Apologetics 1st test

Various worldviews typically make claims regarding what is called “prime reality.” What do we mean by prime reality?

Prime reality is the thing from which everything else comes, the fundamental reality behind everything else.

Consider the following:

     All men are mortal.

    Socrates is a man.

   Therefore Socrates is mortal.

What do we call the form of this argument and what kind of reasoning is this?

This is in the form of a syllogism and it’s an example of deductive reasoning

The conclusions that come from deductive reasoning are logically certain, but can, nevertheless, be wrong. Explain.

They can be wrong if one or more of the premises is flawed. (So, if all men are not mortal, Socrates might still be alive!)

You should be familiar with these three kinds of reasoning:

Deductive: Reasoning from one or more statements (called premises) to logically certain conclusions.

Inductive: Generalization from observations that give conclusions that are probable but not certain. Used in science.

Abductive: The kind of reasoning a detective might use, reasoning from effects back to possible causes.

The theories of Albert Einstein have had a massive impact on our understanding of the cosmos.  List several of revolutionary ideas advanced by Einstein.

1.  The speed of light (in a vacuum) is constant for all observers.

2.  Mass and energy are interconvertible (E=MC²)

3.  Space and time are warped in the presence of mass (this accounts for gravity)

Prior to some key discoveries in cosmology in the early 20th century what did most scientists think about the origin of the universe?

Most scientists didn’t think the universe had a beginning. Rather, they assumed it was eternal.

The original field equations of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity did not seem to allow for a static and eternal universe.  What did Einstein do in response to the implications of his own theory?

In order to “fix” his theory he inserted a new variable into his equations (called the Cosmological Constant) to counteract gravity and allow for a static and eternal universe.

In the 1920’s Edwin Hubble made a discovery that strongly indicated that the universe was not eternal. Explain his discovery.

Hubble observed something called “redshift” when he looked at galaxies. This indicated that everything in the universe was rapidly moving apart. When you rewind this, everything would have begun at a single point in the past.

9. In 1964 Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson accidentally discovered something that provided solid evidence of the Big Bang event. What did they find and why was it significant? 

They discovered the faint radiation afterglow of the Big Bang, something called the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB).  It was everywhere they looked in the sky and it corresponded to predictions.

A universe with a beginning in the finite past has, arguably, some very profound philosophical implications.  Explain some potential philosophical implications of Big Bang cosmology.

At the Big Bang nature itself came into existence. This seems to indicate that nature cannot explain itself.

If the universe began to exist, the cause of the universe would necessarily be beyond the universe.

If the elements of physics (space, time, matter and energy) began to exist, the cause of these things would need to be spaceless, timeless, and immaterial.

John Lennox argued that many people today are skeptical because they wrongly think of God as a kind of “god of the gaps.” What is meant by this phrase?

A “god of the gaps” is a god who is simply brought in when we can’t explain things. (i.e. a “god of thunder”) Such a god simply fills in the “gaps” in our understanding, explaining what science has not yet explained.

What is the problem with having a “god of the gaps” understanding of God?

It means you will have to choose between science and God. As science advances and the gaps are closed, the need for this god diminishes. As science gets bigger, such a god gets smaller.

Summarize the response Lennox gives to the misguided “god of the gaps” understanding of God

The God of the Bible is the creator of all things - all we understand and all we do not yet understand. Scientific descriptions no more compete with God as an explanation than the laws of mechanical engineering compete with Henry Ford as an explanation for the automobile. They’re different, complimentary levels of explanation. 

Explain what we mean by “plausibility structures.”

Plausibility structures are the networks of fundamental beliefs and assumptions we have about reality (largely picked up from our social context) that determine what we find believable. 

We’ve noted there are certain arguably reasonable assumptions we make about the world which we cannot strictly prove or demonstrate.  List several examples.

The past is real.

The external world is real.

The past is a reliable guide to the future

There are minds in the world besides my own.

The uniformity of nature (i.e. the world consistently obeys certain rules)

If more than one hypothesis seems to adequately explain what you observe, there is a helpful rule of thumb called “Occam’s Razor” that generally leads to the superior explanation. What does this principle say?

All other things being equal, the simpler explanation is to be preferred.

What assumptions do we make when we read a “creation” story that may not have been shared by an audience in the Ancient Near East (the historical world of the original readers of Genesis)?

In a world dominated by science, we tend to think of what something “is” in material terms and the creation of something in terms of material processes / explanations.

We examined the case that can be made that the six day sequence in Genesis 1 is not really talking about material origins (i.e. how things were materially produced or came to exist materially), but is telling a different kind of story that would have been very familiar to ancient readers. Explain.

Genesis 1 seems to be about bringing order and functionality instead of material production. This fits very well with the idea of “functional creation” which was the standard focus of creation stories in the ANE.

Explain how the ANE concept of “to be” or “to exist” differs from ours.

In the thought-world of the ANE for something “to be” is a functional category. “To be” is to exist as part of an ordered system. Things like deserts and seas were said not to “exist” because they were not part of the ordered world. Their creation stories would start with descriptions of pre-creation as the time before order, roles, and purposes were established.

What significant clues does Genesis give us that this is not a story about material production but functional creation?

The pre-creation scene is not nothing. When the story opens material is already present.

The heavens and earth are there, but lacking order and purpose. Things are tohu va-vohu (formless and empty) and the ANE symbols of non-order (darkness and water) cover the world.

The text repeatedly talks about separating and naming (the standard ANE way of giving order through functional creation)

Functional creation makes sense better sense of the language (gathering, appearing, bringing forth etc.) and sequence (i.e. the Sun being “created” after light and day and night.)

Does a “functional creation” understanding of Genesis 1 contradict is the idea that God alone is eternal and imply that God created the world from pre-existing stuff?

No. The Bible teaches clearly elsewhere that God created all things visible and invisible ex nihilo (from nothing).

If the beginning of Genesis is about functional creation, what relevance does this have to debates about the age of the universe?

It arguably means that Genesis isn’t intending to tell us anything at all about when the universe and world came to be. In other words, it’s not trying to tell us how old the world is.