Misusing scientific terms is popular within some Christian circles, but perhaps it’s simply inadvertent. Let’s clear up a few terms, starting within mathematics and logic.

• An axiom or postulate is a proposition (statement) taken as a given.
• A lemma is an intermediate proposition or stepping stone rather than the final result, which is a theorem.
• A corollary follows readily from a theorem—it’s often simply another way of stating the theorem.

Lemmas, theorems, and corollaries are all proven, but proofs are only possible within mathematics and logic, not within science.

By contrast, all scientific statements are provisional. A scientific hypothesis is a testable explanation for a phenomenon. It explains and predicts. Once a hypothesis has proven itself, it becomes a scientific theory.

A scientific law is a description of a natural phenomenon, often an equation. Laws and theories are both well-tested, widely or universally accepted within the field, and falsifiable. The key thing to remember is that a theory explains while a law describes.

For example, germ theory, quantum theory, and the theory of evolution are explanations. Boyle’s law, Ohm’s law, and Newton’s law of gravity are all descriptions (and are all equations).

To see the difference, consider Ohm’s Law, I = V/R. This is a description of how electrical current, voltage, and resistance are related. Why it works this way is not part of Ohm’s Law.

A common misconception is that scientific hypotheses mature into theories, which mature to facts or laws. Instead, facts (the observations from an experiment, for example) lead to hypotheses (a plausible but immature explanation), which lead to theories (well-evidenced explanations). In the category of scientific explanations, a theory is as good as it gets and it doesn’t graduate to become a law.

It’s a little wrong to say a tomato is a vegetable;
it’s very wrong to say it’s a suspension bridge.
— Stuart on Big Bang Theory

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 2/27/12.)

Photo credit: Marvin (PA)

Does God exist? I don’t think so. But can we prove that?

Proving that God doesn’t exist—or, more generally, that no supernatural beings exist—seems impossible. An omniscient being wanting to remain hidden would succeed. That’s a game of hide and seek we could never win.

Looking for parallels

To see what we can say about God, let’s look for parallels in how we handle other beings not acknowledged by science—Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, space aliens, leprechauns, fairies, or Merlin the shape-shifting wizard. Any evidence in favor of these beings is sketchy, far too little to conclude that they exist. Do we reserve judgment? Do we say that the absence of evidence is no evidence of absence? Of course not. There’s plenty of evidence (or lack of evidence) to make a strong provisional case. As a result, we typically say that these things don’t exist.

While we’re at it, note the error in the adage “absence of evidence is no evidence of absence.” Of course it’s evidence! Absence of evidence is no proof of absence, but it can certainly be strong evidence. If you’ve spent five minutes poking through that drawer looking for your keys and still can’t find them, that’s pretty strong evidence of their absence.

Examples in the animal kingdom

Note also the difference in the claim that Bigfoot doesn’t exist versus the claim that God doesn’t exist. Science has been surprised by new animals in the past. The gorilla, coelacanth, okapi, and giant squid were all surprises, and Bigfoot could be another. After all, Bigfoot is just another animal and we know of lots of animals. But the very category of the Christian claim is a problem because science recognizes zero supernatural beings.

As definitively as science says that Bigfoot doesn’t exist, how much more definitively can science say that God doesn’t exist when the category itself is hypothetical? Perhaps more conclusively, what about the claim that a god exists who desperately wants to be known to his creation, as is the case for the Christian god?

Let’s be careful to remember the limitations on the claim, “God doesn’t exist.” Science is always provisional. Any claim could be wrong—from matter being made of atoms to disease being caused by germs. Austin Cline observed that a scientific statement “X doesn’t exist” is shorthand for the more precise statement,

This alleged entity has no place in any scientific equations, plays no role in any scientific explanations, cannot be used to predict any events, does not describe any thing or force that has yet been detected, and there are no models of the universe in which its presence is either required, productive, or useful.

The Christian may well respond to science’s caution, “Well, if you’re not certain, I am!” But, of course, confidence isn’t the same as accuracy. That bravado falls flat without dramatic evidence to back it up.

Does God exist or not?

Now, back to the original question, Does God exist? Does this look like a world with a god in it? If God existed, shouldn’t that be obvious? What we see instead is a world in which believers are forced to give excuses for why God isn’t obvious.

