(we don't know who Martin is.  Maybe Bashir?)

From: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 12:16 AM
Subject: [General Question] facts to answer your unanswered question on debate 

Holli sent a message using the contact form at
http://www.rationalresponders.com/contact.

Dear Martin and Kelly,

I can only imagine the type of hate mail you must receive.  I do hope in
this discussion to set a better example.  My reason for writing was born
out of viewing your debate with Ray and Kirk, which I truly enjoyed.  I
felt afterwards there was much left to be desired, as your statement was
correct:  they did not provide you with any facts, aside from their faith
to why they believe in a creator.  And you Kelly, stated that you were
sorry that was not the case.  I hope to fill that with this discussion.

Anthony Flew, a world-known atheist, said “Follow the evidence wherever
it leads.” So true, except…Anthony rejected his atheistic beliefs, for
a belief in a creator.  Why?  Why waste all of that logic and reason, for
fairytales?   I believe I may have the answer, and simply put, it is in
the evidence.  You stated in your debate with Ray and Kirk that you were
given no proof of a creator.  This is a subject I am all too familiar
with, because I once was, as Anthony was, and you are:  an atheist.  I too
followed his statement to follow the evidence, and I found where it led.
Now you can close this email right now and discard it, or you can read it,
or read it while laughing…whatever you choose, the choice is yours.  I
wish not to argue with you, nor will I be disrespectful to you, nor do I
wish to badger you.  And I would even go so far as to say, nor do I wish
to convert you.  The belief, or nonbelief, is a choice every human being
must make, for themselves.  For my choice, I chose Christ.  Though I do
admit to you, that there are countless Christians out there that embarrass
me and my faith.  They claim to know the Lord, but live as heathens and
wife beaters and child molesters and self hatred and that for mankind.  So
personally, I don’t blame those who reject Christ; millions are such a
terrible example of the true faith, and after all, who would want to live
like that anyway?  You brought up many good points, that I do hope to
address.  And I do hope that we can have a respectful discussion, not
debate, on your views as opposed to mine.  Should you respond, I expect
the same respect I am showing to you in return.  And should you not
respond, I will accept that as a rational discussion is not possible, and
respect it.

You will find this email to be void of hellfire threats or
pulpit-preaching statements.  Too many “Christians” play on emotion,
not rational thought and logic.  “Emotion” did not cause me to accept
God; the evidence did.  Opinions will get us nowhere; facts are what
matter.  They can be proven, looked at, studied, in some cases seen, and
so on.  You cannot see emotion, you cannot prove emotion.  At the risk of
“getting right down to it”, I will now proceed to list in simple
fashion some of the facts that led me to the conclusion of a Creator.
Should you be so bold as to respond, each fact should be addressed with
only facts as a rebuttal.  Emotion will be ignored, just as I would expect
you would (and should) ignore emotion if I subject any to you, which I have
already stated I will not. 
The precise aligning of the more than 30 physical constants coming
together in order to sustain life on earth is stated by many to be
impossible.  Yet it is our reality.
Gravity is roughly 1039 times weaker than electromagnetism; if gravity had
been merely 1033 times weaker than electro magnetism, stars would be a
billion times less massive and would burn a million times faster.
Continuing, the nuclear weak force is 1028 times the strength of gravity.
Had the weak force been slightly weaker, all the hydrogen in the universe
would have been turned to helium (making water impossible, for example). 

A stronger nuclear strong force (by as little as 2 percent) would have
prevented the formation of protons, --yielding a universe without atoms.
Decreasing it by 5 percent would have given us a universe without stars.
The charges of the electron and proton have been measured in the
laboratory and have been found to be precisely equal and opposite. Were it
not for this fact the resulting imbalance would force every object in the
universe--our bodies, trees, planets, rocks, stars, to explode violently.

