We’re responding to an imaginary dialogue that explores Soft Theism, which is basically Christianity without the unpleasant baggage. Can jettisoning Christianity’s crazy bits make it acceptable? Read part 1 here.

This is post 20 in this series. Soft theism’s toughest problem is the Problem of Evil, why God allows so much evil in our world.

The Problem of Evil

Atheist: If God is such a great intelligence, why did He create such an inefficient and cruel world?

Soft Theist: Yeah, it’s not the way we would have made the world. Uh . . . a possible answer is that He intended an imperfect, seriously challenging world, as the best way for us to develop character.

Cross Examined Blog: Sure, that’s possible. The problem is that anything is possible with an omni-everything god. Not being constrained is good in that it allows your imagination free rein, but it’s bad if you want any credibility for your claims. This is what happens when you disconnect yourself from reality and build on an unfalsifiable hypothesis. Better: follow the evidence where it leads.

But that would not explain the . . . EXCESS of evil, beyond what is necessary for that! You don’t need that much suffering to develop character. You don’t need kids dying to strengthen their parents’ character! And, an animal kingdom where animals have to kill and eat their fellow creatures? That is a fundamentally cruel system!

Yeah, I know. I know. I think the Problem of Evil is the strongest argument against God.

There are lots of candidates for the strongest argument (the Problem of Divine Hiddenness is my favorite), but I agree that the Problem of Evil is a big one.

Then what is this god good for?!

Seems to me this God does not merit worship. Yet you worship this God!

Aha, yes, but not in the way Christians do. Christians have this completely insane idea of God being oh so wonderful. And I say, what fantasy world are you living in!? There are all kinds of natural disasters and diseases. God is not omnibenevolent; He’s a very mixed entity.

I agree with Dan Barker that by any normal standard of morality, we humans are better than God. If WE had the power, we certainly would have stopped the Holocaust. Which of us would ever dream of destroying someone’s home with a hurricane, or giving a child a fatal disease? God’s sins against us, are far greater than ours against Him.

That reminds me of Stephen Fry’s comment in 2015 when asked what he would say if he met God at the gates of heaven.

I’d say, bone cancer in children? What’s that about?

How dare you? How dare you create a world to which there is such misery that is not our fault. It’s not right, it’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain.

Soft theism’s version of worship

So, in what way, then, do you worship God?

OK. Not by liking him, or praising Him, or loving Him in any traditional sense, but . . . by behaving well. I think that is the only thing He really wants of us, to behave well. If I do that, I am properly loving him. I don’t have to like Him.

“Behave well” sounds like a nice guiding principle, though no more objectively fundamental than the advice from Bill and Ted at the end of their adventure: “Be excellent to each other!” Why muddy the conversation by bringing in God?

You figured out the importance of this on your own. There’s no evidence that God put this notion into your mind. If you want to point out precedents, celebrate the people who played important positive roles in your life: family, friends, teachers, coaches, authors, and others. And if you need something ephemeral for what protects us from harm, look to evolution rather than God—that’s why we’re so well adapted to this world.

When I see a dead squirrel by the roadside, I say, “See, God, that’s YOUR fault. YOU made the world this way. It’s not the squirrel’s fault, it’s not the driver’s fault, it’s YOUR fault. You, are the author of this evil, and many other far, far worse ones. You, are . . . a bastard. . . . And I have no qualms expressing that, because—if He exists—He knows it’s true.

I think the traditional ways of worshipping God—praying, praising, beseeching, is NOT worshipping. To me, that’s just . . . groveling.

Agreed. The form of worship God likes is about the same as what Donald Trump likes (more here).

How good is God?

So, you don’t regard your alleged God as omnibenevolent?

We find the idea of a powerful but imperfect being in the Demiurge (“Craftsman”) in Gnosticism. And more familiar examples are the pantheons of Greece, Rome, and other civilizations.

No, clearly He’s not. I see God as omnipotent, and omniscient, but OBVIOUSLY not omnibenevolent. I see Him as only . . . ULTIMATELY benevolent.

I don’t know what “ULTIMATELY benevolent” means. Perhaps it means that God’s definition of benevolence will be what matters in the end?

I’ve heard Christians claim that human happiness is not the goal of life, but rather, knowing God is. And suffering draws you to God. But, that’s totally irrational to me, that a loving God would torture His creatures for the mere satisfaction of compelling them to believe in Him. If you love someone, you don’t make them suffer excessively.

I agree, but humans are motivated in strange ways. Some say that suffering draws you to God. Corrie ten Boom is a famous example. She was a Dutch Christian sent to a German concentration camp for helping Jews, and her experience strengthened her faith.

