Critique of Religious Scientists' Arguments Continued

Returning to the project from a few posts ago, let's exam more scientists' reasons for believing in a creator. Bullet points indicate primary claims from each author's essay and my response or counterargument follows in bold.

"Let's look at the facts without Bent or Bias", Edward Kessel

• Old proofs are enough to convince a reasonable mind of God's existence. I disagree. Some old proofs are just plain silly. Like, because you can imagine a "perfect" something, god must exist....or something like that.
  
• Science, from the second law of thermodynamics, proves that the universe had a beginning, thus a prime mover, thus a God. Someday in the future, when logical thinking more fully displaces illogical statements driven by ego, we won't have arguments like this. "The universe had a beginning=there was a prime mover=god exists." I can understand how you might assume there was a "prime mover" but it is an enormous leap of faith to conclude that a "prime mover" is anything like us, or even anything like a god.
  
• Science shows that the universe began in an instant. What are the implications of this fact, if it is established as it seems to be? That there is a god who answers our prayers and reveals himself to us in the Bible? I don't think so.
  
• God used his initial laws and matter-his original creation-to keep creating by evolution. I can understand the idea--that God, in the big bang, had it all planned out, all perfectly arranged, so that everything he intended to happen would happen through the natural progression of the physical laws he put in place, so that even evolutionary change is his will; BUT, what evidence supports such a grand hypothesis?
  
• Because mutations aren't always random-mutations tend to reduce organs and characteristics as opposed to heighten-there is an intelligence evident to genetics and evolution. Because there are bad and good mutations, God must exist? I don't get it.
  
• "...to study science with an open mind brings one to the necessity of belief in a God." No, to study science with a religious mindset which is ready to see a god in everything brings naturally causes one to convince himself that god is really in charge, when in fact he's not.
  

"Applying the Scientific Method", Walter Lundberg

• Orderliness and predictability in natural phenomena constitutes a revelation of God in nature. If we were looking for signs of intelligence in outer space, we wouldn't be looking for simple order and predictability. Cycles are everywhere--they are completely expected and 100% unintelligent. Intelligence would make itself apparent by standing out, by doing something different, unusual. Orderliness and predictability=automation.
  

"Physical Evidence of God", Paul Clarence Aebersold

• "...the fact is that man has almost universally recognized a greater all-encompassing intelligence and order in the universe than could possibly be conceived from chance involving inanimate unguided matter. And furthermore, who are we to place a qualitative value on the "intelligence and order in the universe"? One thing we've been slow to accept is that despite all of our unique cognitive abilities, we're still animals with nearly infinitely limited perception and perspective. Primitive people couldn't comprehend how the sun gave life to crops, or how it made them feel better, so they bestowed divinity upon it. Not understanding something or being amazed by the complexity of something does not speak to that something's divinity, it speaks to our continuing simplicity.
  
• No proof can be found-knowledge comes from a molding together of knowledge of the material and the spiritual. Proof in a concrete since is less important than what is readily apparent to our senses or what we've experienced to be true or what has been tested to be found highly probably and supported by evidence. Knowledge may never be 100%, but the important point is that all knowledge is not equally tenuous. Some is extremely reliable.
  
• Since science cannot explain ultimately where everything came from and why, God is the only reasonable answer. This is the worst point yet. At least science admits that it doesn't know when it doesn't know, despite its stringent methodology for determining what it claims. Believers don't have any methodology, just a bold, arrogant claim that provides no real explanation for anything.
  
• "The one thing we all certainly realize is that man and the universe did not spring forth spontaneously from absolutely nothing. They had a beginning, and there was a Beginner." There seems to be some agreement to there being a beginning, but that there was a beginner....well, it just doesn't follow.
  

Identifying Einsteins 'Creative Force" Marlin Kreider

• God exists, but is unprovable, non-physical (author admits) How did the author come to this conclusion?
  
• There are manifold evidences of Gods existence in men and nature at large No, some cherry pick natural characteristics and call them divine because it feels good to do so.
  
