Intro
After reading the ‘god delusion’, and some of the related literature and effort by leading atheists to explain their opinions, I was prompted to discuss some of the points that normally arise here, as a mental exercise maybe, and as a method for a deeper understanding of many of the thoughts that I’ve had on this topic for years.
I was initially just writing some comments as I read the ‘God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins, but then developed these remarks and thoughts into the below discussion.
The Nature of God
I was watching a show by the brilliant George Carlin (RIP) once, and he was making fun of some religious old lady, and he shouted at her … “but you worship an old man sitting in the clouds, that’s ridiculous”… And he couldn’t be more correct (I think). There is a huge discussion about god’s nature, and many attribute human qualities to him (see anthropomorphism), something that is sometimes termed ‘the personal god’: A god who is very much like a person, with a person’s emotions, a person’s actions, and a person’s mode of doing things (accounting-wise for example).
My general readings over the years have led me to the belief that so many (I don’t have enough certain knowledge to say ‘most’) prominent scientists are not theists in the traditional sense of the word (I remember reading a statistic about philosophy professors), but are very far from atheism also. They are predominantly what is sometimes referred to as a ‘pantheist’ (literally meaning god-is-all). A pantheist is a person who believes in a form of universal intelligence, where god and the universe are one… Researching a lot of ‘atheist literature’, I will dare accuse the atheists of a conspiracy to hijack pantheism, while in fact; it is much closer to theism. I am a practicing Muslim, and I find – absolutely – no problems in agreeing with pantheism as I read about it [This is by no means something I invented]... The simple statement that god is the infinite creates this coincidence. On the contrary, it seems that a ‘personal god’ is something it is difficult to agree with, even from a theistic point of view... What sense does it make to give the qualities of man to god, unless – as I will discuss later – this is due to some flaw of our understanding of the transcendental.
Belief in god – In no way – means to necessarily believe in a ‘personal god’, Yet Mr. dawkins insists – so very conveniently – that the theist’s general model of god is the most personal image, which is easiest to attack and make fun of. He also accuses many of the non-atheist scientists (who believe in a non-personal god) of intellectual high treason... you wonder is the point really to have a deep discussion or to score points, and if so the weaker the target, the easier to score.
Arguments
Acquinas’ arguments
I had read Saint Thomas Acquinas’ arguments for proving the existence of god before, and some of the discussions about them, and I knew that they are considered an important landmark in the evolution of theology ( I don’t believe that they are THE proof of god’s existence), so was interested to read what dr. Dawkins had to say about them. My initial surprise was that he considered them almost ridiculous (he didn’t say this literally just out of respect for the saint).
Here I will attempt not to argue for the correctness or fallacy of the arguments themselves, but rather of Mr. Dawkins’ discussion of them.
Let’s examine more:
He groups the first three arguments together for their similarity. They are:
- 1. The unmoved mover: nothing moves without a prior mover... an infinite regression that leads to god (at termination)
- 2. The Uncaused cause: nothing is caused by itself. Similar to the previous, in the need for a first cause to terminate
- 3. The Cosmological argument: There must have been a time where no physical things existed, but since they do exist now, there must have been something non-physical that brought them to existence à Again the first cause
Dawkins believes that these three arguments rely on the idea of regress and invoke god to terminate them. Their failure – according to him – is that they assume that god is the end to the regression, since god is ‘not immune to regression’. I was honestly expecting to see something stronger than that... something that will easily show why these statements of acquinas are rediculous... Well if the problem is calling the terminator ‘god’, DON’T… Let’s call him “Pre-BING”... there must exist a “Pre-BING” that (I’m deliberately not saying ‘who’ here) is capable of answering these regressions by his mere existence. It so happens that we called him ‘god’... that shouldn’t be a problem in itself. Anyway, by saying that god doesn’t terminate the regression (because it’s ‘bad’ – almost literally) the writer doesn’t answer anything and his discussion here turns into a childish writing. If he has no clear answer for them, he could have skipped discussing them, let alone calling the proofs ridiculous... He just plays little with words, in a manner not coherent at all that I honestly can’t find anything discuss, then moves to the fourth argument. The ‘God Delusion’ Discussion of these arguments is one important example of the shallowness of the waters as far as theology and philosophy (maybe not evolutionary biology and other sciences are concerned).
