Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Counterargument for God
Counterargument for God
Counterargument for God
Ebook361 pages6 hours

Counterargument for God

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

()

Read preview

About this ebook

When he tired of listening to the constant attacks on religion by prominent atheists in the media or academia, author John L. Leonard spent several years on a personal journey, investigating the scientific evidence that purportedly eliminated God from what he calls the Big Picture. This book is the product of that effort.

John began with modern Darwinism and biology, and then learned about the evidence found in chemistry for the origin of life as well as the physics required for the Big Bang. From that perspective he formed what he calls his Big Picture of how life, the universe, and sapient humans all came to exist.

After building a strong counterargument to any claim that science can exclude God from His creation, John offers a powerful defense of his Christian faith. Counterargument for God offers a comprehensive rebuttal to atheism, using logic, rational thought, and good, old-fashioned common sense.

2013 Readers Favorite Gold Medal Award.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 31, 2013
ISBN9780985011192
Counterargument for God
Author

John L Leonard

The author has written a number of articles for the online publication American Thinker and was interviewed on the Dennis Miller radio show.Divine Evolution is his first book. He has also written short stories for an anthology about animals and recently published his first detective novel, Coastal Empire, under the pen name of Rocky Leonard. John is the Atlanta Creationism Examiner for the online new source examiner.com.John holds a BBA from the University of Georgia and worked as a computer programmer for more than twenty years before becoming a writer. His writing has also been influenced by shorter stints working as a bartender, real estate investor and landlord.He has been married to wife Lisa for twenty-two years. John is the proud father of two and grandfather of three, as well as pack leader for several wonderful dogs and one crazy cat.Born in Savannah, John has spent most of his adult life in the northern suburbs of Atlanta. The local color in his writing is equally authentic whether the setting is a Georgia beach, downtown Atlanta, or the Appalachian foothills in north Georgia.

Read more from John L Leonard

Related to Counterargument for God

Related ebooks

Religion & Science For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Counterargument for God

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings

0 ratings0 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

    Book preview

    Counterargument for God - John L Leonard

    Target Audience

    Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

    –Gautama Siddhartha, founder of Buddhism

    The target audience for this book is either theist-agnostic or atheist-agnostic, with agnostic being the key word. The atheist claims God does not exist, while a theist asserts the opposite. The agnostic simply says, I don’t know.

    Therefore, a theist-agnostic is someone who believes in a God but admits to some personal doubts, acknowledging that irrefutable proof does not exist. Conversely, the atheist-agnostic does not believe in any form of supernatural intelligence, but concedes that incontrovertible proof to support that belief is unobtainable.

    Please allow me to dispense with formalities and get right to the point: if you are a staunch antitheist and favor scientism over science, this book most certainly will not appeal to you. More than likely, reading it will probably just make you angry.

    Likewise, if you are a devout Jew, Christian, or Muslim with strong personal views shaped by your religious beliefs, this book might not be ideally suited for you, either. You probably won’t feel the need to read it, since you already believe quite strongly in some form of a creator God.

    In other words, if you’re very sure you’ve got all the answers to life’s existential questions and there’s nothing anyone could say that might change your mind about the existence of God, then please don’t let me waste any more of your time.

    The target audience for this book may be confused, with doubts and questions arising from conflict between what they’ve learned about science in school, versus what they’ve been taught in their church, synagogue, or mosque about their personal religion. Their current beliefs (whether theist-agnostic or atheist-agnostic) are not immutable. This reader is primarily motivated by pursuit of the truth, no matter where that journey might lead.

    Quid est veritas? What is truth? That may well be the best question anybody ever asked.

    The targeted reader will find the scientific evidence very interesting, but be willing to consider theological implications should the pursuit of truth take him or her there. This person will go wherever the evidence leads in pursuit of the truth.

    If this sounds like you, please keep reading.

    The intent of this book is not to irritate you. My intent is merely to inspire thought by presenting the science from a new perspective, what I have called the Big Picture. However, the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. Whenever intellectual beliefs widely accepted as fact are challenged by new evidence, there is a natural tendency to resist changing your mind.

    However, the truth will ultimately prevail.

    If you are still with me at this point, I sincerely hope you enjoy the rest of the book.

    The problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubt.

    –Bertrand Russell

    About the Author

    Take the risk of thinking for yourself, much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way.

