Wiker documents several myths have arisen regarding Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution:

1. That Darwin thought up the theory of evolution.  The notion that animals in the present evolved from earlier forms was not a novel idea.  The idea can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosopher Lucretius in the 1^st century BC, and it was particularly in vogue among the intelligentsia in Darwin’s day.  In fact, his very famous grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, wrote a widely acclaimed book titled Zoonomia (1794) in which he laid out his own theory of evolution more than 60 years before Charles wrote On the Origin of Species.  In medical school, Darwin studied under a radical evolutionist by the name of Robert Grant.  He also read the works of other evolutionists.  Darwin did not come up with evolution.  He merely popularized the theory by providing a plausible, naturalistic mechanism by which it might work, backed up by some empirical observations.

   Darwin hungered for originality.  He was so eager to present his theory of evolution as his own theory—and the theory of evolution—that he initially failed to credit the many contributions others had made to his thoughts.  For example, it was Thomas Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population that gave Darwin the idea that natural selection is driven by a competition for food sources, and that death was the key to creating new life.  Other intellectual influences included James Prichard, William Wells, William Lawrence, Patrick Matthew, Edward Blyth, and Robert Chambers.  Chambers published Vestiges of Creation in 1844, and his ideas differed little from Darwin’s.  Indeed, Darwin was so deflated by the fact that Chambers had scooped his ideas (and that his own friends skewered Chambers’ scientific claims), that he began an intense search for better evidence to support the same basic theory.  And then there is Alfred Wallace, who sent Darwin an essay in which he laid out a theory of evolution that so closely resembled Darwin’s theory that it was as if Darwin had written the essay himself.  Darwin was not about to be scooped again, so when he read Wallace’s essay he finally decided to make his own views about evolution public.  A joint paper authored by Lyell, Hooker, Wallace, and Darwin was presented at the Linnean Society in 1858.  One year later, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was released in print.  The historical evidence is clear that the articulation of Darwin’s theory did not require the existence of Darwin.  Other’s came to the same conclusions at approximately the same time.  Perhaps Darwin’s greatest contribution is that of a popularizer of evolutionary thought.

2. That Darwin came to his views as a result of his voyage on the Beagle.  Not so.  His father was an atheist who imbibed his views on origins from his own father, Erasmus (who was a self-confessed Deist, but in reality closer to an atheist).  Charles imbibed his views on religion and origins from both his father and grandfather.  Not only is there no good evidence that Charles was a religious believer prior to his voyage on the Beagle, but there is good reason to believe that he was an evolutionist long before then.  Charles read his grandfather’s Zoonomia early in his life, as well as Lamark’s works on evolution.  Darwin’s acceptance of evolution developed first, and the evidence necessary to support it were sought afterward.
3. That Darwin lost his faith as a result of his study of nature.  Not so.  Indeed, this presupposes that he had a Christian faith prior to his study of nature.  While Charles did enroll in Christ’s College for his undergraduate work in preparation for a divinity degree to become a pastor in the Anglican church, he only did so because he could not succeed at medicine (the profession of his father and grandfather), and did so at his father’s behest.  His father did not want him to become a clergyman because either shared the Christian faith (the only family members who exhibited a religious faith were Charles’ sisters, and they were Unitarians), but because being a clergyman was a semi-respectable job that would pay the bills and allow Charles the free time to do what he loved best: study the natural world.  Becoming a clergyman was a respectable family’s last ditch effort to secure for Charles a stable income and respectable career.
4. That Darwin’s theory was only rejected by Christian fundamentalists who were ignorant of the science.  Not so.  Darwin’s most vocal critics were fellow scientists and close friends.  Some objected to Darwin’s insistence that evolutionary change be unguided (Asa Gray, George Mivart), while others objected to evolution in general (Henslow, Adam Sedgwick, Richard Owen), and others still to various parts of his theory (Joseph Hooker, Thomas Huxley, Charles Lyell, and Alfred Wallace).  In almost all cases, the arguments against Darwinism were scientific in nature, not theological.  And interestingly, many of the same arguments modern anti-Darwinists level at the theory were advanced by scientists in Darwin’s day.  Darwin couldn’t answer those objections in his own day, and not much has changed in 150 years.
5. That evolution must be godless to be scientific.  Many evolutionists in Darwin’s day were theists who agreed with Darwin regarding the process of evolution, disagreed that it was unguided.  Darwin was even criticized for setting up a false dichotomy: either one believes in an unguided, godless evolution, or in a recent special creation and fixity of the species.  He did not consider the option that evolution was guided by God, or perhaps better said, he would not consider that as an option.  He was bent on providing a mechanism for evolution that made God’s hand unnecessary, and was insistent that one accept both his mechanism and his presumption that the mechanism is unguided by any intelligence.  The great myth of Darwin is that Darwinism is equivalent to evolution and atheism, when in fact, one can be an evolutionist and a theist without being a Darwinist.
6. That Darwin’s ideas did not serve as the basis for the Nazi Holocaust.  While Darwin himself would not have supported what the Nazi’s did because he thought sympathy should be shown to the unfit races, Darwin’s ideas of natural selection served as the intellectual and scientific foundation for the Holocaust.  Darwin’s book On the Origin of the Species was even subtitled The Preservation of the Favoured Races in the Struggle for Survival.  According to Darwin, racial extermination was the means by which evolutionary progress was to be obtained.  In chapter 6 of his Descent of Man he wrote, “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes…will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”  The German intellectuals, and finally Hitler himself, took Darwin’s ideas to their logical conclusion, recognizing (as did Ernst Haeckel long before) that Darwin’s hope for “sympathy” toward the inferior races was at odds with evolutionary advancement.

