Atheism and Naturalism

ATHEISM AND NATURALISM

By Nicholas Covington

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Nicholas Covington

Atheism and Naturalism

Copyright © 2009 by Nicholas Ryan Covington

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America

Published by Lulu.com

Cover Photo: Galaxy I Zwicky 18,

Credits: NASA, ESA, and A. Aloisi (Space Telescope

Science Institute and European Space Agency, Baltimore,
Md.)

Original Photo May Be Viewed At:

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/galaxy/pr2007035b/

ISBN: 978-0-557-07046-6

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 Atheism and Naturalism

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Grounding Your Worldview…………………. 5

2. The Philosopher's God…………………….... 21

3. The “Miracle” of Life……………………….. 35

4. Revelations……………………………………53

5. The Case Against Christ…………………….. 61

6. Someone to Hear Your Prayers? .....................75

7. Arguments Against God……………………..83

8. Naturalism…………………………………...95

9. The Big Bang, Being, and Beginnings………101

10. Evolution: The Evidence…………………...111

11. Some Objections Considered.……………...129

Recommended Reading………………………...134

Endnotes……………………………………..…137

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the Montgomery Freethought Association,

Doug Beville, Richard Carrier, Paul Draper, Victor Stenger,
Dave Wisker, James McGrath, and many others for reading
drafts of sections of this book, and all the great skeptics who
have influenced my thinking: David Hume, Charles Darwin,
Daniel Dennett, J.L. Mackie, Michael Martin, Richard Dawkins,
Richard Carrier, and so many others. I will be happy if this book
shares even a tiny bit of the insight and critical thought that they
provided to me.

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Chapter 1

Grounding Your Worldview

1. Theism and Naturalism

This book was written to show that Theism is false and that
Naturalism is true. Theism is the proposition that a perfect, all-
powerful and all-knowing agent created the universe. The God of
classical theism cares very much about his creatures, and so we
can expect him to either interfere in the world today or to have
interfered with the world in the past.
Naturalism is the proposition that “nature is all there is.”
There are no supernatural entities, be they gods, ghosts, wizards,
etc. The universe as we see it today is a product of chance,
necessity, or both.

2. …But how do you know?

Before we decide whether Theism is true or Naturalism is true

(or any alternative) we must understand how we decide what is
true and what is false. We must invent an “epistemology”, which
is basically a “theory of knowledge.”
I am going to set forth my own theory of how human beings
know things, and, if you agree with me, that’s great. If not, at the
end of this section I will present some resources which will help
you construct your own theory of knowledge.
I am a Foundationalist, which means that I have a few self-
evident beliefs upon which I base everything else I know. My
foundational beliefs include the basic laws of logic:

1. The Law of Identity. Things are what they are and are
not what they are not.
2. The Law of Non-Contradiction. A statement cannot be
both true and not true.

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3. The Law of Excluded Middle. Something must either be

or not be.

You do not have to look elsewhere to know that these

statements are true. They are self-justifying; they provide their
own evidence that they are true. A further reason that we do not
need evidence to support them is because logic is the very
framework we use to discuss whether something is true or false:
propositions are discussed within the context of following the
rules of logic, but logic itself is not to be discussed as if it were a
proposition that might not be true.
Likewise, Mathematics can be seen as a self-justifying
study. When I say that ‘one plus one equals two’ I know that two
is defined as ‘one and one’, and so all that I am saying is that
‘one and one equals one and one.’ This is a self-evident
statement, as is the statement A=A.
I also take my memories and experiences to be self-
justifying. I can deny that my memories are true. But I cannot
deny that I have those memories. I can say that my current
experience is a hallucination. But I cannot deny that I am having
an experience right now. This is why experiences and memories
can be accepted as self-evident.

For more on this issue, please see:

An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge by Noah Lemos

(2007).

Philosophy: The Basics by Nigel Warburton (2004).

Philosophy for Dummies by Tom Morris (1999).

Epistemology Entry from The Stanford Encyclopedia of

Philosophy
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/

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2.1 The Tools of Knowing

The next two sections are some useful tools for deciding what is
true which are justified logically but are more than just bare
logical principles.

2.1.1 Simplicity

Scientists and Philosophers frequently use “Occam’s Razor”; a

principle which states that “All things being equal, the simplest
explanation is most probably correct.” This is a principle which I
use very frequently, and since it is not as obviously true as the
laws of logic, I wanted to take time out to explain why I believe
it frequently points us in the right direction. Allow me to use an
analogy:
Suppose that you are forced to choose between two cars,
one of which you will drive on a trip. You are told that the first
car has a problem which may cause it to break down on the way.
You are not told what the problem is. The second car, you are
told, has five problems which may cause it to break down.
Again, you are not told what they are. Based on this information,
which car do you choose?
I would choose the first car, and here is why: we have no
way to distinguish between any of the “problems” each car has.
One could conjecture that some problems are far more likely to
make the car break down than others. One could conjecture that
some problems are far less likely to make the car break down
than others. But to us they are indistinguishable, and so based on
that knowledge, we should treat them equally. Essentially, we
are going to treat each car problem as the same (for the time
being). This is the same as when you assign a coin flip a fifty
percent chance of coming out heads, even though coin flips are
completely determined by the laws of physics. You lack the
knowledge of whether a coin-flip will come out heads or tails, so
you assign an equal probability to both possible outcomes.1
When we do this, it is easy to see that the five-problem car must
have a higher probability of breaking down (given the lack of
information we have).
The situation I’ve described parallels a dilemma human
beings often face: having to choose between two different
explanations for some event. Instead of choosing a car, we have
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to choose an explanation (or theory). Just as the cars have

problems, theories make assumptions that might be false (and if
any of the assumptions were false, the theory would be too). It is
easy to see that a theory which requires fewer assumptions is
more likely to be correct than a theory with many assumptions.
This is because of the simple fact that an assumption can be
wrong, and so for every new assumption you make, you are
adding another chance of being wrong to your theory.
Of course, this principle can never lead to certainty, and I
must advise that certain precautions be taken to prevent the
Razor from being abused. For example, Einstein is said to have
remarked, “Things should be as simple as possible, not simpler.”
This is a very wise piece of advice to scientists, historians,
philosophers, and even ordinary people. If we can make an extra
assumption or two and in turn use our theory to explain many
more facts, it is alright to do so. Even though our theory is losing
simplicity, when it begins to explain more facts we are actually
taking on a simpler overall view of the world. To see how this
works, I’ll use an analogy from Physics: Einstein’s theories are
far more complex than Newton’s, but they explain a greater
number of facts which Newton’s theories do not. The reason that
we continue to accept Einstein’s theories is because if we
accepted Newton’s, we would have to come up with a lot more
theories in order to account for all the facts that Newton’s theory
does not. So even though Einstein’s theory is more complex, in
the overall scheme of things it is much simpler.
Another factor which must be considered is whether a
theory makes predictions which have been verified. If a theory
tells us what to expect, or what not to expect, and its predictions
have been confirmed (or have survived the possibility of being
proven false) then we naturally see it as being preferred over a
theory which does not make any predictions. This increases the
theory’s explanatory power, and so it is to be preferred.

2.1.2 Inference to the Best Explanation

Inference to the Best Explanation (Also called “Abductive

Reasoning) is a method in which one proposes explanations for
some event/phenomenon/data and deduces which of these
explanations is most likely to be true. To determine what the best
explanation is, one must examine (a theory’s):
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a. Explanatory Scope. How many facts a theory explains

(the more the better).
b. Explanatory Power. This does not have to do with the
number of facts explained, it has to do with how well
the theory explains the facts that it does explain.
c. Plausibility. Does the theory seem conceivable? Is the
theory not far-fetched?
d. Not Contrived. A theory that must be conjoined with
other hypotheses in order to make it fit the data is not
preferable to a theory that can stand on its own and
explain all the data.
e. Does not contradict accepted beliefs. If I came up with a
theory that explained Roman History but assumed that
the Caesars were fictional characters, my theory would
have to be rejected because the historical existence of
the Caesars is considered too well established to doubt.
The historical existence of the Caesars has already been
accepted, and new theories must not contradict accepted
beliefs (unless the new theories are stronger than the old
ones).
f. How a theory measures up, on the whole, to these
criteria as opposed to its rivals.2

You may notice some symmetry between these criteria,

and that is because several of them are derived from the
principle of simplicity (Occham’s Razor). For example, the
reason explanatory scope is important is because it would
be simpler to have a few theories which explain many of the
facts rather than many theories which explain only a few
facts each.

The Problem of Abduction

There is a problem with abductive reasoning: that it

seems to commit the fallacy of affirming the consequent.
Affirming the consequent occurs when someone reasons
that:

If A, then B.
B.
Therefore A.
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The problem is that a lot of things besides A might

have caused B, and so the fact that B is the case provides
little or no evidence that A is true.
Bayes’ Theorem logically proves that “a hypothesis is
confirmed by any body of data that its truth renders
probable.”3 We might be tempted to stop there. Isn’t the
problem solved?
No, because a similar problem remains: even if we take
all the theories that we are aware of and see which one
renders the evidence we have most probable, in most cases
it will not be possible to become aware of all the logically
possible theories that could explain the evidence, and
therefore we can’t know if there is a better theory that we
have yet to think of.
A good example is the alleged “fine tuning” of the
laws of physics (discussed further in chapter 3). It is quite
conceivable that tomorrow someone will come up with a
new account of the fine tuning that no one else thought of.
Especially in light of the fact that so many accounts of the
fine-tuning — Like Smolin’s Cosmological Natural
Selection hypothesis (also discussed in chapter 3)—
probably would not have been the kind of thing I would
have conceived of before I had heard of them. So, even if
we were able to say that Cosmological Natural Selection
(for example) was the most probable explanation for the
fine-tuning, we’d have to keep in mind that it is only the
most probable known explanation, because there may be
another theory that is even more probable which we are not
yet aware of.
How can we be justified in believing inferences to the
best explanation? Are we justified in believing them at all? I
think so. I define a belief as a proposition which one thinks
and acts as if true. A belief is a proposition which you rely
upon to be true. What better proposition to rely upon than
the best known explanation [of whatever phenomenon]? If
you’re in a position where you need to choose a theory to
rely on (as we so often are), then why not rely on the best
explanation found to date?

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2.1.3 Useful Skepticism

Whenever you come up with an argument, try to doubt it.

Examine your argument closely, and try to come up with ways to
doubt your conclusion. If, overall, you find that the conclusion of
your argument is more plausible than all of the doubts you have
against it, then your argument is convincing. This is the method
of Skepticism.
This seems obvious enough. However, we human beings
frequently fail to be good skeptics. We have a tendency to
exploit small doubts about an argument when we don’t like the
conclusion, as well as a tendency to ignore significant doubts
about an argument when we do like its conclusion. Being a good
skeptic does not mean finding tiny uncertainties in an argument
and then crossing your arms and refusing to believe. Being a
good skeptic means that you critically examine an argument,
looking for all the uncertainties and doubts it may contain, and
then weighing those doubts against the strength of the claim.
For example, some people refuse to believe that the Earth is
round. For any evidence that you can produce to show the Earth
is round, they can think of a way to doubt it. What about the
pictures that NASA has taken from space showing the Earth is
round? According to Flat-Earthers, those aren’t real: NASA
spent its time developing a super-photoshop type program and
used that to fake the photos. This is not true skepticism because
it does not examine how plausible this doubt is in relation to the
hypothesis that the Earth really is round and NASA actually has
photographed it. A grand conspiracy of the government and top
scientists is not at all plausible, while the claim that the Earth is
round certainly is plausible.
This has great relevance to the question of God’s existence.
A good argument for God’s existence (or nonexistence) need not
be 100% certain. In order to count for or against the existence of
God, the argument only needs to be more plausible than its
doubts. So, for example, the existence of suffering and evil is not
a completely foolproof way to disprove God’s existence because
there could always be some reason an all-powerful and loving
God might allow the existence of evil. But that does not mean
that the problem of evil is not a good argument against the
existence of God. If the proposition that a loving God exists most
plausibly leads to the conclusion that evil should not exist, then
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the existence of evil still serves as evidence against the existence

of God. Although the problem of evil is not an argument that
gives us complete certainty on the question of God, it still counts
strongly against the proposition that God exists. I’ll discuss the
problem of evil further in chapter 7.

2.2 Objections to Strong Foundationalism

In this section I will address the most common objections raised

against Strong Foundationalism (the view that beliefs must be
self-justifying, or derived from self-justifying beliefs such as
logic and/or observation).

2.2.1 The Charge that Foundationalism is Self-Defeating

In Warranted Christian Belief Alvin Plantinga writes,

“Now consider [foundationalism] itself. First, it isn’t

properly basic according to the classical foundationalist’s
lights. To be properly basic, it would have to be self-evident,
incorrigible, or Lockeanly evident to the senses. But first, it
isn’t self-evident for the foundationalist (or for the rest of
us). Even if someone claims it has some intuitive support,
one couldn’t with a straight face claim that it has enough
intuitive support to be self-evident. For if it were self-
evident, it would be such that it isn’t even possible for a
properly functioning human being to understand it without
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seeing that it is true.”

Let’s first consider a more moderate form of

Foundationalism, in which beliefs that might be false (like “there
is an external world”) are treated as properly basic. If someone
holds a belief that might be false, then that means that there is at
least one alternative to that belief that might be true. And if
that’s the case, then the belief cannot have an initial probability
greater than 50% (making it unworthy of belief). You would
need some argument, or evidence, to increase the probability so
the belief would become reasonable. But if you have to make an
argument for the belief, then it is not properly basic. It’s a non-
basic belief. So Moderate Foundationalism doesn’t make much
sense.

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Furthermore, I argue on logical grounds that Strong

Foundationalism appears to be the only valid theory of
knowledge. I have not discovered any theory of knowledge that
does not suffer from serious problems that I believe show it to be
false. For example, one theory of knowledge, Coherentism,
states that beliefs may be accepted if they cohere well with the
rest of one’s beliefs. But how do you know that the rest of your
beliefs are true? After all, there can be many sets of beliefs that
cohere well but are plainly false.
Continuing my argument: I think that we must have either
an infinite number of beliefs or a finite number of beliefs. Since
it does not make much sense to think that we have an infinite
number of beliefs (we have finite minds, for one thing, and for
another thing you could never know that your beliefs were
justified since you cannot examine an infinite number of
propositions) it follows necessarily that we have a finite number
of beliefs. And if that’s the case, then ultimately our beliefs must
be justified or unjustified. If we examine all of our beliefs that
are justified by other beliefs, then we should arrive at a core set
of beliefs which are either justified or unjustified. If they are
unjustified, then by definition we do not know if they are true
and can’t justifiably believe anything. The only way we could
justifiably believe anything is if these core beliefs were self-
justifying, and that is the definition of Strong Foundationalism.

2.2.2 Is Reality an Illusion?

How do we know that what we experience is reality? Several

years ago a movie called The Matrix debuted. The plot was that
reality as we know it was really just an enormous computer
simulation. Is it possible for us to know that we are not
inhabiting a massive computer-generated world? I do not think it
is. However, there is no need to worry: If there is no way to tell
the difference between a computer simulation of our day-to-day
life and a “real” version of life, we may as well consider
whatever we inhabit to be reality, whether it turns out to be a
physical universe or a simulation of one. The way we know and
understand things about our world will remain the same whether
it is made up of bits of computer information or matter and
energy.

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This brings me to yet another issue: how can we be sure

which of our memories/experiences are reliable representations
of what we call the “external world”? I suggest that human
beings are constantly testing their memories against their current
experience as well as against their other memories. If you have a
false memory or have hallucinated at some point in your life, you
can know that this memory/experience was false either because
it is not consistent with a greater number of other memories, or
because it is inconsistent with your current experience. To see
what I mean, consider a hypothetical example: Let’s say that a
woman is attacked and knocked unconscious. She stays in a
coma for several months, and, when she returns to
consciousness, she has a strange (and false) memory of her
husband being the attacker. How could she, or anyone else,
know that this memory was false? For starters she could compare
this memory to her other memories of her husband’s character.
She could ask him what he was doing the night of her attack and
attempt to verify his alibi with anyone who was with him that
night. She could consult hospital and police reports and
determine whether they provided any evidence that he had been
her attacker. Finally, she could think about whether her memory
‘felt real’ or more like a dream.
This brings me back around to a question I partially
addressed earlier: How is anyone to know that all of reality, as
they know it, is not just one big hallucination? I do not think we
could ever know the answer to this question with certainty.
However, I would suggest that it does not matter whether the
world, as we know it, is a hallucination or not simply because
there is no way to tell the difference. The only thing that we can
do is to compare our memories and experiences and toss out
anything that is not consistent with the big picture. Once we do
this, whatever the ‘big picture’ is constitutes reality.

2.2.3 The Riddle of Induction

You may have heard the old saying, “The past predicts the
future.” Although you probably agree that the past usually,
though not always, indicates what the future will bring, you
probably have not thought about how this form of reasoning is
justified. It is not at all necessary for the future to resemble the
past. Although you may have successfully relied on your past
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experience to help you figure out what the future will bring at
some point in your life, there is no guarantee that you will be
able to do so successfully in the future.
Let me be clear: I am not simply bringing up the fact that
you do not know what will happen in the future with complete
certainty. I am questioning how you can know with any certainty
what the future will hold. Make no mistake, you do have
expectations about the future which rely on the past. You expect
the law of gravity will hold tomorrow just as it has in the past.
You expect that the Sun will rise in the morning because it has in
the past. And yet there is no justification for this expectation
other than past experience, and as we have seen, there is no
reason that the future must resemble the past.
This is the so-called “Problem of Induction” and it remains
a hotly debated issue in philosophy right up to the present day.
However, I believe I have a solution for it.
My solution works like this: We know that throughout time
there must have been either complete randomness in the universe
or some type of regularity in the behavior of matter and energy.
It would be simpler if, throughout the entire history of the
universe, it was governed by one set of laws, or regularities,
which worked throughout all times and all places. Therefore,
since I have already established that simpler theories are more
probable, I can say with complete confidence that the most
plausible theory is that the laws of nature which we observe have
always held in the past and will always hold in the future. To be
sure, this is no certainty, but it is the most probable theory in
light of its simplicity.

2.2.4 Did the Past Actually Occur?

Some challengers to Foundationalism ask how we can know that

the past actually occurred rather than, for example, the universe
being created five minutes ago with the appearance of age
(including false memories implanted in our brains). My answer
to this is very simple: The hypothesis that the past actually
occurred is the best explanation for the data. Every waking
moment we are having a present experience. The simplest
explanation for our memories (or anything else, for that matter)
is that memories of past sense experience were created the same
way as present sense experience.
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2.2.5 The Testimony of Others

Much of what I write in this book is based upon the testimony of

others. For example, what I write about fossils is based upon
expert testimony, since I have not seen the fossil myself, or ran
tests to make sure that the fossil was not a fake. How do we
know that the testimony of someone concerning these things is
valid? We know inductively: Most people tell the truth on most
occasions. This is especially true if the expert witness has no
reason to lie or good reasons not to lie. For example, we can
expect that experts who write textbooks on geology would not lie
about the age of the earth or about the methods used to determine
the age of the earth because it would benefit their students to
learn the truth (and in fact, the students might discover the lie
later on anyway).

2.2.6 The Problem of Other Minds

How do we know that other people are not unconscious,

unfeeling robots? We cannot have their private experiences of
feelings and emotions, so perhaps they only act as if they have
emotions.
First, I’d like to establish the fact that we can know what
others perceive. For example, parents routinely discover that
their children are color blind by discovering that their child
cannot perceive a difference between red and green (by asking
the child, for instance).
I believe that perception and internal experience are one and
the same. To see this, try imagining perception without
experience. One philosopher sums up this thought experiment
very well: [Imagine] “You wake up one morning, open your
eyes, and what do you notice first? That the sun is streaming in
the window, that your alarm clock says 7:30, and that your
partner is already getting dressed on the other side of the room
— or that, despite registering all this in a moment, you can’t
actually see anything?”
5

Someone perceiving something from their five senses and

believing they had some experience seems inseparable from the
internal experience. This is so because the two are one and the
same. For more on this, see The Argument from Consciousness
in Chapter 2.
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3.1 Presuppositionalism

My theory of knowledge is not immediately atheistic, and in fact

it has left me quite open to receiving evidence of God, either
from a logical argument or from an observation about the
universe. However, there are some Christians who seem to have
sensed that an evidence-based thought system is fatal to what
they believe. Instead of abandoning their beliefs, they have
turned to something called “Presuppositionalism.”
There are two basic forms of Presuppositionalism: One
which says that you must choose your worldview before looking
at the evidence and proceed to interpret all evidence through the
lens of that worldview, and another which says that the existence
of God must be presupposed in order to reason.
I’ll begin my tackling the first form of presuppositionalism.
Dr. Georgia Purdom, a dedicated creationist and Christian,
describes how she sees presuppositionalism:

“I had a friendly ‘debate’… concerning the merits of

presuppositionalism vs. evidentialism. This person believed
there was ‘neutral ground’ where evolutionists and
creationists can debate the evidence and that the evidentialist
approach was better to use with non-Christians. I tried to
help him see that neutral ground does not exist because both
sides have presuppositions—creationists start with the
authority of the Word of God and evolutionists start with the
authority of human reasoning. If we as creationists agree to
‘leave the Bible out of it,’ then we are starting with the same
presuppositions as the evolutionists and will not be
6
effective.”

The idea that you cannot begin constructing a worldview

without making at least one assumption is both false and
ignorant of recent and ancient philosophical debate. Philosophers
as far back as Aristotle held the laws of logic to be self-evident,
and the position is not at all uncommon amongst the
philosophers of today.
Secondly, the presuppositionalists have not truly thought
out what their philosophy entails: If they are making baseless
assumptions in order to construct their worldview, they have
absolutely no right to criticize anyone else for doing the same.
Anyone who wants to dogmatically cling to Islam, Wicca,
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Atheism, or any other worldview can do so without any evidence

at all and enjoy exactly the same amount of justification as these
Christians.
Yet another fatal flaw to this system of reasoning was
pointed out by an internet blogger:

“Now, the presupposition of the U.S. justice system is

(purportedly) that one is presumed innocent until proven
guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But if we adopt the
AIG/ICR philosophical/apologetic position regarding
presuppositions, no amount of evidence that seems to
support guilt can alter the presumption of innocence. Hence
if I’m ever charged with a crime, I want AIG creationists on
the jury: I’m guaranteed an acquittal, because, you see,
evidence doesn’t count in evaluating presuppositions! And
doing CSI becomes infinitely easier: Decide who’s guilty
beforehand and simply interpret the evidence
7
appropriately.”

3.2 Presuppositionalism: Round Two

As I mentioned previously, there is a second form of

presuppositionalism which asserts that the laws of logic are
proof of God. One popular Christian website spells out the
position this way:

“Logical absolutes exist. Logical absolutes are

conceptual by nature, are not dependent on the space, time,
physical properties, or human nature.
“They are not the product of the physical universe
(space, time, matter) because if the physical universe were to
disappear, logical absolutes would still be true. Logical
Absolutes are not the product of human minds because
human minds are different, not absolute. But, since logical
absolutes are always true everywhere and not dependent
upon human minds, it must be an absolute transcendent
8
mind is authoring them. This mind is called God.”

Notice that it is stated that the laws of logic are absolute

(which I take to mean that they hold true in all possible times
and places), and yet it is also stated that the laws of logic are
dependent upon the mind of God. These two statements
contradict one another because if logic is absolute, then it must
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hold true even in a godless universe. So, the question becomes

whether we can conceive of a godless universe and whether the
laws of logic would still apply. I believe that we can conceive of
a godless universe. God is not logically necessary, and the
presuppositionalists would only be engaging in circular
reasoning if they argued that God is logically necessary because
logic depends upon him. In a godless universe the laws of logic
would hold true precisely because they are absolute (holding in
all possible times and places). In short, logic is not dependent
upon anything and would hold true in all possible universes, and
therefore it is not proof of God.9

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Chapter 2

The Philosopher’s God

Introduction

I’d like to begin this chapter by reminding the reader that

a successful argument for the existence of God only
needs to be more plausible than the doubts that we may
raise against it. So read these arguments and
counterarguments critically, and decide for yourself
which side is more plausible.

Why is there Something Rather than Nothing?

Let us begin our journey by examining the origin and nature of

the universe to determine whether God or Nature provides a
superior explanation for its existence. One of the most baffling
questions ever to be pondered is, “Why is there something rather
than nothing?” Wouldn’t it be simpler for matter, energy, and
space-time to not be? It would seem so. This is where the
believer comes in with an answer: he tells us that God brought
the universe into existence from nothing. Problem solved? Well,
not quite. What he has done is to simply sweep the question
under the rug: For we now must face the problem of why God
exists rather than nothing! Of course, there are philosophers who
argue that God is a necessary being, but after these arguments
are examined later on in this chapter we will see that they do not
hold up. For now, we can simply save ourselves an assumption
and suppose that it is the universe which is necessary (In Chapter
9 we will take a closer look at possible explanations of why the
universe exists).

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Nicholas Covington

Who Detonated the Big Bang?

The next argument we will look at is known as the Kalam

Cosmological Argument. It was popularized by the Christian
philosopher William Lane Craig, and it has become the most
widely discussed argument for God’s existence in contemporary
philosophy.10 The Kalam presupposes that the past cannot be
eternal (I will discuss Craig’s reasoning behind this later). Once
this is presupposed, the Kalam may be stated like this:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe had a cause.

There is a problem with this argument which has forced

Craig to propose that God exists ‘outside of time’. This is how
philosopher John Mackie put it:

“Does God's existence have a sheer origination in

time? But then this would be as great a puzzle as the sheer
origination of a material world. Or has God existed for ever
through an infinite time? But this would raise again the
problem of the actual infinite. To avoid both of these, we
should have to postulate that God's own existence is not in
11
time at all; but this would be a complete mystery.”

If God exists outside of time (as Craig supposes) how could

He cause the universe to exist? Causation is something which
takes place inside of time. So how could something outside of
time cause something to exist when causation can only occur
inside of time?12
I suppose that Craig might opt to use a different definition
of the word “cause.” Suppose that by “caused” he meant
“depends upon something else for its existence.” The first
premise would then read “Everything that has a finite existence
depends upon something else for its existence.” This seems
acceptable (though unproven), but then why would the timeless
cause have to be a God instead of, say, the Tao? Or perhaps the
timeless cause could be a zero-dimensional point of space as
Quentin Smith has suggested.13

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 Atheism and Naturalism

Craig’s response is this: If there were a mechanical,

impersonal cause which created time, it must have existed
eternally. But if it had existed eternally, it would have created an
infinite number of universes since it was creating universes from
eternity past. This is impossible because, according to Craig, an
actual infinite number of things cannot exist (more on this
later).14
This conclusion does not follow. If the cause existed
throughout an infinite amount of time, then it certainly would
have created universes from eternity past. But an impersonal,
timeless cause could cause a single universe (or some limited
number of universes) to exist, and bring no more into existence
because it would not exist in time. Keep in mind that when I use
the word “cause” here, I only mean that this timeless thing is the
reason that the universe exists. It is what the universe owes its
existence to.
The second premise, “The universe began to exist”, is
indisputable in one sense and problematic in another. It is
indisputable because scientists have made an excellent case that
our universe did have a beginning about 13.7 billion years ago in
the Big Bang (more on this in chapter 9). It is problematic
because the fact that our universe had a beginning does not mean
that physical existence as a whole (What I refer to as the
‘Metaverse’; meaning all which exists)15 had a beginning. For
example, some Cosmologists believe that our universe began in
the black hole of another universe. If this is true, then maybe
there were always universes giving rise to even more universes
through black holes (more on this theory in chapter 3).
Craig’s objection to scenarios such as the one above is to
argue that an actual infinite cannot exist. Since a beginningless
past implies an infinite amount of time, an eternal universe (or
metaverse) is out of the question. The following example
illustrates Craig’s usual line of argumentation:

“Imagine a library with an infinite number of books.

Suppose that half of the books are blue and half of them are
green, so that for every blue book there is a green book, and
vice versa. It follows that the library contains as many green
books as the total books in its collection (an infinity), and as
many blue books as green and blue books combined (an

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Nicholas Covington

infinity). But this is absurd. Therefore, actual infinites

cannot exist.”

This is Craig’s argument, and the reason I (and many other

philosophers) believe it fails is because finite numbers cannot be
expected to behave as infinite numbers,16 rendering the claimed
“absurdity” of an actual infinite moot.

The Argument from Contingency

The Argument from Contingency usually goes something like

this:17
1. Everything has an explanation of its existence either
through some external cause or because its existence is necessary
(This is known as the ‘principle of sufficient reason’).
2. The universe is not necessary.
3. Therefore, the universe had an external cause.

