Scientists discover a second hidden CODE in the human DNA: More evidence for intelligent design?

According to this report in TIME Magazine:

"Scientists have marveled at the ingenuity of the DNA code since it was first deciphered in the early sixties, but now it appears that there is much more to it than previously known.

A research team at the University of Washington has discovered a second code hidden within the DNA, written on top of the other.

“Now we know that this basic assumption about reading the human genome missed half of the picture,” said team leader Dr. John Stamatoyannopoulos.

Whereas the first code describes how proteins are made, this second language instructs the cell on how genes are to be controlled. The discovery, published in Science on Friday, will enable improved diagnoses and treatments of disease"

So, we have now more evidence for an extremely complex informational process in the DNA, which includes:

1)A code for the making of proteins (this was already known)

2)A code for a second language which instructs the cell on how genes are controlled (the new scientific discovery).

But language and information always come, as far we know, from some kind of intelligence. And the development and complexity of such language is proportional to the level of intelligence in question (e.g. the human language is a lot more complex than the language used by dolphins) Otherwise, it wouldn't be a language at all. 

Language is teleological, namely, it is goal-directed to a certain goal and is intended to convey some information, which could be decoded by another intelligence which understands the codification. The whole process is information-based.

It is hard to see exactly where we could put such teleological and intelligent processes in a world which is, as philosophical naturalists think, wholly governed by brute, blind, random, mindless and mechanical (i.e. non-teleological and non-intelligent) forces and entities.

This new scientific evidence clinches the argument from design in biology.

I think skeptic David Hume (who's championed by atheists) was right when he wrote:

The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational enquierer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion... Were men led into the apprehension of invisible, intelligent power by a contemplation of the works of nature, they could never possibly entertain any conception but of one single being, who bestowed existence and order on this vast machine, and adjusted all its parts, according to one regular plan or connected system . . .All the things of the universe are evidently of a piece. Every thing is adjusted to every thing. One design prevails throughtout the whole. And this uniformity leads the mind to acknowledge one author" (The Natural History of Religion, pp. 21, 26, emphasis in blue added).

More recently, the defender of philosophical atheism for more than 4 decades and who then left such position in favour of theism, Antony Flew comments about his conversion:

There were two factors in particular that were decisive. One was my growing empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe. The second was my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself – which is far more complex than the physical Universe – can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source. I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so. With every passing year, the more that was discovered about the richness and inherent intelligence of life, the less it seemed likely that a chemical soup could magically generate the genetic code. The difference between life and non-life, it became apparent to me, was ontological and not chemical. The best confirmation of this radical gulf is Richard Dawkins' comical effort to argue in The God Delusion that the origin of life can be attributed to a "lucky chance." If that's the best argument you have, then the game is over. No, I did not hear a Voice. It was the evidence itself that led me to this conclusion

The new evidence for a second hidden code in the DNA, which is a discovery that Hume and Flew couldn't  know, reinforces, refines and updates their arguments.

It seems it is naturalistic atheism which is increasingly becoming pushed against the ropes by the scientific evidence.

Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Robert Sungenis on the debate between geocentrism and heliocentrism: Reflections on the importance of philosophical pressupositions in science

Geocentrism is the model according to which the Earth is at the orbital center of all celestial bodies. We could summarize this view with this saying: The Earth is the center of the universe.

Since Galileo, it is widely held that the geocentric view has been empirically refuted by a heliocentric system, and no informed person would doubt that. 

However, among astrophycisists, there are some of whom argue that both the geocentric model and the heliocentric model are empirically equivalent, and therefore there is not scientific way to decide the question. The decision is, at the bottom, philosophical and extra-scientific.

Albert Einstein, for example, argued this:

The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolomy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either coordinate system could used with equal justification. The two sentences: "the sun is at rest and the Earth moves", or "the sun moves and the Earth is at rest", would simply mean to different conventions concerning two different coordinate systems. (The Evolution of Physics: From Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta, p.212. Emphasis added.)

According to Einstein, it is all dependent on the perspective that we choose (conventionally) to assume. For example, if you assume that the Earth is at rest and that all the other celestial bodies move, you can make calculations and predictions which can be empirically confirmed. But the same happens if you assume that it is the sun which is at rest and the Earth is moving...

So, both models are empirically equivalent (i.e. equivalent from the point of view of the empirical evidence).

More recently, Stephen Hawking, in his lastest book The Grand Design, has made exactly the same point than Einstein:

So which is real, the Ptolemaic or Copernican system? Although it is not uncommon for people to say that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong, that is not true (p.41. Emphasis added)

The underlying point of Einstein and Hawking is that, from a purely empirical point of view, both models (which are theoretically contradictory) are empirically equivalent, and hence there is no scientific justification at all to consider that one of them is the correct one. It is entirely dependent of the perspective that you assume that will determine which models explain the data, but (as Einstein notes) the perspective in question is a matter of convention.

Theirs is a kind of empirical relativism.

Now, I myself am a critic of geocentrism and a supporter of heliocentrism, but in all honesty I think that Einstein and Hawking have a point, if we limit out analysis to the empirical evidence alone. 

Now, obviously limiting oneself to scientific evidence alone (without any awareness of the underlaying philosophical assumptions) is simply naive. All of science has philosophical pressupositions which are assumed without question by scientists (the function of questioning such assumptions correspond to philosophers, not to scientists as such).

