Of Apes and Men: Are You Pulling My Tail?

While checking the forecast on accuweather.com, I was surprised to find, on a weather site no less, an article entitled, “Why don’t humans have tails? Scientists find answers in an unlikely place.” (The article, posted 3/25/2024, was written by Mindy Weisberger of CNN. I have posted the link below.)

Frankly, I had never asked this question! I thought I knew the answer! Was I missing something? Maybe a tail? I was curious.

One’s verdict regarding the Genesis account brings inevitable consequences. Other questions and answers inevitably follow. Based on the Genesis record, which I (and many scientists) hold to be true, it’s super easy to explain and understand why human beings do not have tails.

We never had tails! God made man as a separate creation, from the dust of the earth. Man is not a glorified, improved, evolved ape. Period.

However, those who deny the Genesis account desperately seek to find another mechanism by which life as we know it came to be. As a result, there are countless unanswerable questions which emerge.

Where are our tails, friends?

Great apes have tails. Human beings do not. This is a problem for the evolutionist, who had presupposed that apes’ tails evolved because tails were beneficial mutations. (The article cited below will acknowledge this.) Therefore, apes with tails would have survived due to this added resource, while those that did not would have perished. Survival of the fittest, you know.

So how did evolution become de-evolution? Why don’t human beings have tails?

This is a huge challenge. Unbelieving scientists have spent countless hours, time, and money to discover the answers to this crisis. According to the article’s title, they found “answers” – real answers, not ideas, theories, or possibilities. How? By going to “an unlikely place.” Hmmm … That has you wondering where they went, how they got there, and how they could be sure that these were the actual answers.

At the top of the web page there is a photo of monkeys. The caption reads, “Tails are useful in many ways, but — unlike these vervet monkeys pictured in Lake Mburo National Park in Uganda — humans’ closest primate relatives lost the appendages about 25 million years ago.” There is no footnote or source cited to prove this statement.

The reason for the loss of our tails is said to be a case of “gene jumping.” “Jumping genes” are genetic sequences capable of switching their location in the genome and triggering or undoing mutations.

The article states in part:

Tails are useful for balance, propulsion, communication and defense against biting insects. However, humans and our closest primate relatives — the great apes — said farewell to tails about 25 million years ago, when the group split from Old World monkeys (Again, no evidence of this claim is provided. It’s a “given” to the writer of this CNN article.). The loss has long been associated with our transition to bipedalism, but little was known about the genetic factors that triggered primate taillessness.

Now, scientists have traced our tail loss to a short sequence of genetic code that is abundant in our genome but had been dismissed for decades as junk DNA, a sequence that seemingly serves no biological purpose. They identified the snippet, known as an Alu element, in the regulatory code of a gene associated with tail length called TBXT. Alu is also part of a class known as jumping genes, which are genetic sequences capable of switching their location in the genome and triggering or undoing mutations.

Study coauthor Itai Yanai is a professor with the Institute for Systems Genetics and Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. This “expert” admitted that this “jumping-gene answer” was “astounding.” He said, “I think it’s astounding that one Alu element — one small, little thing — can lead to the loss of a whole appendage like the tail.”

Astounding indeed! And how did a “jumping gene” – just one – in one of our “primate ancestors” – just one – lead to the loss of tails in all – yes, all – great apes and human beings from that point forward?

Another admission – a very honest one – came from the lead study author Bo Xia, a research fellow in the Gene Regulation Observatory and principal investigator at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University. Xia said, “The more I study the genome, the more I realize how little we know about it,” Xia said.

In our current social and cultural climate, unproved humanistic assumptions about origins are stated and affirmed in biology, chemistry, genetics, paleontology, and a host of other sciences. We who believe the Bible to be the inspired, inerrant, authoritative Word of God must continue to ask …

“Are you pulling my tail?”