Further points: The external cause must be timeless, since

time is a property of the universe. Likewise, it must be
immaterial, since matter is a property of the universe. Therefore,
the external cause must be either an abstract object or a mind
(since only these two things can exist outside of space and time).
But only a mind can cause things to exist (abstract objects cannot
bring anything into existence). Therefore, an immaterial mind
brought the universe into existence, which we call God.

What justifies the ‘principle of sufficient reason’? Could it

be that there are inexplicable “brute” facts (facts that have no
reason for their existence)?
Furthermore, the principle of sufficient reason itself does
not seem to have a reason to be true (it is not logically necessary
or true in virtue of some other fact) so it contradicts itself. Still, I
do feel a strong intuition that everything should be explained,
and so perhaps I can agree that we should put our best foot
forward in trying to explain everything.
Challenging the second premise, we can ask the theist to
justify his assertion that the universe is not necessary. The theist
is simply looking at the universe and declaring that it isn’t
necessary because it does not seem like it is to him. There is no
reason we must suppose that the universe is not necessary, and,
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 Atheism and Naturalism

as I discuss in Chapter 9, there are very good reasons to think

that the universe is necessary. Matter, energy, and spacetime do
not seem to be necessary. But God does not solve this problem,
because a perfect, all-powerful being does not seem necessary
either.

The Argument from Lawfulness

If I were to take two weights and drop them from a building,

they would both fall to the ground at the same rate. I could do
this as many times as I wanted and achieve the same result.
Every time I put a pot on the stove, I can count on it not to boil
until it reaches one hundred degrees Celsius. From these two
examples, it should be perfectly obvious that the universe
operates in a lawful manner. Why is it this way? Why shouldn’t I
let go of an object, and on occasion see it float up to the sky
instead of dropping to the ground? The theist would tell us that
the reason for this is that our universe was created by a rational
agent, and therefore it behaves in a rational way. It is up to the
atheist to describe how something irrational might bring about
such perfect order. But this reply has the same gaping hole seen
in most theistic arguments: It replaces one mystery with an even
greater one. If there is a rational Creator, his mind must follow
certain laws and behave in an organized, predictable way (as all
minds must, especially those capable of creating order).18

Descartes’ Argument from the Idea of God

Theologian Peter Kreeft summed up Rene Descartes’ argument

like this:19

1. We have ideas of many things.

2. These ideas must arise from ourselves or from things
outside of us.
3. One of the ideas we have is the idea of God- an infinite,
all-perfect being.
4. This idea could not have been caused by ourselves,
because we know ourselves to be limited and imperfect,
and no effect is greater than its cause.

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Nicholas Covington

5. Therefore, the idea must have been caused by something

outside us which has nothing less than the qualities
contained in the idea of God.
6. But only God himself has those qualities.
7. Therefore God himself must be the cause of the idea we
have of him.
8. Therefore, God exists.

No doubt this argument is both subtle and strange. But is it

successful? No, I don’t believe so. For one thing, how do we
know that what we think of as perfect actually is perfect? We
don’t, and it is difficult to see how we ever could.
Secondly, human beings have the ability to contemplate the
infinite in spite of having finite minds. Limited beings can think
of the unlimited. How does this occur?
Human beings constantly encounter things with limits. For
instance, most of us have a limited amount of money. The idea
of an infinite amount of money comes from (mentally) removing
the limit on our amount of cash. Likewise, we can think of an
infinite and perfect being by removing our own imperfections
and limitations.
Kreeft objects to this because he believes that in order to
recognize our imperfections, we must first have the idea of a
perfect being. Yet this does not follow at all: We do not have to
have smelled the sweetest aroma to know when something
stinks.
Descartes’ argument may also be refuted by analogy:
suppose I write a story about an author who was greater than any
author on earth who had ever lived, including me. Using
Descartes’ reasoning, I couldn’t have gotten the idea of such an
author from observing the world, for by definition no living
author would have been sufficient to inspire the idea of an author
greater than all living authors. I also could not have created this
idea myself, since the author is, by definition, greater than me.
Where did I get such an idea?
I could never claim to have an utterly complete idea of what
this author would be like. If I had a complete idea of this author,
then I could write all of the books that he would write if he
existed, because I would know exactly what he would write.
Obviously, I cannot do that. If I could, I’d be writing that
author’s books so I could collect millions in royalties. So my
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 Atheism and Naturalism

idea of this author must be some type of abbreviated

representation of what the author is really like.
I agree with Descartes that I can’t have a complete
understanding of the greatest author in the world, since I am not
equal to or greater than the author and cannot observe such an
author. However, is my intellect sufficient to come up with an
abbreviated and incomplete mental representation? It would
seem so, since coming up with the idea only requires being able
to think of an author, and mentally ranking that author’s skill.
Human beings certainly know what authors are, and what it
means to be “greater than” something else. It is therefore within
our power to combine those two concepts. Therefore, we can
conceive of an idea that is greater than ourselves. Just ask a
science fiction writer.

Ontological Arguments

Ontological arguments are arguments which attempt to

demonstrate the existence of God by logic alone. They depend
on no external observation whatsoever, which makes them
unusual as well as terribly unconvincing. The objection I find
most convincing, and which is applicable against every
Ontological argument I have encountered, is the fact that if you
want to prove the existence of a being that has effects on the
world (As the God of Abraham does) then your proof of this God
should be based (at least partially) on observation. For example,
the Kalam fulfills this criterion by citing the fact that all events
around us seem to have a cause in order to justify its first
premise. Another objection which applies to most Ontological
arguments is that they depend on defining something which
exists as more perfect than something which does not. For
example, St. Anselm’s Ontological Argument has been stated in
the following way:20

1. Even the Fool has the concept of that than which no

greater can be conceived.
2. Hence, even the Fool believes that that than which no
greater can be conceived exists in the understanding.
3. No one who believes that that than which no greater can
be conceived exists in the understanding can reasonably believe

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Nicholas Covington

that that than which no greater can be conceived exists only in

the understanding.
4. Hence, even the Fool cannot reasonably deny that that
than which no greater can be conceived exists in reality
5. Hence, that than which no greater can be conceived exists
in reality.

How are we to judge what is “greater” or “more perfect”?

Isn’t it a bit subjective? Why are actual things greater than
imaginary things? I know of no reason they are, and so I have
decided to construct my own argument which assumes that
imaginary things are greater than actual things:

1. The more desirable something is, the greater it is.

2. A thing which does not exist is more desirable than
something which does exist (For example, human beings always
desire what they cannot have the most).
3. A God would be more desirable (and therefore more
perfect) if he did not exist.
4. God is completely perfect.
5. Therefore, God does not exist.

Of course, I haven’t proven that God does not exist, at least

not by my own criteria (which requires some observational
evidence against a hypothesis which predicts what we should or
should not observe). Still, arguments like these are great for
giving proponents of Ontological arguments a good taste of their
own medicine.
Even more amusing is the Ontological Argument for an Evil
God:

1. Imagine the most evil and terrible being possible.

2. It is more terrible for this being to exist than not.
3. Therefore, this terrible being exists.
4. This terrible being would necessarily be more powerful
than God, since the worst possible being would be able to
overpower the greatest possible being, God.
5. But if this terrible being were to exist, the worst thing it
could do would be to create human beings and torment
them forever.

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6. We are not being tormented. Therefore, this evil being

does not exist, and the logic this argument is founded upon must
be flawed, since a perfect being by definition would be able to
overpower the evil being, and the evil being by definition would
be able to overpower the perfect being.

The final objection I would like to raise to this argument is

this: Ontological arguments can usually be stated to prove the
existence of anything. For example, I could “prove” that the best
chocolate cupcake existed simply because the best chocolate
cupcake would be better if it existed than if it did not.
The Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga has formulated a
version of the Ontological Argument21 which involves “possible
worlds” (worlds which we can imagine and are logically
possible, but are perhaps not real). His argument, roughly stated,
is:

1. It is possible that there exists a Being that has maximal

greatness.
2. If it is possible, there must exist a maximally great Being
in some possible world.
3. A Being has maximal greatness in a given world only if it
has maximal greatness in all possible worlds.
4. A Being has maximal greatness in a given world only if
it has omnipotence, omniscience, and moral perfection in that
world.

Although I feel that this argument has many of the same

weaknesses as the others I discussed previously, I have found
that it opens itself up to a uniquely devastating objection. The
argument is that God must be necessary since if he exists in one
possible world, then he exists in all possible worlds. But it is
logically possible that a world exists without God.22 This
undercuts the argument that God is a maximally great Being
because he would not exist in all possible worlds and would
therefore not be maximally great.

The Argument From Consciousness

Some insist that consciousness cannot be reduced to mere matter

in motion, and reason from this that there must be something
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Nicholas Covington

beyond the material world. As theologian Richard Swinburne put

it, “The Laws [of Physics] give not the slightest reason to
suppose that some brain state would cause a green sensation or a
sensed smell of coffee.”23 Ergo, materialism is false. The
alternative which he provides is God: It must take an infinite
mind to produce finite minds, as well as it must take something
supernatural to create something that transcends the material in
the way that consciousness does.
Let us begin by asking, “What is consciousness?”
Philosopher Ned Block said that there are two kinds of
consciousness:24 Access-consciousness, which refers to
information being processed in the brain (being conscious of
something); and phenomenal consciousness, which he defined as
subjective experience.
There has been massive progress in discovering which parts
of the brain are responsible for information processing and
consciousness. In 1949, it was discovered that a part of the brain
called the “reticular formation” was responsible for sending
impulses to the thalamus and cortex.25
It has also been discovered that certain parts of the brain are
responsible for the “feelings” we have. Philosopher Daniel
Dennett (who is also Co-Director of Tufts Center for Cognitive
Studies) tells of a Neurosurgeon who was performing brain
surgery on an epileptic patient. The patient had to be kept awake
during the surgery, and the Neurosurgeon would stimulate parts
of the patient’s brain, asking what sensation it caused (to make
sure he was not removing anything absolutely vital). Oddly
enough, one stimulation caused the patient to hear the Guns N’
Roses song “Outta Get Me.”26
The conclusion which I draw from such information is that
the mind is dependent on the brain. We know that access
consciousness has a physical basis, and so the puzzle ahead of us
is how access consciousness creates phenomenal consciousness.
Daniel Dennett defines Quale (singular form of Qualia) as
“an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more
familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us.”27 A good
example of a Quale is the color red.
What causes our awareness and visualization of that color? I
think that when we see the color red, our eyes are receiving light
of a certain wavelength and sending chemical and electrical
signals to our brains that make us believe that we see red.
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I’d like to explain this a bit further by quoting from an

online essay by Evan Louis Sheehan:

“Suppose an alien were to declare that ‘the hard

problem’ is determining what it is about those printed slips
of paper that gives them their intrinsic value. Indeed, the
value of pleasure may be no more difficult to understand
than the value of a dollar. Just as a dollar has value only
because we believe it has value, I’ll argue that a feeling of
pleasure also has value only because we believe it has
value. This simple realization allows us to model
consciousness as merely a system of beliefs, and beliefs are
easy to implement computationally.
“…While we cannot imagine how to program a
computer to feel pleasure, we can easily program a computer
to have a belief system, and we can easily install a belief in
pleasure that becomes true when certain circuits are active.
We cannot understand how a thermostat could possibly feel
cold, but we can easily understand how a computerized
28
thermostat could hold a belief that it feels cold.”

I’d like to illustrate what Sheehan is saying with a thought

experiment: Imagine that in the future, virtual reality video
games are made which have no controllers, no screens, or any of
the other familiar devices of video game systems: They only
manipulate your brain waves to make you believe certain things.
Let's say that I created a virtual World War Two game. I
manipulate the user's brain to make him believe he is seeing the
beaches of Normandy.
What is the difference between having a full-eye screen that
displays the beaches of Normandy, and believing that you see
the beaches of Normandy? There is no difference! So inner
experience is really just perception, and it is easy to imagine a
machine perceiving something. Qualia are really just illusions of
cognitive thought. Ergo, a “computer made of meat” can have
subjective experience.
There are philosophers and scientists who argue that it is
possible to conceive of a being which can perceive and yet not
have any internal experience, but that is far beyond the scope of
this chapter. For those who want to read more about this issue, I
would highly recommend the paper by Allin Cottrell, “Sniffing
the Camembert: On the Conceivability of Zombies” Journal of
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Nicholas Covington

Consciousness Studies, 6, No. 1, 1999, pp. 4–12. This paper may

be accessed free of charge at:

http://www.imprint.co.uk/cottrell.html

I also highly recommend the book Exploring Consciousness

by Rita Carter (2002) for a thorough discussion of this issue.

The Inner Witness of the Holy Spirit

Often when William Lane Craig debates someone, he talks about

the ‘inner witness’ of the Holy Spirit, and how he feels it gives
him all the evidence he needs to believe in Jesus Christ. Even if
all of the philosophical arguments for God fail, this ‘inner
witness’ still provides enough evidence for him to believe.
Besides the obvious fact that gut feelings are a poor indicator of
truth, this argument suffers a major problem: It is condemned by
the Bible itself. In Acts 26:9-15 we learn that the Apostle Paul,
before his conversion to Christianity on the road to Damascus,
was a persecutor of the early Christians. Paul did not have any
“inner witness” of the Holy Spirit telling him it was wrong to
persecute these Christians. In fact, his “inner witness” must have
been telling him exactly the opposite if he was murdering others
for believing what he judged an abomination before Jehovah.
A more damning point against the “Inner Witness”
argument is this: if God endowed human beings with some way
to sense the divine, then people from all cultural backrounds
should feel this divine sense leading them to Christianity (or the
correct religion). But this isn’t what we see at all: The number
one predictors of what religion you will choose is the religion of
your parents and the religion of your culture. I will have more to
say about this in Chapter 6.
A related argument was put forth by Dinesh D'Souza in a
debate against atheist Dan Barker. D’Souza begins his version of
this argument by noting that “95% of people” believe in god.
Can all of these people really be written off as delusional?
Should we not respect human intelligence more than to say that
95% of it is deluded? It would follow that these people must be
experiencing something real; That God is real. My counter-
challenge to Dinesh is this: Ask people what happens when they
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“experience God.” Have they seen Jesus in the flesh? Have they
seen miracles performed? Most of the people I have asked
answered in the negative. What they experience is simply joy, a
feeling of peace, or great relief (such as when one finds a job
after being unemployed for six months). So these people do not
truly “know” that there is a god, they just have an experience
which they interpret as an experience from God. An atheist, on
the other hand, can find joy, happiness, and feel “at one with the
universe” without ever attributing it to a god (There is no reason
to!).
Yet another form of this argument was put forward by
Stephen Layman.29 He suggests that we should believe people’s
testimony about their experiences unless there is reason to
believe that they are liars, insane, or not credible for some other
reason. I agree with him about this. He lists numerous
experiences that people have had in which they sense the
presence of some very powerful, very benevolent being that they
believe is God. Although most people do not have such vivid
experiences, a few do, and Layman argues that the fact that these
people are few in number does not necessarily mean that they
should not be taken seriously. After all, only a few people may
understand some technical mathematical equation, but if they
understood it and said that it was true, it would be reasonable to
believe it.
Nevertheless, if a group of people claims to see something,
such as Big Foot, and we find no physical evidence of it (when
we certainly ought to if it exists) and perhaps even some type of
evidence against it, we are justified in disbelieving them. This is
certainly applicable to the question of God’s existence, as God
ought to leave behind evidence of some kind if he existed (I’ll
discuss this further in chapter 7).
For those interested, I have debunked yet another form of
the argument from personal experience in:

Nicholas Covington, “Advanced Apologizing: Proof of the

Existence of God” (2009)
http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/12/20/advanced-apologizing-
proof-of-the-existence-of-god/

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Nicholas Covington

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Chapter 3
The “Miracle” of Life

Who Fine-Tuned the Cosmos?

The very existence of life seems to be extraordinarily

improbable, so much so that one could say our universe hit the
lottery by having the exact conditions necessary for life. To
grasp the magnitude of this, consider two examples:

1. If the fine structure constant were strengthened by one

percent almost all carbon would be burned into
oxygen (rendering life impossible). If it were
weakened by as much as five percent, stellar
nucleosynthesis would be impossible and the
universe would be composed of only hydrogen, once
again rendering life impossible.30

2. If the force of gravity were stronger or weaker by one

part in 1040, life sustaining stars like the Sun could
not exist.31

Believers argue that the best way to solve the enormous

improbability of a life-friendly universe is to have God design it.
I disagree. First and foremost, the improbability of a life-friendly
universe has been greatly exaggerated because of speculative
assumptions that have been made during its calculation.
Secondly, there may be other universes with slightly different
laws of physics, so our improbable universe might just be the
result of chance, not design. Despite theists’ arguments to the
contrary, the multiverse hypothesis is actually no more complex
than the God hypothesis. Thirdly, modern science has provided
us with several very good reasons for supposing that other
universes actually exist. Lastly, theists assume, without
justification, that a life-friendly universe means a universe which
supports carbon-based life. Yet we do not know whether other
forms of life are possible, and so it may be the case that if the
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Nicholas Covington

laws of physics were different some other form of life would

emerge.
Physicist and philosopher Victor Stenger devotes an entire
chapter to debunking the fine-tuning argument in his 2007 best-
seller God: The Failed Hypothesis. Stenger points out two great
errors permeating calculations of the odds for a life-friendly
universe:32

1. Those who calculate the odds of a life-friendly universe

change only one constant at a time while assuming the
others remain the same, rather than changing the values
of all the constants at once.

2. The calculator compounds this problem by assuming

that all of the physical constants are independent of one
another.

Stenger resolved these problems by conducting his own

study in which he randomly altered the values of all physical
constants affecting star formation simultaneously. His
conclusion was that many potential universes are life-friendly, as
the majority of them produce stars with lifetimes over one billion
years. Other scientists have reported similar results in their
calculations.33 Stenger has even created a program called
“MonkeyGod” which allows users to set the values for a
hypothetical universe and view the results.34
But what if Stenger is wrong? What if a life-friendly
universe is improbable after all?
Remember when I compared our universe to a lottery
winner? Some scientists are taking that metaphor seriously: We
are lottery winners. Scientists have proposed several theories
which predict the existence of trillions of other universes, each
completely disconnected from our own. Out of this
unfathomable sea of universes, at least a few should have “hit the
jackpot” and taken on the conditions which are friendly to life.
Since we can only exist in a life-supporting universe, we would
necessarily find ourselves living in one of those very rare
incubators for life.
But no theist is going to give up the fight that fast, and so
the faithful have come up with objections to the multiverse
scenario. The strongest objection is that the multiverse
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hypothesis violates Occam’s Razor; A principle which tells us

that the simplest explanation is most probably correct. Wouldn’t
one God seem much simpler than billions of other universes?
Not at all.
Suppose you meet a UFO enthusiast. You ask him why he
believes in UFO’s, and he tells you about the strange
unidentified objects which thousands across the world have
witnessed, and a few who have been taken up in alien spacecraft
and subjected to some very uncomfortable probings. You tell
him that this is silly, and that the UFO’s can be explained as
hoaxes, weather balloons, hallucinations, and so on. The
enthusiast counters by claiming that this is possible, but that his
explanation is to be preferred because it is simpler: He explains
all these phenomena with just aliens while you are forced to
come up with several hypotheses to explain the data.
We can all see the folly of the UFO enthusiast: We know
first-hand that hoaxes happen and that weather balloons exist.
Although our skeptical explanation may seem more complex
than the alternative, we are postulating nothing outside of
ordinary experience to explain these phenomena. The skeptical
explanation, although it involves several hypotheses, does not
call on any new, unobserved entity to explain the data. In this
sense it is simpler.
Likewise, we know that the universe exists, and so it is only
natural to consider a larger quantity of that same entity to be no
more complex an explanation than positing a completely new
type of entity (god) which we have never confirmed.
The second objection usually posed to the multiverse
hypothesis is that there is no evidence for these other universes:
They are pure speculation. My first thought is that those who
believe in God have no right to criticize others for speculating on
the existence of other regions of space-time. My second thought
is that there is very good circumstantial evidence for the
existence of a multiverse.
The most popular multiverse hypothesis follows from
Inflationary Theory. It posits that our universe underwent a
period of rapid and chaotic expansion in its first few moments.
Random quantum events allow chunks of space-time to break
away from the original universe and subsequently inflate and
evolve into completely separate universes.35 Our universe may
have been born this way, and it is possible that the multiverse
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Nicholas Covington

has been going on for eons, giving rise to an unimaginable

number of universes.
The second multiverse hypothesis which shows merit is
called “Cosmological Natural Selection.” First postulated by
Physicist Lee Smolin, it appears to have the widest explanatory
scope and the greatest predictive power of all current multiverse
scenarios.
Smolin’s hypothesis is grounded in two very unusual facts
about our universe:

1. Our universe began under conditions similar to a black

hole.

2. Our universe seems unusually suited for producing black

holes.

Smolin takes these two facts and speculates that not only
was our universe produced in a black hole, but that all black
holes produce universes! He further posits that universes have a
way of ‘inheriting’ the values of the laws of physics from their
parent universes, with slight variations. If this is the case, then
we could expect that the most common type of universe is one
which produces the maximum (or near maximum) number of
black holes possible, because universes which are good at
making black holes will produce many more ‘baby universes’
than universes which make few black holes. We can also expect
that we should be living in a common universe, i.e. one which is
skilled at making black holes. So our universe should be an
excellent black-hole producer, with very little, if any, room for
improvement in the way of making black holes. As it turns out,
this is the case.36 Our universe is home to billions and billions of
black holes!
Before you get too excited about this idea, I need to mention
that there are two completely unproven (and perhaps unprovable)
assumptions which Smolin’s hypothesis makes. The first
assumption Smolin makes is that there is some way for a
universe to ‘inherit’ the physical constants of its ‘parent’
universe, with a small amount of variation. The second unproven
assumption which Smolin makes is that once black holes
“evaporate”, they actually completely separate from our universe
and have their own separate space-time.
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However, Smolin makes up for these two unproven

assumptions by using his theory to make several new predictions
which, so far, are holding up37 (it has been about fifteen years
since Smolin first published his hypothesis). Smolin gave an
example of a prediction made by his hypothesis in an essay he
wrote:38

“Here is an example of a prediction made using this

logic. It rests on the fact that remnants of supernovas have
two possible fates: If they are light enough, they become
neutron stars; if they are sufficiently massive, they become
black holes. There is a threshold between these two
outcomes. To have as many black holes as possible, the
threshold should be as low as it possibly can be without
affecting the processes that make the carbon and oxygen that
both we and the massive stars require. It turns out that there
is a parameter that does control the height of the threshold,
without affecting biofriendliness. This is the mass of the
strange quark. I will not go here into how it works, but the
result is a clean prediction: The threshold must be no higher
than 1.7 times the mass of the sun-- that is, no neutron stars
can be heavier than that.”

As of yet, all astronomical observations conform to

Smolin’s predictions.39
Another consideration that makes the theistic explanation of
this alleged “fine-tuning” untenable is the fact that over 99% of
the universe is unsuited to supporting any type of life.40 Why
would a God carefully fine-tune the laws of physics to support
life but leave most of the universe unable to support life? It looks
more like whatever determined the laws of physics did not have
any concern for life (if it was even capable of having concerns).
Thus all atheistic explanations of fine-tuning explain at least one
fact that theistic explanations don’t: the fact that the universe is
not so well suited for life.
In conclusion, the multiverse hypothesis, in the many forms
it takes, seems more plausible than the God hypothesis when it
comes to explaining why our universe is life-friendly. I think this
is especially true in the case of Smolin’s hypothesis: It explains
so much more than the God hypothesis (i.e. “Why would God
create a world so good at making black holes?”) and makes

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testable scientific predictions, whereas the God hypothesis

makes none.

The Privileged Planet

A somewhat weaker version of the “Improbable Universe”

argument is the “Improbable Planet” argument, which runs on
the same principle: The planet we live on must have many
specific, uncommon or rare features in order for life to exist,
therefore a creator is needed to explain this improbability.
Creationist documentary The Privileged Planet alleges that
if Earth were just five percent closer to the Sun, life could not
exist because of an intense greenhouse effect. Likewise, if the
Earth were just twenty percent further from the Sun, it would
freeze over, rendering it uninhabitable for intelligent life. The
documentary goes on to list fourteen other circumstances
necessary for a planet to be habitable, and concludes that a life-
friendly planet is exceedingly rare in the universe.
The argument usually sounds impressive to begin with, but
few people realize just how enormous our universe is, and, once
you do, the argument instantly loses force.
The Privileged Planet alleges that the chance of an Earth-
like planet forming is about 1 in 1015 (That’s a one followed by
fifteen zeroes!). Supposing this is true, would it mean that the
existence of a planet like Earth is too improbable to form even
once in the universe? Not at all. Scientists have estimated41 that
the number of planets in the universe is about 1021 (A one
followed by twenty one zeroes, which is a much larger number
than the odds of a life-friendly planet). If you take 1021 and
divide it by 1015 (the odds of an Earth-like planet) the number
you end up with is 106 (or one million). Therefore, chance alone
requires that at least one million Earth-like planets exist in the
universe!
To pursue the argument further, the parameters which the
documentary claims “necessary for life” are highly debatable. As
an example, many Astrobiologists don’t seem to think life-
friendly planets are as rare as the astronomers in The Privileged
Planet do. In fact, one research paper estimates that there are
over 40 million habitable planets in the Milky Way Galaxy
alone!42

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The Argument from Biogenesis

The Argument from Biogenesis contends that it is either highly

unlikely or impossible for the first life to have come about
naturally. As evidence of this, creationists will often cite the
“Law of Biogenesis”: Life only comes from life. What they
forget is that this applies only to modern day life, because of its
complexity and because it exists in the presence of other life-
forms. Yes, maggots do not form themselves from raw meat, as
people once thought. But that does not mean that the very first
life could have only been created by God. Creationists will often
point out that even the simplest, single-celled organisms alive
today are far too complex to have just fallen together in some
primordial soup. But no scientist alive today believes that life
began with a cell as super-complex as today’s cells are.
Scientists usually begin explaining the origin of life by
explaining the origin of simple, self-replicating molecules, and
then by explaining how these molecules evolved into the first
cells.
Another popular misconception is that since we don’t see
new life emerging from non-living matter today, it must be
impossible. Charles Darwin answered this objection in a letter to
Joseph Hooker:

“It is often said that all the conditions for the first
production of a living organism are now present, which
could ever have been present. But if (and oh! what a big if!)
we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of
ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc.
present, that a protein compound was chemically formed
ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present
day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed,
which would not have been the case before living creatures
were formed.”

In other words, all the substances of which life is made,

such as proteins and nucleic acids, are consumed by modern day
life-forms before they have any chance to combine into
something we might call “life.” Of course, no living things were
around to eat up biological molecules before life originated

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(obviously!), so this is not an issue for hypotheses concerning

the origin of the first life.
Another, more commonly heard argument is that life cannot
originate from “mere chemicals.” This is simply a confusion
over what life is: Life is nothing but the chemicals it is made of.
We only call certain collections of chemicals “alive” because
they can reproduce, they have metabolism, and they can evolve.
Most Intelligent Design Creationists have realized that they
cannot argue that a natural origin of life is impossible, so they
simply take the alternative route of arguing that it is improbable.
The same general fallacies plague each and every one of these
arguments: The creationist either repeats false information or
assumes something he does not know.
For example, a classic argument against the origin of life is
that life only uses left-handed amino acids, while origin of life
experiments produce equal amounts of right-handed and left
handed amino acids. It is further argued that a chain of
completely left-handed amino acids forming from a mix of right
and left-handed amino acids is so improbable that it would not
happen within the age of the universe (The odds of each amino
acid being left-handed is one out of two, and creationists usually
assume that life had to begin with at least one complete protein,
which requires dozens of amino acids). However, creationists
ignore the fact that scientists have discovered a number of
plausible mechanisms to solve this dilemma. For instance,
scientists have discovered that meteorites contain a higher
percentage of left-handed amino acids (which suggests there is a
natural process for generating more left than right-handed amino
acids).43
Yet another classic example of faulty reasoning in origin-of-
life probability calculations is provided in Michael Denton’s
classic anti-evolution text, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. Denton
asserts that the first cell would require “at least one hundred
functional proteins to appear simultaneously in one place.”44
Each protein, according to Denton, would have to be at least
twenty amino acids long. Furthermore, “unique sequences” of
these amino acids would be quite rare: the chances of such
sequences coming together by chance would be about 1 in 1020.
Multiplying the number of proteins times the independent
probability of each one forming, Denton figures the odds of the
first cell forming by chance are about 1 in 102000.
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So what’s wrong with Denton’s estimate? In a word,

everything. For example, he assumes that proteins would be
needed to synthesize and maintain the cell’s membrane.45 These
proteins he assumes necessary are a large part of what makes up
his hundred-protein estimation. But lipid membranes have been
observed to form under plausible conditions simulating the early
earth.46 Why would a cell need to create something already
present in its environment? Furthermore, why would the first
cells have needed to maintain their cell membranes? The first
cells simply had to survive long enough to leave behind a few
offspring. Cell maintenance could be neglected, and eventually
evolve to give a competitive edge to later generations.
Denton’s estimations are further degraded because he
assumes that one, and only one, sequence of amino acids will
function properly. This is absolutely wrong: Proteins often
function just fine when one amino acid in their sequence is
substituted.47 In fact, there is an enzyme called Cytochrome C
which shows a wide range of variation between species and yet
still performs the same task.48
So, how did life start? We don’t yet know. There are
plausible ideas being tested (as I discuss in chapter 9), but it will
most likely be many years before we have a detailed explanation
of how the first life came to be. In the meantime, do not be
fooled by creationist calculations alleging to show the origin of
life improbable. Richard Carrier,49 Ian Musgrave50 and David
Deamer51 have written excellent essays, available online for free
(see references) which do a more than adequate job of exposing
creationist fallacies.
But there is another argument I can give that provides
positive evidence that life arose naturally. Scientists have
methods of finding out the characteristics of the (hypothetical,
not actual) common ancestor of practically any group of similar
organisms. When scientists use their techniques to figure out
what the hypothetical common ancestor of all life would have
been like, they find that it would have been rich in amino acids
thought to be most common on the early earth.52 This is surely to
be expected if life arose naturally from the chemicals on the
early Earth. Later organisms could’ve evolved ways to
synthesize amino acids which were not readily available in the
environment. Yet the very first organisms would not have had
the ability to synthesize just any amino acid. They would have
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had to use what was readily available – the simple amino acids
generated by origin of life experiments. The fact that the
common ancestor of all life predominantly used these simple
amino acids means it likely evolved from an organism which
used these simple amino acids exclusively (or almost
exclusively). This is exactly what we would expect if this form
of life originated naturally. And exactly what we would not
expect to see if life was designed. If life was designed, then the
hypothetical common ancestor of all living things might have
been a highly advanced organism that retained no vestige of an
earlier evolutionary history.

