The following continues the serialization of Chapter 5 on Religion from SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity:
The Case for Lee Strobel
Having spent so much time on Richard Dawkins, I thought I would give some almost equal time to Lee Strobel, a journalist who saw the light later in life. From a legal editor for The Chicago Tribune and spiritual skeptic, he became an evangelical Christian. Like most, he kind of believed, until, at the age of 14, learning about the Stanley Miller experiment was a eureka moment for him, and he kicked God out of his life, somewhat similar to mine when a Buddhist priest could not name a second person who attained Nirvana. In The Case for the Creator, I found his presentation particularly interesting because he provides some scientific facts somewhat reminiscent of my Book 1. His reading of Jonathan Wells’ contempt for evolution steered Strobel towards believing in a Supreme Being, exactly in the opposite direction as my discussion with Richard Dawkins inspiring me to admit that I was, in reality, an atheist, or some strain of one.
The premise of Strobel’s argument is that, as the Universe in its present conformation is essentially an impossibility, then, it must have taken an intelligent designer to create it. He quotes an Oxford (this campus seems steeped in religion, or the absence of it) physicist, Roger Penrose (right), about the precision necessary for the Universe forming being the fraction of a number in the denominator so large that there are more zeroes than the number of elementary particles. Also from James Kasting (Penn State University, left)) that the Moon is amazingly the right size in the exact orbit necessary to minimize Earth tilt, while providing perfect eclipses, as the Sun is 400 times larger than the Moon, but 400 times further away. We are the only known planet even close to this designed condition. How can this be an accident? Well, Paul Doland, a vegetarian agnostic (so indicated in his profile) said to rank 5,575th among all Amazon.com reviewers, with 68 of them, reacted to The Case for the Creator with a 31 page critique: (go to GOOGLE and type in Paul Doland, Lee Strobel):
o This is just another in Strobel’s Intelligent Design apologetic series (Cases for Christ, Easter, and Faith).
o While Strobel’s PhD interviewees are credentialed, they represent a minority opinion relative to others in their scientific field.
o If human life was created by God as his unique crowning glory, why did He bother to create the billions of other galaxies?
o The mere ignorance about the origin of the Universe or abiogenesis does not justify a supernatural explanation.
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The Dow Jones Industrials dropped 114 to 10,783, with world markets mostly down. Gold fell $2/toz to $1232 and crude oil is now at $74/barrel.
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