Which Religion, Pt 1

As many of you are already aware, I have chosen to abandon my original line of reasoning for "Which Religion" (of which I wrote only the introduction before realizing how esoteric such a series would be) and to take up a different train of evidence. I believe firmly that this will be a much more effective series of blog posts than my original plan. Please forgive me for changing direction.

To begin with, we must refute the claim that two religions may be simultaneously true. This position, espoused by many would-be intellectuals, is absurd at best. If I ask you which color of ice cream is correct, you would be fair in proclaiming me a lunatic and would be free to say "That is up to the individual.". If I ask you what the correct answer to 2+2 is, you would be the lunatic for claiming it is up for debate. Religion is not ice cream - it is not up to interpretation. Either Jesus was alive three days after He died, or He was not. Either Joseph Smith received golden tablets from an angel, or he did not. Either those who attacked the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001 are reaping eternal life or not. All religions make objective claims about truth which must be accepted or denied. They cannot and must not be explained away.
It is therefore through objective fact that we must test the claims of religions. If the claims of the Bible are true, the claims of the Buddha, Muhammad and Richard Dawkins are all necessarily false. We then deny agnosticism as well. If the claims of the Bible can be shown to be true, we must accept that God is knowable and that to claim He is not is no more intellectually justified than claiming the reality of Abraham Lincoln is unknowable.
With that taken care of, we must analyze the claims of Christianity. If the Bible teaches truths exclusive of other religions, Christianity is exclusively true. If not, Christianity is unjustified. As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:14 "and if Christ is not raised, then our preaching is in vain, your faith also is in vain."
Join me as we put this to the test. See if the clams of Christianity are true or not, but no longer be a sycophant, claiming truth is either relative or unknowable. To do such is to commit an intolerable act of dishonesty.

Hell

I know, I still haven't finished my last series. I will get back to it. Bear with me, please.
The heart of Hebrews 9:27 reads: "it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgement."
The Bible proclaims that bodily death is not the end, but that a judgement will take place. Those who have placed their trust in God will be separated from those who never made the leap of faith. "These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
God plainly teaches that Heaven and Hell exist and that there is no second chance after death. The tree lies as it falls, so to speak. Still, there are some who do not accept the gospel because they do not know what Hell really is. Let us examine some common beliefs.
Objection: "I don't want to go to heaven! All my friends will be in hell - that is gonna be one big party!"
Answer: In Hell you are completely alone. The Devil and his demons will not be partying either, they are as much prisoner as you (Matthew 25:41). There will be nothing except isolation from God and everyone else. It was you who rejected Jesus - your heart alone. It was you who sinned - your heart alone. For that you must pay alone. Forever. (I am in the process of finding more support for this in the Bible)
Objection: "I won't go to hell, I'm a good person. It isn't like I killed anyone."
Answer: One sin and you are too polluted for Heaven (Romans 3:23). Think of it this way: if God let you into Heaven and your only sin was lying, would it still be Heaven with lies in it? People would have to wonder what was true, they could not be secure, they could not have peace. Even a seemingly small sin makes you unworthy. Everyone needs Jesus (John 14:6).
Objection: "Hell isn't really forever. I will stop existing eventually or be allowed into heaven."
Answer: God Himself had to die to buy your way into Heaven (Romans 5:6). You will never earn it yourself (Isaiah 64:4-9). So you will not be allowed into Heaven. What about just ceasing to exist? Hell is forever (Matthew 25:41). The Bible says the fire of Hell is unquenchable (Revelation 19:20). There are no time outs, no breaks, no drinks of water (Luke 16:19-31). You will not get used to the pain. You will be in total agony forever and ever, remembering how you could have accepted God and knowing you denied Him.
Objection: "A loving God wouldn't really create a place like that!"
Answer: God is not just perfectly loving. He is perfectly holy (Isaiah 6:3). Sins must be punished, because they violate His holy nature (Psalm 51:4). Hell must exist for God to be holy and just. It has to exist for Him to be who He is: Perfect.
But that isn't the end of the story. Because God loves you, He made a way out. Please read this article to learn about how Christianity is unique and what you must do to be saved. If you haven't fallen into Jesus as your savior, placing your trust in Him, you are Hell-bound right now. All you have to do is believe He died for you, know you have sinned and need His forgiveness and ask Him to make you into a new creature. It only takes a minute and eternity is at stake. If after reading this article and the other you still have questions, why not call a Christian you know or a local pastor to walk you through the process? Any true Christian would drop anything to help. Whatever they were doing is nothing compared to your soul.

