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In 2018, I was a guest of Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) at the State of the Union. The place was electric — political theater at its finest. Members of Congress, guests, and press were packed into a room that felt more like a pressure cooker than a chamber. And whoever designed those gallery seats clearly had smaller people in mind.We had to be there early, which meant a lot of sitting. I struck up a conversation with the man seated just behind me to my left. It turned out to be Bill Nye. He was cordial. My kids had watched him on TV. We talked briefly, just two people passing time.A serious person is obligated to be even-handed, even when he doesn't like someone or disagrees with him.After the speech by Donald Trump, as the room began to empty, I stuck my hand out to Bill, and his only response was, “He didn’t talk about space.”It wasn’t a big comment. But it was revealing. We had just witnessed something few people ever experience in person. And that was his takeaway. A lot has happened with America’s space program since then. I looked and have yet to see where Bill Nye said, “I don’t agree with the man, but something good happened here.”I did see he was at a No Kings rally last month.Which raises a simple question: Are we willing to acknowledge what is true, even when we don’t like who it’s attached to?We hear a lot about following the science. Fine. Then follow it.Because if you start with the premise that a person is irredeemable, then everything he does must be dismissed. At that point, you’re not evaluating evidence. You’re protecting a conclusion you’ve already chosen.We’ve seen this before. A man once stood face to face with truth and asked, “What is truth?” Not because the answer wasn’t there, but because he had already decided what he was willing to accept and what it might cost him.Truth is not hard to find, but it’s hard to accept when it costs us something.Sometimes you see people model a better way.I encountered one of those moments when my wife, Gracie, sang at the inauguration of the governor of Tennessee.At the time, Harold Ford Jr. was a young congressman who was present at the event. After Gracie performed, there were a lot of people on that platform. Important people. People far more connected than we were.But Harold made a point to come straight to us.Not a quick handshake and move on. He engaged. Asked questions. Took genuine interest.A few days later, we found ourselves on the same flight to Washington. Gracie was headed to Walter Reed to sing for wounded warriors. Once again, Harold made a beeline for us.Same posture. Same curiosity. Same kindness.We’ve not crossed paths since, but I still watch him when he’s on "The Five." Not because I agree with everything he says. I don’t. I watch because he is measured. He gives credit where it’s due. He asks questions. He looks for common ground. He treats people as individuals, not categories.That stayed with me.I saw something recently that would have been unthinkable not long ago.Mark Levin had Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) on his show. If talk radio were music, I always considered Rush Limbaugh a virtuoso and Mark Levin heavy metal.Levin and Fetterman engaged. Asked real questions. Gave thoughtful answers. No rush to score points.Just two men doing something we used to call normal. And that’s when it hit me. Why does that feel unusual?RELATED: You don’t have to engage with crazy Mark Von Holden/WireImageFor 40 years, I’ve lived in a world where I don’t get to choose who walks into the room to care for my wife. Nurses. Surgeons. Specialists. People from every background and belief system.I’ve seen medical professionals wearing pronouns on their badges. While I inwardly sighed and questioned the scientific judgment of someone who touts that, Gracie still needed care.And in that moment, my irritation didn’t get a vote. So I did what caregivers learn to do.I stuck out my hand and engaged. I listened, observed, and learned to separate what I felt about a person from what I could clearly see in front of me. A serious person is obligated to be even-handed, even when he doesn't like someone or disagrees with him.The next time you hear something good about someone you can’t stand, ask yourself a simple question: Could this be objectively true, even though I don’t like this person?You don’t have to change your vote or your convictions, but you do have to decide whether you’re going to follow the facts or protect a script.In the real world, where people actually depend on you, clinging to a preferred script isn’t just lazy, it can be very costly.If you’re willing to set that script aside, even for a moment, you might find something better than being right.You might find clarity. And in a world this loud, that’s no small thing....Read More
