The Second Law of Thermodynamics is the S for SURGE. Thermodynamics is a study of matter and energy, and the Second Law states that the universe is running out of usable energy. With the amount of usable energy in the universe grows smaller, Since the Second Law is well established, much like the Law of Causality, and if the universe is running out of energy and becoming less ordered. Then where did the original order come from?
Since the Second Law tells us that the universe had a beginning, we still have usable energy left, the universe cannot be eternal, because if it were, we would have reached complete disorder (entropy) by now.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
The Cosmological Argument - Law of Causality
Some Darwinists claim that the Kalem Argument or the Cosmological Argument has been refuted, not exactly by who though. The Cosmological Argument goes like this:
1. Everything that had a beginning had a cause.
2. The Universe had a beginning.
3. Therefore the universe had a cause.
In order for an argument to be true it has to be logically valid, and its premises must be true. This is a valid argument, but are the premises true?
Premise 1 - Everything that had a beginning had a cause - is the Law of Causality, which is the fundamental principle of science. Without the Law of Causality, science is impossible. Science is a search for causes, that's what scientists do - they try to discover what caused what. To deny the Law of Causality is to deny rationality. The very process of rational thinkink requires us to put together thoughts (the causes) that result in conclusions (the effects). If there's one thing we've observed about the universe, it's that things don't happen without a cause. When a man is driving down the street, a car never appears in front of his car out of nowhere, with no driver or no cause.
Since the Law of Causality is well established and undeniable, premise 1 is true. What about premise 2? Did the universe have a beginning? If not, then no cause was needed. If so, then the universe must have had a cause. Until the time of Einstein, atheists could comforted themselves with the belief that the universe is eternal, and thus did not need a cause. But since then, five lines of scientific evidence have been discovered that prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the universe did indeed have beginning. And that beginning was wat scientists now call "The Big Bang." This Big Bang evidence can be easily remembered by the acronym SURGE.
1. Everything that had a beginning had a cause.
2. The Universe had a beginning.
3. Therefore the universe had a cause.
In order for an argument to be true it has to be logically valid, and its premises must be true. This is a valid argument, but are the premises true?
Premise 1 - Everything that had a beginning had a cause - is the Law of Causality, which is the fundamental principle of science. Without the Law of Causality, science is impossible. Science is a search for causes, that's what scientists do - they try to discover what caused what. To deny the Law of Causality is to deny rationality. The very process of rational thinkink requires us to put together thoughts (the causes) that result in conclusions (the effects). If there's one thing we've observed about the universe, it's that things don't happen without a cause. When a man is driving down the street, a car never appears in front of his car out of nowhere, with no driver or no cause.
Since the Law of Causality is well established and undeniable, premise 1 is true. What about premise 2? Did the universe have a beginning? If not, then no cause was needed. If so, then the universe must have had a cause. Until the time of Einstein, atheists could comforted themselves with the belief that the universe is eternal, and thus did not need a cause. But since then, five lines of scientific evidence have been discovered that prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the universe did indeed have beginning. And that beginning was wat scientists now call "The Big Bang." This Big Bang evidence can be easily remembered by the acronym SURGE.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Why I Can't Be An Atheist
On my last post I wrote about David Hume and how Hume's claim that "something can only be meaningful if it's empirically verifiable or true by definition" is self-defeating, it excludes itself because that statement is neither empirically verifiable nor true by definition. However another person Atheists like speaking of is Immanuel Kant.
Kant's impact has been more devastating to the Christian worldview than David Hume's. If Kant's philosophy is right, then there is no way to know anything about the real world, even empirically verifiable things. According to Kant the structure of your senses and your mind forms all sense data, so you never really know the thing in itself. You only know the thing to you after your mind and senses form it.
Another words, if we look at a tree, Kant is saying that the tree you think you are looking at appears the way it does because your mind is forming the sense data you're getting from the tree. You really don't know the tree in itself, you only know the phenomena your mind categorizes about the tree. In short, you "kant" know the real tree in itself, only the tree as it appears to you.
It's funny that the average person on the street doesn't doubt what he sees, but supposedly brilliant philosophers do. If you want to make the obvious seem obscure, just let a philosopher get ahold of it. C.S. Lewis wrote, "good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered." Kant's philosophy is bad philosophy, yet it has convinced many people that there is an unbridgeable gulf between them and the real world; that there's no way you can get any reliable knowledge about what the real world is really like, much less what God is really like.
