{"id":99747,"date":"2023-04-29T15:31:18","date_gmt":"2023-04-29T21:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=99747"},"modified":"2023-04-29T17:49:48","modified_gmt":"2023-04-29T23:49:48","slug":"99747","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2023\/04\/99747.html","title":{"rendered":"Atheism before the firing squad?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"BYU-Idaho<\/a>
The Thomas E. Ricks Memorial Gardens at Brigham Young University-Idaho, where Brent Schmidt teaches\u00a0 \u00a0(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The estimable Jeff Lindsay has penned an enthusiastic book recommendation:\u00a0 \u201cRelational Faith<\/i>: An Essential Book for Understanding \u201cFaith\u201d as Used in New Testament Times and for Appreciating the Restoration\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 Here\u2019s an excerpt from what he has to say:<\/p>\n

\n

There\u2019s a new book, Brent Schmidt\u2019s\u00a0Relational Faith<\/em>, that may be one of the best resources around to help Latter-day Saints and perhaps many other Christians understand and explain what the Bible means when it talks about faith in Christ. Not only does this book help us cut through the clouds of confusion around issues like salvation by faith in Christ vs. \u201cworks,\u201d it also helps us better appreciate and better be able to teach the ancient, biblical nature of the covenant path that is emphasized in the Church. In fact, the remarkable scholarship in this resource provides thorough and intricate support for the fundamental reality of a divine Restoration of the ancient basic principles of the Gospel through the Prophet Joseph Smith.<\/p>\n

Relational Faith: The Transformation and Restoration of Pistis as Knowledge, Trust, Confidence, and Covenantal Faithfulness<\/em>\u00a0by Dr. Brent J. Schmidt (Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 2022) is an essential resource that Latter-day Saints should at least know about if not have on their shelves.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
The Heart and Soul Nebulae\u00a0 \u00a0(NASA\/JPL\/Caltech\/UCLA)\n

<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Sean McDowell and Jonathan Morrow, Is God Just a Human Invention? And Seventeen Other Questions Raised by the New Atheists<\/em> (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2010), 96, give a couple of examples of apparent cosmic fine-tuning:<\/p>\n

First, the expansion rate of the universe after the big bang had to be just right to support life.\u00a0 \u201cIf the balance between gravity and the expansion rate were altered by one part in one million, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion,\u201d claim scientists Mark Whorton and Hill Roberts, \u201cthere would be no galaxies, stars, planets, or life.\u201d\u00a0 How precise is this?\u00a0 If the initial mass of the universe differed by as little as one grain of salt, there would be no universe.\u00a0 Add one grain of salt and the universe would not have expanded; take one grain away and the universe would have expanded too quickly to form galaxies, solar systems, and habitable planets.<\/p>\n

Second, each of the four fundamental forces of nature had to be carefully fine-tuned for life: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force.\u00a0 In particular, the ratio of the electromagnetic force to the gravitational force must be delicately balanced to one part in 10^40 (that\u2019s one part in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000).\u00a0 If the ratio varied even slightly, then our universe would not have small and large stars, which are both necessary for a planet to sustain life.\u00a0 How delicate a balance is this?\u00a0 Imagine covering one billion continents the size of North America with coins.\u00a0 Stack the coins in columns that reach to the moon.\u00a0 Paint one coin red and place it in one of the columns.\u00a0 Blindfold a friend an have her attempt to pick it out.\u00a0 The odds are roughly 1 in 10^40 that she will.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And those are just two<\/em> \u2014 or, depending upon how you count them, five \u2014 of the many<\/em> examples of apparent fine-tuning that might be cited here.\u00a0 McDowell and Morrow cite a British mathematician and physicist (who, after the publication of their book, won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics) in order to show the magnitude of the fine-tuning issue:<\/p>\n

What happens when we try to assign a probability to the fine-tuning of all the known constants of nature?\u00a0 Oxford physicist Roger Penrose concluded that such a task would be impossible, since the necessary digits would be greater than the number of elementary particles in the universe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

