Pretty cool, indeed (not the temperature of the magnets, which is cooled to just above absolute zero, but the fact that science can even approach such a feat).

Scientists are hoping to encounter evidence of the so-called “Higgs boson”, a subatomic particle that has picked up the weighty nickname, “the God particle,” which shrouds the attempt in all kinds of suggestive mystery. The Higgs boson is the one part of the atom that gives all other pieces their mass. It is “what allows us to exist,” says physics professor Tejinder Virdee of Imperial College in London. Without the Higgs boson, Virdee says we would all be “puffs of radiation.” Well, at least we’d all have glowing personalities.

Wow. That’s a pretty bold statement to make about a particle–that has yet been proven to exist or ever have been measured, observed, or left any evidence. In fact, the Higgs boson owes its speculative existence to ultra heavy-duty mathematical equations that are at the forefront of theoretical physics (called “the Standard Model”).  Scientists hope to unravel the “missing” 96% of the mass of the universe and identify the force that has been expanding the universe for the last 13.7 billion years, give or take a trillionth of a second. In fact, scientists and secularists alike seem to have monumental convictions and beliefs about the Higgs boson, so much so that physicist Peter Jenni states “we need to understand the mechanisms of life and the universe.”

That sounds like a tremendous investment of faith, belief, and hope about an entity that has yet to provide any proof or indication that it exists–other than on chalkboards in classrooms or in laboratories. Why…wait…this sounds familiar…in fact, that sounds a lot like the arguments Christians hear all the time about their beliefs. Looks like Occam’s Razor is a double-edge blade.

So, what happens if scientists don’t find evidence of the Higgs boson? Some theorize that the laws of physics might have to undergo a “rethinking.”  The Standard Model has been used by physicists to offer theories about the universe–from elaborate string theory to the idea of multi-verses (more than one universe) existing simultaneously. But physicist John Ellis poses an important question with gargantuan implications: “There have been thousands of theoretical papers [written on theories of the universe]. I’ve written hundreds of them myself. What if it turns out to be a pile of garbage?” 

The point in this chapter is not to disparage the science or the scientists, for what they have accomplished is a truly remarkable feat that may provide more answers (but likely far more questions) about the universe in which we live. The point here is that while secularists, rationalists, empiricists, atheists, and the like proclaim no belief in God, they do in fact have their Golden Calf in the Higgs boson, for what they convey in their hopes for that theoretical particle strikes at the very heart of their arguments against belief in God. God’s revelation in nature is no less than his revelation in Scripture.

As Reformed theologian Cornelius Van Til writes: “The truly scientific method, the method that alone can expect to make true progress in learning, is therefore such a method as seeks simply to think God’s thoughts after him.” Science and discovery, according to Van Til, represent the replication of God’s knowledge at the level of the creature (man). The scientific method is a mirror that reflects God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, and this analogy is one that demonstrates the reflective nature of human knowledge; while that knowledge may be true, it is not comprehensive.

When Job questions the Creator of the universe about his ways, God responds accordingly (in Job 38:31-33):
Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?
Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? Or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?

Such is the power we observe and measure that is reflected in our scientific method that yields creaturely knowledge about the Creator.

First of all, to the non-Christian, our response to the question–no matter how grounded in logic and reason–will be rejected because of their presuppositions. In effect, their question is posed as more of a rhetorical one, completely devoid of any honest interest in our response. Their minds are already made up. Given that, we can proceed.

Before blurting out a reply, we should have an understanding of the literary structure of the Bible. E.D. Hirsch, Jr., editor of the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, wrote that “The Bible is a central book to our culture…Far from being illegal or undesirable, teaching about the Bible is not only consistent with our Constitution, it is essential to our literacy.” Many non-religious universities and colleges offer courses in “The Bible as Literature” or “The Literary Structure of the Bible.” The Bible is not a book—it is a collection of sixty-six books that are historical, poetic, prophetic, and doctrinal in nature and each literary style has a specific intent; some more obvious than others. Even staunch atheists such as Bart Ehrmann teach courses (and write books) on the Old and New Testament from a literary perspective, but deny any theological value or import.

