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

This is post 8 in this series, and we move on to the Christian mindset. Today’s topic is theologians vs. science.

Seeing reality through God

Soft Theist: I strongly reject Christianity, but I think Christians sometimes make good points about the God issue. I’ve heard a Christian say, “The proof for the existence of God . . . is that without Him, you cannot account for anything. . . . Isn’t your very existence, proof of God?”

Cross Examined Blog: This sounds a bit like C.S. Lewis’s claim, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

Now, I don’t consider that an argument that constitutes “proof,” but that is a way of looking at reality that DOES resonate with me . . . But, not you, uh?

Atheist: No, those are just empty words to me.

I agree. If you have God glasses on, you might say that everything makes sense only with God. My recommendation is to take them off, give yourself time to acclimatize (reality may be much brighter), and then see how things look. Millions of ex-believers will tell you that things make much more sense.

Answering the Big Questions

Christians say that you atheists cannot explain how a universe arose from nothing, how life arose from non-life, how reason, logic and morality arose from . . . matter, how mind arose from . . . mud, how consciousness arose from chemicals.

So what? Atheism is one answer (“No”) to one question (“Do you have a god belief?”). This is like pointing out the Chemistry makes no statement about morality. It doesn’t intend to!

Scientific questions are in the domain of science. Atheists are often well informed about those questions and eager to read about new developments, but that isn’t our topic here. Until those questions are reliably answered by science, atheists content themselves with “I don’t know.”

But if you’re saying you have a way to answer these questions with answers as reliable as what science gives, then share those reliable answers! But if, as I suspect, you just have answers without any reason to believe them, what good are they?

Robert Jastrow was an astronomer who held spiritual views similar to yours. He famously said:

For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.

Nope. We’ve learned nothing about reality from theologians. To take just Christianity, science has learned nothing from the Bible. The best apologists have is that they can point to coincidences where the Bible agrees with science. That the Bible kinda says that the universe had a beginning and was created from nothing (it doesn’t). Or that the earth is a sphere (it doesn’t say that, either). Coincidences found after the fact count for nothing. In fact, by conforming the Bible to science (and not the other way around), Christians admit that scientific claims are the ones with credibility.

In reality, scientists climb Mt. Ignorance and phone down all the surprising new things they’ve discovered. To this, the Christian apologist shouts back, “Oh, yeah. I knew that.” One wonders then why Christians haven’t been leading the research all along, using the Bible to peek at the answers in the back of the book of Nature.

But to say “God did it” provides no explanatory information!

Well, not any scientific information, no, but I think it’s a reasonable ultimate explanation for the emergence of these things.

“God did it” explains nothing. It replaces science questions with theological questions. It’s also not falsifiable, which makes it useless.

If you don’t have scientific evidence, then what do you have? Philosophical evidence? Metaphysical evidence? You need to step back and show us the reliability of philosophical or metaphysical evidence for something besides the God question. We can apply these disciplines to real world questions only after we’re on the same page that these disciplines can deliver reliable answers.

Naturalism?

[Christian apologist William Lane] Craig says naturalism is self-refuting. If you say no proposition should be accepted unless it can be scientifically proven, then that very claim itself is a proposition, that cannot be proven.

I don’t think much of Craig’s arguments. I’ve written many posts responding to his ideas (search and ye shall find).

And on this particular matter, the idea of the self-refuting argument is too often used by apologists as a rhetorical ploy rather than an honest response (I respond here). In practice, it often works out like this caricature: “There’s a punctuation mistake here, so the argument is invalid, and I can dismiss it!”

If I find a clumsily worded religious argument, I do the reverse: I try to find what the apologist is probably trying to say and respond to that. (Maybe being generous is easier for me than the Christian apologist. After ten years with this blog, I’m getting a little desperate for interesting arguments to respond to.)

For example, take Craig’s argument, that “No proposition should be accepted unless it can be scientifically proven.” I don’t say that but instead might say, “Arguments backed by the consensus scientific view have a good track record” or “Science delivers—show me that whatever you’re using besides science delivers as reliably.” These aren’t self-refuting.

[Saying that no proposition should be accepted unless it can be scientifically proven] would be . . . scientism, which almost no one subscribes to. Science can only study the natural world, by definition. Certainly, there could be things science cannot address . . . but . . . if something can’t be detected and studied in any way, then what’s the point of believing in it?

I guess the point is . . . curiosity. We humans want to know if there is anything beyond the physical world. So, we speculate.

