Which God is REAL?
Some viewers of this website may inclined to ask: OK, assuming that there is a God, how can you be so arrogant as to believe that YOUR God is the true God and that every other concept of God is wrong?! How utterly closed-minded, ethnocentric, naive, and parochial!! Further, what evidence do you have that Jesus is who he said he was? The testimony of some writings from 2000 years ago?!
Well, the first crucial point is that the Judeo/Christian concept of God has emerged throughout history in far more instances than just in Judaism and Christianity. In fact, the Judeo/Christian concept of God is utterly transcultural and transhistorical:
It’s interesting the spin that can be put on facts. This same point is used as evidence against Christianity, with just as much justification. Simply using dramatic trans- prefixed words does not change that.
For two alternative explanations (not every possibility, as will be said), the first more likely in my view, see here:
- Tales of those myths were spread among multiple people and cultures, and the writers of other belief systems were inspired by those tales.
- A God of another religion is in fact the true God, and inspired Christianity, in the same way this supposes that the Judeo/Christian God essentially inspired the other deities.
————-
MY REPLY: How exactly are you going to use this as evidence against Christianity. You do not develop your argument. In alternative explanation #1, you suggest that “those myths” were spread among multiple people and cultures. However, you fail to notice that many of the cultures that Schmidt’s research mentions were nomadic cultures that had no contact with other cultures. From what culture, for example would native American tribes have absorbed “those myths”? Further, these primeval peoples existed on continents that were isolated from one another.
In alternative explanation #2, you reveal your fundamental misunderstanding of the object/symbol relationship. Human concepts can only serve as representations of God. So when we ask “which God is the right God?,” we are really asking “which concept of God provides the most accurate representation of God?”
As a parallel, when we examine various maps of California, we do not ask “which map is the true map of California?” Rather, we ask, “Which map provides the most accurate representation of the territory that makes up California.” If a given map represented California as a circular island, for example, we could reasonably judge that such a map is garbage.
So one way that we judge the accuracy of a map of California is by comparing its agreement to other maps of California, which were made by other people that surveyed the territory that makes up California. If many different people(s) completed a survey of California and each made a map that had areas of agreement with maps made by others, we could reasonably argue that these points of agreement correspond to accurate representations of the territory.
But no matter how accurate a map is, it can NEVER be the territory itself. Even the most accurate map is an incomplete representation. The same is true of human concepts of God. Your reasoning fails to make the simple distinction between a symbol and the object which is represented by the symbol.
——————
Roy Abraham Varghese notes in his book The Christ Connection: How the World Religions Prepared the Way for the Phenomenon of Jesus:
“No one has chronicled the belief of…primeval peoples in as much detail as [Wilhelm] Schmidt in his twelve-volume The Origin of the Idea of God. Schmidt points out that the African and Asiatic Pygmies believed in a supreme being. The same is true of the Bushmen in South Africa; the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego in South America; the Aboriginies of Australia; the Samoyeds, Koryaks, and Eskimos of the Arctic; and major Native American tribes. The notion of a supreme being is truly global.
And Greece, Rome, Norway, Egypt, Canaan… featured polytheistic religions: most with, say, water gods: sea, rivers… Does that mean those water deities are also ‘transcultural and transhistorical’? Or just that it was just a nice, poetic idea that several people came up with? Or, in the case of Poseidon and Neptune, was plagiarized?
As for the religions there mentioned, they’re clearly henotheistic, rather than monotheistic, like the text heavily implies. Often the ‘supreme being’ is little more than someone such as Zeus: a ruler among the gods, no more. In many cases, as well, this is also the Creator-deity of the religion: an understandable trait, to mark them as ‘supreme’. The act of Creation is where the similarities end, for the most part (more on that later).
———-
MY REPLY:
Back to the map parallel: As time passes, maps become more accurate. Imagine comparing maps of California made today with the very first maps of California made by Spanish explorers. Although these original maps were very flawed, they did get some things right…but the more recent maps are far more accurate. Much like maps, human concepts of God follow a progressive trajectory.
Further, the more prevalent an aspect of human representation of God is, the more likely it is to be accurate. Do you have any research showing that these polytheistic representations are “truly global,” as are the 8 attributes that Schmidt cites? I’ll bet not.
————-
The names most commonly given to the supreme being, says Schmidt, denote his ‘fatherhood, creative power and residence in the sky.’
