Ten Things Christians Should Keep in Mind When Debating Atheists Number Two

Based on my recent post about trying to break my writer's block, I'm tackling this list of ten things Christians/theists need to keep in mind.  See this link for number one, this is the second point:

Science has radically altered how we understand the universe, so theism must grapple with the implications of science before offering prescientific beliefs as truth.

First off, let's discuss definitions of various terms here.  I'm not claiming that these are the best or dictionary definitions, but it seems these are commonly agreed upon definitions.  If you disagree with these definitions I'd be open to hearing alternatives.

Science -- the methodical study of the physical/natural universe.

Radically altered -- completely changed.

Universe -- the totality of physically existent things.

Grapple with the implications -- consider and think about with relation to meaning.

Prescientific beliefs -- (honestly I'm not certain here, but I assume) metaphysical statements.

Truth -- that which best coherently explains and correlates with reality.

Given these definitions I find it curious why this would even be a problem.  Science deals with the physical nature of the universe, religion/Christianity deals with the metaphysical and sources of what it means to exist.  I think the original assumption is that science has somehow proven that God doesn't exist or at least that God doesn't need to exist.  I do not agree with the concept of NOMA, (Non-Overlapping MAgesteria) but in a sense the two are on a one-way street.  Science is concerned with what is happening or from what cause something happens, but it is limited to physical universe.  Science cannot get to a deeper meaning of existence.  Science cannot give why there is anything at all instead of nothingness.  Maybe, but honestly I'm not holding my breath, science will someday give us how the universe came into existence, but even then it still doesn't say why.  To try to apply purely scientific views to morality, consciousness, deeper meaning etc. only leads to disastrous results.  Pure logic says that one must torture the innocent if it will bring about something good.  Applying mathematic principles to life leads to devastating consequences.  As portrayed in the popular movie, Watchmen the hero/villain Adrian Veidt is perfectly justified in killing millions in order to potentially save billions of people.  Also, in V for Vendetta the government is perfectly justified at rounding up innocent people to do scientific experiments on them.  As I insinuated before any number of thought experiments seem to easily slip into absurdity.  Say you somehow could save one person by the torture of another, innocent, unrelated person.  Under strict utility, you have to weigh things that are totally unrelated to their value as human beings.  In a strict utilitarian view the idea of inalienable rights (life, liberty, property, pursuit of happiness) is foreign.  You do not have a right to life if somehow your death brings about some good.

So, the study of the physical universe has greatly altered our lives including how and what are able to do, but it has had no impact on the meaning of life.  Just consider what I'm doing right now.  I'm typing out my thoughts on a laptop computer that is able to connect wirelessly at great speed to the largest collections of facts ever compiled.  It can process information at a speed faster than what used to take up several rooms of computing devices.  This isn't even all that amazing of a machine either.  Even small electronic devices can carry thousands of books.  We can nearly instantaneously communicate visually even at great distances.  We've landed on the moon.  We've sent probes deep into outer space.  But, all of this wonderful progress doesn't bring any deeper meaning or better moral value (whatever that may mean).

So far I've been bringing out the point that science doesn't bring meaning or really better people, only better convenience to living.  But what about the implication that religion is trying to control or denigrate science and scientific progress?  Why is this such a common theme?  I've actually written about this a couple times here and here.  Science actually only makes sense in the context of belief in God.  If everything is the result of random chance (under a strict materialist view), why would one expect any semblance of order to nature?  How can we perform scientific tests without first assuming that things won't randomly change?  Materialists won't admit it, but the consistency in nature is a presupposition smuggled in from the Christian/theistic view of the universe.  These "prescientific" beliefs actually guide science to be better, not just by giving science moral guidelines within which to work (think Nazi science experiments), but by giving it a foundation from which to spring.  If everything is random, then the scientific method itself will never work, because there's no reason why we should expect our testing and hypothesizing to be consistent in a framework of randomness.  Science, in the proper context is not lessened by believing that God created (creates) the natural universe, it a deepened understanding of the creator.  Indeed science is a form of worship, studying to know the Creator better by studying the creation.

Truth ... As Pilate so famously asked of Jesus, "What is truth?" (John 18:38), presumably not knowing that Jesus had already given the answer, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me (John 14:6)."  If you're trying to get to the truth of things, there is only one source of truth revealed to humanity in various ways.  Science certainly is a wonderful study and can teach us much about God, but God has also revealed much of Himself through the person and work of Jesus Christ (John 1:18).  There is no reason to expect science to "find God," or truth about God, but I'd say the reason some scientists can't find God is they are looking at the trees and missing the forest.  Big Bang theory also points to a creator.  The awesome intricacies of biological life, particularly the information found in genes, also points to God.  Also, based on a video I watched recently about quantum theory it seems that one of the conclusions we can come to is that quantum mechanics actually indicates that God is the reason for the universe.  So, science has proven God, just not in the way dogmatic materialist scientists will accept.

