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interesting article. Thought I would share. My idea of eternity & timelessness has been altered after reading this.

Is God In Time?


Gregory Koukl

Is it possible that all of history is one big space-time manifold--a "block universe"?


Put your thinking caps on today. We're going to talk about time.
It's common for us to make the comment "The spaceless, timeless God" or "Then we'll pass out of time, into eternity." However, the Scripture is not clear about God's timelessness. Most of the verses seem to indicate God is in time: Rev 1:4; Rev 4:8, Ps 90, Jude 25, 2 Pet 3:8.

Two popular books describe a picture of God as timeless. Philip Yancey's book Disappointment with God and C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity . Lewis and Yancey both flounder because of theological and philosophical problems that both seem unaware of.

Let's define time and see if God qualifies as being in time.

First, we need a definition or a description of time that seems to capture our basic sense of it. Second, we need to see if this definition applies in any way to God. Third, we need to address some of the misconceptions--philosophical and theological--that Yancey seems to have overlooked.

What is time? To put it most simply, time is duration.

This is where clocks come in (any kind of clock). Clocks mark change or, more precisely, clocks are examples of change that seem to indicate the passage of time. One could say, then, that time is a necessary precondition for change and change is a sufficient condition to establish the passage of time. Maybe there can be time (duration) without change, but it doesn't seem possible to have change without time.

Here's why. If a certain state of affairs is followed by another state of affairs (a change in property exemplification, or relations, etc.) that had not already been contemporaneous--at the same "time"--with the first (as the sequence of numbers might be), then it seems a temporal change has taken place. In our normal way of speaking we say that the first state of affairs is past and the second is present. In other words, there is at least one true past- tensed fact.

It seems that if real change takes place then two entirely different conditions exist in temporal relationship to each other, one earlier and one later. (Notice I didn't say "before and after." These terms don't necessarily imply time, only order. Numbers are in a particular order, but there doesn't seem to be any temporal quality to that order.)

Whenever there's change of any kind we know that time has passed.

So we have a simple test for the existence of time. If there are tensed facts--in this case, a fact about the past--then time has passed. A duration has been measured. Therefore time must exist. Further, agents which participate in this change must sustain change themselves, even if it is an extrinsic change in relations to the events in question. Therefore these agents are in time also.

Now, that seems pretty straightforward to me. If God is an agent of change, then He must be in time or at least enter time at the particular point that the change obtains. This is called the A-theory of time. Tenses are real and becoming is real because real change marks duration, distinguishing past from present from future.

There seems to be only one way to avoid this conclusion. Maybe the relations of "earlier than" and "later than" are not temporal at all, but causal in a non-temporal way, like one plate eternally resting upon another, the bottom one a-temporally causing the position of the top one. (Lewis uses this illustration in another context.)

Is it possible time can be reduced to a series of static events, causally related, yet not in time? Is it possible that all of history is one big space-time manifold--a "block universe"? From the inside we sense the "flow" of time, but in fact each moment is just a static, unmoving, slice of the story. This is Lewis and Yancey's solution. It's called the B-theory of time, but let's just call it the story-book view.

There are Christian philosophers who hold to this view because it's the only view that allows God to be totally timeless. But as we've seen in our definition, such people can't admit to any change in the universe because change immediately thrusts us into time. We have to have God in a changeless state, and the time- space universe existing as a static storybook block.

Okay so far, but here's the problem. When did God create the universe out of nothing? On the B-view, the universe would have had to exist in eternal causal dependence on God, but there never was a "time" when it came into existence. It always existed with God. He is the eternal cause of it--like those two plates, one resting upon the other for eternity--but it never came into existence at any time.

This seems to me to be too high of a price to pay to assert a timeless God.

If God does create, then the game is up. He may have had an eternal intention to do certain things, but then He must exercise His will, He must act with power, and He must create the universe. And it does seem to be that such a creation was a process, at least six days, and that means God was in time, at least by then.

What about God in a kind of hypertime? God can still act and create, but He can be above our time and intervene at different points in our timeline. This was Lewis's view in Narnia. But there's a problem. Yancey says it's "like someone in the real world, who makes a brief appearance in a movie." There is something unreal about this world. Imagine being a character in a book. What is missing? There is no "now." Everything can be marked by a date, but what motivates action?

