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TechnoratiDo science and rationality support atheism?
No, says a nuclear physicist. To understand why, you must be prepared to face the Fundamental Question of Philosophy: Why is there anything rather than nothing?
The challenge of militant Islam is focusing new attention on religion. Many, especially in Europe, are turning from being indifferent to religion to being militantly anti-religious. Christian and Islamic fundamentalism are both being blamed for roles in the bloody war on terrorism. Thus secular Europeans have voiced dismay at American religiosity and worry that faith-based reasoning is spreading in Europe, too. Many Britons, for example, believe the Christian faith of Prime Minister Tony Blair helped lead him to entangle Britain in America's war in Iraq. Thus also, the Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins, who calls himself "the world's most prominent atheist", asserts the "irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11".
The resurgence of a militant atheism represented by these remarks has been the immediate impetus for writing this essay. My primary goal is to analyse the question of the rationality of belief in God with emphasis on the claim that such is irrational because it contradicts science.
For simplicity, belief in God will be identified with theism and with the assertion God exists. This ignores the distinction between theism, which usually considers God as an active agent in world history, and deism, which does not.
Science cannot answer why anything (including science itself), rather than nothing, exists. There is nothing in the universe that can explain the existence of the universe.
Theism generally comes packaged in a religion. The latter is a complex set of ideas that relate God to all aspects of nature including, especially, human nature. For example, religions explain thunder, stars, good/bad fortune, the existence of humankind, the meaning and proper conduct of life, and so on. Each religion relates these to God or gods.
A belief in some religion can and should be distinguished from a belief in God. Religion is a diffuse topic liable to unending disputation whereas theism is not. Unfortunately, most discussions fail to keep this distinction clear. Thus one often reads that religion has made a claim in contradiction to scientific truth, theism is irrational. This is simply a confusion of words and concepts: the rationality of theism does not stand on the scripture of any religion.
Relating God to science
Another important way in which theism is commonly said to contradict science is in respect to creation. Particular scenarios depend on particular scriptures but God is always the creator of the universe. On the other hand, one often hears that science can or will explain creation (eg, the Big Bang) and so the role -- indeed the primary role -- of God as creator is superfluous or just wrong.
Thinking just beyond this shallow point, one realises that science can only explain the creation of something in terms of something else ("something" here includes non-substantials such as laws of nature). After a bit more thought one arrives at the key creation question known as the Fundamental Question of Philosophy: why is there anything at all rather than nothing at all? Analysis of the FQP leads to a clear understanding of the relation between theism and science.
As a start, let us try to answer the FQP with science. To do this fairly we grant the stipulation that everything in the universe is explicable, or will ultimately be physically explicable. This means, in particular, that all fields of science are reducible to physics and that every area of knowledge is a proper subject for scientific inquiry. It does not mean that all explanations will be reduced to physics. It means just that they could be, at least in principle.
This assumption underlies virtually all of modern science. Biologists seek ultimate causes of biological phenomena in terms of chemistry; chemists, in terms of physics. Even mental phenomena are assumed to be ultimately explicable in terms of the physical brain. Not everyone believes this scheme to be true, but a real scientist would never attempt to base scientific explanations on some sort of non-physical, spiritual essence, force, soul, or will. Even a scientific study of artistic or religious inspiration would not use the classical interpretation of inspirations as the in-taking of a spirit.
Science and the fundamental question
Returning to the task of answering the FQP, pick anything -- say a drop of water -- and ask yourself: why is there this thing? Why does this drop exist? An attempt to answer this within the framework of science leads to a series of existing things, and a why-question for each of them.
The series starting with a drop of water might be sketched as follows. A drop's existence can be understood in terms of its individual water molecules, the particular forces between them, and the general physical laws governing motion: quantum mechanics (QM).
Why molecules and inter-molecular forces exist can be understood in terms of atoms, inter-atomic forces, and again, QM. Similarly, atoms and inter-atomic forces, in terms of electrons, nuclei, the electrodynamic forces between them and QM; and so on.
Eventually one reaches the most fundamental level of physics, its most basic concepts and equations. All paths of why-questions, starting from all things, all lead to the same end: the basis of physics. At this point, the FQP requires you to ask why this basis -- the set of concepts and equations underlying physics -- exists.