Creative power, yes, and fatherhood is unsurprising given the patriarchal societies that came up with these deities. Odin too was the ‘all-Father’: however, he was not the Creator in Nordic myth. That title could best be given to an also-male giant.
As for residence in the sky, it varies. Anguta (the Supreme Being of the Eskimo people mentioned) resides in the sea: and in some myths, was just a human.
Past these exceptions, you just have to think like the people of the time. At night, you’d see numerous points of light: at day, one great one. In fact, it’s easy to find many religions with a Sun-god (Sol Invictus, Surya, Utu, Mithras… for starters), demonstrating not only how something impressive can give rise to a view of a god, but also why living in the sky wasn’t really too special. Even beyond Sun gods, the sky was a huge, awe-inspiring sight: where else would you suggest a god live?
One also wonders why that claim is made. I know of few Christians that state God lives in the sky.
————-
MY REPLY:
I don’t exactly know where you are going with this. Could you elaborate? God “living in the sky” is a metaphorical representation, not intended to be literal.
—————
The primeval peoples also highlight key attributes of the supreme being:
1) Eternity, 2) Omniscience, 3) Beneficence, 4) Morality, 5) Omnipotence, 6) Creative power, 7) Giver of the moral code, 8)Author of moral rewards and punishments.”
Ok, so, where is he getting this from?
True, some have some of these traits: we’ve already covered point 6, as I’ve said, Creator-deities are incredibly common, and often (by this act) made ‘Supreme’. This would often make point 1 a necessary continuation (though admittedly it is often not).
Numbers 3, 4, 7 and 8 all seem to say essentially the same thing, which is rather dishonest. Half the points are summarized by ‘in charge of what is good’. It is also actually not too common: many Creator-Deities are also Trickster-Gods, more in line with the classic devil-figure than the God of the Bible.
That just leaves the two omni- traits. Omniscience and omnipotence: and you would not believe just how rare some of those traits were pre-Christianity.
For omniscience, while wisdom can be common, that is by no means omniscience. It is relatively close to non-existence in polytheistic belief systems, such as those mentioned: those religions rely on the interactions of the gods. Omnipotence also is rare: there may be great power, or total power over certain things (such as sea-gods and the sea), but how is that omnipotence?
After a bit of research, I could see little resemblance between the portrait painted by these eight traits, and any religion that comes before Christianity.
Probably the best link is the afterlife: often it involves some form of judgement, and occasionally this is administered by the Supreme Being. Given the human fear of death, an afterlife is an unsurprising component in any religion; and a desire for justice would no doubt create a place of punishment or reward. Unless a God is presupposed, this means a little.
———————
Beneficence and morality are the same thing? What about a morality that is not beneficent? Like a morality that says the strong should prey upon the weak? Giver of the moral code is the same thing as author of rewards and punishments? Are the legislators who make our laws the same as the judges who issue punishments when the laws are broken? Your reasoning is bizarre.
You say that “many Creator-Deities are also Trickster-Gods.” Are you going to provide any research to back this up, or will you just merely assert this? Further, if we don’t know HOW many, how can we know how significant a phenomenon this is? Is is a GLOBAL phenomenon like the concepts of God with the 8 attributes that Schmidt cites?
You say that omniscience is almost non-existent in polytheistic representations of God. But of what use is this point? The point of my citing Schmidt is to call attention to the attributes of God that come up again in culture after culture throughout time. The fact that there are anomalies is of little significance. Nobody is arguing that omniscience is 100% consistent. Would we need 100% consistency among maps of California to argue that a western coastline is an accurate depiction?
You write, “Given the human fear of death, an afterlife is an unsurprising component in any religion.” But this is a double-edged sword. Given the psychological need for not being answerable to a higher power, it is unsurprising that atheist belief systems do not feature an afterlife.
———————
These same above eight attributes are the crucial attributes of the God of the Bible.
One wonders how these civilizations found the idea. Are they meant to have just sensed it, or did they have a revelation? Why do their religions diverge so wildly from Christianity once you go from ‘good and creating’ to ‘polytheism and trickery’.
——————-
MY REPLY:
Here again, you fail to cite any research about the prevalence of “polytheism and trickery” to counteract Schmidt’s research which shows the global prevalence of concepts of God that include beneficence. You seem to think that you can use assertion in place of logically supported argument.
———————
Considering this, one would be inclined to ask: If the concepts of God emerging in separate cultures have the same attributes, by what means could one reasonably argue that these cultures are referring to anything other than the same God?
