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A Critique of Stephen Meyer’s ‘Return of the God Hypothesis’
I have struggled with writing a review of Stephen Meyer’s book, Return of the God Hypothesis, since I finished it a few weeks ago. Every time I pick it up to reread portions of it I find myself wanting to approach the work from a different perspective. The book is neither a straight popularization of science nor an attempt to frame a clear scientific argument. Rather, it’s a well-crafted work of reporting and speculation at the frothy margins of scientific theory that, combined with a few leaps of logic, is harnessed in support of a foreordained conclusion.
I suspect that the science in this book – and there’s quite a lot of it – will, despite being well-presented by an eloquent and talented author, largely elude most readers. Perhaps more importantly, the context from which the science is drawn will likely be unfamiliar to most readers, who will have little familiarity with physics and cosmology beyond what is presented in this book. If this book were merely a popularization of the science of cosmology, that would be fine: people would gain a feel for the state of the field, for its complexity and nuance, and for the remarkable accomplishments that have been made in recent years. But that’s not what this book is. Rather, it’s an attempt to support a metaphysical argument by portraying science as inadequate both in practice and in principle, and so leave no plausible alternative but the eponymous God Hypothesis. To frame that argument responsibly would require considerably more scope and rigor than this already science-heavy book offers. To do it convincingly, on the other hand, requires much less effort, particularly if the reader is inclined to be generous and knows little of physics.
It has been said of Stephen Hawking’s bestselling book A Brief History of Time that it was purchased by many and read by few. I suspect the same is likely true of Return of the God Hypothesis: for many, it will be a tough read. Yet it is an impressive book, and it has lent a great deal of talk-circuit credibility to its author and his premise. The fact that Mr. Meyer is an eloquent speaker and a clever and charming guest undoubtedly adds to that credibility, and it’s understandable why he and his book have received as much praise as they have. Nonetheless, as I will attempt to explain in this review, I think his arguments are weak and his conclusions unsupported.
The book begins with a review of the relationship faith and science have enjoyed throughout history. Meyer is on solid ground when documenting the history of science, and his recounting of man’s march of discovery is readable, detailed, and entertaining. It isn’t relevant to his argument, but it is well-written and informative.
Then we get to the science. Meyer asserts, based on three “scientific discoveries,” these key ideas underlying his argument:
- the universe had a beginning;
- from the beginning (or shortly thereafter), various physical constants have had values that are unlikely to have arisen by chance – that the universe appears to be “fine-tuned”; and
- the genetic coding in DNA represents a kind of “functional” information that is unlikely to have arisen by chance.
I find Meyer’s defense of each of these claims wanting, but, before I critique them, let me make two brief comments, one about the nature of Meyer’s three claims, and the other about the overall thesis of his book.
Meyer’s core argument is that our universe and the life in it are improbable – so statistically improbable as to defy any explanation other than that God designed and created it. It’s difficult to overstate the importance of this: Meyer’s thesis hinges entirely on that alleged improbability.
We can see the probability argument arising from the second and third claims, that of the universe being improbably fine-tuned, and of genetic material having an improbable amount of structure and function. But the first claim is different. It isn’t a claim about probability, but rather part of a necessary precondition to all of Meyer’s arguments. It is essential to his arguments that the universe be finite. It must have had a single beginning; it must eventually end; and there can only be one of them.
Why? Because in order for his statistical arguments of improbability to carry any weight, it’s necessary that the sample space not include an infinite number of instances. This is true because in an infinite number of universes everything that is statistically possible, however statistically improbable, will still happen – in fact, will happen an infinite number of times. And in an infinite number of those instances, the physical constants will have the seemingly improbable values we observe, the seemingly improbable chemistry will have arisen to bring about life such as us, and we will, as improbable as it may seem, be sitting here discussing his book.
