The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever (40 page)

There are two conflicting hypotheses here, two alternative hypotheses. One is that the universe was always here, and the other is that God was always here. Why is it immediately obvious that one of these is more likely than the other? Or, put another way, if we say that God made the universe, it is reasonable to then ask, “And who made God?”

Virtually every child asks that question and is usually shushed by the parents and told not to ask embarrassing questions. But how does saying that God made the universe, and never mind asking where God came from, how is that more satisfying than to say the universe was always here?

In modern astrophysics there are two contending views. First of all, there is no doubt in my mind, and I think almost all astrophysicists agree, that the evidence from the expansion of the universe, the mutual recession of the galaxies and from what is called the three-degree black-body background radiation, suggests that something like 13 or 15 billion years ago all the matter in the universe was compressed into an extremely small volume, and that something that can surely be called an explosion happened at that time, and that the subsequent expansion of the universe and the condensation of matter led to galaxies, stars, planets, living beings, and all the rest of the details of the universe we see around us.

Now, what happened before that? There are two views. One is “Don’t ask that question,” which is very close to saying that God did it. And the other is that we live in an oscillating universe in which there is an infinite number of expansions and contractions.
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We happen to be roughly 15,000 million years out from the last expansion. And some, let’s say, 80,000 million years from now, the expansion will stop, to be replaced by a compression, and all the matter will fly together to a very small volume and then expand again with no information trickling through the cusps in the expansion process.

The former of these views happens, by chance, to be close to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic view, the latter close to the standard Hindu views. And so, if you like, you can think of the varying contentions of these two major religious views being fought out on the field o contemporary satellite astronomy. Because that’s where the answer to this question will very likely be decided. Is there enough matter in the universe to prevent the expansion from continuing forever, so that the self-gravity will make the expansion stop and be followed by a contraction? Or is there not enough matter in the universe to stop the expansion, so everything keeps expanding forever? This is an experimental question. And it is very likely that in our lifetime we will have the answer to it. And I stress that this is very different from the usual theological approach, where there is never an experiment that can be performed to test out any contentious issue.

Here there is one. So we don’t have to make judgments now. All we have to do is maintain some tolerance for ambiguity until the data are in, which may happen in a decade or less. It is possible that the Hubble Space Telescope, scheduled for launch next summer, will provide the answer to this question. It’s not guaranteed, but it is possible.
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Now, by the way, on this issue of who’s older, God or the universe, there’s actually a three-by-three matrix: God can have always existed but will not exist for all future time. That is to say God might have no beginning but might have an end. God might have a beginning but no end. God might have no beginning and no end. Likewise for the universe. The universe might be infinitely old, but it will end. The universe might have begun a finite time ago but will go on forever, or it might have always existed and will never end. Those are just the logical possibilities. And it’s curious that human myth has some of those possibilities but not others. I think in the West it’s quite clear that there is a human or animal life-cycle model that has been imposed on the cosmos. It’s a natural thing to think about, but after a while its limitations, I think, become clear.

Also, I should say something about the Second Law of Thermodynamics. An argument that is sometimes used to justify a belief in God is that the Second Law of Thermodynamics says that the universe as a whole runs down, that is, the net amount of order in the universe must decline. Chaos must increase as time goes on; that is, in the entire universe. It doesn’t say that in a given locale, such as the Earth, the amount of order can’t increase, and clearly it has. Living things are much more complex, have much more order in them, than the raw materials from which life formed some 4,000 million years ago. But this increase in order on the Earth is done, it is easy enough to calculate, at the expense of a decrease in order on the Sun, which is the source of the energy that drives terrestrial biology. It’s by no means clear, by the way, that the Second Law of Thermodynamics applies to the universe as a whole, because it is an experimental law, and we don’t have experience with the universe as a whole. But it’s always struck me as curious that those who wish to apply the Second Law to theological issues do not ask whether God is subject to the Second Law. Because if God were subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, then God could have only a finite lifetime. And again, there is an asymmetric use of the principles of physics when theology confronts thermodynamics.

Also, by the way, if there were an uncaused first cause, that by no means says anything about omnipotence or omniscience, or compassion, or even monotheism. And Aristotle, in fact, deduced several dozen first causes in his theology.

The second standard Western argument using reason for God is the so-called argument from design, which we have already talked about, both in its biological context and in the recent astrophysical incarnation called the anthropic principle. It is at best an argument from analogy; that is, that some things were made by humans and now here is something more complex th t wasn’t made by us, so maybe it was made by an intelligent being smarter than us. Well, maybe, but that is not a compelling argument. I tried to stress earlier the extent to which misunderstandings, failure of the imagination, and especially the lack of awareness of new underlying principles may lead us into error with the argument from design. The extraordinary insights of Charles Darwin on the biological end of the argument of design provide clear warning that there may be principles that we do not yet divine (if I may use that word) underlying apparent order.

There is certainly a lot of order in the universe, but there is also a lot of chaos. The centers of galaxies routinely explode, and if there are inhabited worlds and civilizations there, they are destroyed by the millions, with each explosion of the galactic nucleus or a quasar. That does not sound very much like a god who knows what he, she, or it is doing. It sounds more like an apprentice god in over his head. Maybe they start them out at the centers of galaxies and then after a while, when they get some experience, move them on to more important assignments.

Then there is the moral argument for the existence of God generally attributed to Immanuel Kant, who was very good at showing the deficiencies of some of the other arguments. Kant’s argument is very simple. It’s just that we are moral beings; therefore God exists. That is, how else would we know to be moral?