Aside how this still fails to answer the question of ‘Which God?’, as it could be any of these (even if the points were accurate), there’s also the matter of confirmation bias.
I’ve looked through each of the belief systems mentioned, and while I’d hardly count myself as an expert, the terms used to describe deities work only in the loosest sense. In addition, it’s interesting that many of the religions mentioned are truly obscure: it was hard to find decent information on some of them. Add into that, however, the sheer number of religions, and even if every piece of information here was utterly accurate, it would mean next to nothing. Aside from how you’d expect those related to the true religion to be more major, it is singularly unimpressive when, among hundreds of belief systems, some are similar.
Also, incorporate plagiarism. I’ve already covered small details that are apparently copied by early Christians, but it’s simple fact that any transference of myths from some places, would easily explain these similarities.
To conclude:
- This still fails to answer the question of ‘which God?’ I’ve seen the same argument made by Muslims: and, even should a deity be needed to answer this, it could be any of those mentioned. Presumably the quoted book attempts to answer this: but the post fails.
- The vast majority of religions with no such figure are ignored.
- Those mentioned are sometimes misrepresented.
- It ignores the possibility that plagiarism could be behind at least some of these shared ideas.
- The countless belief systems created by humanity, with all the deities therein, make it as good as certain that some will have similarities.
—————-MY REPLY (point by point):
1) When you ask the question “Which God,” you are failing to make the basic distinction between human representations of God, and God as he actually is. In other words, you are failing to make the basic distinction between symbol and object. When we ask “Which God is Real,” we are really asking which human concept of God is most accurate. Your reasoning is misleading because it conflates symbol and object.
2) You cite “vast majority of religions” with no scholarly citations to back up your assertions. Here, again, we see a display of your penchant for confusing assertion with argument. Without any scholarly citation to back up your claim that “the vast majority of religions have no such figure,” you have not actually produced an argument…just an assertion. Further, even if the “vast majority of religions” featured no such deity, this would have no impact on the global nature of the concepts of God described by Schmidt. The vast majority of religions could have no such concept of God, but the concept of God described by Schmidt could still have a global presence.
3) “Those mentioned are sometimes misrepresented”?? What is misrepresented? What do you mean? Any examples? This is not coherent.
4) “The possibility that plagiarism could be behind at least some of the ideas”? Here, you fail to make the basic distinction between a counter-argument, on one hand, and a counter-proposition, on the other. You propose that plagiarism could be responsible, but unless you develop this with evidence and reasoning, you have merely made a proposal…not a logically coherent argument.
Further, as I mentioned, many of the cultures Schmidt mentions are nomadic and isolated on different continents. Lastly, even if “plagiarism” were behind some of the ideas, what would this really prove. Why did so many cultures choose to plagiarize these ideas and not others? It could be because they recognized these ideas as ACCURATE.
5) Yes, similarities are to be expected. But GLOBAL similarities in cultures isolated from one another by time and distance cannot be explained by coincidence. If one or two or three cultures featured concepts of God with the same attributes, this could be explained as a possible coincidence. But with primeval peoples all over the planet (on isolated continents) featuring concepts of God with the same 8 attributes…it would be absurd to declare this coincidence.
God Is Real…Why modern physics has discredited atheism.
Posted by: Scott Youngren
“If we need an atheist for a debate, we go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn’t much use.”
–Robert Griffiths, winner of the Heinemann Prize in mathematical physics.
.
“What is mind? Never matter. What is matter? Never mind!“
–T.H. Key
————————–
Virtually everyone is familiar with the popular conundrum, “Which came first…the chicken or the egg?” But probably very few people realize that the question of God’s existence, in a very real sense, boils down to what is likely the ultimate chicken-or-the-egg conundrum: Which came first, mind or matter? In other words, is mind (or “consciousness”) the product of matter, or is matter the product of mind? Is our universe—at its core—a material universe, or is it a mental (or spiritual) universe?
It will come as a surprise to many that modern physics has done much to answer this question. And the answer which modern physics provides will require many people to completely reframe their perception of the world in which they live.
Stephen C. Meyer, author of Signature in the Cell, holds a PhD in the history and philosophy of science from Cambridge University. In this book, he reveals the following:
“Since the time of the ancient Greeks, there have been two basic pictures of ultimate reality among Western intellectuals, what Germans call a Weltanschauung, or worldview. According to one worldview, mind is the primary or ultimate reality. On this view, material reality either issues from a preexisting mind, or it is shaped by a preexistent intelligence, or both…This view of reality is often called idealism to indicate that ideas come first and matter comes later. Theism is the version of idealism that holds that God is the source of the ideas that gave rise to and shaped the material world.
