Apologetics

These books are listed to be as updated as possible with current studies, and present a one-stop shop launchpad to current research, and will be listed in order of accessibility, meaning higher up -> easier to read.

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(Subject/Issue | Book)

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Philosophy (including Logic):

An atheist's take on the history of (Western) philosophy (this one in particular is notorious for its bias) | A History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russel (1945)

A Jesuit's take on history of philosophy (A true classic that tries to show the philosophy in detail and with as little bias as possible) | A History of Western Philosophy - Frederick C. Copleston (completed in mid 1970s)

Succinct general history and critiques of Western philosophy with their crucial flaws from a Christian standpoint | A History of Western Philosophy and Theology - John Frame (2015)

An accessible take on the impossibility/trade-off of self-referentiality, and also includes an fun and interesting set-theoretical description of God that at least is a prima-facie answer facing the "Who designed the designer" objection (I would only use it for that negative purpose, but not use it to positively argue for the Christian God)| Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas Hofstadter (1979)

A compilation of Van Til's covenantal/presupposition-exposing style apologetics (more deals with epistemological arguments, since philosophy underwent the epistemological turn in the 16th century) | Van Til's Apologetic: Readings and Analysis - Greg Bahnsen (1998)

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Math:

Classical Text on Kolmogorov complexity which will help you gain a rigorous understanding of complexity and randomness | An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications (1st edition in 1994)

Specified Complexity (as termed Specified Complexity; in statistics, it is equivalent to the concept of Randomness Deficiency) | The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities (1st edition in 1998)

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Basic observation:

Specified Complexity (or if you want better terms to deal with semantic complaints from atheist circles: Randomness Deficiency or Complex Specified Design or Specified improbability (point 4. in Shallit's response; go read it to see how absurd it is)) is defined by SC(x) = Maximum Length of Description (x) - Length of Shortest Compressed Description (x). The Length of Shortest Compressed Description can be upper-bounded by any computed length of description/program, in which description includes both the interpreter/language and the content interpreted. Martin-Löf randomness allows for the highest possible value of the Length of Shortest Compressed Description (infinity) due to treating infinite sequences, and a string that is Martin-Löf random (passes all randomness tests) will not be compressible in its original string sequence, and therefore SC(x) = 0, since the Maximum Length of Description equals the Shortest Compressed Length of Description (it is not compressible, and therefore the shortest length equals the maximum length). If any infinite string is not Martin-Löf random, then the Maximum Length of Description will be bigger than the shortest length, and therefore we could have an easy test of whether something is designed by just finding a randomness test that the infinite sequence fails to pass (theoretically, if a program can be conceived as able to finish running for an infinite amount of time).

In reality, we are never dealing with infinite sequences when deciding whether something is designed. Therefore, we need the equivalent for finite length sequences, and that is Kolmogorov randomness.

If every single text in the world was considered as a holistic whole that describes the universe accurately (with all possible explanations of metaphors, translation between languages etc., so that any word and concept in that whole is maximally understandable as far as we know) and without data-loss, and the total amount of texts are estimated to be about at most 50-60 petabytes, with a petabyte being 10^15 bytes and a byte being 2^8 bits, then the total data would be 60*(10^15)* (2^8) bits, or 1.536*(10^19) bits. This is indeed an enormous amount. But consider the amount of bits in the universe can use to compute that physicists have calculated: 10^90 (or 10^120 if gravitational fields contribute). That is about 10^71 times more than all human texts combined.

There is an atheist's omniscience dilemma, or maybe the quantified rational-irrational synthesis (Rational-irrational synthesis is Van Til's important contribution to philosophy) dilemma: if human knowledge (a total of 1.536*(10^19) bits) is considered "omniscient," perfectly describing the universe without data loss, and those number of bits can be related to the "specified-ness" or, upon compression, the shortest program lenth of the universe by Kolmogorov complexity, then it will calculate a Randomness Deficiency of [(10^20)-1.536]*(10^70) = 10^90. The universe's number of bits will bulldoze over the length anyway, and you will need to say that the universe has a 10^(-90) probability of being undesigned. We can quantify the inconceivable ignorance of this: if an atheist can bet on those odds, he would most likely bet on every single lottery in the world, which give much, much, MUCH better odds than this.

The other horn is much simpler: if human knowledge is considered non-omniscient, then its description of the universe has data-loss. As far as it judges from the design or information of the universe, it cannot speak conclusively about the non-existence of God.

There is no third horn. Therefore atheism is not true. Not under physicalism.