The literary forms most commonly recognized in the Bible include legal, historical, prophetic, apocalyptic, ancient biographical, epistolary, wisdom, poetic, dramatic. Others less frequently mentioned (and some considered sub-categories of the previous list) but present include allegory, diatribe, epic, etiology, farewell discourse, hortatory (paraenesis), hymn, legend, and others. Each of these literary devices serves a particular purpose in communicating information to the reader, which is received at different levels within the mind’s cognitive structure.

For example, when Jesus speaks in parables, we know he is using a parable, so we don’t take the face value of the story as literal; it is a figurative device that illustrates a lesson behind it.

The Bible, like so many other great works of literature, contains many types of figurative language, whether in poetry or prose, gospel or epistle. The difficulty that sometimes accompanies biblical interpretation is partly attributable to the use of literary devices that are not common in everyday prose. Besides the general reasons for use of literary devices, there are particular reasons for their use. When we encounter them in a passage, we must consider the specific purpose(s) that the writer (inspired by the Holy Spirit) chose to use a particular means of expression. Figurative language often helps us understand a passage more deeply, and it can do so in several ways by:

• Presenting descriptive truth, rather than propositional truth
• Presenting more concrete imagery (not just abstract and theoretical)
• Efficiently consolidating the presentation of ideas
• Engaging the emotions
• Making passages easier to recall

For example, Psalm 57:1 (and Psalm 91:4) describes how our soul seeks refuge in the shadow of God’s wings, much the same way a hen protects her chicks. Obviously, this hen image is not to be taken literally—that God is some type of large bird with an enormous wingspan to shelter us. Instead, it conveys important truths about God in a descriptive poetic fashion, rather than in prose, as straightforward propositional truth. It illustrates an abstract theological concept by presenting a concrete image we all understand. The literary purpose is that it communicates God’s love, comfort, and protection to us with simple, vivid imagery that enhances its recall, engages the emotions, and is more compact than a paragraph after paragraph of prosaic exposition would be on the same theme. Such language engages us not only spiritually, but on emotional and intellectual dimensions as well.

So it really should be no “revelation” that the Bible contains much beautiful language that is not only aesthetically pleasant, but speaks to our entire being—spiritual, intellectual, and emotional by using literal and figurative language together.

Therefore, my response to the non-Christian’s question as to whether I believe the Bible is literally true is: “Yes and no”; however, I do believe completely that the Bible is the inspired Word of God.

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods or institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that product material explanations, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine foot in the door.

This statement clearly reveals to us all the falsehood that science is an objective field of inquiry. In Lewontin’s own words, even when the facts don’t explain the story, the unproven precommitment to materialism must be adhered to. The materialist can make no room for God’s involvement in nature because he must cling in a desperate and irrational manner to a worldview that prohibits God from being involved in the very things he created.

It can’t be because people on either side of important arguments have different sets of facts, because they don’t. The “evidence” isn’t different for both sides; it’s the prior commitment to a set of presumptions that makes the evolutionist interpret the facts to comport with his worldview.

But we all have worldviews; we all carry our presuppositions about the world, but we all can’t be right. R.C. Sproul writes in The Consequences of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts that Shaped Our World:

…the existence of God is the supreme proto-supposition for all theoretical thought. God’s existence is the chief element in constructing any worldview. To deny this premise is to set one’s sails for the island of nihilism. This is the darkest continent of the darkened mind–the ultimate paradise of the fool.

I’d like to acknowledge the work by my brother Brian, who provided the essential argument and content for this post. My contribution was secondary to his great work.

In a June 2009 article from Scientific American entitled “Agenticity: Why People Believe Invisible Agents Control the World,” Skeptical Inquirer founder Michael Shermer writes that humans failed to develop a “baloney detector” in our brains to discriminate among true and false patterns we encounter in nature. He claims we make two types of errors: a Type I error, or false positive, where we believe a pattern is real when it is not; and a Type II error, or false negative, where we don’t believe a pattern when it is true. He then proceeds:

If you believe that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator when it is just the wind (a Type I error), you are more likely to survive than if you believe that the rustle in the grass is just the wind when it is a dangerous predator (a Type II error). Because the cost of making a Type I error is less than the cost of making a Type II error and because there is no time for careful deliberation between patternicities in the split-second world of predator-prey interactions, natural selection would have favored those animals most likely to assume that all patterns are real. 