For a long time scientists held that the universe was eternal and unchanging.  This allowed them to avoid the God question—who or what caused the universe—because they reasoned that a beginningless universe needed no cause.[2]  They recognized that if the universe began to exist in the finite past that it begged for a cause that was outside of the time-space-continuum.  As Stephen Hawking told his well-wishers in a pre-recorded message, “A point of creation would be a place where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God.”

Scientific discoveries in the early and mid-20^th century, however, forced cosmologists to the uncomfortable conclusion that our universe came into being in the finite past.  The scientific consensus was that the origin of our universe constituted the origin of physical reality itself.  Before the Big Bang, literally nothing existed.  The universe came into being from nothing and nowhere.  This sounded too much like the creation ex nihilo of Genesis, however, and seemed to require the God of Genesis to make it happen.  As a result, some cosmologists were feverishly looking for ways to restore an eternal universe.

Several theories have been put forward over the last 50 years.  None of them have enjoyed the empirical confirmation that supports the Big Bang model.  They are either lacking in empirical support, or have been disconfirmed by the empirical evidence.  But every time one theory goes down in flames, cosmologists think up a new possibility or a variation of an older one.

In the not-so-distant past, Vilenkin himself has advocated cosmogenic theories that entail an eternal universe, but based on cosmological theorems he developed with Alan Guth and Arvin Borde, as well as an examination of the various candidates for an eternal universe, Vilenkin has come to see that all the evidence points in a singular direction: the universe had an absolute beginning in the finite past.

Vilenkin discussed three models for an eternal universe in his presentation, describing why each cannot deliver on what it promises.  The first is Alan Guth’s eternal inflation model which proposes eternally inflating bubble universes within a multiverse that stretches both forward and backward in time.  In 2003 Vilenkin and Guth discovered that the math for this model will not work because it violates the Hubble constant.  Speaking of the inflationary multiverse, Vilenkin said “it can’t possibly be eternal in the past,” and that “there must be some kind of boundary.”

The second cosmological model was the cyclical model, which proposes that the universe goes through an eternal series of contractions and expansions – our Big Bang being the latest contraction in an eternal series.  Vilenkin shows that this model cannot extend infinitely into the past either because disorder would accumulate with each cycle.  If the universe has been going through this process eternally, we should find ourselves in a universe that is completely disordered and dead.  We do not, hence a cyclical universe cannot extend infinitely into the past.

The final cosmological model Vilenkin deconstructed is the cosmic egg model.  On this model the universe exists eternally in a steady state, but then it “cracked” resulting in the Big Bang.  The problem with this model is that quantum instabilities would not allow the “egg” to remain in a steady state for an infinite amount of time.  It would be forced to collapse after a finite amount of time, and thus cannot be eternal.