• Laws of Nature, Order of Cosmos=God I can understand the temptation to make these anti-logic arguments, but because it sounds good doesn't mean it makes any sense.
  
• Order, according to common human experience, is the result of an orderly mind If you removed all traces of humans from the earth, order would not be so obvious. Rivers meander. Mountain ranges are scattered. Ecosystems are constantly changing over time. Weather is constantly varying from day to day. Extreme order is something we are accustomed to because we live among the buildings and streets of our homes and communities. But order is just another tool we've devised to allow our feeble primate minds and bodies to gain power over our world.
  
• Design and structure of human and animal bodies These bodies have blatant, sometimes devastating imperfections and anomalies. Human fetuses, at some stage in their development, have a tail, lung gill sacs, and fur. Men have nipples. We have skin that burns in the sun. Knees, hips, and backs go out. Our minds fail us in the end. Its sad if you choose to think it is. What can be said for certain is that whatever wonder you find in whatever "design" you see in our bodies, you feel because of yourself, not because of any god hidden in the design.
  
• Can't explain the brain Hundreds if not thousands of scientists would disagree.
  
• We haven't produced life in a laboratory We have produced self replicating molecules, apparently. Give us another billion or two years, I'm sure we can figure it out. Anyway, we've altered life dramatically in the short time since we started using our brains for other things besides foraging, killing, and mating. For a few thousand years, we've unnaturally selected food and animals to make them the way we want them. And now we're genetically engineering food and animals every single day, on a massive scale.
  
• No evidence that genetics iterations could account for life Yeah, and Saddam can't prove that he doesn't have nuclear weapons. Sorry, don't know where that came from.
  Actually, I don't know if I get the point. I think there's plenty of evidence.
  

"Scientific Revelations Point to a God", George Carl Davis

• There is no proof for God (author admits) So, believers just choose to believe.
  
• "No material thing can create itself" Fusion.
  
• "The higher the evolutionary development to which a creation leads, the stronger the evidence of a supreme intelligence behind the creation" Who is ranking the "height" of each product of evolution? Who's to say we're god-like compared with other creatures? Genetically speaking, we share 99.8% (or something like that) of our genes with Chimpanzees. Even with less similar creatures, like squirrels, we share something like 90% of our genome.
  
• The "greatest miracle of all": living, intricate, lovely things were formed from the stars It is pretty amazing, isn't it?
  

"Plain Water Will Tell You the Story", Tomas David Parks

• Order and design in water See previous comments on order and design.
  

"Natures Complexity and God", John William Klotz

• Complexity=God, not blind fate
• Yucca Moth and flower, commercial fig and small wasps testify to existence of God Actually, they testify to evolution. Creatures that fit their environment best survive.
  

"The Most Vital Question Confronting Us", Oscar Leo Braver

• "Science can establish that a creative art at some time must have taken place, implying the existence of a divine intelligence. Science can also establish that none but a divine intelligence could have been the author of the laws of the universe."
• Atheism=strife and war. Atheism is illogical and false. How many wars have been waged because some people didn't believe in Zeus? How many people have starved to death because some people demand evidence and reason before giving themselves over to religious authority?
  

"Rank Materialism Will Not Do", Irving William Knoblach

• Science cannot explain life. Science cannot explain the atom. There are massive scientific projects called particle accelerators that are trying to.
  
• "Science demands faith in the senses, faith in the instrumentation, faith in authority and faith in probability or chance." And religion demands faith in being able to determine hard facts by assigning meaning to our emotions, and by stroking our egos.
  

"A Personal God, Viewed Scientifically", John Lee Abernethy

• Jesus gave evidence that he was the Son of God. I'll have to look that up.
  

"Footsteps of God in the Plant World", Gerald T. Don Hartog

• God reveals himself in the following ways:

1. Orderliness-Growth of Plants
2. Complexity-Nothing man has made compared to a plant
3. Beauty-exceeds that of the greatest genius among men
4. Inheritance-wheat produces wheat

"Facts from a Forester's Fieldbook", Laurence Cotton Walker

• Order-examples from biology, forestry-is evidence of God

"Things a Fruit Rancher's Boy Learned", Walter Lammerts

• The Divine Spirit usually works through spreading belief from parent to child This is of course highly offensive to an atheist--the thought that innocent children are being told what is "true" by their religious parents with no consideration for all arguments for all religions and non-religions. Children should never be "Christian children" or "Muslim children".
  