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/why-dont-humans-have-tails-scientists-find-answers-in-an-unlikely-place/1634668 

 

 

Stephen Hawking - "The universe began with 'almost infinitely small quantum foam of the singularity before the Big Bang.'" Say that again?

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1 Cor 1:20 Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. 

1 Cor 2:9 But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— 10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

I write today with love for the lost, sorrow for the influence that unbelievers have on others, and a renewed desire to share the good news of Christ with all. May we who believe teach and offer hope to our dying world. May we speak the truth in love.

Stephen Hawking, the brilliant world-famous physicist who died March 15, 2018, never accepted the simple truth, “In the beginning God.” Note what he preached instead, with great certainty and confidence. What follows are excerpts from a BreakPoint post, then two posts taken directly from Fox News.

Stephen Hawking and the Limits of our Knowledge (BreakPoint)

Hawking’s book, A Brief History of Time, became a global hit, selling more than 10 million copies. He made regular appearances on television, including hit shows like “The Big Bang Theory” and (in animated form) “The Simpsons.” The film about his life, “The Theory of Everything,” did more than $100-million at the box office and produced five Academy Award nominations and one win.

Stephen Hawking didn’t stay in his lane. He was a scientist, but in each of his books and nearly all of his media appearances, he ventured into philosophy, masking metaphysical observations and proclamations in language of scientific certainty.

Hawking regularly opined on what are known as the “ultimate questions,” such as “Where did everything come from?” “Why are we here?” “What’s the meaning of life?” “Who are we as human beings?” and “What is our ultimate destiny?”

He said:

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.”

“There is no heaven or afterlife… that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

“The scientific account is complete. Theology is unnecessary.”

Stephen Hawking says he knows what happened before the dawn of time (Fox News)

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2018/03/05/stephen-hawking-says-knows-what-happened-before-dawn-time.html

It’s the biggest question in the universe. What happened before the Big Bang? Now world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking says he has an answer.

“The boundary condition of the universe ... is that it has no boundary,” Hawking tells the National Geographic’s Star Talk show this weekend.

In other words, there is no time before time began as time was always there.

It was just different.

He tells physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson that amid the almost infinitely small quantum foam of the singularity before the Big Bang, time existed in a ‘bent’” state.

It was distorted along another dimension — always getting fractionally closer to, but never becoming, nothing.

So there never was a Big Bang that created something from nothing.

It’s just looks that way from our point of perspective.

“All the evidence seems to indicate, that the universe has not existed forever, but that it had a beginning, about 15 billion years ago,” Hawking says in one of his lectures.

“There must have been a beginning. Otherwise, the universe would be in a state of complete disorder by now, and everything would be at the same temperature. In an infinite and everlasting universe, every line of sight would end on the surface of a star. This would mean that the night sky would have been as bright as the surface of the Sun. The only way of avoiding this problem would be if, for some reason, the stars did not shine before a certain time.”

But things were different at the Big Bang.

“The density would have been infinite,” Hawking says.

“It would have been what is called, a singularity. At a singularity, all the laws of physics would have broken down. This means that the state of the universe, after the Big Bang, will not depend on anything that may have happened before, because the deterministic laws that govern the universe will break down in the Big Bang.”

This has long posed a serious problem for physics, he says.

“Since events before the Big Bang have no observational consequences, one may as well cut them out of the theory, and say that time began at the Big Bang. Events before the Big Bang, are simply not defined, because there’s no way one could measure what happened at them.”

But there are ways to figure out what came before, he says.

“Quantum theory introduces a new idea, that of imaginary time. Imaginary time may sound like science fiction, and it has been brought into Doctor Who. But nevertheless, it is a genuine scientific concept. One can picture it in the following way. One can think of ordinary, real, time as a horizontal line. On the left, one has the past, and on the right, the future. But there’s another kind of time in the vertical direction. This is called imaginary time, because it is not the kind of time we normally experience. But in a sense, it is just as real as what we call real time.”

This has enormous implications when it comes to the Big Bang.