Vilenkin concluded by saying “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”  The power of this statement, and its source, should not be underestimated.  Like many other cosmologists, Vilenkin was not satisfied to conclude that the Standard Model (Big Bang) was the end of the story.  He wanted the universe to be eternal.  He has been involved in projects trying to restore an eternal universe, and yet based on the evidence, he is willing to admit that an eternal universe does not appear to be a physical possibility.  All the evidence points to a beginning.  And if there is a beginning, then the question of what caused the universe to come into being needs to be answered.

Science cannot answer this question because science trades on material causes, and you can’t have a material cause before the origin of material reality itself.  Whatever caused the universe to come into being must be immaterial, timeless, non-spatial, powerful, and intelligent.  Furthermore, the cause must be personal as well.  As William Lane Craig has argued: “[I]f the cause of the universe were an impersonal set of necessary and sufficient conditions, it could not exist without its effect. The only way for the cause to be timeless and changeless but for its effect to originate de novo a finite time ago is for the cause to be a personal agent who freely chooses to bring about an effect without antecedent determining conditions.”[3]  And again, “As a free agent God is able to exercise His causal power without any antecedent determining conditions. That is what differentiates a personal agent from an impersonal cause. … Thus, the moment of God’s creating the universe is the moment at which the universe begins to exist. So God exists changelessly (though not immutably) without creation with a timeless intention that a world with a beginning exist, and by exercising His causal power brings such a world into being at the first moment of time.”[4]  An immaterial, timeless, non-spatial, powerful, personal, and intelligent agent sure sounds a lot like the God of theism!

The scientific evidence for a temporally finite universe continues to mount, and this fact leads us toward a theological conclusion about its origin.  As Robert Jastrow famously wrote, “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.”

Most theological determinists are compatibilists.  Compatibilists think determinism can be reconciled with free will: If one acts according to their desires, then their choices are free.  But this is a veneer.  At best this shows that we may feel like we our will is free, even though it is not.  The fact remains that both our desires and our choices are determined by God wholly independent of our own volition.  It should be no surprise when our desires match our actions when God has determined both.  Given theological determinism, there can be no freedom of human will, despite attempts by some to evade the obvious.

Walls outlines several problems with theological determinism/compatibilism:

1. It would make God the author of sin and evil since all of our acts are determined by His will.  In order for person X to rape person Y, God had to determine that person X do so.  That makes God the cause of X’s rape of Y.
2. God could have created a world in which all persons freely did only good, but He did not.  Why would God purposely create a world in which so much evil and suffering occurs, when He could have made a world in which there was only good?
3. It makes nonsense of the notion of moral responsibility. As Wells describes, “When the actions of a person are entirely determined by another intelligent being who intentionally determines (manipulates) the person to act exactly as the other being wishes, then the person cannot rightly be held accountable and punished for his actions.”  How can we be held accountable for thoughts and actions that we never chose, but were chosen for us by God?  This is like taking a child’s hand, forcibly using it to hit another child in the face, and then punishing the child for hitting someone.
4. Only an evil being could manipulate another being to do evil, and only an even greater evil being could then hold that individual morally accountable for their actions by punishing them.Why didn’t God determine that all men do good if He is in sovereign control over each and every one of our acts?  Why did He determine that some people will do evil, and that He will punish them for “their” evil in an eternal hell?  Some Calvinists respond that while God could have made a world without sin, or could have chosen to save all sinners rather than punish them, He chose not to do so because it is only by exercising both judgment and mercy that God’s full glory can be displayed.  But Walls rightly points out that if “God must display justice by punishing evil in order fully to manifest his glory, then sin and evil must occur for God’s full glory to be demonstrated.  The disconcerting consequence here is that God needs evil or depends on it fully to manifest his glory.  This consequence undermines not only God’s goodness, but his sovereignty as well.”

J.W. Wartick recently wrote a nice post on this topic as well: “A Denial of Theological Determinism.”  He lists a few other problems with theological determinism that are worthy of note:

5. It is a philosophy that cannot be lived.  People, even theological determinists, act as though they are free.  When bad things happen, they pray to God for help as if it may change the course of history, even though history was foreordained to be exactly the way God wanted it before the world ever was.  Indeed, even the fact that one is praying about it was determined by God.
6. Theological determinism cannot be rationally affirmed.  Even if theological determinism were true, I could only know it to be true if God determined for me to know it.  And the reason I would know it would not be due to my examination and weighing of the evidence in favor of theological determinism, but because God determined for me to believe it.  Likewise, if I think it is false, it is only because God has determined me to think it is false.  God’s sovereignty, not our own rationality, is responsible for what we believe about theological determinism.