The opposite view holds that the physical universe or nature is the ultimate reality. In this view, either matter or energy (or both) are the things from which everything else comes. They are self-existent and do not need to be created or shaped by mind….In this view matter comes first, and conscious mind arrives on the scene much later and only then as a by-product of material processes and undirected evolutionary change. This worldview is called naturalism or materialism.”
There really is no third stance. Everyone therefore needs to ask themselves, “On which side of this debate do I fall?”
Well…when Max Planck (the Nobel Prize winning physicist who founded quantum theory) says…
“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”
and Albert Einstein says…
“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe–a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”
and the Nobel Prize winning physicist Eugene Wigner says…
“When the province of physical theory was extended to encompass microscopic phenomena, through the creation of quantum mechanics, the concept of consciousness came to the fore again; it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness,” and “The content of consciousness is an ultimate reality.”
and the great physicist Sir Arthur Eddington says…
“The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory.” [“Logos” is defined as “the word of God, or principle of divine reason and creative order.”]
and the knighted mathematician, physicist and astronomer Sir James Jeans says (in his book The Mysterious Universe)…
“There is a wide measure of agreement which, on the physical side of science approaches almost unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter. We are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail mind as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.” (italics added)
…there can be no question on which side of this debate modern physics falls. For a glimpse of the quantum research which has led physicists to draw conclusions such as the above, and to understand why materialism (with its belief that “either matter or energy, or both, are the things from which everything else comes” and “are self-existent and do not need to be created or shaped by mind”) can no longer be deemed scientifically plausible, please view this video of the famous double slit experiment. As this article titled The Mental Universe by Johns Hopkins University physicist Richard Conn Henry reveals, “The ultimate cause of atheism, [Isaac] Newton asserted, is ‘this notion of bodies having, as it were, a complete, absolute and independent reality in themselves.’”
The simplest explanation of why modern physics has done away with materialism/naturalism is this: Material things cannot have “a complete, absolute independent reality in themselves” because, as modern physics has demonstrated, the material world cannot exist independent from consciousness (mind). There is no reality independent of mind.
Here is how University of California, Berkeley physicist Henry Stapp puts it in his book Mindful Universe:
“…According to contemporary orthodox basic physical theory, but contrary to many claims made in the philosophy of mind, the physical domain is not causally closed. [italics are his] A causally open physical description of the mind-brain obviously cannot completely account for the mind-brain as a whole.”
“In short, already the orthodox version of quantum mechanics, unlike classical mechanics, is not about a physical world detached from experiences; detached from minds.”
Princeton University quantum physicist Freeman Dyson echoes Stapp’s above comments:
“Atoms are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom. The universe is also weird, with its laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it passes beyond the scale of our comprehension.”
Physicist George Stanciu and philosopher Robert Augros provide an excellent nutshell explanation of why the naturalist/materialist worldview is no longer scientifically or philosophically supportable in their book The New Story of Science, that further elucidates the above points:
“In the New Story of science the whole universe–including matter, energy, space, and time–is a one-time event and had a definite beginning. But something must have always existed; for if ever absolutely nothing existed, then nothing would exist now, since nothing comes from nothing. The material universe cannot be the thing that always existed because matter had a beginning. It is 12 to 20 billion years old. This means that whatever has always existed is non-material. The only non-material reality seems to be mind. If mind is what has always existed, then matter must have been brought into existence by a mind that always was. This points to an intelligent, eternal being who created all things. Such a being is what we mean by the term God.
Do Christ’s divinity and resurrection defy common sense?
Posted by: Scott Youngren
“The ghostly presence of virtual particles defies rational common sense and is non-intuitive for those unacquainted with physics. Religious belief in God, and Christian belief that God became Man around two thousand years ago, may seem strange to common-sense thinking. But when the most elementary physical things behave in this way, we should be prepared to accept that the deepest aspects of our existence go beyond our common-sense intuitions.”
.
–Nobel Prize winning physicist Tony Hewish as cited in the forward to John Polkinghorne and Nicholas Beale’s book Questions of Truth: Fifty-one Responses to Questions about God, Science, and Belief.
