A parting message to Aron Ra

Dear Aron,

I would say that I enjoyed the experience of our one-on-one conversation, but that would be a rather easily disproved lie given there is a video available. What has pleasantly surprised me is the number of people who would normally agree with you yet reached out to say they did not approve of how you interacted with me. But I’m not writing to complain about your boorish behavior. It’s over and done.

Frankly, I knew who you were before the show and what to expect – it was never going to be a polite conversation or a meeting of minds. As I mentioned, I’d watched a few of your videos. It was going to be a lecture about how I’m wrong about absolutely everything because I am a Christian. You didn’t even seem to notice that I mentioned religion and faith only briefly, and when talking about myself. When we were talking about evidence, I only spoke about scientific evidence, logic, and probabilities.

I did expect to be able to complete the occasional thought, however. Better late than never, I suppose. In this letter I’m going to say everything I would have said during the podcast given the opportunity to speak, and you can no longer interrupt me. I can finish all of my sentences. It will be a unique experience for you, I’m sure, to have to read instead of talking over people, and cathartic for me.

You are an extremely intelligent person, and very gifted. I also knew that before the show. What I did not realize was that you are an unwise person, and you simply do not realize or refuse to acknowledge all that you do NOT know to be true as indisputable fact. You may even think you know, but you don’t.

You can believe everything you tried to tell me about evolutionary biology and you can adamantly insist that it is an absolute fact if you want, but I’m not buying it. I will confess that I am at a severe disadvantage because I have never formally studied biology or evolution except to read about it in books, but what I lack in knowledge I compensate for with logic. Biology tends to bore me. I prefer books about physics, but I have read numerous books about biology and chemistry because I want to understand. I’m seeking answers to existential questions, and that is not a trivial pursuit.

Creation and evolution aren’t even comparable belief systems because evolution is a theory about changes in living organisms that already exist, and creation is a theory about how things come to exist. For you and I to exist, the universe must exist. Life must exist.

Life cannot evolve until it exists. Before evolution can ever become a theory that human beings can contemplate, creation either by divine intervention or a series of insanely serendipitous accidents has already occurred. You simply can’t say the universe must have always existed because the alternative is incredibly inconvenient for you. Prior to the Big Bang, not a star, not a galaxy, not an atom, nor even space existed. The concept is very difficult to grasp, I agree. But that is what the experts teach.

I’ve said this a million times before and I’ll keep saying it until it finally resonates with others that this is indisputable logic. The universe was either planned or unplanned. There is no logical third option. A planned accident is an oxymoron. You tried to argue that the universe came to exist because of a deterministic plan. You also claimed that life had no choice except to come into existence by a series of chemical reactions. Yet if you carefully read those papers you like to cite to “prove” your beliefs are actually verifiable science, you’ll see a lot of conditional words like “could” used, and could represents a probability, not a certainty. More accurately, words like possibility might be used instead of probability.

Those are your personal beliefs. Your personal beliefs are not objective facts. They are not even particularly brilliant beliefs because they largely contradict the established facts that I have gleaned from all the books on existential science I’ve read. The big bang simply can’t describe the beginning of this universe if this universe has always existed. That is a logical contradiction.

The big bang describes the origin of THIS universe, not the speculative universe that might have existed prior to this one. I know that many scientists have begun to have conversations about what existed prior to our universe, but they do not know with anything resembling certainty. All they know is if our universe had a beginning, a whole new set of problems need to be solved. About the only thing everybody does agree upon is that THIS fine-tuned universe had an origin, and we popularly call it the big bang. The only reason we have to assume the origin of life is even theoretically possible is the simple fact of our existence, which is circular reasoning. 

What you’ve done amounts to a desperate attempt to explain the plan for our universe without invoking a Planner. You say the universe has always existed (which is steady-state theory, proved wrong by Edwin Hubble about a hundred years ago) and that life was deterministic. But you also admit that you are not an expert on the origin of life or the origin of the universe, and that means you don’t really know anything except what others have told you, which you regurgitated without really thinking about the consequences of what you’re saying. Of that limited amount of information you have consumed, you’ve only accepted what neatly fits within your established confirmation bias.

You wanted to create the illusion of being far more intelligent than I am, which I won’t bother to argue. I will be the first person to admit I’m not the smartest person in the world. I don’t necessarily think I’m even the smartest person who lives in my house, because my wife is very intelligent. But I do know one thing, and that is the scope of what I don’t know. Belief and knowledge are not synonyms.

And you are not smarter than Fred Hoyle. You’re deluding yourself when you refer to that brilliant scientist as a moron. I believe Richard Dawkins is wrong about virtually everything he’s ever written or said, but I simply do not have the temerity to call the man an idiot. That would require some real chutzpah, because I’ve read several of his books and know he is a very talented writer.