A Comparative Look at Christianity

The difference in Christianity and all other faiths is a simple one.



If Islam lost its central teacher, its principles would not suffer. If the person of the buddha were removed, the life of the Buddhist could still go on. If Moses had not given the law, Judaism might reasonably carry on with no particular entity. Indeed - many modern faiths (New Age, Wicca) do not even have a central figure.



Christianity is different. Remove the central figure - Jesus Christ - and you are left with nothing. The whole of eternity does not hang on adherence to a set of rules, but on the relationship between and individual and their savior.



Romans 3:23: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,"


A single mistake makes you too filthy to enter into the majesty of heaven. If God allowed lies, arrogance and hate into heaven it would no longer be heaven! If you have ever done any of these things, you have sinned and you have come short of the glory of God. That's a pretty big deal in the world of comparative religion. No big scale of Anubis - nothing. One sin and you aren't good enough for Paradise. It makes sense a lot more sense, too. Paradise isn't mostly good - it is perfection.



Romans 6:23a: "For the wages of sin is death..."



The logical consequence of coming short of God's perfection is that you cannot enter into His presence. In Greek, the word we translate as 'death' means separation. The 'first death' is when the soul leaves the body. The 'second death' is when a person is separated from God forever. So if you have ever sinned (at all, remember) your dirty spirit is separated from a holy God. Again, it makes sense.



Romans 6:23b: "...but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."


If death is separation from God, then life is being in his presence. That is the gift of God. It is a gift - a present. You do not earn a present, you just unwrap it. In this case, we could never earn it: any good thing we do is so tainted by the bad in our lives that we are completely helpless to clean ourselves. But, somehow, through Jesus Christ, God has given us a gift we need only to accept.







Romans 5:8: "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."


God loves you. He always has. He loved you so much that before your great-great-great grandparents were born (before the dawn of the universe, in fact), He had come up with a way for you to be with Him. He loves you so much now that He is waiting anxiously for you to come to Him (if you read the story of the Prodigal Son, the father waiting by the road is God and the son is someone who has left their relationship with God). But for you to be together cost God dearly.



Jesus Christ is all God and Jesus Christ is all man. The God who lived in the perfect peace of Heaven drained Himself of all his glory, peace and comfort. He emptied Himself so that we might be given all of the things He gave up (2 Corinthians 8:9). He was tempted, but did not commit a single sin. The God of the entire universe living as a man, subjected to temptation. He was convicted of crimes he did not commit. He was tortured. He was nailed to a cross to die.



Then something happened which we cannot really understand - as Jesus\' life blood flowed out of Him, He cried out: \"My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?\" In that moment, Jesus was completely separated from God. The just punishment for your sin and mine - separation from God - was experienced completely. But Jesus was God. Somehow, He tore Himself that we might never be torn from Him. The Bible says that He became sin.



God exists outside of time, so perhaps that moment of separation and suffering is something God will experience forever. It is too terrible to think about. But that payment was made. The payment for every sin ever commited! But God will not force Himself on anyone - He is not that kind. He will allow you to accept Him or deny Him.



Romans 10:9-13: "that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. For the Scripture says, "WHOEVER BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him; for "WHOEVER WILL CALL ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED."




But anyone who asks - anyone who calls on the name of God - can have their sins completely removed - paid for by God Himself. You must simply call out in faith. You cannot call on a God you do not believe in, and you can not sincerely call on a God you do not believe can or will save you. But if you understand who God is, you will know that He has been waiting all eternity for you to trust Him with your soul.



Paul wrote to Timothy that: I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I've commited unto Him against that day.



