The Case for a Creator
Overall comments
All of the people Lee Strobel interviews for this book are connected with the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC): William Lane Craig is a fellow at the CSC; Jonathan Wells, Guillermo Gonzales, Jay Richards, and Michael Behe are senior fellows; Stephen Meyer is program director for the CSC; Robin Collins has received support for his work from the CSC.
In addition, Phillip Johnson, whose work is often cited for support, holds the title of program advisor for the CSC.
Nonetheless, although both the Discovery Institute and its Center for Science and Culture are mentioned several times, neither one appears in the index. Other people and concepts (such as Strobel's wife) do, despite being mentioned only once.
Chapter 1: White-Coated Scientists Versus Black-Robed Preachers
The first chapter begins with Strobel going through his early career as a journalist for the Chicago Tribune in the 1970's. At that time, he was not religious, but after covering a story in West Virginia about religion and schools, Strobel was reeled into religion. Strobel says he was a skeptic of Christianity and religion, but he does not give any evidence to support his story - so this may be just a ploy.
During his investigation, he learned that there were shootings and bombings at schools "all because some hillbillies are mad about the textbooks being used in the schools." Later, Strobel writes that when he attended an anti-evolution rally in rural Campbell's Creek and was recognized as a reporter, the crowd turned ugly and he was in real fear of physical harm (so much that Strobel's knees were shaking) possibly because they thought the reporter would not portray them in a sympathetic light. An intense, dark-haired wife of a Baptist minister insisted,
"The books bought for our school children would teach them to lose their love of God, to honor draft dodgers and revolutionaries, and to lose their respect for their parents."
a local businessman said,
"Let me put it this way," he said. "If Darwin's right, we're just sophisticated monkeys. The Bible is wrong. There is no God. And without God, there's no right or wrong. We can just make up our morals as we go. The basis for all we believe is destroyed. And that's why this country is headed to hell in a handbasket. Is Darwin responsible? I'll say this: people have to choose between science and faith, between evolution and the Bible, between the Ten Commandments and make-'em-up-as-you-go ethics. We've made our choice - and we're not budging."
Response: As you can see, the reason why the West Virginians were angry was due to religious reasons, it did not and does not matter if the evidence supports Darwin's theory of evolution (which it does). They preferred to choose their belief, and their children's beliefs, based not on what is true but on what they wanted to be true. Of course, everything the minister's wife and local businessman stated about evolution is completely incorrect. The validity of evolution does not refute God or an afterlife, nor does evolution cause morals or meaning to vanish.
What is really interesting and worth noting: Strobel never returns to these incidents, or draws any lessons from them. He never even explicitly condemns the violence. At best, he remarks about Christianity (from his back-then non-religious perspective) as an "archaic belief system". Remarks like this lead many to speculate that Strobel exaggerated about his past beliefs. Most atheists or reasonable people would remark at such violence like this as what it really was: violent irrational lunatics. Rather, Strobel seems to be implying their actions were somehow justified. A rational, hard-nosed journalist would point out that the possible social consequences of a scientific theory have no bearing on whether that theory is true. Strobel does not do this. Rather he supports the crowd's notion that evolution refutes all possible beliefs about God (ignoring all the Christian evolutionists back then and of today).
Response: Despite the book being titled The Case for a Creator-which implies that the book's contents contain a set of factual arguments and supporting evidence worthy of the description "case"-Strobel here does nothing of the kind. In fact, what he's doing is exactly the same thing that his West Virginian interviewees were doing: trying to warn people away from accepting evolution by painting a frightening picture of its imagined consequences. Thus it is no surprise that Strobel does not attempt to cite supporting arguments for this staggering set of claims. Instead, the sole purpose is to provoke horror into Strobel's Christian readers.
Chapter 2: The Images of Evolution
The chapter begins with a quote by Richard Lewontin and Phillip Johnson. Johnson, the father of the modern intelligent design movement, makes the claim that science is identical to materialism and naturalism that purposely excludes god.
Response: The naturalism that science adopts is methodological naturalism. It does not assume that nature is all there is; it merely notes that nature is the only objective standard we have. The supernatural is not ruled out a priori; when it claims observable results that can be studied scientifically, the supernatural is studied scientifically (Astin et al. 2000; Enright 1999). It gets little attention because it has never been reliably observed. Still, there are many scientists who use naturalism but who believe in more than nature. Johnson, in 1996, made the statement "intelligent design debate is not about science, it's about religion and philosophy."
