Answering the AIG power questions, part 1.

Hopefully I will soon get to review another chapter of Hunter's Darwin's Proof, but I've been bogged down with classes starting and trying to trace down his references. It can be hard to find references at a small college, especially if the references are 25 years old. When you are dealing with creationist literature, you want to look up all of their references to see exactly how they butcher things.

In the mean time, I can critique some of the material that the angry parent sent me from AIG. One of the items is a DVD, 4 power questions to ask an evolutionist. I will give my answer to these questions here, one at a time.

The first question is where did the matter come from in the big bang? The first thing to do is to clarify two things. First, the big bang is not evolution. It is completely independent of evolution. Evolution could be true and the big bang false, the big bang true and evolution false, both true, or both false. There is absolutely no overlap in the evidence used to support the two theorie. To a creationist this doesn't matter, because everyone who says the world is old is an evolutionist. So one answer to this is that it is irrelevant if we want to discuss evolution. This doesn't mean the big bang isn't very well supported, nor does it mean we can't answer the question.

The second thing to realize is that the big bang describes the history of the universe from about 10 e -35 seconds after the big bang until today. Right now the theory does not extend to before that time. The question of where the universe came from is separate from the question of its history. Even if creationists were to somehow prove that we needed God to make the matter (technically, matter/energy) of the big bang, that wouldn't disprove the big bang. All of the evidence for the expanding universe and the microwave background, etc., would still be true. So even if there is no answer and even if we needed to invoke God, it doesn't disprove the big bang.

Again, creationists have a hard time understanding this. They do the same thing with the origin of life. Even if we have no clue how life arose, it doesn't disprove evolution. Even if we had no idea how the earth first formed, it wouldn't disprove plate tectonics or other geological theories. There is overwhelming evidence the continents have moved. Let's say we didn't have any idea how the first continents formed. Would that mean that we can't conclude that they move and trace how they have moved over time? It would not. In fact, we do know approximately how continents form, but the point is that the science doesn't depend on it. We know how atoms combine without needing to know how atoms formed, etc.

One other thing before I answer. The video characterizes evolution as saying that matter and energy are all that exists. This is the definition of materialism, not evolution. This is the same problem as extending evolution to the big bang. In this case, they extend evolution to mean materialism. Many evolutionists are materialists, but not all, and the ideas again are independent. Yet again, we see that what they mean by evolutionists is anyone who disagrees with their world view for any reason. They define evolution as atheism, and then explain how evolution leads to atheism. They then believe that if they make an argument against materialism, they have made an argument against evolution. Evolution could be true whether or not God or the immaterial exists.

I think the best way to answer the question is, we don't know. There are speculations and ideas. Perhaps our universe is only one universe on a larger "brane". Perhaps there was a big crunch before the big bang. Perhaps it arose by quantum fluctuation. These are possibilities, but so far they have not been tested (I'm not sure how well they can be tested. My inexpert understanding is that some of these ideas are testable in principle, but the tests are not easy to do or likely in the immediate future).

The video brings up one of these and dismisses it. It mentions quantum fluctuation. It says that quantum fluctuation is something coming from nothing, which is impossible, so we can dismiss it. However, we do know that quantum fluctuation happens. Something does in fact come from nothing and we can measure it, regardless of how counter intuitive that is. It is not clear whether this fluctuation could create the whole universe, but we can't dismiss it out of hand.

Creationists just can't handle the answer "we don't know yet". They think this is admitting defeat, and proves their point. The speaker in the DVD quotes one scientist as saying we don't know, commends him for the honesty, and thinks he has a victory. If we didn't know where that first continent came from, it wouldn't mean plate tectonics is wrong. Creationists always fill in "we don't know" with "God did it". Therefore, their God is just another name for ignorance. I haven't seen the whole video yet, just an overview, but I can already tell that the God supported by the video is interchangeable with the phrase "we don't know". How does that help us understand anything? DO they really want to worship ignorance? Why is it so hard to just leave some things unanswered, but deal with the parts we can answer?

The other problem is that saying God did it doesn't solve his problem anyway. We then have the same question: Where did God come from? They have only pushed it back one step. The speaker does try to answer this, by saying either the universe created itself, always existed, or was created. He claims to disprove the first two, and leave us with the third. But then we must ask of God, did he create himself, did he always exist, or was he created? You havne't solved the problem at all. If God can be the uncaused cause, the one thing that doesn't need something else causing it, why can't the universe itself be an uncaused cause? Something has to be, and there is no reason to think that the first cause is something immaterial.