Regarding the thesis of his book, I have a problem but I’m not quite sure how to state it. Science, including the science Meyer attempts to disprove in his book, has set itself upon the task of answering the “how, what, and when” questions: how does the world work, what laws govern it, when did or will various events occur? Meyer offers an answer to a question science doesn’t ask: “who?” Meyer wants to tell us who created the universe. He doesn’t attempt to present or defend an answer for any of the questions science asks and seeks to answer.
This seems important to me because it suggests that, contrary to Meyer’s oft-repeated claims, the God Hypothesis actually has no true explanatory power. Rather, it merely claims to name an actor – and an ill-defined actor at that. I wonder, how is Meyer’s claim stronger than this one:
“Some non-sentient but unknown natural mechanism, of which we are as yet completely and utterly unaware, established the conditions under which our observable universe exists and the life within it flourishes.”
That wildly ambiguous claim would at least be rooted in something that is consistent with our universal and repeated experience (as Meyer might put it), that of physical reality and the laws that govern it.
In any case, the fact that Meyer’s hypothesis doesn’t actually answer the questions science asks, and that it opens up a universe of new questions (where did God come from, how does God do what God does, what does the mathematics of God look like, etc.) in the process of not answering them, should give us reason to pause, at least.
Claim: The Universe Had a Beginning
Meyer is a science historian, and his account of the evolution of scientific theory regarding the origin of our universe is readable, detailed, and interesting. Most of what we think of as modern cosmology is quite modern, much of it less than a hundred years old, and some of it only a few decades old. It’s sobering to realize how much of what we know we figured out in just the last 50 years.
Yes, we’re pretty sure that everything in our universe was contained in a microscopic pinpoint about 14 billion years ago, and that that pinpoint expanded with unimaginable speed – and continues to expand today. That idea comports with our observations, and the theory supporting it seems robust. Meyer’s account of how we reached that understanding makes for good reading.
But no, we aren’t sure that the universe had a beginning. We admit that things – matter, energy, physical laws, the nature of space and time itself – were likely very different when the stuff of a billion trillion stars occupied a volume vastly smaller than a pinhead. (How many stars can dance on the head of a pin? All of them, it seems.) But we don’t know how they were different. Nor do we know what came before, nor what prompted the expansion, nor whether it happened exactly once or infinitely many times, or indeed whether or not it’s happening right now elsewhere in our own universe. We speak informally of the Big Bang as the beginning of our universe, but all we really know with confidence is that it was a moment in an evolving series of physical states. We don’t know what states came before, nor what states will follow our own.
Meyer is, in my opinion, too casual in his use of the word “beginning.” In Chapter 6: The Curvature of Space and the Beginning of the Universe, he quotes Stephen Hawking and G.F.R. Ellis as writing (in The Large Scale Structure of the Universe) that the general theory of relativity implies “that there is a singularity in the past that constitutes, in some sense, a beginning of the universe.” (emphasis mine)
What did Hawking et al mean by “in some sense?” I don’t know, and Meyer doesn’t pursue it. But it’s hard to conclude that a beginning “in some sense” is the same as, simply, “a beginning.” And in fact, later Meyer quotes Ellis as observing that some cosmologists now see, in Meyer’s words, “singularity theorems as an interesting piece of pure mathematics, but not as proofs of the beginning of our actual universe.” (again, emphasis mine)
In the same chapter, Meyer quotes Paul Davies, in reference to conditions in the very early universe, as saying: “If we follow this prediction to its extreme….” But must we follow mathematical predictions to their extremes? In particular, when it is widely acknowledged that we don’t know which of our physical laws pertain in the extraordinary conditions in the very early universe, how much stock should we place in predictions followed to that extreme?
It is worth remembering how little we understand of the conditions immediately prior to the expansion of the singularity – assuming there was a singularity. We don’t even know if the view conventionally held, that we can know nothing of the universe prior to the expansion of that initial singularity, is actually correct. We thought it was, but then the late Stephen Hawking made the case that black holes might evaporate through quantum processes, and Roger Penrose theorized that we might find echoes of that evaporation in the cosmic background – echoes of black holes that existed before the singularity itself. We now think that, just a couple of years ago, we may have identified one of these so-called “Hawking points,” these shadows of long-gone black holes of a prior universe, in the cosmic microwave background.
