Atheism requires that you believe in 10 impossible things. By denying God as the ultimate cause of the universe, the atheist is left grasping at 10 straws: a series of highly implausible explanations which, when considered together, amount to a cumulative impossibility.
VIDEO & AUDIO LINKS:
YOUTUBE VIDEO: 10 Impossible Things For Atheism
AUDIO PODCAST: 10 Impossible Things For Atheism
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TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Episode 22 of Evidence For Belief, a series which examines evidence for the existence of God. So far in this series we have examined a range of evidence that is drawn from many fields of study – cosmology, physics, chemistry, microbiology, genetics, mathematics, history and philosophy. And while I consider the evidence to be overwhelming, I acknowledge that there will be many people who are unconvinced and who remain resolute in their atheism. So in this episode I want to examine the atheist’s position and point out the logical extension of claiming that there is no God.
In particular, we are going to examine 10 impossible things for atheism. These are 10 things which cannot adequately be explained if there is no God. But before we get into these 10 things, let me briefly clarify what I mean by atheism.
The word atheism comes from the Greek word, atheos, which literally translates as “no God”. Some atheists like to split hairs at this point and say that they are not claiming definitively that there is no God, but just that they don’t believe in God. But either way, whether someone claims that there is definitely no God, or whether they are saying they don’t believe in God, the result for our current discussion is the same.
Essentially, all atheists are maintaining that everything that exists – this universe and our world and everything in it – has a natural cause – a cause or causes other than God. The ultimate extension of atheism is that everything that now exists came into existence via natural rather than supernatural means.
But there is a massive problem with this view. Because as our scientific understanding has increased, particularly over the last century, the possibility of purely naturalistic explanations for a whole range of fundamental things has been shown to be increasingly LESS likely rather than MORE likely.
A century and a half ago, when Charles Darwin and his contemporaries were in the ascendency, scientific understanding was in its infancy. There were a whole bunch of things that they either didn’t understand at all or which were just plain wrong. For example, back then, the universe was believed to have existed forever and so there was no need of an explanation for its cause. There was also no understanding of genetics and very little comprehension of the complexity of life at the microbiological level.
Many scientists back then still held to the ridiculous notion of spontaneous generation – that flies spontaneously generated from rotting meat, mice could arise from grain or from warm, moist soil and weevils spontaneously arose from stale bread and grains. Scientific understanding of these and many other issues was either incredibly simplistic or, in some cases, completely wrong. And in that primitive, uninformed environment of the 1800s, belief in a natural, godless explanation for everything appeared very plausible.
But as we have grown in our understanding of scientific fields such as genetics, microbiology, chemistry, cosmology and physics, we have come to see how implausible it is to attribute everything that exists to purely natural, random processes. Our growing understanding of the remarkable complexity and obvious design of the universe and of all biological life makes it increasingly implausible that it all could have arisen by blind mechanistic processes. In particular, atheism requires adherents to believe in TEN impossible things that natural processes cannot have caused. Now, I’ll defend that word “impossible” shortly, but for now here they are. TEN impossible things that cannot have been caused by purely natural processes:
- The origin of the universe from nothing
- The origin of proteins from random chemical combinations
- Abiogenesis
- Autopoiesis
- The evolution of molecular machines
- The evolution of DNA
- The development of human consciousness
- The precise fine tuning of the universe,
- The extraordinary correlation of abstract mathematics with the observable universe
- The extraordinary alignment of habitability factors for life on Earth
Now, I’m sure some atheists will accuse me of over-reach in my use of the word, “impossible” here. They will claim that there are speculative theories about how some of these things might have come about by natural means. But let me make three brief points in response to that claim:
- Even some atheist scientists admit or hint at the impossibility of natural causes for some of these things. For example, the problem of abiogenesis – the supposed origin of biological life from non-living matter – has already been conceded as being impossible by some atheist scientists.