As philosopher Stephen Braude comments in his insighful critique of Ruper Sheldrake' work:

But no scientific theory is throughly empirical, and like many theories in science, Sheldrake looks more empirical than it is. Like all scientific theories, however, it rests on philosophical pressupositions. Every scientific theory starts from some assumptions or other about what nature is like and what observation is, as well as methodological assumptions about which investigate and explanatory procedures are appropiate to which domains. ("Radical Provincialism in Life Sciences" in The Journal of the American Society fo Physical Research, vol 77, January 1983).

Scientists as scientists seldom are trained to discover the working assumptions of their own discipline, let alone to critically examine and defend them from philosophical objections (again, this is the work of philosophy, not of science).

Braude adds that such philosophical naivité and ignorance is evident in the work of many parapsychologists. (He highlights this point in the case of survival research,  which makes a lot of implicit philosophical assumptions which are not almost never discussed, let alone defended. In my opinion, Braude's insight on survival research is one of the reasons which explain the thereotical lack of sophistication and development in much of the contemporary work on survival).

For example, at times Einstein seemed to believe that his special and general theory of relativity was purely empirical. Such radical and naive empiricism was instrumental in Einstein's rejection of absolute simultaneity. Most lay people and scientists think that Einstein "refuted" absolute simultaneity, but most philosophers of science who have studied the question are skeptical of such claim.

Philosophers of science have shown that Einstein's theory and metholdology is full of pressupositions, some of which are false or at best doubtious. See a philosophical discussion of some of the problems of Einstein's theory in William Lane Craig's book Time and Metaphysics of Relativity (Springer, 2001), and also the collection of essays by several philosophers of science edited by Craig and Quentin Smith in Einstein, Relativity and Absolute Simultaneity (Routledg, 2007)

A contemporary defender of geocentrism is Catholic thinker Robert Sungenis. In his controversial book "Galileo was wrong, the Church was right" he makes exactly the same point of Einstein and Hawking (and many other scientists), namely, that from an purely empirical point of view, both models are equivalent.

Watch this video by Sungenis explaning his arguments:

I side with defenders of heliocentrism, and consider that it is a better and more reasonable model than geocentrism.

But I fully admit that my preference of heliocentrism is primarily philosophical, that is, I consider that the pressupositions underlaying heliocentrism are more plausible than the ones underlaying geocentrism.

In all honesty and with some reluctance, I have to admit with Einstein, Hawking, Sungenis and others that that science, by itself, seems to be ambiguous regarding this problem and cannot settle the question.

Marcus Borg and the lack of evidence as "evidence" for what the Historical Jesus never said

In this interview, liberal New Testament scholar Marcus Borg says this:

The first is that Lewis’ statement depends upon accepting John’s gospel as a historically factual account of how Jesus spoke: “I am the light of the world,” “Whoever has seen me has seen God,” “I and the Father are one.” Most mainstream scholars today would say that Jesus never made those claims for himself, that they are the post-Easter testimony or witness of the early church, and when one no longer thinks of Jesus making those claims for himself, then Lewis’ argument evaporates.

In the past few years and months, I've dedicated a major part of my time to survey carefully the scholarly literature on the Historical Jesus, searching for the positive EVIDENCE for Borg's and other liberal claims.(Keep in mind that in the Jesus research context by "evidence", it means those traditions about Jesus which pass the criteria of authenticity).

After months and months of reading papers, technical articles, books, watching debates, keeping online correspondence with some New Testament scholars and hearing tapes about the historical Jesus, I can say very confidently this: There is NO EVIDENCE at all for Borg's claims like the ones above. There is not ONE criteria of authenticity which support the conclusion that Jesus "never" said that.

When you press liberals to provide exactly a single piece of historical evidence for such claims, their answer consists mostly in a bunch of question-begging assumptions and speculations. In other cases, you get only ad hominem replies, red herrings, speculations about your motives (they will accuse you of "fundamentalist" if you keep pressing questions about evidence) and so forth (all of them sophistical methods intended to distract the attention from the issue at stake, namely, the specific historical evidence for the claim that Jesus never said such and such).

The criteria of authenticity are positive criteria, namely, they provide positive evidence for what Jesus said and did, not negative evidence for that Jesus did not said or did. 

The liberal methodology of Borg is an egregious misapplication of the criteria of authenticity.

The abscence of evidence for Jesus saying X at most would support the conclusion that we don't know if Jesus said it or not. Such lack of evidence is not positive evidence for the negative conclusion that Jesus didn't say it. This is a basic logical and historical point.

For example, A Course In Miracles put in Jesus' lips this claim:

The Son of God is part of the Holy Trinity, but the Trinity Itself is One. There is no confusion within Its Levels, because They are of one Mind and one Will.  This single purpose creates perfect integration and establishes the peace of God.

There is not shred of evidence that such words came from Jesus. But does it "prove" that Jesus "never" said that? Obviously not. At most, we can conclude that, lacking positive evidence for that, we don't know if Jesus said this or not. We're left with a position of agnosticism, not of denialism.

But then the same historical logic and reasoning applies to Jesus' putative words in John's Gospel (specially given that John's Gospel comes from the 1st century in contrast with ACIM, which is 19 centuries later. So John's Gospel stands historically far better than ACIM in regards to the criterion of date, which implies that, on that criterion, John's Gospel is a lot more reliable than the ACIM. But even in this case, it doesn't prove definitively that ACIM is false).

Consider the claim "I am the light of the world". This appears in John's Gospel, but in the Gospel of Thomas (the favorite apocryphal Gospel of revisionists like the Jesus Seminar) something very similar is reported, and (for New Age believers) in ACIM too (an entire section of the ACIM is entitled "I am the light of the world").

