Ancient Documents Predicted Re-Birth of Israel?!!?

Did The Old Testament Scriptures Predict Israel's 

Return on May 14th, 1948?

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The author of “Covenant: G-d’s Plan for Israel in the Last Days,” a book by Baruch Battlestein published in Italy, cites prophecies by Ezekiel and Moses that pinpoint with precision the date of Israel’s return to the land in May 1948.

“Was May 14, 1948, chosen by G-d as the exact day in time to resurrect the nation of Israel, or was it just some random date in human history?” Battlestein asks. “Could it be possible that this exact date was prophesied thousands of years before in Scripture?”

Battlestein cites three verses to reach his conclusion that the date of Israel’s return to the land after 1,900 years was indeed prophesied accurately.

The first is Ezekiel 37:21-22: “And say unto them, ‘Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land: And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all.’”

This verse, Battlestein points out, shows “that it was the will of the Lord to bring them back to their own land and make them one nation in the land.”

The second citation of interest is Leviticus 26:23-24: “And if ye will not be reformed by me by these things, but will walk contrary unto me; Then will I also walk contrary unto you, and will punish you yet seven times for your sins.”

“As a stand-alone verse this is very strange, and when applying it to the history of Israel it seems impossible to fully understand,” writes the author. “However, when we read the Book of Ezekiel we find another strange prophecy that leads us back to G-d’s prophecy in Leviticus. It is through these prophecies that we come to an understanding that May 14, 1948, was the exact date chosen by G-d for the resurrection of Israel thousands of years before it took place.”

That second Ezekiel citation is Ezekiel 4:4-6: “Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it: according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity. For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year.”

“In this strange prophecy, Ezekiel is commanded to first lay on his left side for 390 days and then on his right side for 40 days, for a total of 430 days, as punishment for the iniquities of the house of Israel,” explains Battlestein.

“We are told that this punishment represents one day for each year. Taken alone, the prophecies in Leviticus and Ezekiel do not take on any specific significance. However, when we combine them, the results are astonishing.”

He continues: “G-d decreed to Israel a total of 430 years of punishment for her sins against Him. That punishment consisted of physical removal from the land G-d had promised His people. Israel’s captivity in Babylon was exactly 70 years as prophesied by the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 25:11-12; 29:10). Therefore, the first 70 years of Israel’s punishment was completed when the Babylonian captivity ended.

By the decree of King Cyrus, conquerer or Babylon, the Jews were set free from their captivity in the year 538 B.C.E. The year 538 B.C.E, therefore becomes the base year with which we begin our calculations: 430 years minus 70 year captivity equals 360 years of remaining punishment to come.”

That’s where the Leviticus prophecy kicks in, says Battlestein. The 360 years needed to be multiplied by seven, for a total of 2,520 years.

Using the 360-day Hebrew calendar, that totals 907,200 days. When converted to the 365-day calendar, the 2,520 years or 907,200 days becomes 2,485 years and five months or 2,485.5 years and months. If you subtract 538 years B.C.E, you get 1,947 years and five months.

Battlestein reminds that there was no year zero.

“Therefore, the year 1,947.5 we call the year 1948.5,” he explains. “So exactly 1,947.5 years after 538 B.C.E., we come to the year 1948.5,” he writes. “May is the fifth month of the modern calendar, and on May 14, 1948, Israel arose from the ashes of extinction to become a nation!”

Battlestein is a messianic Jew who lived in Israel until moving to the U.S. He is the author of several books.

GOOGLE's Biblical Archaeology Virtual Experience

Google and Israel Museum Create Virtual Museum Experience

Bible and Archaeology News

Google and the Israel Museum launched an interactive search engine and Web site this week that allows visitors to take a virtual tour of the museum’s vast collection of Biblical antiquities. In addition, ultra high-resolution images and detailed descriptions of more than 500 objects from the collection are now available with the click of a mouse. The Israel Museum collaboration is one of the highlights of the second phase of the Google Art Project, which has now visually documented and cataloged the collections of more than 170 of the world’s top museums, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to the Tate Gallery in London. But the project’s addition of the Israel Museum collection, which contains thousands of important archaeological finds from the Biblical lands, is a special accomplishment. “We can take the experience of our Israel Museum worldwide,” said museum director James Snyder. “We can give people far away who will never get here a chance, palpably, to feel what this place is about.”

Google and the Israel Museum launched an interactive search engine and Web site this week that allows visitors to take a virtual tour of the museum’s vast collection of Biblical antiquities.

Read more about the Google Art Project and the Israel Museum.

View the Israel Museum’s collection with the Google Art Project.

Advice to Christian Apologists Part 2

 For those feeling called to an apologetics ministry, Dr. Craig continues his lecture offering advice to help students in that pursuit. In this second installment, he explains how societal ideas are formed primarily within the university and why apologists can have more impact when they’ve earned a doctorate in a specialized field of study. He then concludes with some very practical advice on why anyone called to apologetics ministry must strive to develop a humble spirit and a true Christian character.

