https://archive.org/stream/JohnW.LoftusWhyIBecameAnAtheistAFormerPreacherRejectsChristianity_201504/John+W.+Loftus+-+Why+I+Became+an+Atheist--A+Former+Preacher+Rejects+Christianity_djvu.txt
W hen it comes to why something-anything-exists, our choices can be reduced to these: (1) Something- anything-has always existed, or (2) something-anything-popped into existence out of absolutely nothing. Either choice seems extremely unlikely-or possibly even absurd. There is nothing in our experience that can help us grasp these two possibilities. But one of them is correct and the other false. We either start with the "brute fact" that something has always existed or the "brute fact" that something popped into existence out of nothing. A third view is that (3) our existence in the universe is absurd to the core. Dr. William Lane Craig used the word "bizarre" to describe our choices about the existence of the universe when he wrote, "I well recall thinking, as I began to study the Kalam Cosmological Argument, that all of the alternatives with respect to the universe's existence-the infinitude of the past, creation ex nihilo, spontaneous origination ex nihilo-were so bizarre that the most reasonable option seemed to be that nothing exists! Since our existence is, however, undeniable, we must settle, however uncomfortably, on one of the above three. "I The Christian maintains that a good personal triune Creator has always existed. The atheist maintains that the material universe either popped into existence out of nothing, has always existed, is self-caused, or it's just a brute fact. Many atheists believe there may be other universes, which have each come into existence by their own big bangs. Atheist philosopher Quentin Smith claims that our universe came "from nothing, by nothing, and for nothing." He even argues that the universe caused itself to exist. 2 So we can understand why G. W. Leibniz claimed the fundamental metaphysical question is this: "Why is there something rather than nothing at all?" He argued we should expect that nothing at all exists-nothing. Why? Because such a state of affairs seems to require no explanation. The fact that something exists demands an explanation for why it exists, he argued. Why do atheists disbelieve in God? Many of us begin by attacking the notion of God as incoherent. For instance, we claim that there is simply too much intense suffering in this world for there to be a good creator. Atheists generally think Christian theism inhibits scientific progress, creates class struggles, sexism, racism, mass neurosis, intolerance, and environmental disasters. Christian thinkers, however, respond that atheism cannot give sufficient reasons why human beings experience consciousness or why people should be morally good. Christians also charge atheists with not being able to sufficiently answer what Albert Camus claimed was the fundamental philosophical question. It is this: "Why not commit suicide?" That is, if we cannot find meaning in our existence, then why not just end it all? Because of this conundrum, Leo Tolstoy chose to believe in God "contrary to reason," and in so doing was "saved fi-om suicide. "3 Atheists have also offered suggestions as to why people turn to religion. Sigmund Freud claimed that religion is an expression of the longing for a father figure. Ludwig Feuerbach claimed that God didn't make man in his image, but rather human beings made God in their image. Karl Marx taught that religion is the opium of the working-class people. It is funded and pushed by the rich class in order to numb the working class fi-om trying to right the injustices put on them by the rich class. Religion keeps the working class focused on a hope of bliss in the hereafter. Friedrich Nietzsche claimed that religion endures because weak people need it. For Jean-Paul Sartre, God represented a threat to authentic morality. If God is autonomous, in the Calvinistic sense, then human beings cannot be responsible for themselves. He argued that the rejection of God makes morality and freedom possible, for only then can people take responsibility for their own choices. Christians have their own explanations for why people become atheists. Psychologist Paul Vitz, for instance, claims the reason why people become atheists is because of bad father figures. 4 They'll further claim that if God does indeed exist, then we need him. Christianity may be a crutch for the weak, but if it is true, then they need a crutch because they're crippled. And if God exists, then Sartre's admonition of autonomous freedom is nothing short of rebellion against God. These explanations on both sides of this debate depend upon whether or not God exists though. So what reasons do Christians have for preferring to believe God has always existed and created the universe? There are three main categories of arguments for God's existence that I'll mention. There are onto logical arguments, cosmological arguments, and teleological (or design) arguments. 5 ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENTS Here's a very brief history of the ontological argument for the existence of God: Italian Anselm originated it around the eleventh century. Duns Scotus and St. Bonaventure accepted the argument, but William of Ockham did not. Italian Thomas Aquinas rejected it in the thirteenth century. Frenchman Rene Descartes resurrected it in the early seventeenth century, and then Baruch Spinoza and Leibniz added their own versions of it. Scotsman David Hume rejected it as did Prussian/German Immanuel Kant, who offered a refutation of it in the latter half of the seventeenth century. German Idealist G. W. F. Hegel argued for it in the nineteenth century. Then in the past several decades Americans Norman Malcolm, Charles Hartshome, and Alvin Plantinga have all defended it. Criticisms and debate about it abound in almost every philosophy of religion textbook. 