Further, any particular slice of the story doesn't define any given character. The character is only a whole character when the complete story is viewed from beginning to end. No individual person is fully present in any given "moment." On any given page of our story we don't see real persons; we only view agents and events. It's only after our story completely unfolds that we have our character in full.

This is actually one view of what a person is. It's called the perdurance view. You never have a whole person at any given point of time, only slices of a person. All the events of that person's life amount to the whole person. In a way, you're not completely you until you're gone.

Isn't this a strange way to view persons? Doesn't it seem that at this moment you are fully the person you are, the same actual person you were a year ago, and the same one you'll be a year from now? Yes, you'll change. You'll learn more and forget some. You'll gain weight or gain muscles over time. But in a very strict sense, you are still the same person; you are still the same you. That's why we can try you for a crime you committed in the past. You're still the same you, but such a thing would be impossible on this storybook view of time.

In our analysis of time, it seems clear that God cannot act in a temporally causal way and still be said to be timeless. If God acts to create, then this change in a state of affairs immediately becomes past to Him. God is characterized by duration at that point and tensed facts are true of Him ("In the Beginning God created [tensed] the heavens and the earth.").

The only way to avoid this is to call our experience of time's flow an illusion and opt for a storybook view of time. But this has its own problems. It's hard to make any sense out of personal identity through the series of events. And the notion of "now" simply disappears.

Certainly, as Yancey points out, there is a difference between God's perspective and our own. But the difference is in His knowledge, not in His relationship to time. God knows the future in advance; He doesn't see it in His eternal present

The critical issue in determinism is not whether the future is fixed or not, but rather what fixes it. If the future is to be a certain way (known through God's perfect knowledge of future- tensed facts) because of individual choices He knows of, then there's no threat of determinism.

The Scriptures seem to identify a God in time, yet a God that is somehow beyond time, not constrained by it the way we are (1 Peter 3). God could have existed during an unmetered duration--or during no "time" at all--with an eternal purpose to create the world He wanted, and an eternal purpose to accomplish particular things in each or our lives. And when He acted to create He entered into time, of necessity, now having a past and a present.

Tremendous comfort can still come from knowing that God has always been in control and will never relinquish it. One might also draw a deeper comfort from knowing that God is in time with me right now, not unreachably transcendent, but right in this moment with me. And because He's in this moment He can act to respond to my needs and prayers.

http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5272

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Designed by Natural Selection


Gregory Koukl

Could it be the evolutionists who are being irrational?


About a year and a half ago, I gave a response to an article in the L. A. Times about a book called The Moral Animal--Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology by Robert Wright. This response resulted in my commentary called "Did Morals Evolve?" There are some interesting things in this book I want to comment on.
Wright's argument is that it is possible to explain all of man's mental and moral development in terms of evolution, "survival of the fittest," and natural selection. One thing he acknowledges is essentially the same point of view held by one of the world's most famous evolutionists, Richard Dawkins. Dawkins makes the point in his watershed book, The Blind Watchmaker , that the world looks designed. He asserts it looks designed--but isn't. He believes natural selection can be invoked to account for all of the things that appear to be consciously design.

Robert Wright unabashedly makes the same point. He uses design language in his descriptions all of the time. He talks about nature wanting certain things and natural selection designing particular things, but then is careful at different points to add the disclaimer that this design is just a manner of speaking because Mother Nature doesn't actually design anything. Natural selection doesn't design anything. There is no mind behind this, no consciousness. It just looks that way. However, since it looks designed, he feels comfortable using design language to describe natural selection as a designer, which is no conscious designer at all.

I think his work might be more honest if he didn't use design language, but it's interesting that he is at least willing to acknowledge that nature does look designed.

Incidentally, I am one who believes that natural selection is a legitimate explanation for many things. I think we can see natural selection at work in the natural realm that does influence the morphological distinctives of populations. The shape of the body is ultimately going to be determined by the genetic makeup of the creature, but whether that phenotype gets passed from generation to generation will be determined by environmental factors--natural selection. And that will then begin to characterize larger groups of the organism.

Basically I believe in what is known technically as the Special Theory of Evolution, or micro -evolution, because it has been demonstrated without question to have occurred. We can observe it happening. This doesn't go against my Christianity or my conviction that God created the world. Darwinian evolution requires macro -evolution, or trans-species evolution.