• There is no evidence for 2 of Darwin's most basic assumptions:

1. The young organisms of each generation continuously tend to vary slightly from their parents in all possible directions
2. Favorable changes we inherited by the next generation and accentuated until extensive changes are built up

• Species do not vary indefinitely
• Most mutations are lethal
• It is doubtful that mutations can accumulate rapidly enough Individuals or families of animals in a species may have lasting variations that do not bestow a benefit until specific outside changes take place, like increased competition, natural disaster, or invasion from other species. Only a tiny fraction of mutations need be nonlethal to allow big change over billions of years. It is interesting that mutations cannot happen too fast or go too slow...an interesting topic to think about and an interesting question that science, not religion, is equipped to explain.
  

"Trillions of Living Cells Speak Their Message" Russell Artist

• A single simple cell is more intricate and amazing in its form and operation than a watch. What's amazing is that primates were able to make a watch; not that nature, after billions of years of evolution, could produce a cell.
  
• "We are confronted with the formidable, even insuperable, difficulties in trying to account for its beginning, and, for that matter, its continued functioning. Unless we maintain with reasoned logic that an intelligence, a mind, brought it into existence." Trial and error; the survival of what works, the death of what doesn't; procreation for the healthiest and most attractive, a lonely life for the flawed designs; bursting populations in constant stress producing an environment that is highly favorable to any tiny improvement....these are natural insights into an automatic, mind-free reality.
  
• All attempts to make a living thing from non-living material have failed
• It is easier to believe that an intelligence brought about life instead of "accidental concourse." No, it is a simple leap of faith that only puts a larger burden of explanation on our shoulders if we answer "God" in response to the question how life came about. Who made God? How can God operate above natural law? Wouldn't God have to be more complex and require more explaining than a more simple natural view of the universe?
  
• Inferring from complexity of cells that an intelligence, God exists, present a "justifiable inference." No it doesn't
  

"The Reasonableness of Theism" George Herbert Blount

• "Order cannot originate from nothing, spontaneously" Order originates from previous order and underlying laws of nature.
  
• "Order=a Planner" is an axiom of a thinking man No, thinking men do not hold many axioms, especially not that one.
  
• (The author sums up an atheists argument quite well:)
• "...the cosmological argument is countered with the possibility that matter and energy are in unending exchange, and that therefore reality, as we know it, has had no beginning. The orderliness of nature is considered as high quality mental fiction. Little evidence is seen for a standard of justice, and all aspects of nature are considered amoral."
• "The atheists view requires considerably more faith than the theists view." An atheist may not make any assumptions at all, a believer must.
  
• If you haven't seen the evidence of God, maybe you haven't looked. It all depends upon interpretation. An amateur video of Big Foot walking by may seem like good evidence to many people that Big Foot does in fact exist. Believers don't have anything as concrete to support their claim that God exists.
  
• (The author believes in God because he claims to have encountered God. In other words, you believe in God when you've met him.) No one should claim to have received personal revelation that God exists unless they in fact did. Simply feeling a "presence" in church or elsewhere doesn't cut it. Having an epiphany doesn't either. Even hearing a voice doesn't count as proof that God exists and is talking to you.
  

"Geological Directives" Donald Robert Carr

• It is a case of "the spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit" (Romans 8:16) There are so many ways we can feel inspired, uplifted, joyful, relieved, contented, etc...how does one tell the difference between natural emotional response to wonderful ideas and the influences of the holy spirit?
  
• (The author was motivated by a powerful sense of need in his belief in God) This is common among believers, this need to believe. Its a psychological issue to be explained by that particular branch of science.
  
• Signs of god-a beginning, uniformitarianism (geologically)
  
• "In a universe which had no beginning, but had always existed, no radioactive elements would remain." I don't know enough about physics and radiation in general to respond to this.
  