6 It is generally agreed that the ontological argument never converted anyone (even though Bertrand Russell once thought it was correct, but later changed his mind). It is an amazing argument-a philosopher's delight! According to Robert Paul Wolff, this is the "most famous, the most mystifying, the most outrageous and irritating philosophical argument of all time.... It remains as one of the most controversial arguments in all of philosophy." Yet, "whenever I read the Ontological Argument, I have the same feeling that comes over me when I watch a really good magician. Nothing up this sleeve, nothing up the other sleeve; nothing in the hat; presto! A big fat rabbit. How can Anselm pull God out of an idea?" 7 Anselm 's Ontological Argument for the Existence of God (1) On the assumption that that than which nothing greater can be conceived is only in a mind, something greater can be conceived, because (2) Something greater can be thought to exist in reality as well. (3) The assumption is therefore contradictory: either there is no such thing even in the intellect, or it exists also in reality; (4) But it does exist in the mind of the fool (see Ps. 14:1); (5) Therefore that than which nothing greater can be conceived exists in reality as well as in the mind. Anselm argued that even those who doubt the existence of God would have to have some understanding of what they were doubting-namely, they would understand God to be a being than which nothing greater can be thought. Given that it is greater to exist outside of the mind rather than just in the mind, a doubter who denied God's existence would be caught in a contradiction, he argued, because he or she would be saying that it is possible to think of something greater than a being than which nothing greater can be thought. Hence, God exists necessarily. David Hume criticized this argument using his distinction between the relations of ideas and matters of fact. The former has to do with abstract ideas, logic, and math that are deductively known, while the latter has to do with what exists in the world inductively known through experience. Hume argued that the question of the existence of God is a about matters of fact, which can be known from experience. Since matters of fact are either true or false, we can also entertain the idea that a necessary being such as God supposedly is, does not exist, so the argument fails. For the ontological argument uses the evidence of the relations of ideas to show the existence of a matter of fact, and that's something Hume would not allow. As Todd M. Furman tells us, a question about matters of fact is "a claim that requires empirical evidence for any sort of justification it might ever have. "8 Or, in the words of J. C. A. Gaskin, "No assertion is demonstrable unless its negation is contradictory. No negation of a matter of fact is contradictory. All assertions about existence of things are matters of fact. Therefore no negation of an assertion that some thing exists is contradictory. Hence, there is no thing whose existence is demonstrable. "9 The basic Kantian criticism of Anselm' s argument is that someone cannot infer the extramental existence of anything by analyzing its definition. Yet defenders reply that Anselm is not defining God into existence. He's merely asking whether we can reasonably suppose that something than which nothing greater can be conceived exists only in the intellect. One major criticism of this argument comes from whether our conceptions of the greatest conceivable being might entail attributes that involve unrecognized inconsistencies or even contractions. Anthony Kenny examined the principal attributes traditionally ascribed to theistic God, particularly omniscience and omnipotence, and argued that there can be no such being as the God of traditional natural theology. 10 A lot of ink has been spilled over these kinds of issues. Take for instance the present debate over open theism, among evangelicals. They're debating whether God exists in time in some sense, or whether God exists outside of time.' Paul Helm has claimed that "the arguments used to show that God is in time, in effect support the view that God is finite." There is such a close connection between the timelessness of God and the spacelessness of God, Helm argued, that a denial of God's timelessness is also a denial of God's spacelessness. Therefore, he claims it's possible that "the belief in God is even more incoherent than previously thought, in that it requires unintelligibilities such as a timeless and spaceless existence." Helm concludes by laying out the three theistic options: Someone can either accept the unintelligible existence of both a timeless and spaceless God, accept the consequences of a God who is both in time and finite, or supply other arguments on behalf of a God who is in time which do not also deny God's space lessness.l2 To this date, option three has not been adequately met in my opinion. I think this whole debate indicates God's existence is unintelligible, regardless of what we might conceive him to be, and hence ontological arguments can't even get off the ground. 13 According to Toni Vogel Carey, rather than the ontological argument being "a proof of God's existence, what emerges is a reason for doubt about claiming we have any understanding of the nature and existence of God. To see this, take a closer look at the role played by the fool. What a fool can understand, anyone can understand, fools being, by definition, deficient in candlepower and wisdom. Why should we suppose, then, that a being than which none greater can be conceived by the fool is as great as a being than which none greater can be conceived, say, by a smart Philosophy Now reader? And by the same reasoning, why should we suppose that a being than which none greater can be conceived by you, with all due respect, is as great as a being than which none greater can be conceived by a genius like Einstein or a saint like Anselm? Finally, why should we suppose that a being than which none greater can be conceived by Einstein or Anselm is as great as a being than which none greater can logically possibly be conceived-than which none greater could be conceived even by God? For plainly this, and not merely the greatest concept of which the fool is capable, is what Anselm's argument requires. "14 Likewise, if we asked an Eastemer what she conceives to be the greatest conceivable being, her conception will start off being different from those of Westerners from the get-go. I think Anselmian arguments, including those of Hartshome, Plantinga, and Malcolm, all begin with Occidental not Oriental conceptions of God, and their Western conceptions of God are theirs by virtue of the prevalence of the Christian gospel in the West. If ontological argumentation is sound, then the Eastern conceptions of God will entail that their God (or the One) also exists. Since these two conceptions of God produce two mutually exclusive conclusions about which kind of God exists, then the ontological argument itself does not lead us to believe in the Christian God alone. An Eastemer might even start off by saying that the greatest conceivable being is the ONE, which cannot be conceived. Where do