The known basis of physics changes in time, and deepens as our understanding of nature deepens. However, at any given time, physics cannot explain the existence of its basis. Its sole job is to explain what is not in its basis in terms of its basis--which is why a basis is called a basis. Thus the FQP creates a series of questions all leading to an unanswerable end -- unanswerable, that is, within the framework of science. Science cannot answer why anything (including science itself), rather than nothing, exists. There is nothing in the universe that can explain the existence of the universe.
That the answer to the FQP cannot be found within the bounds of science and rationality means only that. It does not mean its answer does not exist. If an answer is assumed to exist, in some sense of the word exist, there can be no error in naming it. The traditional name is God. Thus a very important conclusion: within the framework of science, God is unknowable -- and therefore, unknown. Furthermore, the unknowable God must be conceived to be an indivisible unity. For how can one know of parts of that of which nothing can be known?
Common mistakes concerning creation
It is worth mentioning two red herrings commonly dragged into this argument. People with a smattering of physics may bring up "quantum mechanical vacuum fluctuations". Could the universe have been created out of nothing via a vacuum fluctuation? Could it have been created all by itself out of nothing (and therefore, it is implied, without need of God)?
The scientific answer is No: a physical vacuum is a thing, something rather than nothing. Furthermore, there still remains the question of why quantum mechanics itself exists -- or any natural law for that matter?
Others feel that the FQP can have meaning only if one believes that the universe was created at some time, before which there was neither time nor universe. They feel that, therefore, if time extends to the infinite past, then no moment of creation ever existed and therefore it need not be explained.
Unfortunately, this still leaves open the question of why the universe exists at all? Furthermore, why, if it exists today, must it continue to do so tomorrow?
Alternative views of the FQP
Should the Fundamental Question of Philosophy be taken seriously? Many (if not most) people ignore the FQP simply because they are not intellectually serious themselves, but some serious thinkers also ignore it.
There seem to be three possible views of the FQP:
(1) It is irrational, and hence, uninteresting.
(2) It is rational, but scientifically unanswerable and hence uninteresting.
(3) It is rational and scientifically unanswerable, but still interesting.
In the first of these, the claim of irrationality may rest on the phrase "nothing at all" contained within the FQP. Try to visualise "nothing at all"! It is not empty space because space is something. It is not altogether clear that we can conceive of "nothing at all"; but we cannot coherently talk or ask about that of which we have no conception. In a similar vein, some people may feel that the claim that God created the world ex nihilo (from nothing) is irrational since we have no conception of nihilo.
Another possible irrationality in the FQP is contained in the word "why". Some thinkers read motivation into "why", not causality. Since there is no reason to assume that every cause has human-style motivation, and certainly no scientific cause includes motivation, the FQP seems to include an irrational assumption. Many serious people (such as the 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume) view scientifically unanswerable questions of this sort as uninteresting.
It is also possible to argue that a question which is unanswerable is therefore uninteresting. Why, for instance, hit your head against a stone wall? Or, similarly, one could argue because a question lacks a rational answer, the question is irrational. If this is the case, it is meaningless and therefore uninteresting.
As these examples illustrate, "rationality" is ambiguous and "being interesting" is subjective. Hence, the first two views listed above cannot be argued; and no one who maintains either of them can be argued into seriously considering the FQP -- that question which is central to a belief in the concept of God.
Tackling the existence of God
What if we take the third view, that the FQP is rational and scientifically unanswerable, but interesting nonetheless? The modern and highly influential German metaphysician Martin Heidegger maintained that the FQP is the only genuine philosophical question. Oddly enough, he called himself an atheist -- but also claimed that atheists do not deny the existence of God. Rather, they deny that "God has an existence". This obscure wording serves to emphasise the ambiguity in the concept of existence. Heidegger's basic point was that simply stating that God does or does not exist, without further clarifying the sense of the word "exist", is ambiguous.
To say that something "exists" normally means that it is within the universe (of every thing and every being). If we were to say that God "exists" in this sense, it would imply (since God is the reason for or explanation of why anything rather than nothing exists) that the universe explains its own existence. Or, if one prefers to think in terms of creation ex nihilo, that the universe created itself into something out of nothing: no-thing created some-thing out of no-thing! This incoherence amounts to merely a denial either of the meaning of the FQP, or an unwillingness to face its meaning.
We now approach the end of our chain of logic. To say that God exists is to understand existence in an enlarged sense. It means that we accept his complete transcendence, that: the reason for the existence of the universe lies completely beyond the universe. In fact, it lies beyond nature -- it is, strictly speaking, "super-natural".