You’re curious about science’s biggest questions? Great! Then don’t apply an evidence-free answer and think that you’ve answered anything.

Heh, your . . . mindset is, Why believe it if we can’t verify it? Mine is, why dismiss it entirely just because we can’t verify it?

My view is, “Why believe it if there’s insufficient evidence for it?” I agree that we shouldn’t reject something for which the jury is still out.

You say you don’t subscribe to Scientism or Logical Positivism but it seems to me you do, that you’re reducing all worthwhile knowledge to only that which can be measured or scientifically demonstrated. I think God is something that science cannot adequately address.

If your worldview is more than just speculation, you need to show that. Sure, philosophy can imagine various ways that God could exist, but this amounts to little more than sci-fi for theologians.

My suggestion of the day: if your worldview has a could in it (“Well, God could exist, couldn’t he?”), that part isn’t worth keeping.

Next time: Poor design in nature

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

This is post 7 in this series, and up next are theists’ rejection of other gods and the role of evidence and science.

“Atheists just go one god further”

Atheist: Hmmm . . . You don’t believe in Thor, or Jupiter, or the thousands of alleged Gods throughout history, do you?

Soft Theist: No.

Well, we atheists just go one God further than you, and don’t believe in ANY God.

Cross Examined Blog: I discuss this argument in detail here.

I think there’s a big difference between one God and no God. But, I see your point, which is important, that we have no trouble dismissing all these alleged Gods, why not dismiss the one currently in question? And my answer to that is that my concept of God is much more credible than traditional ones, ha ha.

I’ll play devil’s advocate. I agree that you’ve jettisoned from Christianity many of the things that make it hard to believe. Dropping the Bible alone probably eliminates half of my arguments against Christianity. The arguments still available to you are the deist ones (that is, the ones not specific to the Christian god) that are also in vogue now with many Christian apologists—the Cosmological Argument, Design Argument, Fine Tuning Argument, Transcendental Argument, Ontological Argument, Moral Argument, and so on. Skipping ahead, I see that you think another deist argument, the First Cause argument, is your favorite.

Yes, you’ve just eliminated some of your vulnerabilities, but you need some strong points in your favor as well. “My argument isn’t as easily attacked!” isn’t much of a selling point.

[Michael] Shermer says belief in God has all the earmarks of wishful thinking. And that religions have been demonstrably shown to be socially and psychologically constructed.

Yeah, I think that’s true. But, that doesn’t mean a more modern, credible concept of God cannot be true . . . I’m a big fan of Shermer’s by the way. I think the whole thrust of what he presents is a real force for good. I think virtually everything he says is right on the money. I just happen to disagree with him on the God question.

I have no proof that a god doesn’t exist, so yes, your view of God might be true. But with “more modern,” it sounds like you’re arguing for your position by saying that your spiritual views are chic and trendy. Maybe you mean that these ideas come from a society informed by science rather than the Iron Age people who wrote the New Testament. Okay, that’s an improvement, but we’ll eventually look just as primitive to our descendants. But I’m guessing you admit that and are doing the best you can with the imperfect insights we have at the moment.

Where is the evidence?

What is your evidence for God? You have no evidence! You’re just ASSUMING the supernatural exists. The only reason for you to believe that premise is that you already accepted that conclusion in the first place.

No, no. After I rejected traditional concepts of God, I asked myself the open-ended question, “Does a more general God, not tied to any particular religion, make sense?” My starting point was not a presumption.

Sounds like one, since you started with the God hypothesis. A less biased question would be, “Is there any evidence for the supernatural?” Give yourself permission to conclude that there are zero gods, and that would’ve been a more honest quest.

I think it’s YOUR position that starts with a presumption . . . that science is the measure of ultimate reality, period. I mean, the very definition of science excludes appeals to the supernatural. So, not surprisingly you will conclude there is no God.

I don’t exclude the supernatural and am happy to consider it. That’s what I’ve done for ten years with this blog. As far as I can tell, the only route to the truth requires evidence. The supernatural continues to fail every test, but I still look for arguments and evaluate them charitably.

You’re quick to say that science isn’t the only game in town. Okay, let me challenge you on that. What route to the truth do you recommend that’s not some variation on the scientific method? Give us an algorithm, like the scientific method, that would guide someone to the truth. Then actually use it to find something new we can all agree is the truth.

Without this, you’re just handwaving, “Science isn’t the only method, y’know,” or “You haven’t proven there is no God.”

