Category: mostly unimportant

So, I mentioned awhile back that I’m reading “The Case for a Creator” by Lee Strobel, who also wrote such books as “The Case for Faith” and “The Case for Christ,” two very popular books on the college scene in such “black and white” groups as CCF and Campus Crusade…

Anyway, so I saw this book at Barnes and Noble and couldn’t help but buy it since it was that trendy author writing about two things I’m interested in: God and science. Thus far (and, granted, I’m only 80 pgs into it…), the book is worthless. Strobel uses “evidence” out of non-evidence. For example:

“The problem with irreducibly complex systems is that they perform no function until all the parts are present and working together in close coordination with one another. So natural selection cannot help you build such systems; it can only preserve them once they’ve been built. And it’s virtually impossible for evolution to take such a huge leap by mere chance to create the whole system at once.” — pg 79

Why not?! The chances of being struck by lightening once, surviving, and then getting struck again in the exact same location as before isn’t likely, but it’s still possible. How do you know it isn’t possible? And now to the whole “evidence by non-evidence” point:

“This is not an argument from ignorance…we’re not inferring design just because the naturalistic evolutionary theories all fail to explain information. We infer design because all those theories fail and we know of another causal entity that is capable of producing information – namely, intelligence. Personally, I find this to be a very strong argument indeed.” — pg 78

Oh really! All those theories fail? Do you know how science works, Mr. Strobel? You know there is no such thing as “proof” in science? That’s because any evidence can come along and change the way we we all see the world. You assume that since we don’t understand a few facets of the world around us, we must assume that “intelligence” as we know it must be involved. We thought the world was flat until we found evidence to support that it’s round. We thought the universe revolved around Earth until we found that Earth revolves around a star…that is one of infinite stars in the rest of the universe. The “intelligence” you’re talking about is human intelligence. God is all-knowing, thereby presenting an entirely different type of intelligence from what we have experienced. Frankly, Mr. Strobel, you don’t know anything about science if this is the “evidence” you’re presenting. You shouldn’t be writing books about things you apparently know nothing about.

The point of all this is: humans understand absolutely nothing about the “known” universe. We don’t know how God works. We don’t know how it was all done. To quote the common phrase, “we don’t know jack.” How can we assume to know how it all works? Isn’t it possible that there are other universes parallel to our own that have completely different physics to our own? How about another planet out there that has beings built out of neon rather than carbon? Or perhaps even that on some planet on some distant galaxy, a milk cow won an election against someone looking strangely like George W. Bush. Frankly, we don’t know. I can’t prove that these things aren’t happening because, well, because it can’t be proven.

Much like Strobel can’t prove anything he’s putting forth in his book. Know why? Well, because “evidence by non-evidence” isn’t evidence at all. It’s ignorance.