The flip side of that coin is the brief but eloquent proof that God doesn’t exist that I’ve heard is popular among many Jews: there was a Holocaust, so therefore there’s no God. Stated another way, according to a message into a concentration camp wall, “If there is a God, he will have to beg my forgiveness” (h/t commenter Michael Neville).

Next time: a critique of the final bit of the soft theism dialogue

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Image from Avery Cocozziello (free-use license)
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We’re responding to an imaginary dialogue that explores Soft Theism, which is basically Christianity without the unpleasant baggage. Can jettisoning Christianity’s crazy bits make it acceptable? Read part 1 here.

This is post 19 in this series. What good is the soft theist’s God hypothesis, and is beauty a clue to God?

God provides a better explanation

But if your almost-Deistic God is so non-intervening, what good is He? I’m left wondering: why believe at all?

Good question. In practical terms, maybe He’s not much good. But, intellectually, God gives me a better ultimate explanation for the universe, than . . . random chance.

So he’s a mental placeholder and doesn’t have to exist. He’s not the inevitable conclusion pointed to by evidence, preferably from different avenues, as science does it. This is just a way to replace “I don’t know” with “God.” By your own admission he doesn’t make sense, so therefore he makes sense?

Maybe you have an itch that I just don’t have, but this does nothing for me. If we don’t know, I’d prefer to say that.

And . . . there is also a big psychological or emotional aspect to it . . . I read that Elvis Presley once said—and I think this is actually quite profound—he said that . . . to be happy, a person needs three things—someone to love . . . something to do . . . and . . . something . . . to look forward to.

The God worldview is a happier one

I think, given that we can’t prove God or disprove God, we might as well take the happier path and live with the idea that God probably does exist, and . . . look forward to some ultimate resolution to life . . . other than . . . dust. . . .

“The happier path”? Life seen honestly sucks so that you need help getting through, and this theology is a bullet to bite on when things are toughest? This probably isn’t what you think, but then I’m not sure what you’re saying.

Christians also claim that their worldview is more pleasing, as if to say, “Well, there’s not much reason to think that it’s true, but see how happy it makes me!” but this approach has consequences. For example, you posit an afterlife. I don’t want to rearrange my life to adapt to this fact unless I have reason to believe it’s actually a fact. Given the choice between a happy worldview and an accurate worldview, I’ll take the accurate one. (I’ve written about this here and here.)

Personally, I intuitively embrace the idea that . . . everything we do counts, rather than ultimately . . . doesn’t count. . . .

“Intuitively” doesn’t sound like sufficient grounding for a supernatural worldview

Another label for Soft Theism might be . . . “Warm Deism,” . . . warm deism, where a Deity IS involved, DOES care, but, not in any intervening or verifiable way.

Evidence for God (or for Douglas Adams’ puddle?)

Do you have any evidence that God cares about us?

Yeah . . . not hard evidence, but, I see certain aspects of reality, as soft evidence of God’s care for us:

For one, our species is largely thriving on the planet.

This reminds me of Douglas Adams’ puddle, which marveled at how well its hole fit it. It didn’t realize that the adaptation was the other way around.

For another, our bodies usually have the capacity to heal.

Puddle again.

For another, life is intelligible, navigable, rather than . . . a total crapshoot.

Maybe we should worship evolution, which, clumsily, adapted us to our world.

And, there are many joyful experiences in life.

And many sucky ones. The argument for an evil god is just as good as for a good god (though I realize that you don’t claim God is particularly good). Do we really need this God hypothesis? Life shaped by evolution explains things adequately.

I think these aspects of reality are all some evidence, that God cares about us. Granted, one can look at the negative side of each of these factors as evidence of God not caring—situations where people do not thrive, do not heal, are crushed by their circumstances, or have horrible experiences.

I personally went through cancer treatments for a year and a half. That was horrendous. I prefer to think that was just bad luck, and not an act of God.

Yeah, I don’t think God micro-manages. I think good luck and bad luck . . . randomness, is part of the overall plan. And yeah, you’re right, that we can’t logically CONCLUDE that God cares about us in the way a human would, in an overt, consistent way. But, I think God has given us a matrix which, though NOT fully consistent, DOES have . . . strong tendencies—the reasonable person will TEND to do better; the good person will TEND to be loved more. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to interpret those . . . tendencies . . . as God’s care for us.

Yeah, nothing says “I love you” like a marginally supportive living environment.

You want us to believe that this God is a pleasing idea? You’re not selling it. He may not micromanage, but he could’ve created a much more nurturing environment.

Beauty in nature

(Note that this dialogue is a composite of many atheists. Some were more hardcore, some less hardcore.)

I feel that a rainbow is not any less beautiful because you understand the science behind it.

Sure. Sure. I get that. But to me, there is something about beauty, of all kinds, that transcends the . . . ordinariness of life. I feel it wouldn’t be there unless it . . . came from some greater beauty.

