Proof of God: Introduction (2)

Definitions

My first task is the hardest: what is a god, anyway? A definition of something acts like the foundation of a building. Everything is built upon it, so if the definition is even slightly loose the entire thing could topple over at the slightest touch. The sheer variety of religions suggests a single definition of god is impossible.

Which is why I’m using two:

God: Something which can or could perform an action which is, or was once considered, impossible to duplicate by any entity that is not a god under any circumstance.

God: Something which can or could perform an action which is, or was once considered, contrary to the physical laws of the universe.

To save my poor typing fingers, I’ll nickname them “practical” and “theoretical,” in order of appearance.

Obviously, I must spend some time challenging and probing my definitions for weakness, otherwise you’d have little reason to take them seriously. I’ll have to get a little philosophical at times, but I’ll try to keep it to the bare minimum needed for this roast. The end goal is to ensure these definitions meet three criteria: they will not call a non-god a god, they will not call a god a non-god, and if there’s uncertainty in the definitions we’ll find disagreement in real life as well.

I’ll begin with a triviality: is an orange a god? Both definitions talk about actions, not objects, so they might seem ill-suited to the question. Oranges occupy a space and time, however, reflect a certain spectrum of light, and have an outer skin that protects soft, juicy innards. All of these are actions, even though an orange performs them passively. So we can apply both definitions by cataloguing all the attributes of an orange, transforming them into actions, and adding these new passive actions to the list of active things an orange can do.

“Theoretical” says oranges are not gods. For each that has been studied, all have followed the laws of the universe. You might get smug and point out this isn’t proof that every orange is so obedient, and you’d be right. Why, then, aren’t we hurriedly searching every orange for this potential violator?

The answer comes from, of all places. a monk. William of Ockham’s[4] original phrasing of this principle doesn’t quite roll off the tongue:

Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate

[Plurality must never be posited without necessity]

Fortunately, in the intervening centuries other authors have developed variations that are much easier to understand:

If two or more theories explain something equally well, the theory that makes the least assumptions is the most likely to be correct.

The “simplest” or least assuming answer is usually the correct answer.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.[5]

I lean on Ockham’s Razor pretty heavily, so I’ll spend some time defending it. Let’s consider two theories:

  1. In the next hour, a meteor will crash down from above and smack your foot.
  2. In the next hour, nothing special will happen.

As of now, you’ve got no way to tell between the two theories and no way to tell what will happen. Should you start piling pillows on your foot?

Let’s break both theories down. In order for the first one to be true, we need:

  • A meteor to be on a collision course with Earth.
  • Said meteor to be coming in on a trajectory aimed at where you’ll be in an hour.
  • Said meteor to be large enough for at least one part to survive re-entry.
  • Said meteor piece to have enough energy to break through whatever structure is currently above your head.
  • Said meteor piece to travel through the atmosphere and architecture in a path guaranteed to hit your foot.

For the second one to be true, we depend on:

So while both theories may look identical right now, one requires far more extraordinary events to fall into place. It makes sense say that the first theory is unlikely to happen, even though we can’t put a number on how unlikely it is to happen, and even though we have no proof that it won’t happen. This is Ockham’s Razor in a nut-shell; it’s a heuristic or guide to what’s worthy of consideration, which deals with theories that have equal amounts of evidence going for them, based on the assumption that the most likely thing to happen will most likely happen.

This is not Ockham’s Razor:

According to Occam’s Razor, the simplest explanation or the one with the fewest assumptions that explains the facts is to be preferred. Creation makes one assumption—that God is who He says He is in the Bible—because if this is so, then He must have done all that He said He did. This adequately answers all the problems of origins posed above.

Evolution has many assumptions and none of them provides an answer to anything.