Do you believe what God has told you? Do you believe He can and will keep your soul close to Him forevermore? Understanding these things isn't enough (James 2:19). You have to fall into them, trusting them completely, trusting that Jesus Christ can and will save you. Augustine of Hippo once said of salvation: "Without God, we can't. Without us, God won't."

It should be very clear how Christianity is different from other 'religions.' Christianity, in the whole, is a way of life based on two choices. One, accepting what Jesus did for you as a sinner. Two, not wanting to sin any more. It really is easy.

For more, you can e-mail me at JGatlin -at- SimpleComputerSolutionsInc d0+ com. Just convert that to a regular e-mail.

Formspring Question: The Mark of the Beast

Question from an anonymous user: Is the mark of the beast a literal mark?

The short answer to this question is no. The long answer begins sort-of, and will require a little bit of introduction for those less familiar with eschatology. With that aside, the Bible says this requires wisdom, so the explanation will be rather involved. Please bear with me. If you have never heard of the Mark of the Beast it is likely you are not familiar with enough of the surrounding events to understand the answer, please consider first reading my essay A Brief History of Evil.

The Mark of the Beast which the question refers to is a phrase used a handful of times in the Bible, exclusively in the book of Revelation. The flagship verses are Revelation 13:16-17:

And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.

Put simply, there is a mark which the AntiChrist will require people to bear on their right hand or forehead if they are going to participate in his world economy. It will be a choice of remaining faithful to God or feeding your family. The mark will be the name of the beast, or the number which represents that name.

The word translated 'mark' is χάραγμα, charagma (the first letter is chi, so the ch is as in chemistry), a word which connotates an etching, something which has led many in the past to associate it with a tattoo. On a quick side note, χάραγμα is entirely incompatible with a microchip, as the word (to the best of my research) always reflects something on the surface, something visible. But, we have something external, etched in. Something which externally identifies those who would participate in the Beast's economy.

To me, when studying the mark of the beast, it of paramount importance to take a look at a word which is similar in English, but much more shaded in Greek: σφραγίζω (sphragizō). The word σφραγίζω means sealed, and is used by the Apostle Paul in 4:30 to describe how the Holy Ghost protects us from being contaminated by sin, so we might remain worthy of heaven. σφραγίζω refers to a secret seal or a private mark, something used to authenticate and secure without being widely known. In Revelation 7, John uses σφραγίζω to describe the 144,000. It is not a quirk of Paul's language, but an important theological matter. Consider the contrast: Christians are sealed on the inside (a circumcision made without hands) by the Almighty. The servants of the Beast are marked on the outside with the name of their master or his number. Keep this in mind as we go forward.

Having considered the mark itself briefly, I would like to analyze the significance of the right hand and the forehead. The right hand is, symbolically, the tool of work. Jesus is at the right hand of the Father and goes about actually interceding for man. To sit at the host's right side, in Hebrew culture, is to be imbued with all authority of the host. The idea is the same, the person on the right side will be able to carry out actions on the host's behalf, and the host will wholeheartedly endorse it. In the context of a mark on the right hand, carrying out actions on behalf of the Beast would be something visible (a χάραγμα), something giving him authority in your life and something absolutely reprehensible to God. Serve the Beast by name or serve his interests (the number of his name) and you will be accepted in his society. Serve him and you will be allowed to buy and sell. It is external and very real, but not a 'literal' mark.

Now consider the forehead. In Revelation 17, the whore¹ of Babylon has "BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH." written on her forehead. The similarity of two different components in the same vision easily implies a parallel. So to see what the Beast's name and number mean on the forehead of those in the tribulation, we need only understand what is written on Babylon's head. No one explains this as well as Matthew Henry's public domain commentary (1706) of the Bible:

"(1.) She is named from her place of residence - Babylon the great. But, that we might not take it for the old Babylon literally so called, we are told there is a mystery in the name; it is some other great city resembling the old Babylon. (2.) She is named from her infamous way and practice; not only a harlot, but a mother of harlots, breeding up harlots, and nursing and training them up to idolatry, and all sorts of lewdness and wickedness - the parent and nurse of all false religion and filthy conversation."