“James Hartle of the University of California Santa Barbara, and I have proposed that space and imaginary time together, are indeed finite in extent, but without boundary. They would be like the surface of the Earth, but with two more dimensions. The surface of the Earth is finite in extent, but it doesn’t have any boundaries or edges. I have been around the world, and I didn’t fall off. “

There’s no raw physics that supports his idea. Yet.

But Hawking’s insight has proven right before.

What we do know is that when it comes to the Big Bang — and black holes — our understanding of physics breaks down.

The only certainty about the infinitesimally small quantum building blocks of our universe is that they are uncertain. Simply observing them can cause them to change. They can be in two places — or two states — at once.

They seem to be a physical embodiment of probability and potential: elements of reality that haven’t quite yet decided what they’re going to do.

While it dictates our lives, we still don’t know what time is. Or exactly where it comes from.

We know how it works. We know its effects.

It’s like gravity.

It doesn’t entirely seem to fit in the ‘big’ world of the physics we experience, nor the ‘weird’ world of the subatomic.

But, like the strange behavior of quantum physics, perhaps time has a lot more left to tell.

This story originally appeared in news.com.au.

Quotations from Stephen Hawking (Fox News)

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2018/03/14/quotations-from-stephen-hawking.html

LONDON –  Physicist and author Stephen Hawking possessed an uncanny ability to come up with memorable phrases and sayings that summed up his world view. Here is a short selection of his many famous observations:

— “We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the universe. That makes us something very special.”

— “Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.”

— “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”

— “For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.”

— “My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”

— “I believe the simplest explanation is, there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization that there probably is no heaven and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe and for that, I am extremely grateful.”

— “Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free.”

— “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

— “We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.”

— “My disabilities have not been a significant handicap in my field, which is theoretical physics. Indeed, they have helped me in a way by shielding me from lecturing and administrative work that I would otherwise have been involved in. I have managed, however, only because of the large amount of help I have received from my wife, children, colleagues and students. I find that people in general are very ready to help, but you should encourage them to feel that their efforts to aid you are worthwhile by doing as well as you possibly can.”

An Experiment in Atheism: Liberal, Missouri

I am grateful to Eric Lyons for this fascinating article, and I am happy to share it.

Atheism and Liberal, Missouri

by Eric Lyons, M.Min.

In the summer of 1880, George H. Walser founded the town of Liberal in southwest Missouri. Named after the Liberal League in Lamar, Missouri (to which the town’s organizer belonged), Walser’s objective was “to found a town without a church, [w]here unbelievers could bring up their children without religious training,” and where Christians were not allowed (Thompson, 1895; Becker, 1895). “His idea was to build up a town that should exclusively be the home of Infidels...a town that should have neither God, Hell, Church, nor Saloon” (Brand, 1895). Some of the early inhabitants of Liberal even encouraged other infidels to move to their town by publishing an advertisement which boasted that Liberal “is the only town of its size in the United States without a priest, preacher, church, saloon, God, Jesus, hell or devil” (Keller, 1885, p. 5). Walser and his “freethinking” associates were openly optimistic about their new town. Excitement was in the air, and atheism was at its core. They believed that their godless town of “sober, trustworthy and industrious” individuals would thrive for years on end. But, as one young resident of that town, Bessie Thompson, wrote about Liberal in 1895, “...like all other unworthy causes, it had its day and passed away.” Bessie did not mean that the actual town of Liberal ceased to exist, but that the idea of having a “good, godless” city is a contradiction in terms. A town built upon “trustworthy” atheistic ideals eventually will reek of the rotten, immoral fruits of infidelity. 

