Lee Strobel Responds to Your Comments

But let’s pretend for a moment that you could produce some amino acids by shooting electricity through the atmosphere of the early earth. Even then, you’re so far away from even the most primitive living organism that no mere waving of the hands can bridge this enormous gap. It would be like saying that rain and dirt and wind can create a rudimentary brick and therefore this explains the origin of Sears Tower.

No, it’s very much not like that, sir. We have evidence that organic forms can mutate into different organic forms, but we can’t say the same about bricks spontaneously forming buildings.

I concede that we do not know right now exactly what caused life to become as varied as it is, but I quote Isaac Asimov on this one: “To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.”

First of all, I have to say that I am very glad that you not only returned, but that you returned so quickly to address our comments. I also reciprocate your wish that we could sit down together so that I could more properly pick your brain.

Now, onto your post:

I think a big issue most of us had was the arrogance of the statement about not understanding why any atheist would be a good person. Even though you admit that many of us are, there’s a dig implicit in the fact that you believe we can’t be, that it is illogical for the moral atheist to even exist.

You say now that it was the transformative power of God that made you want to be a good person. So what do you do with the millions of people who make the same claim about their conversion to Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Wicca, Hinduism, etc? For my own part, I strongly feel that my greatest advancement in personal morality came when I finally said “you know what, I really only need the Golden Rule!” and shed all the other doctrines and beliefs of religion. In other words, I experienced the same transformation that you claim came from God during my conversion to Atheism! If you believe that goodness comes from God (more specifically, the Christian God), do you believe that all of us who have attributed our moral growth to other sources are lying? Dillusional? Saved by Grace?

“In my writings, I’ve described why I believe the evidence points more strongly toward Christianity than other world faiths.” – I am currently reading a commentary written about one of your books from Tinyfrog. I must say that it’s very interesting, but the evidence as quoted (even without Tinyfrog’s comments) does not strike me as particularly reasonable. That being said, I’ve ordered a few of your books from the library so that I may judge your reasoning for myself.

“Well, I’ve never claimed that the evidence of cosmology takes a person all the way to Christianity, only that it’s one bit of evidence in a cumulative case for the existence of God.” – Only, it doesn’t. The evidence of cosmology points a person to the conclusion that we don’t have enough information yet. We know that life CAN come from non-life, that’s what the Miller experiment showed. If this doesn’t match the current theories about the original makeup of the earth, that’s fine. Maybe those theories are wrong. Maybe the theories are right, but our results are unsuccessful because there was some other currently unknown factor present. An “unknown factor” is not the same as “God.” The “god of the gaps” argument is not only incredibly weak, it also does you a disservice. Every time we have a scientific breakthrough, adherents of the “god of the gaps” make their god that much smaller. When you say that the evidence points towards God, I can only respond that the evidence only points to an area of knowledge that we haven’t, at this time, learned yet. Maybe that’s the Divine, maybe it isn’t. But the evidence doesn’t point toward God any more than it points to a natural but as-yet-unknown factor.

And, I remind you, the Miller experiment proved that life can come from non-life – something you claim is too difficult to believe in. In other words, you are choosing to disregard the evidence that you, yourself, brought up.

As for your next paragraph, I eagerly anticipate your response to “where did God come from?”

“Even then, you’re so far away from even the most primitive living organism that no mere waving of the hands can bridge this enormous gap. It would be like saying that rain and dirt and wind can create a rudimentary brick and therefore this explains the origin of Sears Tower.” – Again, this is a very common, and very poor, argument. Bricks do not compete with each other for resources. Bricks have no incentive to become the Sears Tower. An animal with a random mutation that endows it with some photosensitivity, on the other hand, has a very clear advantage over other animals in certain environments. Your fundamental mistake is that you are approaching the evidence with the assumption of a design-or-completely random dichotomy. I hate to sound condescending, but I understood more about the mechanisms of evolution while I was in primary school. Evolution is NOT random. It is the process of selecting mutations that occurred randomly (well, in the layman’s understanding of the word). Think of picking three cards at random from a deck and then picking the one you want most when you play poker, rather than just having the top one dealt to you. The cards you get to pick from a random, but the fact that you get to pick will certainly give you an advantage. If everyone else in the game is picking as well, that advantage may end up allowing you to beat others, or others will have an advantage that allows them to beat you. Do you understand now?