Irreducible Complexity

Perhaps the most interesting argument turned out by the

Intelligent Design community is the argument from “Irreducible
Complexity.” The argument is a stronger, more rigorous version
of a very old creationist argument which is that some organ, like
the eye or wing, is just too complicated to have come about by
the trial and error process of natural selection. Surely an
unintelligent process could not create something which
intelligent beings like us marvel at! It is usually argued that some
organ, system, or biological structure would not be any good to a
creature unless the entire multipart system was present. Since
evolution can only work through small steps, favoring only what
is useful to the organism at the time, such multipart systems
could not evolve.
As should be expected, Evolutionary Biologists, beginning
with Charles Darwin, have been curious about such complexities
of nature and have searched for testable, scientific explanations
of how these complex systems came to be. In the sixth chapter of
Origin of Species, Darwin even admitted that the eye seemed to
be a threat to his theory:

“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable

contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances,
for admitting different amounts of light, and for the
correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have
been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess,
absurd in the highest degree.”

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But Darwin immediately went on to explain how this

problem could be solved:

“Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a

simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be
shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor…
Then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex
eye could be formed by natural selection… Should not be
considered as subversive of the theory.”

Darwin then went on to list many simpler and more

imperfect eyes found in the animal kingdom: The starfish, for
example, has only a depressed region of light sensitive cells.
Today we know of even simpler eyes, such as light sensitive
pigments found in single celled organisms.53 We can easily
imagine how photosensitive pigments give rise to photosensitive
cells in multi-cellular organisms, and how more photosensitive
cells give the organism a greater sensitivity to light. We can
further imagine an organism evolving a patch of photosensitive
cells, and further evolving a depressed patch of these cells (as the
mollusk Patella has). The next evolutionary step would be for
this photosensitive depression to acquire an outer covering of
ordinary cells for protection (this is the simple eye that the
mollusk Nautilus has). Once this has happened, it is essentially
just a matter of evolving the right types of “outer coverings” (the
lens, the eyelid, and so on) before the evolution of the human eye
is complete.54
I apologize to the reader if my account of the eye’s
evolution seems too abrupt, but rest assured that many have
described it in much fuller detail than I have.55 For example, two
scientists have broken the evolution of the eye into two thousand
steps56 and calculated a “pessimistic estimate” of how long it
would take before the eye evolved. Their answer: only a few
hundred thousand years,57 which is an extremely short period of
time, given that animal life has existed for hundreds of millions
of years.
And what about the wing? If a partially developed wing is
no good for flying, how could natural selection have favored it?
Scientists have discovered that a primitive wing is excellent for
body heat regulation in small animals, such as birds and
insects.58 Once this primitive structure has reached a large
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enough size, it maxes out its use for heat regulation and begins to
be useful for something else: flight.
I once met a creationist in a bookstore, and we (of course)
ended up discussing evolution. Like most creationists, he was
ready to take on evolution with an example of something he
thought could not be evolved. He explained to me that there is a
species of woodpecker that pecks wood with such force that its
eyes would pop out if it did not close them when pecking (I
haven’t been able to find a source for this claim, but for the sake
of argument I will assume it is true). How would something like
this evolve? The woodpecker would need to evolve the instinct
to close its eyes before pecking, but this instinct would do no
good unless the woodpecker had already evolved to peck wood,
which would seem extremely unlikely if this caused his eyes to
pop out (birds that do such self destructive things would not be
expected to be favored by natural selection). But what if the
woodpecker began pecking wood at a much less rapid rate, so
that its eyes remained securely within its head? It could then
evolve the instinct to close its eyes (which would be useful, not
because it kept the woodpecker’s eyes within its head, but
because it kept specks of wood out of its eyes which could cause
eye damage or infection). Once it evolved this instinct, it could
then evolve to peck wood much harder than before, since now
there would be no danger in losing his eyes.
Creationists cannot understand that some things may have
originally had a different function, and so they mistakenly
conclude that an evolutionary predecessor (“half a wing” or “half
an eye”) would not be favored by natural selection. Co-option,
the idea that something can gradually evolve a new function, is
central to understanding biological complexity. If we see a
biological structure, and we notice that it is useless when we take
away one of its parts, we need to ask ourselves whether it really
would be useless: Can it serve another function?
In 1996 the biochemist and intelligent design proponent
Michael Behe authored Darwin’s Black Box – a book which
attempted to revive the old argument from complexity, but with
a few new twists. Behe argued that some microscopic cellular
systems are useless unless the entire system is present.59 It is
argued that since no single mutation could produce these
systems, and since evolution has to work by taking small steps
(more on this in chapter 9), evolution by natural selection cannot
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account for such a system. It is further argued that since such

irreducibly complex objects are, in our experience, always
produced by an intelligent agent (think of a TV which does not
work without all of its parts), we should prefer the explanation of
intelligent design for the irreducibly complex systems we find in
Biology.
Two of Behe’s infamous examples of irreducible
complexity are the blood clotting system and the bacterial
flagellum. The problem with these examples, however, is that
you can take away multiple parts and still have a functioning
system. For example, puffer-fish and dolphins lack several of the
blood clotting factors found in most other vertebrate animals60
and yet they manage just fine.
Another major problem for Behe’s argument is that
scientists have provided a detailed scenario for the evolution of
the bacterial flagellum.61 It turns out that you can take away
parts from the flagellum and still have a functioning system. The
trick is that the system has evolved brand new functions
throughout the course of its evolution. For example, the type
three secretion system, which is thought to be an evolutionary
predecessor of the flagellum, does not function for locomotion
(Like the bacterial flagellum). Instead, it functions to inject
toxins into cells.
How does the intelligent design community respond to
these charges? In the case of the blood clotting system, ID
proponent Casey Luskin62 has argued that it isn’t the entire blood
clotting system which is irreducibly complex; Rather, there are
certain core parts of the blood clotting system which comprise an
irreducibly complex system. However, recent research has
shown that some of the factors Luskin deemed part of the
“irreducible core” (Clotting factors V and VIII) are represented
by only a single gene63 in Jawless fish. This means the two
factors deemed necessary by Luskin actually aren’t; They
evolved from a single ancestral gene which is present even today
in the Lamprey fish.
In the case of the bacterial flagellum, Michael Behe realizes
that it is possible for such a system to evolve through an
“indirect” route (That is, for an irreducibly complex system to
evolve from parts which previously served a different function).
However, he argues that the parts making up such systems, even
if pre-existent in the cell and serving some secondary function,
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Nicholas Covington

could not be combined into an irreducibly complex system

because each part would be specified for its current function and
may not be suited to the new function. Behe provides us with an
analogy to help us understand what he is arguing:

“[S]uppose you wanted to make a mousetrap. In your

garage you might have a piece of wood from an old popsicle
stick (for the platform), a spring from an old wind-up clock,
a piece of metal (for the hammer) in the form of a crowbar, a
darning needle for the holding bar, and a bottle cap you
fancy to use as a catch. But these pieces couldn’t form a
mousetrap without extensive modification, and while the
modification was going on, they would be unable to work as
a mousetrap. Their previous functions make them ill-suited
64
for virtually any new role as part of a complex system.”

Philosopher Paul Draper65 provides an excellent counter to

Behe’s argument: Although Behe’s analogy illustrates his point
well, Behe has not shown that any biochemical “part” must
possess a great degree of specificity before it could perform a
new task. Perhaps when these allegedly irreducible systems first
evolved, the parts could perform their task, but not efficiently.
These parts could later be modified by natural selection to work
more efficiently.
Draper also provides a good argument showing that Behe’s
conclusion is premature. Scientists are still in the process of
figuring out how many of these intracellular systems work, so
why would anyone demand an in-depth explanation of how these
systems evolved? A reasonable position would allow scientists to
continue their work, and, if Darwinian explanations are not
proposed after scientists fully understand these systems, perhaps
we should turn a skeptical eye on evolution. But that day has not
come.
Before I conclude, I’d like to point out two things: (1) That
simplicity, not complexity, is the hallmark of intelligent design,
and (2) That mind boggling complexity is expected from the
process of evolution. To see what I mean, let’s look at
evolutionary algorithms. An evolutionary algorithm is a
computer program which simulates the process of natural
selection in order to solve a problem. For instance, a genetic
algorithm may simulate an imaginary species of television sets

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which has the ability to reproduce. There is random variation

within the population of television sets (as there is within real
species in nature), and the television sets with variations that
make them better suited for watching (Like a clearer image) are
allowed to leave behind more baby televisions than the
variations which make the sets worse for watching. So the best
TV sets will become the most common. In addition, since there
are random changes made in every generation, it allows for a
positive cycle: Each time a good variation arises, it becomes
common. Then another good change takes place and becomes
common. This means that after so many generations there is a
build-up of lots of good changes from the original TV Set.
The process which I have just mentioned has been used with
great success in many different fields.66 In one case, it was used
in electrical engineering to evolve a voice recognition device.
Ironically, the scientist who set up the process of its evolution
has found that, after several hundred generations of evolution,
the device has evolved so much complexity that he is unable to
figure out how it works!67

The Language of God

Stephen C. Meyer thinks that he has found an argument that

proves the existence of God in something that lies at the very
foundation of life: DNA. Meyer argues that since DNA is a code,
and codes are the product of intelligent design, one should prefer
the hypothesis that DNA was created by “the intelligent
designer” (aka God).68
Before I address this argument, I’d like to give a simple
explanation of what the genetic code is made of and how it
works. The genetic code is composed of DNA, mRNA, tRNA,
and a Ribosome. DNA is the “storage medium” which holds all
the information for making a living creature. Messenger RNA, or
mRNA, “reads” and copies the information of DNA. Transfer
RNA molecules, or tRNA, bring specific amino acids to the
mRNA chain. Ribosomes are in charge of matching tRNAs with
the mRNA code. The amino acids form proteins which make up
all aspects of living things, from skin to internal organs and
muscles.
So, as you can see from my simplified explanation of the
genetic code, it is fairly complex and may seem (at first) to be
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Nicholas Covington

impossible to explain by natural means. Yet it is not. Scientists

have discovered RNA which can act as both mRNA and tRNA.69
This in and of itself is a drastic simplification of the genetic
code. But we can go even further: we can postulate that all of the
components of the genetic code originally came from chains of
RNA called Ribozymes. We now know that the Ribosome is a
Ribozyme.70 Scientists have even successfully derived
DNA from an RNA Ribozyme through a process designed to
simulate evolution.71 Essentially, all of the genetic code seems to
be derived from chains of RNA. Later on in chapter 9 I will
discuss how this RNA first formed and whether or not life could
have come from a replicating molecule like RNA that formed by
chance.

A Post Script: More on Irreducible Complexity

Although I tried to be thorough in discussing Irreducible

complexity, I would not have had the space to write about all the
alleged examples of it or about the refutations of it. Those
wishing to pursue the matter further should check out the
following resources:

Finding Darwin’s God by Kenneth Miller (1999)

Kenneth Miller’s Evolution Page:

http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/index.html

Why Darwin Matters by Michael Shermer (2006)

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On Specific Examples of Irreducible

Complexity:

The Immune System

Evolving Immunity by Matt Inlay (2002)

http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/Evolving_Immunity.html

The Eukaryotic Cilium

David Mitchell, The Evolution of Eukaryotic Cilia and Flagella

as Motile and Sensory Organelles (2006).

http://www.upstate.edu/cdb/mitcheld/publications/Jekey_Mitchel
l.pdfs

The Bombardier Beetle

Mark Isaak, An Index to Creationist Claims, s.v. Claim CB310.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB310.html

The Woodpecker’s Tongue

Anatomy and Evolution of the Woodpecker’s Tongue by Rusty

Ryan (2003)

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/woodpecker/woodpecker.html

Sex

Two questions I feel compelled to answer are the how and why
of the evolution of sex. I was once emailed by a stumped

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evolutionist who could not imagine the evolution of sex. He

could not understand how a male could exist without a female, or
vice versa, and so it seemed to him like “the ultimate
irreducibility.” The first place we should start is the definition of
sex: exchanging genetic material with other members of a
species. Bacteria have a way of exchanging genetic material;72
although it is more akin to the copy and paste functions of a
computer than it is to sex. The next step would be for a
population to evolve which went through cycles of giving and
receiving genetic material. This population would be akin to the
species of frogs73 that can spontaneously change sex from male
to female. The final step would be for individuals to be born of
only a single sex (Males that stay as males and females that stay
as females).74

Why Sex?

The best supported explanation of the evolution of sex is the

“Red Queen Hypothesis.” The Red Queen Hypothesis states that
sex evolved so that species could stay one step ahead of
parasites. There is even experimental evidence confirming this:

“Scientists from Rutgers University in New Jersey

have tested this idea by observing different groups of small
fish called topminnow in Mexico. Some populations of the
topminnow reproduce sexually, while others reproduce
asexually, so they provide the perfect opportunity to test
these ideas. The topminnow is under constant attack by a
parasite, a worm that causes something called black-spot
disease.
“The researchers found that identical populations
(“clones”) of the asexually reproducing topminnows
harbored many more black-spot worms than did those
producing sexually, a finding that fit the Red Queen
hypothesis: The sexual topminnows could devise new
defenses faster by recombination than the asexually
75
producing clones.”

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Chapter 4

Revelations

Has God Spoken to Man?

Most world religions, especially the Abrahamic faiths, promote

the idea that God has spoken to man in times past (as well as
today). If they are right, we might expect to find strong evidence
that knowledge of the future was handed down to man in the
form of prophecy. In addition, God may have spoken scientific
facts to man which he could not possibly have known at the
time.
As you might guess, Christians, Jews, and Muslims all
believe that their holy books contain such knowledge. However,
a careful examination reveals that not only is there no strong
evidence of prophecy, but also that the Qu’ran and Torah (Old
Testament) both contain falsehoods concerning history and
science!
There are several criteria an alleged prophecy must meet
before we can consider it genuine:

1. The prophecy must not be vague.

This criterion rules out the vast majority of prophecies,

especially those which are given in the book of Revelation,
which is so vague that many different interpretations have been
proposed for it. For example, the number “666” is said to refer to
the Roman Emperor Nero by the Roman Catholics, while
Seventh-Day Adventists maintain that this number refers to the
pope! Also, in order to be precise, the prophecy should give or
imply a date by which it is to be fulfilled. Otherwise, any group
can make a prophecy such as “City X will be destroyed” and
claim victory for their prophecy if City X is destroyed several
hundred years later. Alternately, a group could always claim that
the prophecy would be fulfilled in the future (if it had not been
fulfilled already) and so such a claim would risk nothing.

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2. We must be sure that the prophecy was made before the

event.

This is another criterion which rules out a very high

percentage of alleged prophecies. To be certain that a prophecy
was made before the event, we must have at least one manuscript
containing it which can be proven to date well before the event
happened.

3. The prophecy must be fulfilled and must not appear in

the same book as a text containing false prophecies.

I take this to be self-explanatory: We must be able to verify

that prophecy came true. We also would not expect a God-given
prophecy to predict anything other than what actually happened.

4. The prophecy must not be something which could

plausibly be attributed to a guess.

Years before the Soviet Union collapsed, many people had

predicted that it would not last. Is there something miraculous
behind their prediction? Not at all, because the Soviet Union had
been unstable for years. Any alleged prophecy must be
something specific and risky in order to even qualify as a
supernatural revelation.

5. The prophecy must not be something that the prophet

and/or his followers could have fulfilled.

If someone predicts an event which they can cause or which

others may cause for the simple reason that they want to make
this person’s prophecy come to pass, the the prophecy is not
impressive. To give an example: If a cult leader predicted that all
of his followers would end up in California in 2012, no one
would consider it miraculous if they did because they would
probably travel to California for the sole reason of fulfilling their
leader’s prophecy.

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A Fantastical Mathematical Prophecy

In all of my reading and research, I have only come across a

handful of prophecies which claimed to fulfill all of these
criteria. One example is a Christian website I came across that
claimed the book of Ezekiel predicted the exact year Israel
would be restored as a nation.76 I must begin by quoting the
relevant passage:

“Then lie on your left side and put the sin of the
house of Israel upon yourself. You are to bear their sin for
the number of days you lie on your side. I have assigned
you the same number of days as the years of their sin. So for
390 days you will bear the sin of the house of Israel.
After you have finished this, lie down again, this
time on your right side, and bear the sin of the house of
Judah. I have assigned you 40 days, a day for each year.”
(Ezekiel 4:4-6, NIV)

All in all, it is predicted that there will be 430 years of

judgment against the nation of Israel. The website claims that
the Babylonian captivity began in 606 BCE, and lasted for
exactly seventy years. This would leave us with 360 years of
remaining punishment. The site claims that God multiplied this
remaining sentence by seven for Israel’s refusal to repent (see
Leviticus 26:18), and, arranging for the differences between our
calendar and the Jewish calendar, we find that the punishment
was set to come to an end in 1948, the same year Israel was
officially recognized as a nation. Pretty interesting, huh?
Interesting, but completely wrong. The Babylonian
Captivity lasted from 597 BCE to 538 BCE,77 which is only sixty
years, not seventy. Furthermore, why didn’t God wait until the
current punishment was completely finished? Instead (according
to this Christian source) God stopped midway through his
punishment, looked at the nation of Israel and how unrepentant it
was, and decided to jack up their punishment by multiplying it
times seven. This indicates to me that whoever performed these
calculations had to fool around with these numbers a lot before
he or she came up with the answer desired.

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Did Isaiah Predict the Shape of the Earth?

Littering the Internet are thousands of websites which claim that

Isaiah 40:22 stated that the earth was round thousands of years
before mankind discovered so.78 However, what this passage
says is that the Lord “sitteth upon the circle of the earth” (KJV,
emphasis mine). Notice the word used there: circle. This implies
that the Earth is a flat disk, not a sphere. A common Christian
defense of this is that the Hebrews did not have a word for
sphere, so they simply had to make use of the language
available. However, Isaiah also uses a word which is translated
as ‘ball’, so this is clearly not true.79 If anything, this passage
does not predict the spherical shape of the earth, it implies the
earth is a flat circle!

Win Some, Lose Some

Last, though certainly not least, is the fact that the Qu’ran and
the Bible both contain facts which we know to be wrong. For
instance, here is how the Qu’ran describes the development of
the human embryo:

“Verily We created man from a product of wet earth;

Then placed him as a drop (of seed) in a safe lodging;

Then fashioned We the drop a clot, then fashioned We the
clot a little lump, then fashioned We the little lump bones, then
clothed the bones with flesh, and then produced it as another creation.
80
So blessed be Allah, the Best of creators!” (Surah 23:12-14)

Obviously this is wrong on many counts: Human beings do

not develop from “wet earth”, Embryos do not pass through a
stage in which they are “blood clots”, and bones do not form
before flesh.
The Old Testament is no better. The book of Ezekiel says
(chapter 26) that Tyre will be completely destroyed by
Nebuchadnezzar. This is a false prophecy, since Tyre was still
standing centuries later when Alexander the Great came through
and conquered it.81

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Jesus as an Apocalyptic Prophet

The consensus view amongst New Testament scholars is that

Jesus was a (failed) doomsday prophet, one who predicted the
end of the world was imminent but was (obviously) wrong.
To understand why this is so, consider the following points
and ask yourself, “What is the simplest explanation which
explains all of this data?”

1. Jesus frequently implies that the end of days is near. For

example:

“Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of

my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him
also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in
the glory of his Father with the holy angels.
“And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That
there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste
of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with
power.” (Mark 8:38-9:1, KJV. Also see Matthew 16:27-28
and Luke 9:26-27).

“Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the

kingdom of God, And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the
kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the
gospel.” (Mark 1:14-15, KJV)

What did the “kingdom” mean to Jesus? According to Bart

Ehrman, the cultural context strongly suggests that the Coming
of the Kingdom indicated God would rule over the world in the
same way that he rules over heaven.82 It would be the end of
days. This is further evidenced by the following passage:

“When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them

that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so
great faith, no, not in Israel. And I say unto you, That many
shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with
Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of
heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast
out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and
gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 8:10-12, KJV, Emphasis
mine).

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2. The notion that the world was quickly coming to an end

and that Jesus would return very soon are echoed throughout the
writings of other early Christians:

“What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short.

From now on those who have wives should live as if they
had none; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who
are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as
if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the
world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its
present form is passing away.” (1 Cor. 7:29-31, KJV,
Emphasis Mine)
“He which testifieth these things [Jesus] saith, Surely
I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
(Revelation 22:20, KJV, Emphasis Mine.)

3. The gospel theme that “The first shall be last and the
last shall be first” makes sense if Jesus was an apocalyptic
prophet, because Jewish apocalypticists (in general) taught that
those in power (who abused it) would be punished while the
oppressed would be redeemed.

4. The following passage in 2 Peter is very difficult to

explain unless Jesus really did teach that the end was near and,
after waiting for decades, some members of the church began to
lose faith (or Christians were taunted for the fact that Jesus’
prediction had not yet been fulfilled):

“First of all, you must understand that in the last days

scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil
desires. They will say, “Where is this 'coming' he
promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on
as it has since the beginning of creation.” But they
deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens
existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water.
By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and
destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth
are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and
destruction of ungodly men.
“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With
the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand
years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his
promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with
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you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to

repentance.
“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The
heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be
destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be
laid bare.” (2 Peter 3:3-10, KJV, Emphasis Mine).

Note that Peter attempts the weak explanation that a

thousand years is a like a day to God. This does not change the
fact that there must have been an expectation within the church
that the end would come soon after Jesus’ death, and this
expectation is best explained as a teaching of Jesus.
Taken together, these facts make a very strong case that
Jesus was a failed doomsday prophet. This completely
undercuts the Christian religion. It also falsifies Islam, since
muslims acknowledge Jesus as a prophet when he clearly was
no such thing.

To learn more about the prophecies of the Qu’ran, please

see:

Miracles of the Qu’ran by Harun Yahya (2009). This may

be accessed at:
http://www.harunyahya.com/miracles_of_the_quran_01.php

Although Yahya’s work is filled with scientific and logical

errors, I believe that you should check this out for yourself.
Seeing this site will only make you realize how weak the claims
of prophecy are for the Qu’ran.

Cosmology and the Koran by Richard Carrier (2001).

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/islam.ht
ml

This is an excellent article debunking Muslim claims of the

Qu’ran predicting recently discovered scientific facts.

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For more on Biblical Prophecies, see:

Biblical Prophecy: Failure or Fulfillment? by Tim

Callahan (1997).

As well as:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/christianity/
prophecy.html

For a thorough debunking of the “Bible Code” see:

Assassinations Foretold in Moby Dick! By Brendan

McKay (1997).
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html

Hidden Messages and The Bible Code by Dave Thomas

(1997).
http://www.csicop.org/si/9711/bible-code.html

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Chapter 5

The Case Against Christ

Introduction

No one person has ever been the inspiration for as many

arguments for God as Jesus of Nazareth. Christian apologists
have claimed they can prove his resurrection, that Jesus
miraculously fulfilled hundreds of prophecies, etc. Non-
christians have responded to these claims, with millions of
words being exchanged between both sides of the debate.
Before we begin, we need to discuss what conditions must
be satisfied in order to show that a miracle has taken place.
Since most claims to miracles, especially those regarding Jesus
of Nazareth, are based on historical testimony, we must ask
whether our witnesses might deceive us, whether they might
have been mistaken, and finally whether there is a natural
explanation for the event they recorded which is more probable
than a miracle.
Our information about Jesus comes primarily from the
gospels, which are very poor sources of historical information.
We do not know who wrote the gospels,83 only that they were
probably not eyewitnesses. Scholars are also very uncertain
about when they were written.84
Furthermore, the gospel accounts of Jesus aren’t likely to
be even roughly reliable accounts of what happened. Take a
look at Matthew 27:51-53, which describes the corpses of the
saints rising from their graves and being seen by many after
Jesus’ resurrection. Many other fantastic events are described in
the gospels (Earthquakes, an unnatural darkness surrounding
Jesus’ death, etc.). And yet no reputable historian saw fit to
record these fantastic events.85 Why? The only reasonable
explanation is that these events did not take place.
I am not claiming that Jesus did not exist, that he was not
crucified, or that he was not a man of local renown. I am simply

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claiming that the gospel accounts are gross exaggerations of his

life. We know this because the historians of the time simply
would not have overlooked reports of saints rising from their
graves, an unnatural darkness, or anything else of the sort.
So how do the gospels line up with our criteria for
miracles? The fact that we do not know who wrote the gospels
means that we cannot know if they exaggerated or lied about
anything they wrote, or whether their sources lied about or
exaggerated the events in question. In fact, the evidence, as
discussed above, suggests that there was exaggeration and
myth-making attached to the church’s memory of Jesus.
Even if the disciples actually died for their faith (and the
historical evidence for this is so weak as to be neglible, by the
way),86 the fact that we do not have their writings on these
matters means that we cannot know precisely what they
believed or what they died for. Did they find an empty tomb and
presume Jesus was raised, without actually seeing the risen
Jesus? We will never know.
We do have one more source for Jesus to consider: The
Apostle Paul. Paul clearly identifies himself in several of his
letters, and there is a consensus among scholars that he wrote
about twenty years after Jesus’ death. Still, Paul did not know
Jesus. Paul only experienced Jesus in a vision on the road to
Damascus.
We also must take into account that twenty years is more
than enough time for a legend to grow considerably, and since
Paul is passing along information he presumably got from the
eyewitnesses, we cannot be sure if he confused, misunderstood,
or exaggerated anything he was told about Jesus (or altered the
teachings of the disciples based on what was revealed to him).
Besides, myths can (and do) spring up within days after the
events. For example, the Denver Post once reported (falsely)
that a girl who attended Columbine High School was
approached by the killers during the infamous Columbine
school shooting and asked, “Do You Believe in God?” The girl
answered, “Yes” and was murdered for her faith.87
As a historical source, the Pauline letters look even less
reliable when we consider that Paul taught that his knowledge
of Jesus came through personal revelations from God and
reading Old Testament Scripture!88 Clearly there is too much

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doubt that can be placed upon Paul’s writings for them to be

evidence of a resurrection or miracle.
I think that most of the arguments for the Christian faith
can be dismissed on these grounds alone. However, even if we
grant that the first Christians really believed Jesus rose from the
dead, it does not follow that this really took place, as I will
discuss in my section on the resurrection.

Lunatic, Liar, or Lord?