• "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork."

"Genesis I in the light of Modern Astronomy", Peter W. Stoner

• "...There is not one single item in this Genesis chapter that disagrees with science as we know it today." Which is no argument for its validity. The implication, however, that God did things by simply saying them, and those things were done instantaneously, and the whole thing was accomplished in days-science disagrees with this entirely.
  

"The Great Designer" Claud M. Hathaway

• Believe based on experiences-knowing him inwardly The human psyche alone is not to be trusted to legitimize enormous claims about the nature of reality.
  
• "I have found that God, the personal Christian God, is the only concept which perfectly fits the peculiar contours of the human soul." The more I experience about myself and other human beings, the more our behavior fits with the explanation for our existence and our behavior provided by Darwin and subsequent evolutionists. Anger has a purpose. Love has a purpose. Sadness has a purpose. The emotions that define us were once tantamount for our survival. They still are, but ways of life have changed since primitive times and we are left with the same emotional programming as our ancestors. We are better equipped to deal with those emotions now that we have the true explanation for them.
  
• "Design Requires a Designer" Where does design end and design begin? A beaver designed a dam-must we glorify the beaver? Intelligence is a recent phenomenon. It is the result of evolution. Design is a product of intelligence; therefore, its an even more recent occurance. Who knows exactly how the framework for self-replicating molecules first came into being. How did the coding begin or where did it originate from? These are legitimate questions that science has already made a great deal of progress with.
  
• "The more complex the order, the more remote the possibility of chance"
• Nature is unable to order itself Read books on evolution.
  
• God must be supernatural-a supernatural first cause

"Scholarly Witnesses and a Few Observations" Marlin Grant Smith

• God=Sovereign
• "We as human beings and the world around us are an aggreagate of effects, and under and behind that aggregate of effects lies the invisible, primordial Cause, which I call God."
• Laws=God Sun=God; Mt Olympus=God; Jesus=God. You can't make such simple baseless claims. Besides, if the laws of physics=God, doesn't this mean he is a very impersonal, powerless God, in the sense that he is limited by his own laws? As Steven Hawkings pointed out, that if God was present at the big bang, he essentially robbed himself of all power by unleashing these natural laws that rule to this day.
  
• Testimony of millions of men, simple and learned, through the ages=god. There are a lot of reasons why good, educated people believed in god. Primarily the fault is embedded in false logic of the kind we see used here by the scientists, as well as the culture, institutions, and limited science available to great men of the past.
  

"A Look Behind the 'Natural Laws'" Edwin Fast

• Complexity and laws=God

"Chemical Laws and God", John Adolph Buehler

• (interesting, supports atheists' arguments:) "The reason chemistry seems to obey the laws we have discovered is because we are really dealing with a statistical science. At the base of our physio-chemical laws is apparant dissorder and chaos, but because of the vast numbers with which we work the statistical laws are applicable and exact laws result. Thus, out of chaos comes harmony."
• "Only by postulating a directional force with a purposeful end can we account for the harmony and order which have come from chaos." Interesting idea, but again, what is harmony, order, and chaos, and in what degree/proportion do these exist? And what exactly is this chaos underlying everything? It seems to me the author is painting a picture of reality to suit his view points on God.
  
• Design, order, harmony=Supreme Intelligence.
• Water cycle, carbond dioxide cycle, ammonia cycle, oxygen cycle=evidence of God
  

"Science Undergirded My Faith" Albert McCombs Winchester

"Naturalism Must Bow to Theism" Olin Carroll Karkalits

• Theism provides better more complete answers and fewer unanswered questions. Wow, that is a completely ridiculous claim.
  