Strobel begins by sharing his experience as an atheist going through a biology class and how his curiosity for truth drove him into liking science. He retells how he grew up in a post-Sputnik era when education and science were held in high regard. He mentions that in the 1960's relativism and situational ethics caused the nation to turn upside down.
Response: How could this be? If a person would prefer to life of hedonism and debauchery, then they can perfectly do that as a theist (and a lot of them do). Strobel said that those who still had faith in the supernatural were, in his view, weak and had no evidence to support their claims. This red herring led to the violation of science (science cannot make a comment on the supernatural).
He quotes Richard Dawkins, who said Darwin make it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. This, however, is far from the only opinion about that-Strobel can easily be accused of cherry picking as a result.
The Images of Evolution
Strobel recalls the images he frequently saw in a biology class.
- Image 1: Tubes, Flasks, and Electrodes of the Stanley Miller Experiment. - This excluded God from having a role in creating life.
- Image 2: Darwin's "tree of Life" - After reading the Origin of Species Strobel says this explained the diversity of life.
- Image 3: Ernst Haeckel's Drawings of Embryos - Strobel says these drawings could be found in virtually every evolution book he studied.
- Image 4: The Missing Link - Strobel mentions and sticks to using Archeopteryx as an example.
Strobel says he met many spiritual skeptics who started doubting in high school or college. Strobel mentions in 2002 a Boy Scout was not granted the Eagle Scout award because he refused to pledge reverence to God. This started when he had "been an atheist since studying evolution in the ninth grade."(Dean E. Murphy of the New York Times, "Eagle Scout Faces Ultimatum over Atheism," Orange County Register (November 3, 2002))
Darwin Versus God
Here Strobel lists many scientists and theologians who find no conflict in accepting evolution and hold a belief in God. Where was Strobel when several Popes openly stated the evolutionary theory does not contradict or refute God? This did not make sense to Strobel because he was taught evolution is undirected. Strobel brings up Phillip Johnson's book, Darwin on Trial, that explains evolution's whole point is to exclude God. (Read this article to see everything wrong in Johnson's book) Strobel says Ernst Meyer agrees with Johnson (quoting phrase word for word on page 23),
"the real core of Darwinism" is natural selection, which "permits the explanation of adaption...by natural means, instead of by divine intervention."
Strobel takes the above quote from Stephen J. Gould, "Abscheulich! Atrocious! Natural History (March 2002). Strobel also mentions Fransisco Ayala, a Dominican priest prior to his science career, claiming there was no need for a creator or external agent for the mechanisms of evolution (Ayala refused to be interviewed for this book). Strobel goes on to quote several other sources, including Pulitzer Prize winners and Time magazine.
Darwin's Universal Acid
Here Strobel goes back to finding sources to support his "atheistic" youth, and summarizes this section with a phrase by Daniel Dennett that evolution is a universal acid that slowly eats through every traditional concept.
Strobel goes on to say that since God was excluded from his worldview, he would go on forth towards his ambitions and pleasures (even the ones that "God" supposedly does not favor). Strobel blames this behavior on religious authorities being unwilling or unable to help him get the answers to questions he had about God. He ends this section retelling his view of such people as "slaves to their wishful thinking."
The Investigation Begins
A friend of Strobel announced that she was becoming a follower of Jesus, which made Strobel go about asking deeper questions about faith and God. The big three questions were the following,
- Are science and faith doomed to always be at war?
- Does the latest scientific evidence point toward or away from the existence of God?
- Are the images of evolution (which spurred him to atheism) still valid?
Strobel then goes of on his quest, saying that he would go where the answers took him. As a journalist, he is supposed to ask questions. He is also a lawyer, meaning he is skilled to make cases. The difference between those two and science is that scientists test and repeat their data, whereas lawyers make a case for a proposition whether it is true or not.
Response: This is false, because Strobel only sought out the Discovery Institute, who advocate intelligent design pseudoscience and cannot divorce itself from religion, making this book not based on scientific research.
Chapter 3: Doubts About Darwinism
Strobel begins this chapter with a paper from the Discovery Institute called "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism." He goes into detail which universities they are from and the several fields they expertise in. In the end, he concludes the "emperor of evolution has no clothes." He provides links to articles from the Discovery Institute criticizing a PBS series presenting the evidence for evolution.
Response: Rather than make a case for a creator, Strobel decided to make a long non sequitor.