One such atheist scientist, biologist Dr. Eugene V. Koonin, states: “The origin of life is the most difficult problem that faces evolutionary biology and, arguably, biology in general. Indeed, the problem is so hard, and the current state of the art seems so frustrating, that some researchers prefer to dismiss the entire issue as being outside the scientific domain altogether, on the grounds that unique events are not conducive to scientific study.”[i]
- Secondly, Naturalistic theories are often wildly imaginative and speculative and can’t really be described as evidence-based science. For example, in attempting to explain the origin of the universe from nothing, some scientists when faced with the impossibility of finding a plausible and coherent natural explanation for nature creating itself, have resorted to the most absurd speculation such as aliens creating our universe or even our future selves coming back in time and creating it. We examined this in the first couple of episodes. And I stress to you, these are scientists who have realised that the scientific cupboard is bare when it comes to providing a more substantive natural explanation for the origin of the universe. Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, the author of “The Return of the God Hypothesis”, in a recent interview with Piers Morgan in his program, Piers Morgan Uncensored, made this comment:
“At the point where matter, space and time begin to exist, the materialist is really up against a huge conundrum, because prior to the origin of matter, there is no matter to do the causing. That’s what we mean by the origin of matter. That’s where it starts. And so if you want to invoke a cause which is sufficient to explain the origin of matter, you can’t invoke matter. Materialistic explanations are, in principle, insufficient. You need to invoke something which is external to the material universe and is not bound by time and space as well. And that starts to paint a picture of the kind of cause you would need that has the attributes that are traditionally associated with God.”
The point is, the materialist is faced with a virtually impossible task in seeking to explain the creation of the physical universe apart from a non-physical, supernatural cause.
- Thirdly and finally, the cumulative implausibility of all 10 things, when taken together, exceeds the bounds of plausibility and simple common sense, and must surely be regarded as an impossibility. These 10 impossible things that I have briefly mentioned need to be taken as a whole, because they allneed to be explained if atheism is true. And while each one individually may be argued by atheists who propose speculative and highly implausible explanations for each one individually, when they are considered together, the cumulative case for all 10 highly implausible things ascends to the point of impossibility. The atheist is left grasping not just one straw, but 10. The atheist is left clinging to a whole series of highly implausible explanations that any reasonable, sensible person would acknowledge add up to an impossibility.
You see, most scientists stick in their one, very narrow field of study. Often they spend their entire lives studying just one tiny component of a sub-branch of a single field of study. And as they come up against the huge problems that are becoming apparent in their own narrow field of study regarding questions of origin, very few of them step back and take stock of all the other disciplines where the same huge problem of origin is also becoming apparent.
But taking all the scientific disciplines together, stepping back and seeing the problem of origin across a broad range of scientific disciplines, the cumulative state of the nation for atheism is dire. The cumulative case against atheism is overwhelming and it’s getting worse the more deeply scientists delve into the nature of the universe and the complexity of biological life and the need to explain those things as a product of purely mechanistic, natural causes. Conversely, as our scientific understanding of the universe continues to grow, the cumulative case for a Creator is becoming increasingly convincing.
Now, let me throw these 10 things back up on the screen again. I want to point out that I have dealt with each of them, individually, over the course of this series. And if you are inclined to be contentious about any one of these, I invite you to go back to the relevant episode and look at the evidence again in detail.
But even if you are inclined to disagree with one or the other of these impossible things, as I’m calling them, perhaps even proposing a speculative theory about how some of these things might have come about – In this episode I’m imploring you to step back and look at the big picture for a moment. Stop trying to plug the gap at one point in the leaking dam wall and step back and look at the leaks that are springing up right across the whole dam wall. You see, atheism requires that all 10 of these things had to come about via natural processes, and the implausibility of that, when they are all considered together, is astronomical to the point of impossibility.
At this point it might be helpful for me to briefly skim across the surface of each one of these again, in order to paint the cumulative picture for you.
1. Atheism requires that you believe that the universe came into existence from nothing by itself. Ultimately, this is the fallback position that atheists must arrive at. They must arrive at a point in the distant past where there was nothing, otherwise you are left with an infinite regression of past causes, which is both philosophically and scientifically impossible. Atheism requires that everything came from nothing in the beginning – all by itself! For example, atheist scientist, Dr Quentin Smith, in a debate with Dr William Lane Craig, stated “The universe came from nothing, by nothing, for nothing!” This is the ultimate, unavoidable extrapolation of atheism. But, of course, this is just nonsense, and it has resulted in atheist scientists proposing the most ridiculous and implausible theories which take much greater faith than belief in God. (See Episodes 1-3).