At the time it was very common for harlots to hang signs up proclaiming their 'services'. So we see this great whore with her head marked by her home and her 'services'. It is then reasonable to assume that the mark of the beast on our forehead would be intellectually proclaiming that we served the beast and that we dwelt in the land that was his (Biblically the far country). If we claim to serve the beast to advance ourselves, we are marked by him just as surely as if we actually did the things we claim. The words we spoke would be real and our own falsehood would be sin.

As for the actual number 666, I subscribe to a simple interpretation. 7 is repeatedly the Biblical number of completion/perfection (Revelation 10:7, Genesis 1:27, Joshua 6, etc.). God is a perfect trinity, 777. Satan is a mock trinity, with two beasts and a prophet, who comes short of God's complete perfection. He is therefore 666. So things which come short of God's glory (sin) and therefore follow after Satan are in accordance with the number of the name. Whether we say "I worship Satan" (To quote Paul: May it never be!), or simply live according to his precepts (again, May it never be!), we are still marked by the beast.
So there you have it. We can take who the Beast is and write it on our hands (with our actions) or proclaim it with our heads (by word). Either way, we are tatooing ourselves with a mark of ownership, instead of having the seal of ownership on our souls. Whether we do it explicitly in the name of the beast, or in the number of his name (the same nature), we stand in sin. So is the mark of the beast a literal mark which could be photographed on the hand or head? I do not believe so. Is it something dangerous, sometimes tangible and frighteningly real? Yes. Yes it is.


Thank you for this question.

¹Henry clarifies the meaning of whore in context: A whore [in this passage] is one that is married, and has been false to her husband's bed, has forsaken the guide of her youth, and broken the covenant of God.

Have a question for me? Visit formspring.me/jgatlin and I will answer it as soon as possible.

Which God?, Pt 1

In the following series, I intend to show that the Creator evidenced in the Creationism series is the God of Christianity. The way we will do this is to investigate what the universe reveals about the character of God and then to see how this is consistent with the God of the Bible. It will not be possible for me to analyze every religion in the history of the world and show how they are inconsistent with what is revealed, sadly. But, such a study can be done fairly easily. The fact that evidence strongly exists for a Creator should refute atheism, the fact that the attributes of the Creator can be known should refute agnosticism.

We have already discovered a few things of our Creator's character in our study of Creationism. If you missed that study, I will review them briefly here. I will also include a reference that says this characteristic matches the God of the Bible.

(1) The Creator has reason. Only a reasonable creature can create something with reason. (Psalms 147:5)
(2) The Creator wishes us to understand. This seems apparent because He imbued us with his own reason. (Isaiah 1:18)
(3) The Creator is powerful. He was capable of creating the universe according to very fine standards. (Psalms 79:11)
(4) The Creator wished for life to exist. He created the universe in a very specific way to that end. (Isaiah 45:18)
(5) The Creator is atemporal. Because He created spactime, he is necessarily outside of it.  (2 Peter 3:8)

With that known, we will proceed according to an outline given in Romans 1:18-20:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

Here we see some attributes of God: opposed to unrighteousness, invisible, eternal, and divine. The following posts in this series will examine the universe as we experience it to see if a perfectly holy, unseen and intangible, timeless and divine God matches what we should expect. Comparing Christianity with faiths outside Judaism and Islam, you will find these characteristics unique. Once we have come so far as to eliminate the faiths outside Judaism and her seed, we will identify why Christianity succeeds over Islam and is the rightful heir to Judaism and her promises.

Stay tuned.

Creationism, Pt 4

In the last three posts, we have examined several different things.
Post One - (Foundation) The Biblical Account of Creation does not contradict known science.
Post Two - (Physics) The universe appears fine tuned to support life.
Post Three - (Reason) The ability to question seems to indicate some master reason.
Post Four - Elegant Summary

This leaves us with a high probability of an atemporal God (who existed before spacetime), who created the universe with the intention of supporting life and gave certain creations (us) the ability to reason. This will be the final post in the creationism series. In Creationism, Part 4 I will present one final proof that the universe was created by a supernatural intelligence before beginning a new series on who exactly that intelligence might be. So, stay tuned for The Search for Truth, Part 1.

