From: jfb@macsch.com (John Baskette)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: A god does exist! (was Re: God does exist!)
Date: 5 Nov 92 07:50:24 GMT
Organization: MacNeal-Schwendler Corp.

Subject: Re: A god does exist! (was Re: God does exist!)
In article <Oct.28.00.29.17.1992.17018@geneva.rutgers.edu> noonan@icd3.Berkeley.EDU (Michael Noonan ) writes:

>}>Do you agree then that it is reasonable to believe based on what we see 
>}>in the universe that a creator-god exists?
>
>John, I didn't see your original post, so I didn't get a chance to
>respond to it.  In answer to your question...
>
>I go back and forth on the issue, but yes, I guess it is "reasonable"
>in a certain sense.  But the argument from design is just one
>possible explanation of many.  Just because I don't have a full
>understanding of something is no reason for me to create a diety to
>explain it for me.  People have done that in the past and that
>"method" of solving the universe's mysteries has been found to be
>false in all cases where science advances to the point of an alternate
>explanation.  I guess science never really disproved a fire-god, but
>by understanding that particular mystery, mankind no longer needs a
>god to explain it.  I need more.  To me, a creator-god is the same
>as a fire-god and we are no better than the ancients if we believe in
>one out of ignorance.
>
>-Mike Noonan

Hello.  I tried to send you my post by e-mail, but the message kept 
bouncing back.

In article <Oct.26.02.55.39.1992.8360@geneva.rutgers.edu> ba2cs252@troi.cc.rochester.edu (Leonidas Hepis) writes:

>No.  People didn't know what lightnings were so they said it was the
>wrath of God.  Later they found a better explanation.  There have always
>been things that were unknown and perhaps there will always be.  After
>all, what does a cow understand of the relativity theory?  Nothing.  It
>can't fit in her mind.  If you put her in a spacecraft and sent her for a 
>fast trip and she comes back younger than her cattle she will think
>you have supernatural powers and no matter how hard you try to explain
>to her with pictures and computer graphics, she simply won't get it because
>of her limitations.  She'll think you're supernatural. 
>
>Similarly, humans can learn a lot but the brain has limitations.  Perhaps
>we are smart enough to understand the universe.  Or we might be able to become
>smarter in the future so that we have no need to resort to supernature (if
>indeed it doesn't exist).  Whatever the case, just because science can't
>explain creation fully as of yet does not lead us to theism.
>
>>Perhaps we will one day through science be able to explain creation
>>fully.  This explanation may very well require the existence of a 
>>creator-god.  I'm arguing that our current scientific understanding
>>lends itself more readily to a theistic explanation than any other
>>and that a scientific understanding of the universe does not rule
>>out theistic explanations.  
>
>Yes and no :-)  Science cannot prove that God doesn't exist but it has
>proved that things that were once thought to be caused by supernatural
>beings (disease, lightnings etc.) have other explanations that don't
>require you make any assumptions about spiritual entities existing.  
>Because of that experience, a lot of people (including myself) are 
>reluctant to resort to supernature when confronted with the question of the
>origins of the universe: we did it before and it was not the right thing.
>

I think that these arguments conceal some errors.

The first error is associating Christian theism with the posters 
interpretation of animism and the "evolution" of primitive religion.

(  An aside:  I believe that the implied view of the "evolution" of
              religion is questionable and debatable, but that is
              a subject for future posts perhaps. ) 

The term supernatural or supernature has meaning only in 
contradistinction to the natural or nature.  In Christian terms
nature is the creation and the term natural pertains to the order of
created things.  This natural order has certain characteristics
that make it amenable to science such as a uniformity of causes 
that permits induction to work and amenability to description by
language and through the use of "scientific laws" that can be 
simple, accurate and predictively successful.
   
(  Another aside:  Often the terms natural and supernatural are used 
              differently by modern writers.  Nature is defined as
              all that could in principle be observed by human 
              beings or studied using scientific methods.  The
              Supernatural, conversely, is not observable by 
              humans and doesn't really exist.)

The imagined primitive religion spoken of here does not have any
concept of nature as distinct from supernature.  There is but one
world composed of many gods or demons with mysterious powers 
exercised capriciously.  These beings are not even supernatural.
They maybe birds or snakes or people or plants.

The success of the scientific enterprise that falsifies this 
religion does not similarly falsify Christian theism or make it 
in any way less probable.  If it does anything it makes Christian 
theism *more* probable because the kind of metaphysical structure 
found in nature is what would be expected if Christian theism were 
true.

