Why I Believe in God…a Response to ATB
Again, as is my custom, I would like to point you to a fellow diarist, just for your edification. The name is A Thinking Bum (ATB or BUM, as I refer to him), and you can check out his diary here.
In one of Bum’s recent entries, he concludes with a question: "So, why do you think there is a God?"
I’d like to respond. Here are my reasons, in the nearest semblance of an order I can manage.
1. The metaphysical problem of origins.
Philosophers from Plato on have strugged with this question. If you posit some other source than a deity or deities for the creation of the universe, some sort of being outside the system, you are left with a profound metaphysical problem, namely, the problem of creating something from nothing. Take one competing view of the beginning of things, the Big Bang. There is a profound metaphysical problem with the Big Bang–where does the stuff that exploded come from? Even if you posit some sort of primeval atom that was superdensely packed and exploded, that does not answer the question of WHERE that ‘primeval atom’ came from. (As an aside, this is my most longstanding problem with Darwinism–that it cannot answer this question of ultimate origin. I have no problem accepting that things change over time. It seems to me to be quite likely that they do. But without the origin question answered, the theory is only partially explanatory.) You cannot blindly assert that matter exists and still claim, in my opinion, to be explaining everything. Avoiding the most fundamental "why" question does not negate the validity of that question.
2. The anthropic coincidences.
A great deal could be said about this, but this earth on which we live is highly attuned to life. In fact, it is possible that in all the vastness of the universe, this is the only planet uniquely wired for life as we know it. If that doesn’t blow your mind, let’s go on. There are hundreds of factors that make life on earth possible. All of these factors are dependent on one another to work. For example, we are the exact distance from the sun to keep the earth’s atmosphere from vaporizing, while at the same time, close enough to keep the earth’s crust warm enough to support life. That is related to the amount of oxygen and other gases in our atmosphere (Ozone and others.) If any of these settings is off, even by a small bit, the entire world of life as we know it comes tumbling down. There has been some refutation of this by atheistic scientists, but I’m unconvinced by their science…I think this is ultimately a probability argument. (ergo…"If we find a universe that has to have thousands of things go exactly right and thousands of factors arrange in exactly such and such a way, and we find that this universe does in fact exist, it is more probable that it was done on purpose than it happened as a product of the equation (Time+Matter+Chance=This exact Universe that accomodates life).
3. Information Theory.
Closely related to #2, is this rather simple little axiom. Simply put it goes as follows (to borrow from old predecessors) If you are walking down the street, and you pick up a pocket watch, you don’t suppose that it happened by accident. If you are walking in the desert and come across a stone pillar with carvings on it, you don’t suppose that the wind has done what you are witnessing. In the same way, a universe like this, with the anthropic coincidences above and with the delicacy of our terrestrial biology, it seems to be the case that these things communicate some sort of design or designer that has instituted them to be the way they are. I believe that this universe, with this complexity of life, is more likely to be designed then to be an accident. If it was designed, that necessarily implies a designer or designers.
4. The Existence of Human Reason.
In a world like the one we live in, if we say our existence is mere happenstance…an accident, a fluke of nature (ignoring for the moment how there can be a nature if everything is an accident), we must also account for the existence of our own ability to debate the issue at all. It seems highly unlikely to me that a universe of the highly fickle nature I’ve described could possibly be "lucky" enough to produce both this kind of universe, this kind of solar system, this kind of planet, this kind of life, and then take the unmitigated leap to become conscious of itself. Again, beating the same drum I’ve been on for all of my first four points, this to me is a probability argument. It seems much more likely that in a world like this, with people who can reason and contemplate our own universe and internal complexity, that it was done on purpose rather than it being an accident, or a product of the Time+Matter+Chance equation. To borrow just a bit from Pascal, it seems that we are in a unique position as human beings because we are the crown of all that is by virtue of our ability to reason, but the lowest of all that is because of our inability to live up to our potential.
NOTE: So far, I’ve not made any sort of case whatsoever for one particular God over another. The only thing I think I’ve made in terms of a choice is positing one God as opposed to many. The reason for that is based on Occam’s Razor, if one deity could adequately do all the same functions as many deities, there is no reason to posit more than one unless we have good reason to do so. Other than history of world religion (which is at best split on their opinion of this issue), I see no reason logically to posit the existence of more than one. One deity is preferable for many reasons.