For these 6 reasons—not to mention the Biblical data—I think theological determinism/compatibilism is incompatible with Christian theism.

Thanks to all for your continued readership, and for sharing my posts on your own blogs, Facebook, and Twitter!

Apparently this misinformation began to circulate widely in 1841 with the publication of Robert Philip’s memoir of John Campbell titled The Life, Times, and Missionary Enterprises of the Rev. John Campbell.  The Life contains a written anecdote of Campbell, who was rehearsing a story told to him by Reverend Dr. Walter Buchanan pertaining to the research David Dalrymple conducted into the church fathers’ citations of the NT.  According to Campbell, Buchanan and Dalrymple were both in attendance at a literary party when someone raised the question: “Supposing all the New Testaments in the world had been destroyed at the end of the third century, could their contents have been recovered from the writings of the three first centuries?”  No one had an answer.  According to Campbell, two months later Dalrymple contacted Buchanan and reported to him that he had taken up the question raised at the party, researched the writings of the church fathers, and had an answer to the question.  According to Campbell, Buchanan told him that Dalrymple told Buchanan he discovered that all but 7 or 11 verses (Dalrymple could not recall the exact number) of the NT were quoted in the early church fathers.

Fortunately for us we have Dalrymple’s notes.  Unfortunately they do not corroborate Buchanan’s story.  Based on several dates provided in Dalrymple’s notes, we know he was working on this project for no less than four years (1780-84)—not two months.  And more importantly, Dalrymple did not discover that all but 7 or 11 verses of the NT are quoted in the Ante-Nicene fathers.  Instead, he found that only 46% of the verses in the NT could be reconstructed from the writings of the church fathers (3620), meaning 54% (4336) of NT verses are missing (Wallace said that Dalrymple found all but 11 verses of the Gospel of John in the Ante-Nicene fathers, but Dalrymple’s notes do not bear this out).

Campbell related this story some 50 years after Buchanan shared it with him, which was itself “some time after” the event in question.[2]  So either Buchanan misunderstood Dalrymple, or Campbell misunderstood Buchanan’s telling of the story, or Campbell “misremembered” what Buchanan had reported to him five decades earlier.  Whoever deserves the blame for creating the myth may never be known, but now that we know it is a myth, let us not be blamed for perpetuating it.  While a significant portion of the NT text was quoted by the early church fathers—and that is significant—we should present the facts as they are, and not as we once thought them to be.

And this is coming to a California school near you this year. California just enacted a law that requires teachers to teach children about gays in history class.

And for the record, I think we should treat homosexuals with respect. I am opposed to verbally abusing and ridiculing gay people (Christians in particular should not be guilty of this). But that does not mean we have to pretend as if their sexual attractions are natural or that their sexual behavior is no different than heterosexuals’. We can love people without having to call their immorality moral or pretending that what is not normal is normal.  While schools should do what is necessary to make sure that gay kids or kids with gay “parents” are not subjected to ill-treatment by their peers, that does not require teaching them that homosexuality is perfectly acceptable. Tolerance and respect does not require agreement. And if we think it does, we have lost the essence of what it means to be tolerant.

Of the myriad of ways one might go about showing why Dennett’s solution does not work, I think Greg Koukl has offered the most straightforward and clearest critique.  Koukl points out that in order to recognize something as an illusion, two things are required: (1) the presence of a conscious observer who is capable of perception, and (2) the ability to distinguish between what is real and what is illusion.

If there were no conscious observers who can perceive, then it is impossible to know there is an illusion because the non-conscious do not perceive or know anything.  So if consciousness was not real there would be no way to perceive that consciousness was just an illusion.  If consciousness is required to perceive an illusion, then consciousness cannot itself be an illusion.  Similarly, one would have to be able to perceive both the real world and the illusory world in order to know there is a distinction between the two, and to subsequently identify the illusory world as illusory.  If all one perceived was the illusion, they would not be able to recognize it as such.

