TGD: Chapter Five - The Evolution of Religion

Chapter Five is entitled, "The Roots of Religion," and in it Dawkins discusses why people hold religious beliefs and why such beliefs are so widespread.

He describes the problem in the first section of the chapter. He says that since we are the products of evolution, we need to consider why natural selection seemingly favored religious belief. It isn't an easy question to answer because religious practices and beliefs seem so inefficient and natural selection usually punishes inefficiency.

So Dawkins asks the question, since religion has such a high cost in terms of time, energy and resources what evolutionary benefit does it offer?

This is a good question. Consider Christianity as an example. Christians are called to follow the example of a man who failed to pass on his genes to the next generation. To the extent that Christians follow Jesus' example, it would seem that we are becoming less fit, in the Darwinian sense.

It is tempting to offer a religious explanation for this dilemma. One might argue that God blesses and encourages religious behavior, thus allowing religious people to continue to multiply despite their self-sacrificing behavior.

This explanation has two problems. First of all, I'm not sure that God shows his followers special favor. Instead, I would argue that God is working to bless the whole world.

Second, there are so many different religious beliefs and practices. Even if we claim that one group survives because God has favor on them, then why does a group with a contradictory set of beliefs and practices survive as well? Is God simultaneously working to support both groups?

Clearly there isn't a simple, religious explanation that works in this case.

Having said all that, I'm looking forward to this chapter. Dawkins is, first and foremost, an evolutionary biologist and in this chapter he's making an evolutionary argument. Since it's his area of expertise Dawkins is able to make a compelling case.

In the first section, Dawkins just goes over possible explanations for why human beings seem to have evolved with religious beliefs.

The first explanation comes from the theory of group selection. The idea is that religious behaviors that hurt an individual's chance of survival might help the group's chance of survival.

The second explanation is that religious behavior might not benefit our genes. Dawkins writes, "An animal's behavior tends to maximize the survival of the genes 'for' that behavior, whether or not those genes happen to be in the body of the particular animal performing it." It is possible that religious behaviors may not have evolved to benefit us, but to benefit someone or something else.

For the third explanation, Dawkins suggests that religious ideas themselves might behave in a gene like fashion. He argues that the religions themselves may have "evolved" in order to ensure the survival of the religious ideas, in much the same way that animals evolve to ensure the survival of their genes.

I look forward to reading a more detailed account of what Dawkins believes is the cause of religion.

TGD: The Story So Far...

At the end of chapter four, Dawkins takes some time to summarize his argument against the existence of God. I think I'm going to do something similar.

Unlike Dawkins, I haven't been advancing one single argument. Instead I've been responding to various points that Dawkins has been making. However, in the process I have been advancing a kind of counter-argument. I think it's time to tie the pieces together and take a look at the argument I've been making (At the beginning of each point, I'll place a link to a previous post where I discuss the issue in detail).

Here is a quick summary of my argument for the existence of God:

First of all, based on the cosmological argument, we know that our universe was created by an external force. We don't know if this first cause is an abstract force or an eternal, divine being, but we know that the cause for the physical universe does not lie inside the physical universe.

Second, we know that our universe is special, because it is able to support intelligent life. This most likely did not happen by chance. From this we can infer that whatever created our universe did so intentionally, with the purpose of one day making intelligent life. From this we can infer that the cause of our universe is both intelligent, and able to make decisions.

Third, Dawkins' argument that such intelligent beings are ruled out by their improbability doesn't apply in this case. Dawkins' argument addresses the improbability of intelligent beings appearing spontaneously within the physical universe. As I said in step one, the cause of our physical universe exists outside the physical universe.

Fourth, when we take a second look at Dawkins' argument, we see that he is merely making the claim that the cause of the physical universe should be simple. This claim is merely a matter of preference or, to be more precise, faith*. There is no reason to believe that the cause of the physical universe actually is simple. Instead, it seems more likely that the cause of our physical universe is complex, for the reason given in step two.

Fifth, a being of such supernatural power and intelligence would theoretically be able to perform miracles. If such miracles occurred, we would expect to find evidence of them. In fact, there are many accounts of miracles throughout history, from ancient times up until the present day. There are even some (relatively) recent accounts of miracles that were witnessed by thousands of people.

Sixth, Dawkins argues that human perceptions are flawed. That every account of a miracle is the result of either some kind of deception, or it was invented in the mind of the person experiencing it. Given the very high number of people who claim to have experienced miracles, it is likely that at least some of them are genuine. Since Dawkins is arguing that miracles never happen, if even one of those accounts represents a genuine miracle, it is enough to refute Dawkins' argument.

The above argument makes the case that there is an intelligent being who created the universe and works miracles. I've avoided using the term God, but clearly the being described matches God's description on several counts.

Of course, I don't believe in just any God; I believe in the Christian God. My belief in the Christian God is partly a result of my own, unique experiences and partly a result of my belief that the New Testament contains a fairly reliable account of a miracle-working Rabbi who lived in the first century.

That is (more or less) the argument I've been advancing throughout the first four chapters. Starting with chapter five though, the book takes a different direction. Dawkins spends less time arguing against God's existence, and more time arguing about how religion is a bad influence.

By the same token, for the remainder of this series I will spend less time arguing for God's existence, and more time focusing on the role of faith. This should be interesting, because in this area I agree with Dawkins on more than a few points. So it should make for some interesting posts as I read the book and discuss the nature of religion and the role it should play both in our private and public lives.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the posts to come.

* Ultimately any belief about the origin of the universe must be a matter of faith. Science can only tell us so much about the early universe. At some point, something happened that no one can really explain. This is a point that Dawkins doesn't quite seem to grasp.

TGD: Chapter Four - Simplicity and the Nineteenth Century

At last we reach the end of chapter four. The final section is entitled, "An Interlude at Cambridge," and in it Dawkins describes a conference he participated in. The conference was sponsored by the Templeton Foundation, an organization which he has little fondness for. The Templeton Foundation awards a prize to individuals who, "Make an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension." Unsurprisingly, Dawkins was the only atheist speaker at this conference.

At this conference gave a version of his argument against God's existence, which I discussed earlier. Naturally his argument was not readily accepted by the other speakers. He describes a few of their main objections.

The major argument revolved on whether or not God is simple. The crux of Dawkins' argument is that God is incredibly complex. The people whom Dawkins was debating with argued that God is actually simple.

The people arguing that God is actually simple probably have a different understanding of God's nature and a different definition of the word simple. These differences of opinion are inevitable when people with different world views talk to each other about what they believe. These differences provide a real challenge for anyone who tries to talk someone out of their world view.

Besides claiming that God is actually simple, the other major response Dawkins received for his argument is that it is very "Nineteenth Century". If Dawkins' opponents explained what they meant by calling his argument "Nineteenth Century", Dawkins doesn't give it. He does, however, share his own opinion about what they meant by it.

According to Dawkins, saying that his argument is "Nineteenth Century" is simply a coded way of saying that Dawkins is being rude by making a direct attack on religion like that.

I have my own opinion about what they might have meant by the phrase "Nineteenth Century". The Nineteenth Century was the height of modernism and Dawkins' world view is very modernist. In particular, his belief that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible is a distinctly modern idea.

This idea has, for the most part, fallen out of favor. The only people clinging to the belief that science and religion are incompatible are religious fundamentalists and men like Dawkins.

Having said that, this is an important conversation to have. I think most people understand that science and religion can coexist, but most people haven't given too much thought to how that compromise works in practice. Reading Dawkins' book has forced me to reevaluate my beliefs about how science and faith interact.