According to Occam’s Razor creation wins!
( “Occam’s Razor and creation/evolution,” by Russell Grigg. http://creation.com/occams-razor-and-creation-evolution, retrieved July 31, 2012)

What’s wrong? While it’s true that biological evolution relies on several assumptions, all of those are fairly simple and easy to show in real life. Evolution does not require the existence of a god, at all. In contrast creationism, or the theory that a god created the universe, depends on the existence of a god merely to make sense. That would have far-reaching, profound effects on the entire universe, and thus counts as an extraordinary assumption.[6]

To properly use Ockham’s Razor you need to do more than just count assumptions, you also need to consider their relative likelihood and their net effect on the world too. A long string of probable events beats out a single improbable one. A vast number of small changes to the world are more likely to happen than one big change.

Back to the orange problem. We have two theories: an orange that violates the laws of the universe is lurking out there somewhere, or all oranges obey the law. If the first one is true, then we have to assume that at least one orange is special, in that it can bend laws that appear rigid according to every test we’ve thrown at its boring peers, while those peers, and indeed everything else we know of, is not special. If the second is true, we’ve made no further assumptions; the very term “law of nature” implies that there are no exceptions, so we’re already covered. Ockham’s razor tells us a frantic orange search is unnecessary, for now at least.

“Practical” is less clear. My interior is soft, but not juicy, and I don’t reflect the same kinds of light, so an orange can already do two things that I can’t. Note that “practical” uses the word “any,” however. An orange tree can bud out a fruit that will eventually become an orange, and so can duplicate one. You might retort that you consider orange trees to be gods, thus saving the orange from being robbed of god-status, but I can counter by replacing the genome of some other seed with an orange’s and letting it grow. We wind up in an arms race, declaring more and more things to be gods until we run out of things, and at this point I’m all too happy to give in. After all, everything is a god when compared to nothing.

Ah, but perhaps I misinterpreted the question. Instead of asking if “any” orange is a god, we should consider if “that” orange is a god. Now you’ve pinned me; quantum mechanics puts a hard limit on what we can measure, so even if I tried to recreate a specific orange atom-by-atom, I could never perfectly duplicate it.

Fortunately, I don’t have to. “That” orange is an abstraction. Bits of the orange are constantly flying off into the environment and vice-versa, so the atom-by-atom definition of “that” orange is different from moment to moment. You can only come up with a useful definition by ignoring those changes, so my reconstruction doesn’t need to include them either. The same logic applies to the quantum fluctuations I was worried about last paragraph.  You might argue that I don’t have the technology to build an orange to the detail required to suit your definition, but “practical” placed no time limits or restrictions on what I could use. I’m permitted to take the age of the universe and use every atom within it in my efforts.

Both definitions have survived oranges, but what about the colour orange? “Theoretical” easily pins this as a non-god, since no definition of orange can be made without reference to light, which itself obeys the laws of the universe.

“Practical” is not far behind. I simply ask you what objects you consider orange, analyse the light coming off them, and duplicate it via some other object. If you instead want orange as defined by everyone, I simply repeat this procedure for everything that can detect a colour called orange and rig up something that matches every definition, on a thing-by-thing basis if need be.

Time for something trickier. In 1983, in front of a large crowd and a huge TV audience, the magician David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear. Removing a 225 tonne, 47 metre high sculpture is an impressive feat that puts many religious miracles to shame. Does this act make Copperfield a god?

Both definitions say no. Magicians do not honestly claim to bend space and time to their whims, or that they alone are capable of their feats. It’s all just a trick, even if that trick took years of training and no other magician alive now or ever could duplicate it. So long as it could be matched by another magician with sufficient time and space on their hands, “practical” argues that this conjurer should not be a god, and “theoretical” reached the same conclusion long ago.

Consider Thor next. He’s a Norse god that can control the weather. Tens of thousands of people believed in him a millennium ago; now, even those who’d like to revive the old Norse mythology don’t take that ability seriously. He’s still considered a god, despite this. Both definitions are careful to include forgotten gods, and controlling the weather seemed both unachievable and impossible to historic Vikings. Again, we reach the expected conclusion.

In Tripoli, Lybia on May 2010, a plane crash killed 103 people but spared one 10 year old boy. The Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, thanked God for saving this child. Surprisingly, he gave no reason why God did nothing for the other 103 people on the plane. Other theologians have thought more heavily and tried to explain why the Christian god can appear so lazy or fickle. Even if they are correct, it’s clear the Christian God can refuse to act. Both definitions permit this and pass the latest challenge.