you go with the ontological argument from here? 15 COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENTS Cosmological arguments begin with some fact of the world and argue to a transcendent God as the best explanation of it. In the Bible there isn't a philosophical argument for God's existence. It was assumed that there was a God. The problem they faced wasn't atheism. It was polytheism. There are three types of cosmological arguments: 1. The Thomistic "Five Ways" Arguments. For the first thousand years Christian thinkers found the most useful philosophical framework within the philosophy of Plato. Most of the works of Aristotle were lost to Western scholars, except as known through Arabic commentators. In the minds of most Christian thinkers in the thirteenth century, Plato was the Christian philosopher, while Aristotle was considered a pagan philosopher. But with the discovery of Aristotle's works, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1275 CE) almost single-handedly transformed the perceptions of Aristotle as a pagan philosopher into the Christian philosopher, such that Aristotelian thought became the official doctrinal framework for the Roman Catholic Church down to our own century. Nothing comparable to this intellectual feat has been done before or after. 16 Aquinas attempts to show that (1) our world is dependent upon an unmoved mover for the fact of motion, (2) there is an uncaused cause for our very existence, (3) there is a necessary being for the universe of contingent beings, (4) there is an absolutely perfect being to account for limited perfection, and (5) there is a cosmic designer to account for ordered design in the universe. These five arguments all assume the eternity of the universe. Even an eternal universe needs a God, Aquinas argued. He did believe that the universe began at some point in time. He just figured if he could show that God exists even when granting the assumption of an eternal universe, then how much more would it be true that God must exist if the universe had a beginning in time. When Aquinas argues against an infinite series of causes, he's not talking about a temporal series, one that stretches backward in time, but a series stretching hierarchically, up some sort of great chain of being. For him, "every moment in the universe, even if the universe has always been here, is dependent for its existence, at that moment, upon an ultimate cause."17 Thus "the cause to which the argument concludes might best be termed a sustaining cause rather than a first creative cause," 18 an unmoved Mover. According to Ed L. Miller, "St. Thomas really thought of his 'Five Ways' as variations on a single idea. which is the substance of all of them: We know from experience that the world is contingent, that is, it depends on something outside itself for its existence. And this would be true even if the world has always been here, for an infinite collection of contingent things is no less contingent than a finite one. But there must be some unconditional, ultimate being upon which the world depends, otherwise it would have no final basis for existence. "19 There are many things that could be said in criticism of Aquinas' s five ways, especially in light of the big bang theory, which has shown our universe began to exist, along with the concept of inertia, which does away with the need to explain motion as requiring either a regress of causes, or an unmoved mover. Nonetheless, Michael Martin argues that "Aquinas gives us no non-question-begging reason why there could not be a nontemporal infinite regress of causes." A first cause, or unmoved mover, is merely assumed as self-evident in his argument, since "it finds no support in experience." Martin offers a history lesson as an analogy: "any appeal to obvious or self-evident evidence must be regarded with suspicion, for many things that have been claimed to be self-evidently true-for example, the divine right of kings and the earth as the center of the universe-have turned out not to be true at all. "20 J. L. Mackie wrote, "The greatest weakness of this otherwise attractive argument is that some reason is required for making God the one exception to the supposed need for something else to depend on: why should God, rather than anything else, be taken as the only satisfactory termination of the regress?"21 According to John Hick, the family of cosmological arguments "does not compel us to believe that there is a God. For one may opt instead to accept the universe as a sheer unexplained fact." Because "we are accordingly faced with the choice of accepting God or accepting the existence of the physical universe itself as a given unintelligible and mysterious brute fact." Hick rhetorically asks, "Why, however, should we not take the physical universe itself to be the ultimate unexplained reality?"22 2. The Kalam Argument. This argument attempts to show that the physical universe must have begun at some point, which requires a timelessly existing personal God as the explanation for such a beginning. This argument states that a beginningless series of events in time is impossible. We can never have an infinite collection of anything, much less events in time, it's argued. Therefore the physical universe began to exist. And since it could not come about by nonpersonal events in time, it requires a personal agent, God, who is outside of time to create it when it began. William Lane Craig is this argument's leading defender today.23 While the Kalam argument is fascinating, several scholars have offered critiques of it, beginning with J. L. Mackie and Michael Martin. 24 Book- length treatments of it have been written by Quentin Smith (with William Lane Craig) and Mark R. Nowacki.25 For this argument. Professor Craig offers a simple structure: 1 . Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. 2. The universe began to exist. 