2. Atheism requires that you believe that proteins, the building blocks of biological life, evolved via random chemical processes. But this has also been shown to be statistically and physically impossible! In his book, “Evolution Impossible’, biologist Dr John Ashton says that protein molecules are so complex that the probability of a single protein forming by random chemical processes is 1 in 10190 – which is renders it well beyond the realm of possibility. (See Episode 4 again)
3. Atheism requires that you believe in abiogenesis, the idea that non-living matter somehow gave rise to living cells – and it all supposedly happened via random chemical processes. But non-life can’t create life. When don’t ever see it happening today and It defies both common sense and the laws of science. Quoting from biologist Dr John Ashton again, he states: “For the first life to start from non-living matter, thousands of specialised large complex molecules must somehow be synthesised in very large numbers from simple, small inorganic molecules. These molecules then have to come together randomly, over and over again, until somehow the structure of the cell is formed. This remarkable and complex structure would still, however, not be alive. To become alive, hundreds of metabolic reactions would have to be initiated, with the metabolic intermediates already in place at just the right concentrations so that the reactions went the right way. Common sense tells us that these sorts of reactions don’t just happen by chance – in fact, we cannot even make them happen.” (John F. Ashton, “Evolution Impossible”, Green Forest, AR, Masterbooks, 2013, p.43.) (See Episodes 2 and 7)
4. Atheism requires that you believe that autopoiesis can be explained via natural chemical processes. Autopoiesis refers to the self-perpetuating, self-organising, self-repairing, self-replicating, life-force that exists at the cellular level. Cells are more than mere microscopic physical structures; they are pulsing with life, and science cannot explain the nature of this self-life nor propose a coherent theory as to how dead matter could have created this life-force. The living cell defies naturalistic explanation because it is alive in a way that mere chemical processes cannot explain! (See Episode 6)
5. Atheism requires that you believe that molecular machines evolved naturally via incremental random chemical processes. Molecular machines are the incredible army of thousands of moving, living machines that inhabit each cell and make the cells viable, carrying out all kinds of essential functions, like workers in a factory. But each of these machines is irreducibly complex and cannot have evolved incrementally over time. Neither can blind chemical processes explain how these machines operate and know their individual function. It was this incredible microscopic world of intra-cellular molecular machines that led the highly respected atheist biologist, Dr Dean Kenyon, to renounce his atheism and finally declare, “Nothing short of Intelligence could have created this intricate cellular apparatus. This new realm of molecular machines is where we see the most compelling evidence of design on the Earth.” (See Episode 6)
6. Atheism requires that you believe that DNA – the incredibly complex biological operating system that resides inside every living cell – evolved incrementally via random chemical processes. But the idea of 3.2 billion base pairs (or individual bits of information in our DNA) evolving gradually and incrementally by chance and arranging themselves in EXACTLY THE RIGHT ORDER is pure nonsense, because the random combinations of nucleotides that would potentially produce gibberish are almost infinitely greater than the precise combinations that would produce meaningful information. In fact the Biology Department of the University of North Carolina recently published a paper calculating that the chance production of a DNA molecule of one tenth the size of our human DNA (so about 300,000 base pairs) is 1 in 1090,000 – which is so astronomical as to be effectively impossible! (University of North Carolina, Biology Department, https://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/abiogenesis.html). (See Episode 5)
7. Atheism requires that you believe that a purely mechanistic material universe somehow produced human consciousness. But this is ludicrous, and there remains no coherent, sensible theory as to how consciousness could arise from mere chemicals and matter. Dr Michael Polanyi, arguably the foremost philosopher of science in the 20th century, wrote:“Mental processes cannot be explained by physics and chemistry. The laws of physics and chemistry do not ascribe consciousness to any process controlled by them: the presence of consciousness proves, therefore, that other principles than those of inanimate matter participate in the conscious operations of living things.”[1]
Similarly, theologian and philosopher, Dr J. P. Moreland, states:“You can’t get something from nothing. If the universe began with dead matter having no consciousness, how, then, do you get something totally different – conscious, living, thinking, feeling, believing creatures – from materials that don’t have that? But if everything started with the mind of God, we don’t have a problem with explaining the origin of our mind.”[2] (See Episode 9).