If we did – and it’s still too early to be sure – then the idea that the universe began with the Big Bang will have to be reworked a bit. Indeed, the entire idea of there being only a single universe would be effectively discredited.
Speaking of Roger Penrose, I find the omission of his Conformal Cyclic Cosmology theory odd. Meyer cites Penrose dozens of times in his book, but I’ve found only two references to Penrose’s own recent (2010) theory of how the universe might recur endlessly, both in the footnotes and neither actually engaging the theory. Meyer spends time critiquing less mainstream theories, including that of Max Tegmark whose theory, as Meyer describes it, claims that “every possible mathematical structure imaginable has a physical expression in some possible universe” or, quoting Tegmark now, “All structures that exist mathematically exist also physically.” This seems to me to be a peculiar prioritization on Meyer’s part, and makes me wonder if he is being perhaps too selective in the theories he chooses to present to his readers.
I believe Meyer does his readers a disservice by not accurately portraying the range of multiple-universe theories currently proposed, given that rejecting all of them is critical to his thesis. Meyer requires that there not be an infinite number of universes, either one following another throughout eternity or any number existing simultaneously in parallel. This is perhaps the strongest challenge to his argument from improbability, and it deserves to be treated with more rigor.
Claim: The Universe is Fine-Tuned for Life
Meyer’s second claim is, I think, his strongest, and its defense constitutes the largest portion of his book.
There is a widely held belief that our universe is a very improbable place, and that if any one of a few physical constants differed from its current value by an almost unimaginably small amount, the result would be a universe that could not contain us as observers. Some argue that such apparent precision is unlikely to occur naturally, and so is evidence of intelligence: that these constants were “fine-tuned” to be precisely what is necessary to allow the universe to develop as it has.
This is the core argument Meyer makes, and it can be compelling: accounts of extraordinarily improbable-seeming things can be powerfully persuasive.
But it’s worth considering what is implied by the claim Meyer is making. First, it requires that it be meaningful to speak of “different values for a physical constant,” and it isn’t immediately obvious that that’s the case. After all, we don’t know why physical constants have the values they do, and we don’t know how the various constants might be related to each other through some aspect of physical reality of which we’re still unaware.
Consider Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity. Until barely a hundred years ago we didn’t know that space, time, mass, and energy were mathematically related. We didn’t know that these aspects of the physical world were intertwined in mathematically determined and measurable ways, and that a value in one domain couldn’t be “changed” without influencing the other domains as well.
Now we think we know that most of the handful of (what we think are) fundamental forces and particles are mathematically conjoined, not truly independent of each other. It is no longer safe to assume that any of these things is truly independent of the others. And, just as it is nonsensical to speak of, say, the value of pi changing in relation to the circumference and diameter of a circle – because it is inherently linked to and constrained by both of those things – it may be nonsensical to speak of any given physical constant changing as well.
In particular, to the extent that the apparent fine-tuning of constants related to gravitational attraction is prominent in these examples – and it is – we should be particularly careful, as our best quantum theories still struggle to incorporate gravity, and especially under the exotic conditions of the early universe.
Perhaps there’s some meaning to the idea of certain physical constants “having different values.” It’s certainly essential to Meyer’s claim of so-called “fine tuning.” It is also certainly debatable, and debated.
But, for the sake of discussion, let’s assume for a moment that it’s meaningful to discuss the possibility of physical constants having different values than they do. Meyer’s contention is that, in most of these configurations, intelligent life could not form in the universe that unfolded from these different preconditions.
That strikes me as a very bold claim. To make it, one has to believe both of the following: first, that we can accurately predict the nature of a universe that follows laws other than the laws that govern our own universe; and, secondly, that we have a reasonable understanding of the range of conditions under which intelligent life might arise, and the nature of that life, in universes both like and unlike our own.
