Is God's Existence a Scientific Question?

We all know that ultimately, belief in God is a matter of faith. God's existence cannot be proved or disproved. However, that has not stopped many theologians from making assertions that their faith is not merely some arbitrarily chosen emotional crutch, but a reasoned worldview based on observable evidence and sound logic. Yet these same theologians are wont to disagree with Richard Dawkins' assertion that God's existence is a scientific question, suggesting that ultimately God's existence is too grand to be understood by the scientific method. But I think that God's existence is indeed a scientific question, for two important reasons.

Firstly, the claim that God exists is almost never merely a metaphysical claim; believers and nonbelievers alike will agree that a world without God will look different from a world with God, usually to the point of debating whether the world would exist at all without God. Moreover, modern believers in the vein of Francis Collins, Tim Keller, and Alister McGrath (among innumerable others) make the claim that there is evidence — i.e., observable phenomena — that supports the existence of God. So believers are in fact making fundamental claims about the nature of reality, and positing evidence to support those claims.

Secondly, we are faced with the important question of how we know what we claim to know. I've often said that metaphysical "knowledge" does not exist, because unlike scientific knowledge, there is no methodology by which to validate the veracity of metaphysical claims. I've yet to encounter an apologist who, after making countless claims about the evidence of God's existence, refrains from somewhat of a backtrack by asserting that God's existence is ultimately beyond our ability to prove or disprove. God, being beyond the natural realm, cannot be observed or measured and apparently, neither can the effects of his alleged interventions in the natural world. The problem with such an argument should be obvious — if something is beyond our natural world, what means do we have to know it exists at all? The "evidence" of God's existence should be ample enough to make his existence beyond dispute; otherwise, "God" can be mercilessly tossed aside with any number of other arbitrary metaphysical concepts. How do we know whether certain phenomena are evidence of God? How might we know whether God is theistic, deistic, polytheistic or pantheistic? How might we know whether God really does speak to people and intervene in the natural world?

Our capacity to reason is the only means by which we have to understand the natural world. The elegance of science lies not in its ability to describe, but its ability to predict. We know, for example, that the standard model of quantum theory is correct because it allows us to predict the behavior of subatomic particles with remarkable accuracy. We know that General Relativity is correct because it allows us to predict the behavior of the stars and planets. We are not imbued with some sort of spiritual "sixth sense" that allows us to reliably understand metaphysical things, or even understand with any certainty whether such things exist at all.

Scientific knowledge is the only true knowledge; it is the only way we can reliably understand the world around us. If there is evidence of God's existence (and especially evidence of any particular religion's view of God), we should be able to clearly observe it and draw unambiguous conclusions about its implications. If this evidence does not exist, however, we must conclude that even if God does exist, there is no way for us to know — no more so than we can know whether magical fairies or a sentient, Matrix-like computer exist. Something truly "beyond" our world may as well not exist at all.

A World Without God

Believers and non-believers certainly disagree on innumerable things, but perhaps one thing we can agree on is that a world without God would look very different than a world with God. I'm an atheist not because I'm certain there is no God, nor because I think religion can be destructive and divisive, nor because I merely disagree with any particular religious creed. I'm an atheist because, when I look out on the world, I see a world just as it would be without a God, and find no plausible reason to entertain the idea of such a being's existence. Throughout this blog I've attempted to address numerous specific issues salient to the clash between faith and reason — the nature of morality, the origins of life and the universe, the problem of suffering, and many others. In this post, I'll lay out what is, for me, the most clear and definitive argument for rejecting belief in a supernatural deity. So it's in that spirit that I ask: what would a world without God look like? What might we reasonably expect to see?


Pattern recognition errors

We humans are programmed (or evolved, if you will) to be experts at pattern recognition. We can discern stationary objects, colors, faces, and countless other patterns. However, we can make two fundamental errors in pattern recognition: we can fail to see a pattern when it is there, such as a well-camouflaged animal; or, we can impose a pattern when there isn't one. Everyday examples of the latter abound: We hear a noise in the night that we believe are footsteps or a voice; we hear it again, and realize that it was just the wind. We slam on our brakes when we momentarily mistake a leaf tumbling across the road for a scurrying animal.

In each case, we are not simply erroneously imposing some arbitrary pattern; we are erroneously imposing goal-oriented patterns. This distinction is very important. An animal scurrying across the road is behaving with a goal: to get across the road; but a tumbling leaf is simply a random occurrence. The voice-like sounds made by the wind are similarly random, goal-less phenomena. Superstitions are rooted in this phenomenon of pattern-recognition errors. For example, if a gambler strikes it rich while wearing a certain hat, particularly if it happens on multiple occasions, he may begin to perceive the hat as his "lucky hat". In reality, the odds of his luck is a statistically predictable phenomenon, and his hat has nothing to do with it. He just happened to win when he was wearing the hat, and has now made the error of assuming that his hat somehow influenced the outcome.

If there were no God, we would expect supernatural beliefs to arise primarily as a result of such pattern-recognition errors, in which people perceived intent in random natural phenomena. Such phenomena might include illness, droughts, natural disasters, or famine. Like the old cliche of the island tribe tossing the virgin into the volcano to appease the Volcano God (see Joe vs. the Volcano), early human cultures would have thought that by performing certain rituals (including prayer) that they could appease a deity and influence the outcome of fateful events in their favor.

If this were the case, religion, being entirely a human construct, would be extremely dissimilar across various cultures. Any two cultures in isolation from each other would have completely different ideas about what supernatural being or beings existed and how they should be properly appeased. Some might not even believe in gods per se, but rather attempt to appease other types of supernatural beings, such as ancestral spirits or animals believed to have mystical powers. Because there would be no singular "true" God or religion to concurrently influence the beliefs of the world's innumerable cultures, no two religions, having never intersected, would share the same gods, rituals, or beliefs. And looking out on the world, this is precisely what we see.


Moral norms

If there were no God, we would expect moral norms to have arisen solely as a consequence of natural selection — sociocultural outgrowths of biologically hardwired behavior that improves our chances at successfully surviving and reproducing. Norms of how humans ought to treat one another would function as a necessity of cooperative, interdependent group living. For example, I ought to treat others with respect and fairness if I expect others to in turn treat me with respect and fairness. We would certainly expect that certain ideals regarding equity and fairness would be ubiquitous, although the nature of in-groups and out-groups and our tendency to be fearful of outsiders would sometimes manifest itself in selective inequalities.

We would not expect to see a consistent, absolute standard of moral norms across all cultures throughout human history; rather, there would be great variability in what was perceived as morally acceptable. This is simply because the types of moral norms that allow a relatively small tribal culture to thrive are quite different than the moral norms that allow what Desmond Morris would call a "super tribe", such as a large city, to thrive. To this end, we would expect to see great changes in moral norms as human cultures became larger, less homogeneous, and more complex.

Looking out on the world, this is precisely what we observe — and perhaps there is no better example than the Bible, and its stark contrast with the common practices of modern Christians. In the Old Testament, the people of tribal Israel kept slaves and were allowed to beat them severely; men were permitted to marry multiple women, and sell their daughters into sexual slavery; genocidal wars were waged against cultures that worshiped different gods, and soldiers were allowed to subjugate the virgin women. Even in the comparatively peaceful New Testament, slavery was permitted and women were explicitly subjugated to men. Modern Christians, of course, along with the rest of our socially evolved culture, tend to view things like slavery, misogyny and religious genocide to be egregious affronts to our most fundamental human rights. As human society has changed, so have our moral norms.


Prayer

If there were no god, we would not expect to see any scientific evidence that prayer has any significant effect on the outcome of any event. People who pray — and those for whom they pray — would not be statistically less likely to get sick, suffer injury, or die tragically. If a natural disaster strikes, it would strike randomly, with no particular person or group statistically more or less likely to be killed, injured, or bereft of their possessions. We would closely examine self-proclaimed "faith healers" such as Benny Hinn, and find no evidence that their prayers actually cure anyone of any affliction. But if prayer does indeed work, it should logically have a measurable, observable effect.

