We have discussed four chapters in Greg Koukl’s book Faith Is Not Wishing. Probably the biggest attack on Christianity is the problem of evil – this is what Greg tackles next.

The problem of evil drove Einstein away from the God of the Bible. It was part of the inspiration for the atheism of British philosopher Bertrand Russell. For so many people it has been the number one complaint against Christianity.

Some people suggest God would like to do something about evil but is unable to do so. Rabbi Harold Kushner delivered this answer in this popular book Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? This God cannot inspire a rescue. There’s not much comfort to be gained from worshiping a God like this.

Back to Bertrand Russell for a minute. He wondered how anyone could talk of God while kneeling at the bed of a dying child. This, of course, is a powerful image, which seems devastating to the Christian worldview. But there’s a simple response – what is the atheist Bertrand Russell going to say to that dying child? Too bad? Tough luck? That’s the way it goes?

Greg brings up an important point. If God does not exist, the one thing we can never do is call something evil or tragic. When we use terms like this, we require some transcendent reference point, some way of keeping score. If there is no standard, then there is no good or bad. As C. S. Lewis said, “My argument against God was that the universe seems so cruel and unjust. But how had I gotten this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call something crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”

In fact, if there is no God, it’s hard to even make sense of the notion of evil. Instead, all we can say is that stuff just happens. We can say we don’t like this stuff, but we can’t call it evil.

We still have a key question – where was God? Why didn’t he intervene in evil situations? But Greg says we don’t really want God to end evil, not all of it. How much evil happens every day unnoticed and unlamented because we are the perpetrators, not its victims? Think of adultery, lying, abortion, and other evils that occur on a day-to-day basis. We actually don’t want God to be sniffing around the dark recesses of our own evil conduct. As somebody once said, if God heard your prayer to eliminate evil and destroyed it all at midnight tonight, where would you be at 12:01?

So why doesn’t God stop the evil? The answer is the same one when we ask another question, “Why doesn’t God stop me every time I do wrong?” We end up with an obvious point – human moral choice give us dignity but at the same time make serious evil possible.

Actually, suffering, tragedy, and evil function as warning signals. The pain we see tells us that our world is broken, that something is amiss. If God took away the pain, we would never deal with the disease. And the disease will kill us, sooner or later.

Greg points out that God has done something about evil, the most profound thing imaginable. He has sent his Son to die for evil men. God offers us mercy instead of the punishment we deserve.

Eventually, God will get rid of evil. Until then, he has a different strategy. It’s called forgiveness. That’s something we can access right now.

This is my fourth blog dealing with Greg Koukl’s book Faith Is Not Wishing. I’m spending time on this book because so many of his chapters reference common criticisms leveled at Christianity. For example, this chapter concerns people who have never heard the gospel, ones who are basically good and sincerely worship God in their own way. Would God send them to hell for not hearing about Jesus?

Greg admits that it is the most taxing objection he faces and also the most odious to others. To non-Christians, it’s a despicable doctrine. After all, if hearing the name of Jesus is a requirement for salvation, entire cultures would be sent to hell, meaning God becomes a petty racist. Is that fair? Is that just?

Paul argues against works salvation by saying there is a single common denominator for people of all ages and cultures – faith. We think of Old Testament believers like Melchizedek or Rahab. In the New Testament we encounter Cornelius and Lydia, non-Jews who are shown grace. In Romans 2, Paul says God “will render to every man according to his deeds… For there is no partiality with God.”

Greg points out that most people in the world worship something beyond themselves with complete sincerity. Is this enough? Has God said that this is adequate? No. In his sermon on Mars Hill, Paul indicates that worshiping in ignorance is not adequate (Acts 17:23). He also indicates in Romans 10:2 that the Jews were zealous for God, but their zeal was not based on knowledge.

But what of the good person? God won’t reject him or her? And actually, the Bible agrees: If a man keeps God’s law, he’ll have no problem with God. But here’s the key question: Where is such a person? When measured by God’s standards, we fall so far short. Where is the good Buddhist, the good Hindu, or the good Muslim? Actually, where is the good Christian? They don’t exist. God’s absolute standards silence every claim to self-righteousness. This is bad news because it makes the whole world accountable to God. This is critical to Greg’s presentation here – People are not ultimately condemned for their rejection of Christ; they’re punished for breaking God’s law.