Read Part 1 of Apologetics Training Advice

2. Apologetics ministry - Earn a doctorate in your area of specialization.

This may not come as welcome advice to some of you. But popular apologetics alone will not do the job. Popular apologetics may sway the uneducated, but it will not change the prevailing thought structures of society.

In order to shape the thought structures of society so as to foster a cultural milieu that allows a place for the Christian worldview as an intellectually viable option, we must influence the university. I say this because the single most important institution shaping Western culture is the university. It is at the university that our future political leaders, our journalists, our lawyers, our teachers, our business executives, our artists, will be trained. It is at the university that they will formulate or, more likely, simply absorb the worldview that will shape their lives. And since these are the opinion-makers and leaders who shape our culture, the worldview that they imbibe at the university will be the one that shapes our culture. If we change the university, we change our culture through those who shape culture. If the Christian worldview can be restored to a place of prominence and respect at the university, it will have a leavening effect throughout society.

But that implies that popular-level apologetics aimed at the masses will not do the job. Only scholarly level apologetics aimed at specialists in the various academic disciplines will be capable of changing the university and so ensuring lasting cultural change. Machen observed that many people in his day "would have the seminaries combat error as it is taught by its popular exponents" instead of confusing students "with a lot of German names unknown outside the walls of the university." But, Machen insisted, the scholarly method of procedure

. . . is based simply upon a profound belief in the pervasiveness of ideas. What is to-day matter of academic speculation begins to-morrow to move armies and pull down empires. In that second stage, it has gone too far to be combated; the time to stop it was when it was still a matter of impassionate debate. So as Christians we should try to mould the thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of Christianity something more than a logical absurdity. 1

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Advice to Christian Apologists Part 1

William Lane Craig

Have you ever wondered what type of training would be the most beneficial for those who aspire to become Christian apologists? Dr. Craig, when asked to present for the Stobb Lectures, recently addressed students interested in apologetics as ministry, offering them three key pieces of advice to help in that pursuit. Here, in the first of two parts, he explains why budding apologists should select an area of specialization in their studies and then demonstrates why a background in analytic philosophy provides a crucial foundation, even as a part of historical and scientific apologetics training.

In 1983, when Alvin Plantinga delivered his inaugural lecture as the John O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, he chose as his topic "Advice to Christian Philosophers." Today I've chosen as my subject the related, but somewhat broader, topic "Advice to Christian Apologists." Plantinga's advice was, however, directed toward those who already were Christian philosophers, whereas my remarks might be more appropriately entitled "Advice to Budding Christian Apologists," that is to say, to those who will but have not yet entered into a ministry of Christian apologetics and wish to know what goes into effective apologetics training.

We saw yesterday the tremendous need for and benefits of Christian apologetics, both in shaping culture and in influencing individual lives. Now to help us to do this well, let me make a few suggestions.

1. Apologetics training - Select some area in which to specialize.

1. Select some area in which to specialize . Some popular Christian apologists make the mistake of trying to be a jack of all trades, and so they are master of none. As a result, their knowledge of the field may be very broad, but it is not very profound. While they may be able to present an initial argument for Christian truth claims, they soon wilt under the pressure of critique, especially on the part of specialists. Speaking on a university campus, they may find themselves ridden with anxiety lest a non-Christian faculty member should show up in their audience and raise an objection they are at a loss to deal with. If that does happen, they may not only embarrass themselves but also injure the credibility of the Christian faith. A merely generalized knowledge of Christian apologetics is fine for certain contexts, and certainly better than nothing, but it will limit the horizons of your ministry.

Instead, I encourage you to specialize in a certain area of apologetics, even as you continue to be well-informed in other areas. For example, given the renaissance in Christian philosophy that has been going on over the last 40 years in the Anglo-American world, many of our best Christian apologists today are, not surprisingly, philosophers.

Christian philosophy, involved as it is with issues of epistemology-like justification, rationality, and warrant, - issues of metaphysics - such as the nature of ultimate reality, truth, and the soul - , and of ethics - such as the existence of moral values and duties, theories of the foundations of value, and the meaning of moral claims - , naturally lends itself to Christian apologetics training. Indeed, the Christian philosopher can hardly avoid apologetics, since the questions he studies are pertinent to a Christian world and life view. Even if his conclusions should turn out to be largely sceptical - say, that we cannot know the nature of ultimate reality - , that conclusion would be vitally important to Christian apologetics, since such a conclusion would scuttle the project of natural theology. So the field of philosophy has a natural affinity to apologetics.

a. Apologetics training - Why a background in philosophy is invaluable to the apologist