And yet, evidence in this regard has remained elusive. From Wikipedia:

Some studies of prayer effectiveness have yielded null results.[20] A 2001 double-blind study of the Mayo Clinic found no significant difference in the recovery rates between people who were (unbeknownst to them) assigned to a group that prayed for them and those who were not.[21] Similarly, the MANTRA study conducted by Duke University found no differences in outcome of cardiac procedures as a result of prayer.[22] In another similar study published in the American Heart Journal in 2006[23], Christian intercessory prayer when reading a scripted prayer was found to have no effect on the recovery of heart surgery patients; however, the study found patients who had knowledge of receiving prayer had slightly higher instances of complications than those who did not know if they were being prayed for or those who did not receive prayer.[7]

But even if specific effects of prayer are scientifically elusive, we might reasonably expect that those who are actively religious might find good fortune more readily than the non-religious. But again, evidence of any such benefit is elusive. Natural disasters, diseases, and all other manner of tragic circumstances strike indiscriminately. Hurrican Katrina decimated much of New Orleans leaving millions of lives in disrepair, but missed the infamously debaucherous French Quarter. Deadly diseases like cancer afflict the young, the old, the religious and the non-religious alike. All of this is precisely what we would expect if there were indeed no God.


Our mere existence

If there were no God, we would not expect Earth to have been purposefully placed in the "habitable zone" in our solar system so that life could arise; rather, we would expect life to arise merely as a consequence of the Earth's proximity to the Sun and the resulting conditions thereof. If that were the case, life — especially sentient life — would be extraordinarily rare. Given the fact that we have found bacteria living near volcanic vents on the ocean floor in extreme heat and total darkness, we might expect that similar microorganisms might be somewhat more common in the universe, and perhaps even within our own solar system. But highly complex, intelligent life would require specific conditions that would be highly improbable.

Looking out on the universe, we see billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars. Large portions of these galaxies — the vast central clusters of stars — are far too hot and cramped for complex life to evolve. Much like there is a "habitable zone" within our solar system, there is a "habitable zone" in our galaxy as well — and, presumably, others like it. We look out on the universe and see vast expanses of nothingness, and inexplicable lifeless planets that have formed — like our own — as a mere consequence of probability. While we can see that our celestial home, and our mere existence, is quite extraordinary and certainly quite rare, we can see no evidence that our universe is uniquely designed to accommodate us. In a few hundred million years, our planet will no longer have enough oxygen in the atmosphere to sustain human life. Billions of years from now, our planet will be annihilated by our sun as it runs out of hydrogen and becomes a red giant. And our entire galaxy may meet an unfortunate fate as it appears to be on a collision course with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. Certainly even now our species lives on a knife's edge of survival. This kind of universe — one utterly indifferent to us — is precisely what we would expect to see if there were no God.


A world without God

We see a natural world indifferent to human suffering, and even to our very existence, rather than a world that appears made for us. We see moral norms that have evolved as tools needed for our survival and that have changed as our cultures have changed, rather than immovable absolutes that have remained unchanged since the dawn of our existence. We see cultures with conflicting and irreconcilably different concepts of what God is and what God wants; moreover, we see countless cultures with pantheistic or animistic beliefs, and cultures that worship animals or ancestral spirits. There is no cohesive concept of "God", nor is there any cohesive concept of how such a deity should be appeased. We see no statistical evidence that prayer, or religious people in general, are more fortunate than the unfaithful, much less that those of any particular religion are more fortunate than those of any other. It is for these reasons that I am an atheist. I cannot fathom any reason to entertain the notion that there is a God at all, much less one that cares about me, listens to my prayers, and grants me good fortune in return for my faith. A world without God would look just like the one we see.

More on Francis Collins

The virtual ink had barely dried on my critique of Francis Collins' The Language of God when I came across an essay he contributed to the Templeton Foundation. Generally, I am not a fan of the Templeton Foundation and its attempts to conflate science and religion as though each were valid forms of inquiry (there is no methodology to religious inquiry), but I don't particularly mind when they invite people of all different scientific and religious perspectives to comment on a "Big Question". The Big Question this time around was "Does evolution explain human nature?" [link] Personally, I was most impressed by the essay of primatologist Frans De Waal, of whose fantastic books Our Inner Ape and Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved I am very fond.

But I wanted to take some time to address parts of Francis Collins' essay, most notably because in his essay he addresses some of my criticisms of his book — namely, that he was merely "shifting the goalposts" and celebrating the beauty of science where it has solved certain mysteries, and celebrating the beauty of religion where science has yet to give us clear answers.

The link to the full article in PDF form can be found here, and I do recommend reading the whole thing (and the other essays available). I'll simply be responding to the parts I feel are most relevant to my critique of his book.

Scientists who share my view do not see evolution as incompatible with the Bible, and we are puzzled and distressed that so many modern-day Christians insist on an ultra-literal reading of Genesis, when thoughtful believers down through the centuries have concluded that this story of God's plan for creation was never intended to be read as a scientific textbook. We see science as the way to understand the awesome nature of God’s creation and as a powerful method for answering the "how" questions about our universe. But we also see that science is powerless to answer the fundamental "why" questions, such as "Why is there something instead of nothing?," "Why am I here?," and "Why should good and evil matter?"

On the contrary, science can do something much more profound than purport to answer such questions: it can tell us whether such questions are even valid to begin with. Perhaps the problem is not that the answers are elusive, but that we are asking the wrong questions. The important question science begs us to ask is, "How do we know what we claim to know?" The problem with Collins' position ("We see science as the way to understand the awesome nature of God’s creation")is that he assumes the existence of God and the truthfulness of his religious claims as postulates. Thus every mystery that science unveils is evidence of his God, and his God is evident in every mystery science unveils. He fails to explain why he is making such metaphysical assumptions in the first place.

Let's focus on this last question. One of the most notable characteristics of humanity, across centuries, cultures, and geographic locations, is a universal grasp of the concept of right and wrong and an inner voice that calls us to do the right thing. This is often referred to as the moral law. We may not always agree on what behaviors are right (which is heavily influenced by culture), but we generally agree that we should try to do good and avoid evil. When we break the moral law (which we do frequently, if we are honest with ourselves), we make excuses, only further demonstrating that we feel bound by the moral law in our dealings with others.

I don't want to jump ahead of him too much, but Collins appears to be walking a strangely blurred line. He insists that we all have some grasp of "right and wrong" — which, in a sense, is true. But then he says that our beliefs about which behaviors are right are heavily influenced by culture. This is not a scientifically untenable position for one positing an evolutionary model of morality. As De Waal explains in his essay, we know that many of our behaviors are shared with primates — empathy, sympathy, reciprocity, self-awareness, even culture and social hierarchies. Yet we also know that social norms have the ability to shape our concept of acceptable behavior, even to the extent that, until the last century or two, slavery was commonplace across the globe. But Collins isn't positing an evolutionary model; he's trying to show that our moral intuitions are evidence of God's existence.

Evolutionary arguments, which ultimately depend on reproductive fitness as the overarching goal, may explain some parts of this human urge toward altruism, especially if self-sacrificing acts are done on behalf of relatives or those from whom you might expect some future reciprocal benefit. But evolutionary models universally predict the need for reflexive hostility to outside groups, and we humans do not seem to have gotten that memo. We especially admire cases in which individuals make sacrifices for strangers or members of outside groups: think of Mother Teresa, or Oskar Schindler, or the Good Samaritan.

