheels to merge into a single front wheel, simultaneously with the steel shape being redesigned. Again, the “judge” of natural selection doesn’t get to separately fine tune a particular part of the instruction manual. It can’t say, for example, let’s only make errors in the section on paint color until we get the shade blue, and then we’ll mutate the instructions for the wheels. The mutations/errors are across the entire instruction manual, and all the judge can do is look at the final product and decide if it will survive.

Actually, Darwin’s theory is even more ridiculous. The theory predicts that, if you keep doing this long enough, keep mutating the instruction manual and letting only wagons/whatevers with the right features “survive,” you will eventually get an intergalactic spaceship with warp drive and a holodeck. Yes, I am serious. The gulf between “simple” one-celled life and human beings – with our perhaps 30 trillion interconnected cells, senses, muscles, organs, and the astonishing abilities of the human brain – is probably greater than that between the cute little red wagon and a spaceship.

I think this example helps grasp, at a basic, non-mathematical level, why Darwin’s theory is nonsense. Random mutations cannot invent new technology. It’s not mathematically possible; it has never happened.

“Entropy” is a fancy word for the general tendency of things to deteriorate. That perfect instruction manual for the first cute little red wagon is lost when that wagon dies. What really happens as the copying errors increase, and the manuals get more and more corrupted? What is the future of the human race? Sanford’s book focuses on that, and I intend to discuss that in my next blog.

Thanks for reading.

Something From Nothing – Revisited

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I am saddened by the confusion over the scientific evidence for God, and particularly saddened that many Atheists deliberately create confusion. This week let’s return to a question I asked about a year and a half ago: Why does anything exist?

I think it’s obvious that if you start with absolutely nothing – no time, no space, no energy, no matter, no laws of physics – you can’t create anything. So, to me, there is clearly no nontheistic reason – no explanation without God – for why anything exists. It just does. By itself, this doesn’t prove that God exists, it just proves that existence is an unshakable mystery.

Yet one Atheist has published a book claiming that you can get something from nothing. Believe it or not, A Universe From Nothing is actually the title of his book. But what he does is disingenuous, and that is sad. He doesn’t start from nothing, he assumes the existence of the quantum field.

What scientists call the “quantum field” is the foundation of our reality. It is a high energy field, and, as I explain in Chapter 14 of Counting To God, described by fantastically complex mathematics. It appears to consist of pure thought – ideas in the mind of God. Clearly the creation of the universe is connected to events at the quantum level – the subatomic level – of reality. But what caused the quantum field to exist? You can’t seriously just assume the existence of the quantum field. How does energy described only by fantastically complex mathematical patterns and equations pop out of absolute nothingness?

There are other problems with his pseudo-science theory, beyond falsely claiming that the quantum field is “nothing.” First, while “virtual particles” – particles that exist for fantastically small periods of time, less time than it takes light to cross a hydrogen atom, and then disappear – do exist, there is no scientific evidence that stable particles can pop out of a quantum field. So that’s another blatant, unacknowledged leap of faith. Second, even if you could get a stable particle from the quantum field, how could an entire universe, with the mass to create hundreds of billions of galaxies, suddenly pop out? Third, even if that event happened, how could it all be so finely tuned as to create the beautifully complex universe we now observe?

The truly sad part is that many people seem to think this quantum field nonsense makes sense. I have met many people who will tell you they think the universe popped out of a quantum field, and that therefore God is unnecessary. Where exactly did the quantum field come from? It makes no sense to say that the quantum field always existed, and then the universe suddenly popped out, sort of like a cosmic egg that finally hatched. If time and space have no beginning, so that the quantum field existed in the infinite past, then, even assuming that there is some small possibility that at some point a universe will pop out, our universe would have “popped out” an infinitely long time ago. Any probability, no matter how small, becomes a certainty when multiplied by an infinite period of time.

The truth is that ALL of these pseudo-science theories that attempt to avoid creation don’t work. The “steady state” theory collapsed in 1965 when Arno and Penzias discovered the radiation from the Big Bang. The “infinite multiverse” theory was disproven in 2003 by the Borde-Guth-Villekin singularity theorem – the past can’t be infinite. The perpetually oscillating universe theory – a universe that somehow contracts and expands forever, creating an infinite number of “Big Bangs” – would run out of energy (second law of thermodynamics).

We are left with the truly astonishing scientific conclusion that our universe was created. What caused that – what was the first cause? This doesn’t automatically get you to God, but it does prove, in my view at least, that something just exists, that there is something outside space and time that is uncaused, that caused our universe to exist. To me, that’s sort of like the first punch in the face of Atheism.