Naturalists struggle to fit consciousness into their worldview because it seems obvious that consciousness is not material in nature.  Various attempts have been made by naturalists to account for consciousness.  One of the strangest explanations is offered by philosopher Daniel Dennett.  His solution is to eliminate consciousness so that it does not require an explanation at all.  He does so by claiming that consciousness is not real, but an illusion.

Of the myriad of ways one might go about showing why Dennett’s solution does not work, I think Greg Koukl has offered the most straightforward and clearest critique.  Koukl points out that in order to recognize something as an illusion, two things are required: (1) the presence of a conscious observer who is capable of perception, and (2) the ability to distinguish between what is real and what is illusion.

If there were no conscious observers who can perceive, then it is impossible to know there is an illusion because the non-conscious do not perceive or know anything.  So if consciousness was not real there would be no way to perceive that consciousness was just an illusion.  If consciousness is required to perceive an illusion, then consciousness cannot itself be an illusion.  Similarly, one would have to be able to perceive both the real world and the illusory world in order to know there is a distinction between the two, and to subsequently identify the illusory world as illusory.  If all one perceived was the illusion, they would not be able to recognize it as such. 

[D]o we need a God to set it all up so a Big Bang can bang? … Our everyday experience makes us convinced that everything that happens must be caused by something that occurred earlier in time.  So it’s natural for us to assume that something—perhaps God—must have caused the universe to come into existence.  But when we’re talking about the universe as a whole, that isn’t necessarily so.
…
The role played by time at the beginning of the universe is, I believe, the final key to removing the need for a Grand Designer, and revealing how the universe created itself. … Time itself must come to a stop [at the singularity].  You can’t get to a time before the big bang, because there was no time before the big bang.  We have finally found something that does not have a cause because there was no time for a cause to exist in.  For me this means there is no possibility of a creator because there is no time for a creator to have existed.  Since time itself began at the moment of the Big Bang, it was an event that could not have been caused or created by anyone or anything. … So when people ask me if a god created the universe, I tell them the question itself makes no sense.  Time didn’t exist before the Big Bang, so there is no time for God to make the universe in.  It’s like asking for directions to the edge of the Earth.  The Earth is a sphere.  It does not have an edge, so looking for it is a futile exercise.”[1]

Expressed in deductive form, Hawking’s core argument appears to be as follows:

(1)   Causes must precede their effects in time
(2)   There is no time prior to the beginning of time (the origin of the universe)
(3)   Therefore, the universe cannot have a cause

By extension he argues:

(4)   Theism requires that God be the cause of the universe
(5)   The universe cannot have a cause
(6)   Therefore, theism is false

If this argument is successful it would disprove the existence of a Creator God.[2]  But is it?  I think not.  Both premises are dubious.

Before I assess the premises of Hawking’s argument, it is important to note that Hawking seems to be responding to premise 1 of the kalam cosmological argument (KCA) for God’s existence.  The KCA argues as follows:

(1)   Everything that begins to exist has a cause
(2)   The universe began to exist
(3)   Therefore, the universe has a cause

While Hawking agrees that everything within the universe that begins to exist has an external cause, he does not think the universe itself could have an external cause because, he says, causal entities must precede their effects in time, and since there is no time prior to the origin of the universe, there is no opportunity for a causal entity to exert its causal influence.  But is this true?  Does this provide a genuine defeater to premise 1 of the KCA?  To answer that question let us turn to an examination of the key premises in Hawking’s argument.

Must causes precede their effects in time?

The first premise in Hawking’s argument is that causes must precede their effects in time.  Said another way, causal relationships necessarily entail temporality.  If this assessment of causality is correct, then the causal principle does not apply to the question of cosmic origins because the principle came into being in tandem with the universe, thereby exempting the origin of the universe itself from its influence.  I think we have good reasons, however, for rejecting this premise.  While temporal priority may be a common property of causation—and even common to our experience of causation—that does not mean it is a necessary feature of causation as Hawking assumes.