C.S. Lewis famously argued that Jesus, by claiming that he was

the son of God, must have been more than just a “good moral
teacher” as many agnostics and atheists labeled him. According
to Lewis, someone who taught the way Jesus did could not have
been crazy, and that someone who claimed to be the son of God
would have been wicked to say so if it were not true. The only
option left is that Jesus was who he claimed to be.
This argument, although popular amongst Christian
apologists today, is transparent and feeble. How do we know
that Jesus claimed he was God? Only by the gospel accounts,
which are unreliable. In fact, New Testament scholar Bart
Ehrman believes that Jesus never called himself the son of
God.89 So this argument is already on shaky ground.
Besides, many people have been proclaimed gods and
messiahs by their followers in spite of their insistence to the
contrary.90 This could easily have been the case with Jesus.
Lastly, it is not difficult for a wicked cult leader to lead his
followers into believing him a self-sacrificing, holy man. The
National Geographic special Inside a Cult documents a cult
leader who had sex with many of his female members and yet
was still revered by these women’s husbands.91

The Jesus Prophecies

It is commonly argued that Jesus fulfilled hundreds of messianic

prophecies from the Old Testament, and that it is wildly
improbable for him to have actually fulfilled all of these unless
he actually was the messiah.
Here are some examples of these prophecies:

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Prophecy: Psalms 109:2

“They have spoken against me with a lying tongue”

Fulfilled: Matthew 26:60

“The chief priests... sought false witness against Jesus”

Prophecy: Psalm 41:9

“Even my close friend, whom I trusted, he who shared my
bread, has lifted up his heel against me.”

Fulfilled: Mark 14:10

“Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief
priests to betray Jesus to them.” (All of these verses are from
the KJV).

As you can see, these are simply Old Testament verses

which happen to describe things similar to what happened in
Jesus’ life. Most of these Old Testament passages do not even
declare themselves prophecies.
But suppose we concede that the gospels record Jesus
fulfilling lots of messianic prophecies. It does not follow from
this that these things actually happened. Since the gospels
should be treated as largely unreliable (as I have argued
previously), these prophecies probably were not fulfilled to the
degree claimed. In fact, the gospel writers would not have
needed to be dishonest in order to do this. If they had made up
their minds that Jesus was the messiah, they may have written
about him fulfilling certain prophecies because they felt they
knew he had fulfilled them, even if they did not personally
witness it. In other words: Christians today may believe that
Jesus is the messiah because he fulfilled the messianic
prophecies, but maybe the gospel writers felt that since Jesus
was the messiah, he therefore must have fulfilled the messianic
prophecies.
Christian apologist Louis Lapides raises an interesting
objection to this:

“When the gospels were being circulated, there were

people living who had been around when these things

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happened. Someone would have said to Matthew, ‘You

know it didn’t happen that way. We’re trying to
communicate a life of righteousness and truth, so don’t taint
92
it with a lie.’”

This argument is wrong on two counts: First of all, the

gospel of Matthew may not have been written within the
lifetimes of these eyewitnesses. Secondly, cult psychology has
shown us that people are able to believe things in spite of what
those outside the cult say (more on this later).

The Resurrection

Christian apologist William Lane Craig offers four facts which

he believes show that Jesus was raised from the dead.93 I will
list them and explain why he believes that these facts can be
trusted, even if the rest of the gospel narratives cannot be:

1. Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea.

Craig argues that because Joseph was a member of the

Jewish court that condemned Jesus, it is highly improbable that
he was a Christian invention. I do not dispute the claim that
Jesus was buried.

2. Jesus’ tomb was found empty by his followers.

In my judgment, the most persuasive argument for this is

the fact that women discovered the tomb rather than men.94 Craig
notes that, in light of the way women were viewed in ancient
times, it would have been far more becoming to have the male
disciples discover the empty tomb. Therefore, it is unlikely that
this story was an invention.
And yet many New Testament scholars are persuaded that
this story is not ‘embarrassing’ at all.95 Jesus taught that the “first
shall be last and the last shall be first.” Allowing second class
citizens (women) the honor of discovering the empty tomb is
simply a dramatic fulfillment of the “last being first.”

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3. Different individuals and groups experienced

appearances of Jesus after his death.

This is another fact that I completely agree with. Craig

believes that these experiences were real, since it is unlikely that
so many would have the same hallucination. He also criticizes
the hallucination theory because it only accounts for the
experiences of the risen Jesus and not the empty tomb. I will
have more to say about this later.

4. The original disciples maintained belief that Jesus had

risen from the dead despite having every predisposition
to disbelieve.

Craig argues that the Jews had no belief in a dying-and-

rising messiah, and that “Jesus’ execution as a criminal showed
him out to be a heretic, a man literally under the curse of God
(Deut. 21.23).” I disagree. After Jesus’ death, his disciples must
have been in complete shock. In order to figure out how to deal
with this situation, they may have turned to scripture and found
passages like Psalm 16:10, which says that God will not let his
Holy One see corruption,96 and Daniel 9:26, which predicted that
the anointed one (“messiah”) would be cut off, and
retrospectively thought these were prophecies of Jesus. In short,
the first Christians did not have “every predisposition” to
disbelieve. Even if they did, cult psychology has proven that cult
members will make up great rationalizations in order to avoid
facing reality, as we will see further on.
Contributing to Craig’s case for point number four, he
argues that James, the brother of Jesus, had been skeptical of
Jesus’ claims to divinity until after the resurrection. He thinks
that something powerful must have happened to change James’
mind, and that the resurrection explains it. Yet Craig does not
consider the fact that we cannot be sure how Jesus’ agonizing
death altered James’ view of him, and, in any case, perhaps
reports of visions of Jesus from his followers would have been
enough to convince James, especially in grief.
Craig concludes by noting that the resurrection hypothesis
has great explanatory power and that it is therefore to be
preferred over naturalistic explanations, which usually involve
two or more hypotheses to explain all the data. Craig believes
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that the resurrection is the simplest explanation to account for all

the data.
In response to this argument, I believe that the reports of
Jesus’ resurrection can easily be explained by a powerfully
simple and more plausible hypothesis: that the early Christians
were no different in character from the cults we see in the
present day.
Craig contends that if the Christians had falsely proclaimed
Jesus risen, the Jewish authorities would have produced the body
of Jesus to scotch such rumors.97 However, the disciples did not
begin preaching publicly until fifty days after Jesus’ death.98 It
strains credibility to believe that Jesus’ corpse was even
recognizable at this point. Furthermore, the disciples probably
would not have abandoned their faith at the sight of Jesus’
corpse. We know from studies in cult psychology that people
will continue in their faith in spite of all evidence to the contrary!
As one psychologist put it,

“[Cognitive Dissonance Theory] has shown how

individuals cannot easily dismiss a belief or attitude they
hold, even when the attitude is directly contradicted by
evidence or events. People will sooner adopt farfetched ideas
99
to explain events than relinquish their preconceptions.”

A good example of Cognitive Dissonance can be found

amongst the “Jehovah’s Witnesses” who predicted that the world
would end in 1975;100 this year came and passed, but did not
convince many within the group to abandon their religion.
An even more striking example of Cognitive Dissonance
comes to us from the strange cults of John Frum. The cults of
John Frum are composed of South Pacific villagers whose
ancestors (somehow) got the idea that an American soldier John
Frum would one day return from America and bring all the great
riches to their people that the Americans enjoyed. Decades after
the cult began, John Frum still has not returned to the natives
with any cargo, but his followers are not deterred, because
nothing could deter them. In 1943 Maj. Samuel Patten set out to
convince the islanders that the American forces had absolutely
nothing to do with John Frum; that the American forces were
never intending to bring the natives endless supplies of cargo as
Frum had allegedly promised. The natives, shockingly enough
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(from a rational perspective), did not believe the Major, and have
continued their religion to this day.101
This brings me to the appearances of Jesus. The passion of
the first disciples can be taken as good evidence that they
believed they had experienced something supernatural; though
whether they actually did is another matter. I think that what the
earliest Christians experienced was not the risen Jesus, but
simply visions of him.
Besides the resurrection accounts, there are many reports of
visions from within the early church.102 This is no coincidence:
Studies have shown that individuals who join cults often have
schizotypal tendencies,103 and that schizotypal personalities
(Which make up more than one-half percent of the population)104
are more prone to hallucinations and “anomalous perceptual
experiences.”105 In fact, one study has shown that, in an altered
state of consciousness, the individual hallucinating (or dreaming)
will see a holy man but not recognize him at first.106 Compare
this to the reports found in Luke 24:36-53 and John 20:11-13, in
which a follower of Jesus sees him but does not recognize him at
first. In short, not only can we expect that earliest Christians
were just the sort to have visions, but we can also see that some
of the reports we have of their visions are consistent with the
hallucination hypothesis (though I do not know how accurate the
reports in Luke and John are).
An objection to the “vision theory” can be made by citing 1
Corinthians 15:6, in which Paul tells us that the risen Jesus was
seen by “over five hundred of the brethren.” Could such a large
group of people have been deluded? Perhaps. There is evidence
which suggests that group hallucination is caused by suggestion.
To give one example, there was a report of a man who found a
group of people gazing upward. When he inquired what they
were looking at, he was told that there was a crucifix in the sky.
He walked up to another person in the group, shook his arm, and
told him that there was no cross. The individual appeared to
“wake up” from some trance-like state, and agreed with him, and
that there was no cross.107 This is very hard to explain if the
group was seeing something real. So group hallucinations can
occur, and, given my theory that the early Christians were
analogous to cult members of the present day, it is completely
plausible that the event described in 1 Corinthians 15 was
something of the sort.
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Even with the evidence of mass hallucination before us, we

may not even need to call on it to explain the passage in 1
Corinthians 15. For example, what if only one person out of the
five hundred had a hallucination of Jesus, and the rest simply did
not dispute this person’s account, or simply went along with it?
Something else to keep in mind is that this account only
comes through one man, Paul. How could we possibly know that
this was not a gross exaggeration or complete falsehood? The
Corinthians had no way of verifying this claim for themselves, as
travel was difficult and dangerous, so there is just no way to be
sure what to make of this passage. One New Testament scholar
has even argued that this passage is a later addition to the book
of 1 Corinthians,108 although this is not widely accepted in
contemporary scholarship.
The only other way around this objection is to argue, as
William Lane Craig and N.T. Wright do, that visions of Jesus
would not have been interpreted as a bodily resurrection because
the Jewish culture had no belief in individual people being raised
from the dead before everyone else at the end of the world
(which is how Jesus’ resurrection was viewed amongst early
Christians; See 1 Corinthians 15:20, which states that Christ was
the “first fruits” of those to be raised). However, many of Jesus’
teachings were heretical. Orthodox Jews at the time certainly had
no belief that a man could be the son of God,109 and yet all of
these things were believed by Jesus’ disciples.
There is also biblical evidence which undermines this
argument. As Dr. Robert M. Price put it,

“Wright comes near to resting the whole weight of his

case on the mistaken contention that the notion of a single
individual rising from the dead in advance of the general
resurrection at the end of the age was unheard of, and that
therefore it must have arisen as the result of the stubborn fact
of it having occurred one day, Easter Day…
“[Wright fails] to take seriously the astonishing
comment of Herod in Mark 6:14-16 to the effect that Jesus
was thought to be John the Baptist already raised from the
dead! Can Wright really be oblivious of how this one text
torpedoes the hull of his argument? His evasions are so
pathetic as to suggest he is being disingenuous, hoping the
reader will not notice. The disciples of Jesus, who was slain
by a tyrant, may simply have borrowed the resurrection faith
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of the Baptist’s disciples who posited such a vindication for

their own master who had met the same fate. Wright should
really be arguing for the resurrection of John the Baptist, if it
110
being unprecedented means anything!”

Furthermore, one biblical scholar has argued that the

general theme of facing death followed by deliverance is
prevalent throughout the Old Testament.111 For example, Noah
escapes death when the world is flooded and is delivered from it
by God. Isaac faces death by sacrifice but is saved at the last
minute by an angel. Daniel is thrown to the lions but is protected
by God, and so on. Jesus’ death and resurrection may be
interpreted as a variation on this theme: Jesus was allowed to
suffer death, but was victoriously raised three days later. In
short, the disciples could have easily gotten the concept of a
resurrection from the themes prevalent throughout the Old
Testament.
As for Craig’s fourth fact, that “the original disciples
maintained belief… despite having every predisposition to
disbelieve,” I think that the hallucinations some of the disciples
may have had would have been more than enough to convince
them of Jesus’ divinity and to motivate them to dedicate their
lives to spreading his message.
The only way that Craig could criticize the account I have
given is by arguing that his theory, that Jesus was raised from the
dead, is to be preferred because it is simpler. But Craig’s theory
isn’t simple; my account of Craig’s “four facts” involves well
known and well documented cultural phenomena, whereas his
account proposes a God which intervenes in human affairs,
which I have yet to see any convincing evidence of. Craig’s
objection is easily refuted by the “UFO Enthusiast” parable I
gave in chapter 3.
Besides, I do not believe that the Resurrection hypothesis
really is simpler. The Resurrection hypothesis contains three
assumptions:

1. God Exists.
2. God intervenes in the world.
3. Raising Jesus from the dead is an act which this God
would be inclined to perform.

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Each of these hypotheses is highly contentious. I would strongly

dispute the claim that God exists (see chapter 7). I would further
ask for evidence that God intervenes in the world. No one, to my
knowledge, has made an airtight case for even one miracle
occurring at any time in history or the present day. Further, even
if one accepts the first two assumptions, he may not accept the
third. For example, if one believes that God does not perform
miracles to or through false prophets, and that Jesus was a false
prophet (see chapter 4), then one will not believe that God raised
Jesus from the dead.
Now let us look at my alternative hypothesis. It contains
just one assumption: that the individuals attracted to early
Christianity were analogous to those joining cults and fringe
religious movements in the present day. From this assumption it
follows that many early Christians would have been prone to
visions and would have been highly suggestible (meaning that
they would have been in the right state of mind to undergo
hallucination en masse).
My theory is simpler and more plausible – I explain things
through known phenomena that both theists and non-theists can
agree exist. It also has greater explanatory scope and power: it
explains why Jesus never appeared to anyone except a few of his
followers (and Paul) rather than appearing to everyone on earth
so that he could share the way of salvation with them. Therefore,
I conclude that it is most probably correct.

The Not So Impossible Faith

A popular internet apologist, J.P. Holding, has advanced an

argument that Christianity was, culturally speaking, so “against
the grain” that it could not have succeeded unless the evidence of
the resurrection had been overwhelming.
Holding presents many factors which he thinks, without the
powerful evidence of the resurrection, would have prevented
Christianity from spreading. For example, Holding argues that a
crucifixion was a humiliating death which would have been
repulsive to most people at the time. Therefore, Christianity
should not have succeeded unless excellent evidence existed to
overcome such an embarrassment.
Sociologist Rodney Stark provides a perfect counterpoint:

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“…Nor would the Jews have been so easily put off by

the facts of the Crucifixion. Indeed, the cross was a symbol
used to signify the messiah in Hebrew manuscripts prior to
112
the Crucifixion.”

Furthermore, plenty of gods in the ancient world suffered

humiliating deaths, yet this did not stop the growth of their
respective cults. For instance, the god Attis died by castration.113
Holding’s response to this example is to ask (rhetorically),
“[D]o you see a church of Attis today?”114 Holding is missing the
point: a god’s embarrassing death would not have inhibited a
cult’s growth. The cult of Attis thrived for centuries,115 and the
fact that Christianity has so far survived many more centuries
could easily be for other reasons besides “irrefutable proof of
resurrection” as we shall see.
Perhaps the strongest point against Holding’s case is that,
during the first century (when the evidence was still available),
Christianity was not popular at all.116 Holding is almost
obsessive about addressing all arguments against his case, yet he
has not made a substantial rebuttal to this point.117 So his
contention that very few would have bought the gospel message
if there was evidence against it can be accepted: Probably only a
tiny minority bought into it while this evidence was still
available.
Addressing Holding’s general point, we can show that there
were lots of things about Christianity which primed it for
success. The deck was not completely stacked against
Christianity; although there may have been factors that decreased
the probability of Christianity’s success, there were also factors
that increased the probability of its success. Historian Edward
Gibbons outlines five reasons he sees as responsible for the
success of early Christianity:118

1. The inflexible, and, if we may use the expression,

the intolerant zeal of the Christians, derived, it is
true, from the Jewish religion, but purified from
the narrow and unsocial spirit which, instead of
inviting, had deterred the Gentiles from embracing
the law of Moses.
2. The doctrine of a future life, improved by every
additional circumstance which could give weight
and efficacy to that important truth.
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3. The miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive

church.
4. The pure and austere morals of the Christians.
5. The union and discipline of the Christian republic,
which gradually formed an independent and
increasing state in the heart of the Roman empire.

Of the Jewish communities in the Roman Empire, J.G.

Davies writes,

“To these synagogues were also attached a not

inconsiderable number of ‘God-fearers’, pagans who were
attracted by the monotheism and way of life, but who
refused to take the final step of being circumcised and
119
acquiring Jewish citizenship.”

Here we see that Christianity already had a great number of

potential pagan converts who would have been receptive to the
Apostle Paul’s teachings (which did away with circumcision and
much of Jewish law).
As for all of the “embarrassing” teachings of Christianity, a
movement called Gnosticism was underway at the time of the
rise of Christianity, and it regarded material things as evil.120 A
religion that went against the “wisdom of this world” would not
have been out of place in the mindset of this time.
Overall, I do not see Christianity as being the socially
unacceptable faith that Holding makes it out to be. However, his
argument is a little more in-depth and multisided than my
summary of it. Those who wish to learn more about it should
visit his website, Tektonics.org, and should also read the secular
response to Holding: The book Not the Impossible Faith: Why
Christianity Didn’t Need a Miracle to Succeed by Richard
Carrier.

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Chapter 6

Someone to Hear Your Prayers?

Your own, personal, Jesus

someone to hear your prayers,
someone who cares

Your own, personal, Jesus

someone to hear your prayers,
someone who's there

-Johnny Cash

Do Aliens Know Jesus?

Imagine aliens land on earth. They are very similar to us, having
a language, computers, society, and so on. The one thing they do
not share with us is a particular religion. They have their own
religions, but not one of them is the same as any one of our
religions on earth. They do not have a Jesus, Buddha, Krishna,
etc. How would human beings react to such a finding? It would
be tempting to think that none of the religions were right. After
all, why would Jesus/Allah/Buddha/Etc. not care enough to teach
this alien society the truth about Him?
The most dramatic confirmation we could have of any
religion is if it was shared by two different planets that had never
come in contact with one another. What are the odds of another
people inventing, for instance, a God who is born in the flesh,
dies for our sins, and is raised three days later, and just so
happens to teach all the same concepts of Christianity?
Yet we may never find alien life, even if it exists. We cannot
count on this opportunity to confirm or disconfirm faith. But
what we can do is learn from a similar situation involving the
Native Americans. According to DNA evidence,121 the first
Native Americans settled in North America about 15,000 years
ago. Until just a few hundred years ago, these people lived and
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died without receiving the message of Jesus. He could have

easily come to them and taught them the Christian doctrine. So
to continue to believe in Christianity, one must believe that he let
generation after generation grow up, grow old, and die in
ignorance of how the universe worked and what they must do to
obtain a reward in heaven.
Imagine the opportunity that was missed: If Native
Americans had developed the exact same religion independently
of the Old World people, this would be a dramatic mark in favor
of Christianity. Critics might suggest that the religion developed
before the Native Americans' ancestors and the Arabic people's
ancestors split apart. Yet this would be easily provable or
disprovable by archaeological evidence showing what the
religious practices of the Native Americans were before Jesus
supposedly came to earth.
We also know that the human species is about 100,000
years old.122 Are we supposed to believe that God did not care
enough to show us the truth for 95,000 years? Let me again
repeat what I said in the previous paragraph for emphasis: To
continue to believe in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or any other
exclusive religion, one must believe that God let generation after
generation grow up, grow old, and die in ignorance of how the
universe worked and what they must do to obtain a reward in
heaven.

Religions have not left us Evidence

One of the gravest objections to the Abrahamic faiths (Islam,

Christianity, Judaism) is the fact that there is simply no evidence
that they are true.
Of course, defenders of these faiths will be quick to try and
produce examples of evidence for their faith, but the evidences
presented, even if completely true (which, in my experience,
they aren’t), are simply meager when we contemplate what an all
powerful God could do.
Suppose that the Jewish Messiah finally arrived, and God
wrote the Ten Commandments upon the moon to signify the
event. Would this not be fantastic evidence that Judaism was
true? Suppose that copies of the Qu’ran were indestructible:
They could not be burned, torn, or damaged in any way despite
the fact that they were made of ordinary paper. Would this not be
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strong evidence that Islam was true? Suppose that after Jesus’
Resurrection, he appeared to everyone on Earth and spoke with
them. Millions of accounts the world over were written and
preserved, right up to the present day. How could anyone deny
Christianity if this were the case?
As it happens, we have no such evidence of miracles. If
Allah or Yahweh wanted our belief, he had the power to present
us with irrefutable evidence of his existence. And yet he did not.
If disbelief upsets these gods so much, why don’t they simply
provide us with some proof? The only explanation that makes
sense is that they do not exist.

Contradictions in the Holy Books

A contradiction in a so-called “holy book” – such as the Koran

or Bible, is a surefire indication that 1) It cannot be completely
true and 2) It is the product of human minds, not the mind of an
almighty and pure God, who would presumably have the
intelligence and logical skills to produce a coherent book.
There is, however, a problem with attempting to show that
contradictions exist in a holy book. The defenders of the faith,
whether it be Judaism, Islam, or any other religion, always
vigorously and desperately seek to resolve these contradictions. I
have no problem with this, but apologists have gotten in the bad
habit of inventing wild, speculative, contrived, and downright
improbable “explanations” to resolve these contradictions. One
only has to visit the website skepticsannotatedbible.com to see
this (The website includes lots of contradictions in the Bible,
Koran and Book of Mormon, as well as links to
Christian/Muslim responses, so you may take a look at these and
make up your own mind).
As I discussed in chapter 1, the more assumptions a theory
must make, the more unlikely it is to be true. So apologists who
invent wild and speculative stories to resolve these
contradictions are doing very little to help their case. If it takes
lots of wild and improbable speculations to save your theory of
Biblical (or Koranic) inerrancy, then it is not likely at all that
these books really are coherent. What’s worse is the fact that an
all-knowing, all-powerful God would (and should) be able to
produce a message which would be understandable to all
generations. A perfect mind communicates clearly and
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coherently. A perfect mind would not author the confusion that

such holy books have created amongst believers and non-
believers alike.
According to Exodus 34:6-7, God punishes children for the
sins of their parents:

“And the LORD passed by before him, and

proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and
gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,
“Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and
transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the
guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the
children, and upon the children's children, unto the third
and to the fourth generation.” (KJV, emphasis mine)

We can clearly see that this verse portrays God proclaiming

that it is he who visits the “iniquity” of the fathers upon later
generations. This is not only a moral atrocity, but also a
contradiction. Ezekiel 18:20 says,

“The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not
bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father
bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the
righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the
wicked shall be upon him.” (KJV, emphasis mine)

I consulted a minister I know and visited two Christian

apologetics websites123 in search of answers to this contradiction.
The answer I received from all three of them was the same:
Children often suffer from the bad decisions of their parents,
such as when a family lives in poverty because of the father’s
poor money management. But this completely misses the point:
In Exodus, God specifically says that he is the one who “visits
the iniquities” of the fathers upon the sons. He doesn’t simply
say that children may suffer from a parent’s immorality or
mistake. This also contradicts Romans 5:12, which states that sin
and death entered the world through Adam. If Adam’s original
sin brought the human race death, pain, and despair, then clearly
God does punish the children for the sins of the father.
This is not the only contradiction in the Bible. Mark 14:12
and 15:25 indicate that Jesus was crucified the day after the

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Passover while John 19:14 indicates that Jesus was crucified the
day before the Passover.
In 1 Samuel 17:51 we are told that David slew Goliath,
while in 2 Samuel 21:19 we are told that Elhanan slew Goliath
[Note that in the King James Version the verse was changed to
say “Elhanan slew the brother of Goliath”; other translations
preserve the original wording].
The Koran is no better. Sura 2:37 and 2:128 proclaims
Allah “merciful” but Sura 4:56 proclaims,

“Those who reject our signs, We shall soon cast into

the Fire. As often as their skins are roasted through, We shall
exchange them for fresh skins, that they may taste the
penalty: For Allah is exalted in Power, Wise.” (Translated
by Abdullah Yusuf Ali)

The Wall Comes Crashing Down

Defenders of Christianity and Islam alike seem to have opted to

“build a wall” to ensure that outsiders cannot critique their
religion. For instance, I came across an apologetics website
which stated:

“Whenever you run across any person who criticizes

the Bible, claims findings of contradiction or error -- they do
not deserve the benefit of the doubt. They have to earn it
from you. Here's why.
“It doesn't take very long to realize that a thorough
understanding of the Bible -- and this would actually apply
to any complex work from any culture -- requires specialized
knowledge, and a broad range of specialized knowledge in a
variety of fields…
“[A]sk yourself this question after considering what
various fields of knowledge a complete and thorough (not to
say sufficient for intelligent discourse, though few even
reach that pinnacle, especially in the critical realm) study of
the Bible requires: [Ancient] Language, Literature, Textual
Criticism, Archaeology, Psychology, Social Sciences,
124
History, Theology…”

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What this really boils down to is an attempt to set the bar so

high for those who question the veracity of the Bible that it
would be utterly impossible for anyone to conceive of doing it.
To be clear, I have no doubt that a professional study of the
Bible, aimed to get at the truth of what the authors intended it to
mean and what it tells us about history, would require some
knowledge from all of these fields, or at least some reading on
the consensus of the experts (in their respective fields).
I did not write this book to answer any of those questions.
What I want to know is: “Is the Bible true in its claims about the
existence and nature of God?”
The author of the apologetics website mentioned above
states an obvious objection to what he wrote: why would God
have made it so hard to understand his Word? His answer is that
although the Bible is difficult and complex from a Historical
standpoint, people still have the ability to learn enough to be
saved. Yet this makes little sense: if I am not in a position to
assess the truth of the Bible, how can I possibly believe it, much
less be saved? How could anyone know that the Bible was
without error if verifying this was damn next to impossible?
So this wall built to keep out critics ultimately keeps out
believers as well. If there were a God who cared about humanity
and wanted it to be saved, he would provide something which
everyone could understand completely and verify for themselves.
He could inspire prophets today just as he allegedly did in the
past. Yet this obviously does not happen. Why not? Is it because
he does not exist?
A similar “wall” seems to have been built by Muslims. It is
often claimed that one has to learn Arabic to “really” understand
the Koran. Why would God erect such a barrier to those who do
not understand Arabic? Once again, let me say that I have no
doubt that an understanding of Arabic is crucial to scholarly
studies of the Koran. But the Koran wasn’t written as a historical
document for future scholars, was it? It was written to
communicate what Mohammed taught about the existence and
nature of God. So if Mohammed was right, why wouldn’t Allah
have inspired prophets in each country to be able to
communicate his message to people in a language they could
understand (along with proof that this really was the message of
God)? The only answer which makes any sense is that Allah
does not exist.
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In conclusion, let me just say that I do not think such

rigorous standards are necessary for us to assess whether the
Bible (or Qu’ran) is true. I believe that, as outsiders and non-
scholars, we should (in general) take the consensus view of
scholars. We should obtain our information from experts in their
respective fields. But we should not concede that we lack the
skills to know whether the Bible or Qu’ran is true or false,
because we can see what the experts are saying about things like
Biblical Archaeology and whether or not the Bible is a valid
account of the past.

The Exodus of Faith

The following story takes place about three thousand years ago
in Egypt: the Pharaoh had the entire nation of Israelite people
enslaved, and although they were forced to work hard, they still
managed to find time for procreation, and so the Israelites were
fruitful and multiplied in number.
The Pharaoh noticed how large the population of his slaves
had become, and so he ordered every baby boy to be tossed into
the Nile. One woman hatched a plan to keep her child from
being slaughtered: she put him in a basket and set him adrift,
perhaps hoping someone would find him. Indeed someone did,
and it was none other than the Pharaoh’s daughter.
She called the child “Moses” because she had drawn him
out of the water. Little did she know that this child would grow
up to be the deliverer of the Israelite people.
From here, most of us remember how the story goes, either
from reading the Bible or from watching The Ten
Commandments: Moses grows up, demands that Pharaoh “Let
his people go,” the Ten Plagues come and pass, then the people
are finally allowed to leave and wander the desert for forty years.
Archaeologists have spent decades digging and re-digging
in the Sinai desert hoping to find some- any- trace of them. It has
been estimated that there were hundreds of thousands of Jews,
who of course were wandering the desert for decades. Surely
they would leave behind such things as pottery, garbage,
weapons, anything. But it is not there. Nor are there any written
Egyptian records of the Israelites inhabiting Egypt during the
time of Ramses.

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The standard Christian/Jewish response to this is that

“absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” But
archaeologists now have the skills to trace very meager remains
left by much smaller nomadic groups. If the Exodus really
happened, then there is simply no excuse for a lack of
archaeological evidence.125 The only reasonable conclusion we
can reach is that the Exodus never took place. It is not a part of
history. This stands as a very damning objection to Judaism, and
to Islam and Christianity, which are based upon it.