So I'm glad that Dawkins is making this argument. My only regret is that he didn't work harder to understand the people he was arguing with. I think he could have gained some valuable insights into how religious people view the world. So far what I've read from Dawkins indicates that he doesn't really grasp what makes a religious person's mind ticks.

TGD: Chapter Four - The Multiverse, Big Crunches, Black Holes and other Strangeness

Today I want to talk a little bit more about the anthropic principle and the question of why our universe is fit for life. It's an interesting question and it's not one that can be answered easily without appealing to God.

The simplest and most straightforward way to address this problem is to claim that our universe couldn't possibly have been any different from the way it is now. This argument is often made by theoretical physicists trying to put together a unified theory that can explain the entire universe. Once we finally have this theory, they argue, we will see that the universe has to be the way it is.

Surprisingly, Dawkins considers this argument unsatisfying. Even if there truly is only one way that the universe could have been, we can still wonder why that one way is so well set up for the eventual evolution of life.

Dawkins gets around this objection by arguing that there may be multiple universes with different physical laws, some of which allow intelligent life to develop. He argues that, as unlikely as this may seem, it is still more likely than the existence of God. This based on the dubious argument he made earlier that it is extremely unlikely that God exists.

I don't think Dawkins' argument here holds water.

People who oppose intelligent design theory rightfully point out that the God hypothesis doesn't actually address the problem. Simply saying, "God did it," might be a valid explanation, but it doesn't help us understand our universe any better. In the same way, "There are billions of alternate universes," might be a valid explanation, but it doesn't actually tell us anything about our universe.

Since neither hypothesis makes for a good scientific theory, the only thing we can argue about is which idea is simpler or more likely. The end result is that we end up arguing about what words like "Simple" really mean. From one perspective, a single universe-designing entity seems relatively simple. From another perspective such an entity is prohibitively complex; even more complex than a billion or more alternate universes. At the end of the day, the argument is almost purely subjective.

In this section Dawkins presents a couple of different variations on the multiverse hypothesis. I want to take a bit of time to comment on each of these.

Another form the hypothesis takes is the serial universe model. The idea here is that our universe is destined to collapse in a "big crunch" and when it does a new big bang will occur and a new universe will form. If we assume that this process has been going on for a long enough period of time, then there have might have been a billion universes already and we're living in one that happened to be fit for life.

The big problem with this theory is that not every universe is guaranteed to collapse. In fact, the most recent evidence indicates that our universe is destined to continue expanding indefinitely, so this theory has fallen out of favor.

Another theory that Dawkins brings up is that every time a black hole is formed a new universe is created inside the black hole. The theory is that the universe inside the black hole might "inherit" similar properties to the parent universe. This system creates a lot of universes where black holes can form and, as a side affect, quite a few universes where stars can form and life can evolve.

I don't know much about this theory, so I don't know how all the details are supposed to work out. What happens to he "baby universe" when the black hole evaporates? Or what happens if the parent universe collapses? Dawkins likes this theory because of its superficial resemblance to the theory of evolution, but it seems to me that this theory creates more problems than it solves.

Finally, in both of the above theories, you can't actually observe or interact with these hypothetical alternate universes. In one case the alternate universe exist either before the "big bang" or after a future "big crunch". In another case, the alternate universes hide behind the event horizon of a black hole.

This is important, because if we could interact with these other universes, they wouldn't really be alternate universes at all. They would just be another part of our universe.

This is the final clue that a multiverse hypothesis doesn't really solve the problem. If we suppose that there is more than one universe out there, then we need to consider the laws that govern their creation and existence, just as we do for objects in the universe. Ultimately we will need a new set of laws to explain objects in the multiverse. How likely is it that those laws will be any simpler, any less contrived, than the laws that govern our universe?

In the end, we'll just be asking the exact same questions about the laws of the multiverse that we now ask about the laws of the universe. Where do we go from there? Hopefully, scientists will have more sense than to propose a multi-multiverse.

TGD: Chapter Four - Deep Inside of a Parallel Universe

First I'd like to apologize for being late with this post. I was a little busy last week and didn't get around to writing a God Delusion post. Anyway, as promised I'm now going to talk about the anthropic principle and how it works as an argument.

As I mentioned last time, the next two sections of chapter four both deal with the anthropic principle. The first section talks about how the anthropic principle applies to the planet earth.

We now know that not all planets are able to support life. In fact there are a number of factors that make our planet and our solar system especially suited for the evolution of complex life. At first this might seem like an odd coincidence, except that if our planet didn't have just the right conditions then we wouldn't be here to talk about it. We'd be on some other planet that is well suited for the evolution of complex life having the same discussion.

Dawkins uses the argument to address the problem of how life appeared on earth in the first place. He argues that even if we discover that it is extremely unlikely that life could have emerged from nonliving matter, say one in a billion, then life still would have appeared because there are almost probably more than a billion habitable planets in the universe.

Here the argument works very well, because we know that there are billions of galaxies containing billions of stars. Of course, we still don't know all of the probabilities. We don't know how likely it is that a given star has an earth-like planet with all the right conditions to support life. We don't know how likely it is that life emerged from nonliving organic compounds. So we can't be certain that life emerging from nonliving organic matter on an earth-like planet is a sure thing, but it does seem reasonable*.

In the next section Dawkins talks about how the anthropic principle applies to the universe as a whole. He mentions the fact that, from the standpoint of contemporary physics, several of the fundamental constants of the universe seem to be "just right" for life, much like our planet and our solar system.

Obviously the same trick won't work here. After all, we can see that the universe is large and it contains a vast quantity of stars, any one of which could contain a life-friendly planetary system. Our universe, on the other hand, is the only one we've got. If this universe wasn't fit for life, then we wouldn't exist. There isn't any other universe for us to evolve in.

Unless we hypothesize, as Mr. Dawkins does, that there are many different universes each with different fundamental constants. Then we could use the same argument to show that the fact that our universe is fit for life is unremarkable.

The fact that Mr. Dawkins is credulous enough to think that a multiverse theory is plausible, after all the incredulity he's shown towards religious beliefs, is shocking. What evidence could anyone provide, either experimentally or observationally, to prove that these alternate universes exist? They aren't a part of our universe at all and they may not be connected with our universe in any way. They are as undetectable as Russell's Celestial Teapot, the Invisible Pink Unicorn or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Back in Chapter Two, in the section on Monotheism, Dawkins wrote this to describe the Abrahamic God, "He not only created the universe; he is a personal God, dwelling within it, or perhaps outside it (whatever that may mean)." Notice the incredulity Dawkins shows at the idea that anything could exist "outside" the universe. But where do these alternate universes exist? Certainly they must be "outside" our universe(whatever that may mean). Interestingly the same idea, which seemed absurd coming from a theologian, suddenly seems completely reasonable coming from a theoretical physicist.

So we see that Dawkins is not really a true skeptic. He is a selective skeptic. He is highly skeptical of religious ideas and beliefs, but much less skeptical of scientific-sounding ideas. Even when those ideas have the same amount of evidence, in fact even when it's the exact same idea, the sciencey sounding one is deemed "plausible" while its religious equivalent is considered preposterous.

I have some more thoughts I would like to share on this topic, but I'll save them for next week. I've also discovered, after reviewing chapter four, that I still have one more section to cover. So I hope you're enjoying my coverage of chapter four, because it's going to continue for a couple more weeks.

* Advocates of intelligent design theory disagree. They argue that the appearance of life from non-living matter is so improbable that it is basically impossible. I personally disagree, but I'm not an expert on the subject. If you want to learn more I found a website that provides a rebuttal to the intelligent design argument.