The other implication of this argument is that, as Christians, we cannot hope to make our case of God in terms of positively portraying it as a conclusion of the quantified amount of information. The dilemma is only there to show that a worldview with materialist/physicalist foundations is self-defeating. Physicalism mathematically limits itself. We of course are not going to prove Christianity with physicalism, but we must consistently point to the seed of divine knowledge already implanted in man. There is a plus, a more-than, beyond physicalism. The arena is much more than just numbers and science, but is still the competing "revelations" against each other.

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Physics

Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory:

A really accessible textbook on Quantum Field Theory | Quantum Field Theory for the Gifted Amateur - Tom Lancaster and Stephen J. Blundell (2014)

A superb reference book on quantum mechanical concepts | Compendium of Quantum Physics: Concepts, Experiments, History and Philosophy (2009) PDF

Anthony Zee's classic with his own intuitive interpretations of equations and concepts | Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell - Anthony Zee (2003)

Beginning of the Universe:

BGV Theorem explained (The universe has a beginning) | Alexander Vilenkin's article (October 2015) on whether the assured beginning of a universe implies the existence of God

General Physics Arguments:

General challenges to atheism (including fine tuning, chemical coincidences etc.) | Modern Physics and Ancient Faith - Stephen M. Barr (2003; Catholic)

How physicists try to solve infinite regression and fine tuning without God: Inflation Theory (inflaton field) and String Theory | The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design - Leonard Susskind (2005)

Popular treatment on the latest physical theories (interestingly admits that the question of why there is something rather than nothing is not yet explained, yet finds solace in the fact that much of the universe can be explained by something that weighs less than a pet dog combined with inflation theory; good case study for the irrationality of physicists, since beginning problem is still left untreated) | The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality - Brian Greene (2007)

Failure of the above to explain the universe (still doesn't explain beginning problem, is non-falsifiable, "explains anything anybody want" etc.)| Physics to God Website (run by two rabbis)

Young Earth Creationist Cosmology that can account for the old-age of stars | A New Creationist Cosmology: In No Time at All - Part 1 (2010), 2 (2011), and 3 (2011) -- the book it was based upon: Starlight and Time - Russell Humphreys (1994)

My own basic observation:

Physicists rely on the inflaton field as the (unproved, and maybe unprovable!) theory to compensate for the low probability of this universe happening (which they readily concede) by taking out a theory that is too "strong" that allows them to say that anything that can ever happen will virtually happen (every universe will be substantiated in the megaverse that encloses them). The most obvious example is that Boltzmann brains, which is a more probable scenario in a universe that allows anything provided that the probabilities are high, are considered more "ordinary" within anthropic constraints, and therefore should be taken as the more likely scenario that our universe is in. This means that all of our memories are very likely false thanks to probability. Probability comes back to bite us.

My own thoughts:

On Quantum Mechanics and Absolutely/Relatively Unknown Information

Quantum Mechanics (defined as any treatment of a system at any scale in which Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle still holds true) just tells us that at low resolution, macroscopic descriptions of any part of the world, the descriptions that have a low amount of bits just cannot describe the system accurately, and therefore there is a cap in prediction power (or a relative loss of it relative to the actual amount of information in that same system under study). The Copenhagen interpretation is a guess that says that information is not just epistemologically but metaphysically less before a measurement is made; measurements are taken to be ontologically important entities that determine the state of the universe. We are doing the "handshaking" or "transaction." Extending that interpretation, the universe is "actually" increasing in information as the bubble of observation expands and forces all the wavefunctions it reaches to collapse. There are also interpretations of the universe that say that the universe is itself calculating information regardless of whether we observe it or not. This is the more ontologically "humble" interpretation. The transactional interpretation where future waves collide with past waves at each moment in the present (or whichever time and place) secures a definite value for observables in every point in spacetime regardless of observation. The universe is already always engaging in "handshakes" or "transactions," and our acts of observation (our "handshakes") are not powerful enough to change the system.

Whichever the case, information that was not in the system under a certain "screen resolution", say system_res1, is always coming into existence in that system_res1. Whether we ourselves are part of the information creating machinery or the universe outside of us is, it makes no difference (if we are conceived as part of the universe).