1. Two types of causality

Causes can be prior to their effects in one of two ways: temporally or logically.  As an example of logical causal priority, Immanuel Kant invited us to imagine a heavy ball resting on a cushion from eternity past.  The physical proximity of the ball and cushion will form a concave depression (indentation) in the cushion that is coeternal with the ball and cushion.  What is the cause of this concavity?  Neither the ball nor the cushion enjoys temporal priority over the other (the ball never began to rest on the cushion, and the cushion never existed apart from the ball’s resting on it), so if Hawking is right, then there can be no cause of the concavity.  But this is absurd.  As a contingent property, the concavity of the cushion begs for a causal explanation.  It is obvious that the weight of the ball resting on the cushion is the cause of the cushion’s concavity (surely the concavity of the cushion does not cause the sphericity of the ball), and yet it never began to do so.  We have, then, an example of a cause that does not precede its effect in time.  It precedes its effect in a different manner: logically.  If the ball did not exist, the concavity of the cushion would not exist.  The ball is logically prior to the ball, though not temporally prior to it.

This demonstrates that the concept of causation outside of a temporal framework is coherent, and if causation is possible outside of a temporal framework, then the absence of time prior to the origin of the universe does not exclude the possibility that the universe also has a cause.  Hawking rightly points out that the universe cannot have a temporally prior cause, but falsely concludes that this excludes the possibility of any cause whatsoever because Hawking falsely believes that there can only be one form of causation.  Even atheistic philosopher Alexander Pruss says it is “dubious” to suppose that causation requires temporal priority because “apart from full or partial reductions of the notion of causation to something like Humean regularity and temporal precedence, …there is [not] much reason to suppose that the cause of a temporal effect must even be in time.”[3]

2. Why is time necessary to causal relationships?

A moment’s reflection on the nature of time and causation should make it clear that causal relationships do not entail temporality.  After all, does time cause anything to happen?  While our experience of cause and effect surely occurs within a temporal framework, time itself is not involved in producing the effect.  Time is not part of the causal equation.  Time is incidental to cause and effect, not essential to it.  So how could the absence of time eliminate the possibility of causal relationships?  If time is not part of the causal relationship itself, then there is no reason to think causation is dependent on time.  The only relationship required between cause and effect is one of explanatory priority.  The cause must be explanatorily prior to the effect, but something can be explanatorily prior to an effect in a logical and/or temporal manner.

3. What about simultaneous causation?

We might even question the assumption that causes necessarily precede their effects in time even within the temporal framework of the universe.  Perhaps it is better to understand some instances of cause and effect as being simultaneous with each other.  As William Lane Craig points out:

Imagine C and E are the cause and the effect. If C were to vanish before the time at which E is produced, would E nevertheless come into being? Surely not! But if time is continuous, then no matter how close to E’s appearance C’s disappearance takes place, there will always be an interval of time between C’s disappearance and E’s appearance. But then why or how E came into being when it does seems utterly mysterious, for there is no cause at that moment to produce it.”[4]

Arguably all causal relationships entail some sense of simultaneity between cause and effect.  If that is so, then it is perfectly rational to understand God’s causing the universe to come into being as occurring simultaneous to the universe’s coming into being.  God’s causal act of creation constituted the first moment of time, being simultaneous to the effect of the universe coming into being (See “Creation was a Temporal Act”).

4.  Hawking’s argument proves too much

Hawking argues that “since time itself began at the moment of the Big Bang, it was an event that could not have been caused or created by anyone or anything.”  But wouldn’t “anything” include physical laws as well?  How, then, could the law of gravity cause the universe to create itself as Hawking claims?  Wouldn’t it have to exist before the universe existed in order to cause the universe to come into being?  And wouldn’t it have to exert causal influence prior to the beginning of time in order to cause a temporal universe to come into being?  It seems so.  So why is it rational to see gravity as preexisting the origin of the universe and exerting causal influence “before” time began, but not rational to extend the same privilege to God?  Hawking seems inconsistent.  He will not allow for God what he allows for in the case of gravity.

Is it impossible for time to exist independent of the material universe?

Hawking’s second premise is that “there is no time prior to the beginning of time (the origin of the universe).”  But he just assumes that the only kind of time possible is physical time.  It is possible that in addition to physical time is another kind of time: metaphysical time.  For example, we can imagine God existing prior to the universe—in the absence of matter, space, and physical time—counting down to the moment of creation in His mind: “3, 2, 1, Let there be!”  Even a sequence of mental events requires the existence of time.  If it is even possible to imagine counting in the absence of the material world, then it proves that it is at least possible that time could exist apart from physical time.[5]  And if that is possible, then Hawking’s second premise can also be undercut.