3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence. In a published exchange with Wes Morriston, Craig claims the first premise is an obvious "metaphysical intuition."26 But Craig is trying to explain more than the origins of space/matter/energy, for along with it he's also trying to explain the beginning of time itself. And it simply is not an obvious intuition to conceive of an event prior to the first event in time. It seems a better intuition would be that the universe has always existed since time now exists, for there would be no "time" at which the universe began to exist independently of the time that originates with the universe. Craig claims God is outside of time before creation and that he becomes inside of time afterward when time begins with the universe. Graham Oppy tells us the problem with his view of God (via e-mail): "If there is a dimension analogous to time that can be used to measure God's existence outside of time, then either (1) God has a beginning in that dimension, or else (2) God has always existed in that dimension. Following the lead of Craig's remarks in connection with the universe, it seems that the first option leads to the suggestion that there is a cause of God's existence, and the second option leads to infinite regress. But, if there is no dimension analogous to time that can be used to measure God's existence outside of time, then it seems to me to be doubtful that we even understand the suggestion that God existed outside of time." By analogy Craig argues on behalf of this so-called metaphysical intuition that people don't imagine tigers "springing into existence uncaused," but Wes Morriston rightly responds that "the First Moment in the history of our universe is unlike all others because that is when the whole natural order comes into being." Morriston continues: "We have no experience of the origin of worlds to tell us that worlds don't come into existence like that. We don't even have experience of the coming into being of anything remotely analogous to the "initial singularity" that figures in the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. That is why the absurdity of tigers and the like popping into existence out of nowhere tells us nothing about the utterly unique case of the Beginning of the whole natural order." Morriston goes on to argue that Craig's view of "creation out of nothing is at least as counterintuitive as is [the idea of] beginning to exist without a cause.... If someone insists it is just 'obvious' that God could create a world without any preexisting material stuff to work with, on the ground that there is no logical contradiction in the idea of such a feat, then the proper reply is that there is also no logical contradiction in the idea of the universe beginning without a cause." Craig's second premise is that the universe began to exist. It too has difficulties. When it comes to scientific discussions about time, relativity, cosmic singularities, and quantum mechanics, this gets pretty deep. Graham Oppy (via e-mail) simply notes that "Craig endorses a theory of space and time that is almost universally rejected by contemporary physicists." Richard Carrier agrees (via e-mail) that "though there are a few philosophers and scientists on his side, Craig's theory of time stiU goes against the current scientific consensus, and is far from being estab- lished. "27 David Ramsay Steele reminds us that according to quantum mechanics "things begin to exist without any cause all the time. "28 So if some things can begin to exist without a cause, the universe could be one of them, which does not require a creator at aU. Craig begins his philosophical arguments by making the distinction between an actual infinite collection of things (which is numerically infinite) and a potential infinite collection of things (which is merely "indefinite," having the potential of being numerically infinite). Using several thought experiments Craig argues that an actual infinite collection of things is impossible. In one of them Craig tries to show that an actual infinite cannot be formed (or traversed) by adding one number after another successively. This is impossible, he says. If someone began the task of counting in the distant past, she could never count to infinity no matter how high she counted, for there would always be one number higher to count. But this is irrelevant to the case Craig wants to make if he intends to show by it that the physical universe couldn't have always existed. Because it says nothing against the possibility of an immortal being counting to infinity if she has always been counting, which is what he must argue against if he intends to claim an actual infinite series of events could not exist. Craig's favorite thought experiment is about Hilbert's Hotel. This hypothetical hotel has an infinite number of guests each in their own separate rooms. Absurdities set in at this point, Craig argues. For even though we already had an infinite number of guests in the hotel, we could repeatedly add more and more guests by simply moving all the present guests down one room and then adding the newest guest to room number one. We could potentially add an infinite number of new guests without the actual number of guests increasing. Furthermore, an infinite number of guests could check out of the odd numbered rooms leaving an infinite number of guests in the even numbered rooms. Craig claims this is absurd. Therefore he concludes that an actual infinite collection of things is impossible, and by analogy, there cannot be an actual infinite series of events in time either. Craig argues that the universe had a beginning since it leads to absurdities to suppose that it didn't. For example, he claims that if an immortal being traversed an infinite in the distant past by counting an infinite number of events down from negative infinity to zero (...-3, -2, -1, 0), then we could never travel back in time to see her counting events, for no matter how far back we go she would already be finished counting them. That's absurd, Craig claims. But he cannot have it both ways. He cannot say she has always been counting and that she has never been counting! If we cannot go back in the infinite timeless past to find her counting, then she was never counting at all, for we have gone as far back in time as possible. But if we can, then there must be a last event that she counts. And if that's so, what reason does Craig have for thinking the immortal being must be finished counting events? It could be that the immortal being is nowhere close to finishing her count. Craig's basic problem is that he conflates counting an infinite number of events with counting all of them. An immortal being could finish her beginningless task (... -5, -4,-3) and yet not count all events (-2, -1, 0). Let's face it; a set of an infinite number of events is not to be regarded as the same thing in every respect as an infinite number of sets each containing an infinite number of events, unless he's equivocating on the notion of what an infinite set of events means (see note). 