Especially as expressed in the notion that faith is “belief without evidence”.
I love new scientific discoveries. Thinking they somehow argue against God’s realness, however, strikes me as saying that figuring out how your grandfather built a clock is somehow evidence that your grandfather didn’t exist when in truth it just means you’ve learned more about your grandfather.
People can make (apparently) compelling cases against (or for) all sorts of things, but quite often they’re not even addressing the information that counts. As far as I can see, people like that Brazilian guy you were worried about aren’t much different than flat earthers: they’re looking at what seems obvious to them but missing a truth right in front of them.
That just shows deep ignorance of the Old Testament; it’s clear there that the Jews are but a stepping stone to reclaiming all humanity.
Yes, absolutely. And yet many of them argue (with evidences far weaker than the evidences we possess for the Resurrection) for the reality of the multiverse
The fact that there is anything at all demonstrates that there has always been something; the only question is what that “something” is. So your question is as much a challenge to anyone as to a theist.
A strong argument can be made that the universe we wee is just the right size and just the right age with just the right composition for there to be at least one planet with intelligent life.
I’ve made an incorrect generalization, I admit that. This doesn’t mean that my assessment of philosophical naturalism was incorrect, I just made the mistake of saying that most atheists are philosophical naturalists.
Yes, the age and size of the universe works better in the opposite direction.
[1] The existence of life depends on the amount of stuff or mass in our universe. If there was too much stuff the universe would have collapsed back on itself after the big bang. This leads to no life. If there was too little stuff or mass then the expansion would have been so great gravity would not have been able to coalesce matter into stars and galaxies. Again, this leads to no life. NASA’s WMAP page:
Our universe seems to have Goldilocks properties: not too much and not too little – just enough mass and energy to support the development of life.
[2] The age of our universe is also just right. If the universe’s history was compressed into a single year, Jesus may have only arrived 5 seconds ago, but that was exactly when he needed to. The big bang did not produce any heavy elements. We were left with primordial hydrogen, helium and lithium. Elements like carbon and oxygen needed time to form and they did so in stars through nucleosynthesis (see the image below). Higher elements on the periodic table were formed in the cores of stars that exploded in a supernova eruption once their fuel was exhausted. Our sun is thought to be a third-generation star. Granted the elements in our universe–those elements absolutely necessary for life-- needed to go through several star cycles in order to be produced, our universe could not be much younger than it is right now to sustain us. We needed a third generation star and time for advanced life and the environment suitable for it to develop.
[3] The size of our universe is related to the amount of stuff (mass) in our universe and also how long it has been expanding for. As we saw in the previous two examples, both of these are just right for the development of advanced life. John Polkinghorne wrote:
The size of the universe is essentially a function of its age. We need time to create second-generation stars, and then for life to evolve, so 13.7 billion years seems about right. If all the 10^22 stars of the observable universe were not there, we would not be here to be daunted by cosmic immensity. In many respects there is no difference between 14 thousand years, 14 million years, and 14 billion years: they are all immense to us and all equally comprehensible to God. The truth is the universe could not be much smaller and support advanced life.