Such fruits were witnessed and reported firsthand by Clark Braden in 1885.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Saturday, May 2, 1885

Braden was an experienced preacher, debater, and author. In his lifetime, he presented more than 3,000 lectures, and held more than 130 regular debates—eighteen of which were with the Mormons (Carpenter, 1909, pp. 324-325). In 1872, Braden even challenged the renowned agnostic Robert Ingersoll to debate, to which Ingersoll reportedly responded, “I am not such a fool as to debate. He would wear me out” (Haynes, 1915, pp. 481-482). Although Braden was despised by some, his skills in writing and public speaking were widely known and acknowledged. In February 1885, Clark Braden introduced himself to the townspeople of Liberal (Keller, 1885, p. 5; Moore, 1963, p. 38), and soon thereafter he wrote about what he had seen.

In an article that appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on May 2, 1885, titled “An Infidel Experiment,” Braden reported the following.

The boast about the sobriety of the town is false. But few of the infidels are total abstainers. Liquor can be obtained at three different places in this town of 300 inhabitants. More drunken infidels can be seen in a year in Liberal than drunken Christians among one hundred times as many church members during the same time. Swearing is the common form of speech in Liberal, and nearly every inhabitant, old and young, swears habitually. Girls and boys swear on the streets, playground, and at home. Fully half of the females will swear, and a large number swear habitually.... Lack of reverence for parents and of obedience to them is the rule. There are more grass widows, grass widowers and people living together, who have former companions living, than in any other town of ten times the population.... A good portion of the few books that are read are of the class that decency keeps under lock and key....

These infidels...can spend for dances and shows ten times as much as they spend on their liberalism. These dances are corrupting the youth of the surrounding country with infidelity and immorality. There is no lack of loose women at these dances. Since Liberal was started there has not been an average of one birth per year of infidel parents. Feticide is universal. The physicians of the place say that a large portion of their practice has been trying to save females from consequences of feticide. In no town is slander more prevalent, or the charges more vile. If one were to accept what the inhabitants say of each other, he would conclude that there is a hell, including all Liberal, and that its inhabitants are the devils (as quoted in Keller, 1885, p. 5).

According to Braden, “[s]uch are the facts concerning this infidel paradise.... Every one who has visited Liberal, and knows the facts, knows that such is the case” (p. 5).

As one can imagine, Braden’s comments did not sit well with some of the townspeople of Liberal. In fact, a few days after Braden’s observations appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, he was arrested for criminal libel and tried on May 18, 1885. According to Braden, “After the prosecution had presented their evidence, the case was submitted to the jury without any rebutting evidence by the defence (sic), and the jury speedily brought in a verdict of ‘No cause for action’ ” (as quoted in Mouton, n.d., pp. 36-37). Unfortunately for Braden, however, the controversy was not over. On the following day (May 19, 1885), a civil suit was filed by one of the townsmen—S.C. Thayer, a hotel operator in Liberal. The petition for damages of $25,000 alleged that Clark Braden and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an article in which they had made false, malicious, and libelous statements against the National Hotel in Liberal, managed by Mr. Thayer. He claimed that Braden’s remarks, published in the St. Louise Post-Dispatch on May 2, 1885, “greatly and irreparably injured and ruined” his business (Thayer v. Braden). However, when the prosecution learned that the defense was thoroughly prepared to prove that Liberal was a den of infamy, and that its hotels were little more than houses of prostitution, the suit was dismissed on September 17, 1886 by the plaintiff at his own cost (Thayer v. Braden). Braden was exonerated in everything he had written. Indeed, the details Braden originally reported about Liberal, Missouri, on May 2, 1885 were found to be completely factual.