The God Delusion Book Review Part 2 Ch. 4-6

Sorry for the delay in getting to this next section of my review of The God Delusion but I've been busy editing a new book by the author of Notes from Afghanistan.

Back to The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.  If you're interested part one is here.

First off, in my review of the first three chapters I talked about how there's no real argument given, or at least not much of an argument given.  Mostly just blustering and casually brushing aside arguments for god, well, in chapter four Dawkins finally gives his argument for "why there almost certainly is no god."  He attacks the "Ultimate Boeing 747" concept as fallacious, citing Natural Selection as NOT blind chance, rather a step-by-step ascent of "mount improbable."  He also, rightfully attacks the concept of "god of the gaps."

I don't hold to Dawkins' intimation that theists/religious people are afraid of or somehow all have enmity towards science.  He says again and again that theist love these gaps in scientific knowledge and that theists cling to things that science cannot (yet) explain.  Again, bad logic in over-generalization/stereotyping.  Just because there have been instances of people that feel that way and their foolishness has been put on display doesn't mean that theists are all foolish when it comes to science.  I don't claim any special knowledge when it comes to science/mathematics I've never had an interest in them (above a cursory curiosity).  I prefer philosophy, logic, language, linguistics, etc.  Just because I have faith doesn't mean that I'm afraid of a scientific explanation, but that's not what Dawkins gives.  He doesn't give "scientific" explanations for these "gaps" he gives atheistic speculations.  The gaps that even Dawkins admits science cannot bridge are the formation of life, the formation of the eukaryotic nature of cells, and the emergence of consciousness.  But, in answer to all these gaps, his argument is the Anthropic Principle.

So, if you're not familiar let me sum up the anthropic principle as Dawkins describes it, though he calls the principle to action in all the cases where science cannot give an answer.  It's something like this, given the number of stars we know exist, even with a one in a billion chance for life to evolve on a planet (though I've read the odds are actually in the trillions), given the estimate of a billion-billion planets in the universe it had to happen, not once but many times.  There are several problems with this idea.  I'm not a mathematician so I could be wrong on this, the issue is probability.  Take a coin toss.  If you flip a coin 100 times you should get 50 heads/50 tails.  However, you could flip a coin 1,000 times and get heads every time.  Odds don't mean that if you do something enough times all the options will present themselves, just that they should or are like to present themselves.  So, it holds that even with a billion-billion possibly earth-like planets, life could have only happened one time and only here on this planet.  Philosophically the anthropic principle is even more fallacious.

The anthropic principle set out as a philosophical idea sounds something like this:

1) It is highly improbable that life could exist without outside intervention
2) We're here, alive, thinking about that probability
∴/therefore
3) It must have happened

Really?  Putting it another way: life could exist without god, we're alive, therefore it did.  The amazing thing to me is that he doesn't just use this principle for the alignment of planets to set up a planet on which life might evolve (the so-called, Goldilocks zone).  He applies this principle to all the mysteries of science!  Like the Big Bang, why are the cosmological constants in perfect setting to allow for a universe that is capable of producing planets that are capable of producing life?  As a side note I watched an interesting (banned) TED talk that claims they might not be constant after all.  There's no need to ask "why" because we're here, therefore it must have happened.  This particular use of the principle might strike people as odd, because think about it, to apply the principle there must be millions to billions of options, or at least enough that the odds are overcome; this means that there must be millions upon millions of universes, either in the past, or multiverses/parallel universes.

Moving on to chapter five about the roots of religion Dawkins again displays his prejudice: "...it only raises the question of why a mind would evolve to find comfort in beliefs it can plainly see are false" (pg. 168).  He then tries to give his Darwinian evolutionary explanation of how religion could have come about.  He starts off with the idea that we've evolved in such a way that obedience of one's elders is a good thing.  The older people obviously know how to survive and if one listens to the elders' advice one will (presumably) survive better but here's how religion comes into play from that notion.  "The child cannot know that 'Don't paddle in the crocodile-infested Limpopo,' is good advice but 'You must sacrifice a goat at the time of the full moon, otherwise the rains will fail,' is at best a waste of time and goats" (pg. 176).  One of the many problems with this theory, is where did the elder get that idea?  There cannot be an infinite regress.  Someone accidentally sacrifices a goat on the full moon and the rains came, or someone didn't happen to have a goat on a full moon and there was a drought?  How could a primitive mind, that can't recall enough data to make even basic tools be asked to recall and relate one day with a whole season wherein the person probably would have died.  How does that lead to survival?  Someone who accidentally sacrificed a goat and then lived through a season with rain survives and passes down this superstition?  I have serious doubts in all these kinds of speculative answers because I see this kind of statement all the time, not just in Dawkins' writing.