29 Besides, even though Craig claims his God is outside of time prior to creation, there is still no conceptual improbability with an infinite God etemally creating the universe fi-om the beginningless past. I don't see how Craig can reasonably argue that his God could not have done this if he had chosen to do so, just as Aquinas saw no problem with an eternal universe and even supposed it for the sake of his arguments. Craig concludes the Kalam argument by claiming the universe must have had a personal cause of its existence. He claims that a nonpersonal cause from all eternity would've already produced the universe no matter how far back in time we go, since all of the nonpersonal factors that would've given rise to the universe had already been in place from aU eternity. However, Wes Morriston counters that if God is timelessly eternal there was never a moment in time when God did not will into existence this universe. Since Craig must affirm that God's intention to create our world is an eternal decision, then God's "decision to create a universe must surely be causally sufficient for the existence of that world. " Either "a timeless personal agent timelessly wills to create a world with a beginning, or else it does not so will. There can be no temporal gap between the time at which it does the willing and the time at which the thing willed actually happens. In this respect a timeless personal cause is no different from a nonpersonal cause." So the Kalam argument fails. But even if the Kalam argument is sound, I still don't see how it follows that this universe was caused to come into existence by the Trinitarian Christian God of the Bible. And there is nothing about the Kalam argument that teUs us anything about this God, if he exists, other than that he caused it to spring into existence. There is equally nothing about the argument that leads me to think that this God is all powerful, either, or loving. The argument at its very best may only lead us to believe that a deistic "god" merely had the power to create what Edward Tryon and Stephen Hawking both describe as a "quantum wave fluctuation," 30 and that's a far different kind of God than the one Craig believes in. Contrary to James F. Sennett, moving from the God of the theistic arguments to the Christian God is like trying to fly a plane to the moon (see note). 31 3. The Leibnizian Argument. G. W. Leibniz's (1646-1716) cosmo logical argument attempts to show that the principle of sufficient reason, when applied to a contingent universe, leads us to believe in a self-explanatory being. The principle of sufficient reason (PSR) states: "There is some explanation for the existence of anything whatever, some reason why it should exist rather than not." The argument begins by supposing that nothing existed- which is what we should expect to find. The existence of nothing would not require an explanation, it's argued. But the existence of something-of anything-does force us to ponder the question, why? We would need no reason to explain the nonexistence of the world. But given the fact that the world exists, we are driven to wonder why it exists. Richard Taylor explains the Lebnizian argument with an easy-to-understand thought experiment, from which I will use in what follows. 32 Suppose you were walking in the woods and you found a perfectly smooth transparent ball about your own height. This would puzzle you greatly. Lesson 1. If you were quite accustomed to such objects of various sizes but had never seen an ordinary rock, then upon finding a large ordinary rock in the woods you would be just as puzzled. Thus, something that is puzzling ceases to be so by its accustomed presence. Likewise, it is strange indeed that our universe exists; yet few are very often struck by this strangeness. Lesson 2. You might not know why it is there, but you would hardly doubt that it did not appear there aU by itself Few people would entertain the idea that it might have come from nothing at all-that it has no explanation for its existence. Likewise existence seems to require a reason, whereas nonexistence does not. Lesson 3. It is not the fact of its having been found in the forest rather than elsewhere that renders an explanation necessary, for our question is not how it happens to be there but how it happens to exist at all. If we annihilate the forest and everything else as well, leaving this ball to constitute the entire physical universe and that no other reality has ever existed or will exist, we cannot for a moment suppose that its existence has been explained. Likewise, it doesn't matter what the thing in question is, or how large it is, or how complex it is-it could be a grain of sand. We do not avoid the necessity of a reason for the existence of that which exists. Lesson 4. It is no answer to the question why a thing exists to state how long it has existed, for the question was not one concerning age but its existence. Likewise, if the universe had no beginning at all, it can still be asked why there is a world, why there is something rather than nothing. Some Criticisms First, when it comes to the PSR, atheists simply argue that the universe is just a brute fact- we deny the PSR when applied to the existence of the universe. Bertrand Russell said, "The universe is just there, and that's all." Maybe reason isn't something that can answer the question of our origins. After all, those who believe that God created the universe cannot offer any reasons why there should be a sehexistent being that has always existed, either. For them, God is their brute fact, just like the physical universe is a brute fact for atheists. And since that's so, then the PSR must be equally appUed to God. What is the sufficient explanation for the existence of God? Second, could we suppose that the universe itself contains the reason for its existence-that it is a necessary being? The Christian can reply that we find nothing about the world to suggest that it exists by its own nature, and many things that sug gest that it doesn't. Every part of it suggests that it is not indestructible-that it has a finite duration. Suppose that a single grain of sand has forever constituted the whole universe. It seems quite impossible to suppose that it exists by its own nature and could never have failed to exist. The same should be true if the world consisted not of one or two, but a million grains of sand. However, what seems to be the case from our perspective and what is actually the case might be two different things. Humans just might have the tendency to suppose these things. When it comes to the origins of reality itself, we must start with a brute fact either way we look at it, and so we may have to throw all