Let me propose an alternative: we’re tuned by evolution to be drawn to some things and away from others. Why are we instinctively repulsed by bad smells or things with a disgusting appearance? Because evolution tuned us that way. It was healthy to avoid eating something rotten, and evolution selected against those humans who didn’t avoid contaminated food.

There’s nothing objectively pretty or sweet-smelling about a flower. It is the way it is because that gave it reproductive success. The stinking corpse lily or skunk cabbage are also successful but in a different way. “A daffodil is pretty” is our programming talking, not something objective. Don’t forget that we’re just Douglas Adams’ puddle, and we’re adapted to the hole, not the other way around.

That we enjoy waterfalls doesn’t mean that a god created them. Thank evolution instead.

Yeah, I understand how you feel. And unless someone is immune to beauty, and the awe and wonder of nature, I think there must be times when everyone has felt there must be something greater than themselves, to put on such a show.

We are programmed to see agency. Is the rustling in the bushes a panther or the wind? The timid hominid who imagined an agent lived for another day, but the unconcerned one might’ve become lunch.

Does this look like a beneficent world?

My problem is that, for every wonderful thing there is an opposite. As Bertrand Russel said, “For my part, I am unable to see any great beauty or harmony in the tapeworm.”

Yes, you could make a long list of how life on earth sucks. Let me add a few more parasite examples from famous naturalists.

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [wasp] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. (Charles Darwin)

When Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that’s going to make him blind. (Sir David Attenborough)

Evolution as the reason for why life is the way it is—not a caring god—is the peg that neatly fits that hole.

Absent hard evidence. I come down on the side of metaphysical naturalism . . . Of course . . . I . . . could be wrong.

Yeah, I appreciate that response. I readily admit I could be wrong. We’re both going with what makes MORE sense to us.

Next: the Problem of Evil

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Image from Chloe Chen, public domain
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We’re responding to an imaginary dialogue that explores Soft Theism, which is basically Christianity without the unpleasant baggage. Can jettisoning Christianity’s crazy bits make it acceptable? Read part 1 here.

This is post 18 in this series, and the topic is physics and logic. Did God create these, and what follows from that? And is God complex or simple?

God’s complexity

Atheist: We know the universe exists; we don’t know about any God. Occam’s razor says . . . you don’t multiply causes beyond necessity. What could POSSIBLY be more complex than an all knowing, all powerful mind? That’s about as much of a violation of Occam’s Razor as you can get.

Cross Examined Blog: And a related shaving-away maxim, also relevant here, is Hitchens’ Razor, named after Christopher Hitchens: “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” Our soft theist makes himself vulnerable to this with declarations of his offended common sense. My own common sense is also offended by some of science’s conclusions, but that’s poor grounding for any conclusion that the scientific consensus is wrong.

Soft Theist: But being “complicated” is an attribute of our world. You can’t apply it to God. A God who is SUBJECT to the limitations of the world He Himself created, such as size, location, . . . complicatedness . . . is not a reasonable concept of God.

Why is it out of bounds to label God complicated or simple? Even if we only look at the supernatural realm, complicatedness must be a thing. And God does enter into our world. Even if you have no place in your theology for God performing miracles, he certainly played a role in our world, having created it.

William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga are Christians, not soft theists like you, but for what it’s worth, they say that God is simple. (I disagree.)

You’re inventing the properties of God, based on nothing.

Did God create physics?

I think your concept of God is a caricature. You automatically assume God is subject to the laws of physics, like some anthropomorphic being WITHIN the universe, instead of an ultimate power that transcends the world He created.

Here again it’s like you’re inventing the properties of a character in a Dungeons & Dragons world. Does it make sense that God would be able to invent the ultimate physics of our universe? On what would that physics be based? You’ll say it’s based on and built on nothing, but how do you know? “Well, we gotta create out of nothing somewhere, right?” isn’t good enough.

This brings to mind a swimmer in a pool who tries to push off from a wall but realizes that they’ve misjudged their distance and have simply pushed against water. Nothing happens. As a swimmer needs a wall if they want to push off, doesn’t God need something from which to create the properties of our universe? Yes, I know lots of theists imagine that God created from nothing, but Genesis 1 doesn’t even claim that, and it may make no sense to imagine God inventing properties in a property-less pre-universe situation.

You’re positing a being that breaks all the laws of physics.

I’m positing a being that created the laws of physics.

Did Walt Disney go on every Disneyland ride for free? Or did he feel obliged to buy a ticket like anyone else? I don’t know—it could have been either way. Or take the video game Civilization. You’re the boss as you decide what everyone does, but you’re constrained by the physics of the game.

Similarly, what are the constraints on a god creating our universe? We’re just making stuff up here, so let’s not imagine this handwaving about God reliably answers any question.