His statement that "evolutionary models universally predict the need for reflexive hostility to outside groups" is patently untrue. While it's true that out-group hostility can sometimes serve in-group solidarity, our innate empathetic drive is not arbitrarily confined to members of our own in-groups. Why should it be? To be reflexively hostile would impede our ability to cooperate with others who may greatly benefit our survival and well-being, or even our ability form in-groups in the first place. It's also quite a ridiculous characterization of the animal kingdom, in which countless animals — primates in particular — function cooperatively in some respect with various out-groups. In any case, I feel that Collins greatly overestimating the peculiarities of human behavior, and greatly underestimating their roots in our evolutionary ancestors.

We should be skeptical of those who dismiss these acts of radical altruism as some sort of evolutionary misfiring. And if these noble acts are frankly a scandal to reproductive fitness, might they instead point in a different direction - toward a holy, loving, and caring God, who instilled the moral law in each of us as a sign of our special nature and as a call to relationship with the Almighty?

The first sentence is a reference to evolutionary models I mentioned briefly in my critique of The Language Of God, namely that acts of extreme selflessness may be an exaggerated or misdirected form of the same empathetic emotional responses that drive us toward more commonplace reciprocal altruism, reinforced by social norms that associate nobility with selfless charity (it should not be difficult to understand why such norms would be beneficial to any socially cooperative culture).

Collins' fatal error, though, is assuming that since evolution shapes our behavior and evolution is primarily concerned with reproductive fitness, that behavior that doesn't contribute to our survival and reproductive fitness would be disregarded by natural selection. We are simply much more complicated creatures than that. Natural selection has merely given us traits — instincts, emotional responses, pattern recognition, etc. — that improve our likelihood to survive and reproduce. Evolution gives no mind to the outcome of these traits. For example, we are excellent pattern-recognition animals, but we often make pattern-recognition errors — mistaking the wind for a voice, the random scattering of grill marks on a toasted cheese sandwich for a divine face, or a tumbling leaf for an animal. Pattern-recognition errors clearly do not contribute to our reproductive fitness, but our general ability to recognize patterns certainly does.

Moreover, extreme altruism toward out-groups may indeed have positive long-term effects on our survival by promoting a charitable culture in which the more fortunate among us offer aid to the less fortunate as well as fostering inter-group cooperation. Of course, we do not act with the foreknowledge of such outcomes, but our altruistic behavior is the product of an innate empathetic emotional response, not a logical algorithm.

The fallacious reasoning of his conclusion is all to easy to expose by simply substituting any other unfalsifiable hypothesis for "God": And if these noble acts are frankly a scandal to reproductive fitness, might they instead point in a different direction - toward a remarkable race of benevolent extra-dimensional aliens who created us, and who instilled the moral law in each of us as a sign of our special nature and as a call to relationship with them?

Do not get me wrong. I am not arguing that the existence of the moral law somehow proves God’s existence. Such proofs cannot be provided by the study of nature. And there is an inherent danger in arguing that the moral law points to some sort of supernatural intervention in the early days of human history; this has the flavor of a "God of the gaps" argument. After all, much still remains to be understood about evolution's influence on human nature. But even if radically altruistic human acts can ultimately be explained on the basis of evolutionary mechanisms, this would do nothing to exclude God’s hand. For if God chose the process of evolution in the beginning to create humans in imago Dei, it would also be perfectly reasonable for God to have used this same process to instill knowledge of the moral law.

The logical flaw here is identical to the previous paragraph: why should we assume that any of this is evidence of "God" and not any other of the infinite number of unfalsifiable hypotheses we can conjure in our imaginations?

A deeper question raised by this debate is the fundamental nature of good and evil. Does morality actually have any foundation? To be consistent, a committed atheist, who argues that evolution can fully account for all aspects of human nature, must also argue that the human urge toward altruism, including its most radical and self-sacrificial forms, is a purely evolutionary artifact. This forces the conclusion that the concepts of good and evil have no real foundation, and that we have been hoodwinked by evolution into thinking that morality provides meaningful standards of judgment. Yet few atheists seem willing to own up to this disturbing and depressing consequence of their worldview. On the contrary, the most aggressive of them seem quite comfortable pointing to the evil they see religion as having inspired. Isn’t that rather inconsistent?

This is really a throwback to the old "if there's no God, nothing means anything" canard. Collins is really asserting that if morality is purely the result of evolution, our standards of behavior are not rooted in absolute truths. To put it another way, if morality is an outcome of evolution, then there is no real "right" or "wrong"; these are merely descriptors we assign to behaviors we find acceptable or not.

And he's right, but for the wrong reasons: "right" and "wrong" are pliable concepts rooted in evolutionarily driven behavioral instincts and reinforced through social norms. Evolutionary models of morality give us a viewpoint that is neither mystically absolute nor wantonly relativistic, but integral to our survival, happiness, and prosperity.

Collins also fails to answer how, if such divine absolutes did exist, we might possibly know them in any objective way. As I mentioned at the outset, there is no methodology to the acquisition of religious knowledge. Special revelation, feelings, visions, voices, and so forth are not valid means of obtaining truth. That is the real power in science: not just to unravel mysteries of the world around us, but to hold us accountable to our claims of knowledge. Religion remains the greatest bastion of superstitious ignorance, where unsubstantiated claims about the nature of reality are not only unchallenged by the burden of evidence, but even celebrated as virtuous. Aren't we getting too big for those britches?

The Bible Compared to Common History

I was recently debating the validity of the Bible with someone when they presented the argument that as much is known about Jesus as about any significant historical figure. This person challenged me to explain how I could believe anything about, say, George Washington, if I didn't buy the historical veracity of Jesus Christ. He claimed that much was written about both of them, presumably from eye witness. So what's the difference? If we dismiss the Biblical accounts of Jesus, don't we have to discount historical accounts of anyone else?

This is a really, really bad argument for the historicity of Christianity, but even though I don't think it should need addressing, apparently it does. So here it goes:

1. The Nature of the Claim

If my friend told me, "I saw a tree today", I would probably believe him. I'd have a hard time thinking of reasons why my generally trustworthy friend would lie about something like that. I also know that trees are pretty much everywhere, and since I see trees every time I leave my apartment, I know that my friend is making a claim that is consistent with reality as I know it.

Now, if my friend said, "Today I uprooted a tree using the power of my mind," I would have grounds to be more skeptical. My friend might be trustworthy in general, but now he's making a claim that stands in stark contrast to reality as I know it. I've never seen anyone move anything at all with telekinesis, much less uproot a tree. Not only have I never personally observed it, but I've never heard of any verified cases of people doing such a thing. So even though my friend might generally be a reliable source of information, I'd probably want to see some proof of his telekinetic powers before I concluded anything other than that he is full of crap.

So, if I heard a historical account of a first-century Rabbi giving sermons and having followers in Israel, I would probably find it to be a reasonable claim. It may or may not be totally accurate or even true at all, but I know it's at least plausible because it is consistent with my knowledge of reality. It's common historical knowledge that there were lots of Rabbis around there during that time, preaching about the kinds of things Rabbis preached about.

But if someone tells me that a first century Rabbi not only preached his religion and had followers but walked on water, turned water into wine, raised the dead, and just happened to be God himself, well... those are quite a bit more far-fetched claims. I know that many people, including many people in my lifetime, have claimed (by themselves and by their followers) to be miracle healers (such as Benny Hinn or Sathya Sai Baba), liaisons between the living and dead (John Edward), prophets, seers, sages, and all other manner of metaphysical things. What plausible reason might I have to give Biblical claims any more credence than I do these people? This is especially a poignant question because while people like Benny Hinn and Sathya Sai Baba live in our modern, scientifically enlightened world, people in the first century had no such enlightenment. If modern people can be duped so easily, why should I believe that people of 2,000 years were somehow immune to such delusions? This is particularly relevant when one realizes that the gospels are not contemporaneous, but rather written decades after Jesus purportedly lived.

Carl Sagan famously said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." The story of Jesus might be true. But where's the evidence? What about the Biblical claims of Jesus is uniquely plausible?