Any design creationist of any ilk, whether old-earther or young-earther, can hold to this. For example, a population of mosquitoes can be almost entirely wiped out by DDT, except for those few who may be naturally and genetically resistant to that strain of DDT. Then they reproduce a whole strain of mosquitoes that are resistant to that strain of DDT. But this is unremarkable. When I hear these kinds of descriptions of minute changes and small variations within a species attributed to natural selection, I have no problem with that in itself.


The so-called scientific argument is sustained simply by a bald assertion that nature did it, and not by evidence that God could not have done it.



I do have another question regarding the assessment, or acknowledgment, that the world looks designed. If it looks designed, it could be equally explained by either the unconscious "design" of natural selection, as the author argues, or the conscious design of a Creator. If someone looks at the natural realm and observes that it looks designed but thinks that it can be accounted for by natural selection, then they are identifying empirical equivalency between two different explanations. Empirical equivalency means the observable data can be explained by two alternatives equally. In this case, the observation of design can be attributed to natural selection or conscious design. The evidence is equal for both. That's what it means to say that the world looks designed but natural selection can account for it.
My question is, why opt for the evolutionary explanation if there are two different explanations that will equally do the job? When you have a question that needs resolution and two empirically equivalent solutions, you must look for some other information to adjudicate between the two. Is there something that can be said for one system over the other that would cause us to choose it as the paradigm which better reflects how the world came to be? What is the compelling evidence that would cause us to opt for a naturalistic explanation over some kind of theistic explanation? Frankly, I know of none. There is only a predisposition to look for a naturalistic explanation that leaves God out. If that is the case, then it needs to be acknowledged.

Why go for natural selection rather than for God? Because God is religion and natural selection is science. Science is seen as fact--and religion as fantasy. If we have a set of physical facts that can be accounted for by a theistic explanation, then you have to have some other information that may cause you to want to dismiss the theistic option. I'm asking "where is the evidence that makes the God option an intellectually untenable one, without bringing in a mere philosophic assumption (namely naturalism)?"

One might rightly ask, where is your evidence that God did it? I can give lots of it. I could give independent evidence that is unrelated to religious authority claims. I can give other evidence why it is reasonable to believe and would be intellectually and rationally compelling to believe that there is a conscious mind behind the universe. I could give cosmological and moral arguments that God is the best explanation for the existence and nature of the universe. Many of these rely on scientific evidence.

Given two options to explain the apparent design features of the universe, one seems to be a bald-faced authority claim -- the non-religious, so-called scientific one.

We have two options--one scientific and one religious--that equally explain the observation of a designed universe. The so-called scientific argument is sustained simply by a bald assertion that nature did it and not by evidence that God could not have done it. However, the design claim that I am making can be further substantiated by other evidence for the existence of God. When push comes to shove, if you are rational, it is more reasonable for you to adopt the conscious design explanation--the God claim. Most people are not going to do that because it is not scientific.

Why does that matter?
Because science knows the answer.
How do they know the answer?
Because God doesn't exist.
How do they know that?
Because nature did everything.
But how do you know that?

That is the question we are trying to ask and there are no rationally sustainable answers forthcoming.

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Oreos & Origins


Gregory Koukl

Many scientists exclude God as an explanation for any event. In some cases, agent causation (i.e. God) is the only rational conclusion.


I want to give a couple of illustrations to try to explain to you why making reference to a designer is legitimate in the scientific arena. As some have argued, whenever you make a reference to a designer, you are making reference to something that is not natural. It is supernatural by definition, therefore you are talking about religion. Well, I guess I have to plead guilty to that. Part of my point earlier was that it's not possible for you to avoid comments that have religious or ****physical ramifications. Both sides have that impact, but when someone makes the comment that now you are talking about religion, what they are essentially saying is "foul." You cannot bring supernatural questions into the discussion about science because science, by definition, is limited only to naturalistic explanations.
Now, that is functionally true right now, but my point is that that is an arbitrary distinction. It implies that the only thing truthful that can be known is known through empirical studies. Science does that kind of thing, so science gives us truth and keep your religion, your ****physics out of this discussion because it just botches up the works. The fact is, agent causation is an acceptable scientific explanation for things because we understand that in the world of natural cause and effect, there are acting agents that make decisions about things. In fact, when you try to solve a murder, this is precisely what you are trying to determine. Who was the acting agent? Not what are the scientific laws that can account for the body being in this position at this particular time. You are not concerned with that. You are concerned with the guilt and the identity of an individual who made a choice to do an immoral act, a homicide in this case. And so you are trying to determine, even using scientific evidence much of the time, who was the agent who acted.