Knowledge from outside science

I agree there is no hard evidence for the supernatural. But, I think it’s reasonable to consider . . . softer “evidence,” like logical arguments and interpretations.

But . . . to say “I believe there is a God” is not proof. It’s just an assertion . . . which requires . . . irrefutable evidence. And since we do not know, then that is the best position to take, that “We do not know.” Making up an answer is not . . . finding an answer, it’s just, making up an answer, don’t you see? Hypothesizing that there is a God is fine, but then you must test the hypothesis, to see if it has any basis in reality.

Mr. Atheist: I don’t ask for irrefutable evidence and certainly not proof, just the majority of evidence.

Think about it: if you had 100% certainty in X, you’d live your life as if X were true. But if your certainty were only 60%, wouldn’t you still live as if X were true? You’d be more humble in your conclusion and maybe more receptive to new challenges, but what would you go with if not the one that has the majority of the evidence?

You keep arguing from a strictly scientific perspective, and I’m arguing from a philosophical perspective. Requiring “irrefutable evidence” is not a reasonable standard for a philosophical issue. The God question is not a matter of physics, but of metaphysics. It’s a matter of interpretation, approach, opinion; it’s not a matter of hard science. Hypothesizing . . . is the best we can do.

While I applaud your careful outline of what you can claim, you’re not helping your case. Science is the discipline following the evidence, and I don’t know what Philosophy is doing besides sitting there and looking important. Without that evidence, why take a leap of faith? Don’t you want your worldview grounded in reality? You’re the guy who values Reason, remember?

Every year we see lists of the top scientific discoveries of the previous year, but we don’t see that for philosophy or metaphysics. I never see philosophers contributing to a field to which they are outsiders (despite much self-important harumphing to that effect from Christian philosophers like William Lane Craig).

I’ll grant that the opposite is possible, that scientists or mathematicians can arguably be philosophers. Perhaps Werner Heisenberg (a physicist) was doing philosophy when he came up with his uncertainty principle. Perhaps Kurt Gödel (a mathematician) was doing philosophy when he discovered his incompleteness theorems. Theologian Alvin Plantinga proposed an even wider view of philosophy when he said that philosophy was simply thinking hard about something. But we don’t see philosophers actually adding value to a scientific field of which they’re not a part.

I agree that hypothesizing is the best we can do, but “Well, God might exist” is hardly enough to support a worldview.

Next time: Theologians vs. science

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

This is post 6 in this series, and up next are God’s hiddenness and our drive toward reason and compassion.

God’s hiddenness and free will

Atheist: Well, let me ask you this—Why . . . would a loving God withhold knowledge of His existence from really sincere seekers . . . such as myself . . . who still see . . . no convincing evidence for God?

Cross Examined Blog: And a related question: is there a downside for misunderstanding or being unaware of God in Soft Theism? In Christianity, your destiny in heaven or hell are in the balance, but what does your God think? Said another way, what is the upside for correctly understanding him?

Soft Theist: Yeah, great question. I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe because . . . proof of God would compel us to be moral, instead of allowing free will to reign . . . as the intended norm.

This is the Problem of God’s Hiddenness, which I think is the single biggest argument against Christianity.

I don’t think free will is relevant. We don’t impose on anyone when we make our existence known. It can’t be any different with God since Christians tell us that he has made his existence known to billions of Christians over the last 2000 years. Jesus made his existence known to his apostles, and that didn’t step on anyone’s free will. God showed his power in public in a test conducted by Elijah. I think this free will argument is a desperate attempt by Christians to explain away God’s apparent indifference to humanity.

And God is no champion of free will when he stands by when robbers, rapists, and murderers impose on their victims’ free will.

I’ve written more on the hiddenness problem here, here, here, and here.

But don’t you think that if God exists, He would communicate with us in some way?

Yeah, yeah, yes. But not necessarily through any physical mechanism that we can detect.

Why the secrecy? And ask yourself which is likelier: God leaves vague, ambiguous bread crumbs about his existence, or God doesn’t exist and your God belief is just wishful thinking.

Clues from God in everyday life

I find . . . the two most valuable concepts in life, are Reason and Compassion, and so . . . I choose to interpret Reason and Compassion, as God’s way of communicating with us.

I mentioned earlier the question of humans vs. the highest life forms from the rest of the universe. Let’s have a little humility—we may not be that special. Reason and compassion are important, and we celebrate sages throughout history who refined these and other traits. But these are due to evolution. We’re Douglas Adams’ puddle again and think that, because the best human traits are important to us, they must be important in an objective sense or from a cosmic perspective.

