Book review by William Lane Craig, Ph.D.

On July 22, 1985, the New Jersey Supreme Court suggested that county clerk Nicholas Caputo institute new procedures for determining the places of candidates’ names on county election ballots, since out of the last 41 drawings conducted by Caputo Democratic candidates had won the coveted top line on the ballot an astonishing 40 times. Observing that the odds against such results are 50 billion to 1, the Court remarked that few reasonable persons would think that blind chance was responsible for the results of Caputo’s drawings.

We all recognize the wisdom of the Court’s recommendation. But why? We are tempted to say that the results of Caputo’s drawings were simply too improbable to be attributed to chance. But that answer cannot be the whole story, since any result of a random drawing is as equally improbable as any other. What is it in addition to the improbability of the result that warrants our intuitive inference to design rather than chance?

This is the question which mathematician and philosopher William Dembski seeks to answer [In his book The Design Inference (1998)]. The solution—which Dembski develops with great precision and detail—may be roughly summarized by saying that chance is ruled out when the highly improbable event conforms to a discernible pattern which is given independently of the event itself. A pattern is given independently of an event if we can formulate this pattern without any information concerning the event itself. Dembski calls a probability conjoined with such a pattern a “specified” probability and formulates the Law of Small Probability: specified events of small probability do not occur by chance.

In the Caputo case, knowing that Caputo was a Democrat and that he had control over the drawings, we can formulate various cheating patterns which would emerge if Caputo were rigging the drawings. Inquiring what pattern characterized the actual series of drawings, we find—lo and behold!—that the actual pattern of drawings is included in the set of pre–formulated cheating patterns. Therefore, we know that the pattern was not due to chance, but to design.

On the basis of his analysis, Dembski outlines a ten–step Generic Chance Elimination Argument:

1. One learns that some event has occurred.
2. Examining the circumstances under which the event occurred, one finds that the event could only have been produced by a certain chance process (or processes).
3. One identifies a pattern which characterizes the event.
4. One calculates the probability of the event given the chance hypothesis.
5. One determines what probabilistic resources were available for producing the event via the chance hypothesis.
6. On the basis of the probabilistic resources, one calculates the probability of the event’s occurring by chance once out of all the available opportunities to occur.
7. One finds that the above probability is sufficiently small.
8. One identifies a body of information which is independent of the event’s occurrence.
9. One determines that one can formulate the pattern referred to in step (3) on the basis of this body of independent information.
10. One is warranted in inferring that the event did not occur by chance.

This is a simplification of Dembski’s analysis, which he develops and defends with painstaking rigor and detail.

Dembski’s analysis will be of interest to all persons who are concerned with detecting design, including forensic scientists, detectives, insurance fraud investigators, exposers of scientific data falsification, cryptographers, and SETI investigators. Intriguingly, it will also be of interest to natural theologians. For in contemporary cosmology the heated debate surrounding the fine–tuning of the universe and the so–called Anthropic Principle will be greatly clarified by Dembski’s Law of Small Probability.

Consider the application of the above Generic Chance Elimination Argument to the fine–tuning of the universe:

1. One learns that the physical constants and quantities given in the Big Bang possess certain values.
2. Examining the circumstances under which the Big Bang occurred, one finds that there is no Theory of Everything which would render physically necessary the values of all the constants and quantities, so they must be attributed to sheer accident.
3. One discovers that the values of the constants and quantities are incomprehensibly fine–tuned for the existence of intelligent, carbon–based life.
4. The probability of each value and of all the values together occurring by chance is vanishingly small.
5. There is only one universe; it is illicit in the absence of evidence to multiply one’s probabilistic resources (i.e., postulate a World Ensemble of universes) simply to avert the design inference.
6. Given that the universe has occurred only once, the probability of the constants and quantities’ all having the values they do remains vanishingly small.
7. This probability is well within the bounds needed to eliminate chance.
8. One has physical information concerning the necessary conditions for intelligent, carbon–based life (e.g., certain temperature range, existence of certain elements, certain gravitational and electro–magnetic forces, etc.).
9. This information about the finely–tuned conditions requisite for a life– permitting universe is independent of the pattern discerned in step (3).
10. One is warranted in inferring that the physical constants and quantities given in the Big Bang are not the result of chance.