The problem in this whole bit about the evolutionary source for religion, which he gives similar guesses in later portions of the text for other questions, but I'll deal with the idea in general here.  All these guesses or theories about evolutionary processes bringing about X result, boil down to this type of argument: 1) this is how X trait could have been passed on through evolutionary natural selection ∴/therefore 2) it was passed on through natural selection.  Basically, if I can explain how something could have happened without god, that's how it must have happened.  I saw this in two different YouTube (two links "You" and "Tube") videos about the beginnings of the universe (though neither mentioned god).  They basically laid out how the universe could have expanded from a subatomic particle that popped into existence from nothing with such and such characteristics, then ballooned out to become the entire universe.  They (both videos) seemed to be speaking authoritatively about these theories, like, this is a possible explanation of how it could have happened without citing god, therefore it must be correct.

The same fallacious thinking is apparent in Dawkins' writing, here's how it might have happened without god, therefore that's what happened.  I like the original Ockham's Razor argument as it was explained to me many years ago: you walk into a room and the window is open, you ask yourself why the window is open.  There could have been a microburst of wind that happened to blow at just the right angle to open the window, or there might have been an earthquake that shook in just the right manner to rattle the window open, or on and on, but the most basic answer, that is someone left it open, is the correct answer.  So, I ask you, in all this theorizing, if such and such variables might have come aligned at just the right way to bring about X trait is the more simple answer, or is it more simple to say, Someone put them that way?  Not that postulating a Supreme Being is more simple in every instance, but in this particular argument, it seems to be straightforward.

Sorry for the length but I only have one more chapter to cover!

In chapter six Dawkins seeks to provide an answer to the idea of mankind being good without God.  As such, he starts off with pointing out the evil in the letters that he and fellow atheists have received from religious people.  Don't get me wrong I hate seeing things like this and I wish I could have worked with those people on how to rewrite their grievances without insults.  Nevertheless, they're out there.  I'm not going to argue that religious people are all civilized that's clearly not true.  I'm not even going to try to narrow the definition of "true religion" that's just a no-true-scotsman fallacy.  The only thing I have to say is to not judge religion by the outspoken few that give it a bad name.

There is one letter that Dawkins attempts to address that claims that evolutionary theory leads to nihilism.  He rebuffs the claim by throwing out there that natural selection is not random.  I think he's missing the point of the issue.  It's not whether the evolutionary process is random (which by the way it requires at least random mutations, so there is an element of randomness in the whole theory) or not; the issue is whether it's a guided process or unguided.  It's about purpose, meaning, and goals.  Not about randomness.  Natural selection has no goal, no guiding principle other than basic survival.  As such it is hopeless despite how Dawkins brushes that claim aside.

Dawkins offers a guess about how natural selection could lead to kindness to one's kin, but then kills his goal of giving meaning within the natural selection schema by likening any altruism outside one's own kin to an accident.  I ca't that one could accept this kind of argument.  Basically, he's saying that while we're not produced via random processes our kindness to anyone other than kin (which is logical), is accidental.  Tell me how this doesn't have a nihilistic conclusion?  "We can no more help ourselves feeling pity when we see a weeping unfortunate (who is unrelated and unable to reciprocate) that we can help ourselves feeling lust for a member of the opposite sex (who may be infertile or otherwise unable to reproduce).  Both are misfirings, Darwinian mistakes: blessed, precious mistakes" (pg. 221).  Tell me how a mistake is better than random when it comes to showing purposefulness.

On thing occurred to me as I was reading his claim about determining that we all have a shared moral compass because of the evolutionary process, I thought of the "famous violinist" argument for abortion.  Based on simple moral tests, we see that everyone agrees one should submit to helping the helpless.  The analogy holds absolutely no weight in the argument about abortion, but it does point to the idea that people often agree on ethical dilemmas.  I love the mention of Harvard biologist Marc Hauser mentioned on page 222 and following.  It's proving C.S. Lewis' arguments from Mere Christianity one survey respondent at a time.  Again Dawkins shows prejudice and dogmatic thinking and shows why he and most of those he references should not be trusted: "For Kant it was a moral absolute.  For Hauser it is built into us by our evolution" (pg. 224).  If one starts off with the dogmatism that there must be no god and that everything is explicable by evolution/natural selection, of course your conclusion is going to agree.

