In this article, James David asked the atheists to “come in”. After presenting the “Argument from design” (and the 'Uncaused cause' augment, which is just Design reworded) for us, James somehow makes the leap to the Christian God of the Bible. He also attempts to show that holding certain Christian views about science is intellectual, and that this is backed up by statistics which show that many scientists, 40%, believe in a personal God. Those stats are wrong. It was probably an unintentional error by James - scroll to the very end of this article to see the real facts.

To many Christians that bother to look for reasons to back up their faith, the Design argument seems the most powerful. Alas, it is among the most weak, even when deployed properly, and actually works to disprove monotheism. James deployed it using incorrect statements about science and such – I'll get to that in a moment.

First though I'd like to address the irony of his leap. Let's assume that whatever started everything deserved the label, “God”. Where then is the connection to Jesus or the Bible? James is very nearly an atheist. He doesn't believe in Zeus or Thor or Ganesh or Tiamat or Allah. He rejects most of the gods that humans have ever believed in with everything they were worth, made great art for, sacrificed for, killed for and died for, save one. An atheist merely goes one step further.

James often used the term “science”, implying that he's referring to science as a whole, as an institution. Science as an institution accepts the Big Bang. It's an extremely well supported theory, with no current opposing scientific theory. It continues to accumulate evidence and has stood up to predictions. Each time we look closer and further back with various spacecraft that listen to the cosmic background radiation, for example, we validate previously made predictions. The Big Bang is one of the predominant theories of the 20th century, if not the single most important discovery of that century. A quick note about theories: science is a collection of theories, and they aren't really proved. If they show correct often enough, we begin to accept them as principles – we treat them as laws, in other words. Evolution is also treated as a scientific principle for the same reasons.

Here are some occasions where he uses the term science and why they are incorrect:

Anyway, scientific observation uniformly demonstrates that explosions always results in chaos, not the type of order we see in our world and our solar system.

Explosions do imply chaos in the short term, but he used this in relation to the Big Bang. If we explode a whale in the ocean, the various parts of that whale will reform into highly ordered structures known as life by various biological and chemical processes. When stars explode, they send their contents into space where they meet up with other such matter and coalesce into the next generation of stars. The Hubble has taken some great photos of stars in various stages of development, from death to birth and birth to death.

But if the universe had a cause called 'God, who made God? Science shows this to be an unnecessary question. The universe is made up of space, matter and time - therefore, since time had a beginning, the cause of the beginning of time must itself be timeless. An eternally existent timeless being does not need a cause.

Science shows no such thing. In fact, this is what invalidates the Argument From Design. If the universe is so complex that it must have a creator (or first cause), then surely God must be just as complex or likely more complex. We must indeed ask, “What created God?”. This leads to an infinite regression of Gods, which violates monotheism and disproves all modern monotheistic religions if we accept Design as true.

Note the bold-faced bit. A BEING? Where did we establish a being? This is a circular reasoning. One must first accept that a timeless being exists for this statement to make sense. Specifically, assuming for a moment that this statement is correct, “The universe is made up of space, matter and time - therefore, since time had a beginning, the cause of the beginning of time must itself be timeless.”, from where did a “being” come into the equation? And, if we must presuppose that a timeless being already exists, why go through the trouble of using pseudo-science to establish that "existing fact"?

What about a cause for the universe that did not involve a conscious being? Beavers make dams and don't have the mental capacity to understand what it is that they are actually doing as far as local flooding and such. What if the universe was made in a similar process, by a non-sentient entity, a cosmological space animal? Surely if we can allow some funky region to house the mind of a sentient being, we can allow a region to hold the mind of a non-sentient being.

Or what if it was made by a totally “natural” process, like when a river neatly sorts random silt and mud into rows of organized rock, fine at the water's edge and course at the outside with a clear order? Or what about the infinity of other possibilities we could imagine? Just because James points out an unknown, doesn't mean we can fill that unknown with gods. Such has been done many times in the past, be it lightning or the Sun. Often have we stuffed gods in as an explanation when we had no other, and often have we later showed these to be wrong.

Now, let me briefly go over the four possible origins for the universe stated in that article:

1. It came from nothing accidentally.

This theory requires us to believe that all the matter, energy and laws of the universe came from nothing by chance. But is this scientific, since it is an undeniable fact that from absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing comes?

