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God would be an atheist...
A rational look at religion, morality, politics and daily life |
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HOME / This Week About GWBAA WEEKLY COLUMNS Previous Print column Why subscribe? Schedule Terms & Rates Subscribe Online column Subscribe BASICS Definitions Atheism Faith God Religion etc Analysis The meaning of life Morality etc NEXT STEPS Buy Discuss Join Read REVIEWS CONTACT Link to this site All Rights Reserved World Copyright © Martin Foreman PREVIOUSLY... People whose primary motives are altruistic - driven by outside needs - tend to seek out new information and change their attitudes and opinions accordingly. People who are primarily driven by internal needs tend to seek out information that corroborates their pre-existing beliefs. This has nothing to do with political perspective - both liberals and conservatives can be open or rigid in their thinking. Ann Coulter doesn't bother me If I am lucky, I will spend the next fifty years avoiding disease and disaster and spend my last days with a companion and a few friends in a small town far from violence and relatively untouched by environmental degradation. The world may be falling into chaos around me, but as the Brits once put it, “I’m all right, Jack”. Blood circulates in the body, the earth’s atmosphere protects us from harmful radiation, neutrons and electrons exist, DNA is passed from to parent to child, the earth is billions of years old and gravity exists. We know these things not because a few individuals proclaim them, but because thousands of men and women over several generations have theorized and researched and tested each idea until there is no doubt that they are true. The evolution of science Let us suppose for a moment that Christians are right. That somewhere Antony is either beaming broadly as he sings God’s praises or screaming in agony as devils torture him. At what point in the continuum of life and death did his spirit, his soul, his personality, call it what you will, pass from this world to the next? In the final ten days when you could see his mind shutting down, where was the Antony we had known and loved? Death comes as the end One of our greatest failings as human beings is our inability to understand other people’s emotions and thinking. We almost always give much greater weight to our own perspective on the world than to that of those around us. The rhetoric of death or the tools of life? |
Column 102 Lack of cause Debating God's existence (ii) By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 794 words Publication date: April 8, 2007 Print publications wishing to syndicate the column should click here. Individual subscribers wishing to receive columns by e-mail should click here. Believers defending their faith give five primary reasons for the existence of God. One is personal experience – God has spoken to me. Another is the existence of miracles. The third is the First Cause argument. The fourth is the apparent impossibility of evolution. The last is the stability of the universe. The first two arguments are easily demolished. The last three appear to be on stronger ground but their foundations are illusions. Personal experience is just that: personal. No matter how strong the presence of God in our lives, no matter how convinced we are that that presence comes from outside us and exists independently of us, at the end of the day, all experience of God comes from within and is nothing more than self-created delusion. Miracles are equally irrelevant. Miracles were frequent in ancient history when events were rarely and uncertainly recorded and people were more credulous. Over years stories grew and changed in the telling and small incidents or outright lies metamorphosized into interventions of the almighty. As we learn about the world about us and record our history better, miracles have shrunk. Instead of global floods and plagues of locusts, John Paul II’s claim to sainthood is based on the fact that a nun prayed to him after his death and her Parkinson’s disease disappeared. Two facts: the cure appeared inexplicable and she prayed to the late Pope. Ergo, she was cured by a miracle. Any ten-year-old with reasonable intelligence and a decent education would spot the fallacy in that argument, but sound reasoning is not a trait normally associated with the Christian faith. For the benefit of nine-year-olds who may be reading this column and uncertain of the illogicalities, let me make it clear. Start by asking for the medical evidence, including dated and witnessed brain scans pre- and post-“miracle” that prove both that the condition was Parkinson’s and that it has been permanently cured. Prove that no other condition could produce the same symptoms and disappear in the same way. IF the disease was Parkinson’s and it has been cured, examine all the circumstances in which the disease pro- and re-gressed. Compare other potential contributing factors such as diet, sleeping habits, chemicals in the environment (eg from cleaning fluids or nearby factories) and so on to eliminate all other causes of regression. Compare this case with other situations where patients have unexpectedly made a recovery without resort to prayer. Compare all other prayers made to John Paul after his death, no doubt with equal or greater fervor, and ask whether they have been granted – particularly those that would qualify as miraculous. Explain why the dead Pope would single out Marie Simon-Pierre for work of wonder. And if after you have done all this and are still convinced that God, or one of his saints, has performed a miracle, explain why God and his saints ignore all the pleas of the millions of other human beings who suffer illness and tragedy on a daily basis. In short, recognize that two events may be connected (prayer and cure) but connection is not proof of cause. God, of course, might exist and be very different from the miracle-working deity pictured by the Catholic faith. Among other arguments for his existence is the First Cause – God caused the universe to exist. For centuries philosophers and scientists have looked into the origins of the universe. As we explore ever deeper, our understanding continues to develop, change and confuse. All very interesting, but not very relevant. Underlying all the debate and scientific evidence, at the end of the day, there are only two key points. The first is our ability to understand the universe in which we live is inherently limited and our concept of “cause” may be flawed or meaningless. Given that caveat, we move to the second point: we have to decide whether all entities can or cannot exist without a cause. If some can exist without a cause, we accept that the universe does not need a creator. If all entities must have a cause, then God created the universe. And something created God. Something else created the creator of God and so on into infinity. The argument that the universe needs a cause but God does not is both poor and hypocritical. Given these two choices – a godless and a god-created universe - the more intellectually honest conclusion is that the universe makes more sense without God. Two arguments remain - the apparent impossibility of evolution and the stability of the universe (the fact that a few minor alterations in the physical structure of the universe would make it impossible to exist). Superficially, these arguments are attractive, but close up, they’re hollow. We’ll take a look at them next week.
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If God existed, he would... If God existed, he would be an atheist. 
God: The Failed HypothesisHow Science Shows That God Does Not Exist "Physicist Victor Stenger has just served up a second course of delectable arguments for the non-existence of God. In his latest book God: The Failed Hypothesis, Stenger runs through the standard rational and biological arguments against any sort of meaningful deity, but he does much more. In plain, easily understood language, Stenger lays out the evidence from cosmology, particle physics and quantum mechanics showing that the universe appears exactly as it should if there is no creator." from the Skeptics Society; read more at www.skeptic.com So that's all right. We can all breathe a sigh of relief. Alternately, we can ask ourselves about the assumptions underlying such a statement, particularly concerning the place of sexual orientation in human values, the ethics of specific medical interventions and the role of a mythical being in determining those values and ethics. Read more at the online edition of the Christian Index or Google "Mohler fetus orientation". State Senator Raymond Finney has introduced a Senate Resolution intended to force state Education Commissioner Lana Seivers to answer the question in a report to be presented by January 15, 2008. Finney, a believer, intends to force Seivers either to endorse creationism or to be ridiculed as deciding a question that belongs to the realm of science. Read more at the online edition of the Knoxville News Sentinel. |
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