TGD: Chapter Four - The Anthropic Principle and Faith

The next two sections of chapter four both deal with different versions of the anthropic principle. Simply put, the anthropic principle states that any universe (or world) in which intelligent life exists must have the right conditions to allow intelligent life to exist. Therefore the fact that our world and our universe have the right conditions for intelligent life is unremarkable.

On the one hand, it is hard to argue against the anthropic principle, because it is self evidently true (ie it is a tautology). Obviously if the conditions on the earth or in the universe were different, such that intelligent life could not exist, then there wouldn't be any scientists to study it. From this, we can safely conclude that no scientists will ever be able to demonstrate that it is impossible for intelligent life to exist in our universe.

So, in a sense, it is completely unremarkable that our planet and our universe are "just right" for us. Indeed, they could not possibly be anything else. Of course, it is only unremarkable that our universe allows intelligent life to form if intelligent life itself is unremarkable. I do not believe that to be true. Instead I think our existence is very remarkable.

Now, the funny thing about the anthropic principle is that there are a couple of different versions of it. Different people use this principle to make different conclusions. Some people use it to argue for the existence of God, while others use it to argue for the existence of multiple universes.

Dawkins uses the anthropic principle to support the idea that there must be a complete scientific explanation for the emergence of intelligent life. He interprets the anthropic principle as, "Intelligent life exists, therefore there must be a scientific explanation for how intelligent life came to exist." This is only true if we assume that the origin of intelligent life has a scientific explanation.

Dawkins holds the assumption, along with many scientists, that anything that exists (or has existed) has a scientific explanation for its existence. This belief is not based on evidence, or at least not direct evidence. It is a kind of faith, although it is rarely acknowledged as such.

All too often this faith gets a free pass. People who believe in God, or in the resurrection of Jesus, are often ridiculed for believing in something that can't be proven. On the other hand, people who believe that everything that exists has a scientific explanation rarely face ridicule, even though their own beliefs are just as unprovable.

Many scientists, including Dawkins, operate under the assumption that there is ultimately a scientific explanation for everything. The problem (at least in Dawkins' case) is that they seem to think that their own beliefs are indisputably true. That simply isn't the case. There is no guarantee that every problem that scientists attempt to solve has a scientific solution. The scientists believe that a solution exists but until they find it, they can't be sure.

Before I finish this post I want to make something clear. I don't have a problem with scientists who believe that what they're studying has a scientific explanation. In fact, I think it's a good thing. Science wouldn't advance if scientists didn't believe in what they were doing. I just want to point out that the scientist's belief is an act of faith, in much the same way that a religious person's belief in God is an act of faith.

Next week I'll take a closer look at these final sections of chapter four. I'll talk more about how well the anthropic principle works on the planetary and universal scale.

TGD: Chapter Four - In Which I Agree With Richard Dawkins Wholeheartedly

The next two sections of Dawkins' book, Irreducible Complexity and The Worship of Gaps, are mostly devoted to explaining the theory of evolution and pointing out the flaws in the so-called theory of intelligent design. As you may have gathered from what I've written so far, I don't have any problems with evolution and I'm not a big fan of intelligent design. As such, I don't have much to write about these sections.

His basic argument is that the success of evolution and the failure of intelligent design should make us suspicious of any attempt to explain the universe in terms of design. I've already discussed the problems with that argument last week and the week before, so I'm not going to do that again. Instead, I'll take the opportunity to point out some of the things Dawkins and I can agree on.

First and foremost, we can agree that the Intelligent Design theory isn't science. It doesn't provide any useful explanations or make any testable predictions. It doesn't give scientists a framework to help them organize their findings or suggest new areas of research.

This is because intelligent design isn't trying to be science. The theory wasn't created by scientists interested in discovering how the natural world works. It was created by religious people interested in controlling what textbooks said about how the natural world works.

It is unfortunate, for many reasons, that so many Christians are so heavily invested in controlling science education in the United States. The most obvious reason is that a large number of people are actively trying to sabotage science education. Every success the movement wins makes our children more ignorant about the biological sciences.

The second problem is that this kind of polarization has a chilling effect on scientific research. Researchers normally seek out problems and potential challenges to a theory. They do this so that they can conduct further research and see if the problem or challenge can be resolved. When you have a group like the ID movement latching on to such problem areas as "proof" that evolution doesn't work it makes it difficult for researchers to do their job.

The last problem I'm going to talk about is one that Dawkins isn't concerned with. The biggest problem I have with the intelligent design movement is that it directly harms Christianity's reputation. It creates the false impression that Christianity and evolution are mutually incompatible, an impression that Dawkins seems to think is correct.

Moreover, it creates the impression, among educated people, that Christians are either backwards, uneducated, or simply unconcerned with the truth. This creates an obvious credibility problem for Christians everywhere.

There, I've now written an entire post about something Dawkins and I agree on. I apologize if your pet pig sprouts wings and flies away, but I'm afraid it couldn't be helped.

TGD: Chapter Four - When All You Have is a Hammer

I have a confession to make. I think Dawkins is probably quite a bit smarter than I am. I know he is much more well educated than I am. So why don't I defer to his superior intellect and expertise?

The simple answer is that I do, when it comes to evolutionary biology. The man knows a lot more than I do about that subject, having studied it for most of his adult life, and I trust his opinions in that field.

The problem is that even when he's discussing radically different fields of knowledge, he still thinks like an evolutionary biologist. He has this strange idea that the understanding he's gained in his field, the knowledge and information he's acquired through many long hours of studying, can be just as easily applied in any other discipline.

Or at least, I assume that's what's going on. It's the only way I can explain the content of this next section. He writes that the theory of natural selection should make us suspicious of any sort of design hypothesis. He says that it should raise our awareness to the fact that there may be other possible explanations whenever a design explanation seems necessary.

The problem with this approach is that it fails to consider how other scientific disciplines differ from biology. A biologist can rely on the laws of physics and chemistry to explain how DNA and RNA works, how mutations happen, how environments change, and how creatures survive and reproduce, all of which goes into explaining how complex life evolved.

A physicist or cosmologist trying to come up with an explanation for the origin of the universe doesn't have that advantage. As I discussed last week, such discussions really fall outside the realm of pure science and into philosophy and metaphysics.

Still, let us suppose for a moment that the complex and wonderful universe we find ourselves isn't the result of design, but instead is the result of some kind of emergent complexity. Emergent complexity happens when a simple initial state, governed by simple rules, is able to produce complex, interesting results.

As an example, let us look at Conway's Game of Life. The rules to the Game of Life are very simple, and given certain initial conditions it can produce complex, interesting results. It is a tool meant to illustrate the power of emergent complexity.

If we assume that the universe works like a more sophisticated version of the Game of Life, then we have to consider the fact that the rules for the Game of Life weren't arbitrarily selected. Those rules were chosen specifically to allow for emergent complexity. Additionally, not every initial state in the Game of Life produces emergent complexity. Most of them fizzle out or fall into a stable, repeating pattern after a few generations.

If anything, the Game of Life illustrates the problem of trying to use emergent complexity to explain the universe's origins without appealing to some cosmic designer. Emergent complexity only works under very specific conditions. It's extremely unlikely that those conditions would come about by pure chance.

So emergent complexity, as an explanation, doesn't eliminate the need for a designer. It just gives the designer a new job description.

Coming back to the point I made earlier, the reason Dawkins doesn't see this flaw is because he studies evolutionary biology. He's used to studying emergent complexity. He doesn't give much thought to the conditions that make emergent complexity possible.