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Chapter 7

Against All Gods

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not

omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is
he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he
neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
-Epicurus

The Problem of Evil

The quote above is a concise summary of the “Problem of Evil”

and it is a solid argument against the existence of God (or at least
the most common conceptions of God). This problem has not
escaped the notice of believers, and so they have attempted to
solve this problem (unsuccessfully, in my opinion) for thousands
of years. I will now address the most common responses to the
Problem of Evil and respond to them. I’d also like to remind my
readers that the arguments against the existence of God do not
have to be 100% certain (as I’ve explained in chapter 1). In order
to be successful, an argument against the existence of God only
needs to be more plausible than the doubts we have about it to
count against the probability of God’s existence.

Biblical Defenses

The first biblical explanation for suffering may be found in

Genesis. The story in Genesis is that God created man and
placed him in the garden of Eden. There was no suffering and no
death. God gave man only one rule to follow: Do not eat from
the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. As the story goes,
Adam and Eve disobeyed this rule, and as a result they and their
descendants (right down to modern-day human beings) were
cursed to live a life of hard work, pain, and eventual death.
This explanation fails because it makes absolutely no sense
to punish us for the sins of our ancestors. If human beings have
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free will, then we should all begin life in a perfect environment,

only having it removed if we sin (having free will means that
there is some possibility, however small, that we will not sin). If
we do not have free will, or if we were created with a sinful
nature, then this explanation still makes no sense because God
should have done a better job creating human beings.
Another explanation is that suffering is redemptive. “The
fining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord
trieth the hearts” (KJV, Proverbs 17:3). Although this may
explain some suffering, there are many horrors plaguing the
world which are hard to conceive of as redemptive: For example,
about twenty-five thousand people die every day of starvation.126
The Book of Job depicts suffering as an act of Satan. Job, a
good and righteous man, has his family and fortune taken from
him. He is stricken with boils and becomes so miserable that he
curses the day he was born. Christian philosopher Alvin
Plantinga has also suggested that Satan, or demons, may be
responsible for some suffering. This is no explanation at all: If
God is all-powerful, then he must allow these devils to torture
people. By not stopping these demons, God would still share
some responsibility for this pain. Even the book of Job indicates
this, as the first chapter depicts Satan asking God’s permission to
torture Job.
Some theists answer the Problem of Evil by pointing out
that God will make everything right in the end. The wicked will
get their just desserts, and the righteous will dwell in Heaven
with the Lord. This explanation fails because it does not answer
the question of why we suffer now. Even if God will make
everything right in the end, this does not explain why he does not
make things right now.

The Free Will Defense

The Free Will Defense explains Evil like this:

1. God wanted to create beings that could make free

choices between good and evil.

2. In order to do this, He must allow people the choice to

do evil, otherwise they would not be free.

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This explanation depends upon the “Libertarian” view of

Free Will, which I reject. Libertarian Free Will postulates that an
agent’s actions are not in any sense determined by the law of
cause and effect. Each individual is utterly and completely free
to make any action.
I reject this view of free will because I believe our actions
are determined by our strongest desires and our knowledge of
how to fulfill these desires. Since human beings sometimes have
sick or evil desires that outweigh their other desires (wanting to
use drugs rather than pay the rent), it is not possible to say that a
perfect and rational God created them because he could have
made them without those desires.127
I want to add that this view of Free Will does not absolve us
of moral responsibility. We should still punish criminals because
we want to provide incentives not to commit immoral actions
and also to protect society from these criminals. A better and
more complete defense of this view of Free Will may be found in
Freedom Evolves by Daniel Dennett and Sense and Goodness
without God by Richard Carrier.
Further problems exist with the Free Will defense, such as:
why should people be allowed to actually torture, murder or rape
other human beings? In Matthew 5:28 Jesus said, “Whosoever
looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery
with her already in his heart” (KJV). Couldn’t people simply
have the freedom to contemplate wicked acts while being
prevented from actually performing them? Alternately, couldn’t
the evil acts people wished to perform simply be things like
adultery, eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and
Evil, etc.? In other words, couldn’t people be allowed to have the
free will to perform evil acts without those evil acts leading to
the suffering of others?
It also goes without saying that the Free Will defense does
not explain the existence of natural evils, like hurricanes,
earthquakes, and forest fires which brutally kill and maim people
but are not the result of any free choice on the part of human
beings.
In the interest of fairness, I will mention that some
philosophers have tried to extend the Free Will argument to
account for natural evils. Richard Swinburne argues that in order
to make free choices, human beings must live in a universe that
behaves regularly.128 You cannot choose to poison someone if
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you live in a universe in which the laws of chemistry are not

always the same and certain substances (like cyanide) don’t
always kill. I think this is a convincing argument (as long as you
buy into supernatural, Libertarian Free Will). Yet it still fails to
explain all natural evil, because all natural evils aren’t simply the
inevitable result of living in a lawful universe. The Earth itself
seems almost designed to ensure suffering and death when it
could have (conceivably) been created differently. For example:
earthquakes, caused by tectonic plate activity, kill about ten
thousand people every year.129 An omnipotent God could have
made things differently.

The Multiverse Defense

Here’s how one philosopher summarized the Multiverse

Defense:

“[R]ather than God’s just creating one or more

universes that have no evil, one might imagine that God
thought it better to create all universes that are better to exist
than not to exist. In other words, instead of minimizing evil
by avoiding creating any universes with evil, God might be
seeking to maximize the net good over evil. Therefore,
instead of leaving our universe uncreated because it has evil
in it as well as good, God might have seen that it has more
good than evil and decided that it would be better to exist
130
than not to exist.”

This solution fails because God could have created many

(or an infinity of) universes, but created each and every one
perfect.

Other Defenses

Faced with the argument from evil, theists often retreat to the
explanation that God allows evil because it leads to some
“greater good.” Yet it is extremely difficult to see how mothers
giving birth to stillborn infants or thousands of people starving to
death every day leads to any “greater good.” Now, one could
object that just because something seems to be true does not
mean it actually is true. When I walk outside it doesn’t seem like

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the Earth is moving; but of course it is moving. This objection

might look plausible, but it has a very fatal flaw. The flaw is that
we are completely within our rights to accept what seems to be
the case until we are proven wrong. If you meet a person who
seems to be five feet tall, you are completely justified in
believing that he is five feet tall and not ten feet tall until you are
provided with evidence to the contrary.
Finally, this so-called “explanation” for the existence of evil
is just speculation. No reason is given for us to accept it, so it is
an ad hoc hypothesis. Remember Occam’s razor: the simplest
explanation is most probably correct, and so an explanation of
evil that depends on a completely unsupported assumption (that
God has reasons for allowing evil unknown to us) while the
explanation that evil exists because God does not doesn’t depend
on any ad hoc, un-evidenced conjectures.
Some claim that evil is simply the absence of good, just as
darkness is the absence of light. I have never understood exactly
how this statement is supposed to rebut the argument from evil,
but it cannot because a God who is “very good” and omnipresent
(exists everywhere, as Christians, Jews and Muslims believe)
should not be absent from any place, and hence evil should not
exist anywhere.
Last but not least is the defense that evil exists because God
partially separated himself from us after Adam and Eve sinned.
This is basically just another version of the original sin defense
addressed in “Biblical Defenses” and it faces exactly the same
objections.
The No-God hypothesis remains the simplest and most
powerful explanation of evil and suffering, and must be
considered incredibly strong in light of the fact that it has
withstood intensive scrutiny from Christians, Jews, and Muslims
over the past three thousand years. Thus, an all knowing, all
powerful, and all good God does not exist. Even a God who was
very powerful, basically good, and somewhat aware of things
that go on in the world would be expected to comfort his
creatures through times of pain.

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The Argument from Nonbelief

The Argument from Nonbelief was first formulated by the

atheist philosopher Theodore Drange. I have written my own
version of it which may be stated like this:

1. God is defined as a morally perfect and all-powerful

being.
2. A morally perfect being would not want his creatures to
remain ignorant or unconvinced of his existence,
especially if being ignorant or unconvinced of him
meant spending eternity in hell.
3. An all powerful God would have the means to remove
all reasonable doubt about his existence.
4. But there is reasonable doubt about the validity of the
Bible, Koran, and existence of God. The Bible might
not have been contradicted by archaeology. The Koran
might not contradict itself. The fantastic prophecies
often claimed by believers might have actually stood up
to critical scrutiny. Evil might not exist. God could have
done lots of things to remove these doubts about his
existence. He did not.
5. Premise 4 shows an inconsistency between reality and
the God hypothesis, because God (as we have defined
him) would not leave reasonable doubt about his
existence.
6. Therefore, the Biblical and Koranic Gods do not exist. It
may also be considered probable that a loving and all-
powerful God does not exist, since we would expect
such a God to reveal the truth to humanity.

The Ultimate Boeing 747

In the book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins makes the

following argument: Fred Hoyle once remarked that the odds of
life arising spontaneously are equivalent to the odds of a tornado
sweeping through a junkyard and assembling a brand new
Boeing Jet 747 by chance. Creationists have often used this
statement to argue that life, or certain features of living things,
must have been designed by God. Yet any God capable of fine
tuning the laws of physics, building a cell, or engineering a
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bacterial flagellum must have a very complex and orderly mind

in order to do those things.
If God possesses ordered complexity, and (by the
creationist’s own arguments) ordered complexity must be the
product of design, does God have a designer? He couldn’t,
because if God were the product of some higher designer he
would not be God. The creationists are inconsistent by claiming
that all ordered complexity must be the result of design and then
denying that God (who would be the epitome of complexity, if
he existed) needs a designer.
I believe that this point can be used not only as an excellent
reply to creationists, but also as an excellent stand-alone
argument:

1. Ordered complexity is improbable without an

explanation (that is, without being brought into
existence by a designer, evolution, etc.).
2. God is a being of ordered complexity.
3. Therefore, God is improbable without an explanation.
4. But God does not and could not have an explanation
(such as being the result of an evolutionary process or
the work of a higher designer) because God, by
definition, could never be the end result of evolution
since he is eternal or the creation of designer since he
supposedly designed everything.
5. Therefore, God is improbable.

I will look at the most common objections to this argument

and examine them:

Objection 1: God is eternal.

Eternal existence does not explain why something exists at all.

Perhaps theists could retort that God might be an inexplicable
fact, but if we are going to posit an inexplicable fact, it may as
well be the universe as God. Occam’s Razor tells us that the
simplest explanation is most probably correct, and so the
existence of nature alone is more probable than nature and a
supernatural being.

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Objection 2: God is simple.

Theists sometimes assert that since God has no physical parts, he

is simple. This relies on a very naive and outdated use of the
word “simple.” Here is a quote from a website called The
Freethought Zone which summarizes the problems with this
position:

“[Theists] could claim that human consciousness may

be complex, but the supernatural, spiritual consciousness of
God is not. This type of claim, however, cannot be correct.
Consciousness by its very nature is complex; whether we are
discussing the consciousness of biological organisms or the
consciousness of a hypothetical supernatural being is
irrelevant. To see that consciousness itself is complex,
consider that consciousness requires the ability to store and
access information that is linked together in many intricate
ways as well as the ability to process that information and to
reason. The web of intricately interconnected data that
consciousness requires is extremely complex. One measure
of the complexity of a system is the logarithm of the number
of states of the system. Applied to a conscious system, this
measure of complexity is proportional to the number of
pieces of data that the conscious system knows times the
degree of interconnectedness in the data. There are three
interesting things to note here: 1) this measure of complexity
is very large if a large amount of data is accessible; 2) the
interconnectedness of data that consciousness requires
greatly increases the complexity; and 3) for an omniscient
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being, this measure of the being's complexity diverges.”

Consciousness, and/or the ability to design, to think, to

monitor every atom in the universe since the beginning of time,
are complex processes. Think of how many computer bits of
information it would require to accomplish this task. God is
complex not in the sense of being made up of many physical
parts, but in the informational sense. Thinking beings must go
through certain specific and complex procedures in order to be
able to think and design (which requires piecing together
information in meaningful ways), store information, etc. Those
procedures may be thought of as 'parts' or 'mental organs' even
though they are not physical parts or physical organs. Now,
different sentient beings may have different 'mental organs' or
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their 'mental organs' may function with varying efficiencies. The

totality of 'possible minds' (that is, all minds that are logically
possible) consists of different combinations of 'mental organs'
and different efficiencies of these organs. Very few of the
number of possible minds would even resemble God, and it is
fairly obvious that the number of possible minds is very large.
After all, there are six billion unique human minds in existence
today, plus the minds of intelligent animals and the possible
minds of fictional characters, gods, and spirits that people have
dreamt of over the millennia. I’ll elaborate on this point again
later on, and explain why it means that God is improbable.

Objection 3: God is a necessary being.

I have addressed the arguments for the necessity of God in

chapter 2 and have found them lacking. Now, in the absence of
an argument showing that God is necessary, we ought to assume
he is not. Simply insisting that God has to be defined as
‘necessary’ does not solve the problem because we do not know
that a being who possesses the characteristics of omnipotence,
omniscience, etc. also possesses the characteristic of necessary
existence.

Objection 4: A Spiritual Being Need Not Be Improbable

This objection comes from Alvin Plantinga’s review of The God

Delusion:

“[S]uppose we concede, at least for purposes of

argument, that God is complex. Perhaps we think the more a
being knows, the more complex it is; God, being omniscient,
would then be highly complex. Perhaps so; still, why does
Dawkins think it follows that God would be improbable?
Given materialism and the idea that the ultimate objects in
our universe are the elementary particles of physics, perhaps
a being that knew a great deal would be improbable—how
could those particles get arranged in such a way as to
constitute a being with all that knowledge? Of course we
aren't given materialism. Dawkins is arguing that theism is
improbable; it would be dialectically deficient in excelsis to
argue this by appealing to materialism as a premise. Of
course it is unlikely that there is such a person as God if
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materialism is true; in fact materialism logically entails that

there is no such person as God; but it would be obviously
question-begging to argue that theism is improbable because
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materialism is true.”

We need not be given materialism to know that theism is

improbable. Suppose that we did posit the existence of a spiritual
being as an inexplicable “brute” fact. How many different
possible spiritual beings are there? There might be some spiritual
beings that have little or no intelligence. There might be some
spiritual beings who do not have the powers or mental abilities
ascribed to God. There are trillions of possible spiritual beings.
Think about it: Since theists say that people have souls (or
spirits) then the total number of spiritual beings would be at least
as high as the number of people who have lived on earth (several
billion) plus all of the millions of unique spiritual beings (gods,
goddesses, elves, angels, jinns, etc.) created in the minds of
human beings.
The vast, vast majority of these possible spiritual beings
fall short of being anything like an all powerful, all knowing, and
perfect personal being. My argument may be summarized as
follows:

1. Theists posit a single spiritual being as the explanation

for all which exists.
2. When we consider all possible spiritual beings (Spirits
with an IQ of 80, Violent Spirits, Evil Spirits, Insane
Spirits, and so on) we realize that, even assuming a
spiritual being as an inexplicable brute fact, an
intelligent, benevolent, and powerful being like God is
not likely to be this spiritual being. (I am assuming all
spirit beings are equally probable, simply because I see
no reason to assign ‘God’ a higher probability of
existing than any other possible spirit being).
3. Therefore, if there is a spirit being who began the
universe, it is highly unlikely that he is anything like
what human beings usually think of as ‘God’.

So theists still need to explain why God exists rather than

any of the countless other possible spiritual beings or no spiritual
being at all. God is still improbable.
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Objection 5: We do not have to explain the explanation.

Positing an incredibly complex, non-necessary being (like God)

as an ultimate explanation for complexity is not satisfying
precisely because we are left with so much unexplained
complexity, which is the very thing creationists seek to remove
when they hypothesize that God exists. When an explanation
(such as God) is more unlikely or equally unlikely as what it is
intended to explain (like the human eye or the bacterial
flagellum), we have no compelling reason to accept it over the
hypothesis that whatever we are trying to explain (like the eye or
flagellum) is simply the result of chance.

The Argument from Disorder

Since God is normally defined as a perfect and rational being, we

should expect that if he created the universe, then the universe
will reflect his rationality and perfection. The universe should be
highly ordered and well-designed.
In many ways the universe does exhibit order. The laws of
physics make our world predictable and intelligible. However,
on many levels our universe does not reflect the work of a
perfect intelligence. Consider the fact that our universe began in
complete chaos and maximum disorder in the first moment after
the Big Bang.133 Philosopher Quentin Smith argues that this is
inconsistent with the hypothesis that God caused the early
universe to exist. He sums up his case better than I ever could:

“It is perfectly reasonable to expect a very good, wise,

and powerful person to begin his creation in a very beautiful
and magnificent way that exhibits an admirably high degree
of naturally good order. ‘Complete chaos is just ugly,’ and a
perfectly rational finite mind would predict that ugliness is
not the very first thing that a good, all-powerful person
would want to create. This expectation is so natural and
obvious that the belief that the early universe contained the
Garden of Eden persisted in Jewish and Christian thought for
nearly two thousand years, requiring extensive scientific
evidence to be falsified.
“This is why the current observational evidence that
the beginning of spacetime is a state of maximal chaos
falsifies theism. The theistic hypothesis is predictively
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unsuccessful and is explanatorily valueless, since ‘Because

God created it’ is not an explanatorily informative answer to
‘Why is the first state of spacetime totally chaotic rather than
ordered in a very beautiful and admirably good way?’”134

Conclusion

All of these arguments show that an all powerful, loving, and

perfect God does not exist. But might there still be some sort of
God, perhaps one that is not quite all-powerful, or perfect, or
rational?
The Argument from Evil shows that an all good, all
powerful, all knowing God cannot exist. In fact, as I discussed, it
shows that even a God who was somewhat powerful, somewhat
aware of the evil in the world, and even somewhat sympathetic
to humans beings cannot exist.
The Ultimate Boeing 747 Argument shows that it is
unlikely for a God of great complexity to exist. The Argument
from Disorder shows that a perfect and/or highly intelligent God
does not exist. The Argument from Nonbelief shows that a God
who wants us to know about him does not exist, unless he has no
power to provide evidence of himself.
Still, I suppose it is logically possible that a spirit being of
little intelligence/complexity/goodness exists and that he
somehow brought the universe into existence. However, there is
no evidence of such a being, and, as I hope to show in the next
few chapters, there is no need for us to invoke such a being to
explain anything in the first place.

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Chapter 8

Naturalism

Naturalism: What it is

There are several definitions of Naturalism, and although they all

mean essentially the same thing, I think it will be useful to list a
few. According to infidels.org (one of the leading websites
promoting Naturalism):

“As defined by philosopher Paul Draper, naturalism is

‘the hypothesis that the natural world is a closed system’ in
the sense that ‘nothing that is not a part of the natural world
affects it.’ More simply, it is the denial of the existence of
supernatural causes. In rejecting the reality of supernatural
events, forces, or entities, naturalism is the antithesis of
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supernaturalism.”

Here is another definition from philosopher C. Stephen

Layman:

“Naturalism: (1) There is a self-organizing physical

reality (i.e., there is a physical reality whose nature is not
imposed by a god or by any other force or agent), (2)
physical reality exists either necessarily, eternally, or by
chance, and (3) leaving aside some special cases [such as
numbers and abstract objects], all entities are physical
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entities.”

Finally, I will offer my idea of what Naturalism entails:

Naturalism is the idea that minds come from matter. Everything
which goes on in the mind is a result of what goes on in the
brain, and minds cannot exist without brains (or some other
physical entity). Theism and Supernaturalism entail the opposite:
matter came from one or more minds (of a God, gods, goddesses,
etc.), minds can exist independently of matter and are not
reducible to material processes (for instance, supernaturalism
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would entail that thoughts are not due to electrical and chemical
activity in the brain).

Falsification of Naturalism

It goes without saying that if any supernatural phenomenon were

proven to exist, the Naturalist hypothesis would be proven
wrong. I do not believe that any supernatural phenomena exist,
and I believe this for the following reasons:

1. I have never encountered any type of supernatural

phenomenon myself. I know people who claim to have
experienced such things, but their descriptions of such
supernatural events seem to me to be due to their own
misinterpretation of these events. For example, one man told me
that he saw a ghost. He and several others were in a car one night
and apparently saw a figure walking off a bridge. They stopped,
got out of the car, and investigated, but could not find anyone
there. I don’t find this persuasive: What if they just saw a mist or
cloud of fog that happened to take a human shape? How do we
know that this figure wasn’t a fast running jogger who got out of
sight by the time they got out of the car? In any case, such
testimony does not warrant the conclusion that ghosts exist.

2. James Randi has, for many years, offered a million

dollar prize for proof of absolutely any paranormal or
supernatural phenomenon. This money has never been claimed,
despite numerous applications and invitations to
psychics/dowsers/etc. to take the challenge. There exist many
other organizations, such as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry,
which has not turned up a shred of evidence for the supernatural
in spite of countless investigations.

3. The evidence offered in favor of supernatural

phenomena is weak, problematic, and has a long history of being
completely debunked after scientific investigation. Dr. Susan
Blackmore authored a book, In Search of the Light, which details
her attempts over many years to prove that psychic and
paranormal powers really exist. She originally believed in
psychic powers, but was later forced to change her position after
years of trying to find these phenomena to no avail. I would
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highly recommend her book, as it details a very thorough search

for these phenomena and how, again and again and again, these
psychic forces failed to show up in experiments.
I also recommend the book Spook by Mary Roach, which
details her research into the afterlife and how she came to see
that the evidence for an afterlife (of any kind) was virtually non-
existent.

The Mind is Natural

For thousands of years Supernaturalists have thought that the

human mind was not reducible to anything physical. They
thought that human beings had an immaterial, supernatural soul
which gave rise to the behaviors and personalities of individuals.
Modern science indicates precisely the opposite: The mind
is reducible to the brain and completely dependent upon it. I
have already discussed some evidence of this in chapter 2 under
the “Argument from Consciousness.”
A memorable piece of evidence for mind-brain dependence
is the curious story of Phineas Gage. Gage was a twenty-five
year old railroad worker who was known to his co-workers as
efficient and even-tempered. One day, while excavating rock, a
premature explosion of dynamite sent an iron bar through Gage’s
skull. It went straight through Gage’s frontal cortex, which is
responsible for inhibition and motor control. Predictably enough,
after the accident Gage was a changed man: He would go into
fits of rage, swear uncontrollably, and behave childishly.137
This story is very profound because it indicates that our
emotions, our temperaments, indeed, the very people we are, are
completely dependent upon the brain. No soul or spirit needed.
Before I leave this topic, I should mention something called
“Dualist Interactionism” (which I will refer to as ‘DI’). The
concept behind DI is, as William Lane Craig put it in a debate
with Paul Draper, that the mind plays the brain the way a
musician plays a piano. Of course, if the piano is not tuned or if
some of its keys are broken, then the musician will not be able to
play it well. Likewise, if the brain is damaged perhaps the soul is
not able to do as fine a job ‘playing’ it. I admit that this might
explain certain phenomena, such as a person becoming forgetful
after the onset of Alzheimer’s. However, the case of Phineas
Gage shows that it is not just cognitive abilities which can be lost
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by brain injury, but your very personality, behavior and

temperament (which must reflect what theists call your ‘soul’)
may be affected by brain injury. DI does not explain this very
well. Naturalism does.
The conclusion that the mind is nothing more than the brain
is of consequence to us because:

1. It destroys the dogma of the soul, which is a key concept

to most religions and forms of Supernaturalism.

2. It fulfills a key prediction of Naturalism: Mental things

are ultimately reducible to non-mental things.

The Argument from Evolution

The second argument I’d like to present in favor of Naturalism

comes from philosopher Paul Draper. Jeffrey Jay Lowder of
Internet Infidels gives a clear and concise formulation of the
argument:

“First, [Draper] observes that the falsity of special

creationism is much more probable given naturalism than
given theism. If naturalism is true, then by definition special
creationism is false. If, however, theism is true, special
creationism is at least as likely to be true as it is likely to be
false.
“Second, assuming special creationism is false,
evolution is much more probable given naturalism than
given theism. Given that complex life exists, what makes
evolution so likely given naturalism is the lack of plausible
naturalistic alternatives to evolution. Given theism, however,
alternatives to evolution are somewhat more likely, simply
because there is less reason to assume the complex must
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arise from the simple.”

This argument is solid and greatly increases the probability

of Naturalism being true. It does presuppose the truth of
evolution, but this assumption is warranted given the vast
amount of evidence for evolution, some of which I will discuss
in chapter 10.

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Nature is All We See and All We Need

The last point I’d like to make in favor of Naturalism is twofold:

Nature is all we see and all that we need to explain anything we
want to explain.
There is no good evidence that anything supernatural exists
now, and so the simplest, most probable hypothesis is that
Nature is all that is (recall that in chapter 1 I discussed why
simpler explanations are to be preferred).
Secondly, Supernaturalism offers us no greater explanatory
power when it comes to any events in the past, including the
very origin of the universe. This is something I will develop over
the next few chapters. For now, I think it will be sufficient to say
that Naturalism is the simpler explanation for both the present
and the past, and it is therefore more probable.

The Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism

Finally I turn to an argument against Naturalism. Christian

philosopher Alvin Plantinga has famously argued that, given
Naturalism and Evolution, it is highly unlikely that our beliefs
are true. Thus you cannot accept Naturalism and Evolution, or
you would be implying that most of your own beliefs are false,
which of course would mean your belief in Naturalism is
probably false. So believing in both Evolution and Naturalism is
self-defeating.
How does Plantinga justify his claim that true beliefs are
unlikely to evolve? Here is his defense:

“Perhaps Paul [a prehistoric hominid] very much likes

the idea of being eaten, but when he sees a tiger, always runs
off looking for a better prospect, because he thinks it
unlikely the tiger he sees will eat him. This will get his body
parts in the right place so far as survival is concerned,
without involving much by way of true belief. ... Or perhaps
he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly, cuddly pussycat and
wants to pet it; but he also believes that the best way to pet it
is to run away from it. ... Clearly there are any number of
belief-cum-desire systems that equally fit a given bit of
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behaviour.”

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I find this evolutionary scenario very implausible. Natural

selection would surely favor reliable and accurate memory (for
obvious reasons), and so our prehistoric hominid Paul would
eventually realize that running away from the tiger is not the best
way to pet it. My point is that if false beliefs have evolved, then
we should be able to realize it because the false belief will be
inconsistent with our other beliefs.
In an email correspondence, Plantinga responded to me:

“First, you can have whole systems of beliefs that are

false, but both cohere and are adaptive. For example,
suppose a tribe thinks everything is a witch and suppose they
can only form beliefs of the sort ‘this witch has P’ for some
property P. If they ascribe the right properties to the right
‘witches’, their beliefs will be false, will cohere with each
other, and will be adaptive.”

Plantinga never gave a reason why such a useless belief

(that all things are witches) would evolve, so I believe his
argument may be safely disregarded.
The real nail in the coffin for Plantinga’s argument is that
specific and situational beliefs (and desires) are not things which
evolve. There are no genes for a belief that John F. Kennedy was
assassinated by the government or that Mars is home to lots of
little green men.
Our specific, situational beliefs are not products of
evolution, but our more general beliefs, which hold true under all
circumstances, may be. Abstract reasoning, the use of deductive
logic, and mathematical reasoning may very well be things
which our brains were hard-wired to use by natural selection.
And these general principles are much less likely to be false in
light of the fact that they should not be adaptive if they were
false. How could a false method of reasoning be as adaptive as a
true system of reasoning? Under what circumstances could
creatures evolve to think that two plus two is thirteen or that
contradictions can exist? Unless and until Plantinga can come up
with a plausible scenario which would make such an
evolutionary step possible, his argument will prove
unpersuasive.140

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Chapter 9

The Big Bang, Being, and

Beginnings

The Big Bang: What it is and How We Know it’s True

The Big Bang theory states that in the beginning all matter,
energy, and space were compressed into a single point called a
singularity. Although some physicists now challenge the idea
that there was an infinitely small point, it may be taken as
virtually certain that our universe began with very little size and
then began expanding. No one is sure what caused this
expansion, mainly because the laws of physics as we know them
do not apply at this first moment in time (there are technical
reasons for those, which I cannot go into here). Physicists are
still working hard to gain a complete understanding of the laws
of physics, so until they do we will not necessarily be able to
know what caused the Big Bang (assuming it had a cause, which
is an open question).
After the expansion began, gravity caused matter to clump
together. These clumps would eventually become stars, planets,
galaxies, and everything else we see in the universe today.
How do we know all this is true? There are several
compelling lines of evidence. The first is Edwin Hubble’s
observations. When a source of light is zooming away from you
at high speeds, the light it reflects shifts toward the red end of the
electromagnetic spectrum. This is known as the “Doppler
Effect.” What Hubble noticed was that almost every galaxy was
redshifted, meaning that the universe was flying apart141.
The natural extrapolation from such an observation is to
suppose that the universe was much smaller in the past.
Extrapolating as far back as we can gets us to the Big Bang
singularity.
There are also scientific predictions made by the Big Bang
which have been verified. I will give just two:

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1. Cosmic Microwave Backround Radiation. In 1948 two

scientists predicted that we should still be able to detect some
radiation left over from the Big Bang. They predicted that we
should be able to detect this as a radio signal with a wavelength
of less than a millimeter, and that we should be able to detect it
from every direction in the sky, since the Big Bang was a cosmic
event. In 1965, this prediction was confirmed.142

2. The Big Bang theory accurately predicts the proportions

of light and heavy elements that we observe today.143

It is very reasonable to accept the Big Bang theory based on

the evidence and based on the fact that no other cosmological
model explains the data as well as it does. However, the Big
Bang theory only explains the earliest moments of the known
universe. It does not tell us how this matter, energy, space, and
physical laws came to be. It does not tell us why there is
something rather than nothing. Nevertheless, there are plausible
speculations which can account for these things, and so this is
what we will discuss next.