our normal suppositions out the window. Third, the main objection is that this argument is based upon the fallacy of composition-reasoning fallaciously fi-om the properties of the parts to the properties of the whole. The truth is that the whole is greater and can even be different than the sum of its parts. Christian theists argue that the things we experience all have causes; therefore they conclude the whole universe needs a cause. Sometimes we can reason this way and sometimes we can't. Here are some legitimate examples of this way of reasoning: Each block in this wall is a brick; therefore, this wall is made of bricks. All the states in the United States are located in the Northern Hemisphere; therefore, the United States is in the Northern Hemisphere. But consider instead these arguments: Each drink is good; therefore, a drink made of all drinks would be good. Or, individual basketball players are good; therefore, a team of them would be good. Or, every person here weighs less than three hundred pounds; therefore, together we weigh less than three hundred pounds. The point is that sometimes we can reason from the parts to the whole, and sometimes we can't. But there is no independent way to decide how we should view the universe. Is it more like a wall made of bricks, or a drink composed of all drinks? In any case Felipe Leon informs us (via e-mail) "the PSR assumes that dependent beings must have their ultimate explanation in terms of 'necessarily existent' independent beings (who exist in all possible worlds), when in fact 'essentially' independent beings (who exist in all possible worlds 'in which they exist') are all that is needed to do the requisite explanatory work. The PSR entails that this isn't enough: if there are any essentially independent, indestructible, free-standing beings, then these beings must be further explained in terms of a necessarily existent being. But surely this is explanatory overkill, and since the PSR entails that a further explanation is required for the necessarily existent being, this epistemic possibility is an undercutting defeater for the PSR." THE TELEOLOGICAL (OR DESIGN) ARGUMENT Stated simply, the teleological (or design) argument argues that a designed universe demands a designer. We'll look at two areas: cosmology and biochemical complexity. 33 First we'll look at cosmology and the anthropic principle. The anthropic principle states the fact that if the initial conditions at the big bang had been different from what they were, life as we know it could not have arisen. That is, human beings would not be here to wonder why it is the way it is, and that explains why we see the order that we do. 34 If gravity were significantly stronger than it is, stars would exhaust their hydrogen fuels much faster, and human life could not appear where stars die young. Or if the strong force, which binds the nuclei of atoms together, were stronger, helium nuclei would dominate the universe, and no hydrogen would be left over. Without hydrogen there would be no water, and no life, as we know it. Had the rate of expansion of the big bang been different by one million millionths no life would have been possible. If the mass of a proton were increased by 0.2 percent, hydrogen would be unstable and life would not have formed. The earth is just the right distance from the sun, just the right size, with the right rotational speed, and with a special atmosphere allowing for life. The earth contains the proper amounts of metals and water-forming compounds. Other constants in the universe include the speed of light, the charge of the proton, the gravitational constant, Plank's constant, and so on. These examples can be multiplied, but the point is that "with a change in any one of a number of factors," then the "universe would have evolved as a lifeless, unconscious entity." Don Page of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, calculated the odds against the formulation of our universe. "His exact computation was 10,000,000,000 to the I24th power, a number so large that to caU it astronomical' would be to engage in a wild understatement." Atheists object that there is nothing surprising at all about the fact that we find order in the universe, for if there wasn't, then we wouldn't be around to comment on it-we could not possibly find anything else. But theists like Richard Swinbume counter that the problem is "not that we perceive order rather than disorder, but that order rather than disorder is there. Maybe only if order is there can we know what is there, but that makes what is there no less extraordinary and in need of explanation. "35 This fine-tuning argument, however, "has at least one fatal flaw," according to ^^ctor J. Stenger. "It makes the whoUy unwarranted assumption that only one type of life is possible-the particular form of carbon-based life we have on Earth. Even if this is an unlikely result of chance, some form of life could still be a likely result. It is like arguing that a particular card hand is so improbable that it must have been preordained." -3r' Richard Dawkins thinks it's strange that religious apologists love the anthropic principle. "For some reason that makes no sense at all, they think it supports their case. Precisely the opposite is true. The anthropic principle is the better alternative to the design hypothesis. It provides a rational, design-free explanation for the fact that we find ourselves in a situation propitious to our existence. What the religious mind fails to grasp is that two candidate solutions are offered to the problem. God is one. The anthropic principle is the other. They are alternatives.... It has been estimated that there are between 1 billion and 30 billion planets in our galaxy, and about 100 billion galaxies in the universe," so "a billion billion is a conservative estimate of the number of available planets in the universe." Therefore "even with such absurdly long odds, life will still have arisen on a billion planets-of which Earth, of course, is one." Once Hfe has arisen, the principle of natural selection takes over, and "natural selection is emphatically not a matter of luck. 3 7 The theistic answer to this objection posits a fully formed and completely ordered God as the answer to this ordered universe. This is an equally troublesome view. According to Richard Carrier, "Who rolled the dice that gave us our god, rather than some other god, or no god at all? Basically theism posits an extremely orderly being that just 'exists' for no reason at all." He goes on to explain how order