He takes those conditions for granted. The conditions that make life possible in the universe, and specifically on earth, aren't of much interest to biologists. The laws that govern the formation of complex matter, that govern the formation of stars and planets, that describe the orbit of a planet around a star, all fall outside of Dawkins' area of expertise.

As a biologist, he takes it for granted that our universe, and the earth, are able to support life, as well he should. However, as someone seeking to understand the nature of the universe, he needs to think about these issues. Otherwise he might miss out on the answer to one of mankind's most important questions, "Does God exist and if so what is he like?"

If Dawkins is going to convince people that God doesn't exist, he's going to have to learn to take this question a little more seriously.

TGD: Chapter Four - The Probability of the Necessity of the Impossibility of God’s Existence

Today we begin chapter four and, at long last, we finally come to Dawkins' main argument against the existence of God.

He begins by sharing an old argument that may be familiar to some of you. It is the argument that the probability of life originating on earth is no greater than the odds that a hurricane sweeping through a scrapyard would, by sheer luck, put together a working Boeing 747. Dawkins makes the point that, however unlikely it is that life first appeared on earth without divine intervention, it is even more unlikely that such a divine being would exist in order to intervene in the first place. In his words, God is the ultimate Boeing 747.

The problem with the argument is that there is a big difference between God and living creatures. Simple organisms are made up of tiny pieces that can be taken apart and put together. In this sense theories of how the first life form emerged are similar to explanations of how a jet airplane might be put together out of a random collection of parts.

This argument only works as an argument against God's existence if we assume that God is made up of tiny pieces that were, at some point in time, randomly assembled. This is very different from the traditional Christian view that God consists of one substance and has always existed.

Comparing the existence of God to the emergence of life is a poor analogy. It is more appropriate to compare the existence of God to the existence of the universe itself. To that end, let us talk about the existence of the universe.

We don't know how the universe came to exist, but we can safely say that there are three possibilities.

First of all, the universe may have always existed. As I've already mentioned, what we know from science makes this unlikely, if not impossible. According to the big bang theory, the universe has a discrete beginning in time. Also, if the universe were eternally old, then the entropy of the universe would have maxed out a long time ago.

Second, the universe may have created itself. The universe may have simply blinked into existence without any assistance from an outside force. It seems absurd to me that anything should be able to create itself, let alone a universe which has no mental faculties or decision making abilities, but some people consider it a possibility.

Finally, the universe may have been created by something else. Whether that something else is God or a prior universe or some kind of universe factory. Of course, whatever created the universe will need a similar account of it's own existence. It either has always existed, created itself, or was created by something else. (This leads to a potential infinite regress, which also seems absurd.)

Given the possibilities, I think that the most likely one, by far, is the claim that the universe was created by something else. Furthermore I consider it most likely that that something else, unlike the universe, does not suffer from entropy and is therefore able to exist eternally.

I realize that some people, like Dawkins, consider the existence of a creator God absurd, but is it any less absurd than the claim that the universe created itself, or that our universe was created by something that was created by something that was created by something, going back forever?

In any case, probabilistic arguments rooted in science can't weigh in on the issue. Scientific arguments have no place in this debate. Scientifically speaking, each of these ideas is impossible. It is impossible for something to create itself, it is impossible for something to exist forever, and it is impossible that the universe was created by something else, that was created by something else, ad infinitum. Each of these things is impossible, and yet one of them must have occurred.

Dawkins claims that the existence of God is extremely unlikely. Even if that's the case, I would argue that it isn't any less likely than the alternatives. Besides, Dawkins' whole argument that God's existence is extremely unlikely hinges on the assumption that God is similar to an amoeba.

If there is any similarity between God and an amoeba, it is that they both exist. Aside from that, they don't have very much in common.

TGD: The Miracle of Belief

Back in chapter two I talked about how Dawkins uses an appeal to ridicule to advance his argument. I suspect this appeal is effective for a lot of people because they share his assumption that religious beliefs are silly, especially any kind of belief in miracles.

In the preface Dawkins said that he hoped this book would convince even religious readers to become atheists. I can see it working in some cases. There are, after all, quite a few people who don't believe in miracles, but still cling to religious beliefs for any number of reasons. I can see such individuals deciding to become atheists after reading this book.

However, I don't think the book will have much of an impact on people who seriously believe in miracles. The only message that this book offers such people is captured perfectly by the title. The message is this, "If you believe in miracles, then you're delusional." I don't think that's an argument that most religious people will be able to accept, especially if they've experienced a miracle themselves.

On the other hand, for people who haven't experienced a miracle and who have no religious background, Dawkins' argument works fairly well. If you accept the basic premise, then you'll probably find the central argument of this book persuasive. I have done what I can to show that there is still good reason to believe that miracles do occur, but I realize that those arguments aren't entirely persuasive.

I know that in my case, I only started to believe because I had the good fortune to experience the power of God in a miraculous way. As such, I'm sympathetic to people who don't believe that miracles are possible at all. I was that way for a long time. For most people I suspect it's one of those things you have to see to believe.

I know I'm not likely to convince my more skeptical readers, but I hope that I can at least give them some understanding of where religious people are coming from. It's easy to read a book like The God Delusion and come away with the impression that religious people are all gullible or delusional or just stupid. Hopefully, by reading these posts you can gain a slightly broader perspective on what religious people are actually like.

Next week I'm going to get started on chapter four of The God Delusion. We finally get to take a look at Dawkins' argument against the existence of God. I hope you'll stick around.

TGD: Chapter Three - Science, Gambling, and the Odds

In the last three sections Dawkins deals with arguments for God's existence that, in my opinion, aren't terribly convincing. In this post I'll try to go over all three sections so we can be done with chapter three and move on to the heart of Dawkins' argument.

In the first of these three sections Dawkins writes about the "appeal to respected scientists". The gist of this argument is that many well respected scientists have believed in God, therefore you should as well.

The argument is a kind of appeal to authority, and not a very good one. Scientists aren't in a better position to know whether or not God exists than anyone else.

In any case, Dawkins points out that these days very few notable scientists are religious in the traditional sense. Quite a few are religious in the 'Einsteinian' sense, which Dawkins decided to lump in with atheism back in chapter one.

This argument seems more relevant to the question of whether or not religion and science are compatible, but I'm not going to bring up that subject again. For now let me just say that the belief, or lack thereof, of scientists has no bearing on the question of whether or not God exists.

In the next section Dawkins discuses Pascal's wager. This isn't an argument for God's existence so much as an argument for why you should believe he exists.

The wager works like this. If God doesn't exist then it doesn't matter one way or the other if you believe in him or not. On the other hand if God does exist then you'll be better off if you believe in him than if you don't. So you should believe in God, in case he does exist.

Dawkins points out to problems with the argument. First, the argument assumes that there is only one possible God that might exist. The argument doesn't deal with the possibility that you might choose the wrong God to believe in.

Second, Dawkins points out that deciding to believe something is not simply a matter of choice, at least, not for him. In order to believe something you need to have some evidence for it. Otherwise you're just paying lip service.

I hate to pile on old Pascal, but I have a few additional problems with the argument. First, it assumes you have a traditional view of heaven and hell, which is not a belief I'm committed to (and it's certainly not a belief I want to promote for the sake of a bad argument).

Finally, the wager only works if you assume that believing in God doesn't cost anything. If, on the other hand, believing in God is something that could potentially cost you your life or your freedom, then the argument doesn't work so well. The argument certainly doesn't convince us to obey Jesus when he tells us to give up everything we have and follow him.