    –Christopher Hitchens, in his closing statement of his debate against William Dembski at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, on November 18. 2010

    My identity should be irrelevant to the reader of this book, truth be told. Most of my counterargument for God actually comes from the quoted words of physicists, biochemists, paleontologists, and biologists — the foremost experts in their respective fields. My contribution primarily consisted of compiling information gleaned from reading the work of others, not making any bold or new scientific discoveries of my own.

    I’m not a scientist. Nor do I claim to play one on television. All of the credit for the scientific research belongs to those scientists and intellectual giants on whose shoulders I stand. The blame for any flaws in my logic, conclusions, and opinions belongs only to me.

    As I learned what the experts have said about the science events necessary to explain our existence, the Big Picture emerged from the individual puzzle pieces. I tried to reconcile the idea of God with the evidence necessary for the theories work as a whole. If you want to argue the scientific evidence, take it up with my sources. My efforts have been confined to applying logic and common sense to the information I gleaned from dozens of books written on the subject, resulting in this attempt to produce a comprehensive counterargument.

    I’ve been refining this counterargument for about five years, which gave me opportunity to learn a little bit about how opposition works.

    If the argument can be won using scientific evidence, terrific. Superior logical arguments also work. Challenging my opinion is one thing. But when all else fails, ad hominem attacks and character assassination unfortunately have become inevitable. When weak-minded people run out of talking points, often they resort to personal attack. It doesn’t bother me a bit.

    When logic turns against the conventional wisdom about the science and the same scientific evidence is used to make a strong counterargument for including God, it can make some people quite angry. The perceptions of God provided by mainstream religion may conflict with their personal lifestyles. Whatever the reason, typically the urge to shoot the messenger emerges toward the destroyer of closely held and cherished personal beliefs, whether they are religious or secular.

    It would seem somewhat rude of me to deprive those critics who will feel the need to find fault with my curriculum vitae of the opportunity by not disclosing my academic history. My college matriculation culminated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Georgia, majoring in Management Information Systems. Basically, that’s a fancy way of saying that my collegiate career ended when I received an undergraduate computer science degree from the business school.

    I will stipulate that my GPA could have been significantly higher if I’d spent a larger percentage of my time on campus sober. But in my defense, let me add that I worked part time as a waiter and bartender to help pay my living expenses.

    Coincidental with my time in Athens, Herschel Walker, perhaps the greatest college football player of all time, played tailback for the University of Georgia. And Georgia was a party school. Keg parties were regular weekend events. On a given weekend, you could see REM or the B-52’s play at Tyrone’s Bar for one-dollar admission.

    It was a great time to be a Georgia Bulldog.

    An admittedly somewhat immature college student, I thought it more important to see The Who play live in Birmingham than study for my Management 351 final exam. I do believe my final grade in the class reflected my poor judgment in that regard.

    On the other hand, The Who did put on a great show that night in Birmingham.

    After graduation, I spent almost two decades writing computer software. Early in my career, I displayed such dedication to the job and tenacity for problem solving that I was selected from a large team of developers to travel the world as part of an elite fly & fix team for international product support, taking me to strange and exotic locations like Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Paramus, New Jersey. Considering the salary I was making when I quit, I must have been fairly good at what I did.

    Over my desk hangs a framed image of the comic book icon, The Incredible Hulk, looking a good bit smarter and more subdued than usual, mostly because he’s wearing a pair of glasses with nerdy-looking frames. The picture is titled The Credible Hulk.

    The caption reads, You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry… because I always back up my rage with facts and documented sources.

    That’s a clue for you — I’m a writer with attitude.

    For the past five years or so, I’ve been writing mostly articles, novels, and short stories.

    So, what exactly are my qualifications to write a nonfiction book debating evolution, science, religion, and the possible existence of God? What makes me an expert on any subject related to science? It’s a reasonable question.

    Before getting started, we should specifically address my scientific credentials or, more specifically, my lack thereof. I personally don’t consider writing computer software science in the same respect as physics, genetics, biology, chemistry, or even paleontology, so I make no claims about my experience or expertise in any particular field of science. Software development is probably more analogous to engineering than traditional science. I once went so far as to write an article explaining that I have no ambitions to become a polymath, preferring to see myself as more a jack-of-all-trades regarding my knowledge of science.

    Since I’m not claiming to present new scientific evidence but merely suggesting a new interpretation of existing scientific evidence, I can’t understand how my opinion can be disqualified. I’m confident my critics will be sure to point out the ways for me.

    It should be very clear my opinions were formed by reading the works of many experts in their respective fields, because I quote them verbatim. Will critics dare challenge the exact words of Stephen Hawking, or question my ability to comprehend their significance?