Stars are extraordinarily distant from one another. Were it not for these
vast reaches of empty space, violent collisions between stars would be so
frequent as to render the universe uninhabitable. 
The heat output of the Sun has changed much down through the ages, and yet
the temperature of our planet has maintained the narrow range necessary to
maintain life.  Further, the level of atmospheric gasses has also
remained, for the most part, a steady constant despite changing
conditions. If there were not enough oxygen in the atmosphere, human life
could not exist. If there were too much oxygen and not enough carbon
dioxide and methane, plants would die and the atmosphere would be so
flammable, fires would overrun the Earth.
Too much of both oxygen and carbon dioxide would also be fatal. But a
third gas, methane, (produced by termites and digestion) is just abundant
enough to keep the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in check.
The Planck Constant, which I am sure you are familiar with, is fixed at
6.6 X (10 to the power of -23) erg per second, a figure used in all major
equations used by nuclear physicists. The energy used by anything is
always some multiple of Planck's Constant. There is no natural reason why
the Planck's Constant is where it is, it could be a lot higher or a lot
lower, but it has been balanced at this level without any natural reason.
The PC (Planck's Constant) appears in an important formula used to
determine the "Fine structure Constant." If the Planck's constant had been
greater by just 0.00000001, all the stars in our system would be red. If it
was lower by just 0.00000001 all the stars in our system would be blue. The
problem with red stars is that they never erupt as supernova, and if there
are no supernova there are no higher level elements that are necessary for
life. If there were no supernova, there would be no carbon to start
carbon-based life like us. Blue stars on the other hand burn only for a
short time, i.e. around 150 million years. However, it took nearly 3
billion years or more for life to emerge on earth.

The speed of light is set at 3 X (108) meters per second. It is an
important constant which figures in Einstein's famous formula E=mc2, again
which I’m sure you are familiar with. "E" is the energy produced when
matter is converted to energy in thermonuclear reactions in stars. If the
speed of light had been just a tiny fraction higher (and there is no
natural reason why it isn't) then thermonuclear reactions would produce
over 10,000 times more energy and all the fuel in the star core would be
used up much quicker. Stars would die out much sooner than the 3 billion
years it took for life to emerge on earth. Hence life would never have
happened.  On the other hand if it was just a little tiny fraction lower,
the early universe expansion would have been much slower and long ago the
universe would have suffered a gravitational collapse. So both ways there
would be no life.

The universe could not have been much smaller than it is in order for
nuclear fusion to have occurred during the first 3 minutes after the Big
Bang. Without this brief period of nucleosynthesis, the early universe
would have consisted entirely of hydrogen. Likewise, the universe could
not have been much larger than it is, or life would not have been
possible. If the universe were just one part in 1059 larger, the universe
would have collapsed before life was possible. Since there are only 1080
baryons in the universe, this means that an addition of just 1021 baryons
(about the mass of a grain of sand) would have made life impossible. The
universe is exactly the size it must be for life to exist at all. 
The Earth is in an exact position so that the average temperature is
balanced between the freezing point of water (32 degrees F) and the normal
body temperature of humans (98.6 degrees F). If the average temperature
ever varied very far above or below these two extremes for very long, we
could not survive.
If the Sun disappeared, the temperature would drop to close to absolute
zero (-460 degrees F) and we would burn up all the Earth's reserves of
coal, oil, and natural gas in about three days just to keep ourselves
warm.
Scientists estimate that if the Earth were just 5% closer to the Sun, the
increase in the temperature would be enough to melt the ice caps at the
North and South poles. The water trapped in these caps of ice would raise
the oceans level by as much as 300 feet. That would be enough to put every
coastal city in the world under water.
The rotation of the Earth on it's axis causes us to have alternate periods
of day and night. During the day, the side toward the Sun warms up while
the other side cools down. While this may be obvious it still has a big
effect on the Earth's average temperature. The moon rotates only once
every 29 ½ days instead of daily. Because of it's slow rotation one side
of the moon gets very hot while the other gets very cold. If the Earth
didn't rotate every 24 hours but rotated every 36 hours the temperature at
noon would be well over 100 degrees farenheit and the temperature at
midnight would drop below freezing even in summer. We would also have
daily tornadoes, and storms due to the temperature changes stirred up by
the wind.
Whilst I do have many other facts to present, I concluded this would be
sufficient to begin (and perhaps end?) this debate.  After reviewing this,
and countless other proofs, I concluded that the evidence does indeed point
to an intelligent designer.  I leave you with a few quotes, as my response
to your statement that scientists today refute the existence of God.
These were also taken into consideration in the evidence I considered, as
many are great minds of science.  Thank you for allowing me the
opportunity to discuss this with you, and for reading these facts.

