Having entered the Christmas season, we ask those who find the work of the Mystagogy Resource Center beneficial to them to help us continue our work with a generous financial gift as you are able. As an incentive, we are offering the following booklet.

In 1909 the German philosopher Arthur Drews wrote a book called "The Myth of Christ", which New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman has called "arguably the most influential mythicist book ever produced," arguing that Jesus Christ never existed and was simply a myth influenced by more ancient myths. The reason this book was so influential was because Vladimir Lenin read it and was convinced that Jesus never existed, thus justifying his actions in promoting atheism and suppressing the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union. Moreover, the ideologues of the Third Reich would go on to implement the views of Drews to create a new "Aryan religion," viewing Jesus as an Aryan figure fighting against Jewish materialism. 

Due to the tremendous influence of this book in his time, George Florovsky viewed the arguments presented therein as very weak and easily refutable, which led him to write a refutation of this text which was published in Russian by the YMCA Press in Paris in 1929. This apologetic brochure titled "Did Christ Live? Historical Evidence of Christ" was one of the first texts of his published to promote his Neopatristic Synthesis, bringing the patristic heritage to modern historical and cultural conditions. With the revival of these views among some in our time, this text is as relevant today as it was when it was written. 

Never before published in English, it is now available for anyone who donates at least $20 to the Mystagogy Resource Center upon request (please specify in your donation that you want the book). Thank you.



March 8, 2010

The Desperation of the Multiverse Theory


Multiverse Mavens Hoisted on Own Petard

6 March 2010
Barry Arrington
UncommonDescent

Several factors are combining to increase belief (of the “faith” variety, not the “demonstrated fact” variety) in the multiverse among materialists. Two of these factors are relevant to ID at the biological and cosmological levels. At the biological level materialists are beginning to understand that the probability that life arose by random material processes is so low (estimated in this article written by materialists to be 10 raised to -1018) that infinite universes are required for it to have occurred, the implication being that we just happen to live in the ever-so-lucky universe where it all came together.

At the cosmological level, the probability that the fine tuning of the universe necessary for the existence of life arose by sheer coincidence is so low that again the multiverse is invoked to provide infinite “probabilistic resources” to do the job (see here).

Of course, there is another possible explanation for both the emergence of life and the fine tuning of the universe. These phenomena may be the results of acts of a super powerful being whom we might call God.

Obviously, the whole reason materialists have invoked the multiverse in the first place is to avoid resorting to agency to explain the emergence of life and cosmological fine tuning. But isn’t it obvious that given the very premises invoked by materialists in the multiverse scenarios that we can just as easily conclude that God exists.

Here is how the logic runs: The materialists says, “Yes, the probability that life emerged through random material processes is vanishingly small, but in an infinite multiverse everything that is not logically impossible is in fact instantiated, and we just happen to live in the lucky universe where life was instantiated. Similarly, we happen to live in the Goldilocks universe (which, again, is one of infinite universes) where the physical constants are just right for the existence of life.”

But the theist can play this game too. “The existence of God is not logically impossible. In an infinite number of universes everything that is not logically impossible is in fact instantiated, and we just happen to live in one of those universes in which God is instantiated.”

I do not believe in the multiverse. The entire concept is a desperation “Hail Mary” pass in which logical positivists and their materialist fellow travelers are attempting to save a philosophical construct on the brink of destruction. The point is that materialists’ own multiverse premise leads to the conclusion that God exists more readily than the opposite conclusion. Ironically, far from excluding the existence of God, if the multiverse exists, God must also exist.
Labels: ,

BECOME A PATREON OR PAYPAL SUBSCRIBER


Patreon!