It took only a few short years for Liberal’s unattractiveness and inconsistency to be exposed. People cannot exclude God from the equation, and expect to remain a “sober, trustworthy” town. Godlessness equals unruliness, which in turn makes a repugnant, immoral people. The town of Liberal was a failure. Only five years after its establishment, Braden indicated that “[n]ine-tenths of those now in town would leave if they could sell their property. More property has been lost by locating in the town than has been made in it.... Hundreds have been deceived and injured and ruined financially” (Keller, p. 5). Apparently, “doing business with the devil” did not pay the kind of dividends George Walser (the town’s founder) and the early inhabitants of Liberal desired. It appears that even committed atheists found living in Liberal in the early days intolerable. Truly, as has been observed in the past, “An infidel surrounded by Christians may spout his infidelity and be able to endure it, but a whole town of atheists is too horrible to contemplate.” It is one thing to espouse a desire to live in a place where there is no God, but it is an entirely different thing for such a place actually to exist. For it to become a reality is more than the atheist can handle. Adolf Hitler took atheism to its logical conclusion in Nazi Germany, and created a world that even most atheists detested. Although atheists want no part of living according to the standards set out by Jesus and His apostles in the New Testament, the real fruits of evolutionary atheism also are too horrible for them to contemplate.

Although the town of Liberal still exists today (with a population of about 800 people), and although vestiges of its atheistic heritage are readily apparent, it is not the same town it was in 1895. At present, at least seven religious groups associated with Christianity exist within this city that once banned Christianity and all that it represents. Numerous other churches meet in the surrounding areas. According to one of the religious leaders in the town, “a survey of Liberal recently indicated that 50% of the people are actively involved with some church” (Abbott, 2003)—a far cry from where Liberal began.

There is no doubt that the moral, legal, and educational systems of Liberal, Missouri, in the twenty-first century are the fruits of biblical teaching, not atheism. When Christianity and all of the ideals that the New Testament teaches are effectively put into action, people will value human life, honor their parents, respect their neighbors, and live within the moral guidelines given by God in the Bible. A city comprised of faithful Christians would be mostly void of such horrors as sexually transmitted diseases, murder, drunken fathers who beat their wives and children, drunk drivers who turn automobiles into lethal weapons, and heartache caused by such things as divorce, adultery, and covetousness. (Only those who broke God’s commandments intended for man’s benefit would cause undesirable fruit to be reaped.)

On the other hand, when atheism and all of its tenets are taken to their logical conclusion, people will reap some of the same miserable fruit once harvested by the early citizens of Liberal, Missouri (and sadly, some of the same fruit being reaped by many cities in the world today). Men and women will attempt to cover up sexual sins by aborting babies, children will disrespect their parents, students will “run wild” at home and in school because of the lack of discipline, and “sexual freedom” (which leads to sexually transmitted diseases) will be valued, whereas human life will be devalued. Such are the fruits of atheism: a society in which everyone does that which is right in his own eyes (Judges 17:6)—a society in which no sensible person wants to live.

Note from Cory: "grass widows" and "grass widowers" are terms that referred to those divorced, separated, or living away from their spouses. For more information: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/grass+widow.

REFERENCES

Abbott, Phil (2003), Christian Church, Liberal, Missouri, telephone conversation, April 7.

Barnes, Pamela (2003), St. Louis Post-Dispatch, telephone conversation, March 12.

Becker, Hathe (1895), “Liberal,” Liberal Enterprise, December 5,12, [On-line], URL: http://lyndonirwin.com/libhist1.htm.

Brand, Ida (1895), “Liberal,” Liberal Enterprise, December 5,12, [On-line], URL: http://lyndonirwin.com/libhist1.htm.

Carpenter, L.L. (1909), “The President’s Address,” in Centennial Convention Report, ed. W.R. Warren, (Cincinnati, OH: Standard Publishing Company), pp. 317-332. [On-line], URL: http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/wwarren/ccr/CCR15B.HTM.

Haynes, Nathaniel S. (1915), History of the Disciples of Christ in Illinois 1819-1914 (Cincinnati, OH: Standard Publishing Company), [On-line], URL: http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/nhaynes/hdcib/braden01.htm, 1996.

Keller, Samuel (1885), “An Infidel Experiment,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Special Correspondence with Clark Braden, May 2, p. 5.

Moore, J.P. (1963), This Strange Town—Liberal, Missouri (Liberal, MO: The Liberal News).