Summary
The upshot of this is that it is simply foolish to assert that science and rationality support atheism.
Finally, it is possible to reach a rational belief in the existence of God. One must have first the mental (and perhaps, emotional) wherewithal to ask the fundamental question. Then one must understand and accept the fact that its answer is unknowable through science. God, the answer, transcends the universe of knowable things.
Edward A. Remler is a professor emeritus at the College of William and Mary, in Virginia. He has worked in nuclear and particle physics theory for the last 50 years.
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This a response to a comment made to the present article. If interest is shown in receiving such response to other questions, I shall try to comply. (This response appears to need to be broken into two parts)
Part 2
As the article pointed out, this position is unassailable. It can be said to lead to some form of agnosticism. However, it neither proves nor disproves the existence of God. Thus, my strong conclusion that an atheist who claims that science disproves the existence of God is confused, at best.
This a response to a comment made to the present article. If interest is shown in receiving such response to other questions, I shall try to comply. (This response appears to need to be broken into two parts)
ck :-) distinguishes between HOW and WHY questions. He is perfectly correct to point out that science is concerned with HOW. And this for at least two reasons.
First of all, all successful scientific proof leads from assumptions through logic (be it verbal or mathematical) to some experimentally verifiable conclusion. This logic shows HOW the assumptions connect to the conclusions and are therefore as true as the conclusions. (Change conclusions to predictions if the experiments have not yet been made).
Second of all, the question of intent (which I can conceive only in a human sense) is most often implied in a WHY question but is automatically excluded by science. That is why scientists can and often (perhaps sloppily) do use WHY when they actually mean HOW; there is no chance of confusion when talking amongst themselves.
The scientific question of HOW, like all questions of logic, always needs and assumes an existent starting point. That is why scientific questions always eventually lead, if pursued far enough, to the starting point that is the basis of physics as then known, and which therefore has no starting point leading to it.
It can now be argued that the FQP has no meaning if only because neither HOW nor WHY can be used to phrase it--no word can phrase it--it is incoherent. HOW cannot be used because it implies a condition (a starting point of logic) which forbids a conclusion (by asking, as everyone know, ‘Why does this starting point exist’). WHY cannot be used because, eliminating intent from its meaning, it reduces to WHY.
I do not need to prove Almighty God exists by my belief since His Is from eternity and you can know Him, love Him and serve Him from today if you are prepared to submit yourself to Him humbly. Therefore, give Him some of your time in silent meditation and ask Him to unfold the real meaning of your life, and His all important role in it, which He has graciously given you so that by being led by Him you may reach the fullness of life, not here in this temporary material place called Earth but with Him in Heaven. This means you will most probably have to ammend your life in accordance with His precepts which are essentially a non-violent resolution of our anthropocentic egocentrism and materiocentric avarice and gluttony. Your life hangs by a proverbial thread since He will soon call upon you to account for your span of life on this marvellous life-supporting planet Earth which He has accorded to you.
The problem for atheists is that they spend their time trying to prove that the invisible world of God does not exist rather than using the rational faculties accorded them by Almighty God to enter fully into His world both visible and invisible. St Thomas saw and believed but blessed are they that do not “see” yet believe.
Almighty God exists and can be known, as He is by many of us. We have no need to prove this. His actualness can be lived and experienced every day. It is up to you to enter into this necessary relationship for yourselves and understand. Submit your intellect to His precepts and you will see too.
redweenur: “...you prefer to say “believe” rather than “have faith”. Any particular reason?”
No particular reason. What is it that you believe this reveals about my comments? In hindsight, I would use the same terms, though. “Faith” seems to cause conversations to spiral down semantic trajectories that are not illuminating (to me).
In any event, I apologize if my words were overly acerbic. I get frustrated by what I believe is a very common misunderstanding that equates agnosticism with ambiguity.
me: “How, then, can the question reasonably be answered (or even explicated)?”
ck: “...through other means (i.e., daily good thoughts [such as, goodwill to all men], heart, words, work or deeds); or it may even be through other tools that are available (i.e., the Good Old Book) or even imaginable (such as, in the other branches of science that may help [i.e., philosophy])”
I’ve studied a great deal of philosophy, and I’ve read the bible many times. Additionally, I believe in treating people kindly and being a good steward of my community by helping others and contributing to the greater good. I’ve good, pragmatic reasons for all of these actions; from my experience, no belief in God is necessary or suggested in these behaviors.