Deism is a tricky case. There are only three central tenets to this religion:[7]

  1. God exists.
  2. God’s only action was to create the universe.
  3. Only god can create a universe.

This god is a bit cold and sparse compared to the compassionate, active gods of other religions, but there’s still clearly a god there. It’s not clear whether this god is or was, though, since it must have existed before the universe, and may only exist before time began.[8] Both definitions are fuzzy about when and where actions happen, so they still work on this odd god. “Practical” is nearly the twin of the deist god; both divide everything in two, and claim one group can do something the other can’t.

Surprisingly, “theoretical” is less clear-cut. Deism says nothing about the conditions before the universe, so its god could have acted entirely by the book. The third clause provides an escape; since nothing within this universe can duplicate the deist god’s feat, “theoretical” can declare it to be a god relative to the universe you’re reading this in.

It does make you wonder what the simplest possible god could be, however. Deism whittles it down to a only three beliefs; could we cut one out?

Statements two and three are compliments of each other, placing a wall between god and everything else, so for now I’ll treat them as one. The first statement must stay, because if we don’t know whether god exists the second and third statements make no sense. If the second and third statements go, we lose the grounds for claiming the first. The property of existence is unique, since it is only assigned to something that already has other properties. We can say a kitten exists because it has soft fur, or it is an infant cat, but if all you knew about kittens was that they exist, you couldn’t use that information in any meaningful way. You’d never be able to verify I was telling the truth. You couldn’t find a kitten, even if you were feeling the soft fur of an infant cat while thinking over places to look.

Worshipping a thing that you could never interact with, or know if it had interacted with you, is nonsensical. Gods must do more than merely exist.

Dropping the second statement but keeping the third is also senseless. If only a god can create universes, and we live in a universe, then something like statement two must be assumed anyway.

Things get interesting if you drop claim three. A thought experiment will help show why.

Suppose you look up from this book to find a space alien sitting in front of you. It politely raises a tentacle and says “hi;” you politely faint and scream, though not necessarily in that order. With those pleasantries out of the way, Alien A explains how it got there. A million years ago, it was carefully frozen and placed on a giant ship hovering above its home planet, tens of light-years from Earth. That ship slowly plodded across the vast distance, gathering energy from the random junk in between stars, and once in a few aeons raising Alien A from stupor to let it repair the damage caused by a few cosmic rays that wiggled through the ship’s shields.

Just as Alien A finishes its tale, Alien B appears next to it, seemingly out of nowhere. After more pleasantries, B explains how it got here: in the far future, it learned how to manipulate space and time. Due to the laws of the universe, it guiltily adds, nothing else can or will do the same.

Is either alien a god?

A few would claim the first one is. If you were to explain the physical and engineering challenges faced by their race, however, most will change their minds. Why? On the face of it, Alien A is far more advanced than we are, and thus able to do things we can’t. However, the Voyager space probe is travelling faster than that alien’s ship. We know of animals that can suspend all activity for years, survive freezing temperatures, and repair their genome after having it blasted to bits by radiation. We have power sources that can last that long, and can build things in space to save us from lifting everything against Earth’s gravity. In short, while we can’t arrive on Alien A’s doorstep at the moment, it’s plausible that we could drop by later. Once they realize that we could duplicate the alien’s feat, most of those who called it a god would change their mind.

Here we find matching ambiguity in “practical” and “theoretical” as well. Alien A seems to be capable of something that nothing else can do, at first. As we examine the facts more closely, however, we realize that Alien A’s trick could be done by us “in practice,” and so change our minds.

On the other hand, we find that while Alien B’s skill is forever beyond our practical abilities, it could be done by anyone else “in theory.” The two definitions of god conflict, creating ambiguity.