    The latter seems the safer bet. Then the argument will be against logic, common sense, and statistical probability, as you will soon see.

    Here are my complete writing credentials: after twenty years of software development and brief tenure as a real estate investor, my journey to becoming a writer literally began by accident. The television had been left playing in the background while I worked on developing a business plan for a friend of mine, when a rather famous atheist and prominent scientist said something that caught me off-guard and so completely contradicted my world view that I spent the next several years voraciously consuming every book I could find about the science he claimed proved that God did not exist. Since I was equally confident a creator God was somehow responsible for my origin, obviously we could not both be right. My research became my first nonfiction book.

    Once I began writing, I submitted several articles to the online publication American Thinker, which led to my being interviewed live by Editor-in-Chief Thomas Lifson on The Dennis Miller Radio Show.

    After Divine Evolution was released by Epress-Online, I spent several more years of research as the Atlanta Creationism Examiner, producing a column from 2010 to 2012 that culminated in the writing of this book. One other non-fiction title is a collection of short stories about animal rescue and fostering dogs called Always a Next One.

    My other two books are detective novels, written as Rocky Leonard. I mention them because Coastal Empire and Secondhand Sight are both published novels and you should buy them on Amazon. I may be the best writer of whom you’ve never heard. Plus, I believe that writing detective novels has sharpened my analytical skills and problem solving ability, so it’s sort of relevant to mention them.

    The work product of Rocky Leonard will increase, but this will probably be the last nonfiction book as John L. Leonard. Editing of my next Robert Mercer detective novel, titled Premonition, will begin as soon as this book is published.

    You may not think that my opinions are important in the Big Scheme of Things, especially if you still disagree at the end of this book, or assess one’s relative importance on fame, fortune, and curriculum vitae. I’m not famous — yet. What makes anyone’s opinion important? Is it the opinion, or the person expressing it? Remember, the large majority of what I say in this book about the scientific evidence comes directly from the scientists. I merely quote them, and then offer an alternate interpretation of the meaning with God included in the Big Picture.

    The purpose of this book isn’t to gain personal fame or fortune. I don’t want to compete with Ray Comfort or William Lane Craig for becoming the best-known Christian apologist. It’s about making this counterargument for God. After the counterargument has been made public hopefully to inspire new debate, I plan to stick with detective novels. I have no desire to keep repeating myself, or endlessly arguing about God.

    If you need to be impressed to keep reading and my interview on Dennis Miller’s radio show wasn’t enough, consider that prominent atheist and author Ed Buckner, president emeritus of American Atheists, once decided my articles were provocative enough that he joined me in a public debate. Also, my friend Rev. Bill Wassner referenced a few of my articles in a course he taught at DePaul University. I am grateful to both Ed and Bill, for considering me a worthy adversary in debate, and recommending a couple my articles to a class of students.

    Do not forget the advice of the Buddha. Don’t give my thoughts and opinions any undue respect or credibility just because something I wrote was mentioned in a college class, or because a prominent atheist thought it might be interesting to publicly debate me. It would also be unwise to summarily dismiss my thoughts and opinions simply because you didn’t think of it first.

    Trust your own logic and reason. Use your own common sense. Think for yourself.

    Part 1 – Framing the Counterargument

    What is the Big Picture in the Big Scheme of Things?

    Beauty is truth, truth, beauty— That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

    –John Keats, from his poem Ode to a Grecian Urn

    Frequently, I will refer to something I’ve coined the Big Picture, a shorthand notation for the various scientific theories and hypotheses required to explain life and the universe containing it.

    My idea of the Big Picture is pretty simple and straightforward. If expressed as a formula, the equation would look something like this:

    Life = Big Bang + abiogenesis + speciation + natural selection

    Some have argued that the Big Bang theory and abiogenesis hypothesis have nothing to do with Darwin’s theory of natural selection, claiming they are as unrelated as germ theory is to the theory of gravity.

    However, that argument is fallacious, for one simple reason.

    Life cannot evolve until it first exists.

    The four scientific theories represented in the above equation for life are inextricably related —without the Big Bang creating this particular universe, the raw materials essential for abiogenesis would not have been available. Without abiogenesis, the first life forms would still not exist, so speciation would not have occurred. Without speciation, there would be nothing for natural selection to evolve.

    First, you must have a beginning, a point at which the building blocks for life are created and provided a suitable environment — like our universe, and especially our solar system. Then an unknown catalyst must bring inanimate matter to life somehow.