Given that it appears in John's Gospel and it is also attested by Thomas' Gospel (provided such tradition were independent), how in the world can Borg to claim such confidently that Jesus "never" say that?

Even if it appears only in John, how exactly this proves that Jesus didn't say that?

Even if it didn't appear in any historical source whatsoever, how exactly such lack of evidence is a positive proof for Borg's categorical assertion that Jesus "never" claimed that?

It is just bad logic and scholarship (put in the service of atheism, religious pluralism and anti-Christian prejudices).

The underlaying liberal (and question-begging) assumption is that if the early Church strongly believed X about Jesus, then any tradition in which Jesus says X is not historical, but an invention of the Church. This is so absurd  and prejudiced as saying that if parapsychologists have interest in proving telepathy, any positive data or reporting supporting telepathy must be flawed or seen with suspicion (this is the standard skeptical position).

According to such liberal "logic", since Chris Carter, Titus Rivas or Michael Prescott are strong believers in the afterlife, all their arguments for the afterlife must be false or at best seen as suspicion, since they are biased and strongly interested in defending the afterlife hypothesis.

Since Dean Radin has dedicated his entire professional life to make of parapsychology a science, we must doubt of all his arguments and evidence shown in his books since he's a "believer" in psi.

This amount to claiming that all or most of the evidence coming from parapsychologists and believers in the afterlife is unreliable, a sheer invention of credulous people who are not interested in the truth.

The last point was made by skeptic Martin Gardner:

How can the public know that for fifty years skeptical psychologists have been trying their best to replicate classic psi experiments, and with notable unsuccess? It is this fact more than any other that has led to parapsychology's perpetual stagnation. Positive evidence keeps coming from a tiny group of enthusiasts, while negative evidence keeps coming from a much larger group of skeptics

In Gardner's jargon, enthisiasts = parapsychologists = tiny group of believers in psi. (The implication is that the evidence coming from "tiny group of enthusiasts" is unreliable. Only the evidence from the "large group of skeptics" is trustworthy).

Exactly the same can be found among "liberals". They assume that if the evidence about Jesus' divine self-perception come from Christians (i.e. enthusiasts of Christianity), the evidence cannot be taken seriously. It MUST be an invention of the Christian enthisiasts.

What is the difference between Gardner's position and the liberal's position? None. Zero... except that Gardner is talking about parapsychologists and the liberals about the early Christians. That's all.

Both are working on the assumption that enthusiasts (of parapsychology or Christianity or...) are not reliable sources of information, and such assumption overrides any possible contrary evidence.

My study of the debate around parapsychology prepared me to discover the misleading ways of argumentation of liberal scholars like Borg.

Exposing a person's prejudices is useful AFTER you have shown that their arguments are wrong (this is what I've made regarding liberals: After showing that their use of the criteria of authenticity are wrong and misleading, I've explained that fact arguing that their methodology is strongly prejudiced. My contention is not that liberals are prejudiced and non-liberals are free of prejudices; rather, my contention is that the prejudices of liberals, influenced by naturalism and religious pluralism, are question begging against the Christian view of Jesus, and that such prejudices force them to misuse the criteria of authenticity, like Borg does when arguing that Jesus "never" claimed what John says that Jesus claimed).

The mataphysics of necessity: Ontology and conceptual distinctions

An interesting topic in metaphysics is the concept of necessity. Without any pretension of being exhaustive, in this post I'll comment on some of the main elements and kinds of necessity.

Kinds of necessity:

1-Logical, formal or conceptual necessity: This kind of necessity refers to truth-values of propositions, and have not (or doesn't need) to have any ontological commitments. They're truth in virtue of the concepts being used in the proposition.

For example, "bachelors are unmarried men" is necessarily true, in virtue of the concept of "bachelor". But note that this proposition doesn't say anything about the objective existence of bachelors. The proposition is true regardless of the existence of any bachelor.

For example: In classical theism, "God is omniscient" is necessarily true, in virtue of the concept of God. Again, this proposition tells us nothing about the objective existence of God. The proposition is true even if God doesn't exist.

For example: "2+2=4". This mathematical proposition is conceptually true (given Peano's axioms, the rules of inference of standard aritmethics and the concepts of "2", "+" and "4"), even if  numbers don't exist objectively.

Note that all of these propositions don't need to have any ontological commitments. Metaphysically, they are all subjective, in the sense of being mind-dependent (they depend for their existence on the concepts used by a mind. No mind --> no concepts --> no proposition --> no truth-values).

Since all the above necessarily true propositions don't imply the objective existence of the entities being mentioned in the proposition, then it follows that if such entities exist objectively, the question of "what explains these entities?" still makes sense.

For example, despite of "bachelors are unmarried men" being (conceptually) necessarily true, it doesn't explain why the hell bachelors exist at all. In fact, the existence of bachelors is (metaphysically, see below) contingent.

2-Metaphysical or ontological necessity: This kind of necessity refers to the existence of objects. Some object X is ontologically necessary if it couldn't not to exist. With some qualifications, they don't have anything to do with the concepts being used in propositions. They don't depend for their existence on the contents of the mind.

Philosophers specialized in metaphysics have realized that necessarily existing beings (e.g. God or numbers, if they exist) must have, in virtue of their necessity, at least the following two features:

-Eternity: they could not have a beginning nor end

-Indestructibility: They cannot be destroyed, otherwise they could have an end and hence could become non-existent. (This is why, Victor Stenger's "metaphysical pizza" reply against the ontological argument is clearly stupid, self-contradictory and embarassing, and only shows Stenger's intellectual limitation to understand propertly philosophical concepts).