For this chapter, Strobel interviews Jonathan Wells, a senior member of the Discovery Institute, who stated his only goal in science is to "destroy Darwinism." Strobel begins to interview him on his book "Icons of Evolution." The "Icons" used by Wells denotes a religious reverence for a symbol.
- Image 1: The Miller Experiment
Wells says the consensus is unclear what the atmosphere was like at the time, but it is generally agreed it is not like the one used in the Miller experiment. The experiment included methane, ammonia, and water vapor, but there is no evidence for methane-ammonia in the atmosphere and hydrogen was too light that the earth's gravity could not hold it.
Response: The Miller experiment tried to prove spontaneous generation was possible, not prove how life first arose. Wells' argument is 50 years out of date. What Wells does not tell is that there have been more than 40 articles written since 1997 which cover nearly every imaginable prebiotic environment and still create certain types of organic material. As for his hydrogen argument, it is greatly misestimated.
Wells mentions that some textbooks mention organic material has formed, but says this organic material is Formaldehyde and Cyanide, and declares that these are toxic and life could not possible form from such substances.
Next, Wells develops a straw man: put a cell in a test tube, poke a hole in it, and all its contents will leak out.
Response: The reason why this is a straw man is because the earliest self-replicating systems were not modern cells. Lysing a cells in a test tube is only proof of Well's lack of understanding. Wells uses a non sequitor by labeling this star man putting humpty dumpty back together again.
- Image 2: Darwin's Tree of Life
Here Wells argues that fossil evidence has not proven Darwin's theory and the Cambrian explosion refutes Darwin's tree of life, which states that populations will diversify over time whereas the Cambrian shows a sudden appearance of life.
Response: Sudden huh? What Wells forgot to mention was that this "sudden appearance" took 10 million years. 11 of the 34 phyla have their origins in the Cambrian (which lasted 50 million years) while many of the other phyla originated much later. How about the Ordovician radiation is much more dramatic. Or how about the many discoveries of transitionals within the Cambrian or the organisms that predate the Cambrian?
There are three stages to ancient life in Earth's history before the Cambrian: the Athcean, Proteroic, and Vendian. The Archean, the age of bacteria, lasted approximately a billion years as blue-green cyanobacteria, which was best suited for a young planet with an atmosphere containing hydrogen, nitrogen, methane, carbon dioxide, and little or no oxygen. Their blue-green color was due to chlorophyll, which allows photosynthesis. The Proteroiz ranged 543 million to 2.5 billion years ago, during which bacteria flourished and the appearance of archaeans. Finally, the Vendian (543 to 600 million years ago)the first multi-cellular organisms appear. Darwin noted the apparent absence of life forms prior to the Cambrian, and he was correct. Wells lies when he said Darwin "knew the fossil record failed to support his tree. He acknowledged that major groups of animals - he calls them divisions, now they're called phyla - appear suddenly in the fossil record. That's not what his theory predicts." This is false, Darwin was well aware of the imperfection of the fossil record, and devoted an entire chapter of his book to explaining why we should not expect to see clear transitions preserved. When Wells speaks of "major groups", he subtly misleads the reader. Based on his examples, a lay reader might erroneously conclude that starfish, crabs, reptiles, insects, and the like all just suddenly appeared during the Cambrian. In fact, as already stated, most species of the Cambrian explosion were relatively similar, and none of them looked much at all like the modern groups that are thought to have descended from them. Here are several Cambrian animals that Wells claims represent "major groups" that are "fundamentally different in their body plans".
- Image 3: Heackel's Embryos
Ernst Haeckel was a nineteenth-century biologist who lived around the same time as Charles Darwin. Haeckel is best remembered for his dictum "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", meaning that a developing embryo retraces the evolutionary history of its ancestors. Haeckel is also infamous for defending this claim by using his own drawings of developing embryos, which turned out to be faked to exaggerate the stages he claimed were there. Wells claims that these known fallacious drawing are still being taught in school text books today, even Strobel recalls seeing these pictures in his biology class.
Response: Wells, however, is lying again, making statements which he must know are false. PZ Myers quotes one of the books which Wells disparages by claiming that it is "resurrecting Haeckel", Campbell's Biology:
The theory of recapitulation is an overstatement. Although vertebrates share many features of embryonic development, it is not as though a mammal first goes through a 'fish stage', then an 'amphibian stage', and so on. Ontogeny can provide clues to phylogeny, but it is important to remember that all stages of development may become modified over the course of evolution.
