Is There A God? - Part 2: There Is A God

So Dawkins says there is no God. But there are many who disagree with him. To represent the opposing side of the argument, I've decided to go with Antony Flew's book, There Is A God. Flew's unique position offers a good deal of intrigue because until recently, Flew has actually been best known for his arguments against the existence of God. In fact, the introduction of the book gives a detailed explanation of why he has been the leading and most respected proponent of atheism in modern history. And then he changed his mind. According to Flew, this change of mind was not due to some sudden "conversion experience", but rather the gradual and logical conclusion of the very question he has been asking all his life. Because of Flew's experience and knowledge in this area, he knows as well as anyone exactly what all the arguments are against the existence of God and yet, based on scientific evidence, he no longer believes that any of these arguments are stronger than those that oppose them. Kind of makes you want to hear what he has to say.

Flew uses a large portion of his book to recount his life's work in order to illustrate the development and evolution of his thought process on the subject of God. Because of this, most of his substantive arguments come from the later portion of the book. I'm going to try to treat Flew's arguments the same way I tried to treat those of Dawkins - with honesty and discernment and without bias. Then I'll take a look at which argument seems to make the most sense. Here we go.

The Good

• "...how easy it is to let preconceived theories shape the way we view evidence instead of letting the evidence shape our theories" (p. 86)

• "Even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith the existence of a lawlike order in nature..." (p. 107, quoting Paul Davies)

• "The laws of nature seem to have been crafted so as to move the universe toward the emergence and sustenance of life." (p. 114)

• "The existence of a multiverse still does not eliminate the question of a divine Source." (p. 116)

• "If we are trying to understand why the universe is bio-friendly, we are not helped by being told that all possible universes exist...'It is crazy to postulate a trillion (causally unconnected) universes to explain the features of one universe, when postulating one entity (God) will do the job.'" (p. 118 & 119, second portion quoting Paul Davies)

• "Living matter possesses an inherent goal or end-centered organization that is nowhere present in the matter that preceded it." (p. 124)

• "The origin of self-reproduction is a second key problem." (p. 125)

• "It is very unlikely that a universe would exist uncaused, but rather more likely that God would exist uncaused." (p. 144, quoting Richard Swinburne)

• "Such a discovery of the Divine does not come through experiments and equations but through an understanding of the structures they unveil and map." (p. 141)

The Bad

• "What is complex about the idea of an omnipotent and omniscient Spirit, an idea so simple that it is understood by all the adherents of the three great monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam?" (p. 111)

The Ugly

• Nothing ugly. Honestly, Flew is so extremely rational that I can't find anything that can be construed as glaringly fallacious.

The Good: Commentary

"...how easy it is to let preconceived theories shape the way we view evidence instead of letting the evidence shape our theories"

If you're a sports fan, you know this is true. When the referees make a call that benefits your team, you tend to agree with them. When they make a call that hurts your team, you tend to disagree with them. Sometimes, you see that the referee was right even though you would have liked to disagree with him. When asking the biggest questions one can ask in life, it seems crucial to me that we try to cast aside our preconceived notions in order to find truth. This is something that Flew seems quite able to do. I wish I could say the same for Dawkins, but I really can't. As a biologist, he is so wedded to the concept of natural selection (a process applicable only to biology/genetics) that he suggests that some form of natural selection can also explain cosmological and chemical phenomena. The fact is, there's just no evidence for that whatsoever. It's a perfect example of a preconceived theory being used to shape the way one views evidence.

"Even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith the existence of a lawlike order in nature..."

Flew's arguments for theism hinge on three arguments for a designer: the existence of laws in nature, the emergence of life from non-life, and the emergence of something from nothing. This statement, of course, applies to the first argument. It is true that we are so accustomed to the laws of nature that it's easy to take them for granted. But even these laws had to be caused by something. Why is it, for instance, that nuclear and gravitational forces are exactly what they need to be in order for matter to exist? Something had to put these laws into place, and that something seems to have been really, really intelligent.

"The laws of nature seem to have been crafted so as to move the universe toward the emergence and sustenance of life."

This is agreed upon by virtually everyone, theist and atheist alike. The question then is why does everything look like it was designed? The answer of course, is either that it was in fact designed or else that there is some other complex cause for the appearance of a design that doesn't actually exist.

"The existence of a multiverse still does not eliminate the question of a divine Source."

Flew goes on to say that the multiverse theory actually makes the question even more imposing than it is to begin with because then you'd have to explain the spontaneous existence of all the other universes as well. This theory is used in an attempt to explain the spontaneous appearance of life from non-life, or of the spontaneous appearance of fine-tuned universal laws of physics, so no, it does nothing to eliminate the question of something appearing from nothing.

"If we are trying to understand why the universe is bio-friendly, we are not helped by being told that all possible universes exist...'It is crazy to postulate a trillion (causally unconnected) universes to explain the features of one universe, when postulating one entity (God) will do the job.'"

While it's entirely possible that there are in fact billions of universes outside our own, this theory is entirely laughable when used as an explanation for the emergence of life. The theory basically goes like this: the odds of life emerging from non-life are so small that it's completely unreasonable to be considered possible in our one universe, within the amount of time that it has existed. But if there are an infinite number of universes, then it's reasonable to think that life would appear in one of those universes, because in an infinite number of universes, anything that can happen will happen. One problem with this theory is we still have to explain where all these universes came from. The other problem is that if these are the lengths that we have to go to explain the origin of life, then we also have to concede the existence of every other ridiculous thing we could possibly imagine. In one of those infinite number of universes, a flying spaghetti monster that eats pink unicorns must exist. In one of those infinite number of universes, enormous polka-dotted helicopters that transform into tiny square-shaped rainbows must exist. It's obviously complete nonsense to invoke a multiverse theory to explain the impossible.