Nothing may be followed by something, but it cannot cause something, otherwise things would pop in and out of existence willy nilly (which they do not!).

Even if a 'big bang' did happen, that only begs the question, "Where did the matter and energy for the big bang come from?"

The bold-face section is incorrect, but I waited until now to address it rather than include it above where I pointed out his incorrect use of the term “science” and what "science" supports. Within our universe, we know of nothing that comes from nothing, this is true. However, our universe may not be the only universe. There are many good reasons to think that this is the case, the quantum mechanics "many worlds" interpretation for example. Our universe may not be the largest structure in the greater cosmos or multi-verse and each universe may be defined by its own laws. In this higher realm, the laws of physics might be very different. This is not pie in the sky, it's taken quite seriously. But do we know for sure? No, we do not. But we clearly cannot say that “nothing comes from nothing” with the implied "anywhere and everywhere".

Who would disagree that causality seems correct? But there is no formal scientific theory describing a ubiquitous causality, just as there was no scientific theory describing ether. It seemed that ether just must be so, that space just couldn't be empty. Ether had no formal, prediction-making, evidence-backed theory and was tossed out as an idea once we learned better. Perhaps causality is the same, given that our minds evolved to understand this 3D world with an up, and a down, with matter that's not too hot or cold, and with objects moving at a rather slow speed. We don't normally deal with absolute zero, Sun-temps or near-light speed objects or many of the true oddness of the universe here on hum-drum Earth. Why would the way we intuit the world be a cosmological norm? We've already discovered that time itself is not a constant, that it changes with speed and gravity - nothing is more unintuitive than that, IMO. However, it doesn't matter. Even if we take causality as an absolute, cross-universal law, the arguments that James provides which relates this to the existence of God doesn't hold water, as I'll explain elsewhere.

Serious experiments are already under way to test some of the predictions of the string theory hypothesis. If these bear out, we may have something which explains something of a “greater region”, where universes are stuck to “branes” in a higher dimensional space and collide to form Big Bangs.

In any case, the laws of our universe apply to our universe – we do know that much. They may or may not apply to that which is “outside”, for lack of a better term, if such a "place" exists. Inserting a thinking, feeling, prayer-hearing being into this “outside” region, however, and giving it very specific attributes, has no bearing in science and is at the very least, no better than assuming that such a realm has different laws. Again, not knowing something doesn't imply gods by default unless we already believe in gods, in which case we're using circular logic.

2. It has always been here.

Consider the universally accepted scientific law called the 2nd law of thermodynamics. It asserts that the amount of usable energy in an isolated system, such as our universe, is decreasing. Since the universe is running down it cannot be eternal.

You feel the impact of this law daily. Your watch, car, house and body are all running down. Think about it - if your watch had always been here, would it still be ticking? The fact is, if the universe was eternal, this law would have ensured it would have reached a state of complete 'run down' long ago, which it has not. So much for theory number two.

I can't help escape the irony here, and I don't mean to belittle James or sound arrogant, but, evolution and the Big Bang are as universally accepted as the 2nd law of thermodynamics by science. One surely wonders, “how can science be so stupid as to accept both the second law AND the Big Bang?” The universe is indeed “running down”, and there will come a time where entropy/chaos/disorder will rule. But thermodynamics most certainly does NOT say that no additional order can arise after the initial explosion; we aren't out of that original source of energy! One can easily make a closed-system experiment and include a LONG lasting battery, for example. No addition energy input from outside of the system, yet, the system can still avoid chaos as long as our battery keeps pumping energy. Not that James actually claimed this specific variant of the Creationist view - I just mention it here for completeness.

The “it has always been there” idea also takes on different meanings if we're talking about the multi-verse or greater cosmos, if any such concepts turn out to be valid. But in any case, the Big Bang tells us only that we started as a singularity, a point of infinite density. How long, if “long” has any meaning in this context, is a different matter. We could have been happily sitting at this stage for trillions of eons – who knows? Science is attempting to tackle these questions as I've said, and how fortunate we are that they don't all just throw their arms up in the air and say, “Oh well, we've gone far enough. God just had to make this singularity, let's all go home and shut off the particle accelerators...”