“the reason he now believes in a Creator is because he was committed to following the evidence wherever it led him — even if it was to an uncomfortable conclusion that contradicted his lifetime of atheistic scholarship. I hope all of us remain as committed to pursuing truth with the same vigor and open-mindedness.” – If the evidence ever pointed to God (more specifically, to a moral god), I’d be the first to jump on board. I tried extremely hard to be religious, but the evidence led me away. Though I was uncomfortable with where the evidence led me, I had to follow. If it leads me back, I’ll return. I always allow myself open to that possibility. But as you have seen here, I have yet to find any evidence that went beyond “We can’t explain this, therefore God must have done it” or “This is really beautiful and amazing, therefore God must have done it.” This isn’t good enough for me, though maybe it was good enough for Mr. Flew (who may, by the way, be going senile. Who may also be exploring Pascal’s Wager so close to death).

I actually agree with a few of Lee’s points and i’m gonna have to comment on Grimalkins comment.

Firstly, the Urey-Miller experiment did not produce life. It produced amino acids. These are the things living organisms are built of but they are not themselves alive. To infer that the Urey-Miller experiment created life is erroneous.

Secondly, I agree with some of Lee’s points. Specifically we do not know about 2 occasions. 1) how the universe started (or rather the first billionth of a second, we’ve got it sussed after that) and 2) How the first life form with inheritable characteristics came to be.

These are gaps in science we have not yet filled. They are the only real gaps left for god to exist in. They also can only allow a deistic god. i.e. he got the ball rolling then stood back. They do not mean such a god exists, or even infer it, but they do allow room for it.

Now to go from a deistic god to the christian god is a HUGE step. Believing in christianity with a critical mind requires that one to either accept the bible as divinely inspired or not.

If the bible is divinely inspired, then why is it so full of barbarity, nonsense and factual errors? And why does it seem so easy to slot into social patterns of primitive people? If it is divinely inspired then what about Q, the source of several gospels, what about the gospels lost to the council of Nicea? What about the translation and copying errors?

If it is not divinely inspired, then why bother with it at all. There are plenty of books out there that tell you how to live a decent moral live that are much better written and much more kindly and uptodate. If a modern reader discards the silly bits of the bible due to his modern view, then what does he need the bible at all?

Different Christians believe different things so I would ask Lee a few clear questions to get a better handle on his “brand” of christianity:
1) Do you believe that Jesus Christ actually existed in a physical form in ancient Judea and do you believe he could perform miracles?

2) Do you believe that the bible is divinely inspired and if so, how do you account for the errors?

3) Do you believe in hell and do you believe that all us atheists are going there when we die? Do you think this is a just punishment for us? If not, why do you believe god sends us there?

4) I’m going to assume you are a decent human being, i certainly have no reason to think otherwise, how therefore do you reconcile the fact that you work on the sabbath, don’t advocate execution for children that rebel against their parents and don’t think that slavery is acceptable? Why do you reject these parts of the bible? On what basis?

Finally, may i just thank you for returning to answer questions, Its deeply interesting to me to discuss religion with genuinely knowledgable religious people and i appreciate the chance to read your posts and try and understand your views.

What did you find less credible about other religions?

I really take issue with the Kalam Cosmological Argument: “Whatever begins to exist has a cause; the universe began to exist; therefore the universe has a cause.”

I don’t understand why this argument isn’t dismantled more often; the first premise is obviously flawed: “Whatever begins to exist has a cause”

How can you say that? Do we have any empirical data that suggest this? Nothing we observe in the universe ever begins to exist, it merely goes from one state of matter to another. All of the matter in the universe that is or will be is already here either in the form of matter or energy.

Neither is there any evidence that the universe began to exist. The Big Bang theory isn’t a theory of how the universe began, it’s rather a theory of how the universe expanded from being very hot and dense to the point where it is today. To say that the universe began is to extrapolate further backwards in time than we have evidence for.

Thanks to Hemant for recruiting Lee for this dialog, and thanks to Lee for being such an enthusiastic participant.

1a) I understand (but do not share) the discomfort with science’s present inability to adequately explain the origins of life or the universe. What I don’t get is the step from deciding that resort to a deity is necessary for answers to those questions to Jehovah-worship. Why this God, of all the possible Gods out there?

1b) I understand that Strobel has “never claimed that the evidence of cosmology takes a person all the way to Christianity, only that it’s one bit of evidence in a cumulative case for the existence of God.” Doing what I do for a living, I’m comfortable with cumulating different pieces of evidence to reach a conclusion (or at least, deciding that one conclusion is more likely to be true than others). So if I were going to retrace Strobel’s steps, what evidence should I look at other than cosmology?

