The five greatest reasons

At the last meeting, I discussed my idea of going through what I call the five greatest scientific apologetic arguments, one at a time. The first one was the beginning of the universe, and so we talked about the big bang theory, and what theological/philosophical implications it has.

I would say, then, the five greatest reasons are (in no particular order):

1. The origin of the universe
2. The fine-tuning of the universe (including the anthropic principle and our privileged position)
3. The origin of life (biochemistry)
4. The origin of man (including the moral argument/imago dei)
5. The design of life for the benefit of humanity (yes, I did say design of life)

Of course, these designations are somewhat arbitrary. Ask any ten people and they'll probably give you ten different answers as to what the five greatest reasons are. And most of these overlap. In fact, you could probably include numbers 2,3, and 5 all together into one big umbrella argument, and perhaps number 1 as well. The "origin of man" argument also has several different parts to it, such as archeology, philosophy, and genomics.

All in all, we'll see if we can cover roughly one topic per meeting for the next four meetings (given that we covered number one last time).