The same person who left the lengthy and thought-provoking response to my first “How Great Thou Art” video made a comment on the second one, “Creation & The Big Bang.”  As before, I decided to post my response here since it should provide worthwhile clarification of some points discussed in the video and hopefully address his differing views.

“ARS” wrote:

“The largest problem with everything you will present is that it is an argument from ignorance (Logical fallacy), nobody knows these things, and none of this is any conclusive evidence for anything other than ignorance. You say that theists call the beginning maker/creator god, but you fail to address the FACT that they have the same amount of evidence to support this as the naturalist, NONE.

“The idea that something un-natural had to create the entire universe is again an appeal to ignorance, nature outside of the universe is not known at present, and therefore cannot be said to lack the mechanism for the universes existence.

“Always existing universe in no way lacks common sense as opposed to created universe, you are stating an extremely weak opinion in that it is common sense to assume a beginning, not a logical or well defined argument. How does one coming to the conclusion God(s) always existed takes more of a stand to the side of common sense, this is bias, plain and simple it is not common sense.

“As far as the scientific evidence I think if you ever go back and change the video, you should clarify the expansion of the universe, as from everything I have read, the galaxies do not accelerate, but rather the space between cosmological bodies expands, this is important and should be noted.”

Here’s my response:

First of all, nowhere in these videos have I claimed to provide “conclusive evidence” for the existence of God.  I do not believe that God’s existence can be proven.  Indeed, if such were possible it would negate the importance of faith in Christianity.  My purpose with this video is to address the misconception that  atheistic, or “natural,” explanations for the universe’s existence are based upon anything more than unproven theories and, indeed, faith.  Given the fact that naturalists have no evidence for their theories for the beginning (which you admit), a supernatural explanation has not been ruled out.  Thus, any scientist who says that belief in God is unscientific is ignoring the fact that neither are any of his explanations for the existence of the universe.  It’s an ad hominem attack that theists shouldn’t fall for.

Of course, I believe the supernatural explanation is more than just a possibility, and I will argue this further in the next several videos.

As for your point that our lack of knowledge about any nature outside of our universe rules out our ability to conclude anything about what created the universe, you’re right.  My point is that anything outside of our universe is by definition not natural, since nature as defined by our laws of physics, etc. is generally assumed to be confined within our universe.  Perhaps there exists a superuniverse with our same laws, but perhaps it has entirely different – “supernatural” – laws totally distinct from our own.  Again, I don’t claim to know “what” is out there, only that God remains a possibility as long as we are unable to prove otherwise.  Again, this doesn’t prove God’s existence, but neither does it disprove it.

As for the concept of an eternal universe not lacking common sense, it does when you consider the fact that our universe is confined by laws which rule out the possibility of eternal existence.  I won’t go into detail as I already did in the video, but entropy is the major one.  Because we exist, and because evidence points to our universe having had a beginning (thus, not being eternal), it is in fact reasonable to assume that something had to create/initiate everything.  God at this point is a vague concept that simply refers to that which started it all (whether a deity or super-universe or alien, whatever).  Since we find ourselves resorting to such a unscientific and supernatural conclusion, we again find that God’s existence has not been disproven.

As for the universe’s expansion accelerating, just Google it.  In addition to the Wikipedia entry, there are numerous other articles on the phenomenon.  Science Daily, for example.

Thanks for your comments, constructive criticism is always welcome!

Brian