Indeed, I should say that the relevance of philosophy to apologetics is so great that even if you do not specialize in philosophical apologetics but choose to go into some other type of apologetics, you would do well to take a strong dose of analytic philosophy. Analytic philosophy is the kind of philosophy that predominates in the Anglophone world. This style of philosophizing contrasts sharply with that of Continental philosophy. Whereas Continental philosophy tends to be obscure, imprecise, and emotive, analytic philosophy lays great worth and emphasis on clarity of definitions, careful delineation of premisses, and logical rigor of argumentation. Unfortunately, theology has for a long time learned to follow the lead of Continental philosophy, which tends to result in darkness being piled upon darkness. The renaissance of Anglo-American Philosophy of Religion over the last 40 years has shown that important apologetical issues can be brilliantly illuminated through the light of philosophical analysis. Richard Swinburne, Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oxford University has written,

It is one of the intellectual tragedies of our age that when philosophy in English-speaking countries has developed high standards of argument and clear thinking, the style of theological writing has been largely influenced by the continental philosophy of Existentialism, which, despite its considerable other merits, has been distinguished by a very loose and sloppy style of argument. If argument has a place in theology, large-scale theology needs clear and rigorous argument. That point was very well grasped by Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, by Berkeley, Butler, and Paley. It is high time for theology to return to their standards. 1

By employing the high standards of reasoning characteristic of analytic philosophy we can powerfully formulate apologetic arguments for both commending and defending the Christian worldview. In recent decades, analytic philosophers of religion have shed new light on the rationality and warrant of religious belief, on arguments for the existence of God, on divine attributes such as necessity, eternity, omnipotence, omniscience, and goodness, on the problem of suffering and evil, on the nature of the soul and immortality, on the problem of miracles, and even on peculiarly Christian doctrines like the Trinity, incarnation, atonement, original sin, revelation, hell, and prayer. The wealth of material which is available to the Christian apologist through the labor of analytic philosophers of religion is breath-taking.

If you want to do apologetics effectively, you need to be trained in analytic philosophy. And I say this even if your area of specialization is not philosophical apologetics. Whatever your area of specialization, you will be better equipped as an apologist if you have had training in analytic philosophy. Suppose you choose to specialize in scientific or historical apologetics. The fact is that some of the most important issues you will confront will be questions arising from philosophy of science or epistemology. Over and over again I see scientists and New Testament scholars making faulty inferences or proceeding from unexamined presuppositions because of their philosophical naiveté.

b. Apologetics training - The presupposition of naturalism is a barrier for historical apologetics

Take the field of historical apologetics, for example, specifically historical study of the life of Jesus. It is remarkable how obtrusive philosophical issues are in this field. The New Testament scholar R. T. France has observed,

At the level of their literary and historical character we have good reason to treat the Gospels seriously as a source of information on the life and teaching of Jesus.... Indeed many ancient historians would count themselves fortunate to have four such responsible accounts [as the Gospels], written within a generation or two of the events, and preserved in such a wealth of early manuscript evidence. Beyond that point, the decision to accept the record they offer is likely to be influenced more by openness to a supernaturalist world view than by strictly historical considerations. 2

The accuracy of France's analysis is borne out by the self-confession of the radical Jesus Seminar of the presuppositions that guide its work. The presupposition which the Seminar acknowledges as of first importance is anti-supernaturalism or more simply, naturalism . In this context naturalism is the view that every event in the world has a natural cause. In other words, miracles cannot happen.

Now this presupposition constitutes an absolute watershed for the study of the gospels. If you presuppose naturalism, then things like the incarnation, the Virgin Birth, Jesus' miracles, and his resurrection go out the window before you even sit down at the table to look at the evidence. As supernatural events, they cannot be historical. But if you are at least open to supernaturalism, then these events can't be ruled out in advance. You have to be open to looking honestly at the evidence that they occurred.

The Jesus Seminar is remarkably candid about its presupposition of naturalism. In the Introduction to their edition of The Five Gospels they state:

The contemporary religious controversy turns on whether the world view reflected in the Bible can be carried forward into this scientific age and retained as an article of faith . . . . the Christ of creed and dogma . . . can no longer command the assent of those who have seen the heavens through Galileo's telescope. 3

But why, we might ask, is it impossible in a scientific age to believe in a supernatural Christ? After all, a good many scientists are Christian believers, and contemporary physics shows itself quite open to the possibility of realities which lie outside the domain of physics. What justification is there for anti-supernaturalism?

Here things really get interesting. According to the Jesus Seminar, the historical Jesus by definition must be a non-supernatural figure. Here they appeal to D. F. Strauss, the 19th century German Biblical critic. Strauss's book The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined was based squarely in a philosophy of naturalism. According to Strauss, God does not act directly in the world; He acts only indirectly through natural causes. With regard to the resurrection, Strauss states that God's raising Jesus from the dead "is irreconcilable with enlightened ideas of the relation of God to the world." 4

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“God” and “the Cause of the Universe”, Question of the week by Dr. Craig

Dr. Craig, I was wondering what the relationship between the proper name 'God' and the definite description 'The cause of the universe' is. A widely held belief amongst philosophers of language is that definite descriptions do not have the same referent in every possible world. For example, 'The man that won the election in 2008' is not necessarily Barack Obama. It may have been the case that John McCain won. So what about the definite description 'The cause of the universe'? If this doesn't have God as a referent in all possible worlds, then there is a possible word in which God is not the cause of the universe. Does this entail that there is no God? If God exists, does he have to be the cause of the universe out of necessity?

