Ken Petzinger & John Paine Know Why You Believe Week 3 Is There a God? Ken Petzinger & John Paine

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http://www.thecaseforacreator.com/ Vine Life Williamsburg Community Chapel Vine Life

The Existence of God With the exception of certain mathematicians and physicists, all the authors of the ‘Great Books’ are represented in this chapter. In sheer quantity of references, as well as in variety, it is the largest chapter. The reason is obvious. More consequences for thought and action follow the affirmation or denial of God than from answering any other basic question. The whole tenor of human life is affected by whether men regard themselves as supreme beings in the universe or acknowledge a super-human being whom they conceive of as an object of fear or love, a force to be defied or a Lord to be obeyed. Among those who acknowledge a divinity, it matters greatly whether the divine is represented merely by the concept of God – the object of philosophical speculation – or by the living God whom men worship in all the acts of piety which comprise the rituals of religion. Mortimer Adler, Great Books of the Western World, Volume 2, p.561 Mortimer Adler (1902-2001) Williamsburg Community Chapel Vine Life

Over time every human culture has had an innate God-consciousness. Ecclesiastes 3.11 (NIV 1984)   He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.    While we cannot “prove” Him, we can look at evidence for God in both of his books. Today we will focus on the book of creation – in future classes we look more closely at the Bible. Williamsburg Community Chapel Vine Life

“Time must have a beginning.” Creation: General Relativity Space-Time Theorems Hawking, Ellis and Penrose Any universe from a solution of general relativistic equations must begin with a singularity like the big bang.   For any such solution time and space originate in the same cosmic bang that originates matter and energy.      “Time must have a beginning.” Stephen Hawking Williamsburg Community Chapel Vine Life

“… at this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”      Robert Jastrow God and the Astronomers Williamsburg Community Chapel Vine Life

Design in the Universe “It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a farcical outcome of a chain of accidents … but that we were somehow built in from the beginning … It is very hard for us to realize that the entire earth is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe … The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”   Stephen Weinberg The First Three Minutes “ … the universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference.” Richard Dawkins Williamsburg Community Chapel Vine Life

Design in the Universe “It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a farcical outcome of a chain of accidents … but that we were somehow built in from the beginning … It is very hard for us to realize that the entire earth is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe … The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”   Stephen Weinberg The First Three Minutes “ … the universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference.” Richard Dawkins IS THIS REALLY SO? Williamsburg Community Chapel Vine Life

NOT AT ALL! In the 1970’s Brandon Carter and others began to investigate theoretical “other universes,” those with different values of physical constants like particle masses, force strengths, etc. It takes about two dozen such seemingly arbitrary parameters to create an “alternate universe.” What Carter and others found was that even small changes in these numbers gave rise to vastly different universes in which life was impossible! This result is called the Anthropic Principle. Williamsburg Community Chapel Vine Life

A famous example relates to how elements form in stars A famous example relates to how elements form in stars. • Carbon nucleus energy level “resonance” Williamsburg Community Chapel Vine Life

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“Had the resonance level in the carbon been 4% lower, there would be essentially no carbon. Had that level in the oxygen nucleus been only half a percent higher, virtually all of the carbon would have been converted to oxygen. Without that carbon abundance, neither you nor I would be here right now.”      Owen Gingerich Harvard Astrophysicist Williamsburg Community Chapel Vine Life

Harvard Astrophysicist Would you not say to yourself, “Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule.” Of course you would … A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics … The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question. Fred Hoyle Engineering and Science, 1981 “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections,” pp. 8-12, November 1981      Owen Gingerich Harvard Astrophysicist Williamsburg Community Chapel Vine Life

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