Who is Making a Leap of Faith?

 The Following is part of a discussion that can be found at: Cosmic Fingerprints

Jon you said:

“And I know you are a Christian so I can only assume you will give me a Christian answer to these problems. But since you are a big proponent of logic and reason, please try and answer these using those tools, instead of faith.” and also here: “I know you keep going back to the entire “Communication and Information” argument for the existence of God. You use real world references like DNA and computer code. But again, these are not leaps of scientific proof, these are leaps of FAITH.”

Your assumption that you would get a“faith based answer” is not your only assumption. It seems to me that you want everything to conform to the rules of logic and reason, fair enough, but have you ever done work to validate the rules of logic? Where do they come from? Why do you accept them and them alone for the basis of your “knowledge”? Wouldn't it be fair to say that your confidence in the rules of logic is faith based? How do you account for reason and logic? Whoever claims these are the only tools we must use in our deliberations ought to be prepared to offer an account for those rules. And when you do offer an account of them guess what tools you will be using? Yes you guessed it, reason and logic. No matter how you slice it, you must use logic and reason to justify logic and reason. The point I am making is that every worldview starts with assumptions. Your worldview assumes the laws of logic are the only valid assumption from which to determine and validate truth claims.

The Christian unashamedly makes assumptions too (that the word of God is true) and then uses reason and logic to make his or her claims. Both worldviews involve assumptions and circular reasoning. The Bible is true because God told me so. Where did he tell me? In the Bible. Yeah very circular. But don’t forget that first principles are basic assumptions that are also circular in that it takes reason and logic to justify reason and logic.

When you ask Perry to refrain from faith based comments why do you then violate that edict yourself? You posit other life forms of the universe as being necessary to validate the conclusions Perry makes about life on earth. That is a step of faith on your part isn’t it? 
This is what you said:

“Now, if you have traveled the Cosmos and seen all the other ways life is made...”

Say what! There is not one shred of evidence for -another way life is made- let alone “other ways” and you want Perry to stick to the facts and not make faith based assumptions!
You also appear not to appreciate that the Christian faith is not a leap in the dark but is substantiated to a much deeper degree than that which is often appreciated.

Perry has made statements regarding the nature of information; scientists who specialize in the nature of information formulate these statements. These are scientists whose affiliations may be religious or non-religious, and there is general consensus among them. There are recognized universal laws concerning information. If these laws are agreed to by scientists of all philosophical persuasions then people interested in truth are obligated to account for these laws according to their own worldview. That is Perrys point, information as agreed to by scientists of various ilk, universally recognize that intelligence is a corollary of information; that is- that intelligence is a necessary cause of information in any form. Information does not exist apart from a mind that caused it. Now you seem to have completely ignored his point that you must account for the information in the genetic code. To assume that he has not been logical or reasonable when he accounts for it by according the cause of it to God is irrational on your part. You may give other explanations for that information such as Venusian life-seed planters or whatever but you must give an account for it and you violate your own rules of reason if you do not acknowledge Perrys elucidation as being entirely logical and reasonable.

In fact your oversight in this regard causes me to question your openness to the logic of it. In fact I could even posit that your reason for objecting to this explanation is not so much based on a love for truth or good science, logic, reason, and openness; but deep in your heart, whether you are conscious of it or not you are absolutely opposed to the theistic view of reality irrespective of the truth, logic and reasoning involved because there are deep moral implications in the acceptance of it for you as an individual if Perry is correct.

Perry said:

                                                                                                                                      “Thus truth exists and an intentional super intelligence exists, because communication exists.”

To which you replied Jon: 

“There is a flaw in the logic because if a “super intelligence” existed that created all the codes in the language of life, then there must an even greater super intelligence to create the information in the first one. Wouldn’t it be logical that this first “God” had in him codes and information in him as well? Because the only way “information and codes” can be created is with a super intelligence, right? Then there can not be a super intelligence by itself that wasn’t created, unless it came from the mind of an even greater being….INFINITE REGRESS.”