This tale of two aliens has a real-life counterpart: pantheism. In that tradition, “god” is taken to mean the entire universe.  “Practical” agrees with this declaration; the “non-god” portion of the universe is empty, and thus incapable of doing any action the “god” portion can get away with. “Theoretical” disagrees, since by definition this god obeys the laws of the universe. The ambiguity is mirrored in real life. Some atheists, most notably Richard Dawkins, regard pantheists as poetic atheists who can’t give up the word “god.” At the same time, both Taoism and Christianity were initially very pantheistic, while Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam all have sects that take pantheism to heart.

I can’t conclude without sharing the most troublesome case for my definitions: kings and queens. The first ruler to claim a “divine mandate” might have been an Egyptian some five millennia ago, but the documentation is too sparse to call it.[9]

Most of us are more familiar with the European rulers and Asian emperors of midæval times. The majority never claimed to be gods, content to “merely” act out the divine plan.

Even the Egyptian Pharaohs fall into this category: they claimed to be descended from the gods, and would become gods upon death, yet were only messengers while alive. Gilgamesh, one of the first and beet known god-kings, was only declared divine after his death.

True human gods are rarer. Naram-Suen of Akkad is the first we know of, but it’s not clear on what grounds he claimed divinity. Neither definition is much help, since the feat of being king or queen is easily duplicated by their successor. These human gods might solve this by claiming to be reincarnations of some deity, but this doesn’t explain how their successor can be alive at the same time without ruling as well. I’m content to dismiss this corner case by claiming these rulers are “gods” for purely political reasons, and don’t see them as much challenge to my definitions.

I hope I’ve convinced you those two definitions are reasonably robust and future-proof. Which one you choose as the ultimate definition is a matter of opinion, but at least all opinions fall somewhere between the two of them. In the process, I’ll have removed the objection that a god cannot be defined, and at least weakened the argument that I haven’t considered every possible god. Time for the next objection:

[4]  His last name has a number of spellings. “Occam” seems to be the preferred choice of Merriam-Webster, but even “Hockham” is considered kosher. There’s also evidence that Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas

[5]  This invokes the Razor from the opposite side, when too many assumptions have been thrown into the pile.

[6] Not buying it? I go into far greater detail in my chapter on the Teleological/Design proof, which hopefully will be enough to convince you.

[7] I’ll admit I’m abusing the term “deist” here. Most deists add additional claims, for instance that reason is a divine gift, and that a god does intervene in an entirely mechanistic way, with no personal element. Since those claims are quite similar to what most religions already propose, I’ve stripped my definition of deism down to a minimum to make it a greater threat to my arguments.

[8] I’m using “begin” in a very loose sense here. I have no idea if time exists “outside” the universe or space existed “before,” and my brain is unable to cope with a timeless space-less expanse (see?), so I need to abuse a word just to attempt to explain a concept. The worst part? I know it’s doomed to fail.

[9]  For good reason: writing had just been invented, by the Egyptians!

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Proof of God: Introduction (1)

Introduction

Here’s a homework assignment for you: Corner any adherent of any religion, and ask for proof that their God or gods exist.

They’ll refuse, with odds better than chance.

They don’t need proof, they say, because they feel his presence within them, or because nothing else can explain how well this world fits together.

I have moments when I realize things like this [Comfort’s argument, reproduced below] myself. Personal moments, when something very physical and small reminds me that the world can’t be an accident. Reminds me that the world fits together too nicely.

Good sex. Hard boiled eggs when you’re in a hurry. What salt water does to my hair. Peanut butter and milk. Giving birth. Aloe. Fingernails.

Now, I don’t get into debates with atheists, and I don’t think one can prove God to anyone else, but I feel it’s worth taking a second to admit to this… since I post a lot of sarcastic bits on this site, and this is a chance to cheese out.

The way a banana fits the hand is exactly the kind of thing that makes me believe… in something. As good an argument as anything, when one isn’t making an argument out of it.

Call it God, or call it lucky agriculture… either way it makes me think the universe has an order I can believe in.