Did God create logic?

When you say that God is not subject to physics and the laws of logic, that’s merely an assertion, based on no evidence, and it opens the gates to a total breakdown of logic. Without evidence, you’re really just “making stuff up.” Your assertion that God would be the only entity not strictly subject to logic, makes no sense, and the only way it could ever make sense would be if you had any evidence for it. As soon as you say God Himself is not subject to logic, then ANYTHING goes!!

NOT AT ALL! The universe has its rules, it’s governed by logic and physics. But God . . . is a different level of reality. I think it’s very logical to say that IF, IF, a Creator of the world exists, then that Creator . . . created logic. If logic and physics existed by themselves first and then a creator came along, who could only operate within those parameters, then that is not a supreme being, but a LESS-THAN-SUPREME being!! To me, your assumption that the limitations of reality apply to an entity that CREATED reality, is NOT a reasonable concept of God. It is not a broad enough perspective on the issue.

God would be a less-than-supreme being if he were constrained by parameters? Okay then—he’s not a supreme being. You seem to imagine that that’s a problem somehow, but you’ve given no evidence for any god, supreme or otherwise.

You’re building your supernatural worldview in a sandbox. Create whatever you want, but don’t imagine that this is grounded on anything or that it’s convincing to others.

If God created logic and wasn’t constrained by any external reality, God could’ve made logic be anything. Show us that God could’ve made 2 + 2 = 9.

Soft theism or warm deism?

So, you’re a theist, not a deist? You think God cares about us?

Yeah, a totally non-caring deistic God doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t see why an intelligence would create a world with all this drama and meaning, on earth, and NOT care about it.

So he cares about us as if we were an ant farm, something to monitor but not assist? You’re treading an odd middle ground, like the Christian, where God cares . . . but not that much.

But this question of how much God cares is unresolved in my mind. If he deliberately made a world with these consequences, why not eliminate most or all of the bad parts like pain, premature death, illness, hunger, and so on. Seen from the other direction, if he didn’t care to tone down these bad features of life, why think that he cares at all?

Next: What good is the soft theist God?

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Image from Christian Holzinger (free-use license)
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We’re responding to an imaginary dialogue that explores Soft Theism, which is basically Christianity without the unpleasant baggage. Can jettisoning Christianity’s crazy bits make it acceptable? Read part 1 here.

This is post 17 in this series, and the topic is the life force. Is this a mandatory theory that fills gaps that naturalism can’t, or is it unnecessary special pleading?

Life force

Atheist: It may seem to you like there’s some special “spark” that makes life different from non-life, but that’s not really the case. At the molecular level, it’s still just chemistry. Why would some intelligence be required for chemistry to progress to the point of what we call life?

Soft Theist: All I can say is . . . how could it not require it!? To me, it’s axiomatic, it’s obvious. No matter how long it took, consciousness emerging from rocks does not make sense to me, unless there is some conscious intelligence behind that whole process. . . .

Cross Examined Blog: You say, “it’s axiomatic, it’s obvious,” and I think that’s your problem. Lots of things seem obvious from our inexpert standpoint, but when experts have discarded those positions, we must remember that expert opinion trumps novice common sense. Let’s have a bit of humility.

You say that the conventional scientific explanation for consciousness doesn’t make sense to you, but do you have the background in the relevant fields for your intuition to count for anything?

You say that human consciousness can’t exist without a cause, and you solve that problem with a Creator that exists without a cause.

Must we posit a life force?

So, you think there is some sort of life force? But . . . the philosophy of . . . Vitalism . . . has long since been discredited. The theory that . . . life is dependent on some force distinct from chemical or physical forces.

Ahh, I think vitalism is a caricature of what is actually a sound idea. Agreed, that historically vitalism is nonsense; there are not magical forces behind this, that, and everything else. But the basic idea, that living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities, I think, is sound. There is a life force! There is a difference—a PROFOUND difference—between a live creature and a dead one!

A profound difference? Let’s think about that. A live thing is different from a dead thing like a wound-up mechanical clock is different from a wound-down clock. Or: water in a river shapes the river bank, but that stops if the river dries up.

You’ll say that dead clocks can be wound up again, and dry rivers can be restarted with rain, but a dead person is dead. You’re looking for a life force here, but “dead” is a moving target. Thanks to medical advances, people who would have been dead in the past from infection, scurvy, diabetes, cardiac dysrhythmia, and so on aren’t today. Does a life force leave the body when a heart stops and return after CPR and adrenaline? Or is this better explained by saying that quick action ensures that the body’s cells don’t die, and restarting the heart through mechanical action and drugs returns the body to a state where the heart pumps blood to keep those cells healthy?