Myers also cites a post listing a large number of other college textbooks[1] that point out the problems with Haeckel's hypothesis. Out of 15 books reviewed, only one presents recapitulation uncritically - and that one is from 1937!
- Image 4: The Missing Link
In this section, both Strobel and Wells repeat the old creationist lie that there are no such things as transitional fossils. Strobel quotes Michael Denton,
[T]he universal experience of paleontology... [is that] while the rocks have continually yielded new and exciting and even bizarre forms of life... what they have never yielded is any of Darwin's myriads of transitional forms... The intermediates have remained as elusive as ever and their absence remains, a century later, one of the most striking characteristics of the fossil record.
Response: This is demonstrably false. Not only do transitional fossil series exist, we have a strikingly large number of them, bridging most of the major evolutionary changes in life's history. Of all of the settled lineages of animals and transitional fossils, this section focuses on Archeopteryx.
Wells points out "Besides, we see strange animals around today, like the duck-billed platypus, which nobody considers transitional but which has characteristics of different classes."
Response: This is another example of the things Wells should already know. In fact, the platypus is transitional - albeit a kind of living transition.
Wells calls Archeopteryx a bird with modern feathers.
Response: Other than its feathers and a few other subtle characteristics, Archaeopteryx is actually much more like a dinosaur than it is like a bird. The Talk.Origins Archive's All About Archaeopteryx FAQ lists its reptilian features, which far outnumber the avian characteristics. What about the many other feathered dinosaurs, such as Sinornithosaurus and Microraptor? Over twenty genera of feathered theropods are known. Wells steers well clear of these, other than to mutter an accusation that they're probably all fakes [p.59].
Chapter 4: Where Science Meets Faith
An interview with Stephen C. Meyer, a philosopher and one of the co-founders of the Discovery Institute. Strobel sets the theme of this chapter to argue how science and religion relate to each other. Strobel begins this chapter with a story of Allan Sandage, a respected cosmologist raised as a nonreligious Jew who shocked his colleagues by announcing his conversion to Christianity at the age of fifty.
Response: What Strobel omits, though, is Sandage's own reasons for why he converted. Sandage himself explains this, and makes it clear that, unlike Strobel and his creationist interviewees, he does not believe the theme put forward in this book, that science points to the existence of God:
Q. Can the existence of God be proved? I should say not with the same type of certainty that we ascribe to statements such as "the earth is in orbit about the sun at a mean distance of 93 million miles, making a complete journey in 365.25 days"... Proofs of the existence of God have always been of a different kind - a crucial point to be understood by those scientists who will only accept results that can be obtained via the scientific method....The Bible is certainly not a book of science. One does not study it to find the intensities and the wavelengths of the Balmer spectral lines of hydrogen. But neither is science concerned with the ultimate spiritual properties of the world, which are also real.
This is a common creationist fallacious tactic: take a few isolated, anecdotal accounts of scientists turning to theism, and use them as a basis to claim that most scientists are turning to theism, when the statistics tell a completely different story. Eighty percent of NAS physicists and astronomers disbelieve in God.
Meyer claims that scientists adopt naturalism is the basis of science.
Response: Methodological naturalists hold that science should exclude the miraculous from scientific explanations of certain events or phenomena, and thus scientists are too biased to see the error of their ways. Meyer paints naturalism as a form of "conspiracy" but the weight of evidence for God is "turning the tide." In Has Science Found God? Dr. Victor Stenger provides a recent survey of the members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) indicates that only 7 percent believe in a personal god.
Chapter 5: The Evidence of Cosmology: Beginning with a Bang
An interview with William Lane Craig. Inexplicably, in a book which claims to present the conclusions of scientific authorities, Strobel's interviewee on the subject of cosmology is not a practicing scientist but a professional Christian apologist. Strobel mentions at the beginning of the chapter "I wasn't interested in unsupported conjecture or armchair musings by pipe-puffing theorists. I wanted the hard facts of mathematics, the cold data of cosmology, and only the most reasonable inferences that could be drawn from them." And yet, Strobel does not interview someone in the fields of cosmology and physics, but rather theology and philosophy?
