Hi Jy,

I must admit, Jy, that I have intensely studied the bible and have come to a number of conclusions that will probably not agree with yours. In the following I was tempted to quote verses from the bible to back up some of my points, but thought better of it. I have also seen the arguments presented by this book in my e-mail discussions with various Christians on the Internet -- my bible study happened before I joined the Internet. Also, I’ve seen arguments similar to this book’s to support Islam and some New Age beliefs.

(a) There exists no proof or disproof of God. There is no physical evidence of the continuation of existence after death. Also, if there is an hereafter, no one knows anything about it, including religious figures (and their books) -- they are only guessing.

(b) From my studies of the Bible. The Bible and traditional Christianity are not compatible with modern science. The Bible and modern science do not agree at all. I won’t go into this in this book review. In addition, the bible is weak in logic and reasonableness. The only way to justify the Bible is by faith -- you must choose to believe it -- with or without any evidence. If I or you believe in a particular God, it can be justified only by faith. However, the danger in faith is that you can choose or be persuaded to believe almost anything. The safeguards of science are not there. The only reliable source of knowing is through science, all others are suspect.

The Koran, Books of Mormon, Hindu Scriptures, New Age Literature and other "Holy" books do not agree with modern science either. Again, to believe in them and what they say, is a jump in faith.

One last thing -- this book needs an Index.

The author doesn’t understand what he is talking about in this statement. It is a typical creationist utterance.

He uses this as a basis for justifying the rest of the book -- everything is supposed to follow from this (untrue) statement, so it is important to comment on it.

The second law of thermodynamics of Physics only applies to a closed system!! The earth is not a closed system -- you must include the sun as a source of energy, so order on earth increases, while the disorder of the sun increases. Also, the Universe is an open system. This is something Creationists, for instance, do not consider. To me Creationists have a closed system since they base their beliefs on the primitive mythologies of the Old Testament, leaving no surprises. To them all basic answers are already known, and there is no need for science.

Both in the case of the law of conservation of energy (mass is a form of energy) and the case of the second law of thermodynamics, a CLOSED system is one through whose boundaries no energy can pass. The second law of thermodynamics applies ONLY to CLOSED systems. According to the Conservation Law of energy, there is never an increase nor a decrease in energy. "gradually losing energy" shows the author is ignorant of Physics and how the universe runs.

(1) A person is not a closed system -- so the body can and does increase its order at the expense of greater disorder in outside objects such as food, usually from other living plants and animals. When a person dies his order decreases and viruses, bacteria, etc. increase their order at the expense of the person's body.

(2) The same with a cell in your body -- it is not usually a close system.

(3) The same with certain organic and inorganic chemical reactions -- molecules build to become more complex, thus increasing their order, by receiving energy from the outside -- in the natural world a molecule is not a closed system. In labs experiment, chemical reactions, etc. are often forced to be closed systems.

(4) Snowflakes with their six-sided crystalline symmetry are formed spontaneously from randomly moving water vapour molecules (disorder to order). Salts with precise planes of crystalline symmetry form spontaneously when water evaporates from a solution (disorder to order). Seeds sprout into flowering plants and eggs develop into chicks (disorder to order). These are not closed systems.

(5) The Earth is not a closed system. It receives energy from the sun, which allows organic molecules to become more ordered at the expense of more disorder in the sun. Since the sun radiates the energy from nuclear reactions, it can be calculated that the sun will supply the earth with energy for at least another 5 billion years. This is a long time for the earth to not be a closed system. This allows life to continue to evolve (increase order) for many billions of years yet. After that, if there is no other source of energy outside the earth (e.g. the stars) then the earth would become more of a closed system and we would see that things on earth would have a net movement from a state of order to a state of disorder.

Of course, (4) and (5) above is the important one for evolution. So there is nothing in the second law of thermodynamics that contradicts evolution.

For the life of me, I cannot see how creationists can discredit the fact of evolution by using this law. I have yet to see any law of Physics that does discredit it.

(2) Page xviii

By definition, when you talk about the universe, you mean "all there is". There is no outside, and recent astronomical data strongly indicates an open, unbounded universe. There is no way you can circle the universe the way the author describes it.

These alone discredit the author’s arguments. For one thing he doesn’t know basic Physics, secondly he is making his false knowledge a basis to build a supposedly logical and scientific belief system. He fails in this. He should stick with Faith only.

