From Parade Magazine — an interview with Dan Brown, the author of the anti-Christian The Da Vinci Code.

Q: Are you religious?
A: I was raised Episcopalian, and I was very religious as a kid. Then, in eighth or ninth grade, I studied astronomy, cosmology, and the origins of the universe. I remember saying to a minister, “I don’t get it. I read a book that said there was an explosion known as the Big Bang, but here it says God created heaven and Earth and the animals in seven days. Which is right?” Unfortunately, the response I got was, “Nice boys don’t ask that question.” A light went off, and I said, “The Bible doesn’t make sense. Science makes much more sense to me.” And I just gravitated away from religion.

Q: Where are you now?
A: The irony is that I’ve really come full circle. The more science I studied, the more I saw that physics becomes metaphysics and numbers become imaginary numbers. The farther you go into science, the mushier the ground gets. You start to say, “Oh, there is an order and a spiritual aspect to science.”

It is a great  tragedy that the pastor had no answer. Here are some things the pastor could have said:

• He could have started by saying that he didn’t have all of the answers. A little humility goes a long way.
• A major point of agreement between the Bible and big-bang cosmology is that the universe had a beginning. This distinguishes Christianity from many other options, such as atheism (which finds the beginning to be a rather troubling concept) or non-theistic spiritual worldviews that posit an eternal universe.
• The universe is not eternal, nor is it self-created. The only other option is that had a beginning, which implies an ultimate cause.
• The universe is incredibly fine-tuned for the existence of life, and even intelligent life such as ourselves.
• The first cell (a “simple” bacterium) would have had to have been extremely complex to the point that naturalistic scenarios for its self-creation seem incredible.
• The pastor should have used other evidences for Christianity (historical reliability of the Scriptures, fulfilled prophecy, evidence for the resurrection) to counteract some of the doubts the young Dan Brown had.

That would be good for starters, and I would expect any pastor/evangelist/apologist to be able to elaborate on any one of these.

It is also inconsistent that Brown left Christianity because he thought it wasn’t scientific, only to replace it with fuzzy and subjective gnosticism and paganism.

Grace and Peace

HT: Wintery Knight