Here Craig presents his most popularized cosmological argument. He calls it the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which goes as follows:
- P1) Everything that exists has a cause
- P2) The universe had a beginning
- C) Therefore, the universe had a cause
Response: There are a wide range of reasons why Craig's Kalam argument fails. The first premise of Craig's argument is flawed. In quantum mechanics, things happen that are not caused. Such as radioactive decay or when an atom in an excited energy level it loses a photon. No cause is evident in the decay of a radioactive nucleus. Craig has said that quantum events are still "caused" just in a non-predetermined manner - what he calls "probabilistic causality." Craig is thereby admitting that the "cause" in his first premise could be an accidental one, something spontaneous and not predetermined. he therefore destroys his own case for a predetermined creation. Even if the KCA was sound, why would the cause itself not be natural?
Response: Begging the Question: The KCA is invalid and refuted because it commits the logical fallacy of begging the question. The phrase "whatever begins to exist" is not presumed to accommodate anything other than God, and that puts God into the definition of the premise of the argument that was supposed to prove his existence in the first place.
Response: Compositional Errors: The two premises that support the conclusion both commit compositional errors. This is because the premise, "Whatever begins to exist has a cause" commits the fallacy of composition because, to quote Francois Tremblay, "The first premise tries to infer a necessary causality on a whole, the universe, on the basis of observation of such attributed in the parts, the existents around us. The attribute being transposed here, being caused, is relational and therefore cannot be transposed. Thus the KCA cannot generalize from caused entities around us to the universe in this matter."
The second premise, "The universe began to exist" forces us to draw an inference between the items in the set (things within the universe) and apply it to the set as a whole (the universe itself). For that to be valid, one must fallaciously presuppose a realm beyond the universe, in which the universe can be taken as an item in a larger set itself, within which it is contained, limited, and defined.
Which gives away to the compositional error, via the fallacy of Begging the question, since such a realm beyond the universe, is entirely unproven and in question itself.
Response: Defining Essentials: The KCA fails to identify, either through its syllogism, or subsequent explanations for it's syllogism, it is defining its essentials. And the word that is essential for it to define is the word universe.
The KCA depends upon the Big Bang Theory, being the beginning of everything, for if not, then there's a part of existence that is unaccounted for, that itself, maybe eternal, or may never have begun to exist, or caused our Big Bang, as a local inflationary expansion, or caused the rest of the universe in it's overall entirety.
Even if the universe in the KCA is defined as the totality of existence, the argument is again rendered impotent and refuted, because the universe could not have been created by something outside itself, since for something to create the totality of that which exists, one can only appeal to that creating agent as being non-existent. Further, for the universe to be labeled the totality of existence, it can never be caused as a whole, since that would assert that at one point, existence, was non-existent, which is impossibly incoherent.
Response: Who Created God?: Another reason why the KCA is invalid and refuted is because it can be expressed in a competing syllogism.
- (P1) Everything that has sentience has a cause.
- (P2) The Judeo-Christian God is said to have sentience.
- (C) Therefore the Judeo-Christian God has a cause.
This syllogism can easily be ported to any god, since most, if not all gods, are said to be sentient in some form or fashion; and all referrals to reality, attest that sentience does not arise without antecedent causation.
Chapter 6: The Evidence of Physics: The Cosmos on a Razor's Edge
An interview with Robin Collins. Collins is not a member of the Discovery Institute, he is a professor of Philosophy at Messiah College. He has a Ph.D in philosophy, but he dropped out of a Ph.D in physics program at UT, Austin. His actual study is in philosophy, not physics.
Collins focuses on the "Fine-tuning argument" and anthropic principle as evidence for God.
Strobel and Collins address the multiple universe or "multiverse" theories. Strobel proceeds to confess that "I found myself agreeing with the iconoclastic Gregg Easterbrook," whom he then quotes as saying: "The multiverse idea rests on assumptions that would be laughed out of town if they came from a religious text" (p. 144).
Response: Yet in the introduction to this book, Strobel said that he would "stand in the shoes of the skeptic" and follow the evidence wherever it leads (p. 28). Given the overt bias evident in such ridicule, however, it is hardly surprising that Strobel comes to the conclusions that he does.
Chapter 7: The Evidence of Astronomy: The Privileged Planet
An interview with Guillermo Gonzales and Jay Wesley Richards, authors of The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery in which they argue for the "rare earth hypothesis." Their position is the earth is so unique suited for life.
