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Recently one of the contributors to this forum, a gentleman going by the name XFactor wrote two articles:
2. Challenging Atheism Part II
In the second of the two articles, Mr X claims the following “In my previous article I provided logical proof that our universe needs a self-existent or self-creating “being” to sustain its existence. This can be taken as evidence suggesting that God exists. I cemented my view by pointing out that not a single scientific theory attempts to explain our existence from “nothing.”
In this article I will address the “logical proof” that Mr X puts forward in the first of his two articles point for point. Personally I find Mr X’s logic highly convoluted and fallacious, and from the many commentators it appears I may not be alone in this. All of Mr X’s content is shown in bold italics.
“The typical atheist is generally looking for genuine proof or sound logic pointing to the existence of God.” I have to say that as a typical atheist, I am looking for no such thing. What I am looking for is for theists to provide the necessary evidence (note not logic and proof is only possible in the realm of mathematics) for their extraordinary claims. And which “God” are we talking about here anyway? As with many such articles Mr X does not take the time to define his deity of choice so that we can evaluate his logic effectively based on a detailed definition.
Mr X really confuses me completely right from the outset. He says the following: “We all however agree that there is no conclusive scientific evidence on the existence of God, so the only way forward is to examine known facts and attempt to find meaning using reasonable logic.”, but then immediately responds to his own statement with “it is my hope that more and more believers start engaging atheists with not only scriptures, but also with scientific facts and principles.”. But wait a minute we just agreed that science is not a good way to look for gods……..
Perhaps Mr X is aware that many Christians do not agree with him on the issue of science being used in the “proof” of God. There are entire Christian institutions dedicated to the use of science to "prove" the earth is 6,000 years old, that Noah's flood occurred 4,000 years ago and that Adam and Eve were indeed very real people who rode on the backs of dinosaurs.
Mr X then goes on to ask the question “Can a person come to know God through Science and logic?”, which he deems the correct approach to take when dealing with the atheistic approach which supposedly places hope on science in order to explain human existence. Atheists in fact do no such thing. They simply reject the assertions of deity made by theists. It is however science that is in the business of attempting to explain the natural world which includes humans. The same science that most Christians presumably accept as well.
His starting point in the argument is the scientific debate around the concept of the origins of matter and energy, and various opinions on “what” preceded the Big Bang. His central assumption seems to be that something existed before our universe and “from this "thing", the extremely large amount of energy needed to create our universe is somehow "created" or "generated" and he goes on to say “So there certainly is strong sentiment within the scientific community that the energy needed to drive the Big Bang originated from somewhere else.”. Personally I think the words “strong sentiment” are too strong. The scientific community has certainly not agreed on the idea of “before” the Big Bang in the first place. This question is one of the most important ones in cosmology. The short answer is that we simply don't know why it came about or where did all that energy come from. We don't know what the state of the Universe was “before” the big bang since there is no remnant evidence that would allow us to observe it. We don't know what to make of spacetime right around the Big Bang, because to describe it we'd need a quantum theory of gravity, which has not been fully developed yet. So there may have been a "before" or at least some sort of extension of spacetime beyond that vicinity, although not necessarily in a way that would be called "before". We just don't know.
Many physicists and theoretical physicists are unhappy with certain aspects of our current model of the Big Bang. One of the most glaring issues is the absolute beginning – the actual moment itself. As you rewind time to get closer and closer to the beginning of the Big Bang, the maths breaks down due to having to invoke infinity (infinitely small in size and infinite in density). By using infinity, we are effectively saying that reality itself has no rules or meaning. Physics and the laws of nature completely break down. In an attempt to make sense of this paradoxical singularity, and restore the reality itself, a few of theoretical physicists have proposed hypotheses on what may have happened before the Big Bang, the following are such proposals:
· The Big Bounce – Prof. Priyam Singh
· Born From A Black Hole – Prof. Lee Smolin
· It’s A Brane New World – Prof. Neil Turok
· Our Universe In A Bubble – Prof Michio Kaku
· The Hartle–Hawking no-boundary condition,
· Big Bang lattice model
· Eternal inflation
What is important to take from these various hypotheses, is that not a single one proposes supernatural process at work and all agree that If the conservation law of mass and energy hold for our universe and also for all other universes then our universe does not theoretically “begin”. The implication is that the existent mass and energy has been around eternity, and thus had no requirement for an initial “creation”.
While wondering what happened before the Big Bang makes for an interesting thought experiment and sparks the imagination, the testability of the hypotheses are nearly impossible in our immediate future. The technology and scientific understanding required for such tests are hundreds, if not thousands of years away.