———————————
The following piece of “common sense” wisdom spread like wildfire in early 2006, and before: “Real estate prices only go up, because they aren’t making any more land…so invest in real estate.” Sadly, many people uncritically accepted this “common sense” view just before the real estate collapse of 2006. Largely, this was the result of failing to expend the time and effort necessary to arm oneself with all of the facts and reasoning available, so as to ensure that one’s “common sense” was truly a fully informed common sense. (And if I was one of those people, I would never admit it). Passively accepting “common sense” wisdom from one’s social/cultural environment can have dire consequences, because one cannot be certain that one has all of the facts unless one actually does the homework.
For a very select few who did the “heavy lifting” necessary to fully inform themselves about the true nature of the real estate market, however, not only was financial disaster averted, but fortunes were made. The hedge fund manager John Paulson, for example, made billions of dollars from the real estate crash by correctly assessing the true nature of the real-estate market…a bubble about to burst.
In a similar light, to those willing to invest the time and effort in examining the claims about the divinity of Jesus, a spiritual fortune awaits. Fortunately, the time and effort required to obtain this spiritual fortune is far less than that which was required of those who profited from the real estate crash. This is partly due to the fact that much of the “heavy lifting” has already been done by others.
Albert Einstein once commented that, “It is harder to crack a prejudice than an atom.” And the Biblical claims surrounding Jesus’ divinity and resurrection are prejudicially rejected by many….with little or no examination of the evidence. Why expend time and effort examining the claims about Jesus’ divinity and resurrection—goes the “common sense” reasoning of many—when there is no good reason to believe in anything that is non-material? If we live in a world that is (as far as we can tell) made up of nothing but material objects, what reason is there to waste time and effort thinking about things of a non-material/spiritual nature? Why believe in the spiritual when the only things we can perceive with our five senses are material things?
Unfortunately, for those who do not want the inconvenience of the “heavy lifting” involved in carefully examining the Biblical claims regarding Jesus, denial of the spiritual is a very weak starting point.
And, as I point out in God Is Real…Why Modern Physics Has Discredited Atheism, modern physics has shown that, contrary to the “common sense” intuitions of popular thought, the fundamental character of the universe is mental/spiritual, rather than material. As Johns Hopkins University physicist Richard Conn Henry puts it in the concluding paragraph of his Nature magazine essay titled The Mental Universe, “The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy.” And if our universe is mental/spiritual, what choice do we have but to conclude that it is the product of a mind/spirit? (Read: God).
Earlier in the above mentioned essay, Henry writes:
The 1925 discovery of quantum mechanics solved the problem of the Universe’s nature. Bright physicists were again led to believe the unbelievable — this time, that the Universe is mental. According to [the knighted physicist, mathematician, and astronomer] Sir James Jeans: “the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter… we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.” But physicists have not yet followed Galileo’s example, and convinced everyone of the wonders of quantum mechanics. As [the great physicist] Sir Arthur Eddington explained: “It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character.”
And if rank-and-file physicists have a hard time accepting the mental/spiritual nature of the universe, it should be no mystery why the general public understanding has not caught up with the insights of modern physics. Elsewhere, Henry elaborates on the topic of why the insights of modern physics have failed to successfully penetrate the general public understanding:
“Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism.” [Underlining is mine]
Accepting that it is the material world which is an illusion, and that it is the spiritual world which is real, involves a much too unsettling and inconvenient trip down the rabbit hole (to borrow from Alice in Wonderland) for many. (Please read Mindful Universe by University of California, Berkeley physicist Henry Stapp, and The Matter Myth: Dramatic Discoveries that Challenge Our Understanding of Physical Reality by physicists Paul Davies and John Gribbin, as well as my essay God Is Real…Why Modern Physics Has Discredited Atheism for a further exploration of this topic). Further, the commonplace perception that only the material world is real (and that the spiritual world is an illusion) is a perception which has become ever more deeply entrenched in our culture over the course of the last several hundred years. Such deeply entrenched elements of the general public understanding do not become dislodged overnight. To cite another example from history, the educated elites accepted that the earth is a sphere (rather than flat) several hundred years before the average person.
Lastly, a theistic view of the universe is distasteful to many because the concept of having to answer to a higher moral authority is an affront to one’s moral autonomy. I discuss this topic in much greater depth in If the evidence for God is so strong, why are so many smart people unconvinced? As a result, many “cling with…ferocity to a mind-independent [material only] reality,” in the above cited words of physicist Richard Conn Henry.
It is not inappropriate, then, to compare those who dismiss the claims of Christ’s divinity and resurrection, based upon a denial of the spiritual, to those who dismiss any notion that real-estate prices could go down sharply, based upon a denial that such an event is possible.