(Laurel Snyder, May 14, 2007, http://www.jewcy.com/religion-and-beliefs/proof_of_god)

I understand that a lot of people do not believe in God because of the simple fact that there seems to be no evidence of Him. I believe the majority of atheists would believe if God showed Himself. So I’m just curious if you have ever asked the Lord into your heart? Because you can’t find God, if you are simply looking for proof. You can only find God when you truly seek after Him. Even just a small amount of faith will due.Even [sic] if you don’t sense His presence immediately. Simply by asking, “God I want to believe in you, so could you show up in my life?” Some people who don’t believe say, “Alright God, if you exist, then show yourself.” As in if they don’t see God show up, then they automatically rationalize that God isn’t real. But the truth is, you have to invite Christ into your life and then He will show up. You WILL feel His presence only when you invite Him into your life. God says draw nearer to me and I’ll draw nearer to you. You can’t see God face to face on earth, but you can feel Him.

(“Violet”, http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110209212839AA9uEI7 )

Only a select few will go farther, but those proofs are somewhat lacking. Ray Comfort, for instance, invokes what he calls the “Atheist’s Worst Nightmare”: the banana.

This fruit fits perfectly in your hand, and has a non-slip texture to help keep it there. You can judge when it’s ripe to eat by the colour of the outer skin. It’s easy to peel open, with the help of a well-placed fingernail. There’s a gentle curve for easy insertion into the mouth. The taste is pleasantly sweet, with no seeds to interrupt your enjoyment. Once finished, the skin is easily discarded and bio-degrades.

A pop can has many of the same attributes, and we know it was designed by humans for humans. Bananas are plants, though, so who could be the designer?

Humans, as it turns out.

Originally, the wild banana had large seeds, and was almost inedible to us. Over 7000 years ago, the residents of what is now Papua New Guinea began cultivating them for food anyway. By keeping only those plants that grew the best-tasting bananas, they gradually improved the taste and reduced the size of the seeds. The new-improved banana picked up fans throughout South-East Asia. Islam then spread the fruit across the Middle East, and may have introduced it to Africa[2] . Portuguese sailors discovered the banana in West Africa around 1500 AD, and began importing it to Europe. It slowly grew in popularity there, eventually requiring large tropical plantations to satisfy demand.

Bananas come in a wide variety of colours, from red to purple, and the majority of them have to be cooked before eating. The yellow “dessert” banana was discovered on a Jamaican plantation in 1836, and its unusually sweet taste and softness made it a hit in the United States of America. Modern agricultural techniques and refrigeration have turned this rare treat into a staple.

The banana is dependent on us for reproduction and protection. The lack of seeds means it can only spread by having a certain portion of the root deliberately cut off and replanted elsewhere. Selective breeding and our desire for a consistent product have robbed the banana plant of genetic diversity, making it easy prey for disease and parasites. In fact, the tastiest variant of dessert banana was killed off by a fungus in the 1960’s. Our current sub-standard replacement is being ravaged by the same disease.

This has been known for some time. If Comfort had only done a little research, he would have been spared the nickname “Banana-man.”

Or take Michael Behe’s argument about the bacterial flagellum. These look like little hairs but act like little propellers, whipping around in circles to drive the bacteria forward. The design of these flagellum is fragile, however; remove any one component, and it’s useless as a propeller. However, evolution works via small, incremental changes, not large leaps; having every piece simultaneously click into place by chance is so unlikely, it would be like tossing some metal into the air and having it land as a bicycle.  If the flagellum was designed, not evolved, Behe proposes that the culprit was an “intelligent designer.” While he’s careful not to use the “g” word, the only potential being that could pull off such a design coup would have to be a god.

One problem: evolution doesn’t force a component to have only one use. Wings began as limbs with a flap of skin, which were useful for gliding, and slowly got better at flying and worse at supporting weight. Limbs are fins that stretched out via 500 million years of evolution, and so on. The flagellum bears a strong resemblance to a “secretion system,” generally a long needle-like structure used to stab other cells and inject them with poison, that has had one or two extra bits added on that allow rotation. Those extras are easy to mutate into place, so the flagellum could evolve after all.

Not only did Behe misunderstand evolution, an embarrassing gaff for a biologist, but he did it in a courtroom, so his mistake has been permanently etched into the public record.