Here’s another way to see that. Make a list of humanity’s most impressive technology achievements—landing on the moon, telecommunication, internet, transportation, war technology (radar, fighter jets, nuclear weapons), energy infrastructure, and so on. Now add in something that we can’t do today. Make it something that seems eventually doable—maybe a cloak of invisibility or eliminating the common cold. Take this list back to Europe 200 years ago and see if they can find the misplaced entry. I’m sure each technology would sound remarkable, and many would be unbelievable.

I give this example to illustrate how provincial our thinking can be. Imagine an alien civilization who achieved a similar burst of innovation in a similar amount of time, ten thousand years ago. Or a billion years ago. What stage of development might they be at now? What might they think of your “The two most valuable concepts in life are Reason and Compassion”?

Whatever reason tells us to do, whatever compassion tells us to do, that’s . . . what God wants of us. So God, DOES reach in to communicate with us, in that way, but not, in any tangible way.

What reason and compassion tell us to do is evolution talking. We’re a social species, and it’s not hard to see how evolution selected for traits like reason and compassion.

Next time: Theists’ rejection of other gods and the role of evidence and science.

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Image from Manki Kim (free-use license)
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We’re responding to an imaginary dialogue that explores Soft Theism, which is basically Christianity without the baggage. Can jettisoning Christianity’s crazy bits turn it into something plausible? Read part 1 here.

This is post 5 in this series, and up next are evolution, the Big Picture, and consciousness.

Evolution and how vs. why

Atheist: I don’t think you understand evolution. Evolution . . . is essentially a process of adaptation over time, with the most successful adapters lasting the longest. It has no need for a God at all.

Your questions, “isn’t there some force moving the whole thing forward,” “why wouldn’t the better adapted organisms simply take longer to die out,” “isn’t there some life force that makes our bodies heal,” “why should it work,” and so on, are ALL answered through a cursory study of chemistry, biology, and evolution. You would find very definitive and evidence-based answers if you looked . . . but you’re not looking, because you have what you think is an easy catch-all “answer” that has fooled you into thinking you know.

This is how religion kills the search for truth. “God of the Gaps” thinking. Like the ancient Greeks. What causes lightning? Zeus, the god of lightning . . . no more investigation required. You’re doing the exact same thing when you ask all those questions . . . without checking for the scientific answers, which exist, and are supported by real-world evidence.

Cross Examined Blog: I’ll add another difficulty with “God did it” as an explanation: it’s unfalsifiable. Wherever the atheist questions—the goodness of God, say, or whether the afterlife makes sense—the theist can always say that we humans can’t judge God. God could have his unfathomable reasons.

An unfalsifiable hypothesis is useless since no evidence can ever prove it wrong.

Soft Deist: Aaaagh! NO, I’m not! You’re attacking a straw man. I believe firmly in the value of science. You’re completely missing my point! Science explains . . . HOW things work, not WHY they should work . . . That is a subtle but critical distinction that I find you atheists NEVER get. Science explains HOW things work, not WHY they should work.

How vs. why doesn’t seem to be a helpful distinction. Why are humans similar to chimpanzees and gorillas but unlike sparrows and bananas? Evolution answers that. Why do the South America and Africa look like jigsaw puzzle pieces, and what’s the deal with volcanoes and earthquakes? Plate tectonics answers that. Why do we get sick from other people? Germ theory answers that.

But I guess you’re asking the meta question: yes, evolution does work, but that wasn’t guaranteed in our reality, so what makes it work?

I’m still not seeing that there’s an interesting question here. Are you sure you’re not inventing a problem? You’ll have a much stronger case if you show that your stumbling block appears in textbooks on evolution. I think the opposite is the case: if you spelled out your concern at a biology conference, they’d say, “Huh?”

While you say you embrace science, the problem raised by your imaginary atheist antagonist remains: “God did it” doesn’t answer the question. Instead, it shuts down the discussion. Slapping the God answer on any particular question at the frontier of science is not to embrace science, it’s to say, “Nothing to see here, people. You science-y guys can go home now. God did it.” In practice, though, it just replaces one mystery, like “Why did the Big Bang go bang?” with a bunch of other questions about who this dude is and how he came to be and so on.