The final argument that Dawkins brings up is one that I've never heard of before. The argument comes from a book called, "The Probability of God". In it, the author uses Bayesian methods to determine the odds that God exists.

I am fond of Bayes' theorem, but this argument doesn't sound like a very good one. Based on Dawkins' description it seems like the man took a very informal argument for God's existence, assigned numbers to various factors that make it more or less likely that God exists, and then used Bayes' theorem to come up with a final probability.

Since I'm not familiar with the argument, I have no way of knowing if Dawkins misrepresented it, but it didn't sound very convincing to me. If you're curious, you can always buy the book. If nothing else, you'll learn how to use Bayes' theorem, which is worthwhile enough.

In any case, we're now finished with chapter three. In a few weeks I will return with chapter four.

TGD: Chapter Three - The Case for the Resurrection

Last week we began to talk about whether or not the New Testament provides enough historical evidence to establish Jesus' divinity. I ended by saying that we should focus our attention on the question of whether or not Jesus rose from the dead. This week I intend to present the historical evidence for Jesus' resurrection.

First, let's talk about the reliability of the books in the New Testament. Considered as a whole, the New Testament is far and away the single most reliable work of ancient writing we have. We have more than 5,000 ancient manuscripts for the New Testament, some from the early second century. Moreover, there is an extremely high level of agreement between the manuscripts.

What does this mean? It means that claims that the New Testament is unreliable because it was written a hundred years or more after Christ's death and copied by generations of scribes is completely false. We now know that most of the New Testament was written by the end of the first century and that the version we have today is nearly identical to the original.

We know that the New Testament is reliable. The next question is, is it an accurate portrayal of history? Does the New Testament provide us with an accurate description of the events of Jesus' life and the early church?

Let me begin by saying that if the New Testament were a normal historical document describing ordinary events no one would seriously question its historical validity. As I've already said, it's the most reliable ancient text we have and most of it was written within fifty years of the events it describes.

We have an incredible amount of evidence that the New Testament is a reliable source of history, but the claims made in the New Testament are also very incredible. For that reason we must scrutinize the New Testament rather closely.

The first question we can ask is, do these accounts agree with each other? The answer is that they do, aside from a few minor details. The gospel accounts all give an incredibly detailed account of Jesus' ministry, teaching, death and resurrection. Some of the smaller details differ between the four gospels, but major events remain the same.

The next question we can ask is, how well do these stories agree with what we know about the time period from other ancient sources? There are actually a number of details, particularly from the Book of Acts that historians can independently verify. There are a few places where the author is mistaken, but judging by the standards of ancient history, the Book of Acts holds up rather well.

The final question we must consider is, did the authors have an agenda which may have colored their writing? In the case of the New Testament it is clear that each of the authors had an agenda. They wanted to convince the reader that Jesus Christ was, in fact, the Jewish Messiah.

Knowing this we have to ask, how much of an affect did this have on their writing? Certainly it had an impact, but it didn't stop them from including several details which ran counter to their agenda.

First, the gospels record that his name is Jesus. This goes against Isaiah, who prophesied that the Messiah would be called "Immanuel".

Second, all of the gospels assert that Jesus was raised in Nazareth. This creates a problem because, according to prophecy, the Messiah was supposed to come from Bethlehem. As we mentioned last time, only Matthew and Luke address this issue directly.

Third, all of the gospels claim that Jesus was crucified. This creates a problem because, according to the Old Testament, anyone who is hung on a tree is cursed.

All of this shows that the authors of the gospels weren't simply inventing a story about a Messiah, but were writing a historical account of an individual, Jesus of Nazareth, whom they believed was the Messiah.

Finally, I want to take a quick look specifically at the claim that Jesus rose from the dead. I know it's an incredible claim, but I think it should be considered plausible for two reasons.

First, the claim that Jesus had risen from the dead appears in even the earliest Christian writings. The claim that Jesus rose from the dead wasn't being made centuries after the fact. Paul wrote that Jesus had risen from the dead barely twenty years after it happened. Paul's readers could have easily asked around to see if this was true.

In fact, Paul wrote that more than five hundred people had seen the risen Christ, and that most of them were still alive.

Finally, many of the people who believed that Jesus Christ rose from the dead died for their belief. Not only did they believe it was true, they were certain enough that they were willing to die for that belief.

All things considered, I think it's fair to say that we have good historical evidence that Jesus Christ did, in fact, rise from the dead.

TGD: Chapter Three - Birth or Resurrection?

The next section of Dawkins book deals with the argument from scripture. Specifically, he deals with the argument that the New Testament provides historical evidence that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God.

He makes the claim that the New Testament is not a valid or reliable source of history. He claims that the New Testament was written a long time after Jesus lived, that it was copied by scribes many times, that it contradicts the historical record, that it contradicts itself, and that its authors all had an agenda that colored their writing.

Dawkins uses the stories about the birth of Jesus as an example to prove his point. He points out the difference between the accounts in Luke and Matthew, and he points out the historical problems with the account in Luke.

There are problems with the accounts of Jesus' birth, but, from an historical standpoint, that is the least reliable part of the gospel story. The gospels were written by followers of Jesus. Jesus' first followers witnessed Jesus' ministry, death and resurrection, but none of them witnessed Jesus' birth. At best, Luke and Matthew were relying on second or third hand accounts of an event that happened almost a hundred years ago.

On the other hand, the accounts of Jesus' ministry are first or second hand accounts of events that happened fifty to seventy years ago. It's reasonable to assume that the accounts of Jesus' life or ministry are much more accurate than the accounts of Jesus' birth.

Moreover, while the doctrine of the virgin birth is important, it's not nearly as important to the Christian faith as the resurrection. The claim that Jesus was raised from the dead is the central truth claim of the Christian faith. We can see this, because nearly every book in the New Testament refers to Jesus' resurrection.

Unfortunately, Dawkins doesn't directly address the issue of whether or not Jesus rose from the dead. Instead he isolates the weakest part of the Biblical narrative and criticizes it. Then he implies that the whole story is equally unreliable.

The problem with Dawkins' argument is that the whole story isn't equally unreliable. Next week I will present the case that Jesus of Nazareth did, in fact, rise from the dead. I hope that you'll come back for that.

TGD: Chapter Three - Experience Revisited

Last week I talked about Dawkins' arguments against the validity of religious experiences. After further consideration (and some helpful conversations with friends) I realize that I wasn't exactly being fair to Dawkins' argument. Since I give Dawkins such a hard time whenever he isn't being fair, I owe you (and him) an apology. I'm sorry for presenting a straw man of Dawkins' argument.

Now I'm going to try and restate Dawkins' original argument, and this time I hope to do it justice.

To begin with, it is obvious that most people's personal experiences are valid most of the time. However, there are cases where individuals can be mistaken. We sometimes see or hear things that aren't there. Some people routinely see or hear things that aren't there. Still, by and large, most of us can trust our senses most of of the time.

One way we test to see if our experiences are valid is to wait and see if the experience persists. We also check with the people around us to see if they experience the same things we do. Using these methods, and others like them, we can deal with the occasional bizarre experience. So long as we know that our experience is mostly valid, we can easily weed out the few experiences that are invalid.

Science makes careful use of these types of corrective procedures. Scientists take careful notes, and use instruments to make quantifiable measurements. They confer with their peers to make sure that their observations or experiments produce similar results. If they don't, then the scientists try to figure out what is causing the discrepancy and try again.