Both properties are essential to necessity, not accidental. Lacking one of them implies that the being in question is not necessary, but contingent.

 

 Some implications:

Some important implications follow the above distinction:

1-Conceptually necessary truths don't have (or don't need to have) ontological commitments. This means that if a given conceptual truth is necessarily true, it doesn't mean that the entities posed by the propositions exist objectively.

For example, "triangles have three angles" is necessarily true, even if not triangle exists at all. And the existence of physical triangles in the world could be purely contingent and in need of further explanation (e.g a triangle on the sand requires of the existence of sand, which is a purely contingent phenomenon explained by natural sciences).

2-Some conceptually necessary truths could pose entities which exist in a metaphysically necessary way. 

For example "God is omniscient" is conceptually and necessarily true, but it doesn't tell us if God exists or not. But, if God exists, then it exists necessarily. So the proposition is both "conceptually necessary" and poses an entity which exists necessarily.

3-If an object is not eternal, it is not necessary.

In all the history of thought, atheism has hold that the universe is eternal and necessary and hence without a cause. 

The problem for atheism is that contemporaty cosmology tells us that the universe began to exist 13.798±0.037 billions of years ago. Therefore, the universe is not eternal. Therefore, the universe is contingent and it needs some kind of explanation of "why does it exist?" like any other contingent being.

This is why some contemporary atheists are prepared to say that the universe began to exist from "nothing", in order to avoid theism.

4-Metaphysical truths don't need to be conceptually necessary:

For example, "whatever begins to exist has a cause" seem to be metaphysically necessary, since its denial implies the coming into being "out of nothing", which seems to be impossible (except for atheists).

However, such proposition is not conceptually necessary, i.e. it doesn't derive its truth-value from the concepts being used in the proposition.

For example, "an actual infinite cannot exist in the concrete world" is not a conceptually necessary truth. But, given the absurd and physically impossible consequences that it has if it were instantiated in the real concrete world, it seems to be metaphysically impossible.

5-Only a necessary being could be the ontological ground for other metaphysically necessary beings.

In other words, necessary entities cannot be ultimately grounded (metaphysically) in contingent beings.

So, if moral values exist necessarily, they cannot be grounded in the physical universe (because it is contingent). This is why atheists tend to hold either the non-existence of such values (the most likely and consistent position given atheism), or to hold that such values exists contingently as an emergent property of matter (something which no natural science supports, since natural science have not discoveried any moral property in physical matter and all the laws of matter have nothing to do with morals nor other personal properties whatsoever).

But a necessarily existing personal being, like God, could ground the existence of necessary moral values (e.g. if God is the "Good", as classical theism holds, moral values must exists eternally and necessarily. God's nature implies them). But not all of morals need to be necessary. God could create them contingently too (e.g. specific moral laws for specific universes, in the same way that physical laws are created for specific universes or realms of existence). Both possibilities are open, provided that God exists and creates universes.

Since moral values are connected to persons, if morals are metaphysically necessary, then persons are metaphysically necessary too. This metaphysically necessity of persons (at least one person) is precisely what theism holds, and what atheism historically has denied and continue to deny (for contemporary metaphysical atheism, persons are not basic to reality, but later by products of a more fundamental non-personal reality, like quantum particles, fields, wave functions, etc. or in the case of some Eastern atheistic worldviews, "impersonal consciousness", "all-pervading energy", Deepak Chopra's "impersonal intelligence" and so forth).

Something similar could be said of mathematical objects (numbers, sets, etc.) but, in contrast with morals, numbers don't seem to be essentially connected with persons, except for the fact that numbers seem to be the contents of some mind.

So, if numbers exist objectively, the following conclusion of mathematician Elliot Benjamin, PhD, seems to be reasonable:

Well if it were the case that numbers and mathematics did exist in some kind of objective/ontological sense, then perhaps this would give us some evidence for some kind of intelligent being who designed the universe--I suppose you can call it God. For the astounding logic involved in higher mathematics is staggering virtually beyond comprehension, with a phenomenal level of mental acrobatics involved in the highest mathematical realms.

This would lead us into a complex mathematical argument for God's existence (there are several of them), which is not the purpose of this post (see, however, this post).

In future posts we'll continue discussing the problems of necessity.

Graham Oppy on the actual infinite and the Kalam argument, conditionals and the instantation in reality of abstract objects.

Secular philosopher Graham Oppy, whose views on the kalam argument I discussed in a previous post, is author of an interesting book on the infinite, as this concept plays a role in mathematics and cosmological arguments for God's existence.

In the kalam cosmological argument, it is argued that an actual infinite (i.e. a collection or set composed by a infinite numbers of parts) cannot be instantiated in the concrete world (e.g. in the physical world). If this argument is sound (and I think it is) it implies that the universe is not past eternal, because a past eternal universe would be composed by an infinite number of past events, and such infinite cannot exist.

This implies the absolute beginning of the universe (note that this argument, developed in medieval times, is wholly independent of the current scientific-cosmological evidence for the universe's beginning). So both scientific and philosophical considerations support the universe's absolute beginning.

