The Existence of God
“In philosophy, it became, almost overnight, ‘academically respectable’ to argue for theism, making philosophy a favored field of entry for the most intelligent and talented theists entering academia today” — Quentin Smith (atheist luminary), “The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism,” Philo, no. 2 (2001): 3.
Theistic philosophy - and physics - has undergone an explosion in the past several decades. Set aside your old “Hume, Kant, and Russell proved that there is no God” and make way for the new lines of evidence. If you read just one book on the existence of God, I would recommend God and Design, which is a collection of essays by scientists and philosophers on both sides of the debate, so you’ll get both perspectives. There are plenty of other books by physicists who believe in some sort of a higher power (whether Christian, Jewish, or some other alternative) than you can shake a stick at. A small sampling includes The Faith of a Physicist by J. C. Polkinghorne, The Mind of God by Paul Davies, The Hidden Face of God by Gerald Schroeder, and The Language of God by Francis S. Collins.
God? Or an Infinite Number of Unseeable Universes?
The teleological argument is the argument for the existence of God that most people find most intuitively appealing. It also has a lot of force, it was one of the key arguments that led to the atheist poster child, Antony Flew, becoming a deist. If there were just a slight difference in how some of the basic laws of physics were slightly different, then life on earth would be impossible. In this article for Wired Magazine, Greg Easterbrook writes:
In recent years, researchers have calculated that if a value called omega — the ratio between the average density of the universe and the density that would halt cosmic expansion — had not been within about one-quadrillionth of 1 percent of its actual value immediately after the big bang, the incipient universe would have collapsed back on itself or experienced runaway-relativity effects that would render the fabric of time-space weirdly distorted. Instead, the firmament is geometrically smooth — rather than distorted — in the argot of cosmology. If gravity were only slightly stronger, research shows, stars would flame so fiercely they would burn out in a single year; the universe would be a kingdom of cinders, devoid of life. If gravity were only slightly weaker, stars couldn’t form and the cosmos would be a thin, undifferentiated blur. Had the strong force that binds atomic nuclei been slightly weaker, all atoms would disperse into vapor.
That is just a small sample. There are literally hundreds of improbable coincidences that were needed for the laws of the universe to result in intelligent life being possible. The odds are literally countless billions upon billions to one. You either have to believe that God designed the universe with the creation of intelligent life in mind, or that there are billions upon billions of unseen other universes that exist in unseeable alternate dimensions with completely different physical laws. We just happen to live in the one universe that does have the physical laws needed for the development of intelligent life. While there are some scientific theories, such as inflation, that make the latter possibility seem more likely, but then as John Leslie (among others) points outs, inflation has its own set of extraordinarily improbable coincidences, as well as other problems that make inflation a problematic alternative to a God who created the universe.
Another secular explanation is observes that, given the fact that we do in fact exist, then the improbable must have occured. But this argument misses the point. As John Leslie points out, suppose you were facing death by firing squad. 100 trained riflemen point their rifles at you, the order to fire is given, and they all shoot. And you are unharmed. You would not conclude “Of course they all missed. If they had hit me I would be dead. The mere fact that I exist is proof.” Instead you would conclude that there was some systematic reason why you are alive - perhaps your friend bribed the armorer to swap the ammunition with blanks. Because of its weaknesses of this argument, most secular defenses have settled on the infinite universes explanation. But you sometimes come across it.
Books on the Teleological Argument:
- God and Design. This is a collection of essays by physicists on both sides of the debate. It includes an accessible summary of the issue.
- Universes by John Leslie. This is a great introduction to the subject by a pantheist, but the technical side has become a little dated over time. It is well-regarded by both theists and atheists.
- Just Six Numbers by Martin Rees, in which he explains the incredible cosmic coincidences and argues for the multiverse explanation. This short book makes a great first pass through the subject.
Websites on the Teleological Argument:
- Here is a list of articles by the philosopher Robin Collins that provide a full discussion of the fine tuning argument, and discuss common atheist rebuttals.
- here is an excellent, but technical, article on the subject by the philosopher William Lane Craig.
The Kalam Cosmological Argument, or Who Made God?
This ain’t your father’s cosmological argument. What it lacks in the intuitive appeal of great cosmological coincidences, it more than makes up for in terms of raw logical force. Given the choice, atheists would overwhelming prefer a timeless and eternal universe, rather than a universe that was created in the Big Bang. The reason for that is because you do not have to explain how something that is timeless and eternal came to exist. It is the “get out of jail free card” for the question “who created it?” It has always existed, timeless and eternal, and thus never had to be created. That is the answer theists use to the question “Who Made God?”
Atheists lost their “get out of jail free card” with the discovery of the Big Bang, which caused them a lot of difficulty. Einstein was probably not an atheist, but he did share Spinoza’s view that God was bound in nature, rather than the theistic view that God created nature. Thus when Einstein’s Theory of Relativity predicted the Big Bang, he introduced a cosmological constant that changed his theory to make the universe timeless and eternal. Einstein later called this his greatest blunder.
Other physicists such as Fred Hoyle tried to create a rival theory to the Big Bang called the Steady State model, which presented a timeless and eternal view of the universe, for what they frankly admitted were atheist reasons. Ultimately the Steady State theory was rejected. As a tangent, the atheistic Hoyle had other problems to grapple with. He became convinced that aliens visited earth to create life, because he did not see any way that the first instance of life (at least, human-style carbon-based life) could be created through natural processes.
The actual nitty gritty of the Kalam Cosmological Argument is very dense and complicated. Here are some resources.
- Here is an introduction to the theory by William Lane Craig, its leading proponent. He has used it to consistently win debates with atheists.
- Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. Besides being a great introduction to philosophy, it has a section on the kalam cosmological argument and the teleological argument.
- Craig vs. Flew. Here is a debate between the Christian philosopher William Lane Craig and the atheist philosopher Antony Flew. Antony Flew later converted to deism, although in fairness he was more strongly influenced by the teleological argument described above.
Is God Nonsensical?
There is a school of thought in philosophy called logical positivism which holds to what is called the verification principle: there must be an empirical test to verify the truth of a proposition, or it is nonsensical. Since there is no empirical test that will conclusively verify the existence of God, then the concept of God must be nonsensical.
Logical positivism was largely abandoned about fifty years ago by philosophers, but some of its ideas live on in the popular imagination. The reason for its abandonment is that the verification principle is self-refuting: there is no empirical test that will verify the validity of the verification principle itself. There are other problems. For example, there is no empirical test to verify the “many worlds” hypothesis discussed in relation to the design argument above. There is also no empirical test to verify that the past actually happened - it could be the case that the universe was created five minutes ago in its current state, including memories of a non-existent past, partially digested food in our bellies, and light traveling from distant stars. But we all believe that the past actually happened - it is not a nonsensical concept even though there is no way to prove it.
Further Reading
- An Opinionated Guide to Philosophy. It helps to have a background in philosophy.
- Books that defend Christianity. This is a list of books that defend everything to the existence of God to the historical evidence for Jesus.
RSS feed