Response: Jay Richards is a Discovery Institute Fellow and fellow of Action Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. Guillermo Gonzales is also a fellow of the Discovery Institute. He is assistant professor of astronomy at Iowa State University. According to Mr. Gonzales faculty page at Iowa State University his work includes "spectroscopic abundance analysis of post-AGB supergiants and RV Tau variables." In other words, he studies the formation of stars.
Both Gonzales and Richards argument rests on the anthropic principle.
Response: However, the anthropic principle is a tautology, weakened by the fact of quantum mechanics, the M-theory and the multiverse.
Chapter 8: The Evidence of Biochemistry: The Complexity of Molecular Machines
An interview with Michael Behe, a senior member of the Discovery Institute and author of Darwin's Black Box. He is a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, but disowned by his own department with an unprecedented disclaimer.
Response: What Strobel does not share is that Michael Behe actually accepts evolution and common ancestry as true.
Behe is known for constructing the argument irreducible complexity.
Response: Every proposed mechanism said to be irreducible complex has been shown to be reducible and can evolve via natural selection.
Strobel quotes Behe, "Now, does this microscopic transportation system [Behe is speaking about the endoplasmic reticulum —Ebonmuse] sound like something that self-assembled by gradual modifications over the years? I don't see how it could have been. To me, it has all the earmarks of being designed."
Response: I don't see how it could have been: this is the argument of intelligent-design advocates in a nutshell. In the Kitzmiller-Dover court case, Behe has admitted in court that his book, Darwin's Black Box, is not peer-reviewed, intelligent design is "fringe" science, and Behe's own definition of a scientific theory would allow astrology to be taught as a scientific theory.
Furthermore, Behe testified that no "explanations" of how the complex organism could evolve. In science, an explanation is defined as a detailed, testable answer, and vice versa. However, Behe was given a mass multiple peer-reviewed scientific literature that did show and explain the complexity of the organisms in question. Behe admitted he had not read any of the material and only Googled the words "random mutation", but that did not make a difference. Without reading it, Behe remarked that they seem good, but nevertheless he concluded that they were not good enough (dismissing them out of hand without even reading any of them because they did not count just because Behe said so). Behe already had presupposition that they were all wrong, and proclaimed with certainty they were all wrong without even knowing what what in them, so Behe conjured up some excuse otherwise he would have to admit he was wrong (meaning he willfully choose to remain dishonest). So Behe extended his demands by wanting a "detailed rigorous" explanation. After more evidence was presented, he only further extended it to "detailed rigorous testable step-by-step." After being presented with exactly what he demanded, Behe weaseled his way out by further extending his demands and setting an impossible criteria to meet ("detailed rigorous testable step-by-step mutation by mutation analysis, including the sizes of now-extinct population of the moment those mutations occurred, the selective value or detrimental effects of each mutation, and many other such answer"). The only reason why Behe did this was to weasel out of admitting he was simply wrong.
When asked if irreducible complexity is falsifiable, Behe said it is otherwise all these "scientists" would not go through the trouble of trying to falsify it.
Response: The scientists are not necessarily trying to falsify irreducible complexity or intelligent design (since neither have anything positive explanations to provide), the scientists are showing why intelligent design is not scientific and revealing that intelligent design has no explanatory power whatsoever.
Chapter 9: The Evidence of Biological Information: The Challenge of DNA and the Origin of Life
An interview with Stephen C. Meyer, a fellow of the Discovery Institute. Strobel describes Meyer, who is not a biologist and has never published a single piece of research on this topic, as "one of the country's leading experts on origin-of-life issues." Strobel continues to praise Meyer in an obnoxious way by sharing an experience Strobel had witnessing Meyer in a debate and how fearless Meyer was (perhaps due to his boxing training).
Response: Curiously there is no reference or footnote to this debate, anywhere. Strobel footnotes just about everything else, but not this debate that demonstrates Meyer's intellectual powers at confronting criticism?
More curiously is why interview Meyer? Strobel seems keen to one-sidely interview everyone involved in the intelligent design movement. Why not interview Michael Denton, who was a strong anti-evolutionist until his latest work, Nature's Destiny, took a complete reverse turn regarding evolution. What changed Denton's mind? Would a journalist like Strobel be interested?
Moving onto Meyer, on page 243 Meyer made such an erroneous claim,
Well, I say it's time to redefine science. We should not be looking for only the best naturalistic explanation, but the best explanation, period. And intelligent design is the explanation that's most in conformity with how the world works.