Now that same mentality can be applied to a lot of scientific examples. For example, we have this thing called a seismograph, right? It's a little needle on a piece of paper that gets drawn across this needle that wobbles back and forth according to the vibrations of the earth and it makes a little squiggle, right? And by looking at this squiggle you can determine the force of an earthquake or what kind of seismic activity is going on. These are blind natural forces being recorded by this stylus on a seismograph.

What would happen, though, if you were looking at the etchings of the stylus on the seismograph and you saw these wobbly, side-to-side movements with an unbroken line of ink, and you saw someone's signature written in there and then it continued on with these wobbles. What would you conclude? Would you conclude that this was some really wacky earthquake? Of course not. You would see the unmistakable signs of agent causation and you would rightly conclude that someone got in there and made a conscious, intelligent choice to move the stylus and make the form of a signature. In other words, you don't explain that even on a scientific instrument by naturalistic causes. You explain it by agent causation.

Now to give you an illustration about how the game is fixed by the courts and by the educational system and by the scientific community, I have suggested what I have called the Oreo Experiment. You go to your chemistry teacher and ask if he is able to look at a solution and describe, based on his scientific testing, what is in the solution and how the solution, the precipitate, came to be. The precipitate is the heavy stuff that falls out, precipitates in the solution. In a beaker, for example. It seems that someone who is well-versed in the area of chemistry and well-versed in the area of physics can look and measure and test and describe what happened in a simple kind of thing.

Your chemist teacher takes the challenge and you say, "Okay, I'm going to put out a beaker full of stuff. There you see it, and now I'm covering it. Tomorrow we'll uncover it and you'll see something that has precipitated. Then it is your job to figure out how that happened." Sure. Fair enough. I know science. I know the laws of chemistry. We'll do it.

However, just before the chemist comes into the room the next morning to begin his experiments to look and observe the precipitate and begin to measure it to solve the problem, you lift the cover on the beaker and drop in an Oreo cookie. He walks in, you remove the cover to the beaker, and there is this discolored solution, but clearly visible is this rapidly decaying Oreo cookie. Very obvious. You can still see the word "Oreo" on it. And you say, "Okay, now using the laws of physics and chemistry, explain to me how that Oreo cookie got there." And he says, "Wait a minute, it's obvious that someone put it there because Oreo cookies don't just manufacture themselves out of nowhere in the middle of a beaker. You are playing a trick on me. Someone dropped it in there." And then you say, "Foul. You've broken the rules. You've inferred an outside agent here. You're not being scientific. It's your job to be a scientist. This is a chemistry lab. Let's stick with science. You are obliged to come up with some kind of explanation limited to the laws of chemistry and physics and time plus chance to explain how that Oreo cookie got there in the last twelve hours." Now, he would be hard pressed to do so. Why? Because it was put there. You know it was. The evidence indicates it was. There was an agent that caused that, but the rules have restricted him from concluding what it obvious in the circumstances.

Now I think it's possible that the rules like that can be so hammered into one that what is obvious to a casual onlooker will not be obvious to the person who is convinced of the rules. Who will deny agent causation even when it is staring him in the face?

This is the argument of Phillip Johnson in Darwin on Trial. He says the cards have been stacked against those who would hold some form of agent causation when it comes to the issue of origins, because when you infer agent causation naturally from the evidence, they say, wait a minute you mean agent as in God? You can't talk about God here. You've broken the rules. So you might legitimately ask, well, wait a minute. What if God did it? Isn't the most important concern that we figure out what actually happened and not necessarily keeping an arbitrarily restricted set of rules? The rules are helpful in certain measure. I would suggest that you could even apply the rules consistently when it comes to historical sciences and agent causation, they allow for this kind of thing. But because the suggestion or the inference is that God might be involved, God is out of the picture, He's not a player in this discussion. Therefore, any of your conclusions which integrate that--even if they're justified by the evidence--are out of bounds and are ruled inappropriate.

The court has said so, and who could ever argue with a decision of the Supreme Court?

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God and Evolution


Gregory Koukl

What is the problem with evolutionists referring to "Mother Nature?"


