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...]
The importance of experiencing pain
Pain is...very unpleasant. Let me apologize in advance if I ramble at some point, but I'm still doped up on painkillers at the moment. Quite frankly, pain sucks. But at the same time, it is very important, even crucial for our survival. Tonight, I found myself even thanking God for my recent pain. If I hadn't felt some serious pain yesterday, I'd probably be dead, or well into the process of dying by now. I was released from the hospital earlier this morning. I was admitted so the doctors could begin treatment for several massive kidney stones (five of them in total) discovered by CT scan. I had gone to the emergency room after experiencing severe pain during a sleepless, most uncomfortable night. Instead of celebrating Independence Day with a whole host of extended family visiting my house, I spent the day consulting a series of doctors before having minor surgery to implant two stents in my bladder. The biggest kidney stone is almost a half-inch big, much too large to pass through my ureter. This marble-sized stone blocked the entrance and gave me an infection as my body began to retain too much urine, which caused the severe pain. I arrived at the emergency room around 5:30 am, and within an hour I had been admitted as a patient. By three p.m. that same day (and a national holiday, no less) I was in surgery. Obviously, the doctors were taking my condition quite seriously. Later that night it occurred to me that only 100 years ago, this merely painful condition would have almost certainly killed me. Without ever feeling any pain, several … [Read more...]
Religulous
I finally broke down and watched Bill Maher's "documentary" titled Religulous, only sixteen years after it was first released. The movie came out a couple of years after Richard Dawkins published The God Delusion, around the same time I had begun research for what ultimately became my first published book, Divine Evolution. When the movie was in theaters, I had neither the time nor the interest in watching it because I had a very good idea of what it was about. The title of the movie appears to be a combination of the words "religious" and "ridiculous", probably to create the impression that belief in God is ridiculous. However, as my book The God Conclusion demonstrates, belief in God is far more logical and better supported by scientific evidence than atheism. The trickiest part of promoting my book has been getting atheists like Bill Maher to read it. In fact, I've never had any desire to watch Religulous because I was fairly sure there weren't going to be any surprises and I'd just been reading The God Delusion. I expected Maher to be smug and condescending as he mocked and ridiculed religious belief much like Dawkins had done in his book, and there weren't any surprises in that regard. I expected him to set up straw men to attack and take a lot of cheap shots at religion and faith, and that's exactly what he did. So, in that respect, the movie did not disappoint. The inspiration for changing my mind and giving the film a try was Maher's somewhat conciliatory recent public statements regarding conservatives and Trump supporters, where he said we can vote … [Read more...]
Probability and odds
Probably (pun intended) the most difficult part of my argument for God is to properly convey the unlikelihood of our universe forming because of an unplanned and undirected sequence of events. The odds against the existence of our universe are literally astronomical. Even so, I may have finally stumbled upon a way to present the improbability in language anyone can understand, or layman's terms, using the NCAA basketball tournament popularly known as "March Madness." Recently, ESPN published a rather remarkable story about an otherwise unremarkable neuropsychologist named Gregg Nigl. What was Mr. Nigl's specific claim to fame? Had he made some innovative medical discovery that was some groundbreaking innovation in the world of sports? No. No skill was involved in his otherwise noteworthy "accomplishment." Did he break some unique sports record like hitting the most bullseyes in a game of darts, or somehow make his mark in the Guinness Book of World Records? Nope, that wasn't it, either. What did Gregg Nigl do in 2019 that was so remarkable? He was the first person known to have gone a perfect 48-0 in predictions through two rounds of the NCAA tournament. The odds against picking a perfect NCAA tournament bracket have been estimated as between a somewhat modest 1 in 120 billion for an experienced gambler to correctly guess all the tournament winners to treating the outcome of every game as a coin flip. Those "coin flip" odds have been estimated to be a stunning 1 in 9.2 quintillion. But in 2019 for the first time in history, Nigl's picks were perfect … [Read more...]