It’s worth noting that there is a great deal we still don’t know about the only universe of which we’re aware, the one we can actually observe. And it’s worth noting that we really don’t understand the mechanisms of intelligence, nor the mechanisms by which life emerged, nor whether there is life anywhere else in our universe including on those planets and satellites within reach of our own small blue orb.
Given how new and incomplete our own knowledge is of the universe we inhabit and the rules that govern it, we should be skeptical that we’re capable of anticipating the infinite range of alternative universes that might arise through the modification of various physical constants. Certainly, we have not invested thousands of cosmologist-years in studying these hypothetical alternatives.
Similarly, given that we have exactly one example of life from which to generalize in a universe likely containing literally trillions of planets, it seems prudent to hesitate before speaking with authority regarding which possible universes can and can’t support life.
Claim: The Genetic Code is Evidence of an Intelligent Designer
Put simply, Meyer’s argument here is based on the observation that the genetic code – the encoding of information in the DNA of living things – represents a particular kind of “functional” information storage mechanism that is unlikely to have arisen through purely natural processes. I find this the most unsatisfying of Meyer’s claims.
Meyer argues in his book and in his numerous public appearances that, in our consistent and repeated experience, every instance of such functional information storage is the result of a guiding intelligence. It follows, he argues, that the storage of functional information in DNA must also be the product of a guiding intelligence.
This seems to be such an obviously poor and illogical argument that I find myself wondering if I am missing something profound. But let’s break it down.
- We are aware of numerous examples of the encoding of “functional” information in a structured form, from computer programs to grammars to all sorts of artificial symbolic schemes.
- Our experience with all of these is that they are the product of intelligence. Specifically, they are the product of human intelligence.
- It is, therefore, our uniform and repeated experience that such encoding is the product of intelligence.
- But we are also aware of the encoding of “functional” information in a structured form in the DNA that is found in each of our cells. It follows, therefore, that this information too must be the product of intelligence, since it is our universal and repeated experience that all such information is the product of intelligence.
But wait. That is – at best – a circular argument. If we include DNA in our initial inventory of “functional” information, then it’s no longer our uniform and repeated experience that such information is the product of intelligence. Rather, it’s our uniform and repeated experience that man-made encoding of information is man-made. That says nothing about not-man-made encoding of information.
(On the other hand, it does seem to me that Meyer would be more consistent if he argued that, since every instance of encoded information of which we’re aware is actually man-made, DNA must also be man-made. But that would be an even more absurd argument.)
Instances of functional information storage in DNA both predate and outnumber every form which we can trace to an intelligent source – that is, every form which was created by man. Our actual experience is that every cell in every organism contains a vast amount of structured, functional information for which we can identify no creating intelligence. There is no basis, therefore, for his oft-repeated claim that, in our consistent experience, such storage is an artifact of intelligence, and the fact that he continues to repeat the claim strikes me as peculiar.
Note that this is subtly different from a probability argument. The argument is that it is the consistency of our experience regarding the origin of artificially encoded information that compels us to accept an intelligent origin of apparently naturally occurring encoded information.
The error seems too obvious to be overlooked, too often emphasized by Meyer to be accidental, and, frankly, too flagrant to be wholly innocent. Again, perhaps I am misunderstanding his argument in some way which will be immediately evident when it’s explained to me.
God of the Gaps?
Meyer doesn’t like this phrase, and I can understand why. We humans have a long tradition of invoking deities to fill the gaps in our understanding of the material universe. We have probably done it since our earliest moments of awareness – indeed, the utility of having that comforting and ready answer might, one can easily believe, be why we are inclined to believe in the supernatural.
Meyer has written a book that could have been written at any time during our long quest for understanding. The details would change, the sophistication would vary, but the product would be similar: a man standing on the edge of the unknown surveys the wisest men around him and concludes that, since they have no wholly satisfactory answers, one or another god is the most plausible explanation.