1c) On a related note, given my comfort with science’s present inability to resolve cosmological questions, is it even possible for me to retrace Strobel’s steps myself? It seems he had a lot of difficulty with origin questions where I have comfort. Without that discomfort, I don’t feel any need to press further where he seemed to.

2) Strobel defines this Creator as an “uncaused, beginningless, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, personal being endowed with freedom of will and enormous power.” I believe I understand all of those adjectives except for “personal.” I think that means that the being is self-aware, possessed of a single identity, but I’m not really sure if that’s what Strobel has in mind. I find it interesting that most of this definition is framed in terms of describing what the creator is not rather than describing what the creator is.

Finally, I appreciate Strobel’s time and energies. Admittedly, it’s a cumbersome format for a discussion but it’s what we have here, and fostering understanding and mutual good will between communities of faithful and unbelieving people is a worthwhile venture.

I know these are the same answers to the same arguments we’ve heard many times… but what makes an omnipotent all powerful being more likely than…say a Universe that has always existed? If you postulate that God always existed – it just makes no logical sense to take that over the universe always having existsted. And the Miller-Urey experiment produced 22 Amino acids and could have easily occured on an early earth near Volcanoes or other geothermal vents…despite the average contents of an early atmosphre. I think Pro-science people get frustrated when the arguments being made are based on not half-truths, but almost non-truths (22 amino acids vs. 2 things that are poisonous to humans). And the “Prime Mover” argument is really non-sequitor. In any case…I appreciate the dialog.

Couple things here I want to address.

Did I investigate other world religions? Yes, especially (but not exclusively) Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, Judaism, and New Age beliefs. In my writings, I’ve described why I believe the evidence points more strongly toward Christianity than other world faiths.

In general, the stock response to this question is objection after objection to the religion in question, but rarely does the convert’s chosen faith ever receive the same type of scrutiny. It almost seems like pre-converts go, “Ok, I’m almost ready to convert now, but first I want to make sure no other religion is the right one,” and then they go looking for reasons to refute them. I hope your intellectual honesty is such that (1) Christianity received the same level of criticism in your studies as other world religions, and (2) you made just as much effort to resolve the criticisms leveled at other world religions as those leveled at Christianity.

Also, are you confident that no obscure, primitive, regional, tribal or syncretic religion you may have glossed over (for example) might possibly be the correct one, and that you have a better reason other than its lack of popularity?

whatever caused the creation of space and time must be … uncaused, beginningless, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, personal … with freedom of will and enormous power … that’s a core concept of God.

Ok, first things first. The only thing you can infer from a logical standpoint is that, logically, to avoid infinite regress, something at some point in history has to be uncaused.

Beginningless? By this you of course mean eternal, and you’re going to have to show how this follows.

Timeless/Spaceless (i.e. dimensionless)? Tenuous, but OK, if for some reason time and space must be created.

Immaterial? Now we get into some interesting philosophical fodder. It has been pointed out that if something is not directly observable, it must interact with nature in a testable way, or it cannot be shown, reliably, to exist. Do you believe such a test exists, and that the Christian concept of God passes it? Bear in mind that some of us were Christians, and have labored for years on the brink of belief and nonbelief, crying out to God for some kind of convincing evidence so we didn’t have to doubt anymore. Remember that even when Thomas asked for evidence, it was given him!

Personal? I’m sorry, you lost me on that one. You’ll have to show me how this follows from the evidence. It is not enough to say that we, as persons, must come from a personal source, as you are then conflating cosmology with philosophy/sociology, or projecting your own attributes onto your image of God. Is it necessarily true that since fish have gills, their Creator must also have gills?

Freedom of will? Einstein himself once mused that perhaps God had no choice in the matter of creating the universe. That’s a bit of a cop-out as an appeal to authority, but once again I fail to see the reasoning.

Enormous power? Well, the Universe itself contains incredible amounts of energy, and I can only assume you are arguing that this energy has to come from something. So I will once again concede this point.

So if we accept that at some point there existed something that has no cause, is dimensionless, and is capable of producing incredible amounts of energy and matter seemingly from nothing, and we observe that in some philosophical frameworks, these are attributes of gods, we have a hypothesis that a god may precede the universe. But that’s all it is — a hypothesis!