• "...There are 'internal' objects of reality within man himself." Inner perception, cognition, experience, feeling, awareness, abstract thought, trancend time and space limitations with imagination, reason, memory, volition and desire, a sense of right and wrong, feelings of obligation, courage, devotion, bravery, loyalty, faithfulness, friendship, love
• These are all descriptions fo Man's Nature-his "inner reality". Men used to romanticize certain characteristics and ways of behaving by envisioning them (and themselves) as divine. But you could take any one of these, like faithfulness, and argue that it is by no means obvious that it's influence on human behavior is cut and dry or definitive in any particular sense. Faithfulness, for example, seems to be the norm for some, especially for the first couple of years of a relationship or through the raising of children, but many many others do not continue being faithful with one person several years down the line. Natural science explains these nuances, not religion. Religion only states that it is wrong to be unfaithful, thus imbiding those who no longer feel any affection towards their mates with guilt, and sentencing them to spend the rest of their lives in unloving , unsatisfying relationships.
  

"God-Alpha and Omega" Edmund Carl Kornfeld

• "Edwin Conklin said, 'the probability of life originiating from accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop'." Life as we tend to think of it (like a turtle or something) did not spring to life suddenly, out of the blue. That is actually how creationists think it happened. Life evolved from simpler life forms through trial and error--through the death of countless unsuccessful mutated individuals, a mutation here and a mutation there offered some sort of advantage over the norm, which allowed it to survive dramatic changes in its environment, or which allowed it to procreate more successfully, while the old way became extinct, faded away, or persisted unchanged. Life as we know it has been selected like this, bit by bit, over billions of years. No explosion went off to create life.
  
• Complexity and order disprove chance
• Christian Faith is not irrational, its superrational. Very funny.
  
• Faith must proceed reason.

"The Universe Under Central Control" Earl Chester Rex

• Design, Law, indicate a unity of purpose and god.

"The Validity of Religion" Malcolm Duncan Winter, Jr.

• "facts fo the Bible have been confirmed by history-archeological findings to an amazing degree." Are there archeological facts that proof Jesus or his disciples were not deluded? Of course not. What is needed is not archeology, its psychology.
  
• The question of whether God exists can only be answered through a step of spiritual faith, taken after inductive reasoning leads one to conclude that a personal God should exist. God gives us a personal assurance of the validity of his existence is unshakeable.
• Faith is a basis for belief

"Wonders of the Soil" Dale Swartzendruber

• Network of design in soil leads one to think of a great designer.
• to deny a designer is as illogical as to deny a farmer when observing a beautiful field of grain. Were there not beautiful fields of grain before farmers came along? Does a bird trainer need to be present or nearbye whenever one observes a flock of geese? Its a pompous idea to think that things can't be the way they are without something like us--with a mind like ours (a simple mind actually that fixates on "design" because a lack of it is too hard to deal with).
  

"Soils, Plants, and a 4000 Year-Old Explanation" Zimmerman

• There is a force in a seed, containing all codes to generate a full-grown plant/fruit. How? "Who" set in motion the laws of genetics and growth?" Genetic scientists are looking into that.
  
• God is an answer to a mysterious universe. "God" is no answer but an ancient, outdated, and cowardly one.
  

"Man himself as evidence" Robert Horton Cameron

• Thought itself proves the existence of God.
  
• Thought is more than a system automatic-it is reasoning, judgement, appreciation of beauty, enjoyment of symphony, a sense of humor.
• Emotion=evidence of creators wisdom
• moral judgement, human will=evidence
• God gives new outlook, new motives, new joys and sorrows to those who find him All of this is a lame attempt to inscribe divinity into human nature. There's no excuse for this. An squirrel, if it could talk, might argue that its puffy tail is evidence that squirrels are children of a god.
  

"Laboratory Lessons" Elmer W. Maurer

• Nothing in natural science, in chemistry, conflicts with the Bible Its difficult for something that is nonsense, or devoid of meaning, to conflict with anything.
  

"Concord Between Science and Faith" WAyne U. Ault

• Faith is how one believes, but is supported by "first cause" and possibly "continouse motivating cause."
  