Looking at the big picture

I am not asking how does nature work, but why does nature AS A WHOLE work. I am not asking what’s the physics behind something (which would be . . . science), but what’s behind . . . physics itself (which would be philosophy, or metaphysics).

I once heard a description of Philosophy that makes sense to me. Imagine Socrates and his students trying to find order in reality. To them, it’s like a swamp, without structure. But as they explore, they find elements that can be grouped together. Gradually, fields form—arithmetic, geometry, medicine, physics, engineering, and so on. And as they do, they’ve become independent fields and are no longer Philosophy.

Physics used to be philosophy, but it’s not anymore. Philosophers have no claim to physics; physicists do.

Christian apologists often hide behind philosophical claims as if, “Ah, but that’s Philosophy!” shields an idea from criticism. I’ve written more on the misuse of Philosophy here.

To you, saying God did it, is unsatisfying. To me, establishing “how nature works,” is great, but, not enough. Evolution doesn’t explain how consciousness can arise from molecules.

That’s exactly what it explains!

Yeah, the incremental steps, the elements, the forces involved, but not WHY THE WHOLE THING WORKS.

This is too vague and hand-wavy. You need to show that there’s a question needing answering. Scientists will agree that they have profound questions that are unanswered. But keep in mind that the people who identified the questions are those very same scientists. Show that your concern would pique a biologist’s interest.

Where did healing come from?

Why are our bodies capable of healing? You would say, well, because of the following measurable, physical causes. And I would say, well yeah, right, of course, and it’s great that we have learned these things, but, why should these elements and forces do what they do? Isn’t it reasonable to posit an ultimate, overall force that created the laws of nature, that causes plants and animals to grow, that causes our hearts to beat for a lifetime, that causes our bodies to heal, that makes evolution progress, that makes intelligence emerge?

I’m sure the relevant scientists would say no. Again, you must show that there’s a gap in our thinking for your God hypothesis to answer.

This reminds me of Julia Sweeney’s “Letting Go of God” monologue that related her long spiritual journey away from Catholicism and then Christianity and then spirituality in general. She remembered realizing that there was no God, and he had no role in her life. “I could just see him sitting on his suitcases near the front door of my house.” She imagined telling him to stay for a while if he needed; there was no hurry. “And slowly, over the course of several weeks, he disappeared.”

Does an actual God have any role in evolution? Or has science explained enough so that God has picked up his suitcases and left?

You ask if it’s reasonable to posit an ultimate force that created the laws of nature. No, it’s not! The supernatural has never explained anything. Every reliable explanation has been naturalistic. I’m sure many will share your angst about something not quite right, something incomplete at the frontier of science. But I’m not one of them.

You’ve heard of Douglas Adam’s puddle? It marveled at how nicely its hole fit it. The mistake, of course, was imagining that the hole was adapted to fit the puddle when in fact the puddle had adapted to fit the hole. We must avoid making the puddle’s mistake.

We have different mindsets. For you, God explains nothing, because you have a scientific mindset. For me, science does not explain enough, because I have a philosophical mindset.

Again, make sure your philosophy is telling you something valid. Philosophy has birthed many disciplines, but they now carry the baton, not philosophy.

Where did consciousness come from?

You say you can’t figure out where consciousness comes from. How about this as an alternate hypothesis: Consciousness is the result of higher biological brain function. There is much scientific evidence for this.

Well, yeah, of course that’s so. Consciousness is the result of higher biological brain function, but, it’s not really . . . where it comes from. I don’t know how else to explain it, but it only makes sense to me that consciousness needs a source for its existence, besides the consciousness-less molecules, from which it emerged.

And again, I accept science completely as to HOW things came to be—astrophysics, paleontology, genetics, all of that. I’m not ignoring them; I’m claiming they are, ultimately, an INADEQUATE explanation for their OWN existence, for WHY all those laws of nature should be as they are . . . and result in intelligence.

You’re, in effect, saying God cannot exist because he violates the laws of physics. And I’m saying a God who is not beyond the laws of physics is a caricature of the concept of God. If you define God like that, in such limited terms, then of course, there is no God.

All right, avoid the limited definition of God and define him more grandly; why think that that God exists?

My response to the question of consciousness is that it is an emergent phenomenon. I see you raise that topic later, so I’ll hold off.

Next time: God’s hiddenness and our drive toward reason and compassion.

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Image from Igordoon Primus (free-use license)
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We’re responding to an imaginary dialogue that explores Soft Theism, which is basically Christianity without the baggage. Can jettisoning Christianity’s crazy bits turn it into something plausible? Read part 1 here.