comes from chaos, because when we roll the dice enough times, "the odds become very good that you will roll the exact orderly sequence of 1 , 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. The odds against such a sequence are something like one in fifty thousand." So, he argues, "it follows that from chaos we can predict order, even incredibly complex order. But we have no comparable explanation for where an orderly god would come from, or why such an innate order would exist at all in a god, rather than a different order, or a chaos instead. "3 8 We'll come back to this argument later on when Dawkins says something stronger than this. Have you ever stopped to think what exists outside of our universe, that is, what is beyond the known order of our universe? Presumably there can be no end to that which lies beyond our universe, if we can even speak of it this way. There are many conceptual problems in understanding what "nothing" is. The VOID is the area beyond space and time itself, and therefore any verbal description or mental image of it will be a terribly imperfect analogy at best. But for a lack of a better term, I'll call this nothingness the VOID (with capitals). How the VOID behaves is simply not known at all since it is nothing. We know it "exists," whatever that might mean, when speaking of nothing. But it is a well-founded supposition that the VOID is infinite-it has to be. How could it end, if we can even speak of it beginning? That thought is mind-boggling to me, and if you'll take a moment to think about it, then you too will be boggled by it. Never ending VOID! Infinite nothingness! We do know about the laws of our universe. But what about the VOID? Is there any law in the VOID that prohibits something coming fi-om nothing, or prohibiting a multitude of universes fi-om existing without beginning? Who knows? If the VOID is "infinite," and we do not know its properties, then perhaps there may be up to an infinite number of universes. With such a number of universes (called a multiverse), other universes may have arisen just like ours inside black holes, although we are the only ones puzzled by this because it indeed looks initially improbable to have arisen out of blind chance, given one try. What is the possibility of our particular universe having arisen out of an infinite VOID where there may be up to an infinite number of universes each arising out of the VOID, and where there may be no ordered laws prohibiting something coming from nothing, or something existing without beginning? Who knows? Some philosophers are now arguing that the answer to the age-old question "why is there something rather than nothing at all" can be answered scientifically. David Ramsay Steele questions why nonexistence is the default view. When it comes to explaining why there is something rather than nothing, he wrote: "It's unwarranted to suppose that nonexistence is more natural than existence. No good theory, physical or metaphysical, tells us to expect there to be nothing. "39 To be sure, there are some good arguments to suggest otherwise. Bede Rundle argues that "there had to be something. "40 Frank Wilczek answers that the reason why something exists is because "'nothing' is unstable. "41 Victor J. Stenger explains: "Since nothing is as simple as it gets, we cannot expect it to be very stable." Given the laws of nature, "the probability for there being something rather than nothing can actually be calculated; it is over 60 percent. "42 As such, "only by the constant action of an agent outside the universe, such as God, could a state of nothingness be maintained. The fact that we have something is just what we would expect if there is no God. "43 In Reason for the Hope Within, Robin Collins lists and defends five independent reasons to reject any kind of many -universes hypothesis. "44 But to people like Collins, Dawkins simply says they "have not had their consciousness raised by natural selection. "45 Stenger argues that the existence of multiple universes "is consistent with all we know about physics and cosmology.... In fact, it takes an added hypothesis to rule them out-a super law of nature that says only one universe can exist. But we know of no such law." He continues, "The hundred billion galaxies of our visible universe, each with a hundred billion stars, is but a grain of sand on the Sahara that exists beyond our horizon, grown out of that single, original bubble of a false vacuum. An endless number of such bubbles can very well exist, each itself nothing but a grain of sand on the Sahara of all existence. On such a Sahara, nothing is too improbable to have happened by chance. 46 If this supposition is correct, the whole notion of God as an explanation of the universe isn't needed because there are a potentially infinite number of universes, and ours just happened to be the lucky one that resulted in us being here to wonder why we exist at all.47 We turn now to biochemical complexity. Fred Hoyle and N. C. Wickramasinghe maintain that the "usual theory of mutation and natural selection cannot produce complex biomolecules from random association of atoms." They point out that there are "ten to twenty distinct amino acids which determine the basic backbone of the enzyme" and that for the enzyme to form, these acids they "must be in the correct position. " They calculate the odds of creating one enzyme at 102°. "The trouble," they argue, "is that there are about 2000 enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 101°°°°, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup." But this is only the beginning, for "nothing has been said of the origin of DNA itself, nothing of DNA transcription to RNA, and so on. These issues are too complex to set numbers to." But the chance for these biological systems being formed "through random shufflings of simple organic molecules is exceedingly minute, to a point where it is insensibly different fi^om zero. "48 The earlier defender of intelligent design was law professor Phillip E. Johnson.49 Today there is Michael J. Behe and William A. Dembski, along with some others whose arguments have had no success in the scientific community. 