One is thus justified in inferring that the initial conditions of the universe are due to design.

Dembski emphasizes that in attributing an event to design, he is not characterizing it as a product of intelligence. For he defines “design” to mean “neither regularity nor chance,” that is to say, if something is not explicable in terms of natural law or chance, then by definition it is due to “design.” To say that something is due to “design” is just to say that it exhibits a certain kind of pattern. Nevertheless, Dembski thinks that proving that something is due to neither regularity nor chance is the logical pre–requisite for proving that it is due to intelligence. He makes the move from “design” to a bona fide designer or intelligent agent by means of a three–step schema of actualization–exclusion–specification; that is to say, one finds that a certain possibility has been actualized (and therefore presumably requires a cause), one excludes accounts of the event based on natural law explanations (thereby showing that the event is physically contingent), and finally one specifies that contingency so as to show that it conforms to an independently given pattern (thereby distinguishing choice from mere chance as the cause of the event). Since the hallmark of intelligent agency is choice, one has thus shown that the best explanation for the occurrence of the event is an intelligent agent. Obviously, this three–step schema simply retraces the steps of Dembski’s design inference, so that it turns out that one is getting to genuine design (a previsioned product of intelligent agency) after all. Thus, if the initial conditions of the universe are due to “design,” as argued above, then the inference to a Cosmic Designer is warranted.

John Lennox, Ph.D., is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science, and Pastoral Advisor at Green Templeton College. He is also Lecturer at Wycliffe-Hall, University of Oxford. He is a native of Northern Ireland and went to school there. He was then Exhibitioner and Senior Scholar at Emmanuel College Cambridge, where he also attended the last lectures of C.S. Lewis, and then became Reader in Mathematics at the University of Wales, Cardiff. During his 29 years in Cardiff he spent a year at each of the universities of Wuerzburg, Freiburg (as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow) and Vienna and has lectured extensively in both Eastern and Western Europe, Russia and North America on mathematics, apologetics and the exposition of Scripture.

He has published over 70 peer-reviewed articles on mathematics and co-authored two Oxford Mathematical Monographs and has worked as a translator of Russian mathematics. He also speaks French and German.

In addition he teaches on Science and Religion in the University of Oxford and on Apologetics and Biblical Exposition at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. He is the author of a number of books on the relations of science with religion and ethics, the most recent of which are: Informetika, Budapest, Harmat-Keve, 2001; Hat die Wissenschaft Gott begraben? (Has Science buried God?), Brockhaus, 2002 (Spanish Clie 2003). Worldview 2004 with Professor D.W. Gooding (3 volumes in Russian and Ukrainian). His most recent book is “God’s Undertaker - Has Science buried God?” (Lion Hudson 2007).

During the Cold War he made repeated visits over 25 years to many of the Communist countries and since the collapse of communism has visited Russia repeatedly speaking in Universities and Academies of Science.

He has been married to Sally (for 40 years) and they have three children and four grandchildren and live in the countryside near Oxford.

Book review by Pete Hartwell 

It is clear from reading The End of Faith that Sam Harris is a strong minded individual. He expresses his arguments so starkly that anyone who reads them can’t remain neutral. Indeed, Harris does not want us to remain neutral about his primary subject of faith.

Harris is a powerful communicator who gives much colour to the issues he is dealing with. He has written this book in order to convince the reader that all religious beliefs are absurd and are, furthermore, hazardous to us. Harris is reacting against modern Islamic terrorists and the religious elitism of the American government.