Haigen

United States

To read Dr. Craig's answer please click HERE

Can Atheists Justify Being Good Without God ?

by Norman L. Geisler

 There is a new atheist’s ad out with a picture of  Santa Claus and the words: “Why  believe in a god?Just be good for goodness sake.”  This is clever, but is it possible?  Let’s analyze it more carefully. 

First, if there is no Moral Law Giver (God), then how can there be a moral law that prescribes: “Be good.”  Every prescription has a prescriber, and this is a moral prescription.

Second, what does “good” mean?  How is good to be defined.? If it can mean anything for anyone, then it means nothing for anyone.  It is total relativism. Being “good” for some (like Nazis) can mean killing Jews.  But for Jews it is evil.  Hence, on this view there is no objective difference between good and evil.

Third,  what does “goodness” itself mean in the atheist slogan.  Being good “for goodness sake” implies that something is just plain good in itself.  That is, it is an ultimate goodness.  But this by definition is what Christians mean by God.  Everything else hasgoodness, but only God (the Ultimate) is goodness.  In this case, the atheist is using “goodness” as a surrogate or substitute for God.  

This maneuver is not uncommon for atheists. Before the Big Bang evidence, atheists were fond of doing this with the word  “universe.”  It was supposed to be eternal and, hence, needed no Cause since only what begins needs a Beginner.  Carl Sagan employed the term “Cosmos” as a God-substitute.  He said, “the COSMOS is everything that ever was, is, or will be.”  It sounds a little like what Psalm 90 declares: “From everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.”  Bertrand Russell attempted the same tactic in his famous BBC debate with Father Copleston.  When asked what caused the universe, he replied that nothing did.  It was just “there.”  But how does an eternal, uncaused universe from which everything else came to be differ from an Uncaused Cause (God)?

However, in the light of the Big Bang evidence that the universe had a beginning, these answers lack scientific support.  As agnostic Jastrow put it, "The scientist’s pursuit of the past ends in the moment of creation."  And  "This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but theologians.  They have always accepted the word of the Bible: `In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth'" (God and the Astronomers, 115).


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Engaging the Happy Thinking Pagan

Do you know people who are very content with life without bothering about the question of God?

 Ravi Zacharias sat down with Danielle DuRant to discuss the idea of the “happy thinking pagan.” To hear the interview, go to Just Thinking Broadcast Archive. 

Danielle DuRant: You’ve spoken about the “happy thinking pagan.” What do you mean by this phrase?

Ravi Zacharias :I think the first time I heard that term was about three decades ago. It was from Os Guinness and he talked about the fact that this was the emerging new way of thinking. That is, “I don’t believe anything but I’m very happy. What does it matter?” And of course, it was also along the time of slogans such as “If it feels good, do it” and “Don’t worry, be happy.” Then the whole question came up about what does the so-called happy pagan actually believe, and it was borderline radical skepticism: not really taking any view of the transcendent seriously but just the pursuit of happiness, raw and unbridled. This sometimes moved into radical hedonism, other times just to contentment. So I mean people who are very content with life without bothering about the question of God.

DD: Philosopher Peter Kreeft argues that “the most serious challenge for Christianity today isn’t one of the other great religions of the world, such as Islam or Buddhism.” Rather, it is paganism, which he defines as “the religion of man as the new God.” Would you agree with him?

RZ: Partly. I don’t think I’d agree with him completely though Kreeft is a much wiser man and a better informed man than I am. I suppose I would wonder what he means by that in the pervasive sense of a belief system. Yes, paganism can be especially daunting with the revival of certain types of Gnosticism and mysticism. Yes, the numbers in the West are growing, but in terms of a threat to stability and freedom, I don’t think that’s the greatest threat we face. I think the whole Islamic worldview has a real challenge and I’ll tell you why. It has a challenge because it is comprehensive. It is political. It has a moral theory. It has a cultural theory. It has a financial theory. So I think in its core the Islamic worldview would pose a greater challenge to the life and the lifestyle of the Western worldview because in the Western worldview you are given the freedom to believe and disbelieve. It’s not always true in Islamic nations. So I would say in terms of the freedom of these things, the greater challenge to the world right now is coming from that worldview, but in terms of the pervasiveness of belief systems, paganism is certainly a daunting one. I don’t think it’s as fearsome but it is real.

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NO GOOD WITHOUT GOD??!!??

This is the final installation of our newest addition to our series "Good Arguments for God's Existence", and it goes by the name of the Axiological or Moral Argument.