Because you didn’t like where our conversation about creation was going, you insisted that the universe has always existed, that life could have evolved or simply appeared after a series of chemical reactions, in short making the argument that this universe did not really have an origin and that life had no choice except to form naturally. Those thoughts might be better described as wishful assumptions rather than mere beliefs. You threatened to call Lawrence Krauss to explain why the title of his book A Universe from Nothing did not mean what it said, but I would have preferred you call Sean Carroll, so I could have spoken to him about the probabilities of the big bang and cosmic inflation that he discussed with Roger Penrose and Laura Mersini-Houghton. It certainly didn’t sound like Dr. Carroll was talking about an eternal universe or a deterministic system to me. Probabilities of cosmic inflation were estimated as being as low as 1 in 10 in 10 to the 124^thpower, which represents an ridiculously improbable number. He didn’t stop the interview and say the numbers were wrong; he agreed with them. If our universe had no choice except to exist, the probability would be 100 percent, not virtually zero.

In short, you simply cannot afford to be wrong, so you talk over people and simply don’t allow them to speak. But you can’t interrupt me when I’m writing. I can complete every sentence, and even proof-read what I’ve written to look for mistakes. I’ve said most of what I wanted to say in this short letter, which was only intended to communicate to you that you are not God. You’re not a god, either. You lack the knowledge of God, and that does not serve you well. You speak as if you have unquestioned authority and knowledge of everything, but it is largely bluster and bravado, not dazzling intellect. Even after I’d told you that I’d made an entire career out of logic when I was developing computer software, you insisted that my thoughts were illogical.

Now if I typed in the string of numbers 00000011, you might think I just typed the number eleven in a funky way. But if I told you that is ASCII code, you could look it up in a table and learn that is actually the computer’s representation of the number three. Not the symbol representing “3” but the actual number three — there is a different value for the symbol, of course, because computers are stupid machines and only understand what you tell them. Question: if I hadn’t told you that the sequence 00000011 actually represented the ASCII number three, would the sequence still exist? Of course it would. But if ASCII itself did not exist and the intelligence to process ASCII code did not exist, would that sequence of zeros and ones still represent ASCII number three? No, it would not.

Intelligence is required to process raw data and turn it into information. This is just a very simple example. DNA is information processing on steroids. The software inside of the box might be sophisticated enough to fool you into thinking you are talking to another human being instead of a computer, but that software was a human invention, based on an intelligent design. Therefore, we can conclude safely and indisputably that intelligent design exists.

The only question remaining is this: can unintelligent design also exist? Isn’t that also an oxymoron? The illusion of design is not design. Poor design is design that needs improvement, at least in theory. For example, the human eye is the evolutionary biologist’s bad example of what is frequently called a poor design because of what “experts” have perceived to be mistakes. These experts have not produced the superior artificial eye and replaced the existing human eye though, leading me to conclude the original eye might not be working so poorly after all.

Can the design of an intelligent object be based upon an unintelligent design? I happen to be thinking about echo-location navigation at the moment. It is a pattern repeated in whales, dolphins, and bats to have the ability to locate objects using sound. Humans borrowed the pattern and turned it into sonar, a significant intellectual achievement allowing humans to also navigate using sound, but using an ability stolen from living creatures that are allegedly the product of unintelligent design.  

Frankly, you don’t know even half of what you think you know. Perhaps deep down you don’t even really believe you know as much as you pretend. You’re basically running a confidence game. If you show any sign of doubt or weakness, the marks might stop shelling over their hard earned money. You don’t have all the answers. You don’t even properly understand all the questions, for that matter. You were determined to “prove” me wrong, but all you did was prove that you can talk over another person without bothering to listen to what they have to say. As a result, I do not wish to have any further communications with Aron Ra.

However, if Aron Nelson ever shows interest in having a more balanced and civil conversation about existential topics, I’d give serious consideration to that possibility. We might actually have a dialogue where we explored our differences of opinion in a sincere effort to communicate ideas, even if we disagree. Have a dialogue instead of a diatribe, just for once. That might actually be an enjoyable experience, because you really are smart and it might be fun to explore your thoughts in greater detail if they weren’t all so dark, arrogant, and close-minded. Of course, I won’t be holding my breath. I’m neither stupid nor gullible. You have invested a lifetime of work into your current persona. Change (or evolution, if you will — pun intended) from the man you are today into someone with whom I’d like to have a polite conversation would require a dramatic change in your personality. But miracles do happen. Don’t take my word for it. Just ask Annabel Beam if you doubt me.

I am convinced there is nothing I could ever say that might lead you to change your mind. God can do anything, though. He created the universe and created life. He raised Jesus from the dead. He can break through that heart of stone in you, no problem. Probably won’t until you first realize you are not a god, though. There is no room in your head for more than one god, and that god should be God the creator of our universe, not you.  Normally, when I end a message like this to a nonbeliever, I like to say “Live long and prosper” instead of God bless you, because I do not wish to offend, and I like leaving people with a positive thought. I can’t wish you a long life and prosperity, though, not while your life’s work is in active opposition to God. I do hope you live for a very long time, so you have ample opportunity to change your mind and repent of your sins. 

Sin is just another word for wrongdoing. I’m just as much of a sinner as you are. I am truly sorry for my sins though, but you seem to wear yours as some badge of honor. You don’t need to apologize to me. All you need to do is tell God you’re sorry and all is forgiven. First you must learn to humble yourself, though. Goodbye, at least for now. I sincerely hope I’ll hear from Aron Nelson one day before I die.