We also have another model that fits these attributes nicely – the Big Bang.

Therefore, let me reiterate my previous challenge: is it your contention that if a model fits the data more completely than any other, that that model is necessarily the correct one?

As one expert told me: “Some textbooks fudge by saying, ‘Well, even if you use a realistic atmosphere, you still get organic molecules, as if that solves the problem…. Do you know what they are? Formaldehyde! Cyanide! They may be organic molecules, but in my lab at Berkeley you couldn’t even have a capped bottle of formaldehyde in the room, because the stuff is so toxic… The idea that using a realistic atmosphere gets you the first step in the origin of life is just laughable… To suggest that formaldehyde and cyanide give you the right substrate for the origin of life, well, it’s just a joke.”

This feels a whole lot like quote mining. Several questions come to mind: Does this “expert” have a vested interest in Christianity? Is there a context to this quote? Does (s)he realize that what is toxic to one form of life isn’t necessarily toxic to another? What is his/her area of expertise? His/her status among other leading experts in the field of abiogenesis research?

You’ll find a lot of us are those socially awkward, glasses-donning “science geeks” that got swirlies in high school, so you’ll have to forgive us for holding you up to a level of scientific rigor and requesting that you establish the reliability and credibility of your sources.

Lee, you drink Hydrogen! and Oxygen!, two combustible gases, on a daily basis. Oh noes!! You’re even partially composed of said elements, as well as Sulfur, Lead, Arsenic, Chlorine (amongst many other elements). Oh, the horror! Lee, who is this “expert” you mentioned? What are his/her credentials? What was the full context of that quote? (etc.) That Formaldehyde/Cyanide quote appears as a straw man designed to attack research into chemical evolution (and I was mocking it, of course).

Also, are you using Quentin Smith’s statement as a blanket statement for what you think _all_ atheists (or anyone in general that accepts evolution) think? There’s this whole matter/energy thing, FWIW. And we all _know_ matter & energy exist. Why don’t we all know that a god exists? He/She/It sure seems to be a sneaky Fellow/Fella/Critter.

Anyway, it’s nice to see you engaging in dialogue with the godless. I’d love to see you and Hemant have a discussion on TV, or better, in front of an audience (so more questions could be answered) — or better yet, before a televised audience! How about a US tour with just the two of you?

Two things:
1. “in my lab at Berkeley you couldn’t even have a capped bottle of formaldehyde in the room, because the stuff is so toxic”

Off topic, but I wonder why the same precautions aren’t taken at most “open casket” funerals where the corpse is loaded with formaldehyde. Or better yet, what about my old Gross Anatomy text, sitting in my library downstairs that still wreaks of the stuff [formaldehyde]? Guess I’m doomed.

All this to say, I wonder about your friend at Berkeley’s credentials. His statement seems a bit hyperbolic.

2. The Kalam Cosmological argument.
Dan Barker pretty much destroys this argument in his re-publication (Godless: How an Evangelical preacher became one of America’s leading atheists).

Lee restated Kalam:
“Whatever begins to exist has a cause; the universe began to exist; therefore the universe has a cause.”

The flaw is so obvious. This is a faulty argument. It begs the question.

If God is the only object accommodated by the set of things that do not begin to exist, then the cosmological argument is begging the question. If there is something else that does not “begin to exist” then what are they, and how do you eliminate them as potential causes for the universe?

As a corollary, which Mr. Strobel does not mention, Kalam involves the assumption that “Infinity is just a concept. An actual infinity does not exist in reality.”

Here, Kalam fails again.

If the existence of an actual infinity is impossible, that disproves the existence of an infinite God.

For me, you’ve got to have a plausible reason for believing a god exists before you set out to discover his/her/its nature. Jehovah fails in this regard.

For more on the Kalam, check out Dan’s Book. I borrowed heavily (read, plagarized) from it for this post. I included a link above.

Great discussion! Limited due to the format and medium, to be sure, but there is a lot of good dialog here. I am learning a lot! Too many discussions of this sort end up in flame wars and it is a huge credit to all sides that this one is so respectful.

I look forward to more.

I enjoy having coffee with people, including Christians, who are able not to prejudge me. But Lee Strobel has already prejudged me as irrational for wanting to be a good person.

In his previous responses he wrote

to be honest, to this day I can’t figure out why atheists would choose any other path [than a self-indulgent, me-first, narcissistic life], although I know many do

I wrote elsewhere about why Lee might have said this and how it’s not even consistent with his own stated experience.