Though Meyer objects to the phrase and argues that he is not engaging in an argument from ignorance, here is how he describes, in Chapter 20, the argument he is making:
Premise One: Despite a thorough search, no materialistic causes have been discovered with the power to produce large amounts of specified information required to produce the first cell.
Premise Two: Intelligent causes have demonstrated the power to produce large amounts of specified information.
Premise Three: Intelligent design constitutes the best, most causally adequate explanation for the origin of the specified information in the cell.
Take a look at that Premise One: “Despite a thorough search….”
What does “thorough” mean, in this context? How does “Despite a thorough search” differ from “Thus far?” What aspect of knowledge does Meyer believe we have exhausted, in our thorough but failed search?
There will always be things we haven’t yet figured out. There will always be a precipice, beyond which is something mysterious and seemingly impenetrable. And there will always be those who stand on the edge and give up on the process and think, I guess God did it.
Of course, they could be right. But they don’t have a very good track record, and I think both science and religion suffer when people engage in this kind of end-run around the humble scientific method, or try to co-opt it to make a theological point. (Similarly, science suffers when scientists try to impugn God with their science. But that’s the mirror image of what’s going on here, and a topic for another day.)
The universe is unimaginably vast, at least 90 billion light-years across and perhaps orders of magnitude larger. It contains perhaps trillions of galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars. It is old, several times older than our own sun, and is full of mysteries.
A hundred years ago our best and brightest argued over whether our galaxy was the only one, and whether the universe was older than we now know our own planet to be. We knew a lot – and, it turns out, we knew almost nothing.
Our best understanding, currently represented by quantum field theory, is bizarre and wildly unintuitive – and yet has wonderful predictive power and astounding mathematical rigor: in some ways, it is the most comprehensive and successful scientific theory ever devised.
It’s too early to throw in the towel.
Published in Science & Technology
JC, if I know almost nothing of physics, I know less of philosophy. In particular, I don’t understand the methods and standards of philosophy, the rules by which things are deemed confirmed or disproved, etc. But I’m inclined to agree with you that, if metaphysical truths are to be supported through argument, philosophy, and not the natural sciences, is the domain within which that debate should occur.
Not at all, Keith. I’m just pointing out that, if there is in fact an infinite number (or infinite sequence) of universes, then Meyer’s argument dissolves. Meyer obviously understands this, and I’m sure that’s why he focuses so much attention on attacking multiple-universe theories.
This bring up another point that I haven’t mentioned about Meyer’s book. Reading it, one might get the impression that theoretical physicists dreamed up the idea of multiple universes simply to avoid the need to acknowledge that God created the one we have. Meyer encourages that perspective, and not always, in my opinion, in an entirely justifiable way.
The truth is more complicated. At least some of the multi-universe theories simply “fall out of the math.” That is, in the process of explaining observed phenomena, the math implies that multiple universes exist, or that there is an endless sequence of universes. I think that’s a distinction worth noting, that multiple universes are predicted by the theory, rather than proposed as a solution to a problem. We can contrast that with the God Hypothesis, for which no theoretical nor observational predictive basis exists.
Put differently: The idea of multiple universes is an inference drawn from theories that attempt to answer questions about the observable universe. The inference springs from the mathematics of the theories themselves. In contrast, the God Hypothesis is an answer invoked by its proponents whenever no other theory is readily available; nowhere does the math or physics point to it as a specific and plausible consequence springing from what we know of the universe.
Laying aside for a moment the fact that “proven” and “disproven” are loaded words as regards science, I’ll just say that I don’t know what we can’t know about our universe. I don’t know that we can’t find compelling evidence to support either case. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I used to think that we could never know anything about a black hole beyond its mass and perhaps its rate of spin; now I am much less confident about that. Similarly, hints that we might see beyond the singularity at the “beginning” of our universe have me wondering.
