Two
items appear below:
1 The Probable Non-Existence of A God
2 The Existence of God – Reply to John williams
THE PROBABLE
NON-EXISTENCE OF
A GOD
John H Williams
We don't see things the
way
they are;
We see them the way we are. (Found in a fortune cookie)
We know everything about
the
Higgs boson except whether it exists.
(Rolf Heuer, D-G of CERN)
Illusion: false or
misleading
perception or belief; delusion. (Collins Concise)
(Investigator 142, 2012
January)
This is a
response to
Kevin
Rogers' The Existence of God (#138), written in reply to my Goodness
and Evil piece (#137). I acknowledge that my article was short on
argument, brevity having the Ockham-like advantage of being sweetly
simple, to which he responded in kind: it was "a good argument". From
my current perspective, life is too ephemeral to go even one round of a
mulberry bush with Kevin on topics such as the hiddenness of God (a bit
like playing hide-and-seek with oneself), and that tedious problem of
evil — only a problem because it actually exists, often where one would
least expect it!
I've
told Kevin I've not
gone
where he'd have liked because I'm more interested in other topics; it's
hard enough focusing on those without being distracted by discussing a
being I don't believe exists. I was content to read the debate between
Kirk Straughan and Kevin, and viewed Kirk as being far more skilled and
knowledgeable – making, as always, perfect sense. Why duplicate, space
in the Investigator being increasingly scarce?
Far from
"waiting for the
dust to settle", I spent several months researching and writing
‘difficult' articles on Ziusudra and Mengele, both subjects being
outside my realm of expertise. I believe that every Investigator
writer
should be free to choose topics they're interested in, and I generally
defer to those who clearly are more invested and more expert. Having
confessed that he's a creationist scientist, Kevin may now want to
flesh out his beliefs in an article, or critique articles of mine on
natural selection and evolution, but that's entirely up to him.
As to
receiving
"free-kicks"
from believers, which Kevin suggests was the case with Bruce Bennie's
article, they're not needed, because I have a clear sense that, since
believers are inclined to supernatural explanations, as well as having
a more or less non-skeptical view on the Bible, that atheists are far
more likely to be right. For example, Kevin wrote me this in an email
on 27/5/10: "The Virgin Birth (VB) would violate everything we know
about biology (a quote I'd sent him by Jack Spong). But so what? The
Bible clearly presents it as something supernatural. If God created,
sustained the universe, and is the author of life, wouldn't it be a
piece of cake to effect a VB?"
IF there
is a god called
God!
Easy-peasy indeed for a being so extraordinary as to be everywhere yet
nowhere, effortlessly multi-lingual in simultaneously dealing with
prayers by the million, who pump-primed the Big Inflation, incidentally
enabling time, space and the laws of physics, directing the unfolding
universe for about nine billion of years, before taking particular
interest in a planet in an off-Broadway solar system in a spiral arm of
one of its galaxies, and, voila! that sublime celestial lab-job,
vita!
A piece
of cake, IF you
happen to believe: I, just an ordinary non-avid atheist and skeptic,
don't, not because "I don't want to believe", as opined by Kevin:
1 I'm
unimpressed with the
plethora of arguments for the existence of any deity. In Investigator
#132 Bob Potter praised the appendix of Dr Rebecca Goldstein's 36
Arguments For The Existence of God (2010), which explained each
argument before giving a "briskly scientific dismissal", as "Flaw #1,
Flaw #2". I too recommend her repudiation of the arguments for, among
others, Fine Tuning, the Big Bang, the Beauty of Physics, Survival
After Death, Free Will and my favourite, The Abundance of Argument
(#36)!
This
is a very good
site:
http://edge.org/3rd_culture/goldstein09.index.html
2 I
assess the
arguments of
fellow non-believers, Straughen, Potter, Eddie, Edwards, De Kretser et
al, as collectively superior to those of Anonymous, Bergman and Rogers.
The same holds in the broader non-fiction world, in my opinion.
3
Believers, some of
whom are
distinguished scientists, write the most ridiculous things, such as "We
need God because he is our Creator and to help us to be decent" (George
Pell, 1991); "On a beautiful fall day, as I was hiking in the Cascades,
the majesty and beauty of God's creation overwhelmed my resistance.
I…saw a beautiful frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high (which had
three streams, thus putting him in mind of the Trinity!). I knew the
search was over. The next morning I knelt in the dewy grass…and
surrendered to Jesus Christ." (Dr Francis Collins, head of Human Genome
Project).
4 As a
scientist, I
don't
factor in the supernatural, and I find Kevin's "Biblical view", that a
god will physically raise the dead, like those bizarre ‘resurrection'
scenes from The Mummy movie trilogy, as macabre, repulsive and
ridiculous, one directly at odds with science.
5 I'm
outraged when
those who
espouse the Good Book, who are supposed to live by its edicts, and in
many cases are employed by churches, behave evilly towards the
vulnerable, misrepresent science, evolution in particular, tell lies to
help the cause or are coyly mendacious, as were those (Phillip Johnson,
Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer) who first promoted Unintelligent Design.