I noticed that other people picked up on this comment of his from last time but evidently he chose not to say anything about that this time.

Yet of all he said that bothers me the most because it’s personal. As far as I’m concerned Lee can believe what he likes about God or the universe in general but I consider it disrespectful of him to imply my choice to try to be good is irrational, especially since he, when still an atheist, made the same choice as soon as he saw his wife behaving in a non-self-indulgent, non-me-first, non-narcissistic way.

Talk, talk, talk. Mr. Strobel, I sincerely appreciate your gracious and respectful efforts for constructive dialogue, and although my remarks may be pointed, I am earnest and my intention is to honor that stance. You have convinced me of one thing:

You have convinced me that the definition of Christian apologetics is the art of talking for so long about a claim for which there is no evidence that people begin to think that all that talk is the evidence.

I need evidence. Talk is not evidence. Evidence has three dimensions and mass.

So far, whenever you talk about evidence, almost all of it is about what you consider are the weaknesses in evidence that contradicts Biblical accounts of the universe and life. But you’re still talking about three-dimensional evidence with mass, and talking endlessly about the weaknesses in theory X does not imply any strengths in theory Y. When you occasionally get around to talking about what you consider to be affirmative evidence for your proposition, it’s all talk. Where’s your three-dimensional evidence with mass? You talk about your thoughts, the thoughts of others, your feelings, the feelings of others, but none of that would tip a scale with a billionth of a gram of mass. It’s just talk.

The god you describe is a god with many excuses and caveats attached. When we ask to see him, we’re told he’s invisible. When we ask to hear him, we’re told he’s inaudible, and so on, or we’re shown beautiful sunsets or laughing babies or star-filled skies. These are usually presented to us with a condescending why-are-you-so-blind tone. I am neither blind nor willfully unseeing. I see sunsets, babies and stars. When we ask why is he so elusive, we’re told that for reasons we cannot comprehend, he wants to be elusive. Sometimes absurd non sequiturs are added at this point about free will and faith. Yours is not even the incredible shrinking god of the ever-narrowing gaps, it is the god of excuses for his everlastingly embarrassing absence.

Apologists are like the host of a talk show where the guest of honor is late. He’s two thousand years late, and the host has to keep the audience entertained and convinced that the one they came to see will be here any minute. They’re getting fidgety, and some are leaving and demanding their money back. So the talk show host does all the talking and talks and talks all about the absent guest of honor until people’s imaginations fill in the empty chair. They’ll sit there doing that for their whole lives.

I find John’s 1:1 statement very ironic: “In the beginning there was the Word.” Yes, that is correct. From the beginning to the end, it’s all words. It’s all talk. Show me, please.

I think before Mr. Strobel expounds any further on the genesis of life, he might like to take a look at this book.

The NCSE had this to say about Jonathan Wells’ treatment of the Miller-Urey experiments:

First, Wells’s claim that researchers are ignoring the new atmospheric data, and that experiments like the Miller-Urey experiment fail when the atmospheric composition reflects current theories, is simply false. The current literature shows that scientists working on the origin and early evolution of life are well aware of the current theories of the earth’s early atmosphere and have found that the revisions have little effect on the results of various experiments in biochemical synthesis. Despite Wells’s claims to the contrary, new experiments since the Miller-Urey ones have achieved similar results using various corrected atmospheric compositions (Figure 1; Rode, 1999; Hanic et al., 2000). Further, although some authors have argued that electrical energy might not have efficiently produced organic molecules in the earth’s early atmosphere, other energy sources such as cosmic radiation (e.g., Kobayashi et al., 1998), high temperature impact events (e.g., Miyakawa et al., 2000), and even the action of waves on a beach (Commeyras, et al., 2002) would have been quite effective.

Full article here.

I suspect that if Strobel isn’t getting his information about Miller-Urey from Wells, he’s getting it from someone selling similar talking points. Indeed, a lot of what I see of Strobel looks like an uncritical repetition of apologists’ talking points.

I see the whole Abrahamic God thing playing out as farce. It’s as though that particular deity wants to do comedy.

The Christian version of the God of Abraham says to Christians,

Heh! I’m sending you a savior. Here’s how it works: if you don’t believe in it…you burn in hell forever, and that includes the Jews. No Jesus. No flame resistance. Period.