In this post, I require you to accept only one axiom going in: Truth is always internally consistent. If you accept the fact that I true worldview cannot contradict itself, we can happily move on.

There are two competing views of morality in the world. The moral relativist and the moral absolutist. The moral relativist (logical positivist) rests his entire philosophy on one claim: "A statement is literally meaningful if and only if it is either analytic or empirically verifiable." That is: the meaning of something is not some transcendental concept, but something based only in experience. If you accepted my axiom, you are not a moral relativist. Why? Their basic claim is not empirically verifiable. Your experiences cannot tell you that your experiences are relative. If we accept the moral relativist's conclusion, we must exclude his premise. His worldview collapses under its own weight.

So, if absolute truths exist outside of experience, they are (by definition) transcendental. These truths exist independent of spacetime. Because they are not bound by spacetime, they cannot be the product of spacetime. If they are independent of spacetime, but still exist as a set framework, we have yet another (tiny, elegant) proof of some atemporal intellect which designed the absolute rules which govern our universe. Let's call this intellect God. Logically, creationism is the only viable belief system.

Thank you for coming through this series with me and be sure to check back for my next series, where we examine the character of this creator to see how we know the God of Christianity is the correct one (and be sure to click on the Facebook button above).

Credo ut intelligentum.

Creationism, Pt 3

At this point in our little study of creationism, I would like to study an argument originally created by Chesterton and popularized by CS Lewis: the argument from reason. I will start with my paraphrase of Chesterton's illustration.

A child wearing a giant cowboy hat is walking happily under some large trees. Suddenly, he sees the mighty trees begin to tremble and then feels a breeze knock his hat off of his head. Looking up with tears in his eyes, he says: "Mommy! Turn the trees off!"

To us, it seems absurd. Of course the wind causes the trees to blow, not the other way around. But if we lacked the benefit of moden science, would it come so easy? Chesterton argues, and I concur, that the child's response is perfectly human. Human beings assume that the big and the tangible is the cause of the intangible and the subtle, not the other way around. Consider the belief that the firing of neurons is the cause of all thought - is there any objective reason for that argument to be anything more sophisticated than the trees causing the wind? Put another way, if we remove our natural bias, is there any reason to distrust the notion that the subtle and intangible (thought) causes the tangible (synaptic activity)?

With that little prelude out of the way, let us consider it completely possible for some intangible concept of reason to drive the brain and not the other way around. Much like Creationism, Part 1, this does little but show that what I propose is possible, that a mind could conceivably be some separate entity from the brain - a greater one, in fact. This argument lends itself to unusual rigor, so I will present it in a way to demonstrate the problem with refuting it. First, carefully examine my axioms. I believe you will find them all logically sound.

Axiom I - Everything created must be of the same type as the direct creator.
I treat this as an axiom to be accepted because I am not sure how to go about proving it. But let me elaborate with some examples. Electricity is able to induce a magnetic field only because they are both different forms of the same thing (electromagnetism). Likewise, matter and energy and interchangable only because they are ultimately the same thing. But no amount of matter will ever create time, because they are of different types. More relevant to this discussion, it is that if a computer is capable of decision making, it is only because humans are capable of decision making. A creature incapable of decision making would not be able to design a machine which

Axiom II - Human beings are capable of determining things as either true or false.
This one is neat. If you refuse this axiom, you are making a judgement that it is false (thereby treating it as true). So either you accept Axiom II or believe that all human experience is chaos. It is not possible to prove this, so it is a more proper axiom than Axiom I.

Axiom III - Matter is deterministic.
A ball does not roll to the bottom of a hill because it would like to, it does because it must. I am using the world deterministic loosely here because I do not know of a better one. This is not to discount randomness at the quantum level or chaos theory, but simply to say that a rain drop does not choose to fall. It simply follows the rules.

Proof I:
(1) Axiom III - Matter is deterministic.
(2) Something which is deterministic cannot make judgements of worth, it can only respond to natural laws (a restatement of Axiom III).
(3) Something which is deterministic will never produce anything which is not deterministic (by Axiom I). Really consider this one.
Conclusion I: The products of purely materialistic behavior will always be deterministic.