Well, first of all you might argue that the premise is dubious. The degree to which humans can be said to be moral beings without the existence of some police force is open at least to debate. But let’s put that aside for the moment. Many animals have codes of behavior. Altruism, incest taboos, compassion for the young, you find in all sorts of animals. Nile crocodiles carry their eggs in their mouths for enormous distances to protect the young. They could make an omelette out of it, but they choose not to do so. Why not? Because those crocodiles who enjoy eating the eggs of their young leave no offspring. And after a while all you have is crocodiles who know how to take care of the young. It’s very easy to see. And yet we have a sense of thinking of that as being somehow ethical behavior. I’m not against taking care of children; I’m strongly for it. All I’m saying is, it does not follow if we are powerfully motivated to take care of our young or the young of everybody on the planet, that God made us do it. Natural selection can make us do it, and almost surely has. What’s more, once humans reach the point of awareness of their surroundings, we can figure things out, and we can see what’s good for our own survival as a community or a nation or a species and take steps to ensure our survival. It’s not hopelessly beyond our ability. It’s not clear to me that this requires the existence of God to explain the limited but definite degree of moral and ethical behavior that is apparent in human society.

Then there is the curious argument, unique to the West, called the “ontological argument,” which is generally associated with [St.] Anselm, who died in 1109. His argument can be very simply stated: God is perfect. Existence is an essential attribute of perfection. Therefore, God exists. Got it? I’ll say it again. God is perfect. Existence is an essential attribute of perfection. You can’t be perfect if you don’t exist, Anselm says. Therefore God exists. While this argument has for brief moments captured very significant thinkers (Bertrand Russell describes how it suddenly hit him that Anselm might be right—for about fifteen minutes), this is not considered a successful argument. The twentieth-century logician Ernest Nagel described it as “confounding grammar with logic.”

What does it mean, “God is perfect”? You need a separate description of what constitutes perfection. It’s not enough to say “perfect” and do not ask what “perfect” means. And how do you know God is perfect? Maybe that’s not the god that exists, the perfect one. Maybe it’s only imperfect ones that exist. And then why is it that existence is an essential attribute of perfection? Why isn’t nonexistence an essential attribute of perfection? We are talking words. In fact, there is the remark that is sometimes made about Buddhism, I think in a kindly light, that their god is so great he doesn’t even have to exist. And that is the perfect counterpoise to the ontological argument. In any case, I do not think that the ontological argument is compelling.

Then there’s the argument from consciousness. I think, therefore, God exists; that is, how could consciousness come into being? And, indeed, we do not know the details in any but the very broadest brush about the evolution of consciousness. That is on the agenda of future neurological science. But we do know, for example, that an earthworm introduced into a Y-shaped glass tube with, let’s say, an electric shock on the right-hand fork and food in the left-hand fork, rapidly learns to take the left fork. Does an earthworm have consciousness if it is able after a certain number of trials invariably to know where the food is and the shock isn’t? And if an earthworm has consciousness, could a protozoan have consciousness? Many phototropic microorganisms know to go to the light. They have some kind of internal perception of where the light is, and nobody taught them that it’s good to go to the light. They had that information in their hereditary material. It’s encoded into their genes and chromosomes. Well, did God put that information there, or might it have evolved through natural selection?

It is clearly good for the survival of microorganisms to know where the light is, especially the ones that photosynthesize. It is certainly good for earthworms to know where the food is. Those earthworms that can’t figure out where the food is leave few offspring. After a while the ones that survive know where the food is. Those phototropic or phototactic offspring have encoded into their genetic material how to find the light. It is not apparent that God has entered into the process. Maybe, but it’s not a compelling argument. And the general view of many, not all, neurobiologists is that consciousness is a function of the number and complexity of neuronal linkages of the architecture of the brain. Human consciousness is what happens when you get to something like 10
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neurons and 10
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synapses. This raises all sorts of other questions: What is consciousness like when you have 10
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synapses or 10
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? What would such a being have to say to us any more than we would have to say to the ants? So at least it does not seem to me that the argument from consciousness, a continuum of consciousness running through the animal and plant kingdoms, proves the existence of God. We have an alternative explanation that seems to work pretty well. We don’t know the details, although work on artificial intelligence may help to clarify that. But we don’t know the details of the alternative hypothesis either. So it could hardly be said that this is compelling.

Then there’s the argument from experience. People have religious experiences. No question about it. They have them worldwide, and there are some interesting similarities in the religious experiences that are had worldwide. They are powerful, emotionally extremely convincing, and they often lead to people reforming their lives and doing good works, although the opposite also happens. Now, what about this? Well, I do not mean in any way to object to or deride religious experiences. But the question is, can any such experience provide other than anecdotal evidence of the existence of God or gods? One million UFO cases since 1947. And yet as far as we can tell, they do not correspond—any of them—to visitations to the Earth by spacecraft from elsewhere. Large numbers of people can have experiences that can be profound and moving and still not correspond to anything like an exact sense of external reality. And the same can be said not just about UFOs but also about extrasensory perception and ghosts and leprechauns and so on. Every culture has things of this sort. That doesn’t mean that they all exist; it doesn’t mean that any of them exist.

I also note that religious experiences can be brought on by specific molecules. There are many cultures that consciously imbibe or ingest those molecules in order to bring on a religious experience. The peyote cult of some Native Americans is exactly that, as is the use of wine as a sacrament in many Western religions. It’s a very long list of materials that are taken by humans in order to produce a religious experience. This suggests that there is some molecular basis for the religious experience and that it need not correspond to some external reality. I think it’s a fairly central point—that religious experiences, personal religious experiences, not the natural theological evidence for God, if any, can be brought on by molecules of finite complexity.