Or, let’s imagine the opposite—a world without God. This would be a world where praying for something doesn’t increase its likelihood; where faith is necessary to mask the fact that God’s existence is not apparent; where no loving deity walks beside you in adversity; where natural disasters kill people indiscriminately; where far too many children live short and painful lives because of malnutrition, abuse, injury, or birth defects; and where there is only wishful thinking behind the ideas of heaven and hell.

Look around, because that’s the world you’re living in.

But this isn’t an anarchist’s paradise; it’s a world where people live and love and grow, and where every day ordinary people do heroic and noble things for the benefit of strangers. Where warm spring days and rosy sunsets aren’t made by God but explained by Science, and where earthquakes happen for no good reason and people strive to leave the world a better place than it was when they entered it. God isn’t necessary to explain any of this. Said another way, there is no functional difference between a world with a hidden god and one with no god.

Listen closely to Christian apologists and you’ll see that they admit the problem. The typical apologetic approach is to:

1. make deist arguments (for example, the existence of morality or design demands a deity to create it), and
2. argue that this deity is the Christian god rather than the god of some other religion.

Are these deist arguments convincing? If so, the apologist should be a deist, not a Christian. And why is the first step necessary? It’s because the Christian god is functionally nonexistent, and this step admits as much.

The God hypothesis isn’t necessary. God has no measurable impact on the universe, and science needn’t sit on the sidelines. There is enough evidence to render a provisional judgment (and scientific conclusions are always provisional).

Prayers are answered with the same likelihood whether you pray to Zeus, the Christian god, or a jug of milk. Religion is what you invent when you don’t have Science.

Can we say that anything doesn’t exist? With certainty, probably not. But with the confidence that we can say that anything doesn’t exist—leprechauns, fairies, or Merlin the wizard—we can say that God doesn’t.

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect 
if there is, at bottom, 
no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, 
nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
– Richard Dawkins

Photo credit: Philosophy Monkey

From Part 1 of this excerpt from my book Cross Examined:

Jim set the cups on their saucers and swirled the tea in the pot. “It was a revelation—all the convoluted and flimsy rationalization that had been necessary before just vanished. My God hypothesis was a poor explanation of reality, and when I no longer insisted that it was correct and simply followed reality where it led me, things made vastly more sense.”

“Moving from love to nothing is a harsh change,” Paul said. “You must at least agree that the atheist position repels many people.”

“Some do feel that way, but that has nothing to do with whether or not God exists. I have no use for the happy explanation but quite a bit for the correct explanation. You can’t be arguing that it’s disagreeable to imagine that there is no God, so therefore he exists—surely we have higher standards of evidence than that.

“Many Christians admit that the problem of evil is the most difficult problem for Christianity—why God lets bad things happen to good people,” Jim said. “The Greek philosopher Epicurus had an excellent way of putting it. He said that if God is willing to prevent evil but not able, then he is not omnipotent. If he is able but not willing, then he is malevolent. If he is both able and willing, then why is there evil? If he is neither able nor willing, then why call him God?”

“Well, difficulties build character,” Paul said. “My own life started out pretty bad, but it made me who I am.”

“That’s just what an atheist would say—we don’t seek out misfortune, but good can come of it. It’s a simple and workable understanding of the world, and it doesn’t need a supernatural element. But the Christian’s challenge is to make sense of evil permitted by a supernatural being who could stop it in an instant if he wanted to—a tall order.”

“Here’s how Reverend Hargrove explained it to me,” Paul said. “Free will is mandatory in a good world. God could have created us like machines without choice so that we would always do the right thing, but then we wouldn’t be human.” He remembered a metaphor from one of Samuel’s sermons. “What’s the point in walking a maze if there’s a sign pointing the correct direction at every junction?”

Jim dropped the Bible onto the carpet and put his bare feet up on the table where it had been. They were practical feet, ugly with calluses, and they looked like they were rarely confined in shoes. His feet made a sharp contrast with his natty gray trousers. “If God cares so much about free will, I wonder why he allows the free will of the victim to be trampled by the thief or murderer,” Jim said. “And tell me this: does free will exist in heaven?”

“I would think that it must.”

“And does it cause the same problems in heaven that it does here on earth?”

Paul swirled the tea in his cup and watched the dark bits of leaves make patterns in the liquid. “I suppose the spirits in heaven are enlightened. They’d have no desire to do bad things. Otherwise, heaven would have the problems we have here.”