50 There are several writers who are answering them, including Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Philip Kitcher, Matt Young, Taner Edis, Michael Shermer, and Mark Perakh, to name a few.51 Victor J. Stenger simply argues that "DNA did not assemble purely by chance. It assembled by a combination of chance and the laws of physics. "52 Michael J. Behe has argued that there is an irreducible element to even the simplest bodily functions. He compares complex biological phenomena like blood clotting to a mousetrap. If we take away any piece, like the spring or the baseboard, the mousetrap will not work. Similarly, if any one of the more than twenty proteins involved in blood clotting is missing or deficient, clots wiU not perform properly. Such all-or-nothing systems could not have arisen incrementally but had to be there all at once, so there must be an intelligent designer. But according to H. Allen Orr, "Behe's colossal mistake is that, in rejecting these possibilities, he concludes that no Darwinian solution remains. But one does. It is this: An irreducibly complex system can be built gradually by adding parts that, while initially just advantageous, become-because of later changes-essential. The logic is very simple. Some part (A) initially does some job (and not very well, perhaps). Another part (B) later gets added because it helps A. This new part isn't essential, it merely improves things. But later on, A (or something else) may change in such a way that B now becomes indispensable. This process continues as further parts get folded into the system. And at the end of the day, many parts may all be required." 53 Dr. Joshua Sharp, an assistant research scientist at the University of Georgia, reminded me of the similarity of this process to scaffolding (via e-mail): "Much like building an arch, different parts are added with a scaffolding to hold them together and help them do their job. However, when a particular part is added, the scaffolding parts become unnecessary and are removed to save energy, much like the scaffolding of an arch can be removed after the keystone is placed. "54 Natural selection is the organizing principle for evolution, where the environment selects those species and mutations that can survive in their given environment. Cesare Emiliani illustrates how efficient natural selection can be: "Imagine that you want to have the entire Bible typed by a wild monkey. What are the chances that such a monkey, typing at random, will come up with the Bible neatly typed without a single error? The English Bible (KJV) contains about 6 million letters. The chances of success, therefore, are 1 in 26 to the 6 millionth power, as there are 26 letters in the English alphabet. This is equal to 10 to the minus 8,489,840. I wouldn't exactly wait around. Suppose, however, that I introduce a control (the environment) that wipes out any wrong letter the monkey may type. Typing away at one letter per second and assuming an average of 13 errors per letter (half of 26), the monkey will produce the Bible in 13 x 6,000,000 seconds = 2.5 years. Not only that, but you are mathematically sure that the monkey will produce the Bible within that time and without a single error. What is utterly impossible has suddenly become not only possible but certain. "55 Stating the odds as intelligent design (ID) theorists do is highly misleading since they presume that life must have turned out exactly as it has. All we are left with is rarity. But "rarity by itself shouldn't necessarily be evidence of anything. When one is dealt a bridge hand of thirteen cards, the probability of being dealt that particular hand is less than one in 600 billion. Still, it would be absurd for someone to be dealt a hand, examine it carefully, calculate that the probability of getting it is less than one in 600 bilhon, and then conclude that he must not have been dealt that very hand because it is so very improbable. "56 The bottom line, according to John Hick, is that "when we look past ANY event into its antecedent conditions, their improbability multiplying backwards exponentially towards infinity, the event appears as endlessly improbable." 57 Whether or not such an event is improbable is purely notional, not objective. "There is no objective sense in which this is either more or less probable than any other possible universe. The only reality is the actual course of the universe, with ourselves as part of it. " Given any event, it is improbable that it occurred at all when one considers the antecedent conditions required for its occurrence. "The antecedent improbability of an individual being conceived who is precisely me is thus already quite staggeringtruly astronomical." My great-great-grandparents had to meet and marry, and one sperm penetrated one egg to form one of my parents, who met and married a spouse, who raised me the way they did plus all of the experiences and thoughts that make up who I am today. According to Hick, "And the same kind of calculation applies to everyone and everything else in the universe." So for any two people who meet and have a conversation, the odds of them meeting and speaking the exact words they do to one another, being dressed as they are, is quite literally impossible from the standpoint of just one hundred years ago. But it happened! Furthermore, Sam Harris reminds us that "examples of unintelligent design in nature are so numerous that an entire book could be written simply Listing them." 58 I consider aU of the natural evils in our world to be evidence of unintelligent design (these are spelled out in chapters 12 and 13 in this book). Karen Bartels specifies a few of them with regard to the design of the human body by saying, "If we assume that Behe is correct, and that humans can discern design, then I submit that they can also discern poor design (we sue companies for this all the time!). In Darwin's Black Box, Behe refers to design as the 'purposeful arrangement of parts.' What about when the 'parts' aren't purposeful, by any standard engineering criteria? When confronted with the 'All-Thumbs Designer' -whoever designed the spine, the birth canal, the prostate gland, the back of the throat, etc. -Behe and the ID people retreat into theology. That God can do whatever he wants, or we're not competent to judge intelligence by God's standards, or being an intelligent designer does not mean being a good or perfect designer. "59 Richard Swinbume claims that in a typical argument there are certain phenomena that call for an explanation. If a scientific (nonpersonal) explanation fails to do justice to the phenomena, it is natural to conclude that we must seek an explanation in terms of the intentional action of some rational agent; that is, God in this case. 60 But a personal explanation in a self-existent etemal triune God of the Bible doesn't do justice to the phenomena in question at all.
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