I don’t see what’s magical about this. When a cell stops getting nutrients, it dies. The process of cell death in this way is well understood, and there’s no “and then the life force goes away” step. At a higher level, the various ways that an organ or a living being can die (such as injury or age) have no need for this idea.

I think the wound-down clock is an effective parallel. Wind it back up again and it does its job, and feed a starving person, and they return to health. A smashed clock is like a body smashed in a car accident. A digital clock with the battery sealed inside is like a person with a finite lifespan. You’d be right to say that we know a lot less about human health than about clocks, but if you want to image a life force, we need to see an argument.

Healing is unexplainable naturally

When I do yardwork and get a scratch on my arm, a few days later, it’s healed. There is some sort of life force.

I’m sorry. You lost me again. How can a well described and understood process, such as healing, be in any way supernatural? An unmeasurable force that animates us!? Science has never found such a force.

I disagree. You CAN measure an organism to determine whether it’s alive or dead. You can’t measure the life force in and of itself, but you can measure its effects, its results, like heartbeat, breathing and so on. So, if you can measure it, doesn’t that prove it exists?

I can listen to a mechanical clock to hear if it’s ticking. Am I detecting the mechanical equivalent of a life force, or can this be explained without that hypothesis?

It’s like gravity. You can’t measure the force of gravity itself, per se, but you can measure its effects and results, and therefore, we know it exists, and is active, even though the force itself, is an invisible, unmeasurable, non-isolatable thing. I’m not making forces up. There is clearly a difference between a live squirrel and a dead one. . . . You would say gravity is measurable. I say life force is measurable also!

We know that gravity is measurable because scientists have measured its force. They’ve also measured Higgs bosons, which are caused by the field that gives things mass. We turn to physicists for information about gravity, and if you want to argue your case for a life force, you must point to the biological consensus.

Imagine a complex domino pattern made of thousands of dominoes. The first domino is knocked over, and the process begins. It’ll eventually run out of upright dominoes, and the process will end. Sometimes, a domino misses its successor, and the process unexpectedly ends. Do we need to imagine a special force to explain this? That a force was in effect while the dominoes were tumbling but left when it stopped? True, human metabolism is more complex and harder to understand than dominoes, but this does nothing to argue for a life force.

Is this grounded in reality?

But if you believe things exist outside the physical laws of the universe, then you can believe anything.

I don’t think that follows at all. Positing a source for nature itself, is to me very reasonable. That doesn’t mean I’m going to believe in ghosts and goblins.

Are ghosts and goblins more fanciful or ridiculous than a Creator? The claims made for a ghost are much more modest than those for a Creator.

But in [the] last 100 years what we’ve learned in biology, genetics, etc. essentially leaves nothing for this supposed life force to do.

Yes, science explains the operation of that life force, but not its existence. Again, that subtle difference atheists never get. All the ingredients needed for life, do not equal . . . life. I think the life force is what makes all these biochemical reactions work. . . .

What life force? Show me this in a biology textbook. Without this, you’re no more credible than the Creationist. With abiogenesis and consciousness, you at least had real topics with open questions.

I, um, hate to give Christian creationists any credit but I heard one make an interesting point. He said no one has ever produced life in a lab, and if a group of scientists get together some day in the future and DO succeed, then what would that prove? . . . that life requires intelligence, to produce it.

Or that they’ve proven a plausible sequence of chemical reactions by which life on earth could’ve begun.

Ha ha. Or, just that you need to get the right ingredients together with a source of energy . . . over time. We haven’t completely mapped out the path from non-life to life yet . . . but we’re pretty close. All you need is basic physics to end up with chemistry, and the right chemistry leads to life . . . to brains . . . to human intelligence. Why would an outside intelligence need to be involved at any point?

What is the God hypothesis good for?

I agree—God is a solution looking for a problem. Has Soft Theism found such a problem, or will it always be at the frontier of science, pretentiously pointing to questions it didn’t uncover and saying, “Well then what about this?”?

I can only answer that by again asking the opposite question—How could [an outside intelligence] not be involved? Or maybe I should say . . . go ahead, prove to me you can create life from inanimate materials.

Prove to you? No, the burden of proof is yours. All you have is, “Science hasn’t explained abiogenesis. Maybe this is where God is hiding!” Yes, maybe a century from now abiogenesis will be the first question about which science throws up its hands and admits that the God hypothesis looks pretty good. But that’s certainly not the way to bet.

You’re being like the Creationists who argue some form of “Science has unanswered questions; therefore, God.” They’ll never stand their ground, saying that if you solve this scientific puzzle, they will reject their faith because that was part of their foundation. Science is never part of their foundation; they just attack things they think are in ours! They have no skin in the game.

Or better yet, prove to me that you can create matter out of nothing. Or show me you can create a law of nature. Or can create a human being with intelligence. I say there is logically an intelligent life force behind all these . . . phenomena . . . an entity commonly referred to, as God.