Consider that first sentence in the excerpt above. There are many assumptions Shermer makes in that statement, which demands that we ask: what preconditions or underlying assumptions would have to be true in order for this assertion or claim to make sense? Dr. Shermer suggests that animals (as implied by his last sentence) would have to possess rationality and the ability to use discernment, but the ability to “reason” is a huge assumption over an impossibly large logic (and evolutionary) chasm for which there is no paleo-biologic evidence. 

Additionally, we would have to assume that this was also an inheritable trait, and that it could be passed along to offspring, and that the same trait responsible for enabling animals to reason this well would also develop in predators who would learn to employ “the-old-rustling-in-the-grass-trick” to flush out these animals.

Given the Darwinist idea of natural selection, we would expect smarter wildebeasts in the African savanna today if in fact they actually could intellectually discern: “If A (rustling grass), then possibly B (wind) or C (predator), so opt for FLEEING.” If that were the case, one would hope to see stampeding herds of animals across the Serengeti every time a gentle breeze came up through the vegetation.

But we don’t, as most any Animal Planet video will reveal.

Christian and non-Christian readers should ask: what are the preconditions of intelligibility (that is, the underlying unargued assumptions = presuppositions) that would have to be present in order for this claim to make sense or even approach some semblance of validity? Dr. Shermer’s preconditions of intelligibility seem to have no scientific basis (the presumption that animals have “belief”, make “assumptions”, or “deliberate”). Dr. Shermer completely disregards the application of basic animal instinct (use of sight, sound, and smell) as survival mechanisms, and instead grants such creatures the power of reason and discernment based solely on his underlying unargued assumptions.  Dr. Shermer here magnanimously grants such creatures the intellectual power of cognitive discernment, when in fact, instinct triggered through scent, eyesight, and hearing likely are to be credited instead.

Perhaps he may have been watching Ice Age when he wrote this piece. 

When we look at Shermer’s argument in detail, we see he actually embraces agenticity unknowingly—the very thing he’s arguing against—as he attributes the rustling of grass to the possible presence of a predator, when in fact it may very likely be the “invisible agent” called the wind that may carry the scent or sound of a distant or nearby predator in the direction of the potential prey. The invisible agent could thus serve as a vehicle that triggers the animal’s instinctual survival mechanisms (to flee or not), and not any assumed ability to reason, discern, or deliberate.

It would seem that Dr. Shermer’s atheistic presuppositions not only tried to stuff the idea of cognitive discernment into the question of natural selection, but it blinded him to the presence and involvement of the invisible agent known as the wind.

Dr. Bahnsen has stated that Dr. Stein lost the debate immediately when he agreed to it because of the a priori rules of logic debate employs.  Dr. Bahnsen brought home this point of the rules of logic when he trapped Dr. Stein in his statement that the laws of logic are “out in nature…are conventions that are self-verifying…and immaterial.” Dr. Stein pushed Dr. Bahnsen to provide another example, other than God, of something that is immaterial. Dr. Bahnsen’s response: “The laws of logic.”

At this point, there was laughter and applause from the audience, and the moderator had to ask the audience to quiet down, as they realized Dr. Bahnsen had just closed the trap door on Dr. Stein. 

I don’t think I’m the only one who also caught Dr. Stein’s slide down the slippery slope to defeat in his introductory remarks. Dr. Bahnsen acknowledged Dr. Stein’s expertise in the narrow domain of  ”The Control of Ovarion Maturation in Japanese Whales” (the subject of Dr. Stein’s doctoral dissertation). However, when it was Dr. Stein’s turn for introductory remarks, he stated he would “grant Dr. Bahnsen his expertise on ‘A Conditional Resolution of the Apparent Paradox of Self-Deception’…” and then immediately followed up with, “I don’t know how much more relevant that is to our discussion tonite than mine is, probably not any more.”

“Probably not any more”? Really? Let’s just ignore the elephant in the room. I could have walked out of the auditorium at that moment because with a statement like that as it related to Dr. Bahnsen’s doctoral dissertation and the subject of the debate, Dr. Stein was already on the ropes before the opening bell for Round 1.

You can read the transcript of the entire debate at www.donnleviejr.com (see the “Stein-Bahnsen Debate Transcript” link).