I've got tons of fishing magazines at home; they're laying everywhere. This one is entitled In-Fisherman and it is one of the best fishing magazines around. It's very helpful in educating you about fishing--fresh-water fishing in particular. But they have these short sections in the beginning--snippets, side-bar type things. This one is entitled "New View of Eye-Spots." It talks about how they are reassessing why these creatures have eye-spots. The purpose for eye-spots, according to evolutionary theory, is to trick the larger fish into attacking the eye-spot and away from the vulnerable spot on the fish in order to give the shad a chance to get away. But now there's a case of a shad, which is a small bait fish that larger fish eat, that has an eye-spot right in the middle of its body, which seems to be the most vulnerable spot. Why would they have an eye-spot there if the purpose of an eye-spot is to provide a protective advantage for the shad?
There's a comment made in the article, "The spots on the sides of shad may have evolved as a way to help the species maintain formation while schooling or spawning and not for defense against predators." Here's another case where you have the evolution language mixed with design language. It "may have evolved as a way to help." In other words, there is a purpose for this and that's to help schooling fish. It's so interesting when one explanation based on evolution doesn't work and they try to come up with another explanation, but both of these explanations imply design and purpose.

I then began reading a book called Big Bass Magic . This author is quite a conservationist, and I'm glad for that. He advocates catch and release, which is big among bass fishermen because we catch our fish for the sport of it and then let them go unharmed. Of course, then they can return to their natural habitat, spawn and enjoy a long life there and maybe be caught again, so we have a resource that is maintained.

The author writes this unusual paragraph. Listen carefully to the words: "Generally, today's fish management has its roots in the agencies and programs of the forties. The purpose at that time was to determine how to exploit what was considered the lavishly over-abundant fish resource."

Let me pause for a moment. He used the word "purpose." Who has the purpose? Fish management people, right? "The purpose at the time was to determine how to better exploit what was considered the lavishly over-abundant fish resource."

He continues, "We often still find that attitude in fish management today, and it is typified by the much publicized statement that any fish that grows up, dies of old age and is never caught is a wasted resource. Well, that presumes that in nature no purpose is served by the complete life of that fish, and it is too much for me to take when that is denied. Nature would not allow a bass, for instance, to reach ten pounds if a bass that size served no purpose in the balance of the ecosystem."



If you are an evolutionist, you are not a theist in the sense that your theism has anything to do with the real world.



He's saying, look, older bass, bigger bass, the ones that people catch and hang on their wall really serve a purpose in the ecosystem. Notice how he used the word purpose to describe the intent of fishery management and then he used the word purpose to describe the intent of nature. Now, what the heck is that? Nature is not a person, therefore nature cannot have intent. Only agents have intents. Nature doesn't. Nature is just a general way of describing the accident of cause and effect in a naturalistic system. So to say that nature has a purpose that is served by the complete life of the fish in the ecosystem is to say something that is nonsense. It's ironic that it is said so glibly without a blush by a man who is deeply committed to evolution.
Now, I think that his gut-level observation is accurate. I think it seems clear that there is some purpose for the full life span of different species, but we can only make a comment like that if there is someone behind the scenes that is purposing, such that the things that we see have purposes. I think it is obvious there is a designer and that's why it is very easy for this man to talk about the purpose of individuals in wildlife management in the same breath as talking about the purpose of nature. It appears that both nature and wildlife management individuals are people that purpose. I think he is right, but nature is not like a mother nature that is to be worshipped. What we call nature is really the purposes of God. It is so obvious that even this evolutionist can't speak in such a way as to avoid that conclusion, which goes to make another point.

If you are an evolutionist, you are not a theist in the sense that your theism has anything to do with the real world. If you want to believe in God and believe in evolution, fine, go ahead and do that, but don't act like your belief in God has anything to do with the real world. It doesn't. Your belief about the real world is evolution, and that means time and chance. If you believe that God has something to do with the real world, then you can't be an evolutionist because evolution is run by chance, not by God, by definition.

Secondly, if you are an evolutionist, then please be honest with yourself and everyone else and abandon this Mother Nature language and all of this purpose talk that you invariably allow to be smuggled into your language when talking about the natural realm. You are rationally obliged, if you want to be intellectually honest, to refer to the rest of the time/space continuum world in entirely chance terms. No more Mother Nature language. No more purpose language. No more design language. Nothing.