Plantinga calls this sophomoric philosophy (I didn't read that review in full before starting my reading/review, I'll probably read it when I'm done with the book), but here's another example from the latter portion of ch. six: "The main conclusion of Hauser and Singer's study was that there is no statistically significant difference between atheists and religious believers in making these judgements.  This seems compatible with the view, which I and many others hold, that we do not need God in order to be good - or evil" (pg. 226).  So many problems with this and I've taken up way too much of your time so I'll try to be brief.  First, attacking religion is a strawman.  The issue isn't religious faith, it's the existence or non-existence of a deity.  So, saying that either side of the issue is good or bad has nothing to do with the actual question.  Secondly, and he attempts to make some response to this, is that the question isn't about the ethical or unethical behaviour of people.  The issue is moral objective standards.  He takes a stab at that question, but more or less brushes it away as not really at stake here.  He claims to answer it in the following chapter but after a small sneak peak, he's more or less going to stay on the track that religious people do bad things therefore religious belief is actually negative towards being good.  He's already hinted at that conclusion by pulling out statistics relating the conservative states in the US versus the liberal states in crime statistics.  Wow, talk about twisting statistics to suit one's needs.  Basically, his argument was something like, there is a higher crime rate in certain cities within predominantly contain Republican Party voters, therefore religious people are actually more evil than atheists.  As to the concept of absolutist morality, he basically brushes it aside because he's believes in a consequentialist view of morality, so seeking a moral absolute is unnecessary.

Discovering the Philosopher in You: Part 7: Happiness and Right Action: How Are Morality and Human Welfare Related?

Continuing the series on discovering the philosopher in yourself.  While the last part of the series was about ethics and moral truth, the fact that there is a right and wrong and that we can know it, this entry goes further down the road of morality and its relation to happiness.

The first three-quarters of the lecture it seems like Prof McGinn is defending the idea of Utilitarianism, and how morality is linked to happiness like a sort of mathematical equation.  It seems like he's defending utilitarianism as the best way to describe right actions, but it seems obvious to me almost immediately that it's not going to work.

Here's how Prof McGinn describes utilitarianism: on the surface it seems like a very fair, no-nonsense system.  Because who doesn't like a system where the sole determination of right action is based on producing the most happiness?  So utilitarianism says that the right action is the one that will produce the greatest amount of happiness.  My first thought is how do we measure an amount of happiness, and  Prof McGinn says he'll discuss that concept later in the lecture.  He really doesn't say much about it, other than asking that same thing, how does one measure happiness?  So, the example Prof McGinn uses relates to choosing one charity over another.  The only criteria for choosing which charity to support is only determined by which charity will produce the most happiness.  This flies in the face of almost all other systems of morality, which is highly controversial.

It's an apparently egalitarian view and quite democratic.  Taxes, this system of morality says that all tax systems must be inherently designed to spread out wealth so that the most people gain the most happiness.  It's also democratic, because the best way to find out what makes the most people happy is to allow people to choose for themselves what makes them happy.  This system is purely mathematical.  There's no room for motivation or character.  It doesn't matter if a person has the worst (or best) of intentions.  It doesn't matter what your motive is, as long as more happiness is produced it's a good action.

There are many implications and arguments that have come out of utilitarianism, including (supposedly) abolishing slavery and arguing against animal cruelty.  The system isn't without it's shortcomings though.  Here's one that Prof McGinn points out: one innocent man knows the location of a billion dollars, and the happiness of ten wicked men can be greatly improved by torturing the one innocent man.  By utilitarian standards, that would be acceptable.  Here's another one, supposedly utilitarian arguments led to the end of slavery (at least in many parts of the world).  Here's my issue with that, if there are fewer people being enslaved and usually that's the case, hence minorities are typically the group(s) being enslaved, then utilitarian ideas say that it's right/good to enslave the few to improve the happiness of the many.  As long as the slaves are outnumbered by the enslavers, and their happiness is increased by the slavery.  Here's another one, murder or even mass murder, like the Nazi genocide attempts, are permissible under utilitarian morality as long as the group being exterminated is fewer in number than the exterminators and the extermination of the minority will lead to the happiness of those doing the killing.

In the end I'm not okay with a system of morality that can excuse mass murder, torture, and slavery.  I've said it before and I'm sure I'll probably say it again, any moral system that excludes God leads to moral relativism.  Utilitarianism cannot be a complete system because it leaves out too many variables that are inherent in morality.