Today’s topics: evolution and human consciousness.

Richard Dawkins

Atheist: What do you think of Richard Dawkins?

Soft Deist: Oh, I like Dawkins. I like Dawkins. I agree with him that belief systems that encourage submission, instead of curiosity and rational thought, are dangerous . . . and often lethally dangerous. I . . . agree with him that traditional “faith” . . . is NOT a virtue. And, that rigid indoctrination of children is a form of child abuse.

So where are you on the faith question? Do you insist on every conclusion being reliably supported by evidence? Why not just say that we can’t answer some of the big questions and leave it at that? You seem to have a restlessness to answer the God question right now.

God’s meddling in evolution?

But . . . I disagree with him on the existence of God. Yes, evolution IS . . . how we got here, but it seems to me that without God, evolution wouldn’t work. Instead of life progressing, from amoeba to man, the better adapted organisms would just . . . take longer to die out. I feel some general force has to be pushing the whole thing forward. I can’t think, “Well, that’s nature . . . things grow, evolution happens.”

I’m unclear about where the problem is. You accept evolution, so what is left for God to do? If you read a textbook on evolution, you’ll find no gaps for God to live in. The natural explanation is sufficient, and God is left with nothing to do.

It’s not that well-adapted organisms take longer to die out but that environments are always changing, and evolution makes life forms change as well. Those individuals that are a little bit fitter (that is, that fit better into their environmental niche) are likelier to create offspring.

The problem of religion

Well, let’s get into evolution in a minute. But . . . I think . . . what you don’t seem to recognize is that any belief in any god supports and encourages extremists.

Mr. Atheist: I see where you’re going, but I think a more defensible concern would be: belief in god (that is, belief poorly supported by evidence) encourages belief in other things poorly supported by evidence such as quack cures, financial scams, QAnon conspiracy theories, and so on. Belief in God might manifest as nothing more dangerous than gathering with nice people on Sunday, but lowering your guard for other nutty claims could be a far greater harm. A credulous, non-empirical Christian approach to society is like using the internet without a firewall.

Oh, I think that’s an overstatement . . . A volcano God who demands human sacrifice does not mean that therefore ANY concept of God is pernicious. I DO agree with Dawkins that traditional religious belief systems need to be scrapped, because they DO contain pernicious ideas that extremist people latch onto.

And . . . of course, I’m claiming . . . Soft Theism contains none of the bad ideas.

Right—this seems central to your belief. You want to have some of the features of Christianity but jettison the crazy, unsupportable baggage. Which came first for you? Did you start as a Christian and shave away beliefs that were indefensible or repugnant? Or did you start as an atheist and wonder, isn’t there more than just what I can see?

And are your views best labelled Soft Theism or Soft Deism? Your view of evolution senses that it’s guided by a deity, and that would indeed be theism. On the other hand, an argument like the First Cause (which you favor further on) doesn’t argue for a god who’s involved with human society but rather a clockmaker who wound up the universe and walked away.

Can evolution explain human intelligence?

I can’t be satisfied to think the universe created itself and somehow intelligence eventually just emerged. Dawkins would say, we don’t know the origins of the universe at this point; it’s lazy to conclude . . . therefore, God. But, I am not at all saying we should not explore the universe further, and further. I’m saying we should be able to foresee logically that there will be no end, that explanations will be infinite.

Who says that the universe created itself? I don’t think this is the consensus view within cosmology. What seems like a leading contender to me is that it was uncaused and uncreated.

You act as if human intelligence is a big deal that is so remarkable that it needs a special explanation, but is it? Sure, from our standpoint, it’s essential to who we are, and we can flatter ourselves to think that it’s pretty special from a cosmic standpoint. But who knows what other things brains might evolve to do in another ten million years?

For a comparison, think of a lizard. It’s conscious, but it would never grasp the idea of humor. Not only will it never get a joke, we could never even convey the idea of humor. Now imagine a mental gap of the same magnitude between us and some supersmart alien race. Just as we could never explain humor (or morality or math) to a lizard, the alien race not only couldn’t teach us their unique mental gifts, they couldn’t even show us that they exist. Our brains would be unable to understand. All we could conclude is that these aliens have mastered some mental domain. They’re far beyond our capacity in the things like science that we do understand, they say this mystery domain is very important, and that’s as much as we will ever understand.

This isn’t to say that these supersmart aliens exist. I’m simply illustrating how petty our human capabilities might be in a universe with 10²² planets. Humility, please.