Continued…coming soon.
the finely-tuned earth/solar system/universe argument is at first persuasive but will progressively lose heft as you begin to toy with the numbers (or other assumptions) used to make it. life on earth has been around a very long time by our standards (at least 3.4 billion, off the top of my head). the vast majority of that life was remarkably different from the dominant life on the planet now…
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calling our limited existence here proof of anything being “anthropic” is terribly misleading. if anything, the history of known life has been centered on microbes not man. this argument implicitly puts human beings on the apex of the evolutionary scale. but that’s not even looking hard at the numbers. (more)
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when you begin to conceive of how vast the universe is, and how many cycles of time (as we know it) might have preceded (and will follow) our existence, the improbability argument really becomes just a statement of incredulity. this is compounded by a kind of selection bias. why must life look like us? from what statistical pool are you drawing? why is the earth the gold standard here?
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time is another selection bias. the earth was uninhabitable for a very long time and will absolutely return to that state given enough time. to say that the universe was somehow calibrated perfectly to give this one planet an ultrabrief (in comparison to all remaining time) window of habitability is a little far-fetched (even moreso if humans were the only life that really mattered). cheers.
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As far as the calculation of the age of the earth, it’s also been shown that a worldwide flood can cause the same things that are used to calculate the age.
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1) I don’t see how the gOd hypothesis solves the problem – it just replaces one mystery with a bigger one. Everything you ask about the universe can be asked about gOd – e.g., who created gOd? If gOd didn’t need a creator, why not? If gOd exhibits order but doesn’t need a creator, the fact that something exhibits order obviously can’t be used as proof of design/creation.
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If you’re going to arbitrarily say gOd is special and an exception to the rule, why not just say that the universe as a whole is special and an exception to the rule? That has one big advantage: We all know the universe actually exists. The same can’t be said about gOd.
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2) I like what J said up there ^ I’ll simply add this: Just because something is extremely improbable doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Unless something is impossible, however, why do we need to invoke gOd? That the dust particles on my desk are arranged just *so* at the moment is extremely improbable; that doesn’t mean that this arrangement required a gOd to bring it about.
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3) “If you are walking down the street, and you pick up a pocket watch, you don’t suppose that it happened by accident.” Of course not – but that’s because we all know pocket watches are made by people. If we find a cockroach instead (the brain of which is vastly more complicated than a watch), we DON’T say “This must have been designed” because we know roaches come from other roaches.
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Which is another way of saying, “This roach came about naturally.” The fact that nature itself can be divided into highly ordered parts (e.g., the roach) and highly unordered parts (the random swirl of dust in the wind blowing over the roach) is what allows us to recognize order (and talk about accidents) in the first place.
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If everything was in fact ordered/designed, we wouldn’t have any conception of disorder or accident, would we?
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Now suppose we were walking along and we came across a pocket watch with a cracked face. We wind it up and find that it keeps time poorly. Would we conclude that the watch was created by a perfect designer? Of course not. A perfect designer would have designed an indestructible watch that always kept perfect time.
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I submit that our world is much more like an imperfect watch than a perfect one (with earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, mass extinctions, pain, disease, birth defects, etc.). Although Christians like to put the blame for these things on human sin, it’s hard to understand why billions of innocent animals ought to suffer the agonies of being eaten alive because Adam ate an apple….
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That aside, it’s hard to understand how anyone can say “The world was made perfect by a perfect creator” if humans could have messed it up so easily. A perfect world – like a perfect watch – would be incapable of being rendered imperfect.
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4) Human consciousness seems to fit in quite well on a continuum going down to simple one-cell creatures. The evolution of consciousness over time seems to make sense as a successful adaptation. It’s far from perfect, however (as books like Daniel Goleman’s Vital Lies, Simple Truths make clear). I think it’s fair to say that a perfect designer would have done much better….
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And really, when you look at the vastness of the universe (with our little galaxy still being 100,000 light years in diameter) and realize that this consciousness of ours exists on what amounts to a single grain of sand on an otherwise unconscious planet, it’s pretty hard to believe that that entire planet exists merely to bring that conscious grain into being. Pretty inefficient, that.