Yes, the
non-existent
immortal soul is a Greek invention: however, since I don't believe that
there is one, I didn't mention it in my article. I've argued its
non-existence in debate with Anonymous: I described it as something
thought up by mensa, a process which occurs in the brain. I assert that
living things have spent eons not existing, then being alive, later
becoming ‘life-less' and returning to non-existence: Kevin agreed
"entirely", yet in his final paragraph he offered that weird "Biblical
view" without making it clear whether that was or wasn't what he
believed.
In
paragraph three, Kevin
offered two astonishingly weak arguments, presumably given to counter
what he described as my "bravado".
1 That a
majority of
Earthlings ostensibly believe in a god or gods is argumentum ad
populum: I don't think that I need give historical examples to refute
this egregious fallacy. I can't think of one good reason to believe in
a god or gods, apart from the threat of being tortured or terminated. A
very large number of people are godless for most of their lives as
adults, safe from proselytizing parents, teachers and priests, without
ever thinking much about a deity, unless as a popular subject for
humour.
2 " …we
live in a world
that
strongly appears to be created and designed and so the existence of a
creator/designer deity seems "bleedin' obvious."!
I've
spent months
thinking
about how best to deal with this shocking delusion, but a thorough
response requires more space than our editor will want to spare. It's
redolent of Ken Ham's Creation Museum of Misinformation and Michael
Behe's Unintelligent Design: "Why do most people disbelieve Darwinian
evolution? They go out and look at the trees and say "Nah"! A letter
sent to Richard Dawkins extolled the ‘design' features' of a banana,
"the atheist's nightmare", thoughtfully, miraculously and conveniently
arranged by a god: an easy-to-peel zippered protective wrapper; a
colour scheme indicating state of ripeness; a tab for removal of
wrapper; sits comfortably in the hand and bends conveniently towards
the mouth. Yes, the bleedin' obvious, unless you happen to know about
how the wild, unpalatable SE Asian Musa accuminata (plantain or cooking
banana) evolved, after some cross-pollination with the far too seedy
Musa balbisiana, then to become the once dominant hybrid cultivar, Gros
Michel, which was replaced (due to Panama Disease) by the ubiquitous
Cavendish, sourced from Vietnam in the 1950s. (Shortages of Gros Michel
began in the early 1900s, and in 1923 a musical hit, "Yes, we have no
bananas" referred to the fruiterer's lament).
Yea,
"fearfully and
wonderfully made", and "how marvellous are thy works" (Jerry Bergman
quoting Psalm 138:14)! I again refer to his In Six Days description of
that amazing moment when a fully-grown ‘Adam' with 100 trillion cells,
plus an even bigger number of intestinal bacteria, was instantaneously
created. (I again ask Jerry, re my article, Natural Selection Does
(Explain Evolution) in #131, to send our Editor the microbiological
evidence — devoid of biblical
quotations,
please — for this (non-)
event).
Kevin,
the argument from
apparent purposeful design is hopelessly inadequate to support the lazy
default ‘God must have done it' school, because it is far from
established that any god exists, and because it is based on an ancient
pre-scientific myth that the god of the Bible must have had something
creatively momentous to do! Yet, should your mind, questioning the
illusory ‘evidence of your eyes', stray from your ‘bleedin'
obvious'
towards mine, and if you take a more disinterested view of the
scientific evidence, and the lack of evidence for creation, you may,
like Darwin during his five years on the Beagle (1831- 1836), develop
the "onset of doubt".
"I had
gradually come, by
this time (during the voyage) to see that the Old Testament from its
manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the
rainbow as a sign etc., and from attributing to God the feelings of a
revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of
the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian … the clearest evidence
would be requisite to make any sane man believe in miracles by which
Christianity is supported…I gradually came to disbelieve in
Christianity as divine revelation … Thus disbelief crept over me at a
very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I
felt no distress, and have never doubted for a single second that my
conclusion was correct."
(The
Autobiography of
Charles
Darwin, 1800 – 1882, Collins 1958, p 85).
Darwin
was quite
reasonably
fearful of publishing his work for over 20 years until forced to by the
arrival of Wallace's virtually identical thesis: he then had to ‘face
the music' for his last 24 years. Over 128 years later, his work and
its massive legacy are still being derided and misrepresented by those
who put their faith in the Bible well before the overwhelming
scientific evidence.
Good
science depends on
the
disinterested pursuit of the truth, as wonderfully exemplified by
Darwin: in Herbert Spencer's words, "The most cowardly thing of all is
to fear that the truth could be bad."
The Existence of God — Reply to John Williams
Kevin Rogers
(Investigator 143, 2012
March)
In Investigator
#142 John
Williams claimed that I had confessed that I was a "creationist
scientist". I am not sure where I made this confession and I am not
sure what John means by it. Fred Hoyle didn't like the Big Bang theory
because it implied the existence of God, and so he labelled anyone who
believed in it as a creationist. So, by Fred's standards, John Williams
is probably a creationist too. I am a creationist in the sense that I
believe that the universe is created by God. However, I am not a Young
Earth Creationist (YEC).