    Once life exists, we can speculate about how that original organism differentiate into several million unique species of both flora and fauna, using only the natural processes of genetic recombination through sexual reproduction, over really long periods of time.

    If the explanations for universe and life within it are significantly less probable events without the intervention of some form of supernatural intelligence, shouldn’t scientists factor that into their calculations regarding these existential questions? Should not evidence suggesting that supernatural intelligence exists be scientifically investigated?

    I say yes.

    The Big Scheme of Things (BSOT) is my shorthand reference to describe a personal point-of-view that encompasses the Big Picture, as well the philosophical implications of that Big Picture, for example the meaning of life. If science can present a reasonable, comprehensive explanation for our existence that perfectly excludes a creator God, the consequence, intended or not, is to allow one reasonably to conclude life serves no real purpose.

    On the other hand, if a preponderance of the evidence indicates that some form of supernatural intelligence is essential for any explanation of how this universe and life to exist, we may assume there is legitimate purpose for our existence, even if we haven’t yet figured it out.

    Word Games

    First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.

    –Epictetus

    Are polar bears and grizzly bears two different species, or two varieties of the same species we call bear? The question may sound silly, but is actually fundamental to understand when discussing the role of speciation theory in the Big Picture formula.

    Years ago, when I was studying biology in high school, there was no argument about the definition of a species. Bears, dogs, cat, and humans were all understood to be distinct species. However, modern biologists have muddied the waters, introducing a new term called clade and suggesting that animals such as bears or crows should be classified into multiple species.

    Speciation is the scientific term describing macroevolution, the theoretical process by which the creation of a distinct, morphologically unique living organism occurs. Speciation theory attempts to extrapolate over time what we can easily observe in the processes of natural selection to explain the origin of a unique genome — still without any sort of intelligent help, of course.

    In his book The Greatest Show on Earth: the Evidence for Evolution, Richard Dawkins wrote,

    "Coppinger points out that when domestic animals break free and go feral for many generations, they usually revert to something close to their wild ancestors. We might expect feral dogs, therefore, to become rather wolf-like. But this doesn’t happen. Instead, dogs left to go feral seem to become the ubiquitous village dogspye-dogs — that hang around human settlements all over the third world. This encourages Coppinger’s belief that the dogs on which human breeders went to work were wolves no longer. They had already changed themselves into dogs: village dogs, pye-dogs, perhaps dingos."¹

    Why have scientists assumed that dogs are related to wolves by descent? Two reasons: comparative anatomy, and comparison of the respective genomes. Comparative anatomy refers to physical attributes in terms of morphological form. In other words, dogs and wolves are both members of the same basic classification as a canine type of biological organism. Such relationship by descent seems natural to believe could happen for two distinctly different species of creature so similar in form as the dog and wolf.

    However, the exact same processes allegedly produce species as disparate as the wolf and turtle, with time being the only new factor that allows for such grotesquely different modifications in basic form. The problem with that theory is that there isn’t really as much time available for such dramatic differences to evolve, due to compression of timescales by multiple mass extinctions. The paleontological record of the Permian extinction suggests that the most distant common ancestor of turtle and wolf should only be about 500 million years old at most, around the time of the Cambrian explosion. Arguably, Lystrosaurus, a pig-like animal that survived the Permian extinction only 250 million years ago, could be considered the ancestor of all modern fauna.

    Now, it may sound silly to say something must have evolved only 250 million years, as if that amount of time is insignificant, but in geologic timescales and compared to the age of the universe, 250 million years is a relatively short period in the BSOT. Considering that the coelacanth allegedly hasn’t evolved in 340 million years, that information is significant, because it means while most species were supposedly diversifying in form to a remarkable degree, producing over a million new species of animals, other species weren’t changing at all, experiencing stasis for hundreds of millions of years.

    If this is all true, then the processes of evolution occur without rhyme or reason. How then, can biologists make predictions about evolution and declare them true?

    Biologist Jerry Coyne has suggested that the only way true speciation is possible is for extended isolation of the gene pool to occur, so that interbreeding with partners with dominant traits cannot undo the work of isolated natural selection. In other words, Coyne has suggested that isolation must occur until recessive genes become dominant; otherwise, the improvements are lost by dilution of the gene pool.

    Simple question: how does this sort of isolation happen, particularly when the species involved are birds or fish?