8. Atheism requires that you believe that the incredibly precise fine tuning of the universal constants that govern our universe all arrived at their impossibly precise and interdependent values by chance. As I explained in Episode 8, the universal constants are the fundamental forces and strengths that undergird the existence and operation of our physical universe – forces like gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces and the cosmological constant governing the energy density and expansion rate of the universe. Scientists recognise that there are about 34 of these precisely fine-tuned fundamental forces upholding our physical universe. In most cases if any one of these forces were altered by a millionth or even a trillions of one percent, the physical universe could not exist. So how did theses constants all arrive at their precisely fine-tuned interdependent values by sheer chance?
If we consider that blind chance could have thrown up ANY values from an INFINITE range of values for each of these forces, the statistical improbability of this is so astronomically huge as to be regarded as impossible. Dr Robin Collins (Prof. Theoretical Physics, North Western University): “The chance of just two of these cosmological constants developing by sheer chance, is one in 100 million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion. That’s more than the number of atoms in the universe! And that’s just TWO of the constants!” There are in fact 34 constants, and it has been calculated that the chance of all 34 of these arriving at their precise values necessary for the existence of the universe is 1 in 10600. (See Episode 8)
9. Atheism requires that you believe that the extraordinary correlation between abstract mathematics and the functioning of the observable universe is mere coincidence. But a blind, mechanistic universe would never have thrown up this kind of correlation. This might seem a somewhat esoteric argument, but for mathematicians who are philosophically inclined, it is a truly baffling thing.
The Fibonacci Sequence is one such example, an elegant mathematical formula for a sequence of numbers where each number in the sequence is the sum of the preceding two. Yet, unexpectedly, we find many structures and forms within the material world conforming to this beautiful abstract mathematical formula.
We see it in such things as spirals in plants and animals, leaf arrangements (or phyllotaxis), certain ferns unfurl their leaves in a fibonacci sequence, the buds within broccoli and cauliflower follow a fractal pattern which follows the fibonacci sequence, some spider species construct webs that follow the fibonacci sequence, within the human body the spiral shape of the cochlea in the inner ear follows the fibonacci sequence and is essential for enabling hearing, and moving out to cosmic considerations, the shapes of spiral galaxies follow a logarithmic pattern that aligns with the fibonacci sequence. These are just a few of the thousands of examples of the fibonacci sequence in evidence throughout nature. This beautiful, abstract mathematical formula is deeply embedded throughout our physical universe, yet there is no logical reason why this should be so – why a purely mechanistic universe should conform to such a beautiful, elegant and precise abstract mathematical formula.
And the fibonacci sequence is just one of many instances of the physical universe reflecting beautifully precise abstract mathematical formulae – other examples include the golden ratio, pi, Eula’s number, fractals and self-similarity, the wave equation and harmonics, Lucas numbers and many others.
If you’re not a mathematician, this is probably all just “blah blah blah” to you. But for those who study these things, this beautiful correlation between the physical universe and elegant abstract mathematical formulae screams out for an intelligent designer. Indeed, it is impossible to explain this correlation in any other way.
For instance, Astrophysicist, Dr Paul Davies, writes: “This is a baffling thing … what I would call the cosmic connection; the existence of a really deep relationship between minds that can do mathematics and the underlying laws of nature.”[3]
Einstein also commented on this completely unexpected and inexplicable connection, when he said, “the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility”.[4] Indeed, the fact that the operation of the universe should conform to such beautiful mathematical formulae is so unexpected that this fact alone has led some scientists to renounce their previous atheism. For example, Roy Williams, author of God Actually, writes that this correlation, and I quote, “played an important part in my passage toward belief in Christianity … because the theistic implications of this argument seemed to me inescapable, and still do.”[5] (See Episode 9)
10. Finally, Atheism requires that you believe that the extraordinary alignment of all 30 habitability factors necessary for life on Earth was the result of random natural processes. In Episode 10, I outlined these 30 habitability factors which all came together for our planet Earth. Let me remind you of a few of these factors:
– orbiting the right distance from our star
– presence of liquid water
– strong magnetic field
– temperature range between 0 and 100
– breathable atmosphere
– moving tectonic plates
– molten core
– rocky planet rather than gaseous
– right rotation rate
– axial tilt for seasons
– large moon for tidal circulation of nutrients
I’ll stop there, but there are about 30 of these factors which all came together on our planet.