Matter and Energy: Possible Origins

One of the most curious discoveries of modern physics is that the

universe looks precisely as it should if it came from nothing. For
example, the total energy of the universe is zero because there
are equal amounts of positive and negative energy.144 The total
electric charge of the universe is also zero because of equal
amounts of positive and negative charge.145 Therefore, the origin
of the universe’s energy and electric charge would not have
broken any law of physics had they emerged from nothing
(“matter and energy can be neither created nor destroyed”).
The sole exception to this trend is matter. There are not
equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the universe, and so
the total matter in the universe is not zero. Some scientists think
that antimatter decays at a faster rate than matter, which would
explain this asymmetry.146
Overall, it seems plausible that the matter, energy, and
electric charge of the universe could have originated from
nothing because it would not necessarily have broken the laws of
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conservation. But how did this transition occur? How do we get

zero net energy from zero energy period? This is not known.
However, there is at least one plausible answer to this question:
From physics it is known that simple states have a tendency to
transition into more complex states.147 Now, since nothingness is
about the simplest state that could be, then it should also be
unstable and likely to undergo a transformation, which could
only be a transformation into something (since there isn’t
anything else for ‘nothing’ to become, other than something!).
There is another argument that suggests that ‘nothing’, if it
ever existed, would probably become something. ‘Nothing’ is a
state which does not contain anything that determines what it
will become in the future. ‘Nothing’ doesn’t even contain
anything that would preserve the state of nothingness. It follows
that if nothing existed, it could become anything.148 Let me say
that again: since ‘nothing’ does not contain anything whatsoever
to determine future states (including a future state of
nothingness), all future states are possible. ‘Nothing’ might
remain ‘nothing’ for all eternity, but that would only be one
possibility out of an infinite number of possibilities.
Of course, there are some philosophers who would object,
and say that something coming from nothing is absurd. Isn’t
getting ‘something from nothing’ like adding zero plus zero and
getting one? Maybe. But remember that our universe contains
zero total energy and zero total electric charge because there is
equal positive and negative amounts of each. So our universe
coming from nothing is not like adding two zeros and getting
one, it’s more like the equation ‘zero equals one plus negative
one’, which, of course, is completely true and not at all absurd.
Now, I’m not claiming that any of this proven or that I
know for certain that everything came from nothing. What I’m
claiming is that this is a plausible answer to the question “Why is
there something rather than nothing?”

An Eternal Reality?

In contrast to the hypothesis that everything came from nothing,

we have the possibility that something always existed.
The usual criticism of eternal universe theories is that the
law of increasing entropy (disorder) would prevent such a thing.
If the universe becomes more and more disorderly with the
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passing of time, then an eternal universe should be completely

disordered by now. Yet it is not. Therefore, the universe is not
eternal.
Yet there are models that can avoid the entropy problem.
Rem Edwards writes that, “[Cosmologists] speculate that when a
cosmic epoch shrinks to quantum size, quantum effects wash out
all existing entropy, all information about what went before; and
thus each new epoch starts afresh.”149
Although these scenarios are certainly very interesting, they
are also very speculative and, of course, leave the actual
existence of the universe unexplained. The universe may be
eternal, but why does it exist at all? Maybe it is inexplicable.
Maybe future discoveries in physics will show that its existence
is necessary. As of now, it is anyone’s guess.

Another Possibility for the Origin of Time

Another possibility is that the universe has always existed, in the

sense that it exists throughout all time, but time itself is not past
eternal. If you had a time machine, perhaps if you traveled back
in time you would come to the first microsecond of the Big Bang
and be unable to travel back any further. There would be no
“before” the Big Bang just as there would be no “north” of the
north pole.
Still, this scenario leaves unexplained why a first moment in
time should exist at all. This is not necessarily a problem as non-
necessary things could exist, but I find it unsatisfying.

Conclusion

All answers to the question “Why is there something rather than

nothing?” are speculative and unproved. Hopefully future
research in physics will resolve this problem. Until then, we have
three basic possibilities:

1. The universe was somehow brought into existence from

nothing. It is not known how this could occur, but it seems that
to do so would not break any laws of physics.

2. The universe is eternal and inexplicable or (somehow)

necessary.
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3. The universe has existed in every moment of time, but

time does not go on forever and ever. Perhaps the first moment
exists necessarily or is an inexplicable “brute fact.”

Life’s Origins

Most theories concerning the origin of life have three basic steps:

1. The formation of organic molecules. Before we can have

life, we must have the materials that life is made of (amino acids,
nucleic acids, etc.).
Scientists have had a great deal of success producing these
molecules when they mix chemicals present on the early earth
and add a source of energy. One example of this is the infamous
Miller-Urey experiment in which scientists created a mixture of
chemicals they believed were present on the early earth and sent
zaps of electricity through the “atmosphere” they created to
simulate lightning. After a few days, amino acids (the building
blocks of proteins) were found in the experimental setup in
abundance! Although this experiment has been criticized
because we now know the early atmosphere was different from
the one Miller used, the experiment has been repeated under
more accurate conditions and amino acids were still produced.150
Further experiments have shown that the building blocks of
RNA (a close cousin of DNA) form under prebiotic
conditions.151

2. The linking together of these organic molecules and

formation of a “replicator.” Scientists have found experimentally
that chains of RNA (a relative of DNA) thirty or forty bases long
can form in both ice and clay.152 Further research has shown that
short RNA enzymes have the ability to reproduce and evolve.153

3. The population of replicators would then need to evolve

into more complex entities. In chapter 3 I discussed the evolution
of primitive strands of RNA to more complex DNA-based life.
Next I will discuss how things evolve (natural selection).

For more information on the origin of life, please see:

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Genesis: The Scientific Quest For Life’s Origins by Robert

Hazen (2007)

The Origin of Life by Albrecht Moritz (2006)

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html

http://exploringorigins.org/

http://biologos.org/questions/the-origin-of-life/

Nick Matzke, “What Critics of Critics of Neo-Creationists

Get Wrong: A Reply to Gordy Slack” Panda’s Thumb, (July 3,
2008).
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/07/what-critics-
of.html

Natural Selection

Natural selection is a very simple process. However, Richard

Dawkins has commented that, “[P]erhaps you need to be steeped
in natural selection, immersed in it, swim about in it, before you
can truly appreciate its power.”154 I agree with Dawkins whole-
heartedly and so I have decided to put forth a thorough
explanation of natural selection.
This is natural selection in a nutshell:

1. There is variation amongst living things.

2. Some variations (or mutations) give an organism a

higher chance of survival, and so a higher percentage of
organisms with these successful variations will be available to
mate as sexually mature adults, and therefore these successful
organisms will, on average, leave behind more offspring than
others. The offspring, of course, will very likely inherit the
successful mutations of their parents.

3. Variations that help organisms survive and reproduce

become common in populations because of this.

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Biologist Sean Carroll gives an example of natural selection

in a species of mice that comes in both dark and light coated
forms. Populations of mice that live on dark, volcanic rock tend
to be dark, simply because they blend in with their environment.
Lightly colored mice are easily spotted against the dark
backround by birds and other predators, and so they have a lower
chance of survival. Since more dark colored mice survive, the
next generation will have a higher percentage of dark colored
mice because there are more dark mice making babies. Since the
genetic variation which causes a dark colored coat will likely be
passed on to most or all of the dark mices’ offspring, more dark
mice will exist. So the environment determines (or selects for)
the characteristics of a species based on what characteristics
allow a greater chance of survival.
PBS Evolution explains the recent evolution of the Darwin
Finch:

“The major factor influencing survival of the medium

ground finch is the weather, and thus the availability of food.
The medium ground finch has a stubby beak and eats mostly
seeds. Medium ground finches are variable in size and
shape, which makes them a good subject for a study of
evolution.
“The first event that [researchers] saw affect the food
supply was a drought that occurred in 1977. For 551 days
the islands received no rain. Plants withered and finches
grew hungry. The tiny seeds the medium ground finches
were accustomed to eating grew scarce. Medium ground
finches with larger beaks could take advantage of alternate
food sources because they could crack open larger seeds.
The smaller-beaked birds couldn't do this, so they died of
starvation.” (references for this quote and the former
example of natural selection can be found under footnote
155).

Another case to ponder is that of Lactose tolerance in humans:

Only in populations which have herded cattle for centuries is
lactose tolerance common.155 The people of Japan and China, for
instance, did not herd cattle in the past, and today they are
usually unable to consume dairy products. Why is this? In earlier
times food was not as abundant as it is now. Having the ability to
digest dairy products would have been a major advantage: It
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meant an extra source of food. During times of famine, being

able to consume something as nourishing as milk or cheese may
have meant the difference between life and death. Through the
centuries, the population would certainly go through many
periods of famine, and each one would reduce the number of
lactose intolerant individuals, while preserving the lactose
tolerant. Eventually the population was primarily composed of
lactose-tolerant individuals.

The Cumulative Power of Natural Selection

The important thing about natural selection is that it can explain

the complexity and diversity of life on earth. Although it is
difficult to picture exactly how (from the examples I have given)
this will become clearer with a few examples.
Natural selection is not a random process. It is a selection
process which keeps beneficial variations in a population and
removes harmful variations.
If you buy a lottery ticket with six one-digit numbers, the
odds of matching the winning sequence by pure chance are one
in a million (There are six numbers, and ten possibilities for each
number if you count zero as a number).
But what if we change things so that the lottery is not pure
chance, but works through a selection process? What if the
lottery number stayed the same every week, you were not told
what it was, but you were told whenever one of your numbers
matched the sequence (For example, if the first number was one,
and your ticket’s first number was one, you would be told. Since
the lottery number stays the same from week to week, you would
have one number figured out)?
Suppose that the first week you played, you picked out
some numbers at random. Let’s say that your number sequence
was 111111. You lost, but were told that the first number was
correct. So the next week you buy ten tickets, all with the first
number as ‘1’ and the other numbers varying from ticket to
ticket. You are told that the ticket you purchased with the
number sequence closest to the jackpot sequence is 144876. You
are told that the last number was correct. So you only have the
middle four digits to figure out. In the third week you also buy
ten tickets, and the closest matching sequence is 125786. You
learn that the first two numbers and last number are correct. The
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next week your closest matching ticket is 123666. You are told
that only the middle two digits are incorrect. You try out each
possible digit for those numbers and eventually hit the jackpot
with the winning sequence 123456.
Pretty amazing, isn’t it? You managed to beat one in a
million odds like clockwork, right? Wrong. The odds are one in
a million when chance alone is at work. When you add a
selection process, the odds become almost one hundred percent.
The lottery parable I have given illustrates how natural selection
acts in the wild: The lottery tickets reproduce themselves just
like plants and animals do, leaving behind many offspring from
generation to generation. The tickets ‘inherit’ their numbers from
the previous generation, just like plants and animals inherit their
characteristics from their parent(s). From generation to
generation, there is slight variation between the parent ticket and
the child ticket, just like in the wild. Instead of an intelligent
agent ‘selecting’ the tickets that are closer to the winning
number, in the wild we have the environment mindlessly killing
or reducing the lifespan of the organisms less suited to it.
In conclusion, I want to draw attention to the many
examples scientists have observed of mutation and natural
selection acting to create: Bacteria have been observed evolving
new molecular machinery,156 we have seen new species157 and
even new traits and abilities evolve.158 We know, by both direct
observation and by theoretical calculations, that the processes of
natural selection and random variation are capable of producing
astonishing complexity and structures remarkably well-suited to
their functions.

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Chapter 10

Evolution: The Evidence

Introduction

Evolution usually refers to a process of change over time.

Evolutionary Theory is a bit different. Evolutionary Theory
states that all living things on earth are the descendants of one or
a few primitive species. Plants and animals of different species
are (distant) cousins to one another. Although there may be
processes that cause genetic change which scientists are not
aware of, the genetic differences between species are easily
accounted for by random mutation and natural selection. Since
we know that both of these things occur (and that they are
sufficient to explain everything), it is simpler to suppose that this
is the only process at work.159 This chapter will focus on the
evidence for common ancestry and will refute creationist
objections to it.

The Fossil Record

Since Evolutionary Theory states that species alive today

evolved from more primitive species, we can expect to find
fossils which share some traits of the more ancient species yet
also have traits of the newer species. For example, if birds
evolved from dinosaurs, we may expect to find birds with
reptilian characteristics or dinosaurs with avian (bird)
characteristics. And, just as evolutionary theory predicts, we do.
Archaeopteryx is one such example.160 Taking Biology at
my local college, I learned that a defining characteristic of birds
is that they do not have post-anal tails. Yet Archaeopteryx does
have a post-anal tail, just like a theropod dinosaur. No bird alive
today has teeth either, yet Archaeopteryx does, just like a
theropod dinosaur. No theropod dinosaur has feathers so well
adapted for flight (like a bird), but Archaeopteryx does. Fossils

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such as this one are exactly what we expect to find if

Evolutionary Theory is correct.
Tiktaalik is an intermediate fossil between fish and
amphibians. It has ribs like a tetrapod (four-legged animal) but
scales like a fish. It has fins like a fish, but the bones appear
more like wrist, hand, and finger bones seen in other animals. To
top it all off, the sediment the fossil was discovered in dates to
about twelve million years before the appearance of the first true
tetrapod amphibians. In short, the fossil shares characteristics of
fish and tetrapod-amphibians, and lived before the first tetrapods
and long after the first fish, exactly as Evolutionary Theory
would predict. The discoverer of the fossil set up a website, and I
strongly encourage you to visit it so that you may see the
evidence for yourself:

http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/

Listen to how one news station described the discovery of a

dinosaur called Albertaceratops:

“The dinosaur's horns, thick as a human arm, are like

those of triceratops — which came 10 million years later.
However, this animal belonged to a subfamily that usually
had bony nubbins a few inches long above their eyes…
“That makes the newly found creature an intermediate
between [later] forms with large horns and [earlier] small-
horned relatives, said State of Utah paleontologist Jim
Kirkland, who…identified Zuniceratops…He predicted then
that something like Ryan's find would turn up.
“‘Lo and behold, evolutionary theory actually works,’
161
he said.”

These fossils are not the only “missing links” discovered

from their evolutionary lineage. Many dinosaurs covered in
primitive feathers have been discovered, including
Sinosauropteryx and Dilongus Paradoxus (a relative of the T.
Rex).162 Many fossils have been discovered which fill in the gaps
between fish and tetrapods.163 And there is a very complete
series of Ceratopsian fossils.164
Nor are these fossil sequences the only ones supporting
Evolution. A very smooth fossil sequence shows the evolution
from reptiles to mammals165. There is a very smooth fossil
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sequence showing the evolution of horses: The earliest fossil

horses are small and have five toes, later ones have four toes,
further on are larger three-toed horses, and the latest horses have
just a single toe and are very large.166 Whales have a similar
sequence, consisting of Indohyus, Pakicetus, Ambulocetus,
Dorudon, Basilosaurus, and many others. One of the most
interesting features of the whale fossil sequence is the evolution
of the “blowhole”: The earliest whale fossils have their nostrils
at the front-end of their skull (as dogs and wolves do), later
fossils have the nostrils placed further up the snout (closer to the
top of the head), and the latest whale fossils have nostrils at the
top of the skull, just as modern whales do.167 The final example
I’m going to present is the human fossil record. These are the
fossil skulls that have been discovered. Notice how there is a
drastic increase in cranial (skull) size over time:

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Creationist Objections to Fossil Evidence

The most frequent objection to the fossil evidence is that there

are too few intermediate fossils. This is false. Researchers at the
University of Bath conducted a study which showed that the
dinosaurian fossil record is exactly what one would expect if
evolution had occurred.168 Further studies have shown, quite
conclusively, that the rates of evolution in the fossil record are
no higher than the rates of evolutionary change occurring
today.169 There are no big gaps in the fossil record that leave
room for intelligent design.
Another common objection to fossil evidence is that the
fossil record shows many “sudden appearances” of new types of
plants and animals. The most famous example of this is the
“Cambrian Explosion,” a time period in which most living phyla
originated in a relatively short period of time. This poses no
problem for Evolutionary Theory, as there are intermediate
fossils between invertebrates and vertebrates (and other phyla)170
as well as natural explanations for the “sudden” increase in
diversity. For instance, some scientists think that the genes
controlling development originated in the Cambrian.
Young-Earth Creationists (Creationists that believe the earth
is less than ten thousand years old) claim that Noah’s Flood
explains the order of the fossil record. I believe Paleontologist
Stephen Jay Gould offered the most concise (and devastating)
reply to these claims:

“[To reconcile the fossil record with creationism,

creationists] offer three suggestions. The first -- hydrological
-- holds that denser and more streamlined objects would
have descended more rapidly and should populate the
bottom strata (in conventional geology, the oldest strata).
The second -- ecological -- envisions a sorting responsive to
environment. Denizens of the ocean bottom were overcome
by the flood waters first, and should lie in the lower strata;
inhabitants of mountaintops postponed their inevitable
demise, and now adorn our upper strata. The third --
anatomical or functional -- argues that certain animals, by
their high intelligence or superior mobility, might have
struggled successfully for a time, and ended up at the top.
“All three proposals have been proven false. The lower
strata abound in delicate, floating creatures, as well as

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spherical globs. Many oceanic creatures -- whales and

teleost fishes in particular -- appear only in upper strata, well
above hordes of terrestrial forms. Clumsy sloths (not to
mention hundreds of species of marine invertebrates) are
restricted to strata lying well above others that serve as
exclusive homes for scores of lithe and nimble small
171
dinosaurs and pterosaurs.”

One last objection is that evolutionists cannot “prove” that

one fossil species is the ancestor of another. This completely
misses the point: Evolutionary Theory predicts that we should
find primitive mammals with reptilian characteristics, primitive
amphibians with characteristics of fish, primitive bipedal
primates that have a mixture of human and non-human traits, etc.
Finding fossils like these is exactly what we would expect if
evolution were true, and if we did not find such fossils it would
indicate that evolution was false. These fossils stand as evidence
for Evolutionary Theory because they were predicted by it.

Genetic Evidence

A remarkable piece of evidence for evolution is the

“pseudogenes”, which are extra copies of genes that have no
apparent function. From time to time a gene will be “duplicated”
by accident. This is a fairly rare event, and where the gene copy
ends up in the genetic code is basically left up to chance.
Although this is rare, evolution occurs over millions of
years and so we can easily expect gene duplication to have taken
place many times. Furthermore, if all living things share
common ancestors, we can expect that they have inherited these
bogus genes from their ancestors, and so different species, like
Gorillas and Chimps, should have lots of the same
“pseudogenes” in the same genomic spots. Since, once again,
gene duplications are rare and random, the odds of the exact
same pseudogenes lying in the exact same places of the genome
must be very low (unless, of course, they inherited them from a
common ancestor). As predicted, this is the case: humans and
their primate relatives (and mammalian relatives, and vertebrate
relatives) share many of the same nonfunctional gene copies in
the same genomic spots.172

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Even more intriguing are the “fossil” genes that are only
explicable through Evolutionary Theory. For example, birds still
have the genes for forming teeth,173 Humans still have the genes
for forming tails, and whales still have the genes for forming legs
and feet.174 How can one explain this except as “leftover” genetic
material inherited from ancestral species?
A line of genetic evidence which is quite similar to the
pseudogene evidence is the “endogenous retroviruses” (hereafter
referred to as “ERVs”). ERVs create DNA copies of themselves
and insert themselves into their host’s genome so they may be
passed along with the host. On a rare occasion, when this viral
insertion takes place within a sperm or egg, the virus will be
passed down to the organism that develops from it (because the
virus is in its genetic code). Since the virus is in the DNA, it will
also be passed on to all of that organism’s descendants. Just like
pseudogenes, the ERV inserts itself randomly into the genome.175
Based on this we can make two predictions: The first is that
we should find the same ERVs in the same genomic locations
across many related species (because they were inherited from
an ancestral species). The second is that the more closely related
two species are, the more ERVs they should have in common.
Both of these predictions have proven correct: There are many
ERVs found in the primates, and in precisely the same genomic
spots. Furthermore, evolutionary “family” trees constructed on
the basis of ERVs are remarkably consistent with other “family”
trees. On the basis of anatomical evidence and geographical
circumstances, Evolutionary Theory predicts that Humans will
be more closely related to African primates than South American
ones, and this is exactly what ERV family trees show us.176
Here is another striking piece of genetic evidence from the
primate lineage: for the past few decades scientists have known
that Human beings have 23 pairs of chromosomes while our
closest relatives (the Gorilla and Chimp) have 24 pairs. When
attempting to reconstruct evolutionary history, scientists
frequently invoke the principle of parsimony: the Evolutionary
scenario with the fewest number of steps is most probably
correct (this parallels the general principle that the simplest
explanation is most probably correct). Since two out of three
apes have 24 pairs of chromosomes, it is probably the case that
their common ancestor also had 24 pairs of chromosomes.
Although it is possible that this common ancestor only had 23
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pairs (and the Gorilla and Chimp lineage both separately evolved
a new chromosome) this is not the preferred explanation, and
furthermore, if these lineages independently evolved a new
chromosome then we should find a chromosome in each of them
which is a recent duplicate of some other chromosome
(chromosomes always, or nearly always, originate as duplicates
or fissions of other chromosomes). Since we do not find any
such recently duplicated chromosomes in Gorillas or Chimps,
the only plausible scenario is that the common ancestor of the
great apes had 24 pairs of chromosomes.
Recall that Homo Sapiens has only 23 pairs of
chromosomes: What accounts for this difference? Could a pair of
chromosomes have been deleted at some point in the evolution
of Homo Sapiens? No, because according to Biologist Kenneth
Miller, the loss of so much genetic information would definitely
be disastrous, if not lethal.177
So how do we account for this change? In light of genetics,
Evolutionary Theory predicts that the chromosome could not
have been deleted in our evolution, and so the only way to
account for the “missing” pair of chromosomes is through a
fusion to another pair of chromosomes. This is known as a
“Robertsonian translocation.” Scientists have observed this
mutation occurring in other mammals with no harmful side-
effects.178 In fact, scientists have discovered a population of rice
rats in which no two rats had the same karyotype (the size,
shape, and number of chromosomes). Lots of Robertsonian
translocations had occurred, and yet the population was still
viable.179
If humans share a common ancestor with the great apes,
then the only way to account for the “missing pair” of
chromosomes is if they fused to another pair. If Evolution is true,
we should find evidence of this fusion in the human genome. In
1991, scientists confirmed this prediction.180
Another example of how common descent makes sense of
molecular data is found in the humble hemoglobin molecules.
Scientists have counted the molecular differences between alpha
and beta hemoglobin clusters and determined that the beta
clusters were copied from the alpha clusters 500 million years
ago. There is only one living group of vertebrates whose
ancestor with other vertebrates goes back 500 million years, and
that is the jawless fish. Now, given the facts I’ve just mentioned,
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it would not be surprising to learn that jawless fish lack beta

hemoglobin clusters. After all, they split from the lineage leading
up to other vertebrates before the gene duplication of
hemoglobin took place some 500 million years ago. Sure
enough, jawless fish do lack beta hemoglobin, exactly as
predicted.
Richard Dawkins puts it this way:

“Given that the split between the alpha cluster and the
beta cluster took place 500 million years ago [Which we can
determine from molecular data], it will of course not be just
our human genomes that show the split -- possess alpha
genes in a different part of the genome from beta genes. We
should see the same within-genome split if we look at any
other mammals, at birds, reptiles, amphibians and bony fish,
for our common ancestor with all of them lived less than 500
million years ago [And we know this from other molecular
data and/or from fossil data]. Wherever it has been
investigated, this expectation has proved correct. Our
greatest hope of finding a vertebrate that does not share with
us the ancient alpha/beta split would be a jawless fish like a
lamprey, for they are our most remote cousins among
surviving vertebrates; they are the only surviving vertebrates
whose common ancestor with the rest of the vertebrates is
sufficiently ancient that it could have predated the alpha/beta
split. Sure enough, these jawless fishes are the only known
181
vertebrates that lack the alpha/beta divide.” (The words in
brackets are my additions).

Creationist Objections to Genetic Evidence

Creationists respond to the genetic evidence mainly the way that

they respond to everything: it’s just common design. There’s so
much wrong with this that it is hard to know where to begin, but
here goes: first of all, when someone takes a paternity test and
the test shows (based on deep genetic similarities) that person A
is the father of person B, any creationist would immediately
accept this as evidence that the two are related. Creationists
usually have no problem accepting the fact that deep biological
similarity points to inheritance from a common ancestor. But
when it comes to drawing the same type of conclusion from the
deep and vast similarities between humans and the other great

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apes, they hold back and want to find a different explanation. If

that isn’t special pleading, I do not know what is.
Secondly, ‘common design’ utterly fails to explain
numerous things we observe in Biology. For example, if whales
and fish were designed by the same designer who was attempting
to use the same designs again and again, then why do fish swim
by moving their tails from side to side, while whales swim by
beating their tails up and down? There’s no common design
there. On the other hand, evolutionists can easily explain this:
whales evolved from land mammals, which swim exactly the
same way: by moving their tails up and down.
Thirdly, this ‘Common Design’ does not explain
nonfunctional similarities. Some creationists have even realized
this (Why did God put all that junk in your genome?), so they
have opted for a different explanation: All this nonfunctional
DNA really has some purpose that we haven’t discovered yet.
Unfortunately for Creationists, this hypothesis has been falsified:
Scientists have deleted millions of letters in the genetic code
which were thought to be useless, and the mice suffered no
adverse effects.182 The study shows that much of this “junk”
DNA really is junk.
Creationists respond to ERVs by claiming that their
insertion into the genome is not random and so commonalities
shared by Primates are just due to separate infections of the same
virus. This is absolutely false: although ERVs may tend to insert
in the middle of a gene or at the end of gene, which gene they
insert into is random (out of the thousands and thousands of
genes in human and primate genomes), and there are studies to
back this up.183
For more information about creationist claims reguarding
ERVs, you can’t beat this HIV researcher’s article:

Abbie Smith, “REPOST: Creationist Claims About ERVs”

ERV Blog (2008).
http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2008/05/repost_creationist_clai
ms_abou.php

Creationists react to the chromosomal fusion evidence in a

variety of desperate ways: I watched one creationist claim in a
debate that the fusion doesn’t prove common descent because
man may have been created with 24 pairs of chromosomes184
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(which was, over time, reduced to 23 pairs through a fusion).

This misses the point: Evolution made a falsifiable prediction
about the human genome which was confirmed, while
creationism makes no predictions about what we will find and is
comfortable with any conclusion, at least with this issue.
Perhaps the most infamous response to the evidence of a
chromosomal fusion comes from creationist Casey Luskin.
Luskin makes the same mistake I pointed out above, and also
manages to make a very ignorant mistake of his own in the
following comment:

“(1) In most of our experience, individuals with

randomly-fused chromosomes or extra chromosomes can be
normal, but it is very likely that their offspring will
ultimately have a genetic disease. A classic example of such
is a cause of Down syndrome, where an individual has an
extra chromosome #21.

“(2) One way around the problem in (1) is to find a

mate that also had an identical chromosomal fusion event or
chromosomal splitting event. But this would require a rare
185
mutant finding a mate with identical traits.”

This statement is easily refuted by the papers I cited earlier

on Robertsonian translocations. These papers document a similar
fusion in sheep which had no apparent effect on fitness and did
not result in any reproductive difficulties, and multiple fusions
and chromosomal differences in rice rats which did not affect the
viability of the population.

Conclusion

For brevity I have chosen to present only two basic lines of

evidence for evolution. To learn more about the evidence for
evolution, I recommend:

The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins (2009)

Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne (2009)

29 Evidences for MacroEvolution by Douglas Theobald

(1999). Available at:
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http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

The Making of the Fittest by Sean Carroll (2007)

Evolution: Education and Outreach. Available At:

http://www.springer.com/life+sci/journal/12052

Evolution: 24 Myths and Misconceptions by Michael Le

Page (2008). Available At:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13620-evolution-24-
myths-and-misconceptions.html

Common Questions and Objections

If people came from monkeys, why are monkeys still

around?