More specifically, how is this any kind “system” for reasonable inferring the existence of God? If there is an alternative (reasonable) path to gaining confidence in God’s existence than science, please describe that “system” precisely.
Redweenur wrote:
“Atheist : I believe that God doesn’t exist”
False. This is a common misrepresentation of Atheism that enlightened ‘believers’ use to set up their straw-man. The author of this article obviously doesn’t get it either when he states:
“Oddly enough, he (Heidegger) called himself an atheist—but also claimed that atheists do not deny the existence of God. Rather, they deny that “God has an existence”. This obscure [sic] wording serves to emphasise the ambiguity {sic} in the concept of existence.”
---
There is an important difference between actively believing that something does not exist rather than not believing in a claim. The author obviously fails to see this distinction as do most enlightened ones, who attempt to comment on Atheism. If theists get a kick out of knocking down their own straw-men, then that’s their business, however it doesn’t make their claims any more valid.
The term “Militant Atheism” is therefore not only false, it’s an obvious cheap shot, designed to bias the article.
Quite an interesting conversation all the skeptics are having amongst themselves. Maybe one of them would like to address the conflation that they all make of science and rationality. If you reduce the rational to what can be explained by the scientific method, what becomes, say, of human rights? Are human rights rational? If not, why do we keep using the concept? Is the idea of the intrinsic equality of human beings rational? If not, why not get rid of the concept altogether and let the survival of the fittest play itself out in a war of everyone against everyone? Let’s have a return to when life was brutish, nasty and short. The ultimate skeptic would adhere unequivocally to Hume’s adage that there is nothing irrational in preferring the destruction of the human race than the scratching of his (Hume’s) little finger.
Some have asked whether the universe had a beginning in time, and that is a scientifically meaningful question.
The prevailing view among cosmologists is that the universe came into being about 13.7 billion years ago. Nobody knows what happened, if anythng, in the first Planck unit of time (a tiny fraction of a second), but a common opinion is that there was a “singularity” in which the universe was infinitely dense and infinitely curved, the latter being a consequence of general relativity. In such a singularity the laws of nature would break down because the number infinity makes the problem mathematically indeterminate.
The beginnings and ends of time and space are among the frontiers of science, and the answers currently proposed by cosmology are quite speculative. In “A short history of time”, Hawking considers a number of possibilities, at least one of which would eliminate the beginnings and ends of space and time by assuming the topology of space-time to form a continuum with no beginning or end.
R. Paul Wiegand: It’s one thing to refuse to address a hard question, it’s quite another to demand answers from questions that do not make sense.
ck: Agree :-)
R. Paul Wiegand: How, then, can the question reasonably be answered (or even explicated)?
ck: ...through other means (i.e., daily good thoughts [such as, goodwill to all men], heart, words, work or deeds); or it may even be through other tools that are available (i.e., the Good Old Book) or even imaginable (such as, in the other branches of science that may help [i.e., philosophy])
R. Paul Wiegand: In any event, accepting the “mysterious/divine” as “transcending” human reason is no different than rejecting a “mystery” altogether.
ck: Yes, very possiible, if you are not guided, systematically.
R. Paul Wiegand: Curiosity involves search, not acceptance. Saying that God exists doesn’t provide any kind of answer, rather it is precisely the reverse. It says, “I have this strange question that I can’t answer, so I will choose to believe that the answer is five.” For you to then say that doubt in your answer (and question) somehow undermines curiosity is very strange indeed. I have the opposite impression.
ck: Agree. Believing in God cannot be done through words, but through actions as in our discussion in item no. 2.
Thank you, R. Paul Wiegand
ck :-)
redweenur: I suggest Thomas Huxley’s 1889 essay on Agnosticism (where the term was coined). Agnosticism is not the belief that the answer is not yet known, it is that the answer unknowable.
HMacK: Given my own non-theistic views, I am puzzled by your comments.
Regardless of who you believe is correct, it is clearly your responsibility to prove (to me) God exists and not the other way round—for (at least) two reasons.
First, I personally make no claim that God does not exist, merely that there is no rational basis for me to believe since it cannot be answered. I can, and have, defended the claim that the question is not answerable (and Remler’s essay reveals part of this argument). Your claim is that God exists. In the realm of ideas, one must defend one’s own claim or withdraw any expectation of its acceptance.