We don't know if technology will one day be developed to such a degree as to allow us to observe even scales at or below the Planck length and Planck time, and we'll discover the rules of and ways to manipulate the universe at the extremely small space-time or extremely large energy-momentum scales. If we do, we may encounter one of two scenarios as far as information is concerned: (1) we cannot find the source of additional information of system_res1, and it really is a "random number generator" or a dice roll for some class of information, which means that quantum mechanics is preserved down to the smallest scales; or (2) we find more ways to describe the universe, giving system_res2, that can fully account for the missing information at system_ res1, and those information are just lurking there waiting to be "offloaded" or "captured" by the larger time- and length-scales. In the first case, information does indeed appear "ex nihilo," and that actually would also be a point which we could argue as one part of God's Providence, as information is continually injected from somewhere "outside" of system_res2, the best and most extensive possible description of the universe. In the second case, information was already always there (whether in us or out there), and therefore all information would just be frontloaded to the beginning of the universe, where we would argue for Creation. Apologetically, it is just a matter of "where" information is located (at the "beginning" of the universe or "alongside" the universe).

Whichever is the case, "information" (or better, randomness deficiency, to avoid the other definition of information as Shannon entropy; Random deficiency = Shannon Entropy - Kolmogorov Complexity) is there as the necessarily dual component of the ineffable "substance." This all sounds very hylomorphic, and in that sense we have never really escaped Plato. Another related matter is how should we argue for that information/form/structure and substance/raw material. Arguing for design is an argument for a very "informational" or "intellectual" part of the world (although we'd like to agree that it takes some "power" to create it), while arguing for brute, raw and data-compression-resistant matter is an argument for a very "potent" part of the world (although it takes some "intelligence" to decide how much to create, what kind of basic matter-type to create). In all aspects of the physical description of the world, there is that indistinguishable but inseparable intelligence/power (and maybe one could argue for goodness) dual- (or triple-) aspect.

Atheists need an ultimate intelligence-from-stupidity argument, not just at the biological level (where the design inference was used) but also at the physical level of description. Therefore, the inflaton field, conceived to solve a different set of problems, was borrowed to explain the current fine-tuned parameters of this universe. The problem is that that inflaton field has parameters of its own that need fine-tuning, and therefore fine-tuning is just pushed further down. Minimal information (or, more accurately, the randomness deficiency; a lot of variables give a large Shannon entropy, and a tight restriction to win gives the Kolmogorov complexity/compressibility as far as we know) is still repackaged and sent to somewhere, and that itself still needs explaining!

For Atheists that argue that Kolmogorov complexity is highly dependent on the language used for description to avoid dealing with it, that argument works both ways: If it is implied that no language is able to describe the universe without (huge) loss of data, how do we then know that the terms/concepts of "evolution" is a well-defined concept that does not present loss of data or whose code-word-length in a program doesn't explode? What use is it of pointing out Berry's paradox at the last moment and saying: "Oh well, on this particular point, we'll never know!" That caveat doesn't really help, but is a selective use of skepticism when convenient. It is remarkably telling that the atheist would resort to this general level objection than quantifying code-word-lengths.

If different strengths of the anthropic principles are spaced too far apart, then one optimization will not necessarily entail another, forcing there to be simultaneous optimizing of multiple factors instead of one single factor, drastically reducing the probability that this particular universe was a "reasonably lucky roll"--why weren't the other more possible observer-containing universes rolled out? This is (one of) the Achilles' heel of Inflaton field theory.

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Towards a general apologetic of the natural world

Can long-term or highly regular laws co-exist with short-term or low regularity actions? I think it can. As long as Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is not disproved, there is always an omnipresent realm co-extensive with our spacetime (in which highly regular laws operate) where new information is constantly being injected into the universe through quantum fluctuation processes. This process is considered "just so" by naturalists who do not want to ascribe it to a God who is actively injecting information or influencing the course of every single field/particle, and is taken as the proof of the world's coming into being ex-nihilo: As long as it obeys certain law-like constraints, and as long as there is some sort of energy source (preferably infinite if we want an eternal multi-verse to bootstrap our universe), new information (that does not break energy conservation) can come into the universe to direct it. There is no need to posit a second entity called "matter" apart from energy if it is just a coefficient of coupled fields that phenomenologically has been conceptualized as matter (matter finds its full meaning in its spatio-temporal response to forces), just as water is not a second entity from H₂O if H₂O has been shown to possess all the properties of "water."

