Why Something Rather than Nothing?

After a night of teenage exuberance, my friends and I would usually end up lying out on a country road, gazing up at the starlit Australian sky, discussing the meaning of it all. We considered ourselves nonreligious, and yet there was something (isn’t there?) about the enormity of the sky that humbled us, stirred us, inspired us to ask deep questions about, well, everything. We called these GLUE conversations—GLUE being an acronym for God, life, the universe, and everything. One of... Read More

Cosmology and Causation: Why Metaphysics Matters

Several people have asked me to comment on the remarks about causation made by atheist physicist Sean Carroll during his recent debate with William Lane Craig on the topic of “God and Cosmology.”  (You’ll find Craig’s own post-debate remarks here.)  It’s only fair to acknowledge at the outset that Carroll cannot justly be accused of the anti-philosophy one finds in recent remarks by physicists Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss, and Neil deGrasse Tyson.  Indeed, Carroll has... Read More

Modern Physics, Ancient Faith: An Interview with Physicist Dr. Stephen Barr

Some news hooks are irresistible, even when they're false or at least incomplete. Case in point: the alleged conflict between science and religion. Is science opposed to religion? The answer depends in large measure on what you mean by religion. If your "religion" is, say, astrology, then you could say there's a conflict between science and "religion". The science of astronomy does conflict with the "religion" of astrology. Probably most people who speak of a conflict between science and... Read More

Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow’s Inadvertent Proof for God

There's an old saying about giving a man enough rope, and he'll hang himself. The idea is that if someone is wrong or lying, the longer they go on, the more obvious this becomes.  Well, Bantam Books gave Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow all the rope they wanted, and the result is The Grand Design, a new book in which they argue against the necessity (and existence) of God.  Here's the core of their argument:   “[Just] as Darwin and Wallace explained how the apparently miraculous... Read More

New Support for the Cosmological Argument

  One of the most interesting and widely discussed arguments for the existence of God is the kalam cosmological argument, which attempts to prove that it is impossible for the universe to have an infinite past. If the argument proves the universe had a beginning, then it follows that some cause that transcends the universe must have brought it into existence. The defender of the kalam argument may also advance other arguments attempting to show that the cause of the universe is God. Although... Read More