There is some weird stuff out there. We are reasonably confident that about 85% of the mass of the observable universe is invisible to us, so-called non-baryonic or dark matter that doesn’t interact with the electromagnetic spectrum and so is undetectable other than by its gravity. But we can, we think, detect it by that gravity, and we think it accounts for the fantastic large structure of the universe, the enormous strands of galaxies and vast empty spaces that may measure literally billions of lightyears across.
Similarly, we have almost no idea what so-called dark energy (a particularly poor name) is, but we’re pretty sure it’s driving the expansion of the universe and it seems that there’s a lot of it — more of it, if you look at its mass-equivalence, than there is matter (dark and otherwise) in the observable universe.
Meanwhile, while quantum theories are wonderfully successful at predicting wildly unintuitive outcomes at very small scales, the implications are so strange that, were they not relatively easy to demonstrate experimentally, no one would believe them. And yet they are easy to demonstrate, and so we do think they’re probably correct, at least in some important ways.
As we consider exotic concepts like multiple universes, string theories, supernatural creators, and their like, we should, I believe, pay attention to the degree to which these concepts arise from our attempts to rigorously explain what we think we can see, versus concepts that have been floating around for thousands of years, and that are routinely invoked whenever other available answers are inadequate. Our confidence in our conclusions, while never absolute, grows as the math and theory coheres and the explanatory power increases. Physics has that going for it. The God Hypothesis, in my opinion, does not.
PS A final aside: Nothing about the existence of multiple universes disproves the God Hypothesis. It would merely undermine Meyer’s particular probabilistic arguments. The God Hypothesis is not falsifiable — not even with really, really good math.
Forgive me — I was typing on my phone. “Can’t” here is shorthand for “We haven’t (yet) and we don’t know how (yet).” Contemporary science.
Perhaps someday science will be able to determine the color of the Almighty’s underwear, but for now, “can’t” is fair enough. Meyer should not rely upon one value of this indeterminate thing in his contemporary argument.
I likewise use “proven” and “disproven” in their vernacular sense — a theory which is “proven” by science is well-supported with predictions, proposed mechanism and so forth well-supported by observation, and as yet unfalsified despite numerous attempts to do so. I should like to avoid the twee ontological angst of knowability in general. It’s enough to discuss the knowability of particulars against a backdrop of at least limited knowability.
Right — which means it’s not science.
I isn’t just that science lacks interest in the spirit- by definition it CANNOT engage such questions b/c, at the outset, it has limited itself to natural objects and methods. It is like trying to use your metal detector to find your lost wad of cash. It is also why atheists asking questions like where did God come from or what caused God are category errors in thinking.
That paragraph alone was worth several likes. I could only do one. All but five of the rest of you should help.
You might say this is a bit off-topic, and you’d be right. But Descartes thought you could prove other people exist, and if we made just one change in his strategy you could prove it–assuming at least one of his arguments for the existence of G-d also works.
Despite much talk about arguments from ignorance for the existence of G-d, I don’t recall ever seeing one. Notwithstanding our gracious host’s reluctance to discuss the issue, Meyer’s argument in the opening post is certainly no argument from ignorance.
I don’t get it. Are you saying that Meyer makes G-d out to be contingent on the empirical structure of nature? That’s completely mistaken. At most, he makes our knowledge of G-d contingent on the empirical structure of nature.
The existence of the director does not depend on the particulars of the film. The particulars of the film are just one available, and extra, argument for the existence and/or characteristics of the director.
Yay Popper!
Some philosophers attempt to support Theism, Agnosticism or Atheism based on what Philosopher Graham Oppy calls “the data.”
What kind of data? Some atheist philosophers point to the problem of divine hiddenness or the problem of evil. The argument goes that if a God exists that is omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omniscient, God would not have just kicked back and watched the Nazis conduct the Holocaust. Instead, God would have put obstacles in the way of the Nazis so that their schemes could not be carried out. Also, God wouldn’t just sit back and watch thousands of children under the age of 5 die each year.
Theist philosophers point to consciousness and human intelligence as “evidence” that God exists, arguing that a naturalistic universe would not likely produce conscious beings with the ability to write poetry and solve differential equations.