Why atheism is self-defeating.
Posted by: Scott Youngren
Whoever it was that first said, “The hardest part of my job is getting other people to do my job for me” apparently didn’t have the job of refuting naturalism, which is the belief (upon which atheism is based) that the natural world is self-existent, and therefore does not require an intelligent cause (God). This is because naturalism is a self-defeating belief system. By creating this self-defeating belief system, naturalists have left little work for the theist to do, other than to point out this self-defeating nature.
The easiest way for one to see that naturalism is self-defeating is to realize that, under naturalism, we have no reason to believe that ANY of our beliefs are true…let alone a belief in naturalism. In fact, under the naturalist belief system, we have no reason to think that we even have the ability to reason accurately.
David Wood writes in his essay The Explanatory Emptiness of Naturalism (as it appears in True Reason: Christian Responses to the Challenge of Atheism):
“According to naturalists, our ability to reason is the product of natural selection acting on random mutation. Natural selection, of course, favors traits that help organisms survive and reproduce. So if human reasoning evolved naturally, it’s because it helped human beings survive and reproduce. Does this give us any basis for trusting our reasoning ability when it comes to questions of cosmology, or quantum mechanics, or neuroscience? Not at all. At best, our cognitive faculties would be reliable when it comes to finding berries, or using a spear against an enemy, or doing something to attract a mate. Interestingly, Darwin himself noticed this problem. He once admitted:
‘[W]ith me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?’
In other words, our reasoning ability serves the same evolutionary purpose as the traits of other animals (e.g., the claws of a lion, the song of a canary, or the colorful buttocks of a baboon). We wouldn’t trust the traits of animals to lead us to the truth, because they weren’t developed for that purpose. Why, then, would we trust our own convictions, which are the result of the same evolutionary process? There’s no way around this problem for naturalists, for in order to escape the Problem of Reason, they would need to construct an argument. But this argument would presuppose the reliability of human reason, which is precisely the issue under investigation. Hence, if we take Naturalism seriously, we cannot take our reasoning ability seriously, and science falls apart.”
The renowned philosopher of neuroscience Patricia Churchland, despite being a staunch naturalist, admits to this problem with naturalism in her article Epistemology in the Age of Neuroscience:
“The principal chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive… . Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing [the world] is advantageous so long as it … enhances the organism’s chances for survival. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.”
Prominent atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel admits to the same in his book Mind and Cosmos, and devotes much of the rest of the book trying to wriggle free from theism. He writes:
“Evolutionary naturalism implies that we shouldn’t take any of our convictions seriously, including the scientific world picture on which evolutionary naturalism itself depends.”
Naturalism, simply put, leaves us no reason whatsoever to think that any of our beliefs are reliable…such as a belief in naturalism. Please recall that naturalism insists that the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection is mindless and random. Also recall that natural selection selects for survivability, not for truth. And, if one stops to think, there is no reason to think that certain false beliefs could not provide just as much survival value as a corresponding true belief. For example, the belief that eating a particular plant should be avoided because doing so would cause one to turn into a werewolf provides just as much survival value as the belief that eating that plant should be avoided because doing so puts poison into one’s body.
Why trying to explain away God with science is an ERROR
Posted by: Scott Youngren
In order to please my readers, I have made the bold decision to begin this essay in an utterly groundbreaking fashion…by providing a surprise bonus feature (that will, at first, seem unrelated to the topic of this essay): I will now explain the mystery of the JFK assassination. The decades of waiting are finally over. Sit tight…here it goes:
The ignition of a powder mixture consisting of the chemicals sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter caused a rapid expansion of gasses which, consistent with Isaac Newton’s laws of motion, forced a lead projectile down a metal tube at a supersonic velocity. The collision of the projectile against certain of Kennedy’s vital organs caused a transference of kinetic energy, which severely damaged these organs, resulting in death.
What’s that I hear you say? You’re disappointed?! You were suspicious of my bold claims from the outset?! All I did was describe aspects of a gunshot (and subsequent wound), in pretentious scientific terms, rather than explain the assassination? You were hoping I would explain who the guilty parties were, and what their motives were?
