Dr Paul Allen

Two of the most celebrated atheists to ever live, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins both acknowledged that the fine tuning of the universe is the most troubling argument that atheists have to deal with. What is fine-tuning? Fine-tuning, as it applies to the universe, is the idea that the conditions that allow life to exist in the universe can occur only when certain universal constants lie within a very narrow range of values. If any of several constants were only slightly different, the universe would be unlikely to be conducive to the establishment of life. All modern scientists agree that the universe seems to be fine-tuned for life. There are so many aspects of the universe that, even if only minutely altered, life could not exist. The universe in which we live gives the appearance of having been designed with incredible precision. Variables in perfect precision We are told by today’s astrophysicists that there were around 122 variables that would need to be lined up with ...

In his famous essay, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Eugene Wigner wrote that the correspondence between pure mathematics and the natural world was “something bordering on the mysterious.” “There is,” he said “no rational explanation for it.” It makes sense to say that basic mathematics was developed to describe things in the everyday world. We can understand the origin of things like counting and addition and how to calculate area. However, as Wigner goes on to argue, this simple explanation fails to account for so much of what we see. The work of professional mathematicians often involves incredible ingenuity and extraordinary feats of logic. Some theorems and proofs take years to work out. And yet, astonishingly, many of the most brilliant and insanely abstract concepts turn out to model real-world phenomena perfectly. They fit like a lock and key. Consider for a moment just how extraordinary thi...

Some philosophers are claiming God doesn’t exist because the universe is big and mostly humanity-free.  These academic philosophers look across the vastness of space and say, “God would not have made something so big and yet so sparse in humanity. Therefore God doesn’t exist.” From the  Real Clear Science  article  “Does the Size of the Universe Prove God Doesn’t Exist?”  by philosopher Emily Thomas we learn: Philosophers of religion such as Michael Martin and Nicholas Everitt have asked us to consider the kind of universe we would expect the Christian God to have created, and compare it with the universe we actually live in. They argue there is a mismatch. Everitt focuses on how big the universe is, and argues this gives us reason to believe the God of classical Christianity doesn’t exist. What’s big? Thomas says, Our own planet is 150m kilometres away from the sun. Earth’s nearest stars, the Alpha Centauri system , are four light year...

“Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.” ( Psalm 90:2 ) This verse was written by Moses as the children of Israel prepared to enter the Promised Land. Perhaps the most basic of all the attributes of God is that He “inhabiteth eternity” ( Isaiah 57:15 ). He is “from everlasting to everlasting,” the God who ever was and ever shall be. Creatures of time cannot really comprehend the idea of past eternity. “But who made God?” children ask. “Nobody made God,” we answer. “He always was.” The alternative would be to believe in the eternity of “space” and “matter,” but these in themselves are utterly incapable of producing our complex universe. God, however, is an adequate First Cause to explain all the effects of our infinite, intricate cosmos. There are many other Scriptures assuring us that God has always been. “Thy throne is established of old: thou art from everlasting” ( Psal...

We need to hear from him that he is sovereign over the whole world, and everything that happens in it. We need his own reminder that he is never helpless, never frustrated, never at a loss. We need his assurance that he reigns over ISIS, terrorism, Syria, Russia, China, India, Nigeria, France, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, and Australia — every nation, every people, every language, every tribe, every chief, president, king, premier, prime minister, politician, great or small. Sometimes we need to hear specific statements from God himself about his own authority. We need God’s own words. It is the very words of God that have unusual power to settle our nerves, and make us stable, wise, and courageous. Vague generalizations about the power of God do not have the same effect as the very voice of God telling us specifically how strong he is, how pervasive his power, how universal his authority, how unlimited his sovereignty. And that our times are in his hands. So let’s listen. Let’s treat t...

I have made the earth, the man and the beast that are upon the ground, by my great power and by my outstretched arm, and have given it unto whom it seemed meet unto me.” ( Jeremiah 27:5 ) “The earth, the man and the beast” are the three entities which God is said to have “created” (Hebrew bara—note Genesis 1:1 , 21, 27) in the Genesis account of creation. However, they are also said in Genesis to have been “made” (Hebrew asah—note Genesis 1:25-26 ; 2:4), and that is the emphasis in our text above. Of course, both aspects were accomplished in the six days of creation week, after which God “rested from all his work which God created and made” ( Genesis 2:3 ). This statement makes it abundantly plain that the present processes of nature do not “create” (call into existence out of nothing) or “make” (build up into more complex forms) anything, as our modern theistic evolutionists and evangelical uniformitarians allege. God has rested from both of these works, except in occasional mira...

Image via Wikipedia Tim Challies writes: On February 14, 1990, the space craft Voyager 1 was on the very fringe of our solar system. Before it drifted away to wander the galaxy, engineers turned the cameras around and pointed them toward earth, 6.4 billion kilometers away. This historic photograph captured earth as just the tiniest point of light in a vast sky. Carl Sagan looked at that photograph and declared, “Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.” We are, after all, the inhabitants of just a speck, the tiniest pinprick of light in a universe of unimaginable proportions. How big is the universe? It’s an impossible question for us to answer, of course, but that has not stopped many from making an attempt. I enjoy hearing about those attempts. Here is one that I came across the other day. It’s worth three-and-a-half minutes of your time: Accordi...

Image via Wikipedia The news outlets are abuzz with reports of some provocative claims made in Stephen Hawking ’s latest book,  The Grand Design , which is due for release on Tuesday. For obvious reasons I haven’t yet read the book, so I don’t know the broader context of his claims or how he supports them. However, since the claims in question have been widely quoted, and several folk have already asked me about them, I’ll offer a few tentative comments (with all the necessary caveats assumed). Here are Hawking’s statements as reported by the  Telegraph  (and by numerous other outlets): Because there is a law such as gravity , the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going. In the first place, I have to assume that Hawking is speaking loosely when he says that “...

Image via Wikipedia I think that it is impossible for something to create itself. (I also think that it is impossible for something to explain itself.) So I disagree with the claim -- attributed to Hawking -- that the universe can create itself from nothing.  This is not to say that I disagree with Hawking's model of the universe (though, given the track record of global cosmology , I'd say the odds are that it is false); what I disagree with is the suggestion that that model involves something that is properly called 'self-creation'.  (In my opinion, Hawking's model either involves absence of cause, or else it involves necessary cause. Most plausibly, absence of cause.)  There are many good things that have been written about cosmological arguments. As on almost any topic in philosophy , a good place to start is with the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:   http://plato.stanford.edu/   . Most discussions of cosmological arguments make some comments a...