Create matter out of nothing? Maybe there’s no matter to create. With the zero-energy universe hypothesis, positive and negative energy cancel each other out, leaving a net energy of zero. Matter is part of the positive energy, and negative energy in the form of gravity cancels it out.

This is just a hypothesis at the moment and so doesn’t thoroughly resolve your challenge. But it is a nice reminder that naive intuition at the frontier of science doesn’t count for much.

Next: God’s role in physics and logic

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Image from Marco Verch Professional Photographer (license CC BY 2.0)
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This has been a long post series, but that was expected, since I’ve been responding in depth to a 76-minute video. We’re getting close to the end, and there will be about five more posts.

As I mentioned at the start, “Soft Theism” has been a refreshing change for me, since I had been spending most of my time focused on Fundamentalist/Evangelical arguments. I hope this has been productive for you readers as well.

I’d also like to thank Miklos Jako, whose dialogue we’ve been examining, for participating in the comments. I hope that when this series is over he’ll write a guest post to summarize his conclusions.

This is post 16 in a series (part 1), and the topic this time is consciousness, emergent phenomena, evolution, and the miraculous.

Is it natural or a miracle?

Soft Atheist: I don’t believe in breach-of-nature miracles, but I believe life itself is a miracle. Intelligence itself, consciousness itself, ARE miracles. Awareness of the material world, is of a different nature than that world, even though it emerges from it, and correlates with it.

Cross Examined Blog: Life is a miracle? I might agree with you depending on how you define “miracle.”

Are you saying that there’s something supernatural here? Or that science’s natural explanations of life, intelligence, and consciousness will forever be insufficient? If so, you need to back up these claims.

Atheist: I see no reason to distinguish consciousness from any other evolutionary process or to attribute evolution to anything more than natural causes. Consciousness is the inevitable result of a sufficiently large brain. What’s your evidence that consciousness is something separate from the brain? Consciousness is simply what the brain does.

Well, when you examine the brain, you’re examining chemistry, you’re not really examining consciousness. It seems separate to me. And I can’t accept the adjectives, “simply” or “just” or “merely” . . . in a discussion about consciousness. I think consciousness is an extraordinary reality. I think it IS magical, and may never be satisfactorily explained by science.

Sure—label whatever you want as magical, and maybe you’re right that science won’t ever completely explain consciousness. But you seem to imagine something objectively correct about identifying consciousness as special. Maybe someone else sees life evolving consciousness as likely but the evolution of eukaryotes as magical. And many Christians will tell you how remarkable the Cambrian Explosion was. Is this just a bunch of uninformed opinions, or can this be grounded in something we can all agree on?

To have a convincing argument, you must move beyond “Well, to me this is extraordinary.”

Emergent phenomena

I think that . . . thinking is an emergent phenomenon.

Yes, and I think this explains much that theists insist is unanswered and even unanswerable.

The concept of emergence is easy to understand. You can’t make a snowflake or even an ice crystal with a single water molecule. A single water molecule doesn’t have pH or salinity, and it doesn’t have the property of fluidity.

Or take another example: I’ve mentioned lizard brains before. The lizard doesn’t have a poorly developed sense of humor or wit or irony—it has none at all. Our larger brain doesn’t make us like a lizard, just better; it makes us something different. It’s not just better by degree (same features, just better) but by kind (with new features).

The human brain has about 10¹¹ cells. Some animals have brains ten percent this size. Others, one percent. And they all think. But below some point, thinking doesn’t happen. A single brain cell doesn’t think 10^–11 times as fast; it doesn’t think at all.

Perhaps it’s like artificial intelligence. A calculator is at one extreme; it doesn’t have AI. At the other extreme would be a computer that can reliably pass the Turing Test. At some point it does enough interesting things sufficiently convincingly that we’ll say that it thinks.

No, it doesn’t think with the same mechanism as a brain, but who cares? If you want to say that this computer has artificial intelligence but doesn’t think and can never think, that’s fine. You’ve just added a “gotta use an animal brain” caveat to the definition of “think,” but you’ve won your argument by moving the goalposts.

The role of evolution vs. the miraculous

Mmmm, well, I notice you used the word “phenomenon.” To some extent, you’re acknowledging the amazing nature of thinking and consciousness. I go one step further and regard it as . . . miraculous.

There’s that word again.

Is life on earth now a miracle? I’ll grant that life is pretty marvelous, but this from Richard Dawkins gives the credit to evolution.

The ratio of the huge amount that [evolution] explains (everything about life: its complexity, diversity and illusion of crafted design) divided by the little that it needs to postulate (non-random survival of randomly varying genes through geological time) is gigantic. Never in the field of human comprehension were so many facts explained by assuming so few.