    Gene pools isolated by geographic regions do help explain subspecies variations like race and breed differences within species boundary, what scientists call ring species like Larus gulls, for example, where animals obviously of the same species no longer interbreed because of geographic distribution. The only salient point to note is that they are all still members of the same basic species of gulls. The same basic animal body plan can be found with worldwide geographical distribution, and while non-interbreeding members develop unique and specific characteristics over time for the local variety, they don’t turn from gulls into pelicans.

    The same biological processes that perfectly explain the variations within ring species of Larus gulls do nothing to explain the existence of other modern species of bird like eagles, sparrows, pigeons, or even other sea birds such as pelicans and ernes. So, what biological rules do account for such diversity?

    Are there any rules for speciation?

    Paleontologist Jack Horner believes he can reverse-engineer a chicken into a dinosaur. If true, why can’t scientists’ reverse-engineer a dog into a wolf, as Coppinger suggest? The evolutionary distance between those species should be even shorter, shouldn’t it? Why doesn’t speciation work bi-directionally? The processes of evolution are perceived to work gradually from smaller to larger organisms and from simpler to more complex. However, the evidence seen in the fossil record strongly suggests that something else is happening.

    We see explosive spurts where remarkable diversity occurs in the ecosystem, followed by long periods of stasis. Dinosaurs were much larger animals than anything we see on earth today, so we don’t always progress from smaller to bigger organisms. In fact, the cumulative pattern of evolutionary development of the biosphere logically implies that there is no pattern to identify as evolutionary in nature, yet patterns emerge all over the place, in things like complimentary systems and food chains.

    Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, co-developer of punctuated equilibrium theory, wrote,

    "The potential dilemma for zebras is simply stated: they exist as three species, all with black and white stripes to be sure, but differing notably in both numbers of stripes and their patterns. (A fourth species, the quagga, became extinct early in this century; it formed stripes only on its neck and forequarters). These three species are all members of the genus Equus, as are true horses, asses, and donkeys… The integrity of zebras then hinges on the answer to a single question: Do these three species form a single evolutionary unit?"²

    If the animals in question can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, then according to the laws of modern biology they are not different species, but varieties of zebra. We do not describe Siamese and tabby as different species of cat. The Pomeranian and Great Dane are not considered different species of dog even though they do not interbreed due to their physical limitations. There cannot be a separate set of rules applied to domestic and wild animals, where one is subdivided into breeds and the other into species. To do so obliterates the true meaning of the word species.

    Inventing a new term like clade to replace the word species seems like nothing more than a feeble attempt to confuse the issue.

    When two purebred dogs of different breeds reproduce, the offspring are said to be a mixed breed, or a litter of mongrel puppies, or mutts. Why should bears be classified any differently than dogs? Because one species is wild and the other domesticated? Yet zoologists now absurdly debate whether a polar-grizzly offspring is a variety or subspecies of bear, or a new species.

    These word games serve only to confuse and obfuscate the meaning of a specific term. If a word is to have specific meaning, there must be consistent application in its usage. Is there a sinister motive behind the change in terminology? Well, it is true that by obfuscating the definition of species, scientists have claimed that speciation has now been observed in both the lab and in the wild. But how can we argue speciation has never been observed when we no longer know what a species even is?

    A bear still a bear, unless it’s a koala bear, which makes it a marsupial.

    A web page provided by the University of California at Berkeley, as an educational tool, serves to illustrate this problem. A diagram compares hooded and carrion crow, asking students if the two varieties of crow should be considered the same species.

    Why wouldn’t they? The natural processes theorized by Darwin were known to animal breeders for thousands of years prior. Natural or artificial selection can both explain the varieties of crow. The theory of natural selection fails to explain the origin of the crow, or the biological processes through which the crow and eagle share common ancestry.

    How does speciation explain the common ancestry of a crow and a butterfly? Or better yet, the relationship between butterfly and butterfly bush?

    If evolution really explains the existence of life without God, then man is not only descended from the apes, but also distantly related to the bananas we both like to eat. The butterfly and butterfly bush are distant cousins. And the only known biological mechanism allowing this to happen is sexual reproduction.

    Time is treated as some magical ingredient that allows for remarkable results from genetic recombination. Personally, I’m not particularly impressed by the fact that a polar and grizzly bears can produce live offspring, or even that the offspring isn’t sterile. But I am keenly interested to learn exactly how a bear and a human, or a human and a rat, might share common ancestry.

    Whether intentional or not, there has been an effort to equate variations within species with the emergence of a distinctly

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1