Here Jon you make a logical error yourself. There is no logical reason why a necessary being need be subject to the laws of contingent being. The law of causality requires that everything (including codes in the language of life) that comes to be must have a cause; a being that necessarily exists does not need a cause since by definition it exists necessarily. From the proposition of necessary existence comes the property of eternal existence such as we describe with the term God. Either the universe (and all in it) is eternal and is necessary being or the universe is contingent and there exists a necessary being that caused it and sustains it. Now if you say that the universe is eternal and necessarily exists as has been stated in outdated cosmology it would appear that you fly in the face of substantial scientific evidence to the contrary via the big bang theory and logically you must substantiate why you believe it is necessarily in existence rather than contingent. You must also explain how- in the light of entropy and the heat death principle- it can be termed as necessarily existing if the Universe is destined to go out of existence, since a necessary existence entails that it never fails to exist. So we take up Perry’s position that is logical and coherent- that a necessary being has instilled the laws of causality, which universally apply to all contingent existences (including genetic code). In short there is no logical reason why God should need a creator or something that wired him up.To add further to the reasoning behind Perry’s affirmation of God behind and responsible for the information in DNA is the Principle of Analogy. As Norman Geisler puts it in the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics:

“The principle of analogy states that an effect must be similar to its cause. Like produces like. An effect cannot be totally different from its cause.”                                                                         

                                                                                                                                                      The effect we are discussing is an encoded language by which cell replication takes place. In a nutshell- cells are created through linguistic instructions. Does God work like this? Scripture says:

In the beginning was the Word, … and the Word was God… All things were made (by the Word) and nothing was made without the Word. (John 1:1-3 abridged and paraphrased)

Jon you said:

“How does this line of reasoning explain pain, suffering and natural disasters?Why design a world that is constantly cooling and erupting with violent events that kill millions of innocent people?What about our fear of pain and death? If God was real, then he has no fear of death or pain and yet he created beings that must suffer this fate. What does that say about him?Also, the problem of evil. Where did that come from?”

C.S. Lewis wrote about pain, he said something like “Why spell pain that way?” In other words why is it that whenever people raise this issue, why is it immediately put in a moral context? Before we deal directly with the question of evil in the world in relation to an all-good God we must address your presupposition in framing the question the way you have.
If you are a strict materialist then you have no valid basis from which to ask moral questions, why are you concerned with evil and good if there is for you (the materialist) no valid reason for a moral framework upon which to hang this question? The moment you invoke a good versus evil question you are assuming a moral universe and you must answer why you believe it to be a moral universe?So you must be clear in your own mind- if you think along the same lines as the anti-theist Dawkins who said: 

“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.” 

If you agree in principal with that statement then by your own definition you invalidate the question of pain and evil. You cannot have it both ways- either your worldview precludes the question of evil altogether or you must agree with the theist and conclude it is indeed a moral universe and get serious with the difficult question of evil. Now if you believe the question of evil does require an answer you must explain where morality comes from and what is the source of your standard by which to differentiate evil from good. Here you may see the irony in Dawkins worldwide campaign to eradicate “the evil religion” which is basically a fundamentalist moral crusade, which has no foundation, according to the terms of his self-defined worldview.
At this point in our discussion of evil I would like to point out that the Christian God is omnipotent and omniscient and on the basis of that and his other perfections God has given a reality which includes the possibility and actuality of evil, but we trust in his perfect goodness and benevolence that this has happened for his ultimate good purpose. 

Suppose a native came across a clearing in the jungle and saw his best friend with strange people obviously from an unknown country. His best friend was lying on a table and in an unconscious state; the stranger was poised over him with a knife. There was blood, strong lights, there was strange music, other people were gathered around in strange costumes, they wore masks, they were intensely occupied with the opening they had made in his stomach. There seemed to be articles of torture and strange machinery all around. I’m sure you would recognize a Vietnam style emergency operating theatre, but that would not at all be likely what was going on in the mind of the one whose friend lay on the table. What is all-important and makes all the difference to our attitude is whether or not we know the intention, and, that we do not have at our disposal the complete picture.

Consider this:
Without evil there can be no concept of Justice.
Without evil, mercy becomes an empty term, redundant.
Without evil, forgiveness is impossible.

Without evil, love -defined as unselfish, loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another- could be experienced, but not consciously known by mankind.