Harris divides his book into seven chapters. He sets out his stall in chapter one, underlining the urgency of the situation. He seeks to demolish the credentials of religious faith in chapter two. Chapters three to five aim to illustrate the damaging effect of religious belief both historically and today. Harris argues simply that it is not acceptable for religious belief to have any public influence. Chapter six puts forward the value of science as opposed to religion for establishing morality. In chapter seven, Harris concludes by pointing the reader to a new kind of spirituality which is devoid of religious faith. Harris builds his spirituality on rational grounds thus rendering faith superfluous.

The subject of faith ties the book together, as the title suggests. Harris is careful to establish what he means by faith. Prompted by his American culture he uses what he calls the ‘scriptural sense’ of faith, referring to the Bible. He says that faith is ‘belief in, and life orientation toward, certain historical and metaphysical propositions’ (pp. 64-65). The individual not only intellectually accepts these propositions, but the way they live is also affected by them. Harris removes any distinction between religious faith and other beliefs that we hold.

As religious faith isn’t distinct from any other beliefs we may have, Harris demands that there be a reason for adopting it. This reason should be consistent with our knowledge of the way the world is and should be a consequence of this knowledge. Harris argues that if there is not a consistency between what we claim religiously and other areas of our knowledge or experience, then our religious beliefs are not really claiming anything objective at all. ‘To believe that God exists,’ he says, ‘is to believe that I stand in some relation to his existence such that his existence is itself the reason for my belief’ (p. 63).

Therefore Harris argues that someone who believes in the existence of God must ‘play the same game of justification’ that we all play when ‘claiming to know the most ordinary facts.’

Click here for the full article.

By Jeff Zweerink, Ph.D.

A number of scientific themes run through the recently released movie Angels & Demons. The popular, but misguided, notion of a perpetual conflict between science and religion (the Roman Catholic church in this instance) provides much of the narrative. Part of this conflict centers on a plot to blow up the Vatican with an antimatter bomb. Just a quarter of a gram (less than the mass of a paper clip) of antimatter making contact with ordinary matter would unleash an explosion similar to those produced by the atomic bombs used to end World War II.

The destructive potential of an antimatter bomb arises from its interaction with normal matter. Whenever a particle contacts its antiparticle, the two annihilate and convert their mass into pure energy. Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc², tells us that the energy released is the mass of the particles times the speed of light squared. Thus, a small bit of mass converts into an enormous amount of energy. Fortunately, everywhere scientists look in the cosmos, they see only matter. Even powerful and sophisticated telescopes detect only trace amounts of antimatter. While this lack of antimatter in the universe bodes well for life (typically the energy released comes in the form of x–rays and gamma rays), it poses a problem for understanding the cosmos.

Here’s why. Scientists regularly make extremely small quantities of antimatter by colliding high–energy particles at accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Studies based on those collisions demonstrate that almost all known physical processes produce equal amounts of matter and antimatter. These same processes govern the universe back to the earliest moments after the big bang. So, how did those processes lead to a universe containing only matter? Where did all the antimatter go?

Particle physicists recognize some processes that generate slightly more matter than antimatter. In technical terms, those processes violate a symmetry known as “CP–symmetry”. In a nutshell, a process obeys CP–symmetry if its results are identical after changing all particle positions to a mirror image and changing all particles to their antiparticles. CP–symmetry–violating processes can produce an excess of matter because they treat particles and antiparticles differently.

Cosmologists can explain the lack of antimatter in the universe if enough CP–symmetry violation occurred shortly after the big bang, resulting in more matter than antimatter. After the excess was produced and the universe cooled more, all the antimatter would have been annihilated with the normal matter, leaving a residue of matter and energy. Calculations show that it would take roughly one extra matter particle for every billion matter/antimatter pairs to generate the matter density of our universe.

One aspect of this explanation that troubles physicists is that the nature of the CP–symmetry violation seems unusual. In other words, its value differs from the theoretically expected value. If the symmetry–breaking were more in line with the expected value, the universe would contain too little matter for life to arise. This indicates fine–tuning in the amount of CP–symmetry violation.