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There was a time when God revealed himself in astonishing, tangible ways.In the Old Testament, he led the Israelites through the wilderness by appearing as a pillar of cloud and fire; he descended on Mount Sinai with thunder, lightning, thick smoke, and a loud trumpet blast to deliver the Ten Commandments; he took the prophet Elijah to heaven in a whirlwind with a chariot and horses of fire; and the list goes on.But since the coming of Jesus, God has been much more subtle in how he reveals himself. Many Christian testimonies include encounters with God, but they are usually experienced in quiet, personal moments.John Luke Robertson believes this is why so many people today refuse to believe in God. On this episode of "Unashamed," he joins Al Robertson, Zach Dasher, and Christian Huff to unpack exactly that. John Luke points out that Jesus’ own life and ministry were clearly marked by subtlety.“He could have said at 12 years old, ‘I'm the Messiah,’ and started it from there, but He waited till He was 30,” he explains.Even after his ministry began, Jesus often told people — including his disciples and those he healed — to keep his miracles secret. Multiple times in the Gospels, he is recorded saying “my time has not yet come” when people tried to force his hand or make him king too soon.When he finally faced the cross, Jesus still remained subtle in admitting his divinity, responding to direct questions like “Are you the Son of God?” or “Are you the King of the Jews?” with humble affirmations such as, “You have said so” or “you say that I am.”“All the way up till the very end, he didn't have this big reveal of who he was. … And I think we see that same thing with God now,” says John Luke.John Luke recalls hearing an atheist explain that he doesn’t believe in God because if he were real, “He would have revealed himself more openly.”But if you look back through history, this isn’t a modern issue. For centuries people have been demanding more obvious or dramatic power.“I was just reading this book talking about the same thing,” says Christian. “It was these two early historians … and they were saying they don't believe the gospel and Jesus because they're like, ‘After the resurrection, why would he appear to women and to peasants? ... Why would he not appear to Caesar and Pilate and all these powerful people?”’In the next segment of the show, the panel moves deeper into how this expectation of a more dramatic, public revelation of God has roots in ancient heresies that the early church had to confront — errors that still influence skeptical thinking today.To hear it, watch the episode above.Want more from the Robertsons?To enjoy more on God, guns, ducks, and inspiring stories of faith and family, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream....Read More
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One of the remarkable scientific discoveries of the past several decades is that the universe and Earth appear fine-tuned for life. Philosopher of science Stephen C. Meyer explains that fine-tuning “refers to the discovery that many properties of the universe fall within extremely narrow and improbable ranges that turn out to be absolutely necessary for complex forms of life ... to exist.” Earth’s position in the solar system is in what scientists call the Goldilocks Zone, where it’s not too hot and not too cold.It’s important to note that the term “fine-tuning” or “fine-tuned” is a neutral description that doesn’t imply the existence of God. It’s a designation routinely used by scientists and scholars of all stripes.Although scientific findings are always provisional, it seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that an incredibly powerful and intelligent being designed our universe to support life. In what follows, we’ll look at the scientific credibility of fine-tuning, specific examples, possible explanations for it, and some objections to it. Fine-tuning is not surprising if Christianity is true, since God intended to create human and animal life (Genesis 1), but it is surprising in the case of naturalism, where it appears to be an astounding coincidence.Believe the scienceOne will occasionally meet skeptics who believe fine-tuning is an idea invented by Christians but not taken seriously by scientists. This is a misconception, to say the least. Consider the following testimony:Agnostic physicist Sir Fred Hoyle: “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.”Atheist physicist Stephen Hawking: “The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.”Agnostic physicist Paul Davies: “The entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge, and would be total chaos if any of the natural ‘constants’ were off even slightly.” “On the face of it, the universe does look as if it has been designed by an intelligent creator expressly for the purpose of spawning sentient beings.”Atheist physicist Steven Weinberg: “Life as we know it would be impossible if any one of several physical quantities had slightly different values.”It’s notable that cosmic fine-tuning was one of the reasons the distinguished atheist thinker Antony Flew changed his mind about God’s existence, as recounted in his 2007 book “There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.”Against all odds?Philosopher Robin