The necessary components for the natural universe we see can be boiled down to three things: energy, regular laws of how energy moves, and irregular information. An atheist will look at these things at this fundamental level of description, and say: energy was and is and will always just be there, either in the form of an untapped potential, or already converted into momentum in space, and is absolute energy; the regular laws of how energy moves is "just so," "purely natural," "impersonal", absolute laws; irregular information appears out of nowhere and is just chance occurence, and absolute chance at that. But these things can be connected theologically to the Bible by the Christian at this very level of description as so (insofar as we humans can understand at a prima facie level): The regular laws of how energy moves was determined by God's wisdom, enforced by His power, and made regular according to His goodness and faithfulness (could we say that the laws are part of God, if it strictly refers to the enforcing part? The enforcing law is God/God's Word?); energy came into existence through God's power; and irregular information is part of God's freedom and power and providence and wisdom (and is just missing knowledge to us)?

No doubt, all the objects and properties of the universe and God can be closely analyzed in a way that may give a more nuanced and holistic description of the objects and the universe. This prima facie description is just there to highlight which of God's properties each property of the universe shows more than God's other properties. In these simple, general level concepts, a believing child can be made to understand the crucial point of disagreement with an unbelieving child at the same meta-scientific level as an adult.

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Chemistry

Trying to explain how everything came about at the chemical level, including life (particularly, abiogenesis is just speculated to have occurred on asteroids) | Chemical Evolution: Origins of the Elements, Molecules, and Living Systems (1991)

Fine tuning is necessary for carbon synthesis. (This article interestingly argues against that by saying that the tuning does not need to be so fine, as long as the lack of carbon's alpha resonance is compensated by the longer lifetime of beryllium. At least the concession is made that carbon has a monopoly on naturally developing life, and that itself is telling. Why did life not appear as lifeforms consisting of other possible combinations of elements? If carbon chauvinism cannot have its day, and other lifeforms are indeed possible, why did we hit the jackpot in that respect and only observe carbon lifeforms?)

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There is a counter-argument to fine-tuning that says: The argument and wonder of fine tuning is only valid when you have multiple universes in the first place to show that this universe is the lucky one out of them all, just as you have multiple planets that don't have life to show convincingly that this planet is the luckiest one out of all of them. This is absurd and is not consistent with the physicists' right intuition that there is a need to discuss multiple universes (and indeed they do go there automatically). The exact reasons for the absurdity of the counter-argument are twofold: (1) From a practical method of doing physics, much of the existence of entities are given by reasonable inferences from data and theories. We could just say that we don't know if there are other planets, and physicists would plainly point to the flying bodies that our sun illuminates in our solar system and say that those can be inferred to be planets, point to the stars in the sky and say that they are like the sun we have, and just assume that there are planets around those suns. In the same vein, the existence of possible universes are not an idle claim, but are being seriously considered with field/string theories and inflation mechanisms to create them. (2) Actual entities and events require counterfactuals to make a theory to begin with and construct predictions which assume that such-and-such will happen under yet-to-be-actualized experimental conditions. A theory about an electron is not very impressive if it only records that electrons start to accelerate away from each other at distance 3 m, 0.1 nm, 2.99 m and 1 million other data points while being scientifically reserved and refusing to say what will happen at a yet-to-be-observed mutual distance by some equation (e.g. Coulomb's law). The person who brings up this counter-argument has not done much science.

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Biology

Overviews of all views:

Overviews of and dialogue between 4 Christian standpoints (Young Earth Creationism, Old Earth Creationism, Theistic Evolution, and Intelligent Design), including more in-depth discussion of the crucial flaws and defenses of each | Four Views on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology) (2017)

Overviews of roughly 6 camps (not necessarily Christian) across the entire spectrum of the origins of life debate (Naturalistic Evolution, Non-teleological Evolution, Planned Evolution, Directed Evolution, Old Earth Creationism, and Young Earth Creationism), discussing the views more from the viewpoint of their underlying assumptions | Mapping the Origins Debate: Six Models of the Beginning of Everything; eBook text online at Wright Library

Intelligent Design:

A comprehensive book for Intelligent Design debates, philosophy of science etc. (interestingly, even talks about the inflaton field!) | Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design - Stephen Meyer (2009) (The website for the book, on which you can find praises/critiques of the book up until 2012)

A book from the secularist (agnostic) corner that proposes structuralism and typology, and presents criticisms of evo-devo, epigenetics, and proposes homology as actually against evolution| Evolution: a Theory in Crisis - Michael Denton (2016)

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Paleontology remains the main battlefield for evidence for and against evolution. A rebuttal of Denton's view that there are too few transitional forms by talkorigins.org frankly admits the evidence and merely replies that Denton is too strict:

"Now to the fossil record. Similar to the creationists, Denton proposes that there are not enough transitional forms in the fossil record, and that what transitional forms do exist are rather dubious in nature because they do not show soft organ changes (since organs aren't fossilized) and are not intermediate in every single characteristic. Thus, Archaeopteryx lithographica, perhaps the most famous transitional form of all time, is inadequate because its wings and feathers were fully formed. Never mind that Archaeopteryx sported more reptilian skeletal characteristics than it did avian ones, and ignore the fact that its skeletal characteristics very closely match a class of wingless reptiles called therodonts that existed around the same time and in the same geographical location. It is apparent, then, that Denton's standards for labeling a fossil a "transitional form" are unreasonably restrictive."