2. Absolute truth

There's also an important difference in that if my friend says he saw a tree, I don't stake my life on it. I will likely assume it's true because my experiences tell me both that my friend is trustworthy and that his story is plausible.

Similarly, when we look at historical figures like George Washington, we are simply accepting what we have as the best evidence. It could be wrong, or inaccurate in parts. But if new evidence emerges to cause us to doubt certain claims made by or about George Washington, we can examine it critically on its own merits. We don't take our historical knowledge of George Washington to be absolute, infallible truth.

Christianity, however, makes just such a claim with regard to the historicity of Christ and the legitimacy of the Biblical accounts. Even if some more liberal Christians may accept that there may be historically inaccurate pieces here and there, most of the fundamental claims — that Jesus was born of a virgin, performed miracles, died on a cross, rose from the dead, and ascended to heaven — are absolute pillars of the faith. Christians are expected to accept that these mystical claims are absolutely and infallibly true. Christians could not imagine altering such major parts of the story, even if the evidence was overwhelming, because to do so would be to dismantle the pillars of the faith itself.



So there you have it: why it is perfectly reasonable to accept most of what we know about most historical figures while being fully legitimate to be skeptical of the Bible.

Francis Collins' "The Language of God" — A Critique

I received Francis Collins' The Language of God as a gift from my parents some time ago (I think it was for my birthday last year), and hearing the book mentioned in a debate I recently watched has provoked me to finally get around to writing a critique of this book.

Francis Collins holds a special place in the heart of modern believers because, in addition to being a devout Christian, he's also an esteemed scientist. Francis Collins headed the project that sequenced the human genome. He's certainly every bit as laudable in his field as someone like Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennet. Like Kenneth Miller, the evolutionary biologist who led the charge against Intelligent Design in the infamous Dover trial, Francis Collins believes that science and religion reinforce one another and are both integral to the human experience. This stands in stark contrast to someone like Dawkins, who argues that science and religion are inherently and irreconcilably in conflict.

So, I've read Collins' book. And, being that I'm still an atheist, I obviously didn't find it to be very persuasive. Not only do I think Collins fails to provide compelling evidence for belief in God (much less his specific god), but I think he also stands as a fine example of why Richard Dawkins is right — that science and religion are incompatible.

But first, credit where credit is due. Collins is no creationist. He's doesn't hawk Intelligent Design. He's a scientist, and he often states positions he knows may be troubling to some believers. As science unravels the mysteries of the world, those whose faith hinged on finding God's miracles in our ignorance are finding the pillars of their faith slowly eroding. Collins, however, views scientific enlightenment as a boon to faith — even a celebration of it. Everywhere he looks in nature, Collins sees evidence of God's divine hand. Unlike many Christians, Collins seems well aware that the complexity of natural things is not, in itself, evidence of God's existence.

But, Collins is also guilty of a sort of intellectual compartmentalization. While in many instances he seems to rebut the "God of the Gaps", I found him to be in many instances "shifting the goalposts" — that is, conceding and even celebrating that science has filled many gaps in our knowledge, while claiming God's hand as an explanatory device for many modern scientific mysteries.

After spending much of the book explaining why he finds anti-scientific religious fundamentalism, atheism and Intelligent Design to be untenable, Collins summarizes his beliefs with an argument that seemingly embraces both science and faith, which he calls "Theistic Evolution". The cornerstone of his arguments center on six major premises (page 200):

1. The universe came into being out of nothingness, approximately 14 billion years ago

2. Despite massive improbabilities, the properties of the universe appear to have been precisely tuned for life.

3. While the precise mechanism of the origin of life on earth remains unknown, once life arose, the process of evolution and natural selection permitted the development of biological diversity and complexity over very long periods of time.

4. Once evolution got under way, no special supernatural intervention was required.

5. Humans are part of this process, sharing a common ancestor with the great apes.

6. But humans are also unique in ways that deft evolutionary explanation and point to our spiritual nature. This includes the existence of the Moral Law (the knowledge of right and wrong) and the search for God that characterizes all human cultures throughout history.

Collins continues with the following summary:

God, who is not limited in space or time, created the universe and established natural laws that govern it. Seeking to populate this otherwise sterile universe with living creatures, God chose the elegant mechanism of evolution to create microbes, plants, and animals of all sorts. Most remarkably, God intentionally chose the same mechanism to give rise to special creatures who would have intelligence, a knowledge of right and wrong, free will, and a desire to seek fellowship with Him. He also knew these creatures would ultimately choose to disobey the Moral Law.

He goes on to briefly discuss why he believes in Christianity specifically, but I won't concern myself with those arguments for the time being. First, I'll take his arguments in the order which he presents them. Anyone familiar with atheist literature, including this blog, should not find any of Collins' arguments to be new.


1. The universe came into being out of nothingness, approximately 14 billion years ago

Like many theologians, Collins' finds the apparent "beginning" of the universe to be evidence of God's existence. But there are two major problems, both philosophical and scientific, with this position. Philosophically, the idea of the universe coming into being ex nihilo is just as problematic for the believer as the non-believer; the believer is simply postulating some sort of extrinsic, causal force and arbitrarily designating it as "God". The argument seems sensible enough if one already believes that God exists, but it does not provide plausible evidence for God's existence because it fails to prove that this causal factor must be God. Even if such an external causal force was necessary to bring the universe into existence, by what measure do we justify calling it "God"? It could be literally anything at all that our imaginations can conjure, all of them equally (im)plausible and unfalsifiable. Finally, such a cause is logically invalid — causality requires time (specifically linear time), and if the universe did not exist, time and causality would not exist either.

The second problem is that scientifically, the Big Bang is not the "beginning" of the universe, as it is often mischaracterized to be; it is the expansion of the universe from a finite point. Why the universe expanded as it did, why it is expanding at the rate that it is, the state of the universe prior to the Big Bang and the ultimate fate of the universe are all being intensely investigated by modern cosmologists. But the greater issue is that our mathematical models are so limited, and our knowledge of the universe so sorely incomplete (most notably with regard to a theory of quantum gravity), that we have no basis for making an assumption such as "the universe arose ex nihilo". Any reasonable person must simply concede that there is too much we don't know about the universe to draw conclusions about its nature.




2. Despite massive improbabilities, the properties of the universe appear to have been precisely tuned for life.

Collins is again guilty of "shifting the goalposts". He spends a great deal of the book debunking theological positions that the apparent design of biological life is evidence for the existence of God, but here he asserts that the apparent design of the universe itself is evidence for the existence of God. Of course, it could be evidence of anything at all — superintelligent aliens from another dimension who created our universe, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or anything else. Why should it be evidence of "God" alone?

The fine-tuning argument makes two broad assumptions: that the universe could be different, and that life could not form under different conditions. The former is entirely speculative; as per the previous argument, we have no basis to assume the universe arose "from" something else at all and thus was ever "tuned" to begin with. Perhaps, as the famous physicist Stephen Hawking postulates, the universe is neither created nor destroyed, but simply IS. And while it's true that life as we know it could not arise if certain laws were different, we also do not know what other variables might allow for some kind of life. If the universe were different, life might be different, but it might still exist. Popular secular author and physicist Victor Stenger has gone so far as to calculate a number of variables that would allow the universe to support life under different physical constants.[link]

Collins' statement about "massive improbabilities" is also fallacious. The probability of us being here is 100%. One cannot calculate probabilities backwards. And sheer improbability, no matter how great, must not be equivocated to impossibility. If I were to give someone a deck of cards and lay out the cards in some random order, the probability of any particular order is 1 in 10^68. And yet, we all know that some order had to arise.



3. While the precise mechanism of the origin of life on earth remains unknown, once life arose, the process of evolution and natural selection permitted the development of biological diversity and complexity over very long periods of time.