But [thinking and consciousness being miraculous is] not really evidence, just your personal slant.

Right, right, agreed, I can’t show you hard evidence . . . I don’t think it’s a matter of science, but of philosophy, of interpretation . . . approach . . . mindset.

Again, philosophy is your sanctuary. You hide there to avoid having to provide a convincing argument. But if philosophy to you means you needn’t have evidence, or you benefit from it being unfalsifiable, it’s no longer an asset but a refuge. The more it protects you from the necessity of evidence, the more it hurts your argument. “You can’t get me!” is no argument.

Intelligence: from evolution or from another intelligence?

If the world is intelligible, doesn’t that imply an intelligence behind it?

Not if evolution provides a natural answer.

I agree that we don’t find minds without bodies here on earth.

Right, and we don’t find minds without brains either. That might be a good start, proving that a brainless mind can exist.

Yet it makes sense to me that at the level of a Creator, at the level of an ultimate cause of nature and its laws . . . there is a mind.

You said that intelligence must come from intelligence, but this is just another infinite regression. You’re the we-can’t-have-an-infinite-regression guy, remember? Stated another way, why must human intelligence demand a Creator when you’re content with “just cuz” for the Creator?

I don’t see intelligence emerging on its own, from matter.

But there’s a wealth of evidence in paleontology and archaeology that documents the gradual development of intelligence, without the need for magical assistance. Throughout the animal kingdom we have examples of every stage of cognitive development, from simple sensors, to reptilian brains, to our brains. All the antecedents are in place, so I don’t see anywhere in the process where a prior intelligence would be required.

I’m surprised you’re not aware of this, as you seem to have an inquiring mind. Intelligence did not just “appear” as an entity, it’s a demonstrable by-product of evolution, and there is no real evidence to suggest otherwise.

Animal eyes have independently evolved forty times. Intelligence in animals has also happened more than once—for example, the octopus developed its intelligence independently from vertebrate animals. Intelligence is just another example of convergent evolution, which is the independent evolution of similar traits such as wings (bats and birds) or spiky protection (porcupines and hedgehogs).

If intelligence has evolved more than once, maybe it’s not as miraculous as you imagine.

Abiogenesis and consciousness: unexplainable without the supernatural

Well, yes, clearly the emergence of intelligence occurred, incrementally, through evolution, over a vast period of time. But, for me, two transition points demand some intelligence or creative force outside of nature, namely the point where inanimate matter became alive, and the point where living matter became conscious . . . however indeterminate those points may be.

Why these? Why not the development of the Eukaryota domain of life (cells with a nucleus)? Or the Cambrian explosion? Or the genetic bottleneck roughly 70,000 years ago that reduced the number of Homo sapiens to as few as 3000 individuals? You’re being arbitrary, and if you disagree, show us that abiogenesis and consciousness are objectively the most unexplainable and foundational puzzles and therefore the most in need of a supernatural explanation.

I wonder: what would it take for you to remove abiogenesis and consciousness from your list of showstoppers?

Next: must life have a life force?

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Image from McKay Savage (license CC BY 2.0)
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We’re responding to an imaginary dialogue that explores Soft Theism, which is basically Christianity without the unpleasant baggage. Can jettisoning Christianity’s crazy bits make it acceptable? Read part 1 here.

This is post 15 in this series, and we wrap up the question of whether humans are equivalent to robots or if a spiritual explanation is necessary.

Personality and the spiritual

Soft Theist: If science tells us that all the molecules of our bodies are replaced every seven years, why can’t I murder someone, and then 8 years later claim, “Hey it wasn’t me, it was the other guy!” I cannot make such a claim, because we are more than just a collection of molecules. We have souls, or spirits . . . or . . . personalities, to use a term more acceptable to you.

Cross Examined Blog: Sure, we have personalities. Evolution has programmed us to be social animals and to support other humans. That does nothing to convince me that souls or spirits exist.

Atheist: If my mother, were revealed to be . . . a robot, I wouldn’t love her any less. Because my reasons for loving her are based on her nature, and intelligence, and kindness. Not what she is made of, whether it’s metal, or, some . . . “mystical spirit.”

Oh, I think you would love her less . . . because exactly what you love her for—her nature, intelligence, and kindness—you’d realize, are not genuine, but only programmed responses. As a robot, she wouldn’t REALLY care about you. It would be an illusion!

Would a Kurzweil simulation (discussed in the previous post) be an illusion if it were an accurate representations of a person’s thinking? Did Deep Blue not really beat the human chess champion because it was a computer? Does a calculator not really do accurate math because it doesn’t have an organic brain? Does a dishwasher not really wash dishes because it moves the water and not the dishes?

The evaluation by a person is what matters. What doesn’t matter is whether that person was convinced by synapses or transistors.