Where does it end?

Let’s say, someday, string theory is understood and accepted as a good explanation for the universe. THEN, you have to ask, “but what is the explanation for string theory?” It never ends. Science never ends. So, I think it IS logical to posit God, as an ultimate causeless force behind everything.

You’re wrestling with the series of causes. Going back in time, it has to end somewhere, right? Okay—that’s a noble quest. But I don’t see how you’re not stuck with the same problem with God. Sure, you can give him whatever properties you want—uncreated, eternal, whatever—but that doesn’t mean he exists.

Or perhaps you’re approaching this from the other direction. You’re not starting with “God” and giving him properties but rather using logic to point to properties. But as we’ve seen with quantum physics, which is both completely illogical and experimentally verified, we must remember that our common sense isn’t much help at the frontier of science.

Well, to me, your concept of God is awfully vague, and with no evidence.

Yeah, vague, and with no hard evidence, true. But remember, I don’t believe in God as a fact, but as the most reasonable . . . hypothesis.

I appreciate your honesty on the evidence issue.

Next time: Evolution, the Big Picture, and consciousness.

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Image from Karly Gomez (free-use license)
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We’re responding to an imaginary dialogue that explores Soft Theism, which is basically Christianity without the baggage. Can jettisoning Christianity’s crazy bits turn it into something plausible? Read part 1 here.

We continue with two questions about the atheist mindset, objective meaning for our lives and spirituality.

Meaning in Our Lives

Atheist: Why would the existence of a God give your life any more meaning than it would without God? I have no problem finding my own meaning in life.

Soft Deist: Yeah, I know . . . the atheist approach is to make your own meaning. That’s one of the big tenets of existentialism—there is no set meaning to life, humans make their own meaning.

Cross Examined Blog: I think the human approach is to make our own meaning, not just the atheist approach. Just because theists point to the supernatural and imagine objective meaning and purpose, that doesn’t mean it exists.

And . . . I know that the atheist attitude is that because life is temporary, it is thereby MORE meaningful, more precious. But I . . . just don’t see it that way. I think if life is temporary, then it’s just not as . . . objectively meaningful.

How valuable would gold be if it were as common as clay? How excited would you be for the weekend after you’d already experienced a trillion of them?

That’s not to say that I’ve proven that one lifetime’s worth of days is more valuable than countless days in heaven. But when the number of new days you’ll get is both limited and unknown, the value of any one day on earth must be much more than that in heaven.

And even if you’re right and forever in heaven with a God-defined purpose is better than threescore years and ten here on earth (as the King James Version phrases it), that does nothing to argue that it’s anything more than mythology. The days on earth are the only ones we know for sure we’ll get.

William Lane Craig—he’s a Christian philosopher—says the universe doesn’t acquire meaning because a person gives it one. Without God, meaning in the universe remains a matter of subjective opinion; a universe without God is objectively meaningless.

“Meaning” for humans is defined by humans. As for objective meaning (presumably this means meaning grounded outside humans, which would exist whether humans did or not), Craig needs to show that such a thing exists. The ordinary kind as defined in the dictionary exists and works well.

Well, that just it. The universe does NOT have an objective meaning or purpose. There are only subjective meanings that we ourselves create in our lives.

I think . . . the very fact that we CAN find meaning in our lives, indicates that there is some ultimate source for that meaning. To my way of thinking, partial meaning cannot exist, without ultimate meaning, without a source . . . like a branch cannot exist by itself, but, must have come from . . . a tree, a source. That’s not so much an argument, but an analogy of how I think of it.

This sounds like C.S. Lewis’s Argument from Desire: we feel hunger, so there must be food. We feel thirst, so there must be drink. And we yearn for ultimate meaning, so it must exist, too. I reject that argument here.

How would a world with objective meaning or purpose look different from one with the ordinary kind, the kind defined in the dictionary? Once we have an unbiased distinction that theists and atheists can agree on, we can move on to figuring out which world is ours.

(I also question objective meaning here and here.)

Reification

Dan Barker [from the Freedom From Religion Foundation] says that the mistake theists make is “reification”—you treat ideas as though they are something real, something objectively out there, when they are just . . . ideas.