How ridiculous is it that we call the initiation of our universe and our existence a ‘singularity’ and then move along?? That is the true intellectual high treason, and signifies a true deficiency in our sense of exploration and wonder.
I know that my discussion of Dawkins’ discussion has no true intellectual weight, but I really found absolutely no statements here... not even wrong ones to argue with. This method of filling space with words will continue a lot through the book, and the weird thing is the writer’s evident sense of achievement about it.
4. 4. The Argument from degree: things in the world differ and there are degrees of everything, and there should exist a maximum, which we call god. Dr. Dawkins, simply says:”is that an argument” and includes an example if we took smelliness… other than the example being completely out of its place, I will have to agree with him here that this is not really an argument that proves anything related to the existence of god, but might have something to do with our awareness of the infinite… Anyway, I think he scores a point here. The way in which he refutes this argument though, does say a lot about the writer’s approach... Indeed it would have been easy to come up with an elegant coherent proof that through a logical contradiction shows that degree doesn’t necessarily dictate a first cause – god – but he didn’t… This flaw in the approach has a lot of value when we understand the background, and in the light of what I will mention later regarding the cultural scientific background of a certain group and their approach to divinity and spirituality. The Left brain versus the right brain… too much analysis, but lack of synthesis which makes the ‘whole picture’ and the ‘colored beautiful view’ disappear, towards more further-breakup and materiality..
5. 5. The teleogical argument: The argument from design. Living things look as if they were designed and nothing we know looks designed unless it has been. The example here is the arrow moving towards its target. It is interesting because in the Quran there is a similar version of this argument saying that the similarity of all living things should be a proof of the existence of god for all those who consider. The writer considers Darwin to be the person who devastated this argument by his theory. He means the theory of natural selection is capable of producing designs, but this argument doesn’t –at all – negate the teleogical argument, as natural selection could have easily been god’s way of creating the designs of living beings. This is something that the writer avoids throughout the book (no wonder). God in no way needs to create each and every animal alone in a horizontal, one time approach – no matter what many believers might think – but could have created the initial life (that too doesn’t need to be done so directly, but rather through mechanisms which science can discover: lightening, pressure, water, fire, etc ..), and the methods for it to evolve.
The Ontological argument
Proposed by St. Anselm of Canterbury, this is an apriori argument. It goes as follows: It is possible to imagine an ultimately great being, that of which nothing greater can be conceived. If you can, and the being exists, then you believe in god. This imagining is indeed possible even for an atheist, as he can think of such non-existent being. A being that doesn’t exist in the real world is surely less great than one which does, so the imagined ‘greatest being’ is not the greatest imaginable being after all. This contradiction proves that god must be existent (The greatest conceivable being).
Dawkins’ reply to this argument is … well... that it is... infantile... voila! He compares it to Zeno’s paradox (which can be easily proven wrong – and a ridiculous trick, unlike the ontological argument)…
Anyway, I do agree that proof of such beautiful truths and grand knowledge and wisdom surely shouldn’t come from purely logical acrobatics… But, again, he didn’t disprove it!!
The Argument from Beauty – Beyond the realm of the logical
I don’t want to over-romanticize things here, but beauty in creation, the design of things, the sheer remoteness of the possibility of our existence are indeed things through which the ‘divine’ can be felt. I guess that atheists can – with the same degree of certainty – say that this is truly where the non-existence of the divine can be… I will not argue a lot here, but would just like to mention the amazing world which is way beyond the logic, measurements and complexity of the material world… the world of the whole, and the world of the infinite boundaries of the mind.. The senses and the physical fail, but the spiritual runs free… If you believe in the divine, it will exist... and heaven might simply be inside you… anyway, I remember reading once the following beautiful sentence “They are two... with his strength the first created the second.. And with his weakness the second created the first.”
The argument from beauty is too vague and meta-logical (the positive kind) for it to be disproven or debunked.
The Arguments from scripture – More on specifics
The Arguments from scripture are arguments that Dr. Dawkins’ used in his book through analysis and discussion of certain statements in the ‘holy books’. He mostly focuses on statements from the Old Testament (some are indeed horrifying), and secondarily on statements from the new testament.. Here my answer is simple. These books are NOT god.. They were produced by people, they reflect psychological, social and even political circumstances of their times. They even reflect – sometimes – the emotional states of the people who contributed to writing them (a gradual process that continued over hundreds of years). Putting these books in their historical perspectives should truly give us a calmer look.. It is normal – although what many may say – that these books reflect elements from their time, which can (and should) be continuously updated and understood based on our newer knowledge and state of society.