(  Another aside:  The scientific enterprise, however, was founded 
              by people with a strongly Christian metaphysical view 
              of the world.  Copernicus,Kepler, Bacon, Galileo, 
              Newton, Leibnitz, etc. where all people of Christian 
              faith who sought to think God's thoughts after Him.
              The scientific enterprise was originally built on 
              Christian metaphysical foundations having 
              pre-suppositions that are inherited from the Christian 
              world-view.  Even the ancient Greek philosophers to
              which science owes a great deal did not produce
              empirical science because of a metaphysical dualism 
              that saw mind as good, but things of sense or 
              feeling as meaningless leading to a radical 
              separation between theory and practice. )   

This first error is a categorical fallacy.  Christian theism
belongs in the category of world-views that have a concept
of nature as does the views advocated by our posters, not in
the category of (what? religions?) like the imagined primitive
religion that science falsifies.

The second error is to equate religious and scientific explanations
in such a way as to imply that they are answering the same kinds 
of questions.  Christian theism mostly addresses why and who 
questions.  The answers are metaphysical interpretations of 
our experience.  Here is a quote from the physicist Paul 
Davies from p. 242 of his book, "Superforce":

"Should we conclude that the universe is a product of design?
 The new physics and the new cosmology hold out a tantalizing
 promise:  that we might be able to explain how all the 
 physical structures in the universe have come to exist,
 automatically, as a result of natural processes.  We 
 should then no longer have need for a Creator in the 
 traditional sense.  Nevertheless, though science may
 explain the world, we still have to explain science.
 The laws which enable the universe to come into being
 spontaneously seem themselves to be the product of 
 exceedingly ingenious design.  If physics is the product
 of design, the universe must have a purpose, and the 
 evidence of modern physics suggest strongly to me 
 that the purpose includes us."

It may be then that we may one day explain creation fully, but 
that even this explanation may very well require the existence 
of a creator-god, because the explanation is most intelligible 
as the product of a designer.

IMO the the young-earth creation science of ICR is pseudo-
science, but I also believe that the relevant passages in 
the Bible can be interpreted in way that is compatible with 
scientific knowledge.  The metaphysics of Christian theism, 
however, far from being a failure, has proven successful
in spite of attempts by many theorists who are not comfortable
with this result.  

In other words, we did not resort to Christian theism before 
(in our imagined primitive religion) and it is the right thing.  
The Christian God is not the same as the fire god.  Christian
theism far from being proven "false in all cases where science 
advances to the point of an alternate explanation" actually 
accords very well with scientific explanations.

>>Could there be a god that is not all-good or doesn't care about our 
>>existence?  The universe that we see seems to be almost uniquely 
>>suited to the emergence of life and intelligence.  This suggests that
>>any creator-god is very much concerned with our existence.  

>This universe may be one of the so many different manifestations of the energy
>that makes up the universe.  Such versions may have been going on forever 
>and will be going on forever (anyone who is willing to believe in an infinite 
>God shouldn't have trouble with this concept).  In this particular version 
>(and perhaps in some others in the past and some in the future), it was
>possible for life to evolve.  In some it did not evolve even if it was possible.
>In this one it did (chance).  Since curiosity and intelligence are selectable, 
>evolution of life leads to intellectual life.  Once you have something that
>understands that it won't live through eternity (something that amoebas don't
>worry about) you have the birth of religion.

Actually, the inductive form of the design argument makes a stronger 
claim.  The claim is that the kind of order found in nature is greater 
than what one would expect if the universe were the result of chance.
I have already twice quoted Einstein where he says that the universe
displays, "a high degree of order, which we are in no way entitled to 
expect a priori".  Here is another quote from the physicist John Polkinghorne
in the book "The Way the World Is" (p.9):

"Again and again in physical science we find that it is the abstract 
 structures of pure mathematics which provide the clue to understanding
 the world.  It is a recognized technique in fundamental physics to seek
 theories which have an elegant and economical (you can say beautiful)
 mathematical form, in the expectation that they will prove the ones
 realized in nature.  General relativity, the modern theory of gravitation,
 was invented by Einstein in just such a way.  Now mathematics is the 
 free creation of the human mind, and it is surely a surprising and 
 significant thing that a discipline apparently so unearthed should 
 provide the key with which to turn the lock of the world."

On pp 10-11 he reacts to Jacques Monod's book "Chance and Necessity"
as follows:

"When I read Monod's book I was greatly excited by the scientific
 picture it presented of how life came to be.  As a particle physicist,
 I found the biochemical details pretty difficult to follow but, 
 assuming them to be correct, they implied that Schrodinger's 
 equation and Maxwell's equations (the fundamental dynamical equations
 of quantum theory and electromagnetism respectively, which I could 
 literally write down on the back of an envelope) had this astonishing
 consequence of the emergence of replicating molecules and eventually
 life.  The economy and profundity of that is breathtaking.  For me,
 the beauty that it revealed in the structure of the world was like
 a rehabilitation of the argument from design--not as a knockdown
 argument for the existence of God (there are no such arguments; 
 nor are there for his non-existence) but as an insight into the 
 way the world is."  

This is the kind of argument I have advocated in my posts.  The
universe as it exists accords more fully with theism than the 
agnostic naturalistic alternatives advocated by many.

John.