Response: It should be repeated and made very clear: Strobel and his fellow-travelers aren't doing science. They're doing something else, and they want to "redefine" science so that the new definition can encompass whatever it is they are doing. Meyer is not clear or explains what he wants the new definition to be. Not a single Intelligent Design proponent has ever provided an answer.
When addressing abiogenesis and the prebiotic soup, Strobel asks where is the evidence for it? Meyer responds with, "The answer is there isn't any evidence... If this prebiotic soup had really existed... it would have been rich in amino acids. Therefore, there would have been a lot of nitrogen, because amino acids are nitrogenous. So when we examine the earliest sediments of the Earth, we should find large deposits of nitrogen-rich minerals... Those deposits have never been located."
Response: There is no footnote for this. Earth today contains billions of tons of organic molecules, we have even discovered this same organic material in space on meteorites and comets. Meyer also fails to qualify his mention of "earliest sediments." If he is referring to the sediments of rock around the age of the origin of life, the reason why is that erosion has destroyed it.
Meyers main source comes from Jim Brooks in Origins of Life, 1985. Strobel labels this an "astounding conclusion", but what he should be more astounded by is how far Meyer had to stretch to find a source for this claim. Further research for Jim Brooks' Origins of Life reveals it is a long out of print according to several online booksellers. But more comical is that Strobel cites the publisher of this book as "Lion" - whose full name is Lion Hudson, which is, in fact, a Christian publishing house. A twenty-year-old, out-of-print book by a Christian publisher - that's the most reliable source that could be found to back up these assertions!
Chapter 10: The Evidence of Consciousness: The Enigma of the Mind
An interview with J.P. Moreland, a Christian philosopher and theologian.
Response: Like many of Strobel's other interview subjects, Moreland is not a scientist and has no scientific credentials to speak of - this despite Strobel's initial boast that he'll be interviewing "authorities" [p.28] in the relevant fields. Moreland does have a doctorate in philosophy and an undergraduate chemistry degree, but he is not an expert on brain physiology or chemistry.
Response: Strobel earlier stated on page 95, "I wasn't interested in unsupported conjecture or armchair musings by pipe-puffing theorists. I wanted the hard facts of mathematics, the cold data of cosmology, and only the most reasonable inferences that could be drawn from them." However, this chapter is full of exactly that which Strobel was hoping to avoid.
The discussion between Strobel and Moreland addresses consciousness. Moreland argues that consciousness could not have originated by natural processes.
Response: Wrong, evolution can and does explain the origin of consciousness.
Moreland insists that consciousness is separate from the brain. His best proof is a report from neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield. Penfield electrically stimulated the brains of epilepsy patients and found he could cause them to move their arms or legs, turn their heads or eyes, talk, or swallow. Invariably, the patient would respond, "I didn't do that. You did." According to Penfield, "the patient thinks of himself as having an existence separate from his body."
Response: However, this is very weak evidence. The fact that people tend to think of themselves as having an existence separate from the body has little to do with whether persons actually are separable from their bodies.
Keith Augustine argues for the dependence of consciousness on the brain in his book, The Case Against Immortality.
Chapter 11: The Cumulative Case for a Creator
Addressing the historicity of Jesus and the historical stance that Jesus did not exist, Strobel quotes Gregory Boyd as some who, "offered a devastating critique of the Jesus Seminar, a group that questions whether Jesus aid or did most of what's attributed to him. He identified the Seminar as 'an extremely small number of radical-fringe scholars who are on the far, far left wing of New Testament thinking."
Response: So by Strobel's logic, if someone belongs to a fringe group then their claims can never be reliable. And yet, practicably every person interviewed in this book belongs to a fringe group. Intelligent Design has been proven and labeled fringe science since the Kitzmiller-Dover trial. The theory of evolution has the support of the overwhelming majority of the scientific community: state, national, and international scientific societies and academies; the biology faculties of dozens of accredited colleges and universities.
Strobel then briefly goes over the evidence addressed throughout this book.
- Evidence of Cosmology - Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument
- Evidence of Physics - the fine-tuned argument that turned atheist Patrick Glynn into a believer.
- Evidence of Astronomy - Earth's rare position to support life
- Evidence of Biochemistry - irreducible complexity
- Evidence of Biological Information - DNA and information that can only come from an intelligent source.
All of these, when compared to Scripture, seem to show a link as if the "creator" authored the Bible.
Response: The verses he uses are very vague, such as God creating all the things "visible and invisible."