Mouton, Boyce (no date), George H. Walser and Liberal, Missouri: An Historical Overview.

Thayer, S.C. v. Clark Braden, et. al. Filed on May 19, 1885 in Barton County Missouri. Dismissed September 10, 1886.

Thompson, Bessie (1895), “Liberal,” Liberal Enterprise, December 5,12, [On-line], URL: http://lyndonirwin.com/libhist1.htm.

The original publisher of this article is Apologetics Press at this URL: https://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=9&article=1447

In the Beginning … Nothing?

The Law of Cause and Effect is among the most fundamental rules of science. At least it used to be. If you had told most people in the past, including brilliant atheists, that there was an effect without a cause, they would not have taken you seriously. In fact, unbelievers denied the existence of God using this very idea. “Who created God?” they would ask, assuming that even God had to have a cause behind Him.

However, if God is not the ultimate cause, who or what is? The problem has been that no one could come up with a plausible alternative to God. In the beginning … what? Matter? Energy? The Second Law of Thermodynamics affirms that the universe, including for example the Sun, is running down. Energy is being expended, not sustained. Nothing in the material universe could have existed from all eternity. It just couldn’t.

Some then tried to claim that a very tiny bit of something somehow multiplied and produced the vast, complex array that we call the cosmos. Once again, however, no one could explain how that “bit” could have existed eternally, or how something so little could cause something so much greater.

So we are back to God, or should be! In fact, scientists who believe in God – and there are myriads of them – have no problem with the fact that God made all things from nothing. Heb 11:3 declares, “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”

However, those who presuppose that there is no God are in crisis. They have come to a cliff, facing a chasm that they cannot cross. If matter was not here from the beginning, if energy did not work on that matter to “create” a “bang” and bring life from non-life, and if there is no God, they are out of answers!

What about evolution? In addition to all its other problems, assumptions, and missing links, this unproven theory lacks a starting point. If man evolved from A … that evolved from B … that evolved from C … what is the first thing, or being, or source that gave rise to all the others? We are back to cause and effect! Evolution demands multiple effects with no ultimate cause or clear intermediate causes! It has no beginning point to offer, especially now that theories of eternal matter or everlasting energy have proven false!

So what’s the latest? How do we get a universe without an origin, a creation without a Creator?

Hold on. The answer is coming. Yes, we are told, atheists have a solution. Are you ready? Some of them are saying …

In the beginning … nothing!

I am serious. The latest idea, presented with a straight face and accepted as quite reasonable by the truly intelligent, is that there is no cause after all. The law of “every effect has a cause,” that “this came from that,” has now become the law of “the first effect had no cause” and “everything came from nothing.”

Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist and Director of the Origins Institute at Arizona State University, published A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing. This book, as its title suggests, purports to explain how something---and not just any something, but the entire universe---could have emerged from nothing, the kind of nothing implicated by quantum field theory.

Wait … did you say quantum field theory? Is that the best we have?

Krauss says, “And while we don’t yet know the ultimate origin of life, for most people it’s plausible that at some point chemistry became biology. What’s amazing to me is that we’re now at a point where we can plausibly argue that a universe full of stuff came from a very simple beginning, the simplest of all beginnings: nothing.”

Huh? What’s that? Say it again? “… we’re now at a point where we can plausibly argue that a universe full of stuff came from a very simple beginning, the simplest of all beginnings: nothing.”

According to Ross Anderson, writing in The Atlantic, “It’s a story that Krauss is well positioned to tell; in recent years he has emerged as an unusually gifted explainer of astrophysics. One of his lectures has been viewed over a million times on YouTube and his cultural reach extends to some unlikely places---last year Miley Cyrus came under fire when she tweeted a quote from Krauss that some Christians found offensive. Krauss’ book quickly became a bestseller, drawing raves from popular atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, the latter of which even compared it to The Origin of Species for the way its final chapters were supposed to finally upend the ‘last trump card of the theologian’”.”