Human beings did not evolve from any currently living species;
we simply share a common ancestor with other primates. To
fully answer this question, allow me to make an analogy: dogs
were bred from wolves by humans (yet we still have wolves).
The reason for this is that in the wild, wolves do not leave behind
more offspring for having the characteristics that humans like
(soft fur, a certain color, etc.). When humans first began raising
wolves, they selected wolves that had the characteristics they
liked and allowed them to reproduce (While not allowing mating
between wolves that had characteristics they disliked). The
environments of the ancestors of modern day dogs and modern
day wolves determined how they ended up today. The same
applies to chimps and humans: Our ancestors and the
chimpanzee’s ancestors lived in different environments and so
we have evolved differently. Our ancestors lived on the savannah
with few trees which made it more advantageous to walk
upright, while the ancestors of other apes lived in trees (where
there was no selective advantage for walking upright, for
instance).

Isn't Evolution just a Theory?

Scientific American provided the following answer:

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“Many people learned in elementary school that a

theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a
mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the
terms that way, however. According to the National
Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is “a well-
substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural
world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested
hypotheses.” So when scientists talk about the theory of
evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity,
for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its
186
truth.”

Can Evolution Increase the Information in the Genome?

Yes, for example, “insertion mutations” which add one or more

“letters” to the gene. One species of bacteria gained its ability to
digest nylon from an insertion mutation.187 In another case, E.
Coli was observed to undergo 2 insertion mutations which
allowed it to digest Salicin.188 Insertion sequences have had
major contributions in the evolution of primates because they
can create new proteins.189 New genes may also originate as
copies of previous genes (which serve another function) and also
from noncoding “junk” DNA.190

Has there been enough time for Evolution to happen?

Absolutely. As I discussed earlier, the rates of change between

fossil species is no higher than it is today. The only way to deny
this is to deny that geologists are dating the rocks correctly. So
how do we know how old the rocks are?
Radiometric Dating is a reliable tool that scientists use to
figure out how old things are. Here's how one method works:
Uranium, specifically 235U, decays over time into 207Pb (Lead). In
the laboratory, scientists can measure how long it would take for
half of any amount of 235U to decay into a 207Pb. The time it takes
for half the amount of 235U to decay into 207Pb is called the Half
Life.
When scientists attempt to date something by this method,
they look at how much of each of these isotopes are present, and
calculate how long it would take for that amount of decay to
occur.

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Of course this raises questions to the inquisitive mind:

“How do you know how much 207Pb was there to begin with?”
The answer is that when a rock is formed, it takes in an equal
amount of 204Pb, which is an isotope that is never, ever produced
by radiometric decay. So we can look at the amount of 204Pb and
figure out how much 207Pb was there to begin with. We subtract
that amount from the present amount of 207Pb, and we end up
with a very precise estimate of how much radiometric decay
occurred.191 Of course, it is possible that the rock was formed
with unequal amounts of 207Pb and 204Pb, but there is a very easy
method that scientists can use to check this. Mark Isaak put it
this way, using an example of a different form of radiometric
dating:

“With isochron dating, we also measure a different

isotope of the same element as the daughter (call it D2), and
we take measurements of several different minerals that
formed at the same time from the same pool of materials.
Instead of assuming a known amount of daughter isotope,
we only assume that D/D2 is initially the same in all of the
samples. Plotting P/D2 on the x axis and D/D2 on the y axis
for several different samples gives a line that is initially
horizontal. Over time, as P decays to D, the line remains
straight, but its slope increases. The age of the sample can be
calculated from the slope, and the initial concentration of the
daughter element D is given by where the line meets the y
axis. If D/D2 is not initially the same in all samples, the data
points tend to scatter on the isochron diagram, rather than
192
falling on a straight line.”

No doubt this is difficult to understand. A simpler response

to the problem is to point to the consistent results of radiometric
dating: Several different methods of radiometric dating have all
yielded an age of about 4.5 billion years for the earth, for
example.193 If something was wrong with these dates, they could
not all be wrong in the same way!
Let us explore another question: How is it we can be certain
that the rate of decay has not changed over time? Let's take a
look at how scientists have tested radiometric dating: In the
essay “Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective” Dr. Roger
Wiens states:

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“Radioactive atoms used for dating have been

subjected to extremes of heat, cold, pressure, vacuum,
acceleration, and strong chemical reactions far beyond
anything experienced by rocks, without any significant
194
change.”

In addition, Geophysicist Joe Meert reports that if 4 billion

years of radiometric decay had happened in only ten thousand
years, it would have destroyed the earth!195
One last question to be asked is this: Are Rocks “closed
systems”? Can 207Pb atoms be added? I will again quote Dr.
Wiens:

“Some doubters have tried to dismiss geologic dating

with a sleight of hand by saying that no rocks are completely
closed systems (that is, that no rocks are so isolated from
their surroundings that they have not lost or gained some of
the isotopes used for dating). Speaking from an extreme
technical viewpoint this might be true--perhaps 1 atom out
of 1,000,000,000,000 of a certain isotope has leaked out of
nearly all rocks, but such a change would make an
196
immeasurably small change in the result.”

Some Popular Creationist Distortions of Science

Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould admitted that the fossil

record lacks transitional forms.

The following quote is used on numerous creationist websites to

try to show that Paleontologists really think that the fossil record
is not in accord with Evolutionary Theory:

“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil

record persists as the trade secret of paleontology . . . [T]o
preserve our favored account of evolution by natural
selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the
very process we profess to study.”
-Stephen Jay Gould

Creationists fail to understand that Stephen J. Gould was

referring to the absence of species-to-species transitional forms.
Gould thought that there were too few species-to-species

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intermediates, and so he sought to explain this by theorizing that

species usually originate in small, isolated populations (which
leave behind few or no fossils) and then spread to other areas and
outcompete the original species. Looking at the fossil record,
such a takeover would have the appearance of a sudden
transformation of one species into another.

“Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain

trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by
creationists—whether through design or stupidity, I do not
know—as admitting that the fossil record includes no
transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking
at the species level, but they are abundant between larger
groups.”
197
-Stephen Jay Gould

Archaeopteryx was “Just a Bird”

A favorite tactic creationists use when they discuss

Archaeopteryx is citing Evolutionary Biologist Alan Feduccia
saying:

“Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into

an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it's not. It is a bird, a
perching bird. And no amount of “paleobabble” is going to
change that.”

I emailed Feduccia about this, and he responded via email as

follows:

“Hi, Ryan, Yes, of course this is preposterous. I was

the person who coined the phrase in 1980 that,
‘Archaeopteryx is a Rosetta Stone of evolution!’
Archaeopteryx is clearly transitory between reptiles and
birds; the question is: what group of reptiles. The current
dogma is that birds are directly derived from theropod
dinosaurs, but there are numerous serious problems with this
proposal, namely,
– the time line is all wrong.
– requires a ground-up origin of flight.
– many characters don't match, especially the digits.

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Nicholas Covington

– requires that all sophisticated flight architecture be

evolved in an earth-bound, flightless dinosaur!!
At any rate count on the creationists to misquote people
to foster their cause.”

Red Blood cells were found in fossil T. Rex bones,

indicating that these fossils are not millions of years old, since
biological material cannot last that long.

Dr. Mary Schweitzer, the professional who made the discoveries

that are cited by creationists says:

“The fossil record can mimic many things, so without

doing the chemistry to show that there are similarities to
blood cells at the molecular level, I do not make any claims
that they are cells.
“…[T]he fields of geology, nuclear physics,
astronomy, paleontology, genetics, and evolutionary biology
all speak to an ancient Earth. Our discoveries may make
people reevaluate the longevity of molecules and the
presumed pathways of molecular degradation, but they do
198
not really deal at all with the age of the Earth.”

Dr. Schweitzer has proposed a mechanism for how this

preservation may have taken place.199
Finally, other scientists have proposed that what was found
had nothing to do with dinosaur material, but was simply the
remains of a “bacterial biofilm.”200

“Were you there?”

No one has to witness an event to be able to make a reasonable

inference about what happened. No creationist would vote a
murderer innocent in the face of extensive forensic evidence and
failure of a polygraph test just because no one else saw the
murder committed.

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Evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics,

which states that everything tends toward disorder, while
evolutionists claim that throughout history life has become more
orderly.

This totally misunderstands what ‘disorder’ in the

thermodynamic sense is. Thermodynamic ‘Disorder’ is simply
energy that is not available for use. Evolution does not violate
this law because usable energy is supplied to living things by the
sun.201

Evolutionists assume stagnant conditions

(“Uniformitarianism”)

Geologists are aware that catastrophes happen, and they look for
evidence of them. A recent study found that Britain became an
island because of a megaflood some 200,000 years ago.202 You
would not find something like that if you assumed only slow,
steady processes for shaping geological and geographical
features. As Stephen Jay Gould put it:

“Geologists have been quite comfortable with the

explanations that some events have been the accumulation of
small changes, and others as the result of, at least, local
catastrophes.
“The creation science literature continues to use the
term ‘uniformitarianism’ only to refer to the notion of
extreme gradualism. For example, they argue that since
fossils are generally only formed when sediments
accumulate very rapidly, that, therefore, there is evidence for
catastrophe, and somehow that confutes uniformitarianism.
“In fact, paleontologists do not deny that fossils that
are preserved are generally buried by at least locally
catastrophic events, storms or rapid accumulations of
sediments. And indeed, that's why we believe the fossils
record is so imperfect and most fossils never get a chance to
be preserved, because the rate of sedimentation is usually
slow and most fossils decay before they can be buried.”203

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Creationists and Evolutionists have the same sets of

evidence. We're just interpreting them differently.

Interpretations of evidence can be (and are) proven wrong. I

believe I have given sufficient evidence in this chapter to show
that creationism is not a viable explanation of life.

For more resources that debunk creationism and intelligent

design, I recommend:

An Index to Creationist Claims by Mark Isaak. Available at:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/

Abusing Science by Philip Kitcher (1983)

Evolution vs. Creationism by Eugenie C. Scott (2005)

Finding Darwin’s God by Kenneth Miller (1999)

http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/

My website and blog that debunk creationism:

http://www.aigbusted.com
http://aigbusted.blogspot.com

Glenn Morton’s Creation/Evolution Website. This is the

page of a Geologist who was once a young-earth creationist. His
articles on the subject are excellent:
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/

“The Kiwi Question” and “Rock of Ages and the Age of

Rocks” by Geologist/Biologist Frank Zindler. Available at:

http://www.atheists.org/Rock_of_Ages_and_the_Age_of_R
ocks

http://www.atheists.org/The_Kiwi_Question

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Chapter 11

Some Objections Considered

Meaning

I live in the great state of Alabama, and because of this I run into
my share of evangelicals eager to share the message of Christ
with me. I often spend a few minutes discussing the issues with
them, for no other reason than the chance to open a mind or two.
Usually, after several minutes of conversation, I’m hit with
questions like “Well, what meaning is there to life if God does
not exist?”
I think that meaning exists to our lives because we create it.
Rational and reflective beings are capable of creating meaning,
and we, being such creatures, are able to endow our lives with
meaning. The works of great philosophers like Aristotle and
David Hume have value because people love them. If no one
cherished their writings, they would have no more value than a
used tissue. People create value for all things, including their
own lives and the lives of others.

Morality

Perhaps the most important, and emotionally charged question I

am asked is “If there is no God, what reason is there to behave
morally?” This is a question which also plagues theists: “Even if
there is a God, what reason is there to behave morally?” If their
answer is that God will send us to Hell if we do not, then I can
likewise appeal to the negative consequences I will face if I do
not behave morally.
In a debate with Michael Shermer, Dinesh D’Souza asked
(and I’m paraphrasing) “If there is no ultimate authority to which
we answer, why not take Machiavelli’s advice, which is, ‘Cheat,
but don’t get caught’?”
There are at least three good reasons: 1) Because you want
to maintain your self-respect (you cannot respect yourself if you
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do not behave like someone you respect), 2) Because you can

never be sure that your actions will remain secret, and so it is
wise to avoid the risk of being punished for your actions, and 3)
Because immoral actions almost always involve hurting or
damaging someone else, and you should not do things that are
not in accord with your desire to help your fellow man.
Now we come to another important question concerning
God and Ethics: “What moral system should be followed if there
is no God, and we cannot rely on the Bible, the Qu’ran, or any
other holy book?”
My reply is that, first of all, we don’t really rely on these
books for moral guidance anymore. Most people would never,
under any circumstances, condone the murder of a child for
cursing his parents (Leviticus 20:9) or the murder of a woman
for committing adultery (Deuteronomy 22:20-21).
Secondly, there are excellent moral systems that have
nothing to do with religion, and those who think differently
really ought to take the time to read and study about them. One
moral system, Utilitarianism, calls for us to act in ways that
minimize harm, or increase happiness, etc. It is beyond the scope
of my book to go into detail about this, but essentially my moral
system calls for one to act in ways that increase (in order of
importance): happiness, justice, and pleasure.
Now, if morality did not come from God, who or what
instilled it within human minds? No one has a fully developed
scientific answer to this question (yet). I think that a lot of
human morality comes from human beings taking note of the
behaviors which lead to happiness and well-being for society and
the behaviors that do not. A society that condones theft cannot
stand economically, and so human beings took note of this and
taught it to their children, and enforced adherence to these rules.
Another explanation for morality is that it evolved:
Individuals that cohere as a group have a greater chance of
survival, and so this was selected for. A more detailed account of
the evolution of morality may be found in Freedom Evolves by
Daniel Dennett.
Some theists claim that without the fear of God, (some)
human beings would commit awful crimes, and atheism is to be
avoided for this reason alone. As evidence for their position,
Christian Apologists (such as Dinesh D’Souza) list the crimes

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committed by atheists: Stalin, Pol Pot, and many other atheists

killed millions of people.
What D’Souza and others overlook is that the communists
did not murder because they were dogmatic atheists, but because
they demanded adherence to the state. The communists
demanded that people recognize the state as the supreme
authority. Kim Il-Sung, the old leader of North Korea, was
reputed to be a god in his country and shrines were built in his
honor.204 In a debate, atheist journalist Christopher Hitchens said
that the North Koreans were taught that the birds sang at Kim’s
birth. Similar stories can be found about other communist
leaders. Clearly the communists do not have a problem with
supernaturalism, but with allegiance to anything except the state!
Finally, we can actually test the idea that it is atheism that is
to blame for totalitarianism. If atheism is to blame for the crimes
of the communists, then non-communist, atheist-majority nations
should be far less moral than theist-majority nations. But they
are not: the Journal of Religion and Society reported that Japan,
Norway, and Great Britain all have far lower rates of belief in
God than the United States,205 yet these nations also have lower
crime rates than the U.S.206 Clearly atheism does not lead to
immorality, indeed, it may even lead to greater moral character.

Looking for God in All the Wrong Places

Against my case for Atheism, it may also be claimed that one is

not to look for God in philosophical arguments or scientific
experiments. Rather, God is something every individual should
seek in his or her heart.
To this I reply that we cannot have a relationship with a
being who will not openly communicate with us. It is hard for
me to see the difference between this type of “heart to heart”
relationship with God and an imaginary friend. Furthermore, the
fact is that if God exists he allows the suffering in the world and
does not even bother to comfort those in need. Although some
may claim that they felt the presence of God after a horrible
event, it would surely be much more comforting if God appeared
in the flesh and spoke to his creatures, assuring them that their
feelings of hope were not in vain. Is that not what a loving father
would do?

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It would seem that God is either nonexistent or has no

concern for us. In either case, the best course that we as human
beings can take is to love and value one another, to be moral, to
give to those in need, to make the world a better place than if we
had never existed.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Naturalistic Atheism is the most rational and well-

supported worldview. Despite insistent Christian apologists,
Naturalism does not hinder one from leading a moral and
fulfilling life. Nor does it take the splendor out of the world: I
know many atheists (myself included) who have become much
more fascinated with science and have discovered joy in the
beauty of the natural world. For me personally, learning about
the Big Bang or the evolution of life is deeper and richer than
any creation myth.

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Recommended Reading

Atheism Explained by David Steele (2008). This book

addresses practically every argument for God in a concise and
easy-to-understand manner.

Sense and Goodness without God by Richard Carrier

(2005). This book focuses on something very much needed in
the secular community: It builds up a completely secular
worldview. Although I don’t agree with Carrier on every issue,
he is right more often than not. His discussions on Morality,
Epistemology, and Theology should be mandatory reading for
every atheist interested in philosophy. The work is technical and
dry on occasion, but overall it is a rewarding read.

The Miracle of Theism by J.L. Mackie (1982). This is a

work by a philosopher that is widely considered the most
rigorous defense of Atheism ever written. This book covers all
philosophical arguments for God (to my knowledge). Although it
is not light reading, any well-read atheist with an interest in
philosophy can and should read this book.

Letters to a Doubting Thomas by C. Stephen Layman

(2007). This book is written as an exchange of letters between
two characters, one an agnostic and the other a theist. It is a book
that almost anyone can read and I consider to be the best and
most reasoned defense of theism I have ever read. A good book
for looking at the other side of the issue.

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (2006). This book

does not delve into the complexities of the philosophical
arguments for God (as the others do) but it is a very worthwhile
read because of Dawkins’ ‘Ultimate 747’ argument for the
improbability of God and because of Dawkins’ social and
scientific commentary on religion.

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Recommended Websites

http://www.infidels.org
A website with lots of writings by famous atheists and
agnostics. Highly recommended for personal study of these
issues.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/
A blog by an atheist Biology professor. Highly
recommended for the commentary on creationists and mindless
theists and his writings about science.

http://www.talkorigins.org/
A website with tons of easy-to-understand articles about
Evolution, the Origin of Life, the age of the Earth, and
Creationism.

http://aigbusted.blogspot.com
My very own blog that debunks creationism and provides a
bit of social commentary on Atheism and Theism.

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If you find any errors in this book, be they logical

inconsistencies, factual errors, or even typos, please contact me:
[email protected]

Revisions and Supplementary Articles to this book will be

made available at http://www.godriddance.com

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ENDNOTES

CHAPTER 1

1
Assigning possibilities equal probability is known as the
“principle of indifference”. In the philosophical literature it has been
criticized because it can lead to contradictory probability assignments. I
think Ofra Magidor got it right when he characterized the principle of
indifference as an action guiding principle and said of it:

“It seems to me perfectly reasonable that an action guiding principle

will give me some recommendation as to how to act. It may not suggest
a unique course of action, nor does it have to be the only action guiding
principle I am using.”

Ofra Magidor, “The Classical Theory of Probability and the Principle

of Indifference” 5th Annual Carnegie Mellon University/University of
Pittsburgh Pittsburgh Graduate Philosophy Conference (2003).
Accessed 3/4/10 at:
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/org/conference/2003/magidor.pdf

2
William Lane Craig explains the same principles of Abductive
Reasoning at the following web address, and credits them to C.B.
McCullagh: William Lane Craig, “The Resurrection of Jesus”
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=535
1 (Accessed 9/26/09).

3
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosopy, s.v. “Bayes’ Theorem”
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bayes-theorem/

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Accessed 3/4/10

4
Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000), p.84

5
Allin Cottrell, “Sniffing the Camembert: On the Conceivability of
Zombies” Journal of Consciousness Studies 6, No. 1, (1999): 4–12.
http://www.imprint.co.uk/cottrell.html

6
Dr. Georgia Purdom, Post on “Answers in Genesis Wall”
http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/aroundtheworld/2008/05/15/answers-
in-genesis-wall/ (Accessed 3/11/09).

7
Richard Hoppe, “I Want AiG Creationists on My Jury”
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2009/02/i-want-aig-crea.html
(Accessed 3/11/09).

8
Matt Slick, “The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God”
http://www.carm.org/transcendental-argument (Accessed 3/11/09).

9
Readers who are interested in learning more about
Presuppositionalism may be interested in philosopher Michael Martin’s
essays on the subject:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/michael_martin/#presup
(Accessed 1/01/09).

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CHAPTER 2

10
Quentin Smith, “Kalam Cosmological Arguments for Atheism”
Published in The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, ed. Michael
Martin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p.183.

11
John Leslie Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1983), p.94.

12
For an excellent examination of the Kalam Argument, See
Wes Morriston “Must the Beginning of the Universe Have a Personal
Cause?” Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2000): 149-169.

13
Quentin Smith, “Time Began with a Timeless Point” Published in
God and Time: Essays on Divine Nature ed. Gregory E. Gansall and
David M. Woodruff, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

14
William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and
Apologetics (Wheaton, Il: Crossway Books, 1994), p.117.

15
The word “Universe” once meant “all which exists.” However, as
Theoretical Physics evolved, Physicists have chosen to speak of
“Parallel Universes” to describe regions of spacetime which are
completely separate from our own. This is why I have chosen to use the
word ‘Metaverse’ to describe “all which exists.” I find that it helps
avoid confusion.

16
Philosopher Wes Morriston has written several journal articles on the
Kalam Argument, including a few on the possibility of an actual
infinite. Many of them can be found online:
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http://stripe.colorado.edu/~morristo/selected-papers.html (Accessed
12/31/08)

17
Here is just one place you can find the argument from contingency
stated: Tom Wanchick, “Opening Statement” (2006).
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/carrier-
wanchick/wanchick1.html (Accessed 3/15/09).

18
Richard Carrier mentioned the following to me in a private
correspondence:

“[T]here is an obvious rebuttal [to your counterargument], to the effect

that ‘minds are inherently orderly, by definition, in a way that universes
are not, therefore positing an orderly god-mind is less mysterious than
positing just an inexplicably orderly universe.’ One counter is to
undercut the global assumption: can observed order only be the result
of a mind causing it, or can order be caused by something else? (and as
we have examples of order forming in the world without a mind
attending it, the answer is no). Or perhaps you may think of something
else wrong with the objection. But it does seem to be a vulnerability the
way you have left it. The objection might be cut off with some succinct
way of rephrasing the paragraph already there, and thus not need
explicit address.” (Correspondence dated 9/5/09)

I replied as follows:

“If we're talking about all logically possible minds, I think most of
them would not be coherent or intelligent to any degree. I mean, if you
‘rewired’ my brain or stimulated it with certain chemicals, you could
only do so much before my thoughts would be completely incoherent,
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unintelligible, etc. There are more incoherent and disorderly

arrangements of minds than there are orderly/coherent arrangments of
minds.” (Correspondence dated 9/6/09)

And Richard replied:

“True, if the posit is ‘some random mind will exist’ then insane idiot
minds would be the most likely outcome (for the very reason you go on
to explain), and a perfect mind like a God's is supposed to be would
have the smallest possible probability. They would attempt to argue
that they are not positing just any mind, but specifically that one, which
would be ordered by definition. The response then would be to
redeploy your prior probability argument: yes, positing a perfect mind
would solve the problem, but that would require assuming the existence
of something that is even less probable than the thing being explained
(an orderly universe). By contrast, if we posit ‘some random universe
will exist,’ a perfectly and totally chaotic universe would be as
improbable as a perfectly and totally organized one, and far more
probable would be a mixed universe somewhere in between, with some
orderly features and some chaotic ones (just like a random imperfect
mind is more probable out of all options than a perfect mind), which is
exactly the universe we observe.” (Correspondence dated 9/7/09)

19
Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics
(Downers Grove, Il: InterVarsity Press, 1994), pp.68-69.

20
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosopy, s.v. “Ontological Arguments”
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ontologicalarguments/
(Accessed 12/31/08).

141
Nicholas Covington

21
Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom and Evil, (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm.
B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), p.108.

22
See Paul Almond, “A Refutation of Plantinga’s Modal Ontological”
http://www.paul-almond.com/ModalOntologicalArgument.htm
(Accessed 12/31/08).

23
Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1979), p.202.

24
Ned Block, “On a Confusion about a Function of Consciousness”
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18, (1995): 227-287.

25
Charles Furst, Origins of the Mind (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1979), p.76-77.

26
Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained, (New York: Back Bay
Books, 1992), pp.58-59.

27
Daniel C. Dennett, “Quining Qualia”, Published in: A. Marcel and E.
Bisiach, eds, Consciousness in Modern Science (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1988). Reprinted in W. Lycan, ed., Mind and
Cognition: A Reader, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), A.
Goldman, ed. Readings in Philosophy and Cognitive Science,
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993).

28
Evan Louis Sheehan, “Simplifying the Hard Problem of
Consciousness.”
http://evanlouissheehan.home.comcast.net/~evanlouissheehan/Simplify
ing_Consciousness.htm (Accessed 3/13/09).
142
 Atheism and Naturalism

CHAPTER 3

29
See Chapters 2 and 3 of C. Stephen Layman, Letters to a Doubting
Thomas, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007)

30
William Lane Craig, “The Teleological Argument and the Anthropic
Principle” In The Logic of Rational Theism: Exploratory Essays, Ed.
Wm. L. Craig and M. McLeod (Lewiston, ME: Edwin Mellen Press,
1990) p.128.

31
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosopy, s.v. “Teleological Arguments”
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleological-arguments/#4.1 (Accessed
1/01/09).

32
Victor Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis, (Amherst, NY:
Prometheus Books, 2007), p.144.

33
A. Aguire, “Cold Big Bang Cosmology as a counterexample to
several anthropic arguments”, Phys. Rev. D 64, Issue 8, (2001): 1-13.
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0106143v1

34
“Monkey God Program” created by Victor Stenger.
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Cosmo/monkey.html
(Accessed 1/02/09).

35
Andrei Linde“The Self Reproducing Inflationary Universe” Scientific
American, November 1994.
http://www.stanford.edu/~alinde/1032226.pdf (Accessed 1/01/09).

Also see: Alan Guth, “An Eternity of Bubbles?”

143
Nicholas Covington

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/hawking/mysteries/html/guth_1.html
(Accessed 3/20/09).

36
L Smolin, “Did the Universe Evolve?” Class. Quantum Grav. 9,
(1992): 173-191.

37
L Smolin, “The Status of Cosmological Natural Selection” Perimeter
Inst. Theor. Phys. & Waterloo University (2006): 1-25.

38
Lee Smolin, “Darwinism All the Way Down” Published in Intelligent
Thought: Science Versus the Intelligent Design Movement Ed. John
Brockman (New York: Vintage Books, 2006).

39
L Smolin, “The Status of Cosmological Natural Selection” Perimeter
Inst. Theor. Phys. & Waterloo University (2006): 1-25.

40
I learned this from the following video that was made by a practicing
scientist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCKqj-2JXZg (Accessed 12/14/09).

41
Neil deGrasse Tyson, “The Search for Planets”, Natural History,
(October 1997).

42
S. Franck, W.von Bloh, C. Bounama, “Habitable Zones and the
Number of Habitable Planets in the Milky Way” Postdam Inst. For
Climate Impact Research (2002): 22-24.
http://biospace.nw.ru/astrobiology/Articles2002/Astrobio_franck_22_2
4.pdf (Accessed 12/21/09).

144
 Atheism and Naturalism

43
American Chemical Society (2008, April 7). Meteorites Delivered
The 'Seeds' Of Earth's Left-hand Life, Experts Argue. ScienceDaily.
Retrieved January 8, 2009, from
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080406114742.htm

Also See:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center (2009, March 18). Clues To A
Secret Of Life Found In Meteorite Dust. ScienceDaily. Retrieved
March 18, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com
/releases/2009/03/090317153047.htm

44
Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, (Chevy Chase, MD:
Adler & Adler, 1986), p.323.

45
Ibid., pp.268-269.

46
W.R. Hargreaves, S. J. Mulvihill & D.W. Deamer, “Synthesis of
Phospholipids and Membranes in Prebiotic Conditions” Nature 266,
(1977): 78 - 80; doi:10.1038/266078a0

47
Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience (New York:
Penguin Press, 2006), p.101.

48
PBS: Evolution, “Molecular Evolution: Neutral Drift”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/05/1/l_051_04.html
(Accessed 1/06/09).

49
Richard Carrier, “Are the Odds Against the Origin of Life Too Great
to Accept?” (2000).
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/addendaB.html
145
Nicholas Covington

(Accessed 1/08/09).

50
Ian Musgrave, “Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics and Probability of
Abiogenesis Calculation” (1998).
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html
(Accessed 1/20/09).

51
David Deamer, “Calculating the Odds that Life Could Begin By
Chance” (2009).
http://www.scientificblogging.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds
_life_could_begin_chance (Accessed 5/04/09).

52
Brooks DJ, Fresco JR, Lesk AM, Singh M. “Evolution of amino acid
frequencies in proteins over deep time: inferred order of introduction of
amino acids into the genetic code.” Mol Biol Evol. 10, (2002):1645-55.
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/19/10/1645 (Accessed
1/21/09).