He says we make a big mistake when we think people are basically good and would turn to God if they had the chance. Romans 1:18-19 tells us that people reject the light given them not out of ignorance, but out of willful suppression of truth. We run from God, not towards Him.

If this is the case, then God must make the first move to block man’s retreat. Again, this is important because it means that no “heathen in Africa” begins a genuine search unless God has first moved in him to do so (John 6:44).

Here’s Greg’s message up to this point. First, God only punishes those who are guilty. Second, guilty people don’t seek God; they run from him. Third, God takes the initiative to pursue us out of love.

How does God pursue us? It certainly possible that in isolated situations he communicates directly. This he did with Abraham. There are so many stories coming today out of restrictive Muslim countries of people having dreams and encountering Jesus in them. This happens all around the world. Greg tells the story of an Indian who was a member of the Brahman caste. He had experienced astral travel to other planets, had psychedelic experiences, and received yogic visions. He found that each step closer to his Hindu gods was actually a step farther from the true God that he sought in his heart. When confronted with the utter emptiness of life and the shallowness of religion, he cried out, “I want to know the true God, the Creator of the universe.” God responded by bringing the gospel to him through the witness of a young woman. Usually, however, the message of the true Savior comes on the lips of a preacher who comes bearing the good news (Romans 10:14-15).

We know based on the Bible and cultural stories that anyone seeking God in truth will find him and be accepted by him. God does not condemn anyone for rejecting a Jesus he’s never heard of. Rather, men are held accountable for their own moral crimes against God and for rejecting the Father, whose voice is heard everywhere.

The third chapter in Greg Koukl’s book Faith Is Not Wishing has a intriguing title: “Was Jesus a Fraud?” He’s referring to the fact that some people believe the story of Jesus was just a recycled version of ancient pagan religions. This has been a recent criticism that many skeptics are using to challenge Christianity. Is Jesus just a copycat messiah?

Greg starts by looking at the ancient historical accounts of the life of Jesus. The authors do not appear to be writing fairy tales for future generations. For example, the opening words of the author Luke talk about compiling an account handed down by eyewitnesses. He’s referring to the use of oral tradition, a huge part of the Jewish society of the time. He and the other gospel writers are aware that they are relating a remarkable story, but they are obviously convinced that the events in these accounts really happened. Their accounts include vivid details of observers who witnessed the events or, in Luke’s case, a chronicler who had obtained the information from people who are actually there. C. S. Lewis once remarked that he knew myths from his literary studies, and the gospels do not read as myths.

One internet documentary has challenged the authenticity of these gospel accounts. It’s called Zeitgeist: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. According to this account, the Egyptian sun god Horus was born on December 25 of a virgin. His birth was accompanied by a star in the east, and three kings followed it to locate the new-born savior. At the age of 30 he was baptized and began his ministry. Horace had twelve disciples and performed miracles. After being betrayed, he was crucified, buried for three days, and then resurrected. Sound familiar? The documentary claims other gods followed this same structure, including Krishna, Dionysus, and Mithras. Osiris, another Egyptian god, also follows this pattern of a dying and resurrected god.

What’s the Christian response? First, the facts listed above in the previous paragraph are almost all false. For example, Osiris did not rise bodily from the dead, and neither Horus, Mithras, or Krishna were born of a virgin. In addition, the dating of these myths causes a big problem for skeptics because most of them actually postdate the time of Jesus.

But what about the myths of dying and rising gods which predate the Christian era? Claims made regarding Jesus of Nazareth are distinct from them in three critical ways – Jesus was a real human whose resurrection happened at a particular place and time on earth, the mythical deities were tied to the repeated seasons of the agricultural cycle (Jesus’s resurrection was a one-time event), and Jesus died as a vicarious sacrifice for sins. Greg spends time on the first point above – the historicity of Jesus. Scholars both liberal and conservative overwhelmingly agree that Jesus was a man of history. For example, Will Durant, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, says this about the gospels: “No one reading the scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them… After two centuries of higher criticism, the outlines of the life, character, and teachings of Christ remain reasonably clear and constitute the most fascinating feature in the history of Western man.”