Another statement the author basis the rest of his book on -- so important to him. All the attributes about what the outside must be like are all assumptions, with no basis of fact -- the author does not try to rationalize these (he quickly glosses over them) -- a serious problem for the rest of his argument. In spite of what has been said in Part I let’s assume all his book before this statement is correct, then:

(a) noncontingent is the only reasonable attribute.

(b) uncaused -- there is no way anyone can imagine something that is uncaused. And, on what basis can you say the outside is uncaused, when all we have is evidence on the inside is cause and effect. .

In the only reliable way of gaining knowledge about the universe, science, you always ask what is the cause of anything. ‘What is the cause of the first cause?’ and ‘What is the cause of that cause?’ are valid questions. You can go back forever. Physics does not deny that the universe has always been here. The question "What happened naturally before the Big Bang to cause it?" is also valid. There are a number of possibilities, including the oscillating universe.

"eternal, unlimited, and all-powerful" for the outside are other unsupported assumptions by the author.

His assumptions here are a complete jump in the dark, and basically meaningless because there is no way you can prove or disprove them. This kind of assumption is the kind of assumptions Karl Marx made in his theories on communism about human relations. Marx’s theories are untestable (so called scientific theories that are NOT scientific) -- no experimental data is possible to prove or falsify his theories. This is why Marxist Communism is like a religion, not a scientific theory. Not only are untestable theories usually useless, they are often dangerous to society. There are many statements that can be made that are not testable -- these should always be suspect.

In this paragraph the author shows a complete disregard for rational discussion.

Why must one come upon a first cause?

The major premise of this argument, "everything had a cause", is contradicted by the conclusion that "God did not have a cause." You cannot have it both ways. If everything had to have a cause, then there could not be a first cause. If it is possible to think of a god as uncaused, then it is possible to think the same of the universe or of any other object.

Some, observing that all "effects" need a cause, assert that god is a cause but not an effect. But no one has ever observed an uncaused cause and simply inventing one merely assumes what the argument wishes to prove. This is not a proof of God.

These pseudo-scientific objections are based on error. No biologist claims organisms suddenly appear in one step of "accidental" mutation. Evolution is the gradual accumulation of tiny changes over millions of generations of environmental suitability. Humans, for example, did not have to evolve -- any one of billions of possibilities could have adapted, making it quite likely that something would survive the ruthlessness of natural selection.

Using probability, after the fact, would be like a lottery winner saying, "It is highly unlikely that I could have won this lottery, therefore I must not have won."

By the way, computer programming is usually based on someone designing a program to run things. Recently, evolutionary programming has been tried and is more successful. Many solutions from randomness and chance are ones a designer would never have thought of. Ask me about this kind of programming -- I’m now experimenting with it even on my small computer system.

The author is trying to sound learned and is throwing in a cheap shot at evolutionary theory. It will take many decades and maybe centuries to find the exact mechanism and history of the development of all the detailed development of life. With modern Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Geology this is actually happening faster than was expected before.

Darwin was a meticulous collector of massive amount of biological data, and refused to come to his conclusions on evolution until the evidence forced it on him He actually planned on publishing after his death, because he expected it to antagonize many in the society of the 1800’s. Because of circumstances he had to publish his results (with all the data) much before his death.

It’s surprising that most of Darwin’s theory of evolution has stayed intact, and is being verified with modern data. Since Darwin , molecular biology (DNA studies is part of this), nuclear physics, etc. have developed, filling in a lot of the puzzle that was missing in Darwin’s day. There is nothing else that comes even close to the success of the evolutionary theory in Science -- without it most of modern day scientific research couldn’t go on.

Ethics (morals) is a completely separate issue than the existence of God. General ethical behaviour in humans and animals, such as compassion, altruism, love, truth-seeking, fairness, justice, etc. are universal, except for 1% of people called psychopaths, that have no moral sense, and are the source of a lot of difficulties in human relations -- this is based on experimental evidence. These ethical traits in humans appear to be genetically based. All are necessary for the survival of a group in the evolutionary process.

According to recent surveys, a little over 10% of the U.S. population are atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers. Of the prison population, only 1% are atheists, agnostics and freethinkers. Just this last week a number of new studies (one took 2 generations of people to complete) show that the number for atheists, etc., in prison is much less than 1 % -- close to zero.. This must tell us something about ethics and humans.