Facing evidence that seems strongly to suggest that the universe has been fine-tuned for life, some who are unwilling to buy the notion of designed fine-tuning have suggested that there\u2019s really nothing remarkable here.\u00a0 After all, since we would not exist in a universe that wasn\u2019t<\/em> suited for us to exist in it, we can only be commenting on the life-friendliness of the universe since it\u2019s life-friendly!\u00a0 We shouldn\u2019t\u00a0 be surprised that the universe welcomes life.\u00a0 No big deal.\u00a0 (This idea is sometimes called \u201cthe weak anthropic principle.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wrote a column for the Deseret News<\/em> back in 2014 about a memorable analogy given by the Canadian philosopher John Andrew Leslie in reply to that response, and then I incorporated that column into a 2019 blog entry that is readily accessible to anybody who might be interested:\u00a0 \u201cMaybe, of course, the firing squad was just on your side . . . \u201c<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Now I append to Professor Leslie\u2019s analogy another one that I\u2019ve come across, in McDowell and Morrow, Is God Just a Human Invention?<\/em>, 98-99:<\/p>\n

\n

Imagine you go to a professional football game and find out the two people seated next to you have last names alphabetically close to yours.\u00a0 You probe further and find out the entire stadium is seated in alphabetical order.\u00a0 What would you think?\u00a0 Suppose the person sitting next to you says, \u201cEverybody\u2019s gotta be seated somewhere.\u00a0 So you shouldn\u2019t be surprised that we all happen to be seated in alphabetical order.\u201d\u00a0 Would you accept such a claim?\u00a0 Obviously not!\u00a0 The reason is that you do not need to know why each person needs to be seated somewhere.\u00a0 You need to know why each person is seated particularly in alphabetical order<\/em>.\u00a0 The fact that people need to be seated somewhere does nothing to explain how we came to be seated in alphabetical order.\u00a0 Yes, we need a seat somewhere in the stadium, and there are many possibilities.\u00a0 But being seated in alphabetical order conforms to a deeper pattern that demands justification.\u00a0 Claiming that we have to sit somewhere doesn\u2019t explain our particularly surprising arrangement.\u00a0 The same is true for the universe.\u00a0 Given all the possible variations of the constants, why do we happen to find ourselves in a universe capable of supporting life?\u00a0 Merely claiming that we could not observe ourselves in any other universe offers no explanation for why we are actually in a fine-tuned universe in the first place.<\/p>\n

Philosopher John Leslie expands on this need for explanation in his famous \u201cfiring squad\u201d analogy.\u00a0 Suppose fifty trained sharp-shooters are lined up to take your life, and they all miss.\u00a0 You could hardly dismiss this occurrence by saying, \u201cIf they hadn\u2019t all missed me, then I shouldn\u2019t be contemplating the matter so I mustn\u2019t be surprised that they missed.\u201d\u00a0 You should still be surprised that you are alive given the enormous unlikelihood of all the sharpshooters missing their mark.\u00a0 Your survival demands an explanation.\u00a0 And so does the fine-tuning of the laws of the universe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u00a0 \u00a0 The estimable Jeff Lindsay has penned an enthusiastic book recommendation:\u00a0 \u201cRelational Faith: An Essential Book for Understanding \u201cFaith\u201d as Used in New Testament Times and for Appreciating the Restoration\u201d\u00a0 Here\u2019s an excerpt from what he has to say: There\u2019s a new book, Brent Schmidt\u2019s\u00a0Relational Faith, that may be one of the best resources […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":30253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[35982,35082,1809,9709,17765,909,4471,10127,545,35991,33954,4684,35988,35916,7215,34860,34857,35913,2905,1812,1815,7113,35985,788,55,1667,2625,17723,35979,35088,17720,11401,35910,3775,35271,4621,33948,34848,35268,4623,33951],"class_list":["post-99747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-brent-j-schmidt","tag-brent-schmidt","tag-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints","tag-electromagnetism","tag-expansion-rate","tag-faith","tag-faith-alone","tag-fine-tuned","tag-fine-tuning","tag-firing-squad","tag-four-fundamental-forces","tag-gravity","tag-hill-roberts","tag-is-god-just-a-human-invention","tag-jeff-lindsay","tag-john-andrew-leslie","tag-john-leslie","tag-jonathan-morrow","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-latter-day-saints","tag-lds","tag-lds-church","tag-mark-whorton","tag-mormon","tag-mormonism","tag-mormons","tag-new-testament","tag-penrose","tag-pistis","tag-relational-faith","tag-roger-penrose","tag-schmidt","tag-sean-mcdowell","tag-sola-fide","tag-strong-force","tag-strong-nuclear-force","tag-strong-nuclear-force-constant","tag-weak-anthropic-principle","tag-weak-force","tag-weak-nuclear-force","tag-weak-nuclear-force-constant"],"yoast_head":"\nAtheism 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