Proof II:
(1) Axiom II - Human beings are capable of determining something as being either true or false
(2) By the definition in Axiom III, this contradicts how we defined deterministic.
Conclusion II: Human reason is not deterministic.

Proof III:
(1) Conclusion I - the products of purely materialistic behavior will always be deterministic.
(2) Something not deterministic cannot be the product of materialist behavior.
(3) Conclusion II: Human reason is not deterministic.
Conclusion III: Human reason cannot be the product of materialist behavior.

Proof IV:
(1) Conclusion III: Human reason cannot be explained without appealing to some other reason.
(2) By Axiom II, only reason can create reason.
(3) Following back in time, we can only create an arbitrarily long list of reasons before hitting the "Prime Mover." The Prime Mover must be uncreated and therefore atemporal in order to resolve the situation.
Conclusion IV: Human beings have some rational, self-existant creator. This is a passable definition of deity.

In sum: The fact that you can use your reason to say "There is no God" proves that there is a God.

Creationism, Pt 2

"So, Justin," you say, "you have shown me that the Bible tells of an old earth where a great catastrophe of tremendous proportions wiped the Earth of life and new life, the divine jump of what had existed before, was created in 6 days. Very well. I understand that COULD be consistent with what we know about the universe. But really - is there any evidence that actually happened?"
If there was not, would I have posed the question? That's what we're here to talk about. To reference Alice in Wonderland, I will begin at the beginning, continue until the end and then stop.
The anthropic principle's claim is that the universe and the earth are both peculiarly designed for life. First, I would like to look at the fundamental fabric of the universe. Those constants which determine how the universe is built and which are stunningly finely tuned for life. I'm going to look at the best examples here, but wikipedia has a decent article on it, if only to see how painfully weak the 'scientific explanations' are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe
Consider the strong nuclear force. When two Hydrogen atoms bond (forming Helium and powering the stars), .7% of the mass is converted to energy. Imagine a world where .8% or more of the mass is converted to energy instead. The rate of fusion would happen so rapidly that no hydrogen would have survived the Big Bang. No atoms would exist in the entire universe. Now imagine a world where only .6% or less of the mass is converted. Insufficient energy would exist for a proton to bond with a neutron. The Universe would consist only of Hydrogen and Helium. There would be no life.
If the ratio of protons to electrons changed as little as 1 part in 1024, the electromagnetic forces between them would either blow the universe up or crush it. In a more down to earth example coined by Richard Feynman, if two people were standing one meter apart on the Earth and each had 10% more electrons than protons, they would both be flung out into space past escape velocity. That is how finely electrons and protons are tuned for life in the universe.
If we increased the gravitational constant (big G) even slightly, stars would burn out so quickly that no light elements would survive. No life. If we decreased it, fusion would occur so slowly that we would all live on ice planets. No life.
If the universe expanded faster, galaxies wouldn't have time to form. If slower, the universe would overcome the acceleration and collapse before galaxies had time to form. STILL NO LIFE.
There are many other examples which are readily available that the universe has been fine tuned for life, some of which are simpler than these and some of which are too complicated for me to verify easily (I will therefore not repeat them). Searching 'fine-tuned universe' and looking at the God and Science website will yield numerous impressive numbers.
Most of the info here is taken from Big Bang Refined by Fire by Dr. Hugh Ross, 1998. But, of course, I have added my own knowledge and flair.
Philosophically, it is unbelievable that the Universe, in its one run (with oscillating universes fully discounted and no evidence for multiverses), has happened to create sufficient intelligence to observe it. Anyone who is not already deeply invested in the opposite position would conclude that an atemporal creator is the most like explanation.
"So, the universe itself does seem pretty specific indeed, even with the small list you have given. It appears a universe where stars may form is a rather improbable one and one which can last long enough to sustain life is even more so. That's actually kind of cool. But I'm still not convinced that you have proved a creator who is any more than some kind of deist figure, much less the God of the Bible. You have shown, at best, that the Bible doesn't contradict reality and that something or someone created the universe for life. Tell me you have something better than that."
I do, my skeptical friend. I do.
Stay tuned.