Well, you were justified in feeling suspicious and then disappointed. The same suspicion, and then disappointment, should surround any bold claims atheists make about science “explaining” things without the need for God. As I note in The God of the Gaps: Why God and Science Are Not Competing Explanations, atheists commit what is known in philosophy as a category error any time they declare that science and God are competing explanations for natural phenomena. Below is an excerpt from the Wikipedia post for Category Error:
A category mistake, or category error, is a semantic or ontological error in which “things of one kind are presented as if they belonged to another”, or, alternatively, a property is ascribed to a thing that could not possibly have that property. Thus the claim that “Most Americans are atheists” is not a category mistake, since most Americans could be (contingently) atheists. On the other hand, “Most bananas are atheists” is a category mistake. This is because bananas belong to a category of things that cannot be said to have beliefs.
Just as bananas cannot have beliefs, science cannot provide complete explanations for natural phenomena. Rather it can only provide useful descriptions. This is why bold declarations from atheists that “science explains things without the need for God” amount to a category error. Edgar Andrews writes in Who Made God?:
“…far from explaining everything, science actually ‘explains’ nothing. What science does is describe the world and its phenomenology in terms of its own specialized concepts and models — which provide immensely valuable insights but become increasingly non-intuitive as we dig ever deeper into the nature of physical reality.”
“…The formula [that describes the force of gravity] equates the gravitational force between two objects to the product of their masses multiplied by a universal constant (the ‘gravitational constant’) and divided by the square of the distance between them. But does the equation ‘explain’ why you don’t bump your head on the ceiling? Not really. It tells us there is a force that keeps your feet on the ground, but you knew that already. It also quantifies that force, allowing us to calculate its strength in any particular case, which is extremely useful. But it doesn’t tell us why there is such a force, why it follows an inverse square law, and why the ‘gravitational constant’ has the value that it does. The equation is a description of gravity rather than an explanation.” [underlining mine]
Science describes natural phenomena in terms of laws, but it does not explain where those laws came from, who (or what) enforces those laws, or why the universe has laws in the first place (rather than just chaos). Scientific description, in other words, ends at the level of natural/physical laws. So how does theism explain the above mentioned phenomena? The answer is simple. As I put it in I Believe In Science, Why Do I Need Religion?:
Such laws are the result of a lawgiver (God). Moreover, theism asserts that matter is nothing more than a manifestation of consciousness (God’s consciousness), which is the view most compatible with modern physics, as I demonstrate in God Is Real: Why Modern Physics Has Discredited Atheism. Robert Boyle, the founder of modern chemistry, summarized the theistic explanation of why matter follows physical laws succinctly when he said: “The nature of this or that body is but the law of God prescribed to it [and] to speak properly, a law [is] but a notional rule of acting according to the declared will of a superior.” [the word “notional” italicized by me]
Or as James Joule, the propounder of the first law of thermodynamics, for whom the thermal unit of the “Joule” was named, put it: “It is evident that an acquaintance with natural laws means no less than an acquaintance with the mind of God therein expressed.”
Former major league baseball player and manager Yogi Berra is perhaps even more famous for his wise sayings than for his baseball career: “If you come to a fork in the road, take it!,” and “Always go to other people’s funerals, or else they won’t come to yours,” and “I knew the record would stand until it was broken.” And much like Yogi Berra’s sayings, atheistic explanations are often grounded in absurdities, although less obvious and less humorous.
One very prominent absurdity is the atheistic citation of pure chance or luck as an alternative explanation to God for such phenomena as the origin of life and the origin of our universe.
Sure—the atheist argument goes—the probability of such things occurring naturally is very low…but with enough time, and even a slight probability, what is there to prevent virtually anything from happening?! But this atheist reasoning makes some very grave oversights. First of all, bare probability and large amounts of time, alone, cannot accomplish anything, ever. Period.
Does this seem like too strong a statement? It is not. Probability and time can never accomplish anything without 1) a causal mechanism and 2) an underlying structure, or order.
As an illustration, consider the lottery: Even though the chance of a specific individual winning the lottery is incredibly small, many people have won lotteries in the past, and many more will win in the future.
What is necessary, then, for this bare probability of a lottery win to result in an actual lottery win? Much more than just time and chance. For one, in order to win the lottery, the causal mechanism of going to the store to buy lottery tickets on a regular basis is required. Without this causal mechanism, the probability of winning the lottery is exactly zero. As one lottery advertisement says, “You can’t win unless you play.”
Secondly, the structure of a lottery commission and a distribution network for lottery tickets (etc.) is necessary (not to mention the monetary system of the Dollar, Euro, etc.). In other words, for one to win the lottery, there must first be a lottery, and there must first be such a thing as money to win.
Why life could not have emerged without God.