Three Objections

This puts me in a bit of a bind. I could spend an entire book jumping from specific proof to specific proof, only to have my work dismissed as merely “cherry-picking” the worst of the bunch. Even worse, new proofs are easy to manufacture. Behe has move on to more subtle arguments surrounding the rate of evolutionary change, while Comfort can rapidly shift between dozens of well-practiced alternate proofs, deflating any rebuttal longer and deeper than a sound-bite.

And so far I’ve just considered Christian arguments. There are thousands or hundreds of thousands of other religions that have existed on this planet. Even within a single religion, there’s an incredible variety of beliefs. Returning to Christianity, depending on your sect God comes in a trinity or in singular form, God is Jesus, Jesus is the Son of God (and thus only partially god-like), or you yourself could become a God. He may actively alter the universe, passively sit by and provides comfort, or any mix in between. In the Old Testament, God is portrayed as a physical being:

And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
(Genesis 3:8, King James translation)

And he said, Hear thou therefore the word of the LORD: I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left.
(1 Kings 22:19, King James translation)

Modern Christians reject this, and agree more with the New Testament’s view of God as a purely spiritual being, outside the physical world. That fits well with Daoists, who put it more poetically:

The revealing of great virtue all comes from the guidance of the Dao.
The Dao is so fleeting, so alternating.
Alternating and fleeting, there are signs in between; fleeting and alternating, there are forms in between.
It is so deep and so very dark. In between, there lie feelings of life. And feelings of life are real, latent with trust.
From ancient times until today, the name of the Dao stays; it has been guiding us to the origin of the manifestations of all things.
How do I know the very origin of the manifestation of all things? It’s through the Dao.

Things rapidly get worse for me, though. The conflicting views on god imply that some of them must be incorrect. This in turn opens up the possibility that none of them are correct, and the true description of the divine order has yet to be discovered or was contained in an extinct religion.

So not only am I facing a Hydra[3] of proofs, I must also factor in multiple definitions of gods that don’t mesh well or have yet to be thought up! Looming over it all is the biggest problem of them all, the one I began with. Why is any sort of proof necessary in the first place?

This is a slightly daunting task. Obviously I can’t claim to be definitive, but as impossible as this sounds, I think I can make a reasonable go of it.

[2]  There is some recent evidence that Africans may have domesticated the banana themselves, on or around 1000 BCE.

[3]  An old Greek monster that grew two heads for every one you chopped off. It likely went extinct because of ever-increasing brainpower, which in turn led to ever-increasing boredom.

Proof of God: Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

In absolutely no order, I must give thanks to:

  • [names]
  • Brandie and Zane, for helping debug some of my thoughts.
  • Daniel Dennett, who’s book “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” tipped me off to Hume’s near-discovery of evolution.
  • Paul Buller, who accidentally helped me improve my section on the Cosmological proof.

How To Read This Book

Experienced readers may find themselves somewhat bored with this book. I’ve done my best to come up with novel arguments, but this territory is very well trafficked. If you find yourself nodding off or intimidated by the scope of this book, there’s no harm in skipping ahead. You can always come back later if need be.

If instead you find yourself short on time, or with no desire to wade through proofs you’ve heard multiple times before, here’s what I recommend:

  • Read at least the last chapter. It makes more sense if you read the Introduction first, but experienced readers should be able to puzzle out what they missed.
  • Hop around through the rest of the chapters as you fancy. Beyond the beginning and end, this book has a very non-linear structure and sometimes refers to previous or future chapters to support a point. Take advantage of that to graze along as you find the time and desire. I recommend skimming the chapters on Fine Tuning, Design, and Popularity, in particular.

Notes

Any writer that discusses science faces this dilemma: should I use scientific notation, or not?

As an example, I can write the speed of light as 299,792,458 metres per second, or as 3.00 • 108 metres per second. The little exponent piggybacking the 10 tells you how zeros to tack on to the right of the decimal place to get to the true value. If that exponent is negative you head left, unsurprisingly; our eyes are most sensitive to light that has a wave length of 0.000000555, or 555 • 10-9, metres.