Second, I’m not interested in your beliefs, so I owe you no kind of proof. Believe in God if you like. But if you want me to believe, you must justify the belief. Or are you reciprocally disinterested in my (non)beliefs? So, perhaps, we each owe each other nothing; however, it is never the case that I owe you proof that God doesn’t exist.
More frustrating: I do not understand how non-theism is inherently closed-minded. I am perfectly open to accepting the existence of God, as long as that existence is demonstrated. Am I closed-minded merely by virtue of the fact that I am not open to taking your assertion as fact? Does the open-minded person uncritically accept everything he or she is told?
You believe God exists, and you’ve not shown any more readiness to accept the possibility that God doesn’t exist than atheists have that he does. How are you any more open-minded?
Rather than answer that, why don’t we skip the ad hominem altogether. It suggests a weakness of position.
This article is really nothing more than the old argument, if god didn’t make the universe, how did it get here? Well, if god made the universe, who made god? He’s just always been there is the usual answer. Its much simpler to say the universe has always just been here, and cut out the middle man. Science and rationality do support atheism in the sense that no evidence of gods or deities has appeared. If such evidence did appear, then science and rationality would support the idea that there is a god. At this point, the existence of electrons, dinosaurs, and distant galaxies is supported by science and rationality because of all the evidence. For god, on the other hand, there is no such evidence. To take this a step further, if you believed without evidence there were green elves living under toadstools in your back yard, that could be called irrational. And it’s the same thing for god. Its a perfectly defensible position to say that belief in god is irrational.
I find it hard to believe that this article came from a scientist. However, I will do my best to tackle some of the professor’s points on this complex subject as simply as I can.
1. The Universe Is. Its existence is a fact. To assert that our universe came from ‘nothing’ is scientifically false. It is entirely based on the assumption that there was ‘nothing’ in the first place. How do we know this? Why should this be scientifically accepted as a fact?
So, what can we use to support the theory that the universe has always existed in some form or another? How about the scientific precept, that states matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed?
For example - if we were to disassemble Disneyland, brick by brick - we would still have the same amount of matter we had in the first place - it would simply be organized differently. The universe evolving from a highly dense sub-atomic particle to what we see today, through a celestial event does not mean it necessarily came from nothing.
2. The “FPQ” is therefore scientifically invalid. Good science (as opposed to the farce known as Creationism), at least has the wisdom to concede that it does not have all the answers. That doesn’t mean we should all rush out and make up gods, ghosts and goblins to fill in these gaps.
3. If God exists, then who created God? Also, if God exists - then how could God have come from nothing? If God is conveniently exempt from these questions, then why can’t the universe be also?
I choose not to go with the blind faith proposition of “God Did It”, at least until more compelling evidence comes to light.
R. Paul Wiegand said…
___________
redewenur wrote ”Agnostic: I’m waiting for proof, but I know that’s irrational.”
This is not correct. Empirical agnosticism (which is what Huxley was) claims that there is no basis on which to judge things outside of what is naturally observable. If there is no such basis, then it is unknowable, and thus it is not a useful question.
If I were to make a silly overgeneralized and unfair summary of views, it would be:
Atheist: I believe there is no God.
Theist: I believe there is a God.
Agnostic: Well, that’s a pointless question.
____________
Yes, fair (if somewhat agitated) comment. But a point of interest in your version of silly and unfair overgeneralisations and is that you prefer to say “believe” rather than “have faith”. Any particular reason?
Remler: “My primary goal is to analyse the question of the rationality of belief in God with emphasis on the claim that such is irrational because it contradicts science.”
Restating this without the vague word “rational”, he wants to prove that belief in God does not contradict science.
That can be proved more simply as follows.
(1) Science is the study of the natural universe, with a view to discovering laws of nature.
(2) God is commonly said to be super-natural, meaning not a part of nature and therefore not subject to the laws of nature.
(3) Therefore God is not amenable to scientific study.
Remler: “We have concluded that the existence of God itself, as distinguished from particular religious teachings, certainly does not contradict science.”
Indeed, but the nonexistence of God does not contradict science either.
Remler: “Finally, it is possible to reach a rational belief in the existence of God. One must have first the mental (and perhaps, emotional) wherewithal to ask the fundamental question. Then one must understand and accept the fact that its answer is unknowable through science. God, the answer, transcends the universe of knowable things.”
If God transcends the universe of knowable things, one might hold a belief in the existence of God, but one could never know whether that belief was true.
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