Can robots have emotions?

OK . . . yeah. But, I think uniqueness is what it’s all about. I think every person is precious because of their unique qualities and character and thoughts. It doesn’t matter to me that we are just a collection of molecules.

It does to me, because if you define human beings that way, then we ARE . . . JUST sophisticated robots. But, we, are not. We are . . . sentient. We DO have the capacity to feel.

Humans are the ones to judge whether someone or something is indeed feeling an emotion. Poll an audience after seeing WALL-E and ask if the robot feels. (Or the blue people in Avatar or the robot in Bicentennial Man or the love interest in Blade Runner or whatever your favorite intelligent non-human is.)

In the last post, you accused Mr. Atheist of being “severely stunted philosophically.” This conversation makes me wonder if you’re severely stunted emotionally.

Your “just sophisticated robots” label doesn’t matter. Do you have humans you love? Your emotions might be quite complicated, but what pushes your buttons doesn’t have to be. A one-year-old’s big eyes and smile invoke an emotional reaction (love, desire to nurture), and it’s not surprising that a robot with a similar appearance could push the same emotional buttons.

Well, that’s kind of what I was saying, about a person’s subjective, unique makeup.

Yeah, but at the same time, you dismiss the idea of a person’s spirit or soul as theist nonsense, when THAT is really what we’re talking about—personality, character, all the unique aspects of who you are as a human being. I say what emerges from molecules, is a greater reality than the molecules themselves.

Emergent properties is an important idea that we’ll get to next time.

Belief as a social disease

Wouldn’t you say that, historically, superstitious beliefs, traditional religious beliefs, belief in a spirit world . . . have amounted to a . . . social disease?

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I share your contempt there. BUT . . . I think, at least in the scientific community, the pendulum has swung somewhat in the other direction—not acknowledging ANYTHING as real unless it can be measured.

I read an article by [Yale professor David] Gelernter, and he says scientism, or he calls it . . . roboticism, was at first just an intellectual school, but today has become a . . . social disease! That we are dismissing the subjective world, when that world is real and absolutely key to our identities as human beings. The world of our . . . own, fears, and hopes, and loves. Our particular memories, of a garden, or a friend, or a trip. Our states of mind, times of sadness, joy. All these subjective feelings we have, can be experienced by you alone; they ARE . . . just in your mind. But, he says, they DO exist . . . and are important.

(I respond to another article from Gelernter here. It was a rejection of evolution, which is an odd article to come from a computer science professor.)

[Gelernter] says man is only a computer if you ignore everything that distinguishes him from a computer. Unlike computers and robots, we don’t have just information: we have feelings.

So, I agree with his general point. If we devalue our subjective worlds, our emotional worlds, we are denying life.

Machines and humans work differently

This raises an interesting point. People are like computers in some ways (both have memory and perform computation) and unlike them in other ways (such as what they’re made of, what powers them, and serial vs. parallel architecture).

The Soft Theism thesis is that we’re not just molecules or computers. That’s true, but we need to understand an important difference, that when compared with people, machines usually achieve the same goal but with a different route. What I think is most important for our conversation is the same goal rather than the route. I explore it this way in my book Future Hype (2011):

[Airplanes] flirted with animal inspiration in their early years. But flapping-wing airplane failures soon yielded to propeller-driven successes. The most efficient machines usually don’t mimic how humans or animals work. Airplanes don’t fly like birds, and submarines don’t swim like fish. Wagons roll rather than walk, and a recorded voice isn’t replayed through an artificial mouth. A washing machine doesn’t use a washboard, and a dishwasher moves the water and not the dishes. Asking whether a computer can think or wonder is like asking whether a car can trot or gallop—a computer has its own way of operating, which may be quite different from the human approach.

We can approach the question of thinking another way: does a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear it make a sound? That depends on how sound is defined. Similarly, whether a computer duplicating a particular human skill is thinking or not depends on how think is defined. You could say that a computer chess champion doesn’t think because it doesn’t operate the way people do. Or you could say that it thinks in its own way because it obviously gets the job done. To take another example, ELIZA was a famous 1965 computer program that played the role of a psychiatrist. It was so convincing that some users earnestly poured out their problems to the imagined intelligence, even though replicating ELIZA is simple enough to be assigned as homework in a college artificial intelligence course. Marvin Minsky considered artificial intelligence “making machines do things that would be considered intelligent if done by people.”

Computers and AI try to copy what humans do, not how they do it. This is no proof, perhaps not even evidence, that AI will never convincingly display feelings and emotions. This undercuts Soft Theism’s claim that naturalistic explanations will always be insufficient and that there must be a spiritual something-or-other at the bottom.

Next time: Intelligence and consciousness: evolution or miracle?

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Image from Possessed Photography (free-use license)
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