Scientific notation is much shorter than the conventional way, which seems like a clear advantage, but it also tends to obscure the true scale of large numbers. The difference between 2.0 • 1010 and 6.0 • 1014  seems bigger than the difference between 7.0 • 1018 and 9.0 • 1018, until you do the maths: the first is a difference of 599,980,000,000,000, while the second is 2,000,000,000,000,000,000. Human beings are lousy with large numbers, and the exponent in scientific notation makes that an order of magnitude worse.

The sheer bulk of conventional numbers creates its own problem, however: all those extra digits make them look more accurate than they really are. For instance, the size of the visible universe is 880,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 metres across. That looks extremely precise, but in reality we’re only confident of the first three digits. All but the first zero is mere padding to get those digits into the right place, and yet there’s no good way to remove the excess fluff.

The same number in scientific notation is 8.80 • 1026. The precision is so easy to convey that it’s intuitive!

On the balance, I prefer to waste a little space to give you a better feel for how large some numbers are, so long as the zeros don’t get too crazy. Just be aware that the first two or three digits are usually the only accurate ones. [1]

My next problem is one of capitalization.

Christianity has decided that their god shall be called God, and can get rather snippy if you don’t fall into line. Yet God is but one of many gods that have existed through the ages, and in this book I’m aiming at a definition of god that encompasses them all. Given the choice of offending Christians by not capitalizing the word god, or offending other religions by implying their Gods are really just the Christian one, I’ve decided to go with the majority. Sorry, Christians, but I don’t mean offence by it, and if I do talk about your god in particular I’ll be sure to make liberal use of the Shift key.

There’s also the problem of pronouns. The Christian God is a “He,” which is both a generic pronoun and a male-specific one. Hindu gods have a definite gender, and some can also be considered a “she.” Deists roll their eyes at the suggestion of a physical shape to their god, let alone a gendered human-like one, so “it” is most appropriate. Satisfying everyone is impossible, so I’ve decided to satisfy no-one and freely interchange all of them.

While apologizing for my apologetics, I should also ask for forgiveness from polytheistic religions. To save my poor typing fingers, I’ll frequently refer to god in the singular. I’m fully aware of the possibility of multiple gods, and all my arguments should succeed or fail equally well in that framework, but it gets annoying to continually write “god or gods.” Again, no slight is intended.

Speaking of other religions, atheists are commonly criticized for focusing on one religion and ignoring all others. I’ve tried hard to avoid that.

[1] But not always. In 1983, the Comité International des Poids et Mesures decided to define the metre as exactly 1 / 299,792,458th of how far light travels through a vacuum in one second.

Proof of God: Table of Contents

 

Proof of God

Context

 (1)

Acknowledgements

How To Read This Book

Notes

  (2)

Introduction

Three Objections

 (3)

Definitions

 (4)

Whither Proofs?

Gotta Catch Them All

 (5)

Proof from First Cause, or the Cosmological Proof

Golden Oldies

Because I Said So

 (6)

Hume’s Trip to the Pole

 (7)

There Are No Stupid Questions

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

 (8)

Absolutely Nothing

So Bad It’s Not Even Wrong

 (9)

Proof from Logical Necessity, or the Ontological Proof

No Really, It’s Quite Popular With Some People

 (10)

Existence is not Great

The Triumph of Irrationality

 (11)

Kant-er Arguments

Gödel’s Proof, and the Problem of Infinity

The Proof that God Does Not Exist

 (12)

Proof from Intelligence

Definitions

 (13)

Divine Gift or Solvable Mystery?

Cogs in the Machine

Language

 (14)

Problem Solving

Mathematics and Logical Thinking

 (15)

Visual Processing

Music

Intrapersonal and Self-Awareness

 (16)

Spatial Reasoning

Tool Use

Play

Culture

 (17)

Creativity

Long-Range Planning

Interpersonal

Altruism

Cross-species Altruism

 (18)

Farming

Lying

So What’s Left?

