2013 Was a Great Year for Apologetics

Christmas is always a joyous time, a time to be reminded of how blessed we are. And now that we're preparing for a new year, I'd like to take a moment and reflect on all God has accomplished through this ministry along with your prayers and support.

Outreaches and Debates

One way Come Reason seeks to share the Gospel is through different outreaches and debate opportunities, particularly at college campuses. 2013 was a great year for outreach as we were able to interact with students at four different college or university campuses this year. I was invited to participate in open forums at both UC Irvine and Riverside Community College. Open forums are where a panel of Christians take questions on morality, biblical Christianity, and other issues from the students. The latter event was covered in the college newspaper with a great write up.

In May, Come Reason co-sponsored with Harvest's The Well Club the second Great God Debate held at UC Riverside. This year's debate focused on the question of life's origin and pitted Dr. Fazale Rana against Dr. Michael Ruse. Over 1,000 students attended the event, which was webcast to countries around the world, thanks to Biola University's apologetics department.

Apologetics Missions Trips are another type of outreach we provide. These trips are where we take a group of high school and college kids to locations that are culturally non-Christian. This year, we visited Dearborn, Michigan for the first time, which boasts the highest Muslim population in the U.S. and has the largest mosque in North America.

The 22 students I took on that trip got to interact with imams, Muslim apologists, speak with ex-Muslims as well as go out on the streets at shopping centers and the University of Michigan Dearborn to witness one on one with the Muslim population.

Conferences

Our Dare to Defend apologetics conferences have been a staple of Come Reason since the ministry's beginning. This year we held two such events, with the first at The Well Church in Oak Valley. Pastor Ron Wood and his congregation graciously hosted a three-day event covering the existence of God, the facts of the resurrection, and other topics. We look forward to holding a similar event in 2014.

The highlight of our year was certainly the outreach at the U.S. Army Garrison in Vicenza, Italy. Entitled “A Reason for Hope,” I was able to give four talks to the troops and their families stationed at Caserma Ederle. I was able to talk about things like the problem of evil to those who had just a few weeks prior returned from the war zone in Afghanistan. Army Chaplain LTC Scott Hammond hosted the event and we are especially thankful to Jeff and Kim Neill for their organization and hospitality in letting us stay at their home.

Speaking and Teaching

Speaking and teaching opportunities continue to play an integral role in the ministry. I continued teaching the monthly apologetics classes at Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, CA. I was also blessed to help teach Pastor Daniel Eichelberger's Deepening Your Faith classes, which are more in-depth theology studies. We covered topics on logic and argumentation, revelation and authority, the person of Jesus, and historic Christian heresies. Other events included services at Calvary Chapel San Diego and Calimesa, and radio interviews on stations in Michigan and New Jersey. If you would like me to visit your church, I would love to come out! Just let me know.

Internet Outreach

Our online ministries continue to grow. Over the past year, we've had over 300,000 visitors to the Come Reason web site from nearly every nation around the world. I've been writing nearly daily in the Apologetics Notes blog, which now averages over 10,000 views monthly. The podcast saw 485,000 hits this year and over 30,000 downloads of the weekly teaching. Our YouTube channel also continues to expand as we add more teachings there, and Facebook and Twitter conversations have been bristling. If you aren't following the ministry through one of these channels, I encourage you to start!

Publishing

One new project that I'm excited about is the upcoming release of True Reason: Confronting the Irrationality of the New Atheism by Kregel. I was blessed to have contributed a chapter on the argument from reason, made famous by C.S. Lewis. The book is due to be released on February 1.

Lastly, after several delays, I was happy to see my debate against Richard Carrier released on video. This was the first Great God Debate, and as you can see it was a packed house with great interaction by the audience. If you'd like a DVD of the deabate, comlete with the Q&A and bonus features, you can get one with your contribution to the ministry.

I can tell you that God opened more doors this year than ever before. It has made me deeply humbled to see how He continues to work and excited to see what He has in store for 2014. It promises to be filled with even more ministry opportunities. I also wanted to say thank you to all those who have prayed for this ministry or contributed to its support. Without you, it would be impossible to accomplish so much. He has truly blessed me and I pray that in 2014 He will bless you as well.

Blessings,
 
Lenny Esposito

Life Itself Shows the Fingerprints of Intelligence

Last year, I debated atheist Richard Carrier on the question "Does God Exist?" I'd like to review some of the arguments I made during that debate and Carrier's responses. If you'd like to see the entire debate, you can do so on the Come Reason YouTube channel. You can also receive a DVD of the debate, along with a bunch of bonus features by making a donation to the ministry here.