It is important to note that the ‘arguments from scripture’ have absolutely no effect on proving atheism to be the correct stance as one can find 100s of problems with a certain book, with little or no effect on religion as a whole.
The 6 Central points of the God delusion: A detailed debate
I have to admit that I was still looking for a knockdown proof of god’s inexistence when I reached the summary. Anyway his summary of the discussion has six points:
- 1. It has been a challenge to the human intellect to explain the complex, improbable appearance of the design of the universe
- 2. The temptation is to attribute this appearance of design to design itself
- 3. This is false because it automatically raises the larger problem of ‘who designed the designer’. To go with ‘2’ would be equivalent to attempting to solve an improbability by posing an even more improbable solution. We need a ‘crane’ not a ‘skyhook’
- 4. The most powerful and genius ‘crane’ discovered so far is Darwinian evolution by natural selection. Design is an illusion.
- 5. We don’t have an equivalent crane for physics. A multiuniverse theory for physics might do exactly what Darwinism did for biology
- 6. We should not give up hope of the better crane in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism.
DONE à There is no god (almost certainly) !
This is it.. This is the central theme and main argument of the book, and here we can have the following discussion:
è Simplicity vs. Complexity: One of the beautiful things in the universe is its simplicity.. Living beings resemble each other wonderfully, the sciences sometimes converge in beautiful ways reflecting the same concepts (sometimes even the same equations), universal truths arise, and we realize deep thoughts and ideas without effort sometimes. Scientists are talking a lot now about unified theories and theories of everything, universal equations and so on. Complexity is simply due to man’s inability to see the ‘bigger picture’ and understand things from a bigger perspective. Our indulgence in over-analysis, the material and the physical, instead of synthesis, the arts, philosophy and spirituality has lead us away from understanding the great simple things in life.
è Design of the Design mechanism – fighting literality: This is important here. How does Darwinism really dismiss the mind’s wondering about the creator.. The initial?? So what if we know how things evolved? Is that really the ultimate thing, after which our imagination and wondering are satisfied?? I think that Darwinism is simply an explanation of something, and there is no reason (at all) to tie belief in the creator to “creationism” or the belief that god literally created everything “as is”. I actually find it somehow amusing that somebody might think that Darwinism through explaining how evolution happened can dismiss our urge to think about the origins of creation and our existence in this universe.
è Just The How: I think that this is the summarizing devastating blow to all of Dr. Dawkins’ arguments. All of this explains ‘the how’ of a certain small thing (his little field of evolutionary biology): How the current states of living beings (just that) happened to be as they are.. The How has never been the issue, so him turning it into the issue (because of the side-struggle between some creationists and Darwinism) is very similar to trying to prove that a certain building doesn’t exist by explaining to you how the plumbing system works!.. I mentioned before that I see evolution to be in harmony with religion. Even religion doesn’t explain “how” god did the creation.. He could have done creation through evolution.. Easy.. Time is not a factor when it comes to the infinite (god).. Yet it’s not the how that needs explanation.. It’s not the ‘how’.. It’s the ‘why’ or the ‘who’ or the ‘from where’ which are the real questions of divinity and philosophy..
è Who designed the designer: The designer in this case being ‘the infinite’ itself is not subject to our ridiculous theories of induction and regression. We can’t discuss the infinite with certainty, looking for iteration in it, knowing that all our – currently existing – sciences and logical devices fail to inform anything about it.
èThe Singularity: This is a response to Dr. Dawkins’ attempt to reduce the problem of religion to simply two sections: a biological one, and a physical one. He believes that Darwinism solved the biology branch of the problem by eliminating the need for a god (my discussion above shows that the Darwinism is an explanation which goes hand in hand with theism, and that evolution can simply be part of design), saying that we shouldn’t lose hope on a physical solution (similar to the biological one). Well any explanations that come from physics would be just beautiful if they touch on the issues of the improbability of our existence, but physics and math have reached a singularity: A point at which all the known laws break and become invalid… this is the moment before the big bang, where the equations of the math and physics become senseless.. It’s like dividing by zero, and creates a discontinuity of sciences, loudly telling us: “This is different”.. It’s not for physics to explore.. Another field of knowledge could be needed here..
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