Religious experiences generally lack this kind of verification. They often aren't well documented and they often lack confirmation from another observer. Certainly, none of them are persistent or experienced by everyone. For this reason, it is reasonable to dismiss such experience.

That is my understanding of Dawkins' argument. Having said that, I still think there is a problem with it.

The main problem is this: religious experiences are too widespread. If you add together all the people of every religious stripe who claim to have witnessed some kind of supernatural phenomena, you'd come up with a number easily in the millions, if not tens of millions. If we assume that all of these people are seeing and hearing things that aren't there, that creates a problem.

I'm not sure if he realizes it, but Dawkins is making the claim that millions of otherwise normal people are functional schizophrenics*. They are considered "sane" only because their hallucinations do not prevent them from functioning in polite society.

The claim that millions of people see and hear things that aren't actually there does speak to the issue of whether or not experience really is a valid way to gain knowledge. After all, if it's reasonable to claim that millions of Christians all share similar hallucinations when they claim to hear from God, how can we be sure that millions of cell biologists aren't experiencing something similar when they look through an electron microscope?

The argument Dawkins is making has to be carefully considered. I think you could still make the claim that scientific knowledge is reliable, even if millions of scientists experience occasional hallucinations, but it would be a difficult claim to defend.

More to the point, I don't think that Dawkins has even considered the possibility that he and millions of his fellow scientists might be experiencing occasional hallucinations. He takes it for granted that what he sees with his eyes and hears with his ears is almost always completely trustworthy. I imagine he holds similar beliefs about most of his peers.

Which brings me to the second objection I have with this argument. He doesn't give a any reason why religious experiences should be singled out for skepticism. Plenty of us have private experiences; things that are only seen by ourselves and perhaps one other person. How can we be sure that those experiences are real?

If we hold them to the same standard we would a vision of the Virgin Mary, then we have to conclude that they aren't real. There just isn't enough evidence to prove that that dinner alone or that romantic walk on the beach really happened.

I think it's more reasonable to assume that those religious experiences are just as valid as any other private experience. They might not provide enough evidence to prove God's existence, but they certainly provide enough evidence to make the God hypothesis seem reasonable.

* This is an awkward phrase, and I might be misusing the term Schizophrenia, but it's the best I can come up with. How do you describe someone who is sane, except for the fact that they sometimes see or hear things that aren't there? I don't think there's a word for that.

TGD: Chapter Three - Experience and Knowledge

Last week I talked about the section titled, "The Argument from Personal 'Experience'". In that section Dawkins tries to address people who claim to have personally witnessed something supernatural.

In the chapter Dawkins doesn't just talk about personal experiences. He also talks about large scale miracles with tens of thousands of eye witnesses. It is a stretch to call these events "personal experiences". I spent most of the last post talking about these kinds of miracles, because they provide the best evidence that God exists and because Dawkins did a poor job providing a credible reason why we should ignore these events.

So this week I want to go back and actually talk about personal experiences. I want to talk about events that are only experienced by an individual or a small group of people.

In these situations Dawkins is able to make a much stronger case. The human mind isn't nearly as reliable as we usually assume it is. He makes a good case that humans are able to see and hear things that aren't actually there, or to be severely mistaken about what we are seeing or hearing. From this, Dawkins argues that it is reasonable to ignore people who claim to have experienced a private miracle.

The problem with Dawkins' argument is that he applies it selectively. He says that people who see the Virgin Mary are seeing something that almost certainly isn't there. But if it's possible that we can see people aren't there, then how can we ever be sure that the people we do see actually are there? How can I be sure that my next door neighbor is real and the Virgin Mary isn't?

In order to make that determination we need to know something. We need to know that my next door neighbor is a real, living person, whereas the Virgin Mary is not. But how do we know that?

This raises some serious epistemological problems. If we can't even trust our own personal experiences, we can't really know much of anything.

You might think that we could somehow use science to determine what's real and what isn't, but scientific knowledge is gained primarily by experiment and observation. In order to do this, the scientists have to be able to trust their faculties. While they are observing or performing experiments, they need to be sure that their experiences are valid. Otherwise the observations or experimental results aren't reliable. And if none of the individual experiments or observations are reliable, then the conclusions we make based on those experiments or observations aren't reliable either.

Dawkins doesn't address any of these issues. He makes the claim that any so called religious experience is really just a malfunction of the human brain, but how can we be sure?

Dawkins is relying on his readers to have an intuitive sense that religious experiences are probably false and other kinds of experiences are almost certainly true. He fosters this by constantly mocking religious beliefs, thus reinforcing the idea that religious beliefs are silly (and therefore false) while other kinds of beliefs are normal (and therefore true).

Unless Dawkins is able to provide a good reason why religious experiences should be singled out for unusual skepticism, then he's just making the claim that it is impossible for us to ever have certain knowledge. That's an argument I've heard before.

TGD: Chapter Three - Miracles

The title of the next section of Dawkins' book is, "The Argument from Personal 'Experience'". In this section Dawkins responds to people who claim to have firsthand evidence of God's existence, people who have witnessed a miracle or had a vision or something similar.

The most accurate thing Dawkins writes in this section is this, "This argument from personal experience is the one that is most convincing to those who claim to have had one. But it is the least convincing to anyone else, and anyone knowledgeable about psychology." If you witness a miracle yourself, or if someone you know and trust tells you about a miracle that they experienced, it can be very convincing. From a distance, however, it is easy to remain skeptical.

This is the main reason why I haven't written about any of the supernatural phenomena I have experienced on this blog. You have no way of knowing if I'm telling the truth or not. You can't really gauge how skeptical I am. Without any way to tell if I'm a reliable witness or not, my testimony would be fairly hollow.

On the other hand, the problem does work both ways. Just as I cannot say anything to Dawkins to convince him that I have experienced a miracle, there is nothing that he can say to me that will convince me that I haven't.

Not that he doesn't try. He spends most of the chapter talking about how easy it is for people to deceive themselves; to see or hear things that aren't actually there. He talks about the tendency of the human mind to see patterns where none exist.

In the case where a miraculous event is only witnessed by one person, these are all valid considerations. However, when there are two or more witnesses, things become more complicated. A lone individual might just be seeing things, but when two or more individuals see the same thing at the same time, that's a little bit harder to write off.

Dawkins addresses this issue briefly, towards the end of the chapter. He talks about the Miracle of the Sun, where 70,000 people in Fatima, Portugal witnessed the sun dance about in the sky and careen toward the earth. He writes, 'It is not easy to explain how seventy thousand people could share the same hallucination. But it is even harder to accept that it really happened without the rest of the world, outside Fatima, seeing it too - and not just seeing it, but feeling it as the catastrophic destruction of the solar system, including acceleration forces sufficient to hurl everybody into space."

What Dawkins is doing here, besides being deliberately obtuse, is setting up a false dilemna. Either the residents all shared the same hallucination, or the earth was yanked from its orbit. The possibility that the people of Fatima saw a vision or experienced some other kind of miracle isn't even considered.

He quotes Hume, who wrote, "No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endevours to establish." I think the Fatima miracle more than qualifies.

We have newspaper evidence that more than thirty-thousand people saw the sun dance in the sky. A simultaneous mass hallucination, or conspiracy on that scale is so ridiculously implausible that the possibility that the people of Fatima saw a divine vision begins to seem reasonable to even the most skeptical minds. The only way we can escape that conclusion is if we begin with the assumption that miracles are virtually impossible.

Of course, this is precisely where Dawkins begins. He begins with the assumption that miracles are impossible. He describes an example of an instance where there is a truly massive amount of evidence that a miracle occurs. He then states that the probability that all of that evidence is either false or misleading is still greater than the probability that a miracle actually occurred, because miracles are impossible.