The power of this particular argument from Natural Theology lies in the fact that is deals with something that every human being is in touch with on a daily basis, whether they are an atheist, agnostic, pantheist, or theist: our moral inclinations and perceptions concerning right and wrong, good or bad.

Some philosophers say that this can often be one of the most powerful arguments for God's existence for precisely that reason. I encourage you to listen to it, and decide for yourself if it's true. 

Ask yourself these questions, as you evaluate this deductive argument for God's existence:

- Are there any logical errors made in the progression of this argument?

- Does the conclusion follow necessarily if the premises are true?

- If God doesn't exist, what then is the ultimate foundation for objective morality?

- Is Morality truly objective, or is it relativistic? 

- What impact should that have on our justice system, international law, or even personal interactions when we are wronged if there truly is no objective right or wrong?

- Would the non-existence of God logically result in "Moral Nihilism", the destruction of all moral value and duties in a society? Is that kind of a world liveable? 

Consider these questions and track with us as we progress through this argument.

- Pastor J.

What is the Relation between Science and Religion

William Lane Craig

Examines several ways in which science and theology relate to each other.

Back in 1896 the president of Cornell University Andrew Dickson White published a book entitled A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. Under White’s influence, the metaphor of “warfare” to describe the relations between science and the Christian faith became very widespread during the first half of the 20th century. The culturally dominant view in the West—even among Christians—came to be that science and Christianity are not allies in the search for truth, but adversaries.

To illustrate, several years ago I had a debate with a philosopher of science at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver , Canada, on the question “Are Science and Religion Mutually Irrelevant?” When I walked onto the campus, I saw that the Christian students sponsoring the debate had advertised it with large banners and posters proclaiming “Science vs.Christianity.” The students were perpetuating the same sort of warfare mentality that Andrew Dickson White proclaimed over a hundred years ago.

What has happened, however, in the second half of this century is that historians and philosophers of science have come to realize that this supposed history of warfare is a myth. As Thaxton and Pearcey point out in their recent book The Soul of Science, for over 300 years between the rise of modern science in the 1500’s and the late 1800s the relationship between science and religion can best be described as an alliance. Up until the late 19th century, scientists were typically Christian believers who saw no conflict between their science and their faith—people like Kepler, Boyle, Maxwell, Faraday, Kelvin, and others. The idea of a warfare between science and religion is a relatively recent invention of the late 19th century, carefully nurtured by secular thinkers who had as their aim the undermining of the cultural dominance of Christianity in the West and its replacement by naturalism—the view that nothing outside nature is real and the only way to discover truth is through science. They were remarkably successful in pushing through their agenda. But philosophers of science during the second half of the 20th century have come to realize that the idea of a warfare between science and theology is a gross oversimplification. White’s book is now regarded as something of a bad joke, a one-sided and distorted piece of propaganda.

Now some people acknowledge that science and religion should not be regarded as foes, but nonetheless they do not think that they should be considered friends either. They say that science and religion are mutually irrelevant, that they represent two non-over-lapping domains. Sometimes you hear slogans like “Science deals with facts and religion deals with faith.” But this is a gross caricature of both science and religion. As science probes the universe, she encounters problems and questions which are philosophical in character and therefore cannot be resolved scientifically, but which can be illuminated by a theological perspective. By the same token, it is simply false that religion makes no factual claims about the world. The world religions make various and conflicting claims about the origin and nature of the universe and humanity, and they cannot all be true. Science and religion are thus like two circles which intersect or partially overlap. It is in the area of intersection that the dialogue takes place.

And during the last quarter century, a flourishing dialogue between science and theology has been going on in North America and Europe. In an address before a conference on the history and philosophy of thermodynamics, the prominent British physicist P. T. Landsberg suddenly began to explore the theological implications of the scientific theory he was discussing. He observed,

To talk about the implications of science for theology at a scientific meeting seems to break a taboo. But those who think so are out of date. During the last 15 years, this taboo has been removed, and in talking about the interaction of science and theology, I am actually moving with a tide.

Numerous societies for promoting this dialogue, like the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology, the Science and Religion Forum, the Berkeley Center for Theology and Natural Science, and so forth have sprung up. Especially significant have been the on-going conferences sponsored by the Berkeley Center and the Vatican Observatory, in which prominent scientists like Stephen Hawking and Paul Davies have explored the implications of science for theology with prominent theologians like John Polkinghorne and Wolfhart Pannenberg. Not only are there professional journals devoted to the dialogue between science and religion, such as Zygon and Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith,but, more significantly, secular journals like Nature and the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, also carry articles on the mutual implications of science and theology. The Templeton Foundation has awarded its million dollar Templeton Award in Science and Religion to outstanding integrative thinkers such as Paul Davies, John Polkinghorne, and George Ellis for their work in science and religion. The dialogue between science and theology has become so significant in our day that both Cambridge University and Oxford University have established chairs in science and theology.