In the kalam argument, it is shown that the existence of an actual infinite in the concrete world would produce absurd and physically impossible situations. A leading defender of the argument, William Lane Craig, comments:

Take, for example, Hilbert's Hotel, a product of the mind of the great German mathematician David Hilbert. Let us first imagine a hotel with a finite number of rooms. Suppose, furthermore, that all the rooms are full. When a new guest arrives asking for a room, the proprietor apologizes, "Sorry, all the rooms are full." But now let us imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms and suppose once more that all the rooms are full. There is not a single vacant room throughout the entire infinite hotel. Now suppose a new guest shows up, asking for a room. "But of course!" says the proprietor, and he immediately shifts the person in room #1 into room #2, the person in room #2 into room #3, the person in room #3 into room #4, and so on, out to infinity. As a result of these room changes, room #1 now becomes vacant, and the new guest gratefully checks in. But remember, before he arrived, all the rooms were full! Equally curious, according to the mathematicians, there are now no more persons in the hotel than there were before: the number is just infinite. But how can this be? The proprietor just added the new guest's name to the register and gave him his keys—how can there not be one more person in the hotel than before?...  suppose some of the guests start to check out. Suppose the guest in room #1 departs. Is there not now one fewer person in the hotel? Not according to the mathematicians! Suppose the guests in rooms # 1, 3, 5 ... check out. In this case an infinite number of people have left the hotel, but according to the mathematicians, there are no fewer people in the hotel! In fact, we could have every other guest check out of the hotel and repeat this process infinitely many times, and yet there would never be any fewer people in the hotel.

Craig's argument is basically a reductio ad absurdum of the existence of the actual infinite in the concrete world.

In the universe of purely conceptual discourse of mathematicians, the actual infinite is a perfectly a logical concept, you're just playing with a bunch of concepts and trying to reason logically about such concepts. But when you try to make it instantiated in the concrete, physical reality, outside of the conceptual realm of mathematics, the actual infinite produces clearly impossible and absurd situations as the ones mentioned above by Craig.

Now, Oppy (who is a sophisticated secular philosopher) understands perfectly the argument and its absurd implications.

To my astonishment, Oppy's reply to it is... to accept such absurd consequences!

Oppy says that we have to "outsmart" the proponent of the argument, that is, "to embrace the conclusion of one's opponent's reductio ad absurdum argument".

But surely this is wrong. If you accept the conclusion of your opponent's reductio ad absurdum argument, then you're accepting that you position was soundly refuted, since it is the main function of any successful reductio ad absurdum, specially in mathematics. (In fact, it is hard to think in a more sound and convincing form of refutation than an reductio ad absurdum argument).

No mathematician would say "Well, you have provided a sound reductio ad absurdum of my argument, and I fully accept and embrace it. Therefore, my argument is right!"

Only an atheist philosopher would dare to suggest something like that, just on behalf of having the upper hand in a debate and trying to appear to be right (to himself) in the face of contrary evidence and sound logical refutation.

By "embracing" the conclusion of the opponent's reductio, Oppy means to accept that if an actually infinite numbers of things exist in the concrete, extra-conceptual world, the absurd situations mentioned by Craig would happen and we should expect and accept them.

Such reply is shocking coming from a philosopher of Oppy's intellectual stature. 

Obviously, if an actual infinite exists, then such absurd situations should be expected. This is simply to repeat the conditional "If an actual infinite number of things exist in the real world, then absurd consequences result"

But the conditional is not in dispute (in fact, such conditional is precisely what the proponent of the kalam is arguing for!). What is in dispute is the antecedent of such conditional, namely, the existence of an actual infinite in the real world.

Simply embracing the conclusion of the argument does nothing to show that the antecedent is possible and hence that such absurd situations can be factually instantiated in the real world.

That a philosopher of Oppy's level of sophistication and erudition have defended such mathematically, metaphysically and logically implausible objection to the kalam argument, reinforces our confidence in the soundness of the kalam as a good argument for the universe's absolute beginning, and hence for God's existence.

Contemporary atheists not just are disposed to accept that "the universe came from nothing", but alternatively also that the universe is composed of an infinite number of past events which, if true, would imply the existence of an actual infinite with its absurd and impossible (and never observed!) consequences in the real world.

It is hard to think about a position which requires more faith than this, and which is more contrary to logic and evidence.

Atheists are prepared to accept ANY position, if it provides them with a apparent escape or way out for not accepting God's existence.

In addition to psychological factors, I suspect that spiritual factors play a role and some religious traditions (from several perspectives) have alerted about it.

For example, in the New Testament, in Matthew 13: 10-13, when asked for his continuous use of parables to convey his teachings, Jesus explained:

And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?

¹¹ He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.

¹² For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.

¹³ Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.

Did Jesus perhaps know in advance that certain kind of persons (the ones who are fully committed to reject any evidence for God) won't hear, and hence to such persons no correct or straightforward or unambiguous explanation and information about God should be given?

Who knows...

Stephen Braude on the nature of physical laws, Richard Swinburne on two kinds of explanations and the location problem for naturalism

Philosopher Stephen Braude explains the proper function and domain of physical laws:

"The laws of physics (including conservation laws) strictly speaking apply only to impersonal or mechanical forces, i.e. to physical systems and interactions abstracted from the realm of intention". 

The realm of "intention" is the realm of mind, which (at least in its rational expression) is a property of persons. 

But according to metaphysical naturalism, "persons" are not basic to reality, but just late and derivative byproducts of the evolution of impersonal or mechanical physical forces. The basic elements of reality are purely impersonal or mechanical.

Granted this basic premise of naturalism, then the existence of personal properties becomes a problem.

Prominent naturalist philosopher John Searle understands the problem:

how do intentional phenomena and consciousness fit into a world made up entirely of physical particles in fields of force?