"Living matter possesses an inherent goal or end-centered organization that is nowhere present in the matter that preceded it."

This is a truth that should be recognized when trying to explain the origin of life. Since we're used to living things, it's easy for us to believe that living things should behave intentionally. But if nothing before in the history of the universe had behaved intentionally, it definitely seems odd that something should start behaving that way all of a sudden, and in extreme magnitude, with the spontaneous generation of life.

"The origin of self-reproduction is a second key problem."

It becomes harder to believe that life evolved from non-life without a designer when you consider that the first (incredibly complex) form of life would have to be able to self-reproduce (also incredibly complex). This is a huge problem that, in order to explain the simultaneous production of life and the ability to procreate from non-living matter, must suspend the second law of thermodynamics.

"It is very unlikely that a universe would exist uncaused, but rather more likely that God would exist uncaused."

This statement doesn't prove the existence of a God, but it does say something about the probability of his existence. Philosophically speaking, it is much easier to explain why God would exist without cause than it is to explain why the universe would exist without cause, unless of course, the universe itself is God. I'm not invoking a "God of the gaps" philosophy here by saying that I can't explain something, therefore God exists. Rather, I'm invoking the argument that it seems more probable for God to exist than for him to not, because the existence of God is, in fact, the most readily apparent explanation for the existence of the universe.

"Such a discovery of the Divine does not come through experiments and equations but through an understanding of the structures they unveil and map."

If an omnipotent and eternal God exists, I don't think we should expect to prove his existence with experiments and equations. Since God must be greater than the laws that govern the universe, since he himself would have created them, there is no reason to believe that God is bound by these same laws. What we might expect, instead, is to discover some glimmer of understanding of God - namely, his existence - through observation of that which has been made, and, conversely, if it is possible to understand any part of God, it stands to reason that that understanding will help us better understand the universe.

The Bad: Commentary

"What is complex about the idea of an omnipotent and omniscient Spirit, an idea so simple that it is understood by all the adherents of the three great monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam?"

Flew says this in response to Dawkins who argues that God cannot be simple because something simple cannot create something complex. This is Flew's way of rebutting Dawkins directly. To me though, this rebuttal isn't convincing. To say that something is understood by a lot of people doesn't prove that it is necessarily simple. At least in one sense, the idea of God must be infinitely complex, since God must at least have intellect superior to (or more complex than) his creation. Then again, you could say God must be simple because he must be purely eternal or purely omnipotent, or maybe even purely good. "Simple" and "complex" in this context don't strike me as very meaningful terms. "Greater than" or "Incomprehensible" might paint the picture better.

In Conclusion

There Is A God really isn't an exhaustive argument for the existence of God. Rather than taking Dawkins' approach of exploring every argument available to make a case, Flew instead chooses to focus on the one most convincing argument - what he calls "the argument to design from order". He doesn't divulge into all the specific scientific data available to support the existence of God, but rather draws upon the conclusions of those scientific studies to show their philosophical implications. The soundness and rationality of this succinct argument seems more than enough to topple Dawkins' own verbose argument, which begins more and more to take on the appearance of a beating-around-the-bush or a grasping-for-straws. One point of interest to me is that Flew, a philosopher, makes his conclusions about God based on well-known scientific evidence. Ironically, Dawkins, a biologist, leaves the arena of science to make his major argument against the existence of God on philosophical grounds. Unfortunately for Dawkins, this philosophical argument - the "central argument of [his] book" - is one of the most obviously fallacious arguments he makes. Of course, the merits of arguments for or against God don't rest solely on the convincing ability of these particular two people, but as they are two of the leading and most learned voices on the subject, they certainly offer some good food for thought.

Basically, this is how the debate boils down: Dawkins argues that there is no good reason for us to believe in God because there is no good evidence to support that claim. He tries to also conjure good evidence that supports the non-existence of God, but that particular evidence falls apart very quickly. Flew then shows that there is compelling evidence for belief in a God, based on 1) the very existence of the universe (and that the prevailing scientific belief is that it had a beginning), 2) an exceedingly overwhelming order in the laws of the universe, and 3) an exceedinly overwhelming order necessary for any form of life to come into existence. Dawkins cannot deny that these three points are true, but he attempts to discount them on the assumption that there is some mysterious cause for them that does not include God, even though this mysterious cause has all appearances of extremely high intelligence and must repeatedly have performed the naturally impossible. At certain points, Dawkins pretends that natural selection can explain the level of complexity in the universe, but as Dawkins himself well knows, natural selection is a theory that applies to living forms and cannot be applied to any of Flew's three tenets, since they all precede life itself. At other points, Dawkins presents hypothetical evidence which would show how the levels of order existent in the universe and in life might be possible (ie. his one in a billion billion argument), except that this hypothetical evidence is absolutely a creation of his own mind and provably absurd. It becomes quickly obvious that this mysterious cause that Dawkins seeks is exponentially less probable than God. Atheism continues to search for a necessary and unknown answer to these three of science's burning questions, when in reality, the most logical answer (and the only known possible answer) is all the while staring us in the face.

The Verdict: God Does Exist.

Given the existence of God, one quickly realizes that we'd better do what we can to be on his good side. But is there anything we can do? And how would we even know? We're inevitably led to ask another question: to what extent has he revealed himself to us? And can any of these so-called "holy texts" be relied on as a true revelation from God? More on that later.