(futher down)

"Every once in a while, a new transitional form turns up and strengthens the evolutionary pattern inherent in the fossil record . But in any case, to deny that the ones that already exist are what they appear to be is a sure indication of unreasonably strict criteria for transitional forms.

We have seen that Denton's assault on evolutionary pattern has failed. The "problems" he points out with the evolutionary interpretation of the data have turned out to not be problems at all. It has additionally been shown - thanks to transitional forms, true homologous structures, and the various novelties that appear in embryological and molecular realms not subject to selective pressures - that deriving a typological pattern from the data is itself a problematic undertaking."

Thus on this point of hard evidence, it seems that evolutionists and anti-evolutionists will keep talking past each other due to different interpretations of the same evidence. A person's belief in evolution can be gauged by how much he is willing to say in the face of this collection of paleontological evidence.

One of the notes is just plain denial:

^"2A creationist critic responded to me at this point by saying that all dogs are members of the same species, and that their variation thus does not constitute evidence for evolution. However, this critic misses my point entirely. What I was attempting to show was that large structural change could occur naturally. The fact that such change can occur within the same species makes the case for macroevolution stronger, not weaker."

It does not make the case for macroevolution stronger. This is just plain question-begging. The whole question should be reformulated as: Is gene-sequence change (the basis for macroevolution) responsible for large structural changes, or are isolated gene pools, evo-devo factors and epigenetic changes (the latter two as bases for microevolution rather than macroevolution) responsible?

Analyzing the evolution-creation debate:

Enlarging the phenotype-space is valid as a rough support for evolution, if we calculate phenotype distance similarly to the distance between two points on a Euclidean space with multiple, mutually-orthogonal axes. Quantum, step-like changes (not to be confused with quantum mechanics) across phenotypes can produce a close-to-continuous fitness-spectrum that can fit multiple environments. Say, for example, 1 step in the x direction and 2 steps in the y direction, which produces a phenotype distance of 5 squared, smaller than 3 (if all 3 steps were taken in the same direction, say x). Actual calculations would determine the weight of each mutation by itself and paired with different distributions. Evolutionists will haggle on how much certain mutations or combinations of mutations can travel over from one species to another with a noticeably "novel" trait. They will also make the regions between the pockets more "forgiving" of mutations that are not-quite-there. If selection is hyper-sensitive, then no travel will be possible. Small deviations from one species will be quickly killed off before the next step of travel takes place. If selection is weakly sensitive, then deviations in all directions will be possible, and the tree will look more like a web with no identifiable "branches" giving structure to the "tree."

The gene sequence will have to travel from one adaptable pocket to the next. Evo-devo and epigenetics will turn those steps into jumps. The whole debate is about how plausible is the jump from one to the next, and fossils give clues to how those jumps actually happened (and incidentally, how they could happen). Evolutionists will therefore "continuitize" the available pockets as much as possible, and both "continuitize" and "amplify" the travel distance per gene mutation as much as possible. Evo-devo and epigenetics do cover a lot of distance, and therefore phenotypes could be chunked into a smaller number of genes. Is the chunking enough?

Most evolutionists will want to allow the whole tree of life (or tree of phenotypical-pockets) to converge to one point. The one tree could have "roots," but those multiple roots must too converge through mutative-biological mechanisms to one point. This is a testament to the incredible life-fitness of the cell. Michael Denton is the dissenter who thinks the phenotypical pockets only converge to multiple trees of life with no overlap between trees at the biological-mutative level (Typology), but could be "linked" to more fundamental physical constraints (Structuralism) or other factors. Denton is therefore an interesting evolutionist that gives us a gauge on the religiosity of the whole evolution camp. He is like the open-minded evolutionist who is sending an invitation to the physicists to calculate a higher probability of cell-like life formation. Evolutionists therefore would want him if they wanted to solve more convincingly the abiogenesis problem (the physicist/chemist side), but that would sacrifice the validity of pure, biological evolution.

Young Earth Creationism:

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Apologetics

Other Readings Lists