So, there are plenty of reasons to reject the complaint of critics who say Jesus was a fraud.

Another chapter in Greg Koukl’s book called Faith Is Not Wishing has an intriguing title – “Is God Just a Crutch?” Greg deals well with that attack on theism.

Atheists like to talk a lot about emotional and cultural factors that might induce somebody to become committed to Jesus. They claim the concept of God is a crutch. But Greg points out that no one can refute an idea by showing the psychological reasons a person happens to believe it. You can’t refute someone’s views by faulting his feelings. This is the key to his entire chapter.

Of course, this game can be played the other way around. Maybe it’s the atheist who uses his or her beliefs as a crutch, an invention of that person’s non-religious wishful thinking. In fact, it was Aldous Huxley who said he bought into atheism because it gave him the freedom to do what he wanted in the area of sexuality.

The key here is simple – objections about the believer, rather than the belief are not valid. Whatever cultural, emotional, psychological, or historical reasons people have tell you only about their cultures, emotions, history, or psychological states.

When someone focuses on the origin of a belief, not its content, this is called the genetic fallacy. Very well-known thinkers have committed this error – Sigmund Freud, Frederick Nietzsche, and Karl Marx all said God was nothing more than a psychological projection. Psychological motivations give you information about the person who believes, but they tell you nothing about the truth of his or her beliefs. Psychological motivations have nothing to do with whether a belief is true or not.

If someone says to us that Christians just want a father figure, there’s a simple answer. We say, “Maybe we do and maybe we don’t, but what does that have to do with whether God exists or not?” As C. S. Lewis said, “You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong.”

So we have to start with reasons first, rather than misleading talk about motives or desires. The atheist needs to give the Christian a convincing argument that God does not exist before asking why the Christian would believe in such a fantasy. Of course, it’s easier for the atheist to ignore the argument and fault the feelings.

What I find interesting is Greg’s final comments in this chapter. If men were to invent a God, he asks, what would he be like? Would we create a God like the one in the Bible? Wouldn’t we want Him to reflect our desires by dismissing our shortcomings? But the God of the Bible is so unlike us. His wisdom confuses us and his purity frightens us. He makes moral demands that we can’t possibly live up to. He does not come running to us when we call on him.

If somebody insists that Jesus is a crutch, there is an element of truth to this. After all, crippled people need crutches. At least he is a crutch that we can lean on. What is the atheist putting his trust in? Can his crutch hold him?

This coming spring our apologetics group will be going through a short but extremely thoughtful book called Faith Is Not Wishing by Greg Koukl. I wanted to highlight some of his chapters here.

The first chapter deals with the concept of faith. Atheists see an inverse relationship between knowledge and faith. They believe the more knowledge of this world that is gained, the less spiritual faith people will have. They see faith as a leap in the dark, a desperate clinging to something when no information is available. It is often seen as wishful thinking. But Koukl points out that biblical faith is very different – it actually comes out of knowledge. It means active trust. He gives an example in the book of Exodus where Moses through the power of God brings forth miracles. In Exodus 14:31, we see the result: “And when Israel saw the great power which the Lord had used against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.” There’s a definite pattern we see in this story–giving the people knowledge of God, in whom they then place their active trust. The key point is that knowledge went before belief. God didn’t ask the Hebrews or Moses for mindless faith, blind leaps, or wishful thinking.

The same is true in the New Testament. In Mark 2 Jesus says to a paralytic that his sins were forgiven. Scribes grumbled about such an audacious claim. So Jesus said, “But in order that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, I say to you, rise, take up your pallet and go home.” Jesus gave the same lesson that we saw in Exodus. He provided something that can’t be seen (the forgiveness of sins) with evidence that can be seen, in this case a dramatic supernatural healing. Again, the concrete evidence allowed the doubters to know the truth so they could then trust in the forgiveness Jesus could give.

Other places in the New Testament follow the same pattern. Peter’s sermon on Pentecost ends with this statement: “Therefore, let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him [Jesus] both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” In 1 John the author ends his letter by saying, “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life.”