• Most have faith in the speed of light, though rarely tested. No one has seen a proton or electron, but see their effects. Much knowledge of universe must be accepted by faith. The catch here is the term "rarely tested". Even if claims about our universe were in fact rarely tested, at least they are tested in some way. The same cannot be said about the existence of God. And even if such claims were not tested at all, there is an enormous difference between saying that light is made of a photons that travel at a certain speed than saying that there is an omnipotent, omniscient God. The larger the claim, the greater the burden of proof. And no claim can be greater, more outlandish, than the claim that there is a God.
  
• Bible reveals God, and man's relation to God. Man must worship, love, and obey a God that shows absolutely no sign of existing, let alone affecting positive change in individuals' lives. The Bible itself is rife with contradictions, literalism and symbolism, to-the-point commandments, poems, vague meaning, and so on. If God chose to reveal himself to man in this way, we'd have to conclude that he's a little off his rocker.
  
• Thousands of "rational, reputable, and well-adjusted men have attested to a conscious personal relationship to God and the power of prayer." Rational, reputable, and well-adjusted men have sworn allegiance to the Third Reich. Doesn't mean we should do the same.
  

"God in Medical Practice" Paul Ernest Adolph

• Hope has definite medical results. 80 percent of all illness encountered in general practice have a predominately physchic causation. 40 percent demonstrate no organic causation at all. Causes of nervous diseases are guilt, resentment, fear, anxiety, frustration, indecision, doubt, jealously, selfishness, and boredom.
  
• "The human body finds harmonious function when it is in tune with its maker." The human body finds harmonious function when it feels secure, and fully embracing a religion that promises eternal life and glory for good works has got to feel pretty nice.
  

"Of Flowers and the Baltimore Oriole" Cecil Boyce Hamann
God is a more logical explanation to design, law, and order than instinct, genetics, or evolution. Cecil Hamann ought to read The Selfish Gene.

A Challenge

A couple of AMAZING books I've read lately: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, by Carl Sagan; and Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris.

I cannot fathom how someone could read these books (especially the latter) and continue to believe in the god of the Bible. Its a little startling to think about. The reason, the common sense, the insight, foresight, and overall scope of these books cuts through the nonsense of traditional religious belief, as well as the typical religious narrowmindedness, like a knife.

If someone walked up to you and said a single book would cause you to seriously question or completely abandon your faith in the god of the Bible, would you read that book?

I'm a big fan of this sort of awakening. Some of my earliest thoughts of any sort of philosophical nature had to do Nazi Germany. How could an entire nation allow the Hollocaust to take place? The question wasn't just an emotional reaction to the horrors of the hollocaust. It was an attempt to understand how millions of people could share a set of beliefs so morrally abhorrent and patently flawed. Only one thing was absolutely certain-that so many people could be so wrong.

If only the minds of Germans weren't so fully captive to Hitler and German nationalist propaganda. If only someone could break through the mental and emotional chains that enslaved Germans during those years. If only myths were dispelled, false idols destroyed, propaganda seen for what it was. If only the people could be set free.

Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation has the power to clear the fog of religious belief, and explain in detail what precisely is wrong with continuing to ally yourself with and support the various religions of the day. This is the most important point that becomes very clear when you read the book. The problem is not just religious fundamentalism, it is the ordinary religious belief of ordinary people that continues to allow immense suffering in the world and provides shelter/justification for further dangerous developements of a more fundamental kind.

Here's a great quote from the book:

"Religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are not--that is, when they have nothing to do with suffering or its alleviation. Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral--that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings. This explains why Christians like yourself expend more "moral" energy opposing abortion that fighting genocide. It explains why you are more concerned about human embryos than about the lifesaving promise of stem-cell research. And it explains why you can preach against condom use in sub-Saharan Africa while millions die from Aids here each year.
You believe that your religious concerns about sex, in all their tiresome immensity, have something to do with morality. And yet, your efforts to constrain the sexual behavior of consenting adults--and even to discourage your own sons and daughters from having premarital sex--are almost never geared toward the relief of human suffering. In fact, relieving suffering seems to rank rather low on your list of priorities. Your principle concern appears to be that the creator of the universe will take offense at something people do while naked. This prudery of yours contributes daily to the surplus of huma misery"

The book is only 113 pages and costs $11 at your local book store. My challenge is the same one religious leaders pose to nonbelievers: Read this book completely and see if you come away unchanged.