In summary, there is ample reason to think Hawking’s first premise is false.  Temporal causation is not the only kind of causation possible, and it may not even be the case that temporal causation requires temporal priority.  As for his second premise, there is good reason to think that physical time is not the only kind of time possible.  And if there can be time apart from physical time, then it is possible for God to have existed before the universe, and to have exerted causal influence to create the universe that was temporally prior to the universe.  There is no good reason, then, to adopt Hawking’s conclusion that the universe cannot have a cause.  It can, and arguments such as the kalam cosmological argument and the principle of sufficient reason give us good reason to think the universe does have a cause, and that cause is God.

And just how exactly does seeing someone get put in jail affect other people in such a way so as to deter them from doing the things that caused those people to go to jail?  Coyne does not explain.  As I explained elsewhere, materialism cannot explain such phenomena because there is no physical interaction sufficient to cause one’s own physical machinery to experience change in any way at all.

Coyne concludes his article by saying once we recognize free will to be an illusion “we can go about building a kinder world” because jettisoning the concept of free will makes us realize that all people—whether good or bad—are just a product of their genes and environment, and such a realization creates in us a sense of empathy for all people.  Really?  Couldn’t the recognition that all people are determined to do what they do make us uncaring toward them?  If people who act badly do so because their hardware is broken, why not respond by killing them?  Isn’t that what we do to broken machinery—discard it?  The only way to build a kinder world is if we choose to do so.  But if Coyne is right, we can’t choose anything, and we don’t know whether physics will determine that we build a kinder or a crueler world.  Coyne wants us to do the very thing he says is impossible: to choose.  And that is the fundamental flaw in his thinking: He invokes the very thing he is trying to eliminate.

Imagine a room that is filled with 1000 pizzas and a one year old toddler.  Let’s say you leave the room for five minutes, and when you return all 1000 pizza boxes are empty.  Your job as a scientist is to explain what happened to the pizzas.  Since you know pizzas must be eaten, and that the only person in the room capable of eating them was the toddler, you set about to develop various theories as to how the toddler managed to consume 1000 pizzas in five minutes.  After years of research you still have not answered the question, but you press on because you are sure science will be able to resolve the dilemma.  It should be obvious that the scientist is pursuing the wrong kind of explanation.  We know the capabilities of toddlers and human digestion, so we know it is not possible to explain the disappearance of the pizzas by appealing to the toddler.  A different explanation is required.  Similarly, we know the capabilities of naturalistic processes, and we know that they are wholly inadequate to explain the origin of the biological information necessary in the first life form.  A different kind of explanation is required: one that involves an intelligent agent.  Insisting that a naturalistic cause is responsible for the origin of life is like insisting that the toddler must have eaten the pizzas.  While not impossible, it is improbable, and there is no good evidence to think it’s true.  The evidence points in a different direction.

But scientists will retort, “The discipline of science requires that no appeal be made to intelligent or supernatural agents.  Only naturalistic processes are allowed as valid explanations.”  While I would dispute the notion that such methodological constraints are necessary to the discipline of science, let’s just assume that for science to be science it must exclude all non-naturalistic explanations.  In that case, why can’t scientists just say that the origin of life may/does not have a scientific explanation, or that the scientific explanation for the origin of life is inferior to some non-scientific explanation?  That never happens.  Many scientists presuppose that the only kind of valid explanation is a scientific one.  Of those who will allow for other types of explanation, they still presuppose that scientific explanations are always superior to other kinds of explanation.  I contend that this kind of thinking needs to be challenged.  Not all problems have a scientific answer, and not all scientific answers are superior to non-scientific answers.  Some problems can only be answered by philosophy (what is real, how do we justify knowledge, what are numbers, where do logical laws come from, etc.).  Others can only be answered by theology (was Jesus the Son of God).  Just as it would be a mistake to think all problems have a philosophical answer, it is a mistake to think all problems have a scientific answer.  If the evidence points against a naturalistic explanation and toward an intelligent explanation, then science should be willing to admit that, even if they are not willing to say that such an explanation is a scientific one.