“Then God could give us that enlightenment now.”

“God can’t just give us wisdom. Then we’d have no opportunity to learn. My point about the maze was that a lesson learned is more powerful than a lesson given. Wisdom is more valuable if we earn it.”

“Why is that?” Jim asked. “God could enlighten us with the same lessons as profoundly as if we’d learned them through experience, and no trials would be necessary. If free will is mandatory, why was the enlightenment needed to properly use it reserved for the spirits in heaven? Why would God shortchange us like that? It’s like an automobile without an instruction manual. The God hypothesis is unnecessary and it complicates the explanation. And why does God not show himself? Why not make clear his purpose? Why the mystery, why the test, when he knows the outcome already? Why not just tell us?”

“He did tell us. He told us through Jesus’s ministry.”

“That’s a story, not concrete evidence. What we see, including the legend of Jesus and the emphasis on faith instead of reason, is exactly the kind of thing primitive people would give us. The natural explanation is far more plausible than the existence of a divine maze maker.”

Paul leaned back in his chair. The defensiveness of the past was almost gone. Instead of focusing on his own crumbling argument, Paul reflected on the construction of Jim’s. He tried for another analogy. “I think of life as a school. We learn and then we graduate into heaven.”

“But some fail and go to hell. It’s a poor school that fails such a huge fraction of its students. Isn’t God a skilled enough teacher that everyone could pass?”

Paul fingered the seams on the arm of the chair as another avenue came to mind. “I’ve always found comfort in everyday miracles—not parting the Red Sea, but a child rescued from a fire or a miraculous recovery from illness. Don’t events like that make you stop and think?”

“Good news pleases me as well, but let’s be clear about what causes it. I read in the paper a few weeks ago about a woman whose home was destroyed in April’s earthquake. She lost everything, but charities and the government have given her food, clothes, and a temporary place to live. Do you know what her reaction was? She said, ‘Thank you, Jesus.’ ”

“And you say that it wasn’t Jesus who helped.”

“Exactly. Give thanks to those who provided the help—the people who have opened their homes to the homeless or fed the hungry. It doesn’t happen often enough, but it happens. People from as far away as Idaho and Washington are still sending bread by train to feed people in San Francisco. The prayer ‘give us this day our daily bread’ is being answered, but by people, not God. We don’t need to invent supernatural beings to explain what we see.”

Paul had seen enough callousness to last a lifetime—and yet, he had seen plenty of generosity, too. “Some would say that Jesus caused those people to do good, that He worked through them.”

“Right, and Santa Claus works through parents. ‘God will provide’ really means that people will provide. It’s amazing how far Christians will go to rationalize a positive role for Jesus. The Creator of the universe apparently stands by to let disaster consume a city, and then his apologists want to credit him with the people cleaning up afterwards. No—I’d rather give people the credit they earned.”

“Many would say that disasters are part of God’s plan—a short-term loss for some greater gain in the future.” Paul surprised himself as he shored up the Samuel side of the argument. He didn’t think it the stronger position, but he wanted to hear Jim’s response.

Jim said, “People don’t say, ‘This disaster must be for the greater good’ and sit back to watch dispassionately. They help where they can. We don’t say, ‘Smallpox is supposed to be deadly and to change that would interfere with God’s plan’—we create vaccines. We don’t say, ‘Injuries are supposed to hurt’ or ‘Bones just break sometimes’—we create laudanum and splints. People talk about how there must be a greater good behind God’s plan so they can salvage the claim that God is good, and yet they don’t hesitate before using modern medicine to help the sick and injured or using charity to help people displaced by a natural disaster. They don’t hesitate a moment before interfering in ‘God’s plan.’ ”

Paul sipped from his cup as he considered Jim’s argument. He was beginning to enjoy this tea—harsh but with a sweet aftertaste. “I heard a story about a woman tending her garden.” Paul wasn’t much for telling jokes, but this one took on a new meaning. “The pastor walks by and says, ‘Isn’t it marvelous what God can do in a garden?’ She wipes the sweat from her forehead and says, ‘You should have seen it when He had it all to Himself.’ ”

Jim stood and let out a whoop. “There’s hope for you yet!” He picked up the tea tray. “Let’s continue in the kitchen.”

To be continued.