53
Frank R. Zindler, “Half a Wing and No Prayer”, The Probing Mind,
April 1986.

54
Ibid.

55
Even Wikipedia has a fairly good and easy to understand summary of
the evolution of the eye: Wikipedia, s.v. “Evolution of the Eye”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye (Accessed 1/20/09).

56
Mark Ridley, “Evolution of the Eye”
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ridley/az/Evolution_of_the_eye.a
sp (Accessed 1/20/09).
146
 Atheism and Naturalism

57
Dan-E. Nilsson and Susan Pelger, “A Pessimistic Estimate of the
time required for the eye to evolve” Proceedings: Biological Sciences
256, No. 1345 (1994): 53-58.

58
Stephen Jay Gould, “Not Necessarily a Wing” Natural History 94
(October 1985): 12-25.
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_functionalshift.html
(Accessed 1/23/09).

59
Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan,
2004), p.197.

60
Mark Isaak, Index to Creationist Claims, s.v. Claim CB200.2
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200_2.html
Accessed 1/29/09

61
N.J. Matzke, “Evolution in (Brownian) Space: A Model for the
Origin of the Bacterial Flagellum” (2003).
http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html (Accessed 1/29/09).

62
Casey Luskin, “How Kenneth Miller Used Smoke-and-Mirrors to
Misrepresent Michael Behe”
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/12/how_kenneth_miller_used_sm
okea.html (Accessed 1/30/09).

63
R. Doolittle, Y. Jiang, and J. Nand, “Genomic Evidence for a
Simpler Clotting Scheme in Jawless Vertebrates” Journal of Molecular
Evolution 66, No. 2 (2008): 185-196.

147
Nicholas Covington

64
Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box [2nd Edition] (New York: Free
Press 2006), p.66.

65
Paul Draper, “Irreducible Complexity and Darwinian Gradualism: A
Reply to Michael J. Behe” Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 19, No.1
(January 2002), pp.3-21.

66
Adam Marczyk, “Genetic Algorithms and Evolutionary
Computation” (2004).
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/genalg/genalg.html (Accessed
1/30/08).

67
Ibid.

68
Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan,
2004), p.226.

69
M. Di Giulio, “The early phases of genetic code origin: conjectures
on the evolution of coded catalysis.” Orig Life Evol Biosph. 33,
(2003):479-89.

70
T. Cech, “Structural Biology: The Ribosome is a Ribozyme.” Science
289, (2000):878-9.

71
Scripps Research Institute (2006, March 27). 'Accelerated Evolution'
Converts RNA Enzyme To DNA Enzyme In Vitro. ScienceDaily.
Retrieved January 30, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com
/releases/2006/03/060327083737.htm

148
 Atheism and Naturalism

72
Daniel Stolte, “Where Bacteria Get Their Genes” EurekaAlert!
(April 7, 2005).
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-04/uoa-wbg040705.php
(Accessed 1/31/09).

73
Steven Sample, “Frogs that Change Sex” Ask a Scientist Biology
Archive. http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/bio99/bio99128.htm
(Accessed 1/31/09).

74
Roughly the same scenario may be found in Richard Dawkins, The
Ancestor’s Tale (New York: Mariner Books, 2004), pp.504-505.

75
PBS: Evolution, “The Red Queen”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/5/l_015_03.html
(Accessed 1/31/09).

CHAPTER 4

76
Craig Crawford, “A Remarkable Mathematical Prophecy”
http://www.theprophecies.com/mathprophecy2.html (Accessed
3/14/09).

77
Funk and Wagnall’s New Encyclopedia, s.v. “Babylonian Captivity”

78
Richard Carrier (a historian) pointed out to me in a private
correspondence that,

“The sphericity of the earth was already demonstrated by Aristotle

using multiple sound scientific proofs c. 360 BC, indicating it was
149
Nicholas Covington

common knowledge among the educated elite in Greek cities, and thus
had already been discovered before him, which means the 400's at the
latest. A likely candidate for the first to have presented empirical
arguments for this is Thales, though we can't prove it; certainly some
time between him and Aristotle it was proved, multiple times in
multiple ways, which were condensed into a serial case that was passed
on to Aristotle. Thales lived 625-545 BC, Isaiah ch. 40 was probably
written circa 560-540 BC (its ostensible date is 8th century, but hardly
any expert believes that anymore), so it is possible (though unlikely)
that Isaiah knew of the earth's sphericity from Greek contacts.”
(personal correspondance dated 8/30/09).

79
The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible s.v. “circle”
and “ball” as used in the book of Isaiah.

80
Skeptic’s Annotated Qu’ran, Surah 23.
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/23/index.htm (Accessed
3/15/09).

81
Funk and Wagnall’s New Encyclopedia, s.v. “Alexander the Great”

82
Bart Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium,
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p.142.

CHAPTER 5

83
Randel Helms, Who wrote the Gospels? (Altadena, CA: Millennium
Press, 1997), pp.1-7.

150
 Atheism and Naturalism

84
N.T. Wright, “The Self Revelation of God in Human History”
published in Antony Flew, There is a God, (New York: HarperOne,
2007).

85
There is one (count it!) claimed exception to this rule, and this has to
do with a historian called Thallus reporting the darkness at Jesus’
death. There are many problems with this: For one thing, we do not
know when Thallus lived. For a good overview of this issue, I
recommend Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament
(Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000),
pp.20-23. Also see: Richard Carrier, “Thallus: An Analysis.”
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/thallus.html
(Accessed 4/1/09).

86
This fact is admitted by Christian apologists Timothy and Lydia
McGrew in their work “The Argument from Miracles: A Cumulative
Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth” published in The
Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishing Ltd, 2009). Despite this admission, McGrew and McGrew
go on to defend the notion that the early Christians were willing to die
for the faith based on reports in the book of Acts which suggest that the
authorities did kill the early Christians for their faith, and so Christians
must have known that execution was a possibility and must have had
some pretty good reasons to believe what they did, if they were willing
to face the possibility of death and/or torture. This is not a strong
argument, not least because of the fact that martyrdom rumors can and
do appear without any basis in fact (see next endnote). Furthermore,
many scholars today view the book of Acts as a very legendary and
unhistorical work, and so it cannot be considered good evidence to

151
Nicholas Covington

prove the McGrews’ point. See, for example, Barrie Wilson, How Jesus
Became Christian (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008), chapter 9.

87
Dave Cullen, “Who Said ‘Yes’?” Salon (September 30, 1999).
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/09/30/bernall/print.html
(Accessed 4/18/09).

88
In Galatians 1:11-12 Paul says that he did not receive his revelation
from any man, but through personal revelation of Jesus Christ. In
Romans 16:25-26, Paul tells us that the gospel of Jesus Christ was
hidden long ago, but is now revealed through ancient prophecies (Old
Testament Scriptures).

89
Bart Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted (New York: HarperOne, 2009),
pp.139-143.

90
See Robert M. Price “Beyond Born Again” chapter 7.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/beyond_born_agai
n/chap7.html (Accessed 3/21/09).

91
National Geographic, “Inside a Cult”
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/inside-a-cult-
3401/Overview (Accessed 3/21/09).

92
Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan,
2004), p.184.

93
These four facts are recounted numerous times in Craig’s debates, as
well as on his website. See William Lane Craig, “The Resurrection of
Jesus”

152
 Atheism and Naturalism

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=535
1 (Accessed 9/26/09).

94
See Jeffrey Jay Lowder, “Historical Evidence and the Empty Tomb:
A Reply to William Lane Craig” published in The Empty Tomb: Jesus
Beyond the Grave Eds. Robert M. Price and Jeffrey Jay Lowder
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2005). Also available online:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/empty.html

95
Bart Ehrman, Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene, (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2006) pp.225-226.

96
The Apostle Peter is reported to have used this verse in reference to
Jesus in Acts 2:25-27.

97
Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan,
2004), p.221.
98
See Acts 1-2.

99
Marc Galanter, Cults: Faith, Healing, and Coercion, (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1989), p.152.

100
Anne Marie, “Did the Watchtower Really Say the End Would Come
in 1975?” http://www.4jehovah.org/help-1975-prophecy.php
(Accessed 3/27/09).

101
Paul Raffaele, “In John They Trust” Smithsonian Magazine,
February 2006. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-
places/john.html?c=y&page=6 (Accessed 12/26/09).

153
Nicholas Covington

102
Everett Ferguson, Early Christians Speak Vol. 2 (Abilene,TX: ACU
Press, 2002), pp.114-115 and 214.

103
S. Day and E. Peters, “The incidence of schizotypy in new religion
movements.” Personality and Individual Differences 27, (1999): 55-67.

104
S. Torgerson, E. Kringlen, V. Cramer, “The Prevalence of
Personality Disorders in a Community Sample” Arch Gen Psychiatry
58, (2001): 590-596.

105
C. McCreery and G. Claridge, “A Study of Hallucination in Normal
Subjects-I. Self-Report Data” Personality and Individual Differences,
21, (1996): 739-747.

106
J.J. Pilch, “Appearances of the Risen Jesus in Cultural Context:
Experiences of Alternate Reality.” Biblical Theology Bulletin: A
Journal of Bible and Theology 28, (1998): 52-60.
107
Charlie Broad, Religion, Philosophy and Psychical Research
(London: Routledge, 1953), p.90.

108
Robert M. Price, “Apocryphal Apparitions: 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 as
a Post-Pauline Interpolation” republished in The Empty Tomb: Jesus
Beyond the Grave Eds. Robert M. Price and Jeffrey Jay Lowder
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2005).

109
The belief that God could have a literal, flesh and blood son may
have come from Greco-Roman myths, such as Romulus and Hercules.
See Titus Livius, The Early History of Rome, 1.16 and Diodorus
Sicilius, Library of History, Book IV, 9.1-10.1 .

154
 Atheism and Naturalism

110
Robert M. Price, Review of N. T. Wright’s Resurrection of the Son
of God. http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/rev_ntwrong.htm
(Accessed 4/3/09).

111
Wheaton B., “As it is Written: Old Testament Foundations for
Jesus’ Expectation of Resurrection,” Westminster Theological Journal
70, (2008): 245-53.

112
Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity, (New York: HarperOne,
1997), p.62.

113
Encyclopedia of Greek Gods, Spirits, Monsters s.v. “Attis”
http://www.theoi.com/Phrygios/Attis.html (Accessed 3/23/09).

114
J.P. Holding, Response to Robert M. Price.
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/nowayjose_CC3.html (Accessed 3/25/09).
Webpage now defunct.
115
The Columbia Encyclopedia, s.v. “Cybele.”

116
Richard Carrier, Not the Impossible Faith (Lulu Press, 2009),
chapter 18.

117
J.P. Holding, defending his thesis against critics.
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/nowayjose_CC2.html (Accessed 3/26/09).
Webpage now defunct.

118
Edward Gibbon, The History Of The Decline And Fall Empire
(London: Strahan and Cadell, 1776-1789), chapter 15.

155
Nicholas Covington

119
J.G. Davies, The Early Christian Church (New York: Barnes and
Noble Books, 1995), p.30.

120
P.70-73, Ibid.

CHAPTER 6

121
Stefan Lovgren, “First Americans Arrived Recently, Settled Pacific
Coast, DNA Study Says.” National Geographic February 2, 2007.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070202-human-
migration.html (Accessed 3/27/09).

122
Matt Ridley, Evolution, Third Edition (Malden, MA: Blackwell
Science LTD, 2004), p. 549.

123
See Kyle Butt, “Do Children Inherit the Sins of Their Parents?”
(2004). http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2543 (Accessed
4/05/09).

Also see: CARM, “Do the Sons Bear the Sins of Their Fathers or Not?”
http://www.carm.org/bible-difficulties/genesis-deuteronomy/do-sons-
bear-sins-fathers-or-not (Accessed 4/05/09)

124
J.P. Holding, “Why Critics of the Bible Do Not Deserve the Benefit
of the Doubt” http://www.tektonics.org/af/calcon.html (Accessed
4/6/09).

125
Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman, The Bible Unearthed (New
York: Free Press, 2002), pp.48-71.
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 Atheism and Naturalism

CHAPTER 7

126
World Food Programme, “Hunger Stats”
http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats (Accessed 4/10/09).

127
It is worth mentioning that Alvin Plantinga argues that it is possible
that all possible creatures God might create suffer from “transworld
depravity,” meaning that all creatures God can create do some wrong
actions in all worlds that God can create. Of course, this is just a
possibility, and so admittedly it doesn’t defeat the problem of evil as
much as it does suggest a plausible way out of it. Even Plantinga would
admit that it is still just as possible that evil does contradict God’s
existence. Plantinga depends on his hypothesis just to get Theism
consistent with the Evil, while Atheism does not need an additional
hypothesis to become consistent with evil. Again, I must remind you
that the simplest explanation is the best, and therefore Atheism is to be
preferred. Even worse for Plantinga’s solution is that while all human
creatures may suffer from transworld depravity, there are certainly
beings like God who do not. Why didn’t God choose to just create
other gods (or god-like beings that shared all or most of his
characteristics)? See Mark Walker, “The Anthropic Argument Against
the Existence of God”, Sophia, 2009. Also, the following work is a
devastating response to Plantinga’s conjecture: pp.148-157 of Quentin
Smith, Ethics and Religious Thought in Analytic Philosophy of
Language, Yale University Press, 1997.
http://www.qsmithwmu.com/a_sound_logical_argument_from_evil.ht
m (Accessed 12/21/09).

128
Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1979), pp.245-257.

157
Nicholas Covington

129
USGS Newsroom, “Alaska and Washington Yield Largest U.S.
Earthquakes… Significant Earthquakes of ’96 Rattle China, Indonesia”
(February 13, 1997).
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=975 (Accessed
12/4/09).

130
Don N. Page, “Scientific and Philosophical Challenges to Theism”
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0801/0801.0247v2.pdf (Accessed
4/11/09).

131
“Science, Complexity, and God”
http://freethought.freeservers.com/reason/complexity.html (Accessed
4/11/09).

132
Alvin Plantinga, “The Dawkins Confusion” Christianity Today,
(March 2007).
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/marapr/1.21.html
(Accessed 4/11/09).

133
Victor Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis, (Amherst, NY:
Prometheus Books, 2007), pp.117-121.

CHAPTER 8

134
Quentin Smith, “Time Began with a Timeless Point” Published in
God and Time: Essays on Divine Nature Edited by Gregory E. Gansall
and David M. Woodruff, Oxford University Press, 2001.
http://www.qsmithwmu.com/time_began_with_a_timeless_point.htm

158
 Atheism and Naturalism

135
Internet Infidels, webpage on Naturalism:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/naturalism/
(Accessed 4/13/09).

136
C. Stephen Layman, Letters to a Doubting Thomas, (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2007), p.16.

137
Kieran O’Driscoll and John Paul Leach, “’No longer Gage’: an iron
bar through the head: Early observations of personality change after
injury to the prefrontal cortex” British Medical Journal 317, (1998):
1673–1674.

138
Jeffrey Jay Lowder, “Argument from Evolution”
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/atheism/evolution.ht
ml (Accessed 4/18/09).

139
Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function, (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993), pp.225-226.

140
Also see See Stephen Law, “Plantinga's Belief-Cum-Desire
Argument Refuted” forthcoming in Religious Studies. Available at:
http://lawpapers.blogspot.com/2009/06/plantingas-belief-cum-desire-
argument.html (Accessed 12/18/09).

CHAPTER 9

141
Simon Singh, Big Bang (New York: HarperCollins, 2004) pp.214-
261.
159
Nicholas Covington

142
Ibid. pp.422-437.

143
Ibid. p.444.

144
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam
Books, 1988), p.129.

145
Michio Kaku, Parallel Worlds, (New York: Random House, 2005),
p.93-96.

146
John Roach, “Scientists Ponder Universe’s Missing Antimatter”
National Geographic (July 6, 2005).
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/07/0706_050706_antim
atter.html (Accessed 4/21/09).

147
Victor Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis, (Amherst, NY:
Prometheus Books, 2007), p.133.

148
This idea is not my own. I first learned about it from reading the
following Richard Carrier’s response to the question “If originally there
was nothing, doesn’t that mean no potentiality for anything, rather than
full potentiality for everything?”
http://www.godcontention.org/index.php?qid=82 (Accessed 12/18/09).

149
Rem Blanchard Edwards, What Caused the Big Bang? (New York:
Editions Rodopi B.V., 2001), p.117.

150
Douglas Fox, “Primordial Soup’s On: Scientists Repeat Evolution’s
Most Famous Experiment” Scientific American (March 28, 2007).
160
 Atheism and Naturalism

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=primordial-soup-urey-miller-
evolution-experiment-repeated (Accessed 4/23/09).

151
Douglas Fox, “Did Life Evolve in Ice?” Discover (February 2008).
http://discovermagazine.com/2008/feb/did-life-evolve-in-
ice/article_view?searchterm=Life%20Ice&b_start:int=0
Accessed 4/23/09

152
Page 3, Ibid.

153
Scripps Research Institute (January 10, 2009). How Did Life Begin?
RNA That Replicates Itself Indefinitely Developed For First Time.
ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 23, 2009, from
http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/01/090109173205.htm

154
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin,
2006), p.117.

155
Amber Crass, “Got Gas? It Could Be Lactose Intolerance.” (2009).
http://ibdcrohns.about.com/cs/li/a/lactoseintol.htm (Accessed 4/23/09).

Reference for the colored mice example of natural selection:

Sean Carroll, The Making of the Fittest (New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2006), pp.57-64.

Reference for the PBS quote:

PBS: Evolution, “Natural Selection in Real Time”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/educators/course/session4/elaborat
e_b_pop1.html (Accessed 4/23/09).

161
Nicholas Covington

156
Karl Bates, “Evolution Caught in the Act” EurekaAlert! February
19, 2004. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-02/uom-
eci021904.php (Accessed 4/23/09).

Also see: Kenneth Miller, Finding Darwin’s God (New York: Harper
Perennial, 2007), p.145-147.

157
K. Byrne and R.A. Nichols, “Culex pipiens in London Underground
tunnels: differentiation between surface and subterranean populations.”
Heredity 82, (1999): 7-15.

Dr. David Whitehouse, “Scientists ‘See New Species Born’” BBC

News (June 9, 2004).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3790531.stm (Accessed
4/23/09).

Joseph Boxhorn, “Observed Instances of Speciation” Talk.Origins

(1993-2004). http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
(Accessed 4/23/09).

158
Michael Le Page, “Evolution Myths: Mutations Can Only Destroy
Information” New Scientist (April 16, 2008).
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13673-evolution-myths-
mutations-can-only-destroy-information.html (Accessed 4/23/09).

162
 Atheism and Naturalism

CHAPTER 10

159
There is a process called “Genetic Drift” which is essentially just
random changes in gene frequency, but it is not clear that this process is
responsible for much genetic change. In any case, it could hardly be the
basis for increases in complexity and fitness.

160
An excellent review of the Archaeopteryx fossils may be found
here: Chris Nedin, “All About Archaeopteryx” (1999)
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx/info.html (Accessed
4/27/09).

161
Associated Press, “Newly Discovered Horned Dinosaur Follows
Evolutionary Theory, Scientists Say” (March 4, 2007).
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,256438,00.html?sPage=fnc.scie
nce/evolution (Accessed 4/27/09).

Some corrections were made to the reporting of the above article.

Albertaceratops evolved from dinosaurs with small horns, not large
horns as the wording of the original article would suggest. This
information was disocovered: See Stefan Anitei, “A New Horny
Dinosaur, a Missing Link from Small to Large Horns” Softpedia,
(March 5, 2007).
http://news.softpedia.com/news/A-New-Horny-Dinosaur-A-Missing-
Link-From-Small-to-Large-Horns-48620.shtml (Accessed 9/06/09).

162
John Roach, “New Dinosaur Discovered: T. Rex Cousin Had
Feathers” National Geographic (October 6, 2004).
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1006_041006_feath
ery_dino.html (Accessed 4/27/09).
163
Nicholas Covington

Also see Luis M. Chiappe, “Downsized Dinosaurs: The Evolutionary

Transition to Modern Birds”, Evolution: Education and Outreach 2,
No.2, (June 2009).
http://www.springerlink.com/content/66w3755838876571/fulltext.html
(Accessed 12/21/09).

163
Nature, Illustration of Tetrapod Evolution:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7085/images/440747a-
f1.2.jpg (Accessed 4/27/09).

Also see Louise S. Mead, “Transforming Our Thinking about

Transitional Forms”, Evolution: Education and Outreach 2, No.2,
(June 2009).
http://www.springerlink.com/content/501371w1h0h58385/fulltext.html
(Accessed 12/21/09).

164
Frederick Edwords, “The Dilemma of the Horned Dinosaurs”
Creation/Evolution 3 No. 3 (1982): p.1-11.
http://ncseweb.org/book/export/html/3042 (Accessed 4/27/09).

165
Palomar college website, Illustration of mammalian jaw evolution.
http://daphne.palomar.edu/ccarpenter/jaws1.gif
Accessed 4/27/09

166
Florida Museum of Natural History, Illustration of Horse Evolution.
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/natsci/vertpaleo/fhc/Stratmap1.htm
(Accessed 4/27/09).

164
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Also see: Donald R. Prothero, “Evolutionary Transitions in the Fossil

Record of Terrestrial Hoofed Mammals” Evolution: Education and
Outreach 2, No.2, (June 2009).
http://www.springerlink.com/content/k786p18g77j41370/fulltext.html
(Accessed 12/21/09).

167
J.G.M. Thewissen, S. Bajpai “Whale origins as a poster child for
macroevolution” Bioscience 51, (2001):1037-1049.

If you do not have access to this article, you may see a clear example of
some transitional whale fossils here:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/lines_03
(Accessed 4/27/09).

168
University of Bath (January 30, 2009). Dinosaur Fossils Fit
Perfectly Into The Evolutionary Tree Of Life, Study Finds.
ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 27, 2009, from
http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/01/090126082351.htm

169
Kenneth Miller, Finding Darwin’s God (New York: Harper
Perennial, 2007), p.110-111.

170
Mark Isaak, An Index to Creationist Claims s.v. CC300
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC300.html (Accessed
4/27/09).

171
Stephen Jay Gould, “Genesis and Geology.” The Atlantic Monthly
250, No. 3, (September 1982): 10-17.
http://www.darwiniana.tripod.com/gould_am_250_3_10-17.html
(Accessed 5/01/09).
165
Nicholas Covington

172
Douglas Theobald, “29 Evidences for Macroevolution” Talk.Origins
(1999-2006).
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section4.html#pseudogenes
(Accessed 4/28/09).

173
David Biello, “Mutant Chicken Grows Alligatorlike Teeth”,
Scientific American (February 22, 2006). Available at:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=mutant-chicken-grows-alli
(Accessed 4/28/09).

174
Douglas Theobald, “29 Evidences for Macroevolution” Talk.Origins
(1999-2006).
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#atavisms
(Accessed 4/28/09).

175
Douglas Theobald, “29 Evidences for Macroevolution” Talk.Origins
(1999-2006).
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section4.html#retroviruses
(Accessed 4/28/09)

176
Heui-Soo Kim, Osamu Takenaka and Timothy J. Crow, “Isolation
and phylogeny of endogenous retrovirus sequences belonging to the
HERV-W family in primates” Journal of General Virology 80, (1999):
2613–2619.

177
Kenneth Miller, Only a Theory, (New York: Viking Penguin, 2008),
p.105.

166
 Atheism and Naturalism

178
A. N. Bruere and P. M. Ellis, “Cytogenetics and reproduction of
sheep with multiple centric fusions (Robertsonian translocations)” J.
Reprod. Fert. 57, (1979): 363-375.

179
B.F. Koop, R.J. Baker, H.H. Genoways, “Numerous Chromosomal
Polymorphisms in a natural population of rice rats” Cytogenet. Cell
Genet. 35, (1983): 131-135.

180
J. W. Ijdo, A. Baldini, D. C. Ward, S. T. Reeders, and R. A. Wells,
“Origin of human chromosome 2: An ancestral telomere-telomere
fusion” Genetics 88, (1991): 9051-9055.

181
Richard Dawkins, “The Information Challenge”
http://www.skeptics.com.au/publications/articles/the-information-
challenge/ (Accessed 11/12/09).

I am indebted to Dr. Russell Doolittle for some information about the

blood clotting cascade that he provided to me through personal
correspondence.

182
Doe Joint Genome Institute, “Mice Thrive Without ‘Junk DNA’”
(October 2005).
http://genome.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD020724.html (Accessed
4/28/09).

183
R.S. Mitchell, B.F. Beitzel, A.R.W. Schroder, P. Shinn, H. Chen, et
al. “Retroviral DNA Integration: ASLV, HIV, and MLV Show Distinct
Target Site Preferences” PLoS Biology Vol. 2, No. 8, e234
doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0020234

167
Nicholas Covington

184
This particular debate is “Abbie Smith vs. Charles Jackson” and as
of this writing may be viewed on this youtube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/rattrap3 (Accessed 5/03/09)

185
Casey Luskin, “And the Miller Told His Tale: Ken Miller’s (Cold)
Chromosomal Fusion” IDEA (October 2005).
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1392
(Accessed 4/28/09).

186
John Rennie, “Fifteen Answers to Creationist Nonsense” Scientific
American (July 2002). Available at:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=15-answers-to-creationist
(Accessed 4/28/09).

187
Dave Thomas, “Evolution and Information: The Nylon Bug” New
Mexicans for Science and Reason.
http://www.nmsr.org/nylon.htm (Accessed 4/28/09).

188
B.G. Hall, “Adaptive evolution that requires multiple spontaneous
mutations. I. Mutations involving an insertion sequence.” Genetics.
1988;120 (4):887-97.

189
Nancy Touchette, “Junk DNA Creates Novel Proteins” Genome
News Network, May 30, 2003.
http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/05_03/junk.shtml
(Accessed 4/28/09).

190
M. Long, E. Betrán, K. Thornton, and W. Wang, “The origin of new
genes: glimpses from the young and the old.” Nature Reviews: Genetics
4, (2003): 865-875.
168
 Atheism and Naturalism

http://pondside.uchicago.edu/~longlab/publications/pdfs/2004_origin_o
f_new_genes.pdf (Accessed 4/28/09).

191
Kenneth Miller, Finding Darwin’s God, (New York: Harper
Perennial, 2007), p.67.

192
Mark Isaak, An Index to Creationist Claims s.v. CD002
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD002.html (Accessed
11/14/09).

193
USGS, webpage discussing the age of the Earth.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/age.html (Accessed 11/14/09).

194
Roger Wiens, “Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective.”
pp.23-24 http://www.asa3.org/aSA/resources/Wiens.html
(Accessed 4/28/09).

195
Joe Meert, “Were Adam and Eve Toast?” (1996-2001).
http://chem.tufts.edu/science/Geology/adam-eve_toast.htm (Accessed
4/28/09).

Creationist attempts to deny the validity of radiometric dating are

further discussed in Roger Wiens, “Radiometric Dating: A Christian
Perspective.”

196
Page 20, Roger Wiens, Ibid.

169
Nicholas Covington

197
Stephen Jay Gould, “Evolution as Fact and Theory” Discover 2,
(May 1981):34-37.
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_fact-and-theory.html
(Accessed 5/01/09).

198
Mary Schweitzer, “Ask the Expert” Nova ScienceNOW July 31,
2007. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3411/01-ask.html
(Accessed 4/30/09).

199
NC State University, “NC State Paleontologist to Present Theories
of Fossil Preservation at AAAS Conference” news release, Feb. 15,
2006. http://www.ncsu.edu/news/press_releases/06_02/026.htm
(Accessed 4/30/09).

200
University of Washington (July 30, 2008). Did Dinosaur Soft
Tissues Still Survive? New Research Challenges Notion. ScienceDaily.
Retrieved April 28, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com
/releases/2008/07/080729234140.htm

201
Stephen Lower, Page on Entropy (2003-2007).
http://www.chem1.com/acad/webtext/thermeq/TE2.html (Accessed
5/01/09).

202
Dave Mosher, “Megaflood Created Great Divide Between Britain
and France” Livescience July 18, 2007.
http://www.livescience.com/history/070718_british_megafloods.html
(Accessed 5/01/09).

170
 Atheism and Naturalism

203
Stephen Jay Gould, Testimony for McLean v. Arkansas Board of
Education 529 F. Supp. 1255, 1258-1264 (ED Ark. 1982). Available at:
http://www.antievolution.org/projects/mclean/mva_tt_p_gould.html
(Accessed 5/01/09).

CHAPTER 11

204
Brian Barron, “Life in the Secret State” BBC News (2001)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/
1519045.stm (Accessed 5/02/09).

205
G.S. Paul, “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal
Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous
Democracies: A First Look” Journal of Religion and Society 7 (2005).
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html (Accessed 5/02/09).

206
Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of
Criminal Justice Systems, covering the period 1998 – 2000.
http://www.unodc.org/pdf/crime/seventh_survey/7sv.pdf (Accessed
5/02/09).

171