4. Once evolution got under way, no special supernatural intervention was required.

5. Humans are part of this process, sharing a common ancestor with the great apes.

These could probably be summarized under a single point instead of three. Being scientifically valid positions, I take no issue with them aside from the implication that supernatural intervention was no longer required only after evolution got under way. This seems like a rather arbitrary point. Why not say that no supernatural intervention was required after the Big Bang, or after the formation of the Sun? Perhaps Collins is again succumbing to a God of the Gaps reasoning, since the mechanism of abiogenesis is unknown, but the mechanism of evolution is well validated.



6. But humans are also unique in ways that deft evolutionary explanation and point to our spiritual nature. This includes the existence of the Moral Law (the knowledge of right and wrong) and the search for God that characterizes all human cultures throughout history.

There are two points worth addressing here that Collins believes count as evidence for the existence of God: the ubiquity of supernatural belief in human history, and the presence of cooperative moral ideals. But contrary to Collins' assumptions, neither of these factors defy evolutionary explanation; and even if they did, he is merely shifting the goalposts yet again. In these cases though, Collins seems to be a bit oblivious to the research in evolutionary biology and anthropology that gives us strong scientific explanations for these phenomena.


The search for God

Collins argues that the ubiquity of religion throughout human history seems to point to some greater spiritual need inherent within us. But there are more than a few problems with this line of reasoning.

Religion is to some degree ubiquitous, but nothing about doctrine or dogma is even remotely so. Many religions hold no idea of a Creator (the most well-known probably being Hinduism), instead postulating that the universe is infinite. Some religions have not even worshipped "gods" at all, but ancestral spirits, animals, or forces of nature. Those that do believe in gods may believe in one god, many gods, deistic gods, theistic gods, or pantheistic gods. There is a profound lack of homogeneity among religious practices the world over. This suggests that religion may not be the product of an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent Creator, but rather an evolutionary byproduct of our cognition.

All modern animals, particularly humans, are pattern-seeking animals. We are especially skilled at facial recognition (we see faces on Mars and the Virgin Mary on toasted cheese sandwiches), and recognizing goal-oriented behavior patterns. We are much more likely to err on the side of caution, even to the point of imposing patterns that are not there. We are, it is often said, more likely to mistake a shadow for a burglar than a burglar for a shadow. We are more likely to mistake a leave tumbling across the road for a scurrying animal than to mistake a scurrying animal for a leaf.

There are two mistakes a pattern-seeking animal can make: we can fail to recognize a pattern when there is one, or we can impose a pattern when there is not one. Due to the potentially deadly consequences of the former, it is no surprise that we are prone to the latter.

If a person prays for a safe trip before driving cross-country and arrives safely at their destination, they will likely attribute their pray for keeping them safe. A gambler who snaps his fingers before winning a game of blackjack may begin to associate finger-snapping with good luck and develop a superstitious habit. But we know that car accidents and Blackjack odds are statistically predictable phenomena.

It is no surprise then to find humans attributing divine intent to random processes of nature, or to believe they have seen spirits, ghosts or gods. A significant degree of supernatural beliefs can simply be reduced to pattern-recognition errors. These pattern-recognition errors also served a function as a sort of failed science. They purported to explain a host of unknowns long before the scientific method came along with empirical methodology that could falsify or validate claims about reality. Viewed in this context, the ubiquity of supernatural belief seems an inevitable outcome of our evolution, not evidence of God's existence.



Morality

Collins believes that what he calls the Moral Law defies evolutionary explanation. Aside from being an obvious "God of the Gaps" argument, it's simply wrong — there are in fact numerous evolutionary models to explain our sense of "right and wrong".

Humans, like virtually all modern animals, are necessarily cooperative, group-living, interdependent creatures. None of us has the luxury of moral autonomy; our physical health, emotional well-being and our very survival is wholly dependent on our ability to live cooperatively with one another. Nor is our innate capacity for empathy by any means unique; it has been extensively documented in creatures ranging from primates to rats. For our species, as with so many others, cooperative group living is not a choice — it's a survival strategy.

I imagine that Collins would readily accept that evolutionary models could explain reciprocal altruism — i.e., "tit for tat"; I help you, you help me. But can evolutionary models explain the actions of someone who helps others with out regard to to their own well-being, or even to their own detriment? Indeed, a bevy of cultural forces (norms that extols the virtues of giving) coupled with an exaggerated or even misdirected application of our innate empathetic responses may serve to explain such behavior. It's important to understand that our charitable actions are driven not by reason, but by emotion. If we see the image of a starving child on TV, we will inevitably experience an empathetic emotional response. For many, this response will not be powerful enough to provoke check-writing. But for some, their empathetic response will be overwhelming, and quenched only by taking action.

Of course, it's beyond the scope of this blog to detail scientific models for the explanation of morality. But we seem to be much farther along than Collins seems either aware or willing to believe.



Cover to cover

I found Collins' book ultimately unpersuasive because in literally every case, he merely shifts the goalposts of the God of the Gaps. Perhaps evolutionary models, if they don't already do so, can account for our moral impulse with immaculate precision. Perhaps discoveries in physics in the next centuries will unravel mysteries of the universe we never imagined being capable of understanding. Many such hypotheses — such as String Theory or Stephen Hawking's "No Boundary Universe" — would undoubtedly be discomforting for believers if empirically validated to the degree of Darwin's theory of evolution. An enclosed universe without a beginning or an end, humans whose behavior is solely the sociocultural byproduct of their inner ape... these are the kinds of scientific discoveries that seem more plausible every day, and should further cause us to ponder what value, what real knowledge, faith in supernatural deities can really offer in the wake of such tangible enlightenment.





Addendum: A misrepresentation of Richard Dawkins


I feel compelled to digress just a little and address Collins' objections to Richard Dawkins and his popular atheist polemic The God Delusion. In Chapter 7, entitled "Option 1: Atheism and Agnosticism", Collins accuses Dawkins of setting up a number of straw man arguments, mischaracterizing faith, and possessing a "vitriolic personal agenda". He summarizes Dawkins' arguments in three categories:

"First, [Dawkins] argues that evolution fully accounts for biological complexity and the origin of humankind, so there is no need for God. While this argument rightly relieves God of the responsibility for multiple acts of special creation for each species on the planet,it certainly does not disprove the idea that God worked out His creative plan by means of evolution."

That's true of course, but that's not Dawkins' argument. He does not at any point assert that evolution disproves the existence of God. Dawkins asserts that evolution conclusively disproves Creationism and Intelligent Design, a point on which Collins agrees. But what Dawkins is really talking about is the "God of the Gaps"; that science has continually eroded theological ideas by providing material explanations for things once thought to be solely in the domain of the supernatural or unexplainable, and in the process has made God continually less relevant. He is arguing that when science scores points for human knowledge, theists simply reposition the goals. Now that we have a sound scientific theory to explain the complexity of all living things, theologians have in many instances given up on the argument that "apparent design" proves divine design with regard to biological life, but then resort to the same fallacious reasoning when examining, say, cosmology and the origins of the universe.

I'd also like to add that while Dawkins' argument rightly relieves The Flying Spaghetti Monster of the responsibility for multiple acts of special creation for each species on the planet,it certainly does not disprove the idea that The Flying Spaghetti Monster worked out His creative plan by means of evolution.


"Dawkins second argument is another straw man: that religion is antirational... while rational argument can never conclusively prove the existence of God, serious thinkers from Augustine to Aquinas to C. S. Lewis have demonstrated that a belief in God is intensely plausible."

Dawkins is certainly well aware that many intelligent people have attempted to construct logical syllogisms to provide evidence for the existence of God. Given that a good chunk of The God Delusion is spent addressing arguments such as the Cosmological Argument and the Ontological Argument, I think it's disingenuous to suggest that Dawkins is equivocating faith with stupidity. What Dawkins is really exploring is the issue of knowledge itself — how do we really know what we claim to know? If, as Collins suggests, rational knowledge can never prove God's existence, than how are we to know with any reasonable certainty whether God exists at all?