When we boil away the sophistry, what we're left with is a classic example of circular reasoning. Really, this argument is nothing more than atheistic fideism; the assertion that we should believe that God doesn't exist even when all the evidence says that he does.

Even if we somehow manage to swallow the notion that the miracle of Fatima is some kind of hoax or optical illusion (maybe swamp gas refracting the light from Venus), it is hardly the only recorded supernatural occurrence in recent history. One should also study the Azusa Street Revival and the Toronto Blessing. And I'm sure a quick study of religious revival movements would turn up a few more examples of large-scale miracles. Some will be more credible than others, but if we want to establish that God doesn't exist, we need to provide a reasonable explanation for all of them. If Dawkins has such an explanation, he isn't exactly shouting it from the rooftops.

TGD: Chapter Three - Ontology, Foolishness and Beauty

In the next section of "The God Delusion" Dawkins addresses the ontological argument for God's existence. The ontological argument goes like this: We can conceive of a being that is the greatest conceivable being. This being may or may not exist in reality. However, a being that exists in reality is greater than one that exists only in the imagination. Therefore any being that exists only in the imagination cannot be the greatest conceivable being. Therefore, the greatest conceivable being must exist in reality as well as in the imagination. Therefore, God exists.

The ontological argument is an interesting argument. Dawkins quotes Bertrand Russell, who said, "The argument does not, to a modern mind, seem very convincing, but it is easier to feel convinced that it must be fallacious than it is to find out precisely where the fallacy lies." This is precisely what makes the argument so fascinating.

The problem was eventually identified by Immanuel Kant. Kant pointed out that the argument relies on the assumption that existence is a property. Based on that faulty assumption, Anselm is able to make the claim that objects that have this property, the property of existing in the real world, are more perfect than objects that don't. Still, Kant's refutation of Anselm's argument wasn't published until almost seven hundred years after Anselm originally made the argument. When Russell said that it is hard to figure out exactly where the fallacy is, he wasn't kidding.

Of course Dawkins is never convinced that the argument has any validity to it. He finds it absurd to think that such grand conclusions could follow from a simple logic puzzle. He even chastises Russell, who was, for a brief time, convinced that the ontological argument must be sound. He compares the ontological argument to Zeno's proof that Achilles will never catch up to the tortoise*. He says that Russell should have realized that the ontological argument was bogus, just like the ancient greeks realized that Zeno's proofs were bogus.

There are a couple of problems with Dawkins' comparison. First of all, the fact that Achilles will actually catch the tortoise is self evident, whereas God's nonexistence is not. Secondly, Dawkins claims that Zeno's contemporaries simply labeled Zeno's argument a paradox and waited for later generations to solve it. Dawkin's ignores the fact that Zeno's contemporaries found his arguments troubling. Zeno's arguments showed that there was a flaw in how they understood the universe.

Dawkins' line of thought here seems a little bit troubling. He seems to be suggesting that God's nonexistence is obviously true. He's also saying, if you encounter some evidence or line of reasoning that might lead you to believe that God exists, it's probably just a trick. You should ignore it and go on believing that God doesn't exist. Dawkins routinely takes religious people to task for advocating that people should believe in God whether or not logic or the evidence supports it, but that seems awfully close to what he's implying here. That people should believe that God doesn't exist whether or not logic or the evidence supports it.

One thing Dawkins brings up as he's talking about the ontological argument is that Saint Anselm makes the claim that atheists are fools. Anslem makes this claim based on the first verse of Psalm 14, which says, "The fool says in his heart there is no God."

For once I'm going to stick up for Dawkins, and point out that Anselm is misusing scripture here. Psalm 14:1 isn't saying that all atheists are idiots. For one thing, the word for "fool" in Hebrew doesn't refer to an idiot, but rather someone who lacks moral character. Secondly, the verse doesn't say that atheists are fools. The verse isn't about atheists; it is about fools. Finally it says that fools have said, "In their heart," that there is no God. These fools might be very religious on the outside, but deep down they do not really believe in God. The claim this Psalm is making is when people behave immorally, they deny the existence of God. If you read the entire Psalm, it's clear that this is what the Psalmist is getting at.

Now that I've straightened that out, let's move on to the next section. This next section deals with the argument from beauty. In this section Dawkins doesn't even bother to explain what the argument from beauty is, he just says that he isn't convinced by it. I'm a little disappointed that he doesn't even bother to restate the argument. He should at least try to understand the argument being made before he dismisses it.

Still, in his own way Dawkins has been addressing the argument from beauty since the beginning of the book. In the opening chapter he talks about the transcendent beauty of nature. He talks about how that same feeling of transcendent wonder that inspires some people to pursue God, inspires Dawkins to pursue science.

The argument from beauty, in a nutshell, is that feelings of transcendent wonder indicate the existence of something transcendent. Dawkins seem to be saying that such feelings merely indicate the wonder of nature, or the beauty of a particular work of art. None of it points to a higher cause, which is the source of all things wondrous or beautiful.

* The paradox is this: In order for Achilles to catch the tortoise, he must first reach the tortoise's starting location. Once he does that, the tortoise will have moved, so Achilles will have to reach the tortoise's new location. Of course, by the time he does that, the tortoise will have moved again, and so on ad infinitum. Therefore Achilles can never catch up to the tortoise.

TGD: Chapter Three - Degree and Design

Last week I said I would talk about the rest of Aquinas' proofs and the ontological argument for God's existence. Unfortunately, I seem to have bit off more than I can chew. I've managed to cover Aquinas' last two proofs but the post is already getting long. I will have to write about the ontological argument next week. I'm sorry for the delay.

Last week I had just finished discussing the first three of Aquinas' proofs for God's existence. Today I'm going to pick up right where we left off.

Aquinas' fourth proof is the argument from degree. This argument states that things vary in how perfect or how good they are. He argues that there must be a being which is the most good, which is the source of all things good and of all that exists. This being we call God.

This is Dawkins' reply to the argument from degree: "You might as well say, people vary in smelliness but we can make the comparison only by reference to a perfect maximum of conceivable smelliness. Therefore, there must be a pre-eminently peerless stinker, and we call him God."

Not only is Dawkins' reply funny, but it gets at the main problem with the argument from degree. Aquinas makes the assumption that existence is a form of perfection. From this he is able to conclude that the source of all that exists is the source of all things good and perfect. This is the same sort of dodgy logic that the ontological argument relies upon.

So I don't think the argument from degree works as a proof of God's existence. However, I think it raises some impportant questions. How did humans first learn to be good? What is the ultimate source of moral goodness? These are questions that need to be addressed.

At last we come to Aquinas' fifth proof. This is the teleological argument, or the argument from design. Before I write about what Dawkins has to say, I want to describe the argument and give some background.

In this argument Aquinas argues that inanimate objects act according to a purpose, because they always behave according to the same pattern. He argues that this did not come about by chance. He argues that there must be an intelligence behind the universe that guides inanimate objects to behave in predictable patterns.

Aquinas' argument relies upon the idea, common in his time, that objects behave according to a purpose. These days we don't think of objects as having a purpose. It may seem silly to say that objects have a purpose but does it make any more sense to say that inanimate objects behave according to natural laws? Doesn't the existence of natural laws imply the existence of a supernatural lawgiver?