I share all this to illustrate a point. Folks who think that science and religion are mutually irrelevant need to realize that the cat is already out of the bag; and I daresay there’s little prospect of stuffing it back in. Science and religion have discovered that they have important mutual interests and important contributions to make to each other, and those who don’t like this can choose not to participate in the dialogue, but that’s not going to shut down the dialogue or show it to be meaningless.

So let’s explore together ways in which science and religion serve as allies in the quest for truth. Let me suggest six ways in which science and religion are relevant to each other, starting with the most general and then becoming more particular.

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The New Atheism and Five Arguments for God

William Lane Craig

Are there good arguments for God’s existence? Have the so-called New Atheists shown that the arguments for God are no good?

Copyright © 2010 by Christ on Campus Initiative (CCI)

It’s perhaps something of a surprise that almost none of the so-called New Atheists has anything to say about arguments for God’s existence. Instead, they to tend to focus on the social effects of religion and question whether religious belief is good for society. One might justifiably doubt that the social impact of an idea for good or ill is an adequate measure of its truth, especially when there are reasons being offered to think that the idea in question really is true. Darwinism, for example, has certainly had at least some negative social influences, but that’s hardly grounds for thinking the theory to be false and simply ignoring the biological evidence in its favor.

Perhaps the New Atheists think that the traditional arguments for God’s existence are now passé and so no longer need refutation. If so, they are naïve. Over the last generation there has been a revival of interest among professional philosophers, whose business it is to think about difficult metaphysical questions, in arguments for the existence of God. This resurgence of interest has not escaped the notice of even popular culture. In 1980 Time ran a major story entitled “Modernizing the Case for God,” which described the movement among contemporary philosophers to refurbish the traditional arguments for God’s existence. Time marveled,

In a quiet revolution in thought and argument that hardly anybody could have foreseen only two decades ago, God is making a comeback. Most intriguingly, this is happening not among theologians or ordinary believers, but in the crisp intellectual circles of academic philosophers, where the consensus had long banished the Almighty from fruitful discourse.1

According to the article, the noted American philosopher Roderick Chisholm opined that the reason atheism was so influential in the previous generation is that the brightest philosophers were atheists; but today, he observes, many of the brightest philosophers are theists, using a tough-minded intellectualism in defense of that belief.

The New Atheists are blissfully ignorant of this ongoing revolution in Anglo-American philosophy.2 They are generally out of touch with cutting-edge work in this field. About the only New Atheist to interact with arguments for God’s existence is Richard Dawkins. In his book The God Delusion, which has become an international best-seller, Dawkins examines and offers refutations of many of the most important arguments for God.3 He deserves credit for taking the arguments seriously. But are his refutations cogent? Has Dawkins dealt a fatal blow to the arguments?

Well, let’s look at some of those arguments and see. But before we do, let’s get clear what makes for a “good” argument. An argument is a series of statements (called premises) leading to a conclusion. A sound argument must meet two conditions: (1) it is logically valid (i.e., its conclusion follows from the premises by the rules of logic), and (2) its premises are true. If an argument is sound, then the truth of the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. But to be a good argument, it’s not enough that an argument be sound. We also need to have some reason to think that the premises are true. A logically valid argument that has, wholly unbeknownst to us, true premises isn’t a good argument for the conclusion. The premises have to have some degree of justification or warrant for us in order for a sound argument to be a good one. But how much warrant? The premises surely don’t need to be known to be true with certainty (we know almost nothing to be true with certainty!). Perhaps we should say that for an argument to be a good one the premises need to be probably true in light of the evidence. I think that’s fair, though sometimes probabilities are difficult to quantify. Another way of putting this is that a good argument is a sound argument in which the premises are more plausible in light of the evidence than their opposites. You should compare the premise and its negation and believe whichever one is more plausibly true in light of the evidence. A good argument will be a sound argument whose premises are more plausible than their negations.

Given that definition, the question is this: Are there good arguments for God’s existence? Has Dawkins in particular shown that the arguments for God are no good? In order to find out, let’s look at five arguments for God’s existence.

1. The Cosmological Argument from Contingency

The cosmological argument comes in a variety of forms. Here’s a simple version of the famous version from contingency:

1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.
2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
3. The universe exists.
4. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence (from 1, 3).
5. Therefore, the explanation of the universe’s existence is God (from 2, 4).

Now this is a logically airtight argument. That is to say, if the premises are true, then the conclusion is unavoidable. It doesn’t matter if we don’t like the conclusion. It doesn’t matter if we have other objections to God’s existence. So long as we grant the three premises, we have to accept the conclusion. So the question is this: Which is more plausible—that those premises are true or that they are false?

1.1. Premise 1

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Can We Be Good without God?

Why God is the only sound foundation for morality?

Can we be good without God? At first the answer to this question may seem so obvious that even to pose it arouses indignation. For while those of us who are Christian theists undoubtedly find in God a source of moral strength and resolve which enables us to live lives that are better than those we should live without Him, nevertheless it would seem arrogant and ignorant to claim that those who do not share a belief in God do not often live good moral lives—indeed, embarrassingly, lives that sometimes put our own to shame.