One of the points I offered for God's existence is the fact that  life itself shows the fingerprints of intelligence. In the debate, I argued:

In all of human existence, it has been readily understood that life comes from life, since at no time have humans ever observed anything else.  And now, science has amassed even more evidence for the absolute uniqueness of living systems as non-random, information-bearing systems.

Human beings have consistently recognized that highly specified information—from cave drawings to computer systems—are always the result of an intelligent mind.  The identifying features of intelligence are:

• They are COMPLEX SYSTEMS
• They are SPECIFICALLY ARRANGED to perform a function
• They are HIGHLY CONTINGENT. In other words, there is nothing that forces the patterns to emerge as they do.

Code-breakers in World War II and scientists who search for signs of extra-terrestrial life both use these criteria in separating what is natural and what is the sign of a mind a work.

Now, when we look inside living cells, we see that they exhibit the same marks of intelligence.  For example some of the simplest bacteria have a DNA molecule which is about 4,000,000 nucleotides long.  These nucleotides need to be in just the right order or the bacteria could not live.  In fact, Gustaf Arrhenius states that there are more possible nucleotide sequences than there are atoms in the universe.  Yet, these are ordered perfectly in living systems to build the proteins necessary for life.

Secondly, amino acids, the workhorses that build proteins, are selected perfectly, too.  Amino acids are what are known as "handed," that is they occur in two shapes that mirror each other like a left and right hand.  Each of these types is equally distributed in nature: the odds of each are 50% and they will bond to the RNA molecule equally well.  But ALL biological proteins must use ONLY left handed amino acids for life to exist.  So, how can you have an RNA molecule form randomly but only select the left-handed acids?  Given that bacteria are, for e.g., 4 million nucleotides long, how can they assemble by chance to use only left-handed acids?

These and other reasons are why MIT mathematician Murray Eden has stated that the chance emergence of life from non-life is impossible.  Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA, also famously stated "the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle."  DNA and molecular systems required for life are specific and complex enough to rule out chance.  And since complex systems that are specific are also a sign of an intelligent mind, it is reasonable to hold that "intelligence" is responsible for life.

Tomorrow, I will discuss Carrier's response to this line of argumentation.

Can Infinite Universes Explain Fine-Tuning?

In my debate against Richard Carrier, one of the facts I offered for God s existence is that the universe clearly shows evidence of being finely-tuned for life. Our universe is not simply "fine-tuned" but exquisitely -tuned for advanced life. Examples of fine tuning may be found in the laws of the universe, in the fundamental constants of the universe, and in the initial distribution of mass and energy at the universe's beginning.

First, the LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE. Two such finely tuned laws are:

• The law of gravity that acts on all matter. Without gravity, stars would break apart and we would have no long-term energy to sustain life.
• The strong nuclear force. Without this, the protons in the nucleus of an atom would repel each other and our universe would be made up of nothing more than hydrogen.

Secondly, we see fine tuning in the FUNDAMENTAL CONSTANTS that govern just how much items in the universe are affected by certain laws.Here are just two:

• We know that the gravitational constant, which is the value of how much masses will be attracted to one another could sit in a range anywhere within 1x 10⁴⁰ power, or 1 followed by 40 zeros. But if the force of gravity was increased by one part in a billion, billion, billion, billion, advanced life would be crushed according to Cambridge Royal Society Research professor Martin Rees.[1]
• Barrow & Tipler, in their landmark book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, note that if Einstein's cosmological constant varied in either direction by as little as 1 x 10¹²⁰, (which is a fraction so small that it would take more zeros to write than there are atoms in the universe) If this were to be changed by even that amount, the universe would expand too fast for galaxies & stars to form.

Thirdly, we see that the INITIAL DISTRIBUTION OF MASS AND ENERGY of the Big Bang needed to be just right. The initial conditions of the universe show extremely low entropy. Roger Penrose calculated the chances of this to be 1x10^{10^(123)}, a fraction so incredibly small it defies any example. Penrose said, "I cannot even recall seeing anything else in physics whose accuracy is known to approach, even remotely, a figure like one part in 10^{10^(123)}."
Taking all this into account, John Leslie remarks, "Clues heaped upon clues can constitute weighty evidence, despite doubts about each element in the pile."[2]

Does the Multiverse Solve this Problem?

Carrier claims that the multiverse hypothesis solves the problem of an exquisitely fine-tuned universe poised just right for advanced life to develop. He claims by simply having an infinite number of universes being created, there is bound to be one that would have the conditions we see, and naturally we are here because we happen to live in that universe. But I see at least three problems with this assumption:

The Many Worlds Hypothesis is Speculatory

The idea of an infinite number of universes having every conceivable construction of laws is sheer speculation. There simply is no observable data to back this up. In fact, there cannot be any observable data since we would never be able to observe anything outside our own universe. If we can see it, measure it, or in some other way capture data, we know it's in this universe.