Biblical faith isn’t wishing; it’s confidence. It’s not denying reality, but discovering reality. It’s a sense of certainty grounded in evidence that Christianity is true – not just “true for me,” but actually, fully, and completely true. So knowledge comes first, and confidence follows. So we need to gather evidence, which will increase our knowledge and deepen our faith. Today, thanks to the Internet and other sources, it’s easy to gather evidence for the reliability of the Christian faith. Let me know if you’d like some ideas of places to go for further evidence.

I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be an Atheist by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek has an important chapter dealing with the possibility of miracles. Since I will be speaking on this in a week, I wanted to write about miracles to make sure I understood their main points.

I think I’ll start my presentation with a question: have you or someone you know experienced a miracle? It might be a healing or an answer to prayer. J. P. Moreland, a noted Christian philosopher, says he is always surprised when he asks this question of groups he is speaking to. A large number of people always raise their hands. We in the West are cold, rational people that really don’t believe in miracles. But they seem to be happening around us.

Can we justify belief in miracles? That’s what the authors of the book tackle. They start with a definition. A miracle is a special act of God that interrupts normal events. It’s done to authenticate some message from God.

They use a simple illustration to explain how miracles add to our worldview. They tell of one speaker who brought in two boxes for his audience – one was closed, and one was open at one end. The speaker held up the closed box and said atheists believe the physical universe is closed, like the box. But he said he believed there was a God outside the box capable of reaching into it and performing what we call miracles.

The authors indicate there is a key element here. If we admit there is a God, then miracles are possible. It’s always been funny to me that people do believe in God, but they have difficulty with miraculous events associated with Jesus, such as walking on water or changing water to wine. Once you have settled the idea that there is a God, then all possibilities are open since he created the entire universe out of nothing. He can certainly do other, more minor miracles.

Geisler and Turek tackle two well-known objections to miracles. The first one was by Spinoza, who said natural laws are immutable. But the authors point out the creation of the universe seems to throw that objection out the window. They say laws describe, not prescribe what will happen.

The second objection was by David Hume. He argued that natural law is a description of a regular occurrence, while a miracle is a rare occurrence. He then says the evidence for the regular is always greater than that for the rare. Next, he says, a wise man always bases his belief on the greater evidence, and, therefore, a wise man should never believe in miracles. That may sound like a good argument, but they point out the problem with “the evidence for the regular is always greater than that for the rare.” Think of all the things that have happened which are rare but we have better reasons to believe in them – the origin of the universe, the origin of life, the start of new life forms, the entire history of the world. These are all rare events, yet we believe in them. The issue is not the rarity of an event; it’s whether we have good evidence for it. They accuse Hume of circular reasoning – he says only believable events are regular, and since a miracle is not regular, it fails to meet this criteria.

The authors end the chapter by discussing why there are no biblical miracles happening today. They mention that most miracles in the Bible actually occurred only during three periods of history – in the time of Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. They believe that since there is no new revelation coming from God today that needs confirmation, there are fewer miracles. But I suggest that there are miracles, at least on the smaller scale involving individuals. We’ll see what reaction I get when I ask the class next week whether they have experienced miracles.

The next section of I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist is important but not necessarily easy to grasp. The authors Norm Geisler and Frank Turek deal with the argument for God from morality. It can be summed up this way: every law has a lawgiver; there is a moral law; therefore, there is a moral lawgiver.

Of course, the key portion of that argument is the existence of a moral law. The authors start out by saying our Founding Fathers thought there was such a law. Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “nature’s law” is “self-evident.” They claim Jefferson meant you don’t use reason to discover it; you just know it. All people are impressed with the fundamental sense of right and wrong. For example, everyone knows that love is superior to hate and courage is better than cowardice.

They point out that this does not mean that every moral issue has easily recognizable answers or that some people don’t deny that absolute morality exists. There are difficult problems in morality. In addition, they understand that people suppress and deny the moral law every day. But they say there are basic principles of right and wrong that everyone knows, whether they will admit them or not.

The authors claim there are eight reasons why the moral law exists. First, the moral law is undeniable logically. A person may say “there are no absolute values,” but this person who denies all values actually values his right to deny them. In addition, he wants everyone to value him as a person, even while he denies that there are values for all persons. So, even those who deny all values nevertheless value their right to make that denial. That’s inconsistent.