In some sense, I think the whole “Does God exist?” question doesn’t get to the issue most of us are interested in, which is this: If God does exist, what is God’s nature? What are God’s demands of human beings? Were the 9-11 Hijackers doing God’s work? Does God condemn those who don’t accept Jesus to a hell of eternal conscious torment?
In other words, if God exists but takes an extremely passive role in our universe, it’s almost as if God doesn’t exist.
Here is philosopher of religion Graham Oppy explaining why, in his opinion, atheism makes the most sense.
Oppy is a philosopher in Australia.
The point that is always elided, by both Meyer and Racette, is the direct interaction of consciousness with matter/energy. Neither seem to discuss this. This is the central feature of Quantum mechanics: Consciousness affects Quantum processes. What is Consciousness? How does it affect Quantum processes? What does the mean.
The problems with Quantum theory is that it cannot account for the values of fundamental constants. Scientists expected that their Theory of Everything would show the inter relatedness of the fundamental constants, and why they had the values that they had, but that has not happened. That used to be considered an indication of the validity of a theory. Maxwell’s, equations, for example automatically yielded the value of the speed of light, confirming that light is an electromagnetic wave–with the Ether the most certain thing in the Universe, until it wasn’t (when Einstein explained the photoelectric effect showing that light is a particle, the photon. It’s a wave; its a particle; It’s a wave AND a particle. ? One cannot speculate that the fundamental constants are interrelated in some specific way when the Theory doesn’t in any way address the reasons for those constants. So it doesn’t meet the physicists expectations for what a complete theory would do (although Maxwell’s equations turned out not to be a complete theory). Cosmologists and string theorists are busy scrutinizing the cosmic background radiation (which is fully consistent with an origin, whether the mathematics can get you there or not–as far as I am aware, all of the physicists pretty much agree on that. Otherwise, you wouldn’t need inflation. And where did that inflation come from? Another “field has to be postulated, the Inflaton Field, with it’s fundamental particle,the Inflation, and so on to infinity and beyond!) to find evidence for those 10 to the 500th power other universes that just HAVE to be there.
I’m not holding my breath for the explanation of dark matter and dark energy, which comprise 96% of the Universe, and which the scientists don’t know what it is.
Our knowledge is a torch of smokey pine
That lights the pathway but one step ahead
Across a void of mystery and dread
Bid then the tender light of faith to shine
By which alone the mortal mind is led
Unto the thinking of the thought divine.
Santayana.
In my view there are a lot of mistakes in Racette’s analysis. Too many to begin to address.
Per the physicists, the unfolding of the Universe was completely encoded in the early universe. That means you and I were encoded in the Universe at the time of the Big Bang. Maybe Meyers, or Racette, could expound at on that at some point.
Oh, and I did read Hawkings’ book. He is in a quantum era a strict mechanical causal determinist atheist. He didn’t understand Quantum Mechanics.
And also Penrose’s book on Cycles of Time. Also implausible based on Entropy.
Many neuroscientists believe that certain configurations of matter/energy result in consciousness. In their view, there is no “ghost in the machine.” The mind is the brain. If you suffer a stroke or a concussion or some other injury to the brain, you could lose some of your memories. You might not recognize your spouse as your spouse. Your personality might change. Thus, there is no need to argue that a “soul” exists. A human being consists of matter/energy.
I think it was C. S. Lewis who said that without evil, moral values and judgements don’t amount to much. I’m probably stating it incorrectly, but memory tells me that he believed that in a world filled with evil, moral judgements and actions come to a point; they really matter, and for that reason God allows evil to exist. Probably not persuasive to most, I believe he is correct to some degree.
The limitation to his argument, as I see it, is that it does not address the problems of birth defects, mental illness, childhood cancer, etc. But then, one can’t say they are the result of evil will on the part of humans, as one should with the Holocaust.
People talk about that stuff a lot in philosophy and theology.