“[Reason tells me of the] extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capability of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.”
–Charles Darwin, as quoted in his autobiography
———-
The Atheist-Biologist-in-Chief, Richard Dawkins, writes in his book The Blind Watchmaker:
“…Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” But when one looks into the reasoning behind Dawkins’ statement, one quickly realizes that, to hijack a quote from another prominent atheist (the philosopher Bertrand Russell), “This is one of those views which are so absolutely absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them.” Indeed, years of intense research by highly credentialed biologists with rigid ideological commitments to atheism are required to concoct a view so ridiculous.
The first key point is that Darwinian theory does not even attempt to explain the origin of life. Rather, Darwinian evolution only attempts to explain the diversification of life from a putative common ancestor. The Darwinian mechanism of random mutation and natural selection, quite obviously, applies only to that which has genes to mutate and reproductive offspring to naturally select…namely, living things. So the key question pertinent to God’s existence, here, is not how life diversified, but how it originated. How did the first life emerge from non-living matter? To answer this question, one must first determine just what life is.
OK…I want numbers. What is the probability the universe is the result of chance?
The reader of the essay entitled “What is the Chance the World is the Result of Chance?” may be interested in knowing some hard numbers with regard to the probability that the universe occurred randomly (i.e. no conscious creator involved). Oxford University professor of mathematics John Lennox quotes renowned Oxford University mathematical physicist Roger Penrose:
“Try to imagine phase space… of the entire universe. Each point in this phase space represents a different possible way that the universe might have started off. We are to picture the Creator, armed with a ‘pin’ — which is to be placed at some point in phase space… Each different positioning of the pin provides a different universe. Now the accuracy that is needed for the Creator’s aim depends on the entropy of the universe that is thereby created. It would be relatively ‘easy’ to produce a high entropy universe, since then there would be a large volume of the phase space available for the pin to hit. But in order to start off the universe in a state of low entropy — so that there will indeed be a second law of thermodynamics — the Creator must aim for a much tinier volume of the phase space. How tiny would this region be, in order that a universe closely resembling the one in which we actually live would be the result?”
If the evidence for God is so strong, why are so many smart people unconvinced?
”I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that… My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind.”
–New York University Professor of Philosophy Thomas Nagel–
———–
Recently, a reader posted a comment to this website which read “GOD IS NOT REAL” …with a string of obscenities appearing before and after these four words (which I have removed to maintain a PG rating). It does not take a trained psychologist to perceive that there is more than just bare logic shaping these atheistic views. If this person had arrived at atheism purely from logical reasoning, he would have calmly posted a response to the arguments posted on this website or would have simply chosen to ignore them.
But this person is hardly alone. Why do so many people take offense at the idea that there is a God? Further, why are so many smart people unconvinced despite the wealth of evidence? And if the evidence is so strong, as this website contends, why isn’t it more commonly known?
Quotes about God to consider…if you think science leads to atheism.
“This sense of wonder leads most scientists to a Superior Being – der Alte, the Old One, as Einstein affectionately called the Deity – a Superior Intelligence, the Lord of all Creation and Natural Law.”
–Abdus Salam, winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in electroweak theory. He is here quoted in his article entitled Science and Religion.
“A scientific discovery is also a religious discovery. There is no conflict between science and religion. Our knowledge of God is made larger with every discovery we make about the world.”
–Joseph H. Taylor, Jr., who received the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the first known binary pulsar, and for his work which supported the Big Bang theory of the creation of the universe.
“I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon. I want to know his thoughts; the rest are details.”
–Albert Einstein
“God [is] the author of the universe, and the free establisher of the laws of motion.”
–Physicist and chemist Robert Boyle, who is considered to be the founder of modern chemistry.
“It may seem bizarre, but in my opinion science offers a surer path to God than religion.”
–Physicist Paul Davies in his book God and the New Physics. Davies is the winner of the 2001 Kelvin Medal issued by the Institute of Physics and the winner of the 2002 Faraday Prize issued by the Royal Society (amongst other awards).
About me
Can the question of God’s existence be answered conclusively and in a rationally sound manner? Fortunately, for the person willing to invest time in the articles, videos, and recommended readings posted on this site, the resounding answer is “yes”…one can logically establish God’s existence far more conclusively than is commonly understood. The more deeply one probes this question, the more clear it becomes that disbelief in God is a smoke screen fashioned from outdated science, discredited but fashionable philosophy, and disingenuous, selective reasoning.