But wait! It would, indeed, be arrogant and ignorant to claim that people cannot be good without belief in God. But that was not the question. The question was: can we be good without God? When we ask that question, we are posing in a provocative way the meta-ethical question of the objectivity of moral values. Are the values we hold dear and guide our lives by mere social conventions akin to driving on the left versus right side of the road or mere expressions of personal preference akin to having a taste for certain foods or not? Or are they valid independently of our apprehension of them, and if so, what is their foundation? Moreover, if morality is just a human convention, then why should we act morally, especially when it conflicts with self-interest? Or are we in some way held accountable for our moral decisions and actions?

Today I want to argue that if God exists, then the objectivity of moral values, moral duties, and moral accountability is secured, but that in the absence of God, that is, if God does not exist, then morality is just a human convention, that is to say, morality is wholly subjective and non-binding. We might act in precisely the same ways that we do in fact act, but in the absence of God, such actions would no longer count as good (or evil), since if God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. Thus, we cannot truly be good without God. On the other hand, if we do believe that moral values and duties are objective, that provides moral grounds for believing in God.

Consider, then, the hypothesis that God exists. First, if God exists, objective moral values exist. To say that there are objective moral values is to say that something is right or wrong independently of whether anybody believes it to be so. It is to say, for example, that Nazi anti-Semitism was morally wrong, even though the Nazis who carried out the Holocaust thought that it was good; and it would still be wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in exterminating or brainwashing everybody who disagreed with them.

On the theistic view, objective moral values are rooted in God. God’s own holy and perfectly good nature supplies the absolute standard against which all actions and decisions are measured. God’s moral nature is what Plato called the “Good.” He is the locus and source of moral value. He is by nature loving, generous, just, faithful, kind, and so forth.

Moreover, God’s moral nature is expressed in relation to us in the form of divine commands which constitute our moral duties or obligations. Far from being arbitrary, these commands flow necessarily from His moral nature. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the whole moral duty of man can be summed up in the two great commandments: First, you shall love the Lord your God with all your strength and with all your soul and with all your heart and with all your mind, and, second, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On this foundation we can affirm the objective goodness and rightness of love, generosity, self-sacrifice, and equality, and condemn as objectively evil and wrong selfishness, hatred, abuse, discrimination, and oppression.

Finally, on the theistic hypothesis God holds all persons morally accountable for their actions. Evil and wrong will be punished; righteousness will be vindicated. Good ultimately triumphs over evil, and we shall finally see that we do live in a moral universe after all. Despite the inequities of this life, in the end the scales of God’s justice will be balanced. Thus, the moral choices we make in this life are infused with an eternal significance. We can with consistency make moral choices which run contrary to our self-interest and even undertake acts of extreme self-sacrifice, knowing that such decisions are not empty and ultimately meaningless gestures. Rather our moral lives have a paramount significance. So I think it is evident that theism provides a sound foundation for morality.

Contrast this with the atheistic hypothesis. First, if atheism is true, objective moral values do not exist. If God does not exist, then what is the foundation for moral values? More particularly, what is the basis for the value of human beings? If God does not exist, then it is difficult to see any reason to think that human beings are special or that their morality is objectively true. Moreover, why think that we have any moral obligations to do anything? Who or what imposes any moral duties upon us? Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science, writes,

The position of the modern evolutionist . . . is that humans have an awareness of morality . . . because such an awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth . . . . Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says ‘Love they neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond themselves . . . . Nevertheless, . . . such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, . . . and any deeper meaning is illusory . . . .1

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Series - "Icons of Evolution, Fossil Horses"

Three years before Charles Darwin's death in 1882, Yale University paleontologist Othniel Marsh published a drawing of horse fossils to show how modern one-toed horses had evolved from a small four-toed ancestor. Marsh's drawing, which included only leg-bones and teeth, was soon supplemented by skulls, and illustrations of horse fossils quickly found their way into museum exhibits and biology textbooks as evidence for evolution. Early versions of these illustrations showed horse evolution proceeding in a straight line from the primitive ancestor through a series of intermediates to the modern horse. (Figure 10-1) But paleontologists soon learned that horse evolution was much more complicated than this. Instead of being a linear progression from one form to another, it appeared to be a branching tree, with most of its branches ending in extinction. Although advocates of Darwinian evolution have done almost nothing to correct the other icons of evolution, they have made a determined effort to correct this one. Since the 1950s, neo-Darwinian paleontologists have been actively campaigning to replace the old linear picture of horse evolution with the branching tree.

Drawings such as this one (created in 1902) used to be common in museum exhibits and biology textbooks, and can still be found in some places today. The two oldest members of the series, Hyracotherium and Protorohippus, had four toes on their front feet; the next two members, Mesohippus and Protohippus, each had three; and Equus, the modern horse, has one.