I however agree with Mr X’s final comment on this matter “And I’m not saying that God created the energy. The energy could have easily come from another natural process altogether.” As with most other god-of-the-gap problems in the past, science has always come up with the answers and the god has always been pushed back to the next knowledge gap. I would place a bet on the horse that has already won a thousand times.
Mr X then tackles what he obviously regards as a problem for his “creator”, the problem of Infinite Regress. His solution to this is the Infinite Monkey Theorem, where he grandly concludes “it is also possible that given a significantly large enough amount of time, an intelligent being, aka God, could also have possibly come into existence. So, “God” does not necessarily need a creator, much like the universe or life does not necessarily need a creator.” I would guess that Mr X is so fixated on having his God around that he completely missed his own logical fallacy. Yes indeed, why is a creator god required if a universe and the life within it can be sufficiently explained by the Infinite Monkey Theorem. Why on earth do we need to plug an additional and by Mr X’s account unnecessary, supernatural being into the mix. Mr X is also, unlike his fellow Christians, quite content that his version of the Christian deity is part of nature and perhaps even “created” by nature itself. Of course Mr X seems to completely miss the point that the solution to the Infinite Regress paradox is not to assert the “eternal” creator god or indeed initial “creation” in the first place and assume rather that the universe is eternal and follows natural laws. Even if an eternal universe framework falls into the same logical paradox of infinite regress, what would be the benefit of superimposing an additional layer of unknown complexity by adding a yet to be defined God into the equation?
Mr X then addresses the counter-argument to modern versions of the argument from design for the existence of God as introduced by Richard known as the Ultimate Boeing 747 Gambit. The argument is a play on the notion of a "tornado sweeping through a junkyard to assemble a Boeing 747" employed to decry abiogenesis and evolution as vastly unlikely and better explained by the existence of a creator god. According to Dawkins, this logic is self-defeating as the theist must now account for the god's existence and explain whether or how the god was created. In his view, if the existence of highly complex life on Earth is the equivalent of the implausible junkyard Boeing 747, the existence of a highly complex god is the "ultimate Boeing 747" that truly does require the seemingly impossible to explain its existence.
Again Mr X is so obsessed with having a creator God around that he attempts to pretend that humans can given enough time be “able to do what “God” can do”. He then says “I think the key trait behind “God” is intelligence, not necessarily complexity.”, all of which in my opinion is a deliberate misunderstanding of the Boeing 747 Gambit. The Gambit is all about complexity as is Richard Dawkins counter-argument. Mr X is really clutching at straws here and making wild guesses about the nature of his deity, which I would guess does not fit in with the Christian view of a God that is omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent and therefore by implication infinitely more complex than the universe he directs on a second-by-second and hair-by-hair basis. Mr X is making up his own version of deity to “win” the argument.
In conclusion MR X says the following:” So whatever chain of events led to our existence; somehow Infinite Regress is not a problem for our universe, else we simply wouldn't be here. In my view, the only way this is possible is if something in the creation chain or hierarchy is somehow self-existent or self-creating, else our present reality collapses by virtue of Infinite Regress. In other words, through a chain of creation originating from a self-existent object or being, our universe is ultimately formed. All other creation “scenarios” succumb to Infinite Regress. So my conclusion is that we did not come from “nothing”, but from something already there. Self-existence is perhaps cemented by the fact that not a single scientific theory attempts to explain our existence from “nothing”.”
Ultimately Mr X concludes that the universe or chain of universes before our current universe must be “created” by a primary “self-existent” force, being, god who knows what. He not only concludes this but then in his second article goes on victoriously to claim “In my previous article I provided logical proof that our universe needs a self-existent or self-creating “being” to sustain its existence. This can be taken as evidence suggesting that God exists. I cemented my view by pointing out that not a single scientific theory attempts to explain our existence from “nothing”.” And why may we ask should the universe not be that self-existent entity with no gods required?
Mr X has attempted to use all this sciencey sounding stuff and logic to “prove” the existence of his particular brand of creator deity, without a definition of said deity and not a shred of real evidence. Hopefully you the reader did not miss the fact that not a single scientist alive today or scientific theory says one conclusive jot about the “before” of the Big Bang. The simple answer in science is “We don’t know.” To go around asserting that you have provided logical proof based on scientific facts and logic is nothing short of dishonesty and science fiction.
Furthermore, even if we were to grant Mr X all his logical fallacy and giant leaps of science, he is still only left with deism. It’s notable that Mr X operates in the realms scientific unknowns, in a fancy version of a god-of-the-gaps fallacy, and does not use the realm of known science provide logical arguments for theism. He does this because he knows he still has all his work cut out to get to theism, where science makes life for a god with a finger in the pie very difficult.
In short the most logical position is not to assert anything (Null Hypothesis) beyond the point where current evidence, hypothesis testing and theory lead us. To do anything else is entering the realms of poppycock.