Obviously if our world is "entirely" made up of impersonal forces and entities, exactly where we can ground the existence of intentional phenomena, consciousness and other personal properties (like moral values, moral responsability, etc.)?

Note that is not simply the personal opinion of Searle, but a real and serious problem implied by the basic premises of naturalism itself. That many naturalists don't realize this (or don't want to see it, because they are not open to other worldviews) is their problem...

Consider another fully consistent naturalist, Alex Rosenberg:

Since physics has excluded the existence of anything concrete but nonspatial, and since physics fixes all the facts, we have to give up this last illusion consciousness foists on us... There is no room in a world where all the facts are fixed by physical facts for a set of free floating independently existing norms or values (or facts about them) that humans are uniquely equipped to discern and act upon

Consider naturalist Richard Dawkins:

Retribution as a moral principle is incompatible with a scientific view of human behaviour. As scientists, we believe that human brains, though they may not work in the same way as man-made computers, are as surely governed by the laws of physics. When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it. We track down the problem and fix it, usually by replacing a damaged component, either in hardware or software... Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution

Try to put yourself in the shoes of naturalists. It is obvious that if you begin with a purely and entirely physical world (which is purely mechanical and impersonal) you will be forced to end up with purely physical, mechanical and impersonal reconstruction of reality, which don't allow for any personal feature.

      Physical facts  ------------------> more physical facts.

No moral values, no moral responsability, no free will, no consciousness, no rationality, no mind, no intentionality, no conceptual framework, no spiritual realm, etc. seem to fit confortably with such worldview.

This is the decisive metaphysical adventage of theism. This worldview begins with and it is grounded upon a spiritual PERSON (God) and end up with personal, spiritual properties (spirits, afterlife, intentional phenomena, consciousness,  etc.) which fit nicely and are to expected to exists if such worldview were correct.

This is why we have arguments for God's existence based on all the above personal features of reality. (The argument from consciousness, the argument from morality, the argument from intentionality and so forth. All of these arguments have in common to argue for God's existence based on the evidence of personal properties in a physical world).

And this is why the objections against such arguments are superficial, based on an improper understanding of the deeper metaphysical problems of any impersonalistic worldview (e.g. the Euthyphro's Dilemma used by atheists to object the moral argument is, in my opinion, one of the worst and more superficial arguments in the history of philosophy. I've commented about this argument here).

Note, by the way, that the problem of naturalists also exist for any other worldview which is impersonalistic (like some Easter philosophies which talks about "impersonal consciousness", whatever they mean). Like naturalism, these philosophies tend to be skeptical or dimissive of personal properties as actual, trascendent realities (e.g. when they say that we live in a "world of duality, in which evel and good are illusions which exist only in appearence in this world". Note that it is what Richard Dawkins more or less says too!).

Clearly, there is an intellectual pressure for proponents of impersonalistic worldviews to explain away these personal properties and somehow undermine them because they realize that such personal features don't fit nicely or comfortably into an impersonalistic worldview (naturalistic or not).

Again, in theism, a person (God) produces, at his image, other persons (human beings, aliens beings if they exists, spiritual beings, etc.), which share, limitedly but essentially, some of His basic personal properties. In theism, persons comes from the Person, minds from the Mind, intrinsic moral worth from the Perfect Goodness itself (=God).

Infinite Person (God)--------------------> finite persons
Infinite Consciousness (God)--------> finite consciousness
Perfect Good itself (God) ----------> intrinsic moral worth
Perfect Freedom (God)----------> limited but actual free will

Not one of the above properties exist nor can be found in the physical world itself, and naturalists are philosophically committed (whether they realize it or not) to deny, or cast serious doubts on the objective existence of these personalistic properties.

These properties is precisely what we would expect to find if theism were true, but not if naturalism were true (this counterfactual insight underlies the whole argument...).

Richard Swinburne on two kinds of explanation

According to philosopher of science Richard Swinburne, there are two kinds of explanations used in science and common sense: personal explanations (i.e. explanations in terms of the intentions of a person) and scientific explanations (e.g. explanations in terms of mechanical or impersonal forces).

For example, evolution is explained in terms of a mechanical process, namely, natural selection operating on random mutations. This is a kind of scientific explanation. No "person" is involved in the explanation.

But there are also personal explanations (e.g. used in social science and daily life). For example, if you ask me why I wrote this post, I'll reply with a personal explanation: I wrote it because I wanted to share metaphysical insights by Braude and Swinburne about the nature of reality and how they affect our assessment of the evidence for theism vs the alternatives.

My intention is the ultimate explanation of the coming into being of this post.

Note that the above personal explanation only makes sense if you understand my intention (or if you suspect that I have other, hidden intentions).

But if you remove any intentional process whatsoever as an explanation of this post, then the coming into being of this post becomes wholly inexplicable. A sheer mistery.

Swinburne's insight and the Big Bang Cosmology

If we agree with Swinburne that there are only two kinds of explanations (I'd like to call them, personalistic explanations and impersonalistic explanations, which are mutually exhaustive), then you're in position to understand why atheists are prepared to say that the universe "came from nothing".

In the case of the absolute beginning of the unverse, the scientific (impersonalistic) explanation is not possible, because there cannot be in principle any physical explanation of the coming into being of the whole physical universe itself. 

Since the impersonalistic explanation is not possible in this case, the only possible explanation is the personalistic one: The universe came into being by the intention and power of a person (or bunch of persons), which naturalism cannot accept at all. So, they prefer to say that the universe came "from nothing".