The reason for their campaign, however, is more interesting than the horse icon itself. People used to regard the old icon as evidence that evolution was directed, either supernaturally or by internal vital forces. Neo-Darwinists now ridicule directed evolution as a myth, and cite the new branching-tree arrangement of horse fossils as evidence that evolution is undirected. But the doctrine of undirected evolution is philosophical, not empirical. It preceded all evidence for Darwin's theory, and it goes far beyond the evidence we now have. Like several other Darwinian claims we've seen, it is a concept masquerading as a neutral description of nature. 

Jonathan Wells. Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution Is Wrong

The Real Barrier to Unguided Human Evolution

Comparing DNA sequences and estimating by how many nucleotides we differ from chimps doesn't tell us much about what makes us human. Many of those nucleotide differences have no effect, because they are the product of neutral mutation and genetic drift. While these neutral mutations may affect the over-all mutation count, they don't answer how many mutations are required for the transition from chimp-like to human.

This problem is analogous to one we examined concerning protein evolution last year in the journal BIO-Complexity (Gauger and Axe 2011). Converting one protein to another's function can be viewed as a version, in miniature, of converting one species to another. But it is much easier to convert proteins than species.

We began by identifying two proteins that are close together in structure, but that have distinct functions. We examined what the minimal number of mutations to convert one protein to the other were. If all the places where they differed had to be changed, that would mean we would have to switch 70% of one protein to achieve conversion to the other's function. It's unlikely that all those mutations are required, however, since many if not most of those changes are due to neutral mutation and drift, just like in the chimp-like to human case.

So to estimate the minimal number of mutations required for conversion to a new function, we identified and tested the most likely amino acid candidates using structural and sequence comparisons, one by one and in combination. We ended up changing nearly the entire active site to look like the target protein, but failed to achieve conversion.

Based on the number of groups we changed, we made a minimum estimate that seven specific mutations would be required for a functional shift to be observed. To get seven coordinated mutations takes far too long, even for bacteria, with their high mutation rate and large population sizes. 10^27 years is our estimate, based on Doug Axe's population genetics model, also published in BIO-Complexity.

Personally, I think the chimp-like to human conversion would have to have taken many more years than any protein conversion, 

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The Evidence for God

When asked what he would say if he met God in an afterlife Bertrand Russell responded, ‘I should reproach him for not giving us enough evidence.’ Some atheists will make the stronger claim that there is no evidence for God’s existence. By contrast, on this website we claim in various articles that there is evidence for God’s existence, and pretty good evidence into the bargain. Given such a disparity, it is worth asking what we mean by ‘evidence’?

Some people might think of evidence in terms of the five senses, but this is much too restrictive. Scientists, for example, don’t limit themselves to the five senses, but use various instruments to weigh objects, measure charge, detect particles, etc. Of course, the senses are important since, for example, we see the dial pointing to a certain value, but we don’t see the weight of the object or see the particle in question. Obviously though, we can’t use instruments in this way to detect God, so if this is how evidence is to be understood the evidence for God seems to be non-existent.

But this is still much too restrictive because it suggests that the only way we can know if something exists is to detect it directly using either our senses or suitable measuring devices

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Can Random Mutations Create New Complex Features?

Casey Luskin June 22, 2012 5:47 AM 

Since posting our recent rebuttals to the TalkOrigins page on the Cambrian explosion (see hereand here), we've received some requests to respond to other pages on the TalkOrigins archive. One of these is a page purporting to respond to the claim that "Evolution cannot cause an increase in information."

Of course this title equivocates on the meaning of "information." As explained here, evolutionary mechanisms can generate new Shannon information, but that's is often a trivial accomplishment and doesn't at all necessarily mean you've generated any new functional biological feature. A random, garbled, functionless stretch of DNA can entail new "information" in the Shannon sense, but that's never going to explain how complex functional biological features arise. In any case, the TalkOrigins page responds as follows:

It is hard to understand how anyone could make this claim, since anything mutations can do, mutations can undo. Some mutations add information to a genome; some subtract it.

That bizarre statement reflects a gross misunderstanding of how Darwinian evolution works. A longstanding postulate in evolutionary biology, called Dollo's Law, holds that evolution is not reversible. Perhaps in some cases mutations can "undo" anything they "can do," but it's not at all clear that this is always the case.

There's a good reason for Dollo's Law. Darwinian evolution tends only to fix traits in a population when they confer some advantage upon the organism. Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne affirms this when he states: "It is indeed true that natural selection cannot build any feature in which intermediate steps do not confer a net benefit on the organism."¹ So some mutations might provide an advantage, but "reversing" those mutations would presumably cancel the advantage. As far as the Darwinian mechanism is concerned, there isn't always a reason to expect that a mutation that "undoes" some advantageous trait will confer an advantage, get passed on to offspring, and be maintained in a population. So anything a mutation does cannot always be undone.

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