At the same time the same exact God, evidently whispers to the Jews who are no less pious or devout,

Don’t listen to the Christians, that’s not the real savior. And, guess what?, you won’t burn in hell forever.

Then, a few centuries later the same exact God tells the Muslims,

Here’s your ticket to paradise, but it’s not Jesus, it’s Muhammed. The Jews will burn, the Christians will burn. But, for you, Muhammed, the real savior, is the one true prophet.

Think about this.

Beliefs covered by the label Christianity are all over the map of human wishful thinking, to the point of incoherency. There are atheist Christianities. Christianities which don’t believe in miracles or that Jesus was resurrected or that Jesus was born of a virgin. There are Christianities which deny the existence of hell, and Christianities they believe hell is very real. And, most Christianities would never acknowledge that their version of god is compatible with the various gods incarnated in the Muslim sects.

The Muslims will stand up and say, “what our god told the Christians is wrong. Fact is, our holy book actually tells us in plain Arabic to kill non-Muslims.” Clearly, the Muslims don’t think the Christians have it right. The Jews, on the advice of the same god, will state that Christians are mistaken.

No one should buy into such malarkey, and those who are currently part of it should see it for the intrinsically bizarre notion that it is and get out.

Strobel suggests to us that we should accept Christianity, and that it makes sense in the complete absence of evidence to have faith in what the Christian god tells believers, yet, the same exact god is telling Jews and Muslims that Christianity is wrong. No one should even pretend to have faith in something as incoherent as the Abrahamic god. Seems that each of these religions has to have faith that their god is telling only them the truth while it lies to the other two. Is that really something to base your hope on?

People should look through Strobel’s dreck and see that he’s getting paid bigtime to pretend and perpetuate this stuff.

If Christianity conferred to its faithful any tangible benefit of note it would be observable in all Christians not just in those to whom the cash flows for speaking fees, books, clerical and administrator salaries, bonuses, and the like. Fact is, if, as Strobel and other Christians claim, atheists lead morally deplorable lives relative to Christians, it should be straightforwardly observable, but it is not. Here in the US there are more than 30 million atheists, so if even a small fraction of them were as inherently morally corrupt as Strobel defines them to be, it would be so obvious as to be undeniable. As we so often see, here is a religious person lying about the state of the world, but among his usual associates, his lies go unchallenged.

This man claims that atheists are not moral while he would stand in defense of his beloved abstraction, “Christianity.” Has this man ever publicly spewed the same venom at the Roman Catholic Church over the sexual immorality of its clergy? For centuries essentially every member of the Catholic preisthood has been aware that the innocent were being sexually victimized, yet none of them stood up to defend the victims. Clearly, the Christianity of the priests did not and does not make them moral.

Does Mr. Strobel voice outrage at Christian Scientists who let their children and other family members die instead of getting them life-saving medical attention? Hundreds of Christian Scientists die every year from easily treated afflictions while their families look on while praying to the same god that tells Jews that Christianity is hogwash. How is it exactly that the Christianity of Christian Scientists makes them moral? If Christianity can make a parent abandon their own child to the ravages of disease when proven cures are at hand, Christianity has no claim to moral effectiveness.

Does Mr. Strobel publicly denounce the current African witch hunts being perpetrated by Christian clergy that are taking the lives of hundreds of women and children? Does he denounce the stupidity written into the Bible by ancient ignorant scribes that give rise to such immoral behavior? Many of the children are being burnt, hanged or bludgeoned by their parents who can’t afford the exorcism their charlatan clergy demand is required. The very Christianity that Strobel claims people cannot be moral without, has so corrupted these people’s minds that they cannot even protect their own children.

If these are examples of Mr. Strobel’s Christian morality, it is apparent we would all do well without it.

Americans pump over 200 billion dollars a year into the Christianity industry and only a small fraction of it(a little over 10 percent) finds its way to humanitarian aid. Every year Christianity spends more of its money on advertising, legal fees and settlement costs related to morally corrupt clergy(including pedophile priests), public relations, political lobbying, and hush money to avoid the publicity of trials than it does on humanitarian causes.

To pretend that the thing Strobel calls his god is worthy of placing one’s faith in is complete farce. To contend that his beloved Christianity leads to moral behavior is demonstrably wrong. While many Christians are morally acceptable, many are also morally reprehensible.

Mr. Strobel makes a living patting Christians on their heads and stroking their egos. He tells them that as members of his ingroup, they are inherently morally superior to outsiders. In turn they buy his books and pay his appearance fees. He lies to his fellow Christians about non-believers though he has demonstrated a lack of understanding of them. He defines non-believers as immoral.