So, naturalists only have two choices: Either deny the evidence for the absolute beginning of the physical world, or either to claim that it comes from "nothing". Both alternatives have been (as expected) defended by some atheists.

Since the absolute beginning of the physical unverse implies that the only possible explanation is that the universe came from a person (God) or a bunch of person (e.g. a kind of polytheism = multiple god-like spiritual entities = multiple very powerful spiritual persons), the whole question is if theism or polytheism is true. By Occkam's razor the former is simpler than the latter, hence theism seems to be the best explanation.

The atheist reply "the universe came from nothing" is not just absurd and obscurantistic but in addition question-begging too, since it assumes (don't prove) that persons are not basic to reality and hence that theism cannot be a possible explanation at all. 

This shows that atheism is, for many people, a commitment of the will which has nothing to with the evidence, science or rationality.

The problem of assumptions and pressupositions on the Historical Jesus research

Everybody have assumptions, bias and preconceptions. We're all influenced by culture, philosophical assumptions, emotional drivens and so forth. Psychology has shown that beyond any doubt, and common sense supports it too.

The function of "assumptions" is to provide a framework to understand and interpret the evidence (and sometimes, what counts as evidence or not is even determined by the assumptions).

Now the question to comment in this post is not the existence of assumptions, but rather how certain accumptions block our searching for the truth, blocking the acceptance of evidence, or begging the question regarding the topic under investigation.

For example, in psychic research, the materialistic assumption that psi and ESP cannot happen (or are extremely improbable) works as a blocking and question-begging assumption, namely, it interfers with the proper assesment and objective recognition of such phenomena, in the sense that the evidence for it will be interpreted in a way consistent with the assumption, or even worst, not recognized as evidence in the first place.

Present evidence for telepathy, the skeptic will say that the evidence is flawed (even if the flaw cannot account for the overwall results, or even if the flaw is purely imaginary).

Present evidence for remote viewing, the skeptic will say the same and imply that the researchers are biased due to their sympathies to the paranormal.

Present evidence in which not flaw has been detected by the skeptic, he will say that "it is not impossible" that in the future some flaw will appear...

Present evidence which would convince any scientist of any other area of science, and the skeptic will say that the evidence in this case is insufficient because "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

In these cases, what is operating is a set of assumptions which override the evidence,  or explain it away. The assumptions imply setting the evidential standards so high, that no reasonable or realistic evidence could be ever produced to their satisfaction.

I've discoveried exactly the same regarding the historical Jesus studies. In fact, in this field, the assumptions and prejudices tend to be more obvious and more egregious. Not even in parapsychology I've seen such amazing working of blocking and question-begging assumptions like in the historical Jesus studies.

Let's to comment in a couple of them:

Assumption 1: The Gospels were written by deceivers and people who constantly were inventing fictional stories about Jesus (stories which nothing, or just a little bit, have to do with him)

This assumption derives, mainly (but not exclusively) from atheism. Wishful thinking also plays a role here.

Contemporary liberal scholarship is, as a rule, philosophically driven by a form of atheism known as metaphysical naturalism.  The liberal Jesus Seminar makes this assumption explicit and straighforward:

the Christ of creed and dogma . . . can no longer command the assent of those who have seen the heavens through Galileo’s telescope. The old deities and demons were swept from the skies by that remarkable glass. Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo have dismantled the mythological abodes of the gods and Satan, and bequeathed us secular heavens (preface of The Five Gospels, p. ix-x, xiii. Emphasis in blue added).

The assumption here is that science makes theism (the existence of God) false and hence the belief in God cannot be accepted. This is straighforwadly an atheistic assumption.

Atheism implies that miracles (understood as special divine interventions) cannot  happen. Since the Gospels are full of miracles, it follows that such stories are fictional. Hence, the Gospels are historically unreliable because they were written by writers who constantly were mading up and writing down false, supernaturalistic fantasies in them.

Note that the conlusion "the Gospels are historically unreliable" derives, in the above argument, directly from the atheistic assumptions applied methodologically on the miracles and other stories in the Gospels.

Drop such assumption, and the whole question-begging result is unwarranted, and you will be free to investigate with Gospels' evidence with a open-critical mind, without any blocking assumption which begs the question in one direction or another.

Note, by the way, that assuming the truth of theism doesn't beg the question regarding the historical Jesus and Gospels, because theism only guarantees the possibility of miracles, but it doesn't imply that any miracle claim is factual (let alone that the Gospels miracles actually happened). 

The advantage of the theist is that he's open to follow the evidence wherever it leads: If it leads to the actual occurence of a given miracle, the theist will accept it, since his worldview allows for such event. If the evidence doesn't support the miracle claim, the theist should reject such specific miracle claim (rejection which doesn't conflict with theism either, since theism doesn't imply that every miracle claim is true).

There is a widespread misconception according to which, if one is a theist, then one is obligated to accept every miracle claim. This is false. The theist is not obligated to accept any miracle claim in the same way which a parapsychologist who accepts the paranormal is not obligated to accept any psychic claim, or that a phycisian who accepts that viruses produce diseases is not obligated to accept the claim that all new diseases are viral.

Atheism, on the other hand, precludes in advance the possibility of any miracle being actual, and only allows as true and valid the evidence contrary to the occurence of miracles. This is why atheistic assumptions (like the Jesus Seminar's) egregiously begs the question against miracles, tend to exaggerate the possible problems of the Gospels as historical sources (problems which are common to any ancient historical document) and hence tends to create unwarranted skepticism about the possibility of the Historical Jesus being actually like portrayed in the Gospels.