I think if you consistently talk in a way that fits your basic world view you will see how ridiculous that world ends up being. It becomes untenable. It can't be held because the world is obviously designed. Things obviously fit into ecosystems with a particular purpose. They obviously have their place. Bodies are obviously artifacts. Mouths were made for eating. Hands were made for grasping. Legs were made for walking. They don't just happen to do that because they accidentally formed that way through the forces of nature acting on mindless matter. That, by the way, is the thing that gives human beings purpose. Not only are their bodies purposeful but their lives are purposeful as well.

Why? There is an intelligent Creator who is behind everything. A Creator we see quite obviously, as Paul says in the book of Romans, and as you say consistently every time you use the words Mother Nature.

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forgot to post links

http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5268

http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5488

http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5199

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Evolution Can't Explain Morality


Gregory Koukl

If you argue that morality evolved, you may end up saying that one "ought" to be selfish.


Yesterday I had a very interesting conversation about morality and whether evolution is an adequate explanation for morality. Many of you know that I have argued for a long time that morality -- the existence of moral things, "oughts", the notion of moral actions and moral motives, the reality of morality -- is a very powerful evidence for the existence of a moral God, whose character is the moral standard of the universe. I won't suggest that this is without problems, but I think it best answers the existence of morality. Those who are physicalistic, naturalistic, or empiricistic in nature -- physicalistic are those people who want to define everything in purely physicalistic terms that can be understood by chemistry and physics; those who are naturalistic want to explain everything solely in terms of natural law without any appeal to transcendent law or supernatural things or beings; those who are empiricistic want to explain everything in terms of that which you can access by the five senses -- are going to try to find ways of understanding morality that falls within the purview of their belief system without having to make an appeal to a divine being. But I don't think that works.
One way to go about this is to argue from effect back to cause, looking at effects and asking ourselves what is the simplest, most elegant solution that is an adequate explanation for the effects that we see. Not the simplest solution, but the simplest which is also adequate. This is also known as Ockam's Razor. I don't think the evolutionary explanation is adequate. That goes something like this: In order to survive, animals develop. Through the process of natural selection, naturalistic forces mold certain behavior that we call moral behavior which simply functions to allow the organism to exist and continue to survive. Actually, not the organism, but the species, because in some cases it requires sacrificing individual organisms so that the larger species can survive. This is all that morality ends up being.

That which we think is morality, or that which we call morality, turns out to be a description of animals conditioned by their environment to act in certain ways that benefit the survival of the species. We have just given that conduct a label. We call it morality. That is offered as a sufficient, adequate and complete description of how the behavior that we call moral behavior actually came about.

My response to that is it isn't an adequate explanation at all, because the category of things that we call moral is not adequately engaged by mere descriptions of past behavior. That morality entails a look forward to the future, not just to the past, not just looking backwards to what we have done, or what was done by certain individuals, which they happen to call moral. But it is a look forward into the future about how we ought to behave. Since morality is prescriptive, not descriptive, and if it is normative -- if it talks about how we ought to behave -- and the evolutionary description of moral behavior doesn't engage that very fundamental, core element of morality, then it hasn't explained it and morality still needs to be explained.




So all of this so-called description of where morality comes from, gets reduced to this ludicrous statement: I morally ought to be unselfish so that I can be more thoroughly selfish. That is silly.



There was another bit of step by step reasoning that I used to show, I think, very clearly that what evolution might describe couldn't possibly be what we understand morality to be. My basic point is this: what naturalists explain when they seek to explain morality in naturalistic, evolutionary terms is not morality at all. They are explaining something different. I get to that by asking a series of questions. Instead of looking backward, I look forward, and I ask a question of moral behavior like "Why ought anyone be unselfish in the future?" for example. The question came up yesterday regarding an observation that was done with chimpanzees. There was a group of chimpanzees which had, in a sense, punished one member for being selfish by withholding food from that member and therefore teaching that member moral behavior. Apparently, the moral rule that undergirded the lesson was that the other chimpanzee ought not be selfish. That's a moral statement and the question I'm going to ask is "Why ought the chimp (or human) not be selfish?" I'm looking for a justification there.
The answer is going to be that when we're selfish, it hurts the group. But you see, that answer isn't enough of an answer because that answer itself presumes another moral value that we ought to be concerned about the health of the group. So, I'm going to ask the question, "Why ought we be concerned about the health of the group?" The answer is going to be because if the groups don't survive, then the species doesn't survive. Then you can imagine the next question. "Why ought I care about the health of the species and whether the species survives or not?" You see, the problem with all of these responses that purport to be justifications or explanations for the moral rule, is that all of these things that are meant to explain the moral rule really depend themselves upon a moral rule before they can even be uttered. Therefore, it can't be the explanation of morality. When I ask the question "Why ought I be concerned with the species?", the next answer ends the series. The answer is, "I ought to be concerned with the species because if the species dies out, then I will not survive. If the species is in jeopardy, then my own personal self interests would be in jeopardy."