Well, that’s the thing; I think ideas ARE real; it’s just that they are  . . . not physical “things” . . . I’ll give you an example of what I mean: Say, a good friend of yours, is killed by a giant boulder. Which is the greater reality, the boulder, or your friendship? Surely, the boulder is the greater reality; it killed your friend. Surely, your friendship is the greater reality; it meant a great deal to you, whereas the boulder is just an inanimate object. So . . . how does one reconcile these two powerful realities? I do it by perceiving the world dualistically. I see life as a constant interplay between both these realities, the physical and the spiritual.

Where is the spiritual in this example, and what’s there to reconcile? We have good days and bad days. Stuff happens.

Let me compare the boulder killing the person with a nature TV show with a fox chasing a rabbit. Our allegiance is probably for the rabbit, and we don’t want to see it killed. But maybe the fox has pups back home, and they’ll die if they’re not fed. Also, the fox is keeping the rabbit population under control to avoid overgrazing. We may want the rabbit to live and the pups to eat, but it’s a zero-sum game in reality. And, if we don’t like seeing the rabbit eaten, we must remember that, unless we’re vegetarians, we’re part of the problem.

Seeing a physical/spiritual duality doesn’t explain anything with the fox vs. rabbit contest, and it doesn’t explain anything with the boulder vs. the friend.

Spirituality

Now, I am not a dualist in the sense that there is some magical spirit world that frequently breaches the laws of nature. But, I am a dualist in the sense that, in addition to the physical world, there is a spiritual world that emerges from it—experiences, of love, beauty, deep emotion. All these admittedly fuzzy and abstract things, I think DO exist. They resist scientific verification, but they are real, and absolutely critical to our identity as human beings.

You think my mistake is reification, regarding these things as real. I think your mistake is reductionism, experiencing these things yourself as real, yet claiming they are not really real, because they are not physical.

So the spiritual world is just the emotional component of the natural world? There’s no supernatural involved? I can accept that, but you imagine the supernatural exists since you imagine God. You might want to clarify.

Obviously I agree that love, emotion, and the experience of beauty exist. Some things are physical (rock, car, sun), and some are abstract (love, frustration, courage). I don’t see the difficulty they pose for science.

Yes, there is more to learn about them. If you’re saying that science will forever be stuck analyzing human experience at the chemical or hormonal level, that sounds unlikely. Physics and chemistry are indeed low level—not usually the most productive place to discuss love or beauty—but physiology, psychology, artificial intelligence, and other disciplines are bridging that gap.

A focus on the lower level may be inappropriate or unhelpful, depending on what you’re thinking about, but that doesn’t make it invalid. Here’s an example that bridges that low-to-high gap. Suppose you saw 123 on a calculator display. You know that those digits are just representations. Sure, it might look like 123, but this is just electrons turning bits of liquid crystal dark or light. Are physics and semiconductors of any use when the topic is a cerebral math problem? Obviously, the answer is yes.

Where did logic come from?

But ideas are not things in and of themselves. For example, logic is not a thing. If all life died out, then there would be no logic.

Not quite. There’s a difference between logic and the laws of logic. An example from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance illustrates this. Before Isaac Newton, there was no Newton’s Law of Gravity, but of course there was still gravity, and it was still true that F = Gm₁m₂/r² (the formula that Newton discovered). The thing and the laws describing the thing are different.

Oh, I disagree. I think if a new form of intelligent life arose, that life form would find itself operating in a cosmos with the very same logic that was there before. I don’t think we create logic. We discover it. We activate what was already an inherent, existing, part of the cosmos.

But that brings its own conundrums. In our world, 2 + 2 = 4, and something can’t be a potato and not-a-potato at the same time (the law of excluded middle, one of logic’s three traditional laws). Is God constrained by these axioms? If he is, then we get these axioms from a greater reality than God. It’s reality that teaches us that 2 + 2 = 4, not God.

Or, if God is not constrained by these axioms, then God created the rules of addition and the laws of logic. But now they could be anything. God could’ve made 2 + 2 = 9 and created different laws of logic.

My assumption is the former, that God is constrained by an external reality. But if you say that the buck stops with God, then show us how God could’ve made 2 + 2 = 9 and could’ve made a thing that’s a potato and not-a-potato at the same time.

(You may be familiar with the morality version of this argument, the Euthyphro dilemma.)

Next time: Evolution and human intelligence

See also:

• Christianity Can’t be Deduced from Nature
• The Argument from Mathematics Doesn’t Add Up to God
• A Dozen Responses to the Transcendental Argument for God
• Do Atheists Borrow From the Christian Worldview? A Parable.

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Image from daily sunny (license CC BY 2.0)
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