However, fine–tuning implies an Agent external to the universe (that is, a supernatural Agent) was involved in its origin and development. Recent research, which I will discuss next week, reveals that the CP–symmetry violation fine–tuning may be “solved” given the masses of the most fundamental particles known to physicists: quarks. But this solution simply moves the fine–tuning to a different part of the model, namely the quark masses.

By Kenneth Samples
Part one of four

I once asked my public-college philosophy students if they thought human beings possessed a soul. A student quipped, “James Brown certainly does!” Popular musicical entertainer, James Brown, may have been called “the Godfather of Soul,” but he’s certainly not the only one to possess a soul.

In this article I will briefly describe how I understand Scripture’s teaching concerning the constituent aspects and ultimate union of human nature. In further installments of this series I will then explain and evaluate three theological views concerning the origin of the human soul.

Christian Anthropology

In his helpful book, Handbook of Basic Bible Texts, evangelical Christian theologian John Jefferson Davis summarizes the meaning of the imago Dei (image of God):

“God created man and woman in his own image and likeness. Creation in the image and likeness of God includes the moral and spiritual nature, intellect, feelings, will, and dominion over the lower creation. God created man and woman as morally responsible agents.”

Being made in the image of God means humans are both physical and spiritual creatures. In fact, the human person represents a union of material (physical) and non-material (spiritual) aspects. There remains a theological debate about how to best describe the Bible’s true perspective concerning the constituent nature of human beings. Some believe in trichotomy—the view that human beings are made up of three component parts (body/soul/spirit). Others embrace the position of dichotomy—the view that human beings are a union of body and soul-spirit.

Dichotomy

I view the position of dichotomy as the most biblically consistent position for four basic reasons:

1. The terms “soul” and “spirit” are used interchangeably in both the Old and New Testaments (Genesis 35:18; 1 Kings 17:21; Luke 23:46; Acts 7:59).

2. Some passages refer to more than the three constituent elements of body/soul/spirit (“heart,” “mind:” Matthew 22:37) which makes me think the meaning of the text shouldn’t be taken overly literally. The best interpretation of Matthew 22:37 is the admonition to love God with one’s entire being not in multiple distinct parts.

3. Theologically speaking, both “soul” and “spirit” reference that immaterial aspect of a human being’s nature found in union with the body (Genesis 2:7).

4. The totality of human existence is referenced sometimes in terms of “body and soul” (Matthew 10:28) and at other times as “body and spirit” (2 Corinthians 7:1).

These reasons lead me to conclude that human beings, via the imago Dei, are a union of material and immaterial aspects.

In the next installment of the series I will begin a discussion concerning three views of the soul’s origin. So check back with Today’s New Reason to Believe next Tuesday.

To consider all the relevant scriptural passages relating to the constituent aspects of human nature, see Davis’s Handbook of Basic Bible Texts.

For more about the historic Christian view of human nature, see my book, A World of Difference: Putting Christian Truth-Claims to the Worldview Test, particularly chapter 10

If living things - things that we manifestly did not design ourselves - bear the hallmarks of design, if they exhibit a signature that would lead us to recognize intelligent activity in any other realm of experience, then perhaps it is time to rehabilitate this lost way of knowing and to rekindle our wonder in the intelligibility and design of nature that first inspired the scientific revolution.

Stephen Meyer, Ph.D., Signature in the Cell (2009)

Hat tip to Apologetics315

By Dani Garavelli

You would think, wouldn’t you, that one of the principal attractions of atheism would be the complete absence of schisms. Where the devout always seem to be working themselves up into a frenzy over some obscure theological point, non-believers can glide through life, absolved, as they are, of the need to negotiate the terms of their disbelief. If there’s no God, there is no message. And if there’s no message, then there’s nothing much to argue about.