Common reply:

I've been shocked with the answers provided by people sympathetic to the Jesus Seminar, when confronted with the above argument.

As a rule, their response is purely emotional and defensive. For example,  they will tell you that "conservative" also have faith commitments or assumptions.

If they were intellectually serious people, they would realize that the faith commitments and assumptions of "conservatives" do NOTHING to justify the assumptions and prejudices of "liberals" nor to refute the argument that such liberal assumptions beg the question. How exactly the faith commitments of a priest justifies the Jesus Seminar's naturalistic (and hence question-begging) approach to the historical Jesus?

Suppose that I write a post in which I expose the question-begging assumptions of a materilistic skeptic (like that I've done here). Does it make sense to reply "Well, but you say nothing about the assumptions or prejudices of Chris Carter or Dean Radin, who are biased in favor of the paranormal"?

No intellectually serious person would argue like that. If a person argues like this, you would suspect that he's an intellectually dishonest person, or simply someone absolutely blinded by his emotions and prejudices and who's reacting on a purely emotional level.

If my argument about the skeptic's prejudices (and how they seriously affect the assesment of the evidence) is correct, it is absolutely irrelevant that other people (let's say, Dean Radin or Chris Carter) have bias and pressupositions too, because the latter doesn't justify the former, and the my critique of skeptics don't rest on the lack of bias or assumptions by parapsychologists.

It's like defending oneself from the charge of murder, saying in the judicial process "Well, Mr.Judge, you're biased too, the guy in front of my home is also a murder and you do nothing about it!".

Even if you were right, and the guy in front of your home is a criminal, and the Judge is biased, this doesn't NOTHING to refute the charges against you.

With such stupid "defense", you probably would end in jail.

I'm extremely dissapointed of people like that. Shame of them.

Assumption 2: The assumption 1 overrides over the criteria of authenticity when they support Christology

Another way of formulating this assumption is like this: The criteria of authenticity ONLY can be accepted when they support non-Christological traditions.

For example:

The criterion of multiple attestation is accepted when it supports non-Christological traditions (e.g. Jesus' historical existence which is attested in several, independent sources). But the same criterion will be rejected by liberals when it supports Christological traditions (e.g. that Jesus was born in Bethelhem, which supports that he was the Messiah predicted by the Old Testament).

Also, the example of the empty tomb. The empty tomb is not itself Christological, but since the resurrection claim implies the empty tomb (it is therefore part of the evidence for the resurrection), some scholars have tried to attack it in order to deny the resurrection.

Although accepted by most scholars ((including by many atheist and other anti-Christian scholars) due to the strengh of the historical evidence for the empty tomb, a few of them (mainly liberals) reject it as an invention by Mark, despite of passing the criterion of multiple attestation (in addition to other criteria like embarassment).

So, many liberal scholars don't apply the criteria consistently, but inconsistently in order to reach anti-Christian conclusions.

The key and secret to understand liberal scholarship in general is to understand exactly its philosophical and ideological rejection of Christology. The criteria of authenticity are then misused (in particular ways, depending on the scholar) to fit this agenda.

Common reply:

A common answer for the above objection is that, even if a tradition passes the criteria of multiple attestation, it "could" be invented by the Church by different, independent persons who share the same beliefs about Jesus.  (Alternatively, it is formulated like this: "It was very easy for the chruch to create that").

The fallacy of this answer is obvious: The "could" and "it is very easy" responses are NOT historical evidence. They're NOT criteria of historicity. They're sheer speculations. Then, how the hell such mere speculations may be overriding force over the historical criteria, like the criterion of multiple attestation?

Even if the same tradition "could" be invented by persons who shared faith in Jesus, it doesn't imply that such invention actually happened. Simply believing in something doesn't make you a deceiver or cheater.

Historians don't work with mere speculations or  sheer possibilities, but with concrete evidence which makes a given possibility more likely than not.

But the underlaying motive for the skeptic is to block or avoid all the evidence which supports the distinctive Christian view of Jesus (Christology). This is pure wishful thinking and intellectually dishonest ideology. That's all. (Compare with the skeptics Martin Gardner or James Randi's creative scenarios of how a psychic "could" cheat the experimenters, or how it was "easy" for a magician to fool the investigators or how the psychic investigators are unreliable because they are believers in psi... even if not such evidence for fraud or deception or technical flaws exists in the specific experiments!)

Certainly, that a magician "could" cheat under certain experimental conditions don't make any particular psychic (in the same conditions) to be a fraud. This is not evidence at all for the claim that given psychic is a fraud. (In the same way, that a given tradition about Jesus "could" be invented doesn't make it an actual, proven invention).

Mere possibility is not evidence, and many liberals use such gambit as a question-begging criterion on non-historicity.

The real problem here is the contemporary ideology of naturalistic atheism. I'm sorry to be so blatant, but I do believe this: When atheistic ideologues put their dirty hands on a given topic (specially on a topic which is in tension with atheism and naturalism) we tend to see pure disaster (recent example: the atheists "take" on Sheldrake in Wikipedia)

Atheists work fine in areas in which atheism is not in question (e.g. computer science, law, medicine, etc). But don't put them in positions in which they must "assess" topics in which atheism is challenged, otherwise...

If Shaldrake is constantly mistreated and misrepresented by atheists in what is supposed to be an innocent online "encyclopedia", you can imagine that atheists would do with the Historical Jesus... the number one, public historical enemy of atheism around the world.