The universe was not created by singing elves

Last night I went to a lecture at St. Thomas, given by a physicist, Dr. Stephen Barr. The lecture was part of a series sponsored by a group that does a lot of such event around here in the realm of Science and Religion. The talk was about design arguments that point to the existence of God.

Was quite interesting. Barr brought up how there is a difference between cosmic design arguments, and biological design arguments. The former tends to look at how things are ordered by natural laws, whereas the latter looks at how biological systems are grouped by function.

He made the point that atheists claim life is also based on natural laws (natural selection) but that such arguments overlook that order does not arise from disorder, but that order arises from order that was already there.

In physics, and nature, this order is often related to symmetries, which is a complex field of study.

(Here is Barr's new book. He seemed to indicate that most of the lecture was taken from things in the book.)