The second punch, a knockout punch, is that our universe is astonishingly fine-tuned. In so many ways, from the precise settings of the constants of physics, to the number of dimensions of space, to the mind-boggling ordering of the universe at the Big Bang, to the laws of physics, to the nuclear resonance levels within atoms, and on and on, the universe at least unquestionably looks like it was perfectly designed for life. This is commonly accepted among Atheists.

So our universe was somehow created, there can’t be an infinite number of past universes, and our universe is perfectly designed. To me, those are knockout punches.

And yet the public reads the titles of these nonsense books and thinks there’s a “scientific” explanation without God for existence.

I’ve been a little behind on my blogging, but hope to get back into it this year. If you have questions, or suggestions for blog posts, please comment on my Facebook author page.

Thanks for reading.

A New Dawn

Atheist Pseudo-Science, Science, , , ,

How do you explain the miracle of dawn? With heavenly clockwork, an immense fireball rises over one horizon and marches inexorably toward the other, bringing light and heat, making all life possible, and astonishing the sentient beings who stand witness. My best dawns were after sailing through the night, and seeing the darkness slowly conquered by the rising Sun. If you’ve ever watched a dawn, from first rays to final glory, you know it is a miracle.

In the ancient world, dawn, like every other mysterious thing, happened at the will of the gods. Over thousands of years, and most impressively in the last few hundred years, we’ve come up with different stories. We now say the Sun is a ball of burning stuff, of hydrogen atoms in a controlled ten-billion-year thermonuclear explosion. We now say the predictable march across the sky, and all other clockwork of the heavens, are the result of gravity, a fundamental force of nature where objects interact over great distances. Many extend this progress story – this “grand progress narrative” of “natural” causes replacing divine causes – to the origin of humans, we sentient creatures who observe the dawn. Many will tell you we are here because life arose by accident, and that, through blind, unguided evolution, the continual process of natural selection preserving the best mutations, those first cells eventually transformed into human beings.

This “grand progress narrative” supports a philosophy called Scientism. Scientism is the belief that everything can be explained by so-called “natural” causes, without God. Scientism is clearly not science, but it masquerades as science, and many can’t tell the difference. The grand progress narrative is scientism’s main theme. Scientism says there will always be a natural, materialistic explanation, and that if we just wait long enough we will figure it out. Scientism claims that natural causes alone can and will explain the dawn, and even how we came to be here.

Most people aren’t aware that in the last few decades this grand progress narrative has been proven false. Scientific progress has not slowed; fortunately for us new discoveries continue. But this thousand year old story of “natural” causes replacing divine causes has been reversed. To see why, let’s look at the dawn piece by piece.

We know the Sun is made of “stuff,” mostly burning hydrogen. We now also know that, without God, there is no explanation why stuff, or anything else, exists. All of true science – observation, experimentation, and reasoning – now leads us to a unique event – a universe created out of nothing, all matter and energy, even time and space itself, created in a single “big bang” instant. This “big bang” theory forced Atheists to retreat and claim, with absolutely no scientific evidence whatsoever, that our universe somehow popped out of an infinite, eternal, and perpetually inflating “multiverse.” This infinite multiverse theory was disproven by the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin singularity theorem of 2003, what I have previously called the “God Theorem.” As one scientist put it, “With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape: they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.”

We know that the clockwork of the heavens results from gravity. We have learned that gravity, along with dozens of other constants and features of our universe, is “impossibly fine-tuned,” set just perfect for life. If the force of gravity were stronger or weaker by one part in a number with 60 zeros life would not exist. That’s a greater precision than throwing a dart randomly and hitting a bulls-eye on the other side of the universe. Other features of our universe are even more precisely set. Without God, we have absolutely no explanation for this fine-tuning, and the amazingly perfect design of our universe.

Some say the first life arose by accident. Science now tells us that’s a fantasy. Harvard’s “Origin of Life Initiative” crashed and burned, its scientists crushed by the enormity of the problem. We now know that even the most “simple” life is a fantastically designed collection of micro-miniaturized factories and roads and storage facilities. Without God, we cannot explain the origin of life.

Some say, most of our popular culture will insist, that human beings arose solely through blind, unguided evolution. Yet we have found massive amounts of original information in every species on Earth. Throughout all of science, all of human history, all of our human experience, we have never found meaningful information that did not arise from a mind. This information – unique DNA coding in each species – proves the existence of a transcendent intelligence.

At this time in human history, we are witnessing a new dawn. Scientism’s grand progress narrative has been exposed. Without God, there is no explanation why anything exists. Without God, there is no explanation for the incredible design and fine-tuning for our universe. Without God, there is no explanation for the origin of life. Without God, there is no explanation of the creation of new species, including and especially human beings. It is a new dawn for belief, and if we as a culture can grasp the wonder, and work together as God wants, there may be hope for us yet.

Thanks for reading.