Despite this, atheism was last week rent by disagreement, proving that the need for petty, internecine squabbling runs deeper in the psyche than the need to find meaning in existence. The question that is dividing its leading proponents is how much they should be evangelising about their lack of faith. Should they adopt a live-and-let-live approach to the religious? Or should they be shouting their atheism from the rooftops in an attempt to get all the blinkered throwbacks to see the light?

In the live-and-let-live corner are the “old” atheists led by US professor Paul Kurtz, who founded the Center for Inquiry three decades ago to offer a positive alternative to religion. Kurtz – who built alliances with religious groups over issues such as opposing creationism in schools – lit the kindling for the argument when he called the decision to celebrate Blasphemy Day with a contest encouraging new forms of blasphemy a betrayal of the civic virtues of democracy.

In the opposing corner are the new, In-Your-Face atheists – Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and PZ Myers – who see it as their duty to launch constant attacks on the faithful. Within their ranks, there is a kind of competitiveness to achieve ever greater degrees of non-belief. Myers once drove a rusty nail through a consecrated communion wafer and posted it on his website.

It’s the new atheists, of course, who are in the ascendancy. Their noisy denunciation of religion seems to capture the zeitgeist, even though the vitriolic rhetoric they use has more in common with the clergymen they oppose than with the liberal secularism of our age.

As regular readers of this column may know, I am not hugely devout, my faith, at its lowest ebb, being based more on a desire for God to exist than on an overpowering conviction that he does. If I were to lose the last vestiges of it and become an atheist, I suspect the most liberating aspect would be the prospect of jettisoning, once and for all, any association with the intolerance and invective that has blighted some sections of my own Church for so long. So it strikes me as odd that so-called movement atheists should adopt the very tactics they claim to abhor in religionists to further their own cause.

Like missionaries in Africa, they trample over other people’s beliefs in an attempt to replace them with their own “superior” world view. They dislike the way some churches put up The End Of The World Is Nigh posters to try to boost numbers, so they slap up their own message – “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” – on the side of buses, even though, for some people, the thought of life as one long struggle with a big, black hole at the end of it, is not cheering, but deeply distressing.

They complain about parents indoctrinating their charges, but set up atheist summer camps, which encourage “scepticism”. “It is a telling fact that, the world over, the vast majority of children follow the religion of their parents rather than any of the other available religions,” Dawkins has said. Uh huh. And I think you’ll find most children of non-believers also tend to be non-believers.

For all movement atheists are forever going on about their own intelligence, they seem singularly unable to distinguish between organised religion and personal faith, ridiculing both with equal vehemence. I mean, by all means criticise individual religions: Catholicism for its tendency to cover up child abuse; Protestantism for its rejection of fun; Islam for its sometimes dubious treatment of women. There are plenty within those creeds who would agree with you. Feel free to criticise the short-comings of individual practitioners too: there will always be those who don’t practise what they preach (although many more are doing their best to live good and loving lives).

But bear in mind believers don’t have a monopoly on ruthlessness; or arrogance or mean-spiritedness, as Dawkins so ably demonstrates. Here is a brilliant man who uses his intellect to put other people down. Here is a man so convinced of his own rightness that he treats all who disagree with him with contempt. It’s almost as if he considers himself infallible.

Mocking what is sacred to other people – by drawing Jesus with nail polish dripping from his wounds instead of blood, for example – doesn’t seem sophisticated or useful, it seems childish; like spoiling someone’s else’s toy because you don’t have one of your own.

The refusal of movement atheists to accept that faith and intelligence are not mutually exclusive, undermines their credibility. But even if they were right: if all believers were sad, pathetic and deluded, I don’t see what would be so clever about snatching away their comfort blanket.

The urge to strip away the meaning others invest in life is a brutal one, which is why a schism which benefited “new” atheists would be very bad news indeed.

At its worst, “movement” atheism is more than the passive non-belief in the existence of God. It’s a cult which has all the nasty trappings of religion, except the deity. It’s a form of secular fundamentalism every bit as bitter, as poisonous and potentially sinister as the doctrines it hopes to replace.