Contrary to what is often claimed, I have found the bible does not promote an absolute moral code. It presents a relativistic situational ethics. What does the bible say about morality in things that count? Some people talk about right and wrong absolute standards and that a Moral Law exists. In my study of the bible, I find the bible is in favour of a kind of situational ethics, not an absolute standard. Because the bible does not present a standard Moral Law, Christians have so many different views of what morality is all about -- based on the bible, all of these views can be justified. From my bible study I have come to believe the bible standards are purely human ethical standards reflecting the primitive times when the bible was written.

The author’s arguments about ethics are false.

A quote:

A "nothing" experience can be very intense.

by Gordon Newfeld (Sun paper 93-07-10)-belonged to Moonies -- an x-Moonie

The question could be asked: "Are hundred’s of millions Hindus hallucinating when they experience intense religious events?" "Are the Muslims hallucinating when they experience religious feelings?" The same question can be asked of any religious experience, including Christian.

From one of my website pages:

A "nothing experience can be very intense". Many intense religious experiences in all the different religions and intense non-religious experiences may only be mind experiences and do not give evidence their religion or belief system is true. However, it is evident that many people, if not most people, have a need to experience intense feelings. These experiences can be private and/or public. This is shown in people's intense participation: in sports, games, hobbies, sex, romance; in reading (novels, poems, scholarly works, etc.); in watching "gripping" movies or TV; in personally helping others, in accomplishing a worthwhile thing, in solving meaningful problems, in relevant learning, in working on a worthwhile project, in scientific discovery; in hiking, gardening and other nature activities; in relating to others. In causes such as radical fundamentalism (Jewish, Islam, Christian, Hindu, Sikh, and any other religion); nazism, communism, capitalism, socialism, or any other "ism"; New Age. In personal religious experiences. In Charismatic type of religious service or political event. In drugs. In natural and man-made catastrophes. You can probably think of many other ways. It is important to realize that you , as a person, have some choice and control in what endeavour you will experience these intense feelings.

The good news is that: the assumption that the bible is divine is not necessary. Who told you it was divine other than the bible itself? If you do not believe the bible is divine then you do not assume the existence of Sin, you do not assume the fall of mankind, you do not assume the wrath of God and "divine judgment", you do not assume Christ's sacrificial atonement means anything -- it doesn't if you don't assume all the above. (When I was a born-again, dedicated Christian I believed all these assumptions to be reality.) By not making these assumptions you are then free of all this and can begin to live a happy, free, fun and ethical life; a life with real meaning.

There is nothing complicated in personally, privately talking with God, in admiring the universe; and simply believing in the continuance of existence after death; and in being humane.

From my intense study of the bible I have concluded that the God of the Bible could not be the God of the Universe. There is no evidence that shows that the God of the Bible or the God of the Koran is the God of the Universe. The evidence of the scientific study of the Universe indicates that the God of the Universe must be much greater than the God of the Bible or the God of the Koran.

God cannot be all-knowing (omniscient). There is an innate uncertainty in all processes in the universe. This is described in Quantum Physics by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principles. This means no one can know any process in any detail. In most cases this uncertainty is very small, but it still says God cannot be all knowing.

This also means God or anyone else can only predict the future in limited detail, even if everything of the present is known. Therefore, God cannot be all-powerful (omnipotent) -- cannot know the future completely.

The Bible is a book like any other ancient book. It is written by people that saw the universe as was common in ancient times. Through Science people have found the universe to be quite different than the biblical description of it. As in any ancient document, one may find some useful information in the Bible. By viewing the Bible (also the Koran and other "Holy" books) as an ancient man-made book that presents ancient ideas prevalent at the time one can enjoy and appreciate it more. These "Holy" books may even have been progressive for the time in which they were written.

Even if we accepted all the above as presented by the author as being true hardly guarantees that a given belief system based on them is the TRUTH. It does not follow from the claims made in the book’s Introduction and Chapter 1 that the Bible has any truth to it or that Christianity is THE belief system that matters. If the author wants to HONESTLY persuade people to accept the bible as their "Holy" book and Christianity as their belief system, he must do these on ‘choice of faith’, not FALSELY on the basis of science or reason.

Take Care, Hooge