Collins points out, “If the initial explosion of the big bang had differed in strength by as little as one part in 1060 [i.e., 1 followed by 60 zeros], the universe would have either quickly collapsed back on itself, or expanded too rapidly for stars to form. In either case, life would be impossible.”This is a mind-boggling number. Collins likens this improbability to “firing a bullet at a one-inch target on the other side of the observable universe, twenty billion light years away, and hitting the target.”He also observes that “if gravity had been stronger or weaker by one part in 1040, then life-sustaining stars like the sun could not exist.” If gravity were slightly stronger, stars would burn out in millions, rather than billions, of years (our sun is about 4.6 billion years old). If gravity were slightly weaker, most stars would never form at all — or would be too small and cold.Oxford mathematician and philosopher John Lennox helps us understand this vast improbability as follows:Cover America with coins in a column reaching to the moon (380,000 km or 236,000 miles away), then do the same for a billion other continents of the same size. Paint one coin red and put it somewhere in one of the billion piles. Blindfold a friend and ask her to pick it out. The odds are about 1 in 1040 that she will.A little closer to home, Earth’s position in the solar system is in what scientists call the Goldilocks Zone, where it’s not too hot and not too cold, allowing for liquid water to exist on its surface. The size of Earth also ensures that it has the right gravity to retain an atmosphere suitable for life without being too strong to inhibit the mobility of organisms.Many other examples could be cited, but these illustrate the almost inconceivable odds against a life-permitting universe and Earth.By designThese numbers are so surprising that they call out for an explanation, and there seem to be only three options: physical necessity, chance, or design. Regarding physical necessity — that the universe had to have the properties that it does — there are no good reasons to believe this. As far as scientists can tell, the universe could have had a vast range of different laws, constants, and qualities. To cite Davies again, “There is not a shred of evidence that the [parameters of our] universe [are] logically necessary. Indeed, as a theoretical physicist I find it rather easy to imagine alternative universes that are logically consistent, and therefore equal contenders for reality.”Regarding chance, we saw earlier how incredibly unlikely it is that any possible universe would support life. When you combine the improbabilities of all the fine-tuned parameters together, the odds against life become overwhelming. The one remaining option is design. All our experience tells us that only rational agents design things, and thus a cosmic designer is the best explanation for the universe’s fine-tuning.Multiverse muddleSpace prohibits an extended discussion of objections to fine-tuning. I’ll briefly address two that are frequently mentioned. The first is known as the weak anthropic principle, raised by physicist Martin Rees, among others: “Some would argue that this fine-tuning of the universe, which seems so providential, is nothing to be surprised about, since we could not exist otherwise.” Thus, we should not be surprised that the universe is fine-tuned for life, since we are here observing that it is. But as philosopher Douglas Groothuis points out, this confuses two related but distinct ideas: 1) the truism that we couldn’t observe anything unless the universe was life-permitting and 2) an explanation of why the universe is so finely tuned. Acknowledging the first observation doesn’t negate the need to explain why, against all odds, our universe is life-permitting.Second, some thinkers appeal to the idea of a multiverse to explain fine-tuning. If billions, or even an infinite number, of other universes exist, one of those universes will inevitably permit life. We happen to be in the lucky universe that does. God is in the detailsThere is no experimental evidence, however, that a multiverse exists, and some see it as an ad hoc proposal to avoid the theistic implications of fine-tuning. As physicist John Polkinghorne writes, “Let us recognize these speculations for what they are. They are not physics, but in the strictest sense, metaphysics. There is no purely scientific reason to believe in an ensemble of universes.”While the multiverse hypothesis is complex, ad hoc, and lacks evidence, the design hypothesis is simple (one Creator) and, as noted earlier, draws on our universal experience that only minds design things. Thus, fine-tuning provides compelling evidence that God exists and intended to create living beings. And this sounds very much like the kind of God we find described in Genesis — one who, from the beginning, “created the heavens and the earth” and declared his creation “very good” (Genesis 1:1, 31).A version of this essay originally appeared on the Worldview Bulletin Newsletter....Read More
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