Kant commits the same error as Hume, he violates the Law of Noncontradiction. He contradicts his own premise by saying that no one can know the real world while he claims to know something about it, namely that the real world is unknowable. Kant says the truth about the real world is that there are no truths about the real world.
Kant also makes another logical fallacy called the "nothing-but" fallacy. This is a fallacy because "nothing-but" statements imply "more than" knowledge. Kant says he knows the data that gets to his brain is nothing but phenomena. But in order to know this, he would have to be able to see more than just phenomena. In other words, in order to differentiate one thing from another thing, you have to be able to perceive where one ends and the other begins. For example, if you put a white a piece of paper on a black desk, the only way you can tell where the paper ends is by seeing some of the desk that borders it. The contrast between the paper and the desk allows you to see the boundaries of the paper. In order for Kant to differentiate the thing in the real world from that which his mind perceives, he would have to be able to see both. But this is exactly what he says can't be done! He says only the phenomena of the mind can be known, not the noumena (his term for the real world).
If there's no way to distinguish between the phenomena and noumena, then you can't see how they might differ. And if you can't see how they might differ, then it makes much more sense to assume that they are the same - in other words, that the idea in your mnd accurately represents te things in the real world.
Kant was wrong by saying that your mind doesn't mold the tree, the tree molds your mind. If Kant claims that he can't know anything about te real wolrd, then how does he know the real world is there? And secondly, his view is self-defeating because he claims that you can't know anything about the real world while asserting that he knows the real world is unknowable.
This is what happens when a beautiful theory meets a brutal gang of facts. This one more reason WHY I CAN'T BE AN ATHEIST!!
Kant's impact has been more devastating to the Christian worldview than David Hume's. If Kant's philosophy is right, then there is no way to know anything about the real world, even empirically verifiable things. According to Kant the structure of your senses and your mind forms all sense data, so you never really know the thing in itself. You only know the thing to you after your mind and senses form it.
Another words, if we look at a tree, Kant is saying that the tree you think you are looking at appears the way it does because your mind is forming the sense data you're getting from the tree. You really don't know the tree in itself, you only know the phenomena your mind categorizes about the tree. In short, you "kant" know the real tree in itself, only the tree as it appears to you.
It's funny that the average person on the street doesn't doubt what he sees, but supposedly brilliant philosophers do. If you want to make the obvious seem obscure, just let a philosopher get ahold of it. C.S. Lewis wrote, "good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered." Kant's philosophy is bad philosophy, yet it has convinced many people that there is an unbridgeable gulf between them and the real world; that there's no way you can get any reliable knowledge about what the real world is really like, much less what God is really like.
Kant commits the same error as Hume, he violates the Law of Noncontradiction. He contradicts his own premise by saying that no one can know the real world while he claims to know something about it, namely that the real world is unknowable. Kant says the truth about the real world is that there are no truths about the real world.
Kant also makes another logical fallacy called the "nothing-but" fallacy. This is a fallacy because "nothing-but" statements imply "more than" knowledge. Kant says he knows the data that gets to his brain is nothing but phenomena. But in order to know this, he would have to be able to see more than just phenomena. In other words, in order to differentiate one thing from another thing, you have to be able to perceive where one ends and the other begins. For example, if you put a white a piece of paper on a black desk, the only way you can tell where the paper ends is by seeing some of the desk that borders it. The contrast between the paper and the desk allows you to see the boundaries of the paper. In order for Kant to differentiate the thing in the real world from that which his mind perceives, he would have to be able to see both. But this is exactly what he says can't be done! He says only the phenomena of the mind can be known, not the noumena (his term for the real world).
If there's no way to distinguish between the phenomena and noumena, then you can't see how they might differ. And if you can't see how they might differ, then it makes much more sense to assume that they are the same - in other words, that the idea in your mnd accurately represents te things in the real world.
Kant was wrong by saying that your mind doesn't mold the tree, the tree molds your mind. If Kant claims that he can't know anything about te real wolrd, then how does he know the real world is there? And secondly, his view is self-defeating because he claims that you can't know anything about the real world while asserting that he knows the real world is unknowable.
This is what happens when a beautiful theory meets a brutal gang of facts. This one more reason WHY I CAN'T BE AN ATHEIST!!