So, until Mr. Strobel can demonstrate somewhere other than in his own mind that Christianity observably sets its practitioners in better stead than the rest of humanity, he should keep his appraisals of other worldviews to himself.

With each comment, I found myself wishing I could meet with the writer personally, sit down together with a cup of coffee at Starbucks, and have a true back-and-forth conversation

God yes! I would like to extend our Canadian friend’s offer and say that the next time Lee is in Boston, he should let us know and we will set him up with no end of kind nonbelievers who would love to buy him coffee and have an engaging discussion.

I noticed another common misunderstanding of the principles of evolution by natural selection:

But let’s pretend for a moment that you could produce some amino acids by shooting electricity through the atmosphere of the early earth. Even then, you’re so far away from even the most primitive living organism that no mere waving of the hands can bridge this enormous gap. It would be like saying that rain and dirt and wind can create a rudimentary brick and therefore this explains the origin of Sears Tower.

One need not climb Dawkins’ Mount Improbable from the front! The gap is not purported to be bridged by waving of the hands, nor even of any single step. The evolution of life as it stands right now arose from countless little steps over the course of billions of years.

Strobel writes: “Some posters reacted to my comment that I didn’t have enough faith to believe that nothing produces everything [referring to cosmology]; non-life produces life; randomness produces fine-tuning; chaos produces information; unconsciousness produces consciousness; and non-reason produces reason.”

Sadly, this statement only clarifies what I suspect many of us have known all along: Stroble does not grasp some basic principles of studies in question. One of the more glraing errors is the false dichotomy between life and non-life. I suppose that deep down, Strobel is an essentialist, which oeads to all kinds of problems since essentialism has few points in common with modern science in general, and less with biology.

Back in April Hemant put out the call for questions for Lee Strobel. I thought I asked a very direct one.

I’ll re-ask it.

I look at the request for a question as a bit of a puzzle.

The puzzle is this: “Can I formulate a question for Lee Strobel that will garner any response different from what a reader of his books would expect? Any question that will cause him to pause for a moment and consider the thoughts of someone outside his worldview, before launching in to the standard apologetics?”

Here’s the best I could come up with:

Lee,

In your book, The Case for a Creator, why did you choose the people you chose to interview?

The title of your book is:

“The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God”

You have a chapter on Cosmology, for example. Presumably you are covering this subject as a journalist. And presumably you are going to investigate the scientific evidence in Cosmology that points towards the existence of God.

In fact, this is what you say in this part of your book:

“I wasn’t interested in unsupported conjecture or armchair musings by pipe-puffing theorists. I wanted the hard facts of mathematics, the cold data of cosmology, and only the most reasonable inferences that could be drawn from them (p. 95).”

In fact, this chapter is called The Evidence of Cosmology: Beginning with a Bang
An Interview with Dr. William Lane Craig

Now, if it were me and I were looking to write about this evidence, I’d interview a cosmologist. Call me an idiot. Maybe I don’t know how this whole “christian apologist” line of business works.

But here’s what I’d do for a chapter on cosmology: I’d try to get an interview with Stephen Hawking, if I could. Or at least a PhD in astrophysics or relativity, right? But instead, you interview a Philosophy professor at a school of theology, the intelligent design advocate and fellow at the Discovery Institute Dr. William Lane Craig. Is that REALLY getting the hard facts of math, and the cold data? He’s a pipe-puffing philosopher!

You have a chapter on Physics, but you don’t interview a physicist. Instead you interview an associate professor of philosophy at Messiah College.

Why is it that you seem to have picked and chosen your interviewees to fall into line with your belief system? You had to go so far to make your point, that you had to resort to professors of philosophy at religious colleges, rather than talk to cosmologists and physicists about cosmology and physics. Why is that?

Is that good scholarship? Is it good journalism? Is it the sign of an open inquiry? Are those the cold hard facts of math, as found by an unbiased journalist looking at all sides of an issue? Should I, as a reader, come away with that thinking that I heard the best possible case for the existence of God, and seeing that no actual physicists or cosmologists were interviewed, thereby conclude that the case for God is incredibly weak? It looks weak to me if you have to stack the deck with non-cosmologists talking cosmology and non-physicists talking physics.