Still, so long as those natural laws seem arbitrary most people are willing to accept that they exist. If we argue that God exists because some arbitrary set of natural laws exist that's just a rehash of the cosmological argument, which I talked about last week. However, if the natural laws seem contrived; if the natural laws appear to have been carefully set with a particular purpose in mind; then that would be evidence for an intelligence guiding the universe.

This is the summary Dawkins' gives of the argument from design: "Things in the world, especially living things, look as though they have been designed. Nothing that we know looks designed unless it is designed. Therefore there must have been a designer, and we call him God." Dawkins points out that the theory of evolution blows this argument out of the water completely.

Of course, Dawkins' version of the argument is very different from Aquinas' original argument. I would accuse Dawkins of deliberately constructing a straw man, but I know exactly where he got this version of the argument. This form comes from creationists who stubbornly refuse to accept the theory of evolution. Dawkins has spent much of his career debating against creationism.

On the (relatively) small scale, evolutionary theory works as an explanation for the complex, seemingly designed, nature of life. But on the cosmic scale evolution doesn't solve the problem of design, it just moves it. In order for evolution to work, the laws of the universe have to be just right. The cosmological constant has to allow for the slow, steady expansion of the universe, in order to allow stars to form and generate the elements required for life. Similarly, if the force of gravity were stronger or weaker then it becomes impossible for life-sustaining stars to exist, making it impossible for life as we know it to exist.

So we see that the laws which govern our universe were not chosen arbitrarily. Instead it seems that they were finely tuned to allow life to form. This gives us reason to believe that there is an intelligence guiding the universe. This argument doesn't prove the existence of any specific deity but it demolishes the claim that God doesn't exist.

Next week: Saint Anselm makes his appearance.

TGD: Chapter Three - Cosmology and Omnipotence

In Chapter Three of "The God Delusion" Dawkins begins to address the arguments for God's existence. The first section concerns Aquinas' five proofs for God's existence.

Not surprisingly, Dawkins isn't impressed with Aquinas' arguments. I can understand why. Dawkins and Aquinas are working from different assumptions. They both understand the universe in radically different ways. Dawkins is a student of modern science, biology in particular, and Aquinas was a student of Aristotelian metaphysics.

So it will be my task to try and bridge the gulf that separates these two great minds and see if we can find some common ground. Let's get started.

Aquinas' first three proofs are the argument of the unmoved mover, the argument of the first cause, and the argument from contingency. Dawkins groups these arguments together, since they have a similar form. I will focus on the argument from contingency, sometimes called the cosmological argument, because it is the strongest.

This is Dawkins' summary of the argument: "There must have been a time when no physical things existed. But, since physical things exist now, there must have been something non-physical to bring them into existence, and that something we call God."

It's worth pointing out that modern science actually strengthens this argument. According to the Big Bang Theory, the universe has a definite beginning in time. This suggests that the universe isn't self sustaining, but was brought into existence by some outside force.

Moreover, even if the Big Bang Theory turned out to be incorrect (even though there is some very solid evidence for the theory), it is impossible for the universe to be infinitely old. If it were, then according to the second law of thermodynamics the universe would have reached a state of maximum entropy by now, which would make it impossible for life to exist.

So the cosmological argument effectively proves that the natural universe was created by an external force, which Aquinas calls God. Unfortunately, this is as far as the cosmological argument takes us. Dawkins rightly points out that, based on these arguments alone, there is no reason to assume that this "God" is a being with all the attributes we normally associate with God.

At this point, Dawkins has a brief digression where he talks about God's attributes. He claims God's omniscience contradicts his omnipotence since, if God already knows what he is going to do in the future he cannot change his mind. This is a silly argument, similar to asking if God, being omnipotent, can make a boulder so heavy he can't lift it. Both assume that there is a contradiction in the will of God.

In the example of God making a boulder so heavy he can't lift it, the contradiction is obvious. God wants the boulder to stay on the ground while at the same time wanting to lift the boulder. The argument assumes a contradiction to prove a contradiction. I'm not impressed by it.

The argument about God changing his mind is more subtle, but is basically the same. God wants to do something in the future, but when the time comes he wants to do something else. However, if God is omniscient, his knowledge doesn't change over time. So God has no reason to change his mind, if we assume that God's will is consistent. We only get a contradiction if we assume that God's will is contradictory.

What this really boils down to is, can God do something that is logically impossible? As many theologians have pointed out, not being able to do things that are logically impossible isn't really a limit on omnipotence. Contradictions are, by definition, nonsense. Saying that God cannot perform nonsensical actions doesn't place any meaningful constraints on God's power.

I'm afraid this post is getting long, so I'll stop here for now. Next week I'll write about the rest of Aquinas' proofs as well as the ontological argument for God's existence.

TGD: Imagine a World Without Religion

Before moving on to chapter three, I wanted to take a moment to talk about how Dawkins uses hypothetical scenarios to further his argument. In a few places he uses hypotheticals to paint a picture and support his argument. They are powerful illustrations, but they depend a number of questionable assumptions.

The hypothetical scenario I want to talk about appears in the preface. He describes an advertisement for a documentary he presented. The advertisement had the words, "Imagine a world without religion," beneath a picture of the Manhattan skyline; in which the twin towers were still standing.

As an American, I feel the impact of that argument. It feels like a blow to the solar plexus. I'm sure we all wish that those towers were still standing and I'm sure we all wish the 3,000 people who died when they collapsed were still with us.

It's also a damning argument. Everyone knows, on a deep level, that the ideology of the 9/11 hijackers was deeply perverse and destructive; and everyone knows that their ideology was undoubtedly religious.

Still, we need to take a step back and ask, is religion to blame for the attacks of 9/11? Certainly, religion was a factor, but was it the cause?

To give an example, what if the slogan had read, "Imagine a world without airplanes?" This message is far more accurate. The 9/11 attacks would have been impossible without commercial airlines, yet no one blames the Wright brothers or their infernal invention for destroying the world trade center.

Additionally, the first slogan ignores any other affects that religion has had on the Manhattan skyline. Like, for example, bringing European immigrants to the Manhattan island in the first place.

Religion has been a major factor throughout all of history. It is literally impossible to imagine what the world would be like today if religion had never existed. Instead, I'm going to stick to a very simple rule. I'm only going to consider those cases where religion has a direct role in the creation or destruction of individual buildings.

Obviously, all the religious buildings wouldn't exist, including the great cathedrals of Europe as well as most of Vatican city. The Wailing Wall wouldn't exist and neither would the Sacred Mosque or the Dome of the Rock.

So far we've lost all the places of worship, but since there's no religion, no one will miss those. We might miss the artwork that went into those buildings, especially the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Still, so far we haven't lost much.

But it doesn't stop there. Medieval universities, including the universities of Paris, Cambridge and Oxford, all started as Christian schools based out of cathedrals or monasteries. They received their official support from the Vatican. Additionally, all of the Ivy league schools, except Cornell, were founded during the colonial period by various Christian groups.

As an aside, Richard Dawkins graduated from the University of Oxford. One wonders where Dawkins would have received his education from in this hypothetical scenario, but, as I said earlier, we're only going to concern ourselves with the affects of religion on buildings, not people.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point (and allowed myself to make a cheap shot at Dawkins' expense). I've shown that these kinds of hypothetical situations are very contrived. One cannot surgically remove religion from human history and make a realistic estimate of whether humanity would be better or worse without it. Even if someone could produce such an estimate, we have no way of testing it.

I'm not going to deny that many terrible atrocities have been committed in the name of God, but we shouldn't forget about the massive amount of good that has also been done in God's name. Would the world would be better off without religion? That's a question that no human can answer, not even Richard Dawkins.