So, in abbreviated form, the reasoning goes like this: I ought to be unselfish because it is better for the group, which is better for the species, which is better for me. So why ought I be unselfish? Because it is better for me. But looking at what is better for me, is selfishness. So all of this so-called description of where morality comes from, gets reduced to this ludicrous statement: I morally ought to be unselfish so that I can be more thoroughly selfish. That is silly. Because we know that morality can't be reduced to selfishness. Why do we know that? Because our moral rules are against selfishness and for altruism. They are against selfishness and for the opposite. When you think about what it is that morality entails, you don't believe that morality is really about being selfish. Morality is about being unselfish, or at least it entails that. Which makes my point that this description, based on evolution, does not do the job. It doesn't explain what it is supposedly meant to explain. It doesn't explain morality. It is simply reduced to a promotion of selfishness which isn't morality at all.

Morality is something altogether different. We may debate about all that moral views and understandings entail, but one thing we can all agree on, I think, is that when we are looking for a definition of morality, we know it isn't about selfishness. It is about not being selfish, just the opposite. That's why these explanations don't work. They either smuggle morality into the equation by describing the behavior that is meant to be explained by evolution so they depend upon morality to do the job, or else the descriptions and explanations end up being reduced to selfishness, which isn't what we're trying to explain. We're trying to explain why one ought not be selfish, not why one ought to be selfish.

http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5237

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To say creationism isn't scientific involves two false assumptions about science. This makes the exclusion of intelligent creation from the realm of science arbitrary.

Science Isn't, Science Is

by Greg Koukl

Stephen Jay Gould, evolution's popular icon from Harvard, has fired his latest salvo against creation in his new book, Rocks of Ages. He continues to advance the idea that the term "creation science" is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.


There are even some Christian thinkers who agree with him. Creation, they suggest, is theological. Science is empirical. Religion and science, like oil and water, don't mix. They represent two entirely different "magisteriums," in Gould's words. Science is the domain of fact and reason. Religion is the domain of belief and faith.

Line of Demarcation


Implicit in such statements is the assumption that there is a precise definition of science. Any discipline that does not conform to this definition is "unscientific," being outside of science. Add to that the prevailing mood of scientism (only the methods of science can be trusted to tell us what's true) and the result is that all other disciplines--including theology--yield nothing but interesting beliefs, not facts.


To say that any form of creationism is not science involves two assumptions. First, it presumes there is a clear line of demarcation between science and non-science (with creation on the non-science side of that line). Second, it presumes that disciplines outside of science have no place intruding upon scientific conclusions. That would pit fact against faith.


However, the exclusion of intelligent creation from the realm of science is arbitrary for two reasons. First, the fact is there is no clear line of demarcation between science and non-science. Second, even if there were such a line, it wouldn't automatically mean that well justified conclusions from other disciplines could not have a bearing on scientific thinking.

Necessary and Sufficient


Three things are required to establish a clear line of demarcation between science and non-science. First, one would have to identify necessary conditions that any discipline must satisfy to qualify for the label "scientific." A necessary condition is a minimal requirement, an essential element that must be present in every case. It allows us to point to clear examples of things that are immediately excluded as science.


Second, one would have to identify sufficient conditions that any discipline must satisfy to qualify for the label "scientific." What constellation of factors are adequate for a definition? When is enough enough? Sufficient conditions allow us to point to clear examples of things that are immediately included in the class.


For example, for a geometric figure to be a square, it must be a closed, two-dimensional form consisting of four straight lines that are connected. This is absolutely necessary. Any form that does not have these characteristics isn't even in consideration.


This isn't enough, though. It's not sufficient. A parallelogram and some rectangles fit this description, yet are not squares. More is needed. If you add that each line needs to be the same length and all connecting angles are 90o, then you have added other conditions that, in sum, are sufficient to encompass all squares. Anything fulfilling the necessary conditions might be a square, and anything satisfying the sufficient requirements must be a square.