Secondly, we know there is a moral law by our reactions. The authors included a great story to prove their point. A professor at a major university in Indiana gave one of his relativistic students who did not believe in absolute moral values a lesson in this point. The professor, who was teaching a class in ethics, assigned a term paper to the students. One student, an atheist, wrote eloquently on the topic of moral relativism, arguing that all morals are relative and there is no absolute standard of justice or rightness. It was actually a good paper with good documentation. The professor read the paper and wrote on the front cover, “This is a good paper, but I’m going to give it an F because you put it in a blue folder.” The student, of course, was enraged and said that it wasn’t fair to give him a bad grade because of the folder. The professor acted puzzled, saying the student didn’t believe in moral values, so why was he talking about something being fair. The light bulb went on the student’s head. He realized that he really did believe in moral absolutes. The authors say that a good way to get moral relativists to admit that there are absolute morals is to treat them unfairly. Their reactions will reveal the moral law written on their hearts and minds.

There are more arguments for the existence of moral laws, but I will save those for future blog.

The next section of I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist deals with the design of life. It focuses particularly on the most difficult problem of all for Darwinists – where did the first life come from?

The authors point out that the first problem when talking about evolution is in its definition. Darwinists make no distinction between microevolution and macroevolution, and thus use the evidence for micro to prove macro. Microevolution has been observed (changes within species), but it can’t be used as evidence for macroevolution, which has never been observed (the evolving of one organism into another kind of organism). Natural selection, the device Darwinists say that powers evolution, has never been observed to create new types.

There are five reasons the authors list to explain why natural selection can’t create new life. For one thing, there seems to be genetic limits built into basic types of animals. For example, dog breeders create different kinds of dogs, but the dogs always remain dogs. Secondly, the change that occurs within types of animals appears to be cyclical rather than directed toward the development of new life forms. The two authors use an example of Darwin’s finches, which were noted as having varying beak sizes depending on the weather. No new life forms came into existence; only the beak sizes changed in these birds. The third reason involves something called irreducible complexity. Living things are filled with molecular machines that are irreducibly complex, meaning that all the parts of each machine have to be completely formed and in the right places and in the right size in the correct operating order at the same time for the machine to function. The authors use as an example a car engine, which needs so many systems to operate together for success. These complex biological systems could not have developed in a gradual Darwinian fashion because intermediate forms would be nonfunctional. All the right parts must be in place in the right size at the same time for there to be any function at all. A fourth problem with natural selection is the non-viability of transitional forms. The authors use as an example the Darwinian assertion that birds evolved gradually from reptiles. Such a change would necessitate a transition from scales to feathers, but how could a creature survive that no longer has scales but does not quite have feathers? A creature with the structure of half a feather has no ability to fly. Finally, the authors discuss molecular isolation. If all species share a common ancestor, the authors indicate we should expect to find proteins sequences that are transitional from fish to amphibian, for example. That’s not what is found. Scientists have discovered that the basic types are molecularly isolated from one another, which seems to preclude any type of ancestral relationship.

But Darwinists say the fossil record supports their position – does it? It actually lines of better with supernatural creation. There aren’t missing links – there’s a missing chain. Nearly all the major groups of animals known to exist appear in the fossil record abruptly and fully formed in strata from the Cambrian time period. This is been called the Cambrian explosion or biology’s Big Bang. This, of course, is completely inconsistent with Darwinism. There’s no evidence of gradual evolution but of instantaneous creation instead.

Again, I’m going to quit at this point even though I have not finished the chapter in the book. There’s plenty here to think about.

This blog is a continuation of a summary of a powerful book, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Geisler and Turek.. The last time I discussed the book I was working my way through a chapter about the complexity of life. This time I would like to finish that particular chapter, which talks about the philosophy behind Darwinism and materialism.

The authors say Darwinists have been successful in convincing the public that Darwinism represents science while those who oppose Darwinism represent bad science. However, Geisler and Turek say just the opposite. It’s the Darwinists who are practicing the bad science because their science is built on a false philosophy.