Arguments for the Existence of God Ridiculed

Months and months ago, before my connection to the net inexplicably went away and before I finally wrought a means to return, I wrote a blog entitled "The Deconstruction of 'Evidence of God in an Expanding Universe' by J. C. Monsma". In the blog, I summarized the "scientific" arguments for belief in god as presented by 40 accomplished men of science. I intended to scrutinize these arguments and the inherent logic utilized by these men to justify their continued belief in a creator. Now, almost a year later, I return to my mission.

"The Origin of the World-By Chance or Design?" by Frank Allen

• The origin of the Universe has occured in time; therefore, the universe must have been created. "The universe must have been created" implies a being doing the creating, which I believe does not follow from the simple observation that the universe exists in time. The universe may have come into being, but how? Or the universe may have always existed. Or it may have existed forever in cycles of "boom" and "crunch". We're still not certain.
  
• "The great first cause, an eternal, all-knowing and all all-powerful creator must exist, and the universe is his handiwork." More unjustified conclusions picked from thin air. A "great first cause" does not equal "an eternal, all-knowing and all-powerful creator". This is an example of anti-logic, kinda like 2+2=5.
  
• "The adjustment of the earth for life are far too numerous to be accounted for by chance." The adjustments of the earth are presently acting in accordance with natural laws, not supernatural, outside interference. This is the way its always been. Science seeks to open up the big picture, to show how it all happened, not to resign in ignorance, which is what "too numerous" and "chance" implies--that things cannot be explained or understood naturally (as though we are incapable). This intellectual resignation or cowardice is still not justfication for making the anti-logic leap that God is an explanation.
  
• Design seen in earth as a sphere, rotating on an axis around the sun. Inclination of the Earth. Gasses of the atmosphere ideal for life. Density of atmosphere protects the Earth from meteor impacts. Rain. Properties of water. Soil. -All too convenient for life. All pointing to design, not "chance". The universe is unimaginably vast. Perhaps every exploded star and nebula contains the essential ingredients for creating life. Perhaps most nebulae fall under the same basic laws of physics, ultimately causing their vast clouds of dust and debri to circle and coalesce in much the same way, with much the same order that formed our galaxy. Perhaps we are not unique--we're the necessary and expected result of physical laws acting upon the universe. Who are we to claim that anything about our world is "too convenient" when it is entirely possible that billions or trillions of other earth-like planets may exist in the unverse. We simply do not know. No judgement can be drawn about our own uniqueness.
  
• Distance of earth from sun, size of earth, make life possible. Good observation. But in the universe we may be like creatures living at the bottom of the sea. We may not yet comprehend that life exists in so many other forms in so many other radical, "extreme" environments. Life may not be exclusive to a planet with Earth's exact dimensions in its exact relation to its sun.
  
• The odds of a protein molecule randomly coming together are such that its essentially impossible, according to Swiss Mathematician Charles Eugene Guye. Life did not come together to form a protein molecule or a creature in one big, random step. If it did, then yes, maybe it would be a mathematical impossibility. Rather, there was a process that explains the existence of all life (evolution/natural selection) save for the first and most simple forms of replicating DNA. And there are enough hypothesis out there to explain how life first came into being on this planet that an intellectually honest person will not resort to answering "God" when faced with a yet unresolved scientific issue.
  

"A Conclusive Test" by Robert Morris Page

• "The historical appearance of the Christ as prophesized, with the fulfillment of the many things that were prophesized, a fulfillment that is so firmly established historically as to be doubted by those with little knowledge, has authenticated not only the prophecies concerning Him, but also the validity of His teachings." I may need to go back an review these amazing "prophecies", but from what I can recall, its all pretty laughable really, to take the vague prophecies of the bible and claim that only Jesus could possibly fulfill them. Especially when it is apparent to Bible scholars that Jesus did not consider himself the son of god and Mary was not referred to as a virgin until John came along and revised the story a little.
  