To get a good grade on an essay test it is necessary that one know the material, but that is not enough. He must also be able to articulate the correct answers clearly in writing. That would be sufficient.


Both boundaries are needed. If there are only necessary conditions, then you can clearly know some things that are not scientific, but you can't state with certainty what things are. On the other hand, if there are only sufficient conditions, you can clearly know some things that are science, but you can never state with certainty what things are not.


Note that sufficient requirements are not always necessary. Owning a billion dollars is sufficient in itself to qualify you as rich, but there are many rich people who are not billionaires.

In or Out?


The third requirement for a valid definition of science is that the necessary and sufficient conditions must include everything we already understand to be science and exclude those things that clearly are not.


This is where the real problem lies. Virtually any attempt to list necessary and sufficient conditions for a definition of science either includes things clearly not scientific, or excludes things that clearly are.


Let me give some examples. When the question "What are the elements of science?" comes up, certain components are cited. Characteristics are offered like observation, experimental repeatability, falsification, conformity to natural laws, etc. But are any of these elements either necessary or sufficient to identify an activity as scientific?


None of these are really necessary, in our sense of the term. Too many bona fide scientific procedures do not use them. No one has observed a magnetic field itself. It's hard to imagine a repeatable experiment that would address the issue of the extinction of the dinosaurs. The concept of "survival of the fittest" is not falsifiable. And the Big Bang is allegedly a singularity that is the source of natural law, and therefore could not be caused by it. However, each of these is unquestionably within the realm of science.


It seems equally clear that none of these could be sufficient conditions for science either. Biblical exegesis relies on observation. Spiritual regeneration is a repeatable event (by another "experimenter", that is). Theological doctrines are, at least in principle, falsifiable. And math and logic conform to a type of law. Yet none of these, by virtue of the presence of those elements, would be considered scientific.


The point is simply this: Apart from a clear line of demarcation identifying both necessary and sufficient conditions for science, it is presumptuous to exclude intelligent creation from the field of science. If, on the other hand, science is defined not by necessary and sufficient conditions, but by a constellation of endeavors that generally characterize clear-cut cases of science, that allows us to make meaningful distinctions between science and non-science. However, this method also qualifies intelligent design as scientific because it employs that same constellation of techniques the other disciplines do.

Problems on the Outside


One other element--the notion of external conceptual problems--bears on the issue of the singular authority of science in the area of knowledge. These are problems raised in a discipline outside of science that are reasonable and rationally justified, yet conflict with the conclusions of science.


For example, one conclusion of science may reduce man to a brain and a body, denying the ****physical dimension of the soul. Man is simply a machine made of meat, locked in a mechanistic universe of cause and effect. If, however, other disciplines--like philosophy, ethics, or theology--could provide legitimate reasons for the existence of the soul, this would weigh against the "scientific" conclusion.


In the twentieth century, science has become an elitist, parochial enterprise. This is unwarranted. First, there is no clear set of conditions--either necessary or sufficient--that distinguish science from non-science. Second, even if there were, non-scientific enterprises like philosophy, theology, and ethics might contribute legitimate, defensible conclusions that represent problems for some scientific views.


Well-justified conclusions from other disciplines ought not be dismissed out of hand. To disregard a view simply because it's "religious" or "theological" is obscurantist. If truth is really the object of the scientific enterprise, scientists should welcome it from any source.


http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6032

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The presence of evil in the world is considered by some to be
solid evidence against the existence of God.

I think it proves just the opposite.

Evil as Evidence for God

by Greg Koukl

The presence of evil in the world is considered by some to be solid evidence against the existence of God. I think it proves just the opposite. The entire objection hinges on the observation that true evil exists "out there" as an objective feature of the world. Therein lies the problem for the atheist.

To say something is evil is to make a moral judgment, and moral judgments make no sense outside of the context of a moral standard. Evil as a value judgment marks a departure from that standard of morality. If there is no standard, there is no departure.

Evil can't be real if morals are relative. Evil is real, though. That's why people object to it. Therefore, objective moral standards must exist as well. This discovery invites certain questions. Where do morals come from and why do they seem to apply only to human beings? Are they the product of chance? What world view makes sense out of morality?

We can answer these questions by simply reflecting on the nature of a moral rule. By making observations about the effect--morality--we can then determin