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Why I Can't Be An Atheist
With so many Atheists attacking Christianity I find it necessary to love those haters, after all that is what Jesus taught his disciples to do, to love the enemy. Some atheist told me that was impossible to do, perhaps to him it might, not to a Christian.
Someone recently said that one day Christianity will die out thanks to people like David Hume, Richard Dawkins, and Immanuel Kant. I really don't think so.
David Hume is known for his philosophy, he believed that all meaningful ideas were either true by definition or must be based on sense experience. According to Hume, there are no sense experiences for concepts beyond the physical, any metaphysical claims should not be believed because they are meaningless.
He asserted that propositions can be meaningful only if they meet one of the two conditions: the truth claim is abstract reasoning such as a mathematical equation or a feinition; or the truth claim can be verified empirically through one or more of the five senses.
While he claimed to be a skeptic, Hume certainly wasn't skeptical about these two conditions - he was absolutely convinced he had the truth. He wrote, "If we take in our hand any volume - of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance - let us ask, 'Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?' No. 'Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?' No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." If he is correct than all the talking about God is meaningless. 200 years later Hume's two conditions were converted into the "principle of empirical verifiability" by twentieth-century philosopher A.J. Ayer. The principle of empirical verifiability claims that a proposition can be meaningful only if it's true by definition or if it's empirically verifiable.
Dr. Norman Geisler replys to Hume and Ayer, "The principle of empirical verifiability states that there only two kinds of meaningful propositions: 1) those that are true by definition and 2) those that are empirically verifiable. Since the principle of empirical verifiability itself is neither true by definition nor empirically verifiable, it cannot be meaningful."
Therefore the principle of empirical verifiability could not be meaningful based on its own standard. Hume's hard empiricism, and that of A.J. Ayer, is self-defeating. The claim that "something can only be meaningful if it's empirically verifiable or true by definition" excludes itself because that statement is neither empirically verifiable nor true by definition. In other words, Hume and Ayer try to prove too much because their method of discovering meaningful propositions excludes too much. Certainly claims that are empirically verifiable or true by definition are meaningful. However, such claims don't comprise all meaningful statements as Hume and Ayer contend. So instead of committing all books about God "to the flames" as Hume suggests, you may want to consider using Hume's books to get your fire going.
This is one of the many reasons I can't be an atheist.
Someone recently said that one day Christianity will die out thanks to people like David Hume, Richard Dawkins, and Immanuel Kant. I really don't think so.
David Hume is known for his philosophy, he believed that all meaningful ideas were either true by definition or must be based on sense experience. According to Hume, there are no sense experiences for concepts beyond the physical, any metaphysical claims should not be believed because they are meaningless.
He asserted that propositions can be meaningful only if they meet one of the two conditions: the truth claim is abstract reasoning such as a mathematical equation or a feinition; or the truth claim can be verified empirically through one or more of the five senses.
While he claimed to be a skeptic, Hume certainly wasn't skeptical about these two conditions - he was absolutely convinced he had the truth. He wrote, "If we take in our hand any volume - of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance - let us ask, 'Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?' No. 'Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?' No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." If he is correct than all the talking about God is meaningless. 200 years later Hume's two conditions were converted into the "principle of empirical verifiability" by twentieth-century philosopher A.J. Ayer. The principle of empirical verifiability claims that a proposition can be meaningful only if it's true by definition or if it's empirically verifiable.
Dr. Norman Geisler replys to Hume and Ayer, "The principle of empirical verifiability states that there only two kinds of meaningful propositions: 1) those that are true by definition and 2) those that are empirically verifiable. Since the principle of empirical verifiability itself is neither true by definition nor empirically verifiable, it cannot be meaningful."
Therefore the principle of empirical verifiability could not be meaningful based on its own standard. Hume's hard empiricism, and that of A.J. Ayer, is self-defeating. The claim that "something can only be meaningful if it's empirically verifiable or true by definition" excludes itself because that statement is neither empirically verifiable nor true by definition. In other words, Hume and Ayer try to prove too much because their method of discovering meaningful propositions excludes too much. Certainly claims that are empirically verifiable or true by definition are meaningful. However, such claims don't comprise all meaningful statements as Hume and Ayer contend. So instead of committing all books about God "to the flames" as Hume suggests, you may want to consider using Hume's books to get your fire going.
This is one of the many reasons I can't be an atheist.
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