"Dawkins' third objection is that great harm has been done in the name of religion... But evil acts committed in the name of religion in no way impugn the truth of the faith."

Dawkins spends a great deal of time pointing out the consequences of celebrating irrational thought, but he does not equivocate this to be evidence of religion's falsehood. Dawkins' position on this matter should be quite clear, since he's often stated that what are often touted as benefits of religion hold no bearing on the validity of its claims about reality. Collins' error is that he seems to presume that religious "truth" is a de facto property of reality, and should not be scrutinized with the same vigor as any other scientific claim.

5 Questions Every Intelligent Atheist Must Answer... Answered

I've seen a million of these little lists, but this one was different... because it's a video, not just a list of questions. The author actually takes the time to explain why each question is valid, and despite demonstrating an elementary misunderstanding of some basic scientific and logical principles, he does a good job explaining why he's skeptical of an atheistic world view. So, without further ado, here is the video, followed by my answers:



Question #1: You accuse Christians of using "God of the Gaps" to explain things we don't know; but aren't atheists just using "chance" in the exact same way?

No, we're not. First, it's important to understand why the "God of the Gaps" fallacy is in fact a logical fallacy. If we were living in the 11th century and I said, "We have no scientific, rational, logical explanation for why objects fall to the ground — it must be because God pulls them to the ground!", I would be guilty of creating a false dilemma, saying that only God could explain such a thing. But why "God"? Why not, for example, super-intelligent alien beings from a parallel dimension? The Flying Spaghetti Monster is an atheist polemic device used to illustrate this precise fallacy. How would you know it was "God", and not the Flying Spaghetti Monster (or any other arbitrary thing you can imagine)? "God did it" is not a falsifiable hypothesis. There is no way to prove or disprove the "theory" that God pulls things to the ground.

Probability, on the other hand, works on mathematical formulas and observable, empirical evidence that can be proved or disproved. "Chance" and "randomness" are really just colloquialisms that describe varying degrees of probability. Furthermore, atheists are not suggesting that "chance" in itself accounts for anything at all as if it were some mystical universal force of causality, but rather that the laws of science allow for varying degrees of probability within certain parameters. You accept that there is a certain statistical probability of being in a fatal collision every time you drive your car; that doesn't mean that chance itself causes fatal collisions.

The God of the Gaps argument is simply the assertion of an arbitrarily chosen unfalsifiable hypothesis when no falsifiable hypothesis is known. So, for example, while someone may assert that God created life simply because the precise chain of chemical reactions required to create the first nucleic acids is not yet known, it is fully valid to accept that, given the laws of chemistry, there is a reasonable probability of nucleic acids arising from certain chemical reactions that would have taken place in primordial conditions. Meanwhile, there is absolutely no way to prove or disprove that God instantaneously defied the laws of chemistry and created life. Even if such a magical event occurred, maybe it was the Invisible Pink Unicorn or extra-dimensional aliens. How would we prove it was "God"?



Question #2: Why Should There Be Something Instead of Nothing?

The question assumes that "why" is a valid and necessary component of rational understanding. But let's take it back a step: Why should there be a God? Why doesn't God need to be created? Invoking God as a creator creates an infinite regress — it begs the question, "what created God?" If one can assert that God simply "is" and does not need to be created, they are simply arbitrarily stopping the infinite regress at "God"; it would be just as easy, and just as logical, to say that the thing that created God does not need to be created, and so on ad infinitum. Why not save oneself the infinite regress and simply assume, until evidence proves otherwise, that the universe itself simply "is"?

And, point of fact, the idea of a universe that simply "is" is an idea supported with some empirical evidence in modern theoretical physics, as described by Stephen Hawking in his famous book A Brief History of Time.

Sub-questions:
"Also, the world seems to have been fixed, somehow, to make life possible."

Consider that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. That 99.9% of every species that has ever lived has died out. That Earth can support life on some of its surface some of the time, but that every species, including our own, is on a knife's edge of survival. Consider that in a few hundred million years, there won't be enough oxygen left in the atmosphere to support life on Earth. Consider that in another 5 billion years or so, our planet will be consumed by the sun as it runs out of hydrogen and expands into a massive, cooler Red Giant.

Now, consider that life can arise in the mostly unlikely of places: bacteria can survive in hydrochloric acid; that creatures live in the sea by hydrothermal vents in complete darkness, extreme heat and immense pressure. From ExtremeScience.com:

Scientists have gone down to explore and study these deep ocean hydrothermal vents and were completely surprised to find the areas immediately around the vents teeming with abundant life. The temperature of the water coming out of the vents has been measured at the source and it varies from just 68 degrees to as much as 600 degrees Fahrenheit. At sea level, water reaches the boiling point at 225 degrees Fahrenheit, but down in the deep ocean around hydrothermal vents where the water can reach well over the boiling point, the water coming out of the vents doesn’t boil! What prevents the scalding hot seawater from boiling (turning into vapor) is the extreme hydrostatic pressure of all the overlying water. What surprised scientists was that there was an entire ecosystem, a community of diverse life forms, absolutely thriving in conditions that were previously thought to be inhospitable to any kind of life.

The point is, the Earth is not adapted to us. We, and all life, are adapted to Earth. It may be exceedingly improbable that life like ours would arise. But clearly, it's quite possible, and probable enough to have happened.

"Biological life itself bears the marks itself of intelligent design."

Biological life bears the mark of genetic adaptation and natural selection. The notion that it was crafted by an ethereal intelligence is unfalsifiable.



Question #3: Where do you get your morals from?

Where do you get your syntax from? Sheesh. Talk about unnecessary prepositions. Seriously though. There are two things worth addressing here: one is the biological and sociological foundation of moral behavior; and the other is the implication that "God" accounts for moral order and is, in some way, the source and guiding force of this order.


Moral behavior did indeed evolve as an adaptive mechanism. As Frans De Waal said in his book Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved, free and equal people never existed. We are and have always been bonded, interdependent and unequal (note: this is "unequal" in a sense of biological fitness, not in a sense of moral value). For us, as with millions of other species, cooperative group living is not a choice but a survival strategy. None of us have the luxury of moral autonomy because we are inexorably dependent on our ability to cooperate with one another for our physical and emotional well-being, and indeed our very survival as a species.

So, that may be where morals "come from", but as the author says, morality is a judgment about how we "ought" to behave, not merely a description of past behavior. The atheist indeed has no infallible, absolute source of morality — but neither does the believer. Our ideas about how we ought to behave are rooted in our biology, but evolve through complex social norms — what Richard Dawkins describes as the "shifting moral zeitgeist." We do not derive our morals "from" some external, ethereal source; rather, our moral norms evolve through millenia of cooperative group living.

There is perhaps no finer example of this shifting moral zeitgeist than the Bible itself. By modern standards, slavery is widely regarded as a crime against humanity. But in the Bible, slavery is not only condoned, but commissioned, and slaves are dehumanized to the point of being mere property. In the Bible, a woman is obligated to marry a man who rapes her. God commands acts of genocide against entire cities, and only virgin women are to be spared, kept as loot.

Moral behavior has changed not because of religion, but often despite it. What we call "morality" is ultimately a sociological outgrowth of emotionally driven behavioral impulses that are biologically hard-wired through evolution and natural selection. It's beyond the scope of this blog to discuss the sociological mechanisms of the evolution of moral norms. I'll provide a reading list at the end of this blog and include some books that shed light on the issue.


The other notable issue though is the implication that only God can be the arbiter of our morality. Here's the problem: God is invisible, and does not speak to people collectively. If someone claims God spoke to them, we pretty much just have to take them at their word. No one, not even Christians (all 33,000+ denominations of them), can agree on exactly what God is or what God wants. So even if you think God bestows moral guidance upon us, we still have to talk with one another.