I suppose one could argue that God didn’t want to violate Hitler’s “free will” as he issued orders to construct gas chambers for 6 year old Jewish children and their parents. It’s not persuasive to me. But, maybe.
This reminds me of Atheist Philosopher Dr. Stephen Law’s “Evil God Hypothesis.”
Dr. Law argues, not that he actually believes this, that the universe is governed by a perfectly Evil God. Why then do flowers exits? Rainbows? Puppies? Giggling babies?
Well, the Evil God allows the good (those flowers, rainbows, puppies and babies) to exist in the service of a greater evil, the depression people suffer when those flowers, rainbows, puppies and babies are snuffed out. This Evil God allows a bit of good so that a greater evil can result.
This is sort of a mirror image of what Theists argue when explaining why God allows so many animals to suffer, so many babies to die, so many parents of children to die of cancer while their children are still in elementary school. God allows these evils for the greater good.
Law argues that if you think his Evil God is not realistic then you shouldn’t think the Good God is realistic either.
The video.
It takes quite a leap of faith, but if you believe we have the ability to be like the angels, you must accept that we have the ability to be “fallen” angels/demons. I think I heard WFB, Jr. say something like that once.
Still doesn’t say anything about the lives of people being destroyed through natural disasters or diseases.
Can he prove it’s not a simulation?
And poetry:
“Tis of the essence of life here, though we chose greatly, still to lack the lasting memory at all clear, that life has for us on the rack, nothing but what we somehow chose. Thus are we wholly stripped of pride, in the pain that has but one close, bearing it crushed, and mystified.”
Frost. The Trial by Existence.
One issue that has been brought up is: What about heaven?
Are people going to do bad things in heaven? Or, when people get to heaven, will people only do good?
If so, then it would seem that God either doesn’t think that allowing humans to have free will is so important after all or it’s possible to have a realm, like heaven, where people have free will but always choose to do the good thing instead of the bad thing.
This objection goes away if one doesn’t believe in an afterlife, I suppose.
Reincarnation does address all of those things. Each life is like a new class in school. Each life is a part in an semi-improv play. We are given situations that will help us learn the next lesson we need.
But reincarnation doesn’t necessarily require an omnibenevolent, omniscient and omnipotent God or does it?
Or put it this way, why would a good God allow Hitler to implement the Holocaust? Was it necessary for people to suffer terribly in those concentration camps so that in some future life they could enjoy a happier life? Why wouldn’t a good God allow people to experience the good life without having to suffer through the torture and starvation on the way there?
Yes, if we make just one change in his strategy–and assuming at least one of his arguments for the existence of G-d also works.
But his first argument isn’t gonna work, unfortunately. That leaves us with his version of an ontological argument.
So that’s a pretty big “if” we got there.
I have often postulated a God that once existed but either no longer exists or no longer intervenes in the universe he created. In other words, maybe there was once a God and he did create the universe in its initial state. But from that moment on either he no longer existed or he no longer interacted with the universe.
This would explain the problem of divine hiddenness/evil. It would explain why it’s hard to get people to agree on God’s nature, whether Jesus rose from the dead, whether Mohammed heard the voice of an angel in a cave, whether the pastor at your nearby church is preaching the word of God or leading people away from God’s word.
No.
It means that there are better things than free will–things which, in all likelihood, we can only get by using free will properly.
That is how habits work, after all. A person can lose his ability to not do something bad by doing the bad so often that it’s an unbreakable habit. Then he’s got something worse than free will. A person can lose his ability to not do something good by doing the good so often that it’s an unbreakable habit. Then he’s got something better than free will.
That was a real hoot!
Wasn’t Satan/Lucifer once one of the Big Dogs in Heaven? Wasn’t there a “war” in Heaven where he and his followers were thrown out? That’s the story I heard years ago though I don’t take it as literal truth. It would imply that if you were there from the beginning, you were on probation.
Another mystery is how you can comment when you are listed as “Inactive”?