Quotes:
Fred Hoyle (British astrophysicist): "A common sense interpretation of the
facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as
with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth
speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem
to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."
George Ellis (British astrophysicist): "Amazing fine tuning occurs in the
laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity
of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word
'miraculous' without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the
word."
Paul Davies (British astrophysicist): "There is for me powerful evidence
that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though
somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe....The
impression of design is overwhelming".
Paul Davies: "The laws [of physics] ... seem to be the product of
exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose".
Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy): "I find it quite
improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some
organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for
the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing."
John O'Keefe (astronomer at NASA): "We are, by astronomical standards, a
pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had
not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come
into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the
universe was created for man to live in."
George Greenstein (astronomer): "As we survey all the evidence, the
thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather,
Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending
to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme
Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos
for our benefit?"
Arthur Eddington (astrophysicist): "The idea of a universal mind or Logos
would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of
scientific theory."
Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics): "Astronomy leads us to a unique
event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very
delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to
permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say
'supernatural&#39 plan."
Roger Penrose (mathematician and author): "I would say the universe has a
purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance."
Vera Kistiakowsky (MIT physicist): "The exquisite order displayed by our
scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine."
Robert Jastrow (self-proclaimed agnostic): "For the scientist who has
lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad
dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer
the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted
by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."
Stephen Hawking (British astrophysicist): "Then we shall… be able to
take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the
universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate
triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God."
Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "When I began my career
as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never
in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book
purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are
in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws
of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these
conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics."
Note: Tipler since has actually converted to Christianity, hence his
latest book, The Physics Of Christianity. It’s a great read, one I
highly recommend.
Alexander Polyakov (Soviet mathematician): "We know that nature is
described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it."

Ed Harrison (cosmologist): "Here is the cosmological proof of the
existence of God – the design argument of Paley – updated and
refurbished. The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence
of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes
of universes or design that requires only one.... Many scientists, when
they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design
argument."
Edward Milne (British cosmologist): "As to the cause of the Universe, in
context of expansion, that is left for the reader to insert, but our
picture is incomplete without Him [God]."
Barry Parker (cosmologist): "Who created these laws? There is no question
but that a God will always be needed."
Drs. Zehavi, and Dekel (cosmologists): "This type of universe, however,
seems to require a degree of fine tuning of the initial conditions that is
in apparent conflict with 'common wisdom'.”
Arthur L. Schawlow (Professor of Physics at Stanford University, 1981
Nobel Prize in physics): "It seems to me that when confronted with the
marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The
only possible answers are religious. . . . I find a need for God in the
universe and in my own life."
Henry "Fritz" Schaefer (Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and director
of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of
Georgia): "The significance and joy in my science comes in those
occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, 'So
that's how God did it.' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's
plan."
Wernher von Braun (Pioneer rocket engineer) "I find it as difficult to
understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior
rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a
theologian who would deny the advances of science."
Carl Woese (microbiologist from the University of Illinois) "Life in
Universe - rare or unique? I walk both sides of that street. One day I can
say that given the 100 billion stars in our galaxy and the 100 billion or
more galaxies, there have to be some planets that formed and evolved in
ways very, very like the Earth has, and so would contain microbial life at
least. There are other days when I say that the anthropic principal, which
makes this universe a special one out of an uncountably large number of
universes, may not apply only to that aspect of nature we define in the
realm of physics, but may extend to chemistry and biology. In that case
life on Earth could be entirely unique."
Antony Flew (Professor of Philosophy, former atheist, author, and debater)
"It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA
research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful
argument to design."
Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "From the perspective of
the latest physical theories, Christianity is not a mere religion, but an
experimentally testable science."
Well said, Frank.  Again, thank you.
Cordially,
Holli in Texas