I
believe that the
universe
is old and was not created in 6 literal 24-hour days. As I have
explained privately to John, I am not sure to what extent evolutionary
theory is true. My background is in engineering, physics, maths and
philosophy. I haven't done any formal studies in biology and so I don't
have firm opinions on the matter. One of my daughters spent 8 years
attempting a PhD in microbiology, but she is largely agnostic on the
issue; so that is cause for some caution.
Some
atheists seem to
argue,
"Since atheism is true, therefore evolution must be true. Since
evolution is true, therefore atheism is true." In other words, their
belief in evolutionary theory is more ideologically driven rather than
scientifically driven. I actually do suspect that a lot of evolutionary
theory is true, but I do not believe that it necessarily leads to
atheism and I do not have any ideological compulsion to believe or
disbelieve it. I am quite happy to follow where the evidence leads. I
think John wants to pigeon hole me to create something that he can
attack. Richard Dawkins uses the same strategy. He would love all
Christians to be YECs and he even argues that they ought to be, but his
motive is to create a target that he can ridicule.
John
referred me to
Rebecca
Goldstein's critique of 36 Arguments for the existence of God. The main
arguments that I have presented in The Investigator Magazine
are the
Kalam Cosmological Argument and the Fine-Tuning Argument (FTA), so I
was particularly interested in Rebecca's position on these arguments.
Rebecca started with the cosmological argument and immediately
misrepresented it.
Her 1st
premise was,
"Everything that exists must have a cause", and then raised the
question, "Who caused God?" This is a very common basic error. The
first premise of the cosmological argument should instead be,
"Everything that begins to exist has a cause." To put it crudely,
something must be eternal and uncaused; otherwise we would not be here.
It is either God or the universe; and it ain't the universe. So she
started off on the wrong foot and her subsequent comments on the
cosmological argument are completely invalid after that. She then makes
some comments on cause and effect, where she completely misunderstands
David Hume's position.
Her
comments on the FTA
are
very brief. She claims that a "Theory Of Everything" (TOE) may explain
why the physical constants have their current values. TOE is actually a
misnomer. Physicists suggest that a "Grand Unified Theory" (GUT) may
unite the 4 forces, but even if it does, this will not be a theory of
everything. Even if the physical constants can be derived from a GUT,
it wouldn't explain the fine tuning of the Big-Bang initial conditions
and it would also be a grand fluke that a GUT would generate the right
values for the physical constants.
She then
appealed to the
multi-verse theory and the oscillating universe theory. The oscillating
universe theory is definitely not viable and the multi-verse theory has
a number of problems, which I have already listed in one of my replies
to Kirk (#127). The flaws she raised are hopelessly flawed and naive,
but John seems to be easily pleased, provided that the conclusion
appeals to him. Quite frankly, I was quite surprised that John would
refer me to such a site. He has had plenty of exposure to the Kalam
Cosmological argument and should have seen the flaws in Rebecca's
arguments without any assistance from me.
Kirk and
I have debated
the
fine-tuning argument. John claimed that he "viewed Kirk as being far
more skilled and knowledgeable". I have distributed links to the debate
quite widely and one of my daughters has also distributed the link to
her fellow medical students. The feedback I have received differs
vastly from John's claim. I have already challenged John to distribute
the argument to his acquaintances if he really believes that Kirk
presented the stronger case. No answer came the stern reply.
In Investigator
#138 I stated, "I am quite satisfied that I
presented a
good argument and that I addressed all of Kirk's objections. Please let
me know of any specific issues that I did not address." However, John
has come up with nothing specific, only an unsubstantiated general
comment and a reference to a hopeless web site. The central issue is
not who won the debate on the fine-tuning argument but "Does God Exist?
The
cosmological argument
and
the design argument (in the form of the fine-tuning argument) are
probably the most important arguments for the existence of God. They
are also major topics of discussion within the scientific and
philosophical communities. Knowledge is justified, true belief. If a
person takes a firm position as an atheist or theist, then they should
have a reasoned position on these 2 arguments, otherwise their beliefs
are not justified. It is intellectually dishonest to attempt to ignore
these arguments or hope they go away. These are not "astonishingly weak
arguments" as John claims. He responds by referring back to Darwinism
as an explanation of design.
However,
Darwinism does
not
explain fundamental things like the existence of the atomic table and
the ability of elements to form complex molecules and it does not
explain the origin of the universe. Darwinism is irrelevant to these
issues.
The
remainder of John's
arguments are not relevant to the existence of God. He creates an
argument for design from the shape of bananas and then knocks it down.
Did I ever mention bananas? Also the fact that some people who claim to
be Christians do bad things is not an argument against the existence of
God. And so on.
I agree
with John that
the
majority is not always right. However, if you are the member of a
minority and presume that you are right without providing a reasoned
justification, then you are simply a minority bigot. The truth is not
"what John believes".