 (19)

Proof from Logic and Dualism

The Connection to Reality

Confirming The Obvious

 (20)

Elegant, According to Whom?

Dualism

 (21)

Dualism

The Limits of Logic

 (22)

You’ve Got to Have Soul!

 (23)

Proof from Morality

Moral Quandaries

 (24)

Two Big Objections

 (25)

Social Animals

The First Game

 (26)

The Golden Rule

Clockwork

 (27)

Fuzzy Logic

The Monkey Wrench

 (28)

Proof from Design, or the Teleological Proof

Cranes and Skyhooks

 (29)

A Hat Tip to Mandelbrot

 (30, 31, 32)

Evolution and Chaos

Baby Steps to a Light-Sensitive Patch…

Take A Chance

 (33)

I Fought The Law

Death by a Thousand Cuts

 (34)

Proof from Popularity

Bridge Jumping

Judgement Day

The Ascent of Religion

 (35)

Over-active Pattern Matching

Classism

Evolution

Social Attachment

Fear of Death

How Religion Started

(unfinished)

(36)

Proof of God: Context

I used to own this little Palm device. The thing was a decade old when I got it, and the on-screen keyboard was scarred by the continual tap-tap-tap of a stylus. I had to find just the right pressure to register a letter; sometimes, it would register the wrong one and I’d be forced to stop, try to reposition the cursor with the stylus, delete the offending letter without adding more, and finally right that wrong. As the screen required manual calibration, typing the wrong letter was unfortunately common. It made writing tedious.

And yet, during rare moments of downtime, I would solemnly tap away at the thing. Some days I could manage a hundred words, and in the evenings I would pop out the SD card (the docking station was broken, if I recall) and copy those hundred words into their proper place in Proof of God.

If my timestamps are correct, I started writing that book on December 21st, 2009. I’m a bit surprised it was so recent, but maybe the Palm distorted my sense of time. Back then, I thought there was a hole in the atheist literature; while a decent number of books on apologetics existed, they struck me as shallow. No one seemed interested in gathering a comprehensive list of counter-proofs, and everyone assumed that Christianity was the only religion out there.

I think I was also trying to better understand religion. Weird fact: I didn’t believe in belief until well into my adulthood. Don’t get me wrong, I’d briefly see preachers on TV when flipping to cartoons, and I’d been in churches and read a few Bible stories. But the stories were too fantastic to be taken seriously, so I thought they persisted because people wanted to ground themselves in the past. If times were tough, remind yourself that you’ve survived a lot worse before and you’ll feel better. None of my circle expressed religious belief, so I thought society had long since shed those false beliefs and moved on.

It was only when I spent time with a true believer outside my bubble that I realised I’d been in one. Naturally that led to a desire to catch up on what I’d missed, and that led to the study of why people believed in their religion. And once my head had filled with arguments and counter-arguments, it made sense to start typing them out to clarify things.

While the date I started Proof of God is murky, the date I stopped is not: August 4th, 2013. I’d decided to leave the boring parts until last, which sapped my desire to write. The citation-heavy style I prefer created a maintainence headache. But above all, my answer for why people believed was leading me to an unsettling conclusion: people believed in religion to discriminate against others and get ahead in life, albeit unconsciously. The arguments for belief were just a conscious smokescreen for that discrimination, which made a book devoted to them seem useless.

In hindsight, I was also getting cynical about the atheist community. The odd beliefs of the devout seemed far less shocking when I started running into skeptics who doubted climate change and couldn’t wrap their heads around consent. Atheists could pick apart the finer details of the Watchmaker argument, yet struggle to understand feminism. Believing in nonsense seemed to be a fundamental part of being human, and wouldn’t go away if every religious person deconverted. The revelation took more wind out of my sails, and seeded a complex set of feelings about the skepto-atheist community.

If I seem somewhat dour, take heart. Proof of God also led me to some novel atheist apologetics, which I quietly continue to pursue. The introduction and conclusion we’re the first time I expressed those ideas in writing. I’m proud of other chapters too, and several years ago vowed to blog them should I wind up on FtB.

Well, here I am. And here it is, in small