Happy Birthday Darwin

The numbers may or may not surprise you. For the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birthday, Gallup did a poll among Americans to find the current level of belief in evolution. You can find the complete survey results here.

Richard Dawkins is famous for his statement that Darwin made it possible for him to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. Yet when Dawkins was questioned by Ben Stein in the film "Expelled" as how how evolution answers the question of existence, he couldn't do it. He punted to an assertion that aliens seeded the earth and that's how existence arose - an opinion shared by Francis Crick the co-discoverer of DNA. Of course, this explanation runs afoul of the infinite regress problem (who seeded those aliens and the ones before them?)

You have to, at some point, reach an uncaused Cause that brought about everything we know. Darwin didn't attempt to go there - instead Origin of Species starts off with several existing life forms that are already in possession of reproductive capabilities (isn't that convenient?) The question of existence isn't answered by him maybe because he knew that the options boil down to just two - matter before mind or mind before matter. And even skeptics of Christianity - such as J. S. Mill - have stated "It is self-evident that only mind can create mind."

Natural selection and survival of the fittest? Sure, we see that. Micro-evolution? Yes, we have different breeds of dogs and such. But mind arising from mindless matter, existence coming from non-existence, purpose and meaning emanating out from purposeless and meaningless stuff, and personality coming from impersonal things? No, that doesn't happen - cause and effect just don't work that way.

But a Cause that resembles all the effects we are in possession of? That makes perfect sense.

So happy birthday Charles. You certainly are a towering figure and were right about some things, but you were wrong about the most important thing.

Why Believe in God?

Atheist: There is no God!
Christian: Are you sure - can you prove that?
Atheist: I don't need to! It's obvious!
Christian: Humor me - prove it...
Atheist: Well, I can't with total certainty. But it's the best option.
Christian: So you can't prove it? But you think atheism is the best option?
Atheist: That's correct.
Christian: So atheism is a belief then.

It's a fact. No matter how much atheists deride Christians for a 'belief' in God, they too, have a belief - a worldview. And it's one that can't be proven with certainty. This is why the recent atheist bus campaign seen both in the U.S. and Britain had the signage: "There is Probably no God". Dr. Mortimer Adler put it this way: “An affirmative existential proposition can be proved, but a negative existential proposition – one that denies the existence of some thing – cannot be proved.”

But here's the thing: what is really the best explanation for why we're here? Why, as Martin Heidegger asked, do we have something rather than nothing at all?

As a Christian, I believe the best answer is God. One that, when understood via the effects of creation, resembles a Cause that mirrors the Creator found in the Bible. The form of reasoning used to arrive at this conclusion is sometimes called the cumulative case method, or abductive argumentation - an explanatory hypothesis that best accounts for a wide range of facts about reality as we know it.

This week I'll be teaching through the section of the Apostle's Creed that states "I believe in God the Father Almighty..." The presentation I'll be using is below - feel free to browse through it or download it for your own use.

In the end, the options boil down to just two: matter before mind or mind before matter. If you embrace the former, you must believe that a Mindless, Purposeless, Meaninglessness, Amoral, Impersonal universe accidently creating beings equipped with minds who are obsessed with purpose, meaning and morals, and full of personality. In other words, impersonal matter + time + chance equals a cause that possesses none of the characteristics of its effect.

How reasonable does that sound to you?

View more presentations from Robin Schumacher.

Why Believe in Anything?

In December of 2008, Harris Interactive did a study and found that about 1/3 of Americans believe the Bible to be the Word of God. That's about the same percentage (according to the same study) as people who believe in UFO's and less than those who believe in ghosts (44%).

James Sire is a Christian author and speaker, and his most popular session title - the one he found draws the most students on a college campus - is: "Why Believe in Anything at All?" In his presentation, he looks at the factors that go into forming a belief - personal, cultural, etc., and then asks if any of them are truly valid for forming a belief that matches up with the way reality is.

So why do you believe what you believe? Because your parents taught you something, because a professor in class made a particular claim, because a religious authority figure asserted a certain position? How do you know what's true and what's not - what to trust and what to dismiss?

I'm beginning this week to teach through a series on the Apostle's Creed, which starts out with the words "I Believe..." Although there's no way to exhaustively cover the topics of belief, reason, faith, and epistemology in one shot, the presentation below walks through these difficult topics and explains why Christianity meets the key requirements for truth and why it is worth believing in.

In the end, why believe in anything? Simply because the claim being made is true. No other reason is valid.

View more presentations from Robin Schumacher.