Are these really the very very best experts that the Creator of the entire universe can muster as expert witnesses? I’m looking to get F. Lee Bailey to argue the very very best case God’s got. Why did you chicken out and just get some religious apologists and pipe-puffers instead of scientists?

Because, I may be incredibly dense, but it sounds to me that you either could not find a physicist or a cosmologist who would wax sufficiently religious, or you were purposefully stacking the deck. As I said, I might not get exactly how this apologist gig works. Is your primary audience christians or non-christians? Because I cannot imagine many non-christians would accept a philosophy professor from a bible college to be a better authority on cosmology than an actual cosmologist.

You seem to fancy yourself an expert on Biblical history. Would it be alright for me to interview a professor of economics or law or sports medicine or some other unrelated field who has leaned back in his armchair and puffed on his pipe to determine whether or not the Dead Sea Scrolls are accurately translated? Or should I actually confer with linguists and historians and archaeologists?

I’m sorry, but you asking a professor of philosophy about the laws of physics and the stars and the galaxies is kind of like asking a pot-smoking navel-gazing hippy about the aerodynamics of the space shuttle. Between you, me, and the lamppost, I don’t think those philosophy guys can tell the difference between a quasar and a qualium. (But a lot of them sure know what a quaalude is!) As for me, I’ll trust the guys who can actually land a rocket on mars or the moon to tell me about mars and the moon, and the philosophers can lean back in their armchairs and puff on their (usually not tobacco) pipes and blow smoke-rings and convince themselves that they understand the inner workings of the universe without looking through a single telescope.

I suspect in answer, you will refer me to some actual physicist or cosmologist who espouses the creationist point of view, or at least a deist one. What I’m wondering though is why you didn’t see fit to perform that due diligence in your book itself. You know, as a Journalist and all, looking at the scientific evidence, and the cold, hard facts of math, and not content with the musings of pipe-puffers.

Anyway, here’s hoping that I came up with a true puzzler of a question. One that might cause you to pause and reflect for an instant before launching into standard apologetic boilerplate.

And thanks for conversing with us here.

Siamang, if Strobel answers any of the (follow-up) questions in this thread, I hope he answers the ‘main’ one expressed in your last post.

Nicely articulated.

Thanks, AxeGrrl.

Here’s a run-down of the interviewees in “Case for a Creator”:

JP Moreland: philosophy teacher at Biola (formerly Bible Institute of Los Angeles). Fellow at the Discovery Institute.

Stephen Myer, former philosophy teacher at the religious Palm Beach Atlantic University. Co-founder of the Discovery Institute. Holds PhD in “Philosophy of Science”.

Michael Behe Biochemist at Lehigh University, Senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.

Guillermo Gonzalez astrophysicist at at Iowa State University until May 2008, and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.

Robin Collins, professor of philosophy at Messiah College and former Fellow of the Discovery Institute.

William Lane Craig, Professor of Philosophy at Biola University and Fellow of the Discovery Institute.

Johnathan Wells, Molecular Biologist and senior fellow at … well you can guess by now, can’t you?

There you go. That’s the breadth and width of Lee Strobel’s “Case”. Seven dudes from the Discovery Institute. Three scientists and four “philosophers” teaching at bible colleges. And those of us who have followed the Intelligent Design movement have ample, *ample* information as to the *ahem* character and reliability of the three non-philosophers interviewed.

In fact, I know more about Behe than I know about Strobel, and if Strobel picked Behe, that tells me *volumes* about how skeptical a “journalist” Strobel is.

I guess talking to someone who *wasn’t* a fellow of the Discovery Institute… you know, that just wouldn’t be A Journalist Investigating the Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God.

Looks like he got a wide and varied set of opinions that ran the gamut from A to B!

Ugh.

I found out that Strobel also published “The Case for a Creator For Kids!”

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0310711487/ref=s9k2a_c1_at4-rfc_p?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-3&pf_rd_r=0R2F298FQ894QZB9JP4K&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=463383391&pf_rd_i=507846

The product description says “Excellent for Homeschool Use”.

This is nothing but indoctrination.

Hey, Richard, should we buy a copy and go over this together and post our review of the “hard scientific facts” noted therein?

You know. For kids.

>:-(

I’ve got some time right now, I think we should get a couple copies of this and meet for coffee.

I plan to use a hiliter pen.

Otherwise, yes, libraries.

Just checked. Los Angeles Public Library system doesn’t carry this book. And I’m not about to suggest they add it to their collection!