Thirty five years ago in July, our son was born. We named him Matthew, which means "gift from God." In 1990, there were four babies born in our church congregation in short order. All of them were boys, and they were named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The parents of these children, including my wife and me, had no idea the other parents were having boys or what they planned to name them. Even more amazing, the boys were born in "Gospel" order, which required Luke to be born prematurely. What are the odds that four babies would be born in the same congregation, and that they would be named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and born in order, with no girls or boys with other names born in between? The math is quite complicated. Of course, if you knew the child would be male and had to be named either Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, then the math can be relatively easy and simple enough. It's four factorial, or twenty-four different possible combinations, which equates to roughly a four percent probability that given the option of only four names to choose from, the likelihood that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John would be chosen in that exact order versus let's say Mark, Matthew, John, and Luke, for example. But how do we calculate the odds that no other children named Alvin or Sally or Mary (or Mohammed) would be born in the congregation during that same time? I suppose it could be calculated, in theory--we'd have to find out how many families were in the congregation at that time, and of that number, calculate how many of them were of "child-bearing" age. Difficult, … [Read more...]
Why you should NEVER buy an insurance policy from Progressive
I'll admit that I should have known better. Several years ago my son purchased a comprehensive auto policy from Progressive Insurance. It didn't end well for him. You know the company -- they saturate the air waves with their advertisements featuring Flo the lead insurance agent, Jamie the comic relief guy, and a regular cast of characters working hard to convince you to buy an insurance policy from them. Their ads emphasize how much money you can save with gimmicks such as the "Name Your Price" tool, where you tell them how much you can afford to pay for insurance coverage. What the ads fail to tell the buyer is that Progressive screws their policy holders when it comes time to pay a claim. Like I said, my son bought a comprehensive policy for his car. The word comprehensive has a special meaning: includes all or everything. You can buy liability insurance that only pays for the other driver's car in the event of an accident and doesn't pay for damages to your own car, or you can buy collision insurance, that pays for both cars in an accident. Comprehensive insurance is supposed to be the "kitchen sink" of insurance policies and include uninsured motorist as well as liability and collision. However, when another driver forced my son off the road and it totaled his car, Progressive refused to pay. Why? According to the claims adjuster, comprehensive coverage doesn't include collision insurance. Which is insane. My son lost ten thousand dollars he couldn't afford to lose. It was a terrible experience and I felt bad for my son. And in retrospect, I had … [Read more...]
Fred Hoyle and the probability of God
[I wrote this for publication at American Thinker but it was rejected so I published it myself.] The probability that a supernatural God exists is extremely high. We can be confident because this conclusion is based on the best scientific evidence currently available. Sir Fred Hoyle Our universe hasn’t always existed. We can believe this is true because scientists have observed redshift (the phenomena where objects in the universe are moving apart at an accelerating speed) and discovered cosmic microwave background radiation, establishing the facts that our universe is expanding from an origin where no planets, galaxies, or even atoms existed. This singularity is popularly known as The Big Bang Theory. Physicist Fred Hoyle coined that phrase on March 28, 1949, to mock the concept of a universe with an origin while it was still only a hypothesis. He believed in an eternal or “steady state” universe because Hoyle was a brilliant scientist but also an atheist, and he recognized the problems caused by a universe that hadn’t always existed. A universe that had been literally created from nothing. Hoyle might have been our most brilliant scientist of the previous century. He formulated the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and co-authored the famous B2FH paper, which asserted that complex chemical elements were produced by nuclear fusion reactions that took place inside of stars. He studied the carbon-12 atom and predicted if the anthropic principle (a concept stating the universe’s observable properties must be such that they allow for the existence of … [Read more...]
A few current thoughts on the Shroud of Turin
In my opinion, if nothing else, the Shroud of Turin is compelling evidence that shows God has a terrific sense of humor. There are precious few religious relics and artifacts that can cause such a furious and ferocious debate. If you really want to argue about whether it could be real, I'll be your Huckleberry. For years, I've studied every piece of alleged evidence involving the shroud. As luck would have it, my cohort-in-crime Wilfred recently published an image of the shroud with commentary, and the post went viral: as of this writing, his post has received more than 3.2 million views, over 76 thousand reactions from visitors, 5,000 comments, and shared 5,150 times. Not too shabby for an hour or so of easy work. For the record, we will probably never know exactly what the shroud is and how it was created, but we do know with some degree of certainty what it is not: it is not a medieval forgery. The image on the shroud was created by some unknown means, and was not created by paints or dyes. A team comprised of some of the best scientists in the world spent two weeks in the early 1980s closely scrutinizing the cloth and performing a series of scientific experiments to see if they could figure out what the material was and how it was created, which became known as the Shroud of Turin Research (STURP) Project. In 1988, a rather famous carbon dating test result dated the shroud between 1260 and 1390 A.D. which of course would make it a medieval forgery with a much too recent date of origin to be considered a candidate for the burial cloth of Jesus Christ. … [Read more...]
The Unplanned Universe is Mathematically Impossible
We know the universe had an origin or a beginning. Science calls this singularity the "Big Bang" theory, a term originally coined by a very famous scientist (and atheist) named Fred Hoyle. Sir Fred Hoyle Hoyle was mocking the idea that our universe could have had an origin because at that time it was believed our universe was too complex to have had a beginning. The eternal or "steady state" universe was preferred by scientists and intellectuals because the universe with an origin required too much to explain. Hoyle had lots of company with him in agreement in their belief that the universe was eternal, including the atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell. Even very smart people are humans, and all humans make mistakes, both honestly and dishonestly. However, after seeing the evidence for the Big Bang, Hoyle drastically changed his tune and said this: "Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom. Otherwise, the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly miniscule. A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question." Hoyle, Fred, "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections. "Engineering and Science", November 1981. pgs. 8–12. I felt this quote by Dr. Hoyle was so important that I included it in my book The God … [Read more...]