Did you catch that? The well-known atheist, Richard Dawkins, sees this “big nothing” as sufficient to overthrow the theologian’s arguments for God’s existence? Krauss says, “We don’t know … plausible …” That unseats faith in God?

Think back with me about this.

When scientists declared that life cannot spontaneously generate from non-life, the theologian already knew that.

When scientists admitted that they could not find the links to prove evolution, the theologian already knew that.

When scientists proclaimed that the universe had a beginning, the theologian already knew that.

When scientists realized that matter and energy could not have existed eternally, the theologian already knew that.

And now, when scientists say, it all started from nothing, the theologian already knew that, too. “In the beginning God.” That’s it. In the beginning, there was no universe, no matter, no creation. Not until He brought it all into being, ex nihilo, from nothing.

Dawkins’ bold statement makes me think of Robert Jastrow’s famous comment. Jastrow (1925 – 2008) was an American astronomer, physicist and cosmologist. He was a leading NASA scientist, populist author and futurist. He wrote, "… scientists cannot bear the thought of a natural phenomenon which cannot be explained, even with unlimited time and money. There is a kind of religion in science; it is the religion of a person who believes there is order and harmony in the Universe. Every event can be explained in a rational way as the product of some previous event; every effect must have its cause, there is no First Cause. … This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatized."

"Consider the enormity of the problem. Science has proved that the universe exploded into being at a certain moment. It asks: What cause produced this effect? Who or what put the matter or energy into the universe? And science cannot answer these questions, because, according to the astronomers, in the first moments of its existence the Universe was compressed to an extraordinary degree, and consumed by the heat of a fire beyond human imagination. The shock of that instant must have destroyed every particle of evidence that could have yielded a clue to the cause of the great explosion."

"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

—Robert Jastrow, The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe, (1981), p. 19.

Now consider the title of Anderson’s article in The Atlantic: “Has Physics Made Philosophy and Religion Obsolete?”

Are you kidding? Physics – at least all that physics has actually proven – has shown faith in God to be the only thing that is not obsolete! Theories come and go. God remains.

Note what Krauss further admits in response to this question from Anderson:

Anderson: “Your book argues that physics has definitively demonstrated how something can come from nothing. Do you mean that physics has explained how particles can emerge from so-called empty space, or are you making a deeper claim?” 

Krauss: I’m making a deeper claim, but at the same time I think you’re overstating what I argued. I don’t think I argued that physics has definitively shown how something could come from nothing; physics has shown how plausible physical mechanisms might cause this to happen. I try to be intellectually honest in everything that I write, especially about what we know and what we don’t know. If you’re writing for the public, the one thing you can’t do is overstate your claim, because people are going to believe you. They see I’m a physicist and so if I say that protons are little pink elephants, people might believe me. And so I try to be very careful and responsible. We don’t know how something can come from nothing, but we do know some plausible ways that it might. 

But I am certainly claiming a lot more than just that. That it’s possible to create particles from no particles is remarkable---that you can do that with impunity, without violating the conservation of energy and all that, is a remarkable thing. The fact that “nothing,” namely empty space, is unstable is amazing. But I’ll be the first to say that empty space as I’m describing it isn’t necessarily nothing, although I will add that it was plenty good enough for Augustine and the people who wrote the Bible. For them an eternal empty void was the definition of nothing, and certainly I show that that kind of nothing ain’t nothing anymore.

There is more in Anderson’s article. Read all of it here: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/has-physics-made-philosophy-and-religion-obsolete/256203/?UTM_SOURCE=yahoo.

It’s not just theologians. Even fellow scientists take issue with Krauss’ conjecture. Look at this review of Krauss’ book, written by David Albert, a professor of philosophy at Columbia and the author of “Quantum Mechanics and Experience.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html?_r=1

The more I read and think, the more I believe Genesis! God took nothing and created all.