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Pretty egocentric, too.
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I’m not going to comment on AUUB’s notes, except to say this: I don’t think that the ideology espoused by AUUB is internally consistent. Take for example the example of a roach being more complicated than a watch. Saying they come from other roaches is beside the point. Somewhere, there was a first roach. Where did it come from? How did it get there? Where is the consistency?
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I’m reminded of an old proverb about the forest and the trees.
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Ah, sorry you don’t think my notes are worthy of rebuttal. I thoght they were pretty good. Your unwillingness/inability to counter them makes them seem even better.
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“Somewhere, there was a first roach. Where did it come from? How did it get there? Where is the consistency?” Evolutionists have a very good answer to that question: Roaches evolved from earlier creatures. We have good reason to believe that life itself arose quite naturally out of a chemical soup, just as chemical elements themselves arose quite naturally as the universe cooled.
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It seems that theists like yourself are the ones who don’t have a good answer and are being inconsistent. Saying a mysterious, invisible gOd created roaches is a non-answer. Saying that a gOd who exhibits order need not have had a designer/creator but that everything else that exhibits order must have had a designer/creator is a glaring inconsistency.
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So it’s all very natural. Everything came very naturally from something else. So… What was first? Where did the first things come from? Until you can answer that question, everything else you say is on borrowed capital. Has matter always existed? Is that a real answer? Saying “it’s natural” or “they came from something that existed before” is dodging the question. Period.
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“Has matter always existed? Is that a real answer?” I submit that it is. It’s a much better answer than: an unknowable ‘being’ that always existed in some unknowable way brought about matter through some unknowable means. At least the former has the added benefit of being consistent with experimentation and observation, while the latter is simply unacceptable.
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http://www.opendiary.com/entryview.asp?authorcode=A219369&entry=10442&mode=
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What do you mean by unknowable? I presume you mean that there is no extant external evidence that you will accept. That is not the same as unknowable. I could very easily claim to know God as He is revealed in nature and as He has revealed himself to me, but for you, that answer is “Just so.” I don’t think it is any more “just so” than blindly asserting matter has always existed.
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The God I assert and endeavor to prove is infinitely knowable by many different standards of proof: logically, metaphysically, epistemiologically and ethically. He is just not immediately knowable naturalistically. As to that point, I’ve not begun to talk on the various religious experience arguments for the existence of God or the revelation of God through Scripture.
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“At least the former has the added benefit of being consistent with experimentation and observation…” Oh, really? We can observe and experiment on the beginning of time, where no one existed and no one observed? Really? I sense arguments about carbon dating and red shift coming, but that is NOT the same as observing and reproducing results. The science of cosmology is extrapolation.
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Extrapolation from an extremely small sample. How can any person presume to judge billions of years of history from perhaps two hundred years of data collection? I have faith in chemistry, biology and physics, up to a point, in their ability to express and explain the world we live in. I lack faith that it can explain all of history satisfactorily based on a tiny sample like 200 years.
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Stealth, Thanks for your replies. I feel like this conversation has expanded beyond what is pratical with notes. In lieu of leaving a dozen more notes, I’ll probably end up taking this to my diary. I will answer this: “unknowable” simply means “impossible to know,” even in principle.
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I will quickly respond to this as well: “Oh, really?” Matter/Energy is neither created nor destroyed. This is a fundamental observation that is not contradicted by cosmology. It is assumed that nothing material existed prior to the big bang expansion, yet this is not a conclusion of cosmology. The eternal nature of matter/energy is yet to be contradicted by any observation/experimentation.
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Contrastedly, your conjecture postulates some unknowable form of existence that is both eternal and has the power to bring forth matter/energy out of “nothing” through some unknown means. Strip away the religious jargon and this is essentially what you’re proposing as superior to what I’ve stated. I find it simply bizarre.
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The principle of conservation of mass is a principle used to verify calculations so we can make sense of what we see. That is decidedly different than being an overarching principle of explaining everything, or claiming it is all that is. If unknowable means “impossible to know” then there are a great many naturalistic assumptions that are similarly unknowable. Locke didn’t even go that far.
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