Some might argue that given enough time and enough planets, one planet was bound to arise with all the habitability factors lined up by sheer chance. But this grossly underestimates the improbability of each habitability factor. For instance, taking just the one factor of the presence of liquid surface water which is necessary for life, NONE of the approximately 4,500 exoplanets discovered so far have liquid water on the surface of the planet. So the probability of a planet having liquid surface water appears to be, at best, 1 in 4,500. But that’s just one of 30 habitability factors. And given that cumulative probabilities need to be multiplied together rather than just added, the statistical improbability of all 30 factors lining up in a single planet is a number so astronomically huge as the be virtually impossible.
For example, a recent study by astrophysicist, Dr. Erik Zackrisson from Uppsala University, Sweden, used computer modelling to simulate the universe’s evolution following a supposed Big Bang, and the modelling estimated that the probability of an Earth-like planet with all of these habitability factors in place evolving by pure chance is 1 in 700 quintillion. This is essentially zero in statistical terms. His landmark study was published in “The Astrophysical Journal”.
This is why in 2015, science writer John Horgan wrote in an article in “Scientific American”: “The more scientists investigate our universe, the more improbable our existence seems. If you define a miracle as an infinitely improbable event, then our existence, you might say, is a miracle. Scientists try in vain to hand-wave our improbability away … My own intuitions keep me from ruling out the possibility of supernatural creation.”[6]
So those are the TEN impossible things that atheists must somehow contend with. And let me emphasise, if you are an atheist, you need to believe not just one or two or three of these impossible things. You need to believe that all ten of these things happened by themselves, by chance, without any guiding intelligence. In excluding God as a possible first cause, the only alternative left open to you is that all this happened by chance – by blind, natural, material processes. And as I explained earlier, the implausibility of all ten of these, when taken together, is extreme to the point of impossibility.
CONCLUSION
In closing, let me point out that in the ongoing debate between theists and atheists, theists (those who believe in God as the ultimate cause of everything) are often accused of believing in the impossible – of holding to a belief in something that defies observable evidence. But I put it to you that the shoe is actually on the other foot.
The weight of observable evidence points very strongly to a supernatural Creator, and as that evidence grows and our understanding of the extraordinary complexity and obvious design of the universe increases, it is the atheist who is increasingly forced to believe in the impossible – that all this somehow came about by blind chance processes – that it all simply created itself!
I put it to you that belief in a Creator God is the most REASONABLE explanation for the universe as we now understand it, and those who reject the theistic explanation are left clinging to explanations that are individually so unlikely and implausible and, when considered together, must be regarded as cumulatively impossible.
For more information, you can check out my books, which are available from my website, smartfaith.net, where you can also subscribe to my weekly blog. The next episode is a fascinating one: 7 Historical Facts that Support the Resurrection of Jesus. Don’t miss it!
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] Michael Polanyi, “The Anatomy of Knowledge”, Rutledge Press, London, 1966 p.323
[2] J. P. Moreland, in Lee Strobel, “The Case for a Creator”, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 2004, p.307 f.
[3] Paul Davies, Are We Alone?, Penguin Books, 1995, p.84
[4] Albert Einstein, “Physics and Reality”, Franklin Institute Journal, March 1936.
[5] Roy Williams, “God Actually”, ABC Books, 2008, p.68
[6] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/can-faith-and-science-coexist
[i] Koonin, Eugene V., The logic of chance: The nature and origin of biological evolution. Pearson Education, NJ. 2012, p.351.