• "For those who study God and the relationship that one should have with him, and wholeheartedly sets out to fulfill the conditions, there will be such overwhelming influence in the person's life that there can be no room for doubt-God becomes an intimate personal reality of such nearness and such magnitude that faith grows to the proportions of positive knowledge." I don't doubt that we possess deep emotion (spirituality) and the ability to enhance that emotion over time. And its no surprise that those who mentally and emotionally fixate on an imaginary father in heaven will come away feeling very close to that being.
  

"The Lesson of the Rosebush", by Merrik Stanley Congdon

• By analogy to our own intelligent agency in a world fraught with rational values, we must accept the implications of similar rational activity and intelligent control involved in..." the bell curve, the water cycle, the CO2 cycle, reproduction, photosynthesis, etc. We are a mirror of the universe, the universe is not a mirror of us. We see orders and patterns because our existence is dependent upon and derived from those orders and patterns.
  
• "How could they operate rationally throughout Nature without the sustaining intelligence of a rational creator who works in and through their creation?" What is "rationality throughout nature"? Mere existence? What would qualify as irrationality in nature? Well, there are plenty of examples. Wales with hind legs under their skin. Human embryos that all, at some point, possess gill sacks, tails, and fur. Cancer. A meteorite. If one were to put a face on, and capitalize the first letter of Nature, then one would also be forced to conclude that Nature is a heartless bitch who cares not for the suffering of creatures and revels in the countless deaths off individuals and species that do not submit to her will. I choose not to personlize or deify nature in this way so I can keep my sunny demeanor (and to be intellectually honest).
  
• One cannot "disprove the existence of intelligent activities of an unconditioned, personal God." One cannot disprove the existence of the Great Spagetti Monster in the sky.

"The inescapable Conclusion", by John Cleveland Cothran

• "...the behavior of even insensible matter is not at all haphazard, but on the contrary, 'obeys' definite "natural laws." The fact that we have enough mental faculty to perceive order in our world does not justify once again personifying natural phenomena. Slavery may be an unfortunate part of human history, and it while it still exists in explicit or subtle forms (religious worship), our experiences do not mean we can say that anying "obeys" anything else--as though there were a conscious command and a conscious submission involved when water melted into ice. That is absurd. The rule is a lack of conscious reaction--it is an automatic, depersonalized state.
  
• Periodic Law, not Periodic Chance We don't understand how natural laws came about if it ever had a beginning. I'd add, however, that it is not as though we have a 10 commandments of Physics. Physics is far more complicated, far more expansive than what can be understood by a few basic observations (water boils at 100C-but even that is not fixed. It depends upon atmospheric pressure, the purity of h20, and so on)
  
• "Consider the 102 known chemical elements and their amazing diversities and similarities." Ok, I will.
  
• "The materical universe is unquestionably one of system and order, not chaos; of laws, not chance and haphazards." That doesn't make God the manager of an assembly line. Again, because we are able to perceive the workings of a fraction of the universe doesn't mean the order we see there was created and is being ruled by a super being. If you were to assume that complexity and order (the universe) must arise from complexity (god), you'd still be making an ass of yourself for assuming, and you couldn't make any definite conclusions about the nature of the entity that did the creating/planning. It could in fact be a big ol' monster made of spagetti.
  
• Matter did not create itself. A creative agent must have existed. The agent had to have a mind. But mind must have a will to act. Only a person has a will. This is a good one. "Only a person has a will"? Tell that to the beaver constructing a dam or the hungry lion. If we look at our fellow creatures, we see them doing things that are necessary for their survival. By an large, the story of our existence has been defined by the same. Only the situations, the environments, are different. "Matter did not create itself". Yeah, nuclear fusion did, actually. Until it is shown that God is molding clay into human beings at the center of the sun, I'm not buying the notion that "A creative agent...had to have a mind".
  

"The Answers to the Unanswered Questions", Donald Porter

• "...as a scientist I derive satisfaction only by placing God in the leading role." As a bike salesman I derive satisfaction only by placing Lance Armstrong in the leading role.
  

More to come....