During the Q&A segment at one of my university campus talks, someone challenged a point I made during my presentation. My claim was simple, from universal experience complex, meaningful and functional designs always come from minds. We can look at the world of technology, we can see how gears, motors and turbines are designed. There needs to be good amounts of intelligence and information it their design. So then, my point was that in biology, we also find gears, motors and turbines, so what do we make of that? We know what it takes to design such things, intelligence, always.
The challenger, an atheist, countered with arguing that the universe filaments had order, but came about through naturalistic mechanisms. The universe filaments are made up of superclusters, clusters, galaxy groups, and all the way down into galaxies and smaller. This surprised me since this seems to favor my view, not his, as a different atheist told me in the past.
I had another concern too, he assumed I assumed his assumptions. I didn’t.
To believe that objects, like the universe, starting to exist without a prior cause is irrational. However, that cause would have to have some type of God like nature. The universe is finely tuned, much like your car. There are vastly more ways for it to fail than work. Just one tiny structural change and the car aborts. If your car leaves the finely tuned sweet-spot, it’s dead.
While my response was fairly simple, I still needed tools like intelligence and the ability to spot thinking errors. How do we learn clear thinking, good reasoning and reasoning error identification? Below I provide some sources to do just that. Obviously, I may not agree with every conclusion from these resources. However, I think each will help you think clearer.
First, I recommend Greg Koukl’s free radio show podcast. It’s more than a radio show. He converses with callers answering questions, but does not just tell you what to think, he shows you how to think. During that time, he teaches philosophy and logic.
Second, I recommend Greg Ganssle’s book “Thinking About God: First Steps in Philosophy”. Greg is a great writer and makes the dry topic of philosophy come alive (Kindle, Paper).
Third and fourth, I recommend Nathaniel and Hans Bluedorn’s two books, “The Fallacy Detective: Thirty-Eight Lessons on How to Recognize Bad Reasoning” (Kindle, Paper) and “The Thinking Toolbox: Thirty-five Lessons That Will Build Your Reasoning Skills” (Kindle, Paper) . These are both written with the pre-teen in mind, which means anyone can read them. While written at a lower level, they don’t hold back on essential content, from spotting thinking errors to tools of clear reasoning.
Fifth, I recommend Jason Lisle’s book, “The Ultimate Proof of Creation”. In this book, he gives tools for proper thinking and teaches common logical fallacies people make (Kindle, Paper).
The apostle Peter taught us to have answers for our faith, which is what I try to do here. I would love for you to follow iApologia to get the latest updates to your inbox. Plus, I will send you my Free Quick Guide why that gives 8 reasons science points to God.
Please tell us your thoughts below!