3. It's not really here, it's an illusion.

A student once asked Dr. Nathan of Toronto: "How do I know I exist?" to which he replied, "Who shall I say is asking?" The fact is, you cannot deny your existence without at the same time affirming it.

I can say the words "I do not exist"; however, by saying them I implicitly affirm that I do exist. That's why the affirmation "I do not exist" is not affirmable. So much for theory number three.

This is a philosophical anything-goes, la-la land argument, and I won't address it. The clear direction of his article was God in the context of science – such ponderings clearly are not.

4. It came from nothing supernaturally.

Since investigations, by their nature, use a process of elimination and 'inference to the best explanation' we are left with theory number four - creation by a supernatural being. Since it is the only option and we have eliminated all the others, it must be a fact (creation by 'aliens from outer space' is a theory that simply pushes the question of origins further back without actually answering it).

This has already been addressed - it's just reworded - however, I'll go with it. If by “supernaturally” he means that which science doesn't know, then this “explanation” is correct as we don't yet know; it's correct merely by definition, but it does nothing to further the Design argument. We also don't know what electrons are - we don't know how to break them down further. We could then, in this context, call the innards of electrons “supernatural”, but we cannot then assume that they contain pixies. While we cannot disprove that they contain Smurfs, this doesn't prove that they must contain Smurfs. The “inside” of an electron and the time "before” the Big Bang are one in the same – gaps in knowledge. James focuses on the Big Bang simply because to him, it presents issues with his religious views.

In other words, and, once again, nothing points to a “being” unless we are merely looking to validate preconceived notions which is of course circular reasoning and unacceptable in science. Note also that his “aliens in space” comment applies equally well to “God did it” - both just push origins further back. Indeed, most guesses, educated or otherwise about the start of it all that we thus far have push the limits further back. Only one idea is troubled by this “back pushing”, however; science is happy as a clam to reveal further mysteries, but monotheism is directly invalidated by this notion, as I've said already elsewhere. Science wasn't bothered when we learned that the basic unit of the elements was the atom, nor when we learned that we could go further down still. There is no dogma in science which insists that there is a magic line at which point only a mystical explanation will henceforth suffice. Only certain religions are endangered by these seemingly infinite regressions.

He sums up these ideas like this:

1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause (e.g. a building, machine or work of art).

2) The universe began to exist (accepted by most scientists and stated in the Bible).

3) Therefore the universe has a cause.

Without further comment, as I've covered the details elsewhere, I'll just say that even if we accept all of this as true, it says nothing at all about what that cause actually is. We could imagine a million non-God supernatural causes, or think about the handful of ongoing scientific hypothesis, including Strings with their higher dimensional spaces and other universes.

A Christian who doesn't accept Darwinian evolution and the Big Bang cannot be intellectually full-filled, not without active deceit/will-full ignorance (or real ignorance, but that negates intellectualism by definition). Many Christians can accept both theories. For those who insist that these theories contradict their faith the answer is clear: dump your faith. Go one God further along your quasi-atheistic path and “come in”, if you wish to be intellectually fulfilled.

Richard Dawkins takes this all one step further in his book, “The God Delusion”. The chance of a snail brain popping into existence is so utterly slim that it's all but impossible. The chance of primitive form of life – nothing more than a sack that carries genetic information and makes copies of itself – popping into existence by random merging of pre-biotic chemicals are one in a billion according to some estimates. Very slim, but given that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars and planets where this dice-throwing can take place, it is not at all impossible or even very improbable. The only process that we know of to then increase complexity is the very non-chance act of natural selection, a gradual mechanism that can take a primitive microbe and make a snail brain or a human brain given enough time.

Now, what would the odds be that a mind as complex as God's could pop into existence, a God complex enough to create a universe and hear hundreds of millions of prayers at the same time? The odds are virtually impossible. The argument from design reworded like this is referred to by Dawkins as the “Ultimate 747 gambit”, and it shows why God almost certainly DOES NOT exist as described. One could at this point say that God also evolved, having started as something simple enough that mere probability could chance it to get started. Of course, there's no evidence for this just as there's no evidence for any gods, and this would also conflict with Biblical views, so this isn't a big help...

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