Where does Darwinism go wrong? Many Darwinists start with the idea that God is not necessary because science can explain everything. But there are all sorts of rational beliefs that cannot be proven by science: mathematics and logic (science can’t prove them because science presupposes them), metaphysical truths (for example, there are minds that exist other than my own), ethical judgments (you can’t prove by science that Mother Teresa was good because morality is not part of the scientific method), aesthetic judgments (no one can scientifically prove something is beautiful), and science itself (the belief that the scientific method discovers truth ironically can’t be proven by the scientific method itself).

The key point the authors wish to get across is that science itself is built on philosophy. So, if you have bad philosophy, you get bad science. How is it that science is built on philosophy? First, scientists use philosophical assumptions and the search for causes. For example, scientists assume by faith that reason and the scientific method allow us to accurately understand our world. You can’t prove the tools of science by some sort of experiment – the laws of logic, the law of causality, the principle of uniformity. Secondly, philosophical assumptions can dramatically impact scientific conclusions. I think right now about the debate on climate change. Many scientists are getting a conclusion that they wish to get to keep the scientific funding going.

The authors say the bad science of Darwinists essentially comes from their false philosophy of naturalism/materialism. Geisler and Turek have five reasons why materialism is not reasonable. First, there is specified complexity in life that cannot be explained materially. Think about the DNA message. Secondly, human thoughts and theories are not comprised only of materials. How much does love weigh? Third, if life was simply material, then we could take these materials and make a living being. But we cannot do that. Fourth, if materialism is true, then all people of human history who had spiritual experiences have been completely mistaken. That’s hard to believe considering the list of those who have had such experiences – think of Abraham, Moses, Kepler, Newton, Pascal, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Jesus Christ. Fifth, if materialism is true then reason itself is impossible. Why? If mental processes are nothing but chemical reactions in our brains, why should we believe that anything is true? Chemicals don’t reason, they react. We would be doomed to conclusions based on chemical reactions rather than reason.

Well, that’s a lot of heady material to consider, and it deserves further thought. But I think it’s pretty powerful.

I have been blogging on a book that our class at church will be reading together–I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Geisler and Turek. For this entry I want to cover what is probably my favorite section of the whole book. It involves the argument from design, also called the teleological argument. It looks like this: every design had a designer; the universe has highly complex design; therefore, the universe had a designer. In the last few years science has uncovered so much evidence of complexity in the universe that argues powerfully for the existence of God.

For one thing, the universe is specifically organized to enable life to exist on earth. Think about just the solar system–no other place is able to sustain life. We live, like Goldilocks, in a just-right position, neither too hot (Venus) or too cold (Mars).We have around us scores of improbable and interdependent life-supporting conditions that make earth a perfect home in a hostile universe. These highly precise environmental conditions go by the term “anthropic principle.” The universe looks fine-tuned to support human life here on earth.

What are some of these conditions that are exactly right? I’ll just list some, skipping the details, but the book explains each more fully: the percent of oxygen in the atmosphere, the transparency of our atmosphere, the moon-Earth gravitational interaction, the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere, the gravitational force in the universe, the expansion rate of the universe, the velocity of light, the level of water vapor in the atmosphere, the precise location of Jupiter in the solar system, the thickness of the Earth’s crust, the rotation of the earth, the tilt of the Earth’s axis, the rate of lightning in the atmosphere, seismic activity on the earth. There are something like 122 of these conditions both on earth and throughout the universe that have to be precisely right for us to exist.

The authors quote a Nobel Laureate, Arno Penzias, who has this to say after examining the conditions like the ones in the previous paragraph: “Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan.”

The skeptic’s response comes in several flavors. One popular one today is called the Multiple Universe Theory. This theory says there actually is an infinite number of universes in existence, so it’s no wonder that at least one looks like the one that we are in. There are significant problems with this explanation. First, there is no evidence for it. Secondly, an infinite number of finite things like universes is an actual impossibility. Third, even if there were other universes, they would need fine-tuning to get started just as ours did.

This chapter in Geisler and Turek’s book discusses design of the universe, but there is much more to this design argument. The other area of design that is so powerful today has to do with the microscopic level. Design that went unnoticed in Darwin’s day is being revealed in exiting ways. I’ll cover those in the next blog.