The Many-Universe Making Machine Would Then Need to be Designed.

If an infinite number of universes that are all divergent are somehow being generated continually, we've simply pushed the problem back a notch. What is this thing, this mechanism that is a universe-generating machine? How come it functions so well at generating universes that it never stops? How does it get all the right components to make a self-sustaining universe together and spit out a finished product? If it is a mind, then it s still evidence for God. If it is material, then the machine must itself have been created somehow, which means we're back to the same question.

Even with Multiple Universes, Our Universe is Special

 EVEN IF multiple universe creation in chaotic/eternal inflation is true, it coupled with our observation that the cosmological constant is non-zero would seem to suggest that our universe would appear to be the first one ever to appear. In their paper "Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant" physicists at MIT and Stanford (Lisa Dyson, Matthew Kleban, Leonard Susskind) show that given the factors necessary for life and the low initial entropy conditions, either there is no real cosmological constant or "an unknown agent intervened in the evolution, and for reasons of its own restarted the universe in the state of low entropy characterizing inflation." [3]

References

[1] Rees, Martin. Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe (New York: Basic Books, 2000) 30.
[2] Collins, Robin. "A Recent Fine-Tuning Argument." The Philosophy of Religion Reader. Ed. Meister Chad. New York: Routledge, 2008.
[3] L. Dysona,b, M. Klebana, L. Susskinda, "Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant" Journal of High Energy Physics 0210:011,2002. Revised 14 Nov 2002
Available online at http://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0208013.pdf

The Great God Debate: Does God Exist? Esposito vs Carrier

Does God Exist? Philosophers and theologians have written volumes on this topic, but it has become especially significant in our modern world. Can we prove that God exists? And what are the implications if God doesn't exist? Listen to this lively exchange between Lenny Esposito and atheist Richard Carrier recorded before a packed house at the University of California Riverside.

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

Evolution and the Indian Rope Trick

Last month, I was privileged to be a part of the Great God Debate II: The Origin of Life, which pit atheist Michael Ruse against intelligent design advocate Fazale Rana. In Dr. Ruse's opening statement, he made an argument on what he has labeled the "fallacy of selective attention or illicit focus." It was probably Ruse's most powerful point and he admitted it carried the bulk of his reasoning for why the idea of intelligent design can be dismissed.

Ruse showed a picture of an Indian guru climbing a rope suspended into the sky. This is a well-known illusion called the Indian rope trick. He then states:

"You look at this and you say 'Oh my God! Newton was wrong! Gravity doesn't work.' Hang on a minute, hang on a minute. Of course gravity works. We don't just look at the Indian rope trick in isolation. We take it in context. We ask ourselves, 'Why would we say that the Indian rope trick must be a trick and not magic?' Why do we think that Newton's laws do hold in a case like this? Why do we think that there's something fishy going on here? And the answer of course is that we're not just judging the Indian rope trick on its own, but against the background knowledge that magic simply doesn't work and that Newton's laws do."

(You can see Ruse make this argument here.)

Ruse follows up this analogy by summarizing his argument thusly:

• We don't just look at it (the cell) and say "Oh my goodness, it is so complex and works so well. It must be designed in a hands-on fashion."
  
• We judge the cell against all our knowledge, and that includes our knowledge of evolution through natural selection at the macro level.

Now, I think Ruse is onto something here. He's right that we cannot take the cell in isolation. However, I think when studied carefully his argument actually works against him.

Ruse assumes that when judging the Indian rope trick, all we need to do is appeal to Newton's laws. That's not exactly true. We appeal to our past experience of the world and we find that we never experience a violation of gravity. It is our experience that things, without any external force, will fall to the earth. However, that is exactly the argument that intelligent design proponents are making! In our experience, when we see very complex, information -bearing systems, we understand that an intelligent agent is the cause of those systems. It would be the extraordinary thing to find an information-carrying code that is complex but arose naturally. Cryptographers and archaeologists base their vocations on this principle.

If we expand Ruse's level of examination beyond the cell, we have the same issues. If we look to life, we never see life arising spontaneously from non-living material. Louis Pasteur proved this and we bank on it every time we go to the grocery store. I don't know about you, but I don't want to find new life in my peanut butter jar!

If we judge the cell against ALL knowledge, then our past knowledge of life coming from life and complex information-bearing systems coming from minds are the equivalent of our experience of our past knowledge of how gravity affects ropes and people. It is the evolutionist that seems to be seeking an Indian rope trick explanation for what we now know to be true. And I, for one, am not buying it.