Question #4: How Did Morals Evolve?

Firstly, there are a great many books written by evolutionary biologists on the evolution of morality. I will include some of my favorites in the reading list at the end of this blog. Explaining the mechanisms of moral evolution is beyond the scope of this blog and frankly not something I am qualified to do, being that I'm not actually an evolutionary biologist. Instead, I'd like to address some of the fallacies in the description of the question, namely this:

There is something in us that is self-consciously aware of the process of evolution, that understands what the goal of evolution is — survival of our own species — and instructs us through our conscience to fulfill the optimal conditions for our survival."

As I stated earlier, what we call "morality" is ultimately a sociological outgrowth of emotionally driven behavioral impulses that are biologically hard-wired through evolution and natural selection. We are not consciously aware of these impulses; for example, if we see a child standing in a busy intersection, our instinct will be to rush to the child's rescue. We do not stand there and rationalize the pros and cons of various possible outcomes, but act instinctively and impulsively. Our empathetic emotional responses are hard-wired by natural selection.

"There are two cavemen in neighboring villages. One kills the other in cold blood. We're supposed to believe that he feels guilt because such an act ultimately undermines his own survival?"

Nothing about evolutionary and sociological models of morality suggest anything of the sort. Firstly, it's quite an assumption to assume he would feel guilt; many people — sociopaths — feel no such empathy. But empathy itself is indeed hardwired in our biology, and integral to our ability to cooperate with one another and thus benefit our survival. (The evolution of empathy is discussed in numerous books I will provide in the list.) If our murderous cavemen felt guilt, it would be because his empathetic instincts — the same ones that have been invaluable assets in our survival as a species — caused an emotional response to his behavior. It is also likely that an empathetic response is reinforced by the culture at large, further compounding the feeling of "guilt".

"In the rest of the animal kingdom, killing the opposition seems to secure just the opposite."

I hate to be crass, but this demonstrates an absolutely befuddling ignorance of animal behavior. Virtually all modern animals — primates in particular — are gregarious, cooperative, interdependent creatures that have, in countless studies, displayed emotional responses consistent with our own empathetic instincts. Wolves and lions travel in packs. Primates live in communities. All such animals share resources and protect one another. Where on earth did our author get this preposterous idea that animals benefit from randomly killing each other? Survival of the fittest applies to groups, not merely individuals.



Question #5: Can nature generate complex organisms in the sense of originating it, when previously there was none?

The theory of evolution explains the diversity and complexity of biological organisms. It's not my, nor anyone else's, job to educate our author on how evolution works as there are innumerable resources available to inquisitive minds.

Evolution is not, however, the theory of the origin of life. That is abiogenesis. Again, it's beyond my qualifications and the scope of this blog to explain how abiogenesis works. A couple of points are worth mentioning though. Firstly, if the foundation for one's faith rests upon the notion that science will never find a theory that fully explains the exact sequence of chemical reactions that led to the first biological organisms, I would say that such faith is on precarious grounds indeed. Science has a remarkable track record of "filling the gaps". After all, that is precisely what science attempts to do! And secondly, while scientists are busy researching falsifiable hypotheses about the origins of life, simply asserting that "God did it" is wholly unfalsifiable and arbitrary. We might as well assert that the Flying Spaghetti Monster did it.





Wrapping it up...

This video reinforces what, in my mind, is the core difference between a blind believer and a skeptic: the ability to critically examine one's own ideas. The author seems to gain a sense of contentment, for example, from the fact that the theory of abiogenesis is incomplete or that we do not yet have a full understanding of the origin of the universe. To paraphrase Richard Dawkins, believers and skeptics both love the gaps, but for different reasons. Believers love them because they seem like a nice place to put "God did it". Skeptics, however, love the gaps because it's an opportunity to learn more about our world. When a skeptic sees a gap in science — such as the origin of the universe or the origin of life — the conversation is just beginning. When a believer sees a gap, the conversation is over.


"I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world." - Richard Dawkins



Further reading:

1. Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved by Frans De Waal

2. The Blind Watchmaker: How the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a World Without Design by Richard Dawkins

3. Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong by Marc Hauser

4. The Naked Ape Trilogy by Desmond Morris

5. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

While I'm on the subject...

I liked Eddie Current's blog, but there was something else that caught my attention the other day. There's a story on CNN titled, "Former fundamentalist 'debunks' Bible" (view it here). It's about a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who goes around saying things like:

Doctrines such as the divinity of Jesus and heaven and hell are not based on anything Jesus or his earlier followers said.

At least 19 of the 27 books in the New Testament are forgeries.

Believing the Bible is infallible is not a condition for being a Christian.
No one accepts everything in the Bible. Everyone picks and chooses.

There's no proof Jesus physically rose from the dead, and the resurrection stories contradict one another.

Basically this story is being published because there's a mild buzz about religion with the release of the movie "Angels & Demons". The article even references Dan Brown. This guy says he's agnostic, which is fine (I like to call myself a "militant agnostic" — I don't know and you don't know either!). And I agree with some of his points, of course. But while I'm all for debunking the Bible, this is a great example of how not to do it.

Like, for example, I think a lot of Christians would agree that Biblical inerrancy is not a prerequisite for Christianity. Only total fucktards with no grasp of logic believe in Biblical inerrancy.

It's also obvious that every believer cherry-picks the Bible. Nobody has bumper stickers with Old Testaments scriptures where God tells people to commit genocide, subjugate women or beat slaves. That stuff is, ya know, immoral, even though it was like totally okay when God said it was. Anything's okay if you have a good enough reason, like God surely did.

But I digress... the real poopstink of the whole thing is that he just gives the Bible too much credit as a historically valid document· Yes, the New Testament Bible stories contain numerous historical errors and contradict one another. But when he says things like, "I think some of the disciples had visions," he's actually making the assumption that the stories in the Bible have any factual credibility. Someone like Jesus probably did exist, but the Jesus of the Bible is a work of fiction, and his "twelve disciples" likely are as well. How do I know this? Because there is no contemporaneous evidence that Jesus existed. Zero. None. Nadda. The gospels were (supposedly) written decades after this guy lived. They are not, as often claimed, "eyewitness accounts". If that were true, then how would such detailed accounts of Jesus' solitairy endeavors be possible? And considering the kinds of ridiculous crap people believe in today, from Benny Hinn to John Edward to Sathya Sai Baba, are we really supposed to believe that people living in a pre-scientific age two millenia ago were somehow impervious to such flights of fancy?

Bottom line: The best way to treat the Bible is like any other cuturally relevant work of fiction, not as something whose substance needs debate or clarification.

Another "Proof" of God refuted (Eddie Current)

Copied and pasted from Eddie Current's blog, which can be viewed here. Eddie Current, btw, is the guy who does some pretty entertaining satirical videos like this one. Enjoy.


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A couple of people have sent me a fictional story about two Christians in a philosophy class confronting their atheist professor. (Maybe you've seen it; apparently it's been circulating by e-mail for years. A version can be found here.*) The story, which frankly is an embarrassment to anyone who has sat in a philosophy class or studied science, is an elaborate take on one argument for theism that I see over and over. Basically: "Yes, it may be true that we cannot see God, but what about magnetism, or electrons, or the wind? We can't see those, either. And what about love, or hope, or compassion, or any kind of thought -- not only can we not see them, but in addition science can't detect them, can't explain exactly what they are or how they work. If God doesn't exist, then the wind, hope, and love all must not exist, either."

This idea was touched on in the film "Contact," in the scene where Ellie Arroway demands proof of God, and Palmer Joss responds by asking her to prove that she loved her father.

If you're inclined to believe, it's fairly convincing. Surely, there are intangible things that actually do exist, so of course God is like that, too. But the argument introduces two classes of entities: merely invisible things, and states of mind, and it conflates the two classes into one class, the assumption being that God must be in that class as well.

Let's think of some merely invisible things: Air. Wind. Magnetism. Radiation. Low-voltage electricity. Hydrogen gas. "You can't see any of them, right?" Perhaps, but why the sudden emphasis on human vision? All of those things, and any other real-but-invisible thing you can think of, have effects that can be directly observed. Air, when it circulates as wind, makes leaves move. Magnetism affects a compass. Radiation can be picked up with a Geiger counter, electricity with a voltmeter. Hydrogen burns when ignited along with oxygen. Unlike acts of God, these things are all 100% predictable, testable, and repeatable; there is no case where hydrogen is not flammable or a magnetic field doesn't affect a compass. Basically, for all real-but-invisible things we know about, we have some kind of device or process that will reliably detect their presence. So, could we come up with a device that detects the presence of an invisible "God field"? Perhaps -- but if we do, atheists will no longer have much of a defensible position. To date, such a device hasn't been invented, so atheists remain atheists.

The other class in the argument comprises human states of mind: emotions, feelings, thoughts. I'm prepared to say that hope and compassion didn't exist on Earth in, say, the Devonian period 350 million years ago. Are theists prepared to say God didn't, either? I doubt it. But if they are, then we are in complete agreement. To me God seems to be a state of the human mind in the same way as love, anger, or hope are: a subjective phenomenon confined exclusively to the self. I have no issue with that kind of God whatsoever. (Just don't tell me He caused the Steelers to beat the Cardinals.)

The most likely counter-objection to what I'm saying would be something like, "Well, God is more like a state of mind than a mere invisible thing, except that He exists independent of humans, existed before humans, and will exist after humans." Well, fine, but that kind of destroys the analogy between God and fleeting, human states of mind, doesn't it?

If God exists, then He exists in His own class separate from merely invisible things and states of mind. That's the God that the theist must argue for.



* The most egregious misstatement in the story is, "According to the rules of empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your God doesn't exist." There's a subtle but critical distinction between having a position (saying something) and not having a position (saying nothing). "Science" -- and by the way it's quite a stretch to identify science in such singular, authoritarian terms, as in "the Catholic Church" or "the Republican National Committee" -- is unable to take any position whatsoever on the existence of God.

Why do I write this blog?

I started this blog way back in 2006. I've dabbled with it with varying degrees of passion, and have now accumulated just shy of 50 posts. I haven't ever bothered with even a basic hit counter, so I really have no idea how many people read this blog. I know I'm not exactly revolutionizing the web here, but that doesn't really bother me. But I have to admit, I do sometimes question myself and wonder why the hell I bother writing all this jazz. I mean, I am really, really proud of, for example, the post "The Problem of Suffering". I wish a million people could read it. But nowhere near a million people have read this blog, and it's a safe bet that will never happen. So why do it? Why do I spend all the time writing all this stuff?

Well, I do it partly because I really just enjoy writing. And I do it for my own edification. When I organize my thoughts by writing them down, I feel like I get a better grasp on how to articulate my beliefs, which comes in handy when I'm having actual conversations with others about the subject — which, shockingly, does happen from time to time.

I've considered writing a book. In fact I have drafts of a few different books, with some material taken from this blog. But I feel like an atheistic polemic would be a little too easy. I mean, there are already tons of excellent books about atheism, like The God Delusion, The End of Faith, and God is Not Great. I'm a pretty regular guy who earns his living as a personal trainer. I can't imagine that too many publishers would be jonesing to hear what I have to say about atheism when there are guys from Oxford writing books about it. If I ever do write a book about atheism, it would have to have one hell of a unique angle and it would have to be immaculately researched. I have some good ideas, but it would be a shit-ton of work to follow through on for something that would probably have a pretty slim chance of getting published, and frankly I just haven't been passionate enough or optimistic enough about it to make it happen.

I have thought of lots of other angles, including starting a website and even shooting a documentary (Bill Maher totally stole my idea!). I may still do something like that. We'll see. But for now, I just find this to be a nice catharsis. I am genuinely concerned about the impact religion has on the world. While it's true that a lot of times it motivates people to do good, it's also extremely divisive. People kill each other over it, battle scientific progress over it, fight with their families and in-laws over it, and use it as a wedge to reign down on the civil rights of others. I think that science and reason can offer us better solutions to the kinds of dilemmas humankind has traditionally turned to religion to solve. So even if this blog is mostly just me shouting in my own cave, I take a little comfort in the hope that just maybe, someone will walk by and listen in.

The Jesus Myth

Note: The following is a blog I drafted ages ago, but never finished. I have a number of these and decided to go ahead and publish them in their unfinished form. Enjoy.

Something has been on my brain, kind of randomly: Jesus. Not the religion that worships him and eats him, but the idea of Jesus as a historical figure. Some non-Christians figure Jesus was probably just a nice, charismatic dude who shopped at Journeys and played guitar in Fleet Floxes, and that all the divine parlor tricks are just myths. But I take the more confrontational and factual position that Jesus, at least in the way he's described in the Bible, did not exist at all. He is a complete work of fiction.

The only records of Jesus' existence are the books we see in the Bible. A lot of people, like Francis Collins (the human genome guy), think that the four gospels are eyewitness accounts of Jesus' life. But there are two really, really big problems with that. The first is that even by the quesitonable standards of early-church scholarship, the gospels were all written decades after Jesus purportedly lived. The second is that they are simply not written like eyewitness accounts; there are countless times when Jesus wanders off alone, and then we're told exactly what he and God (or Satan) said to each other.

There's a stunning lack of contemporaneous evidence that Jesus ever existed — in fact there is exactly zero. There are no collaborating documents of Jesus's life anywhere. And here was a guy who, by any standard, was pretty amazing. He performed amazing miracles before thousands of people and was persecuted by the Roman Empire, but there are no contemporaneous records of his existence at all?

But there's another simple, and very obvious problem with the accounts of Jesus, which is the fact that virtually his entire life is absent from any kind of recorded history at all, much less contemporaneous records. Does it not ever bother Christians that people were supposedly there for his birth (which was suspiciously similar to the Egyptian god Horus), and then nobody seems to know what he did for the next 30 years? Does it not bother them that the New Testament is loaded with internal condradictions? That claims the gospels make, such as Herod ordering all firstborn killed or that he performed a census, lack any corroborating contemporaneous evidence?

Of course, I can't prove that Jesus didn't exist. One website attempting to address the historicity of the census said that just because there isn't any extra-Biblical evidence doesn't mean it isn't true. Well duh. But it means that the case for it being true is very, very weak, because you're just believing it because it's in the Bible. Using the Bible to verify that Jesus existed is sort of like using Gone With The Wind to verify that Scarlett O'Hara existed. I mean, the Civil War really did happen, right? Many of the places and events described were described accurately. Not only that, but there are multiple accounts of the events — a book and a movie!

Consider one last thing, an argument I have to credit to Sam Harris. Consider that right now, the mystic Sathya Sai Baba has thousands upon thousands of followers. People believe he performs Jesus-caliber miracles, some of which are unimpressively documented on YouTube. People believe that Benny Hinn can channel the power of Jesus to cure the blind and the crippled. People believe that John Edward can talk to their deceased loved ones. And people believe this stuff today, in our scientific and technologically advanced age, where we can pretty much prove that those guys are full of shit. And yet we're supposed to believe that people 2,000 years ago, retelling fantastic events decades after they happened, are reliably accurate?

Christians use a kind of special pleading, where they disregard all the countless other stories of gods and miracles as myth, but embrace Christianity's as infallible truth. At least as an atheist, I'm an equal-opportunity blasphemer. I think all religions are stupid and false. It's just a damn shame that in our modern world, it's accepted and even respected to believe first and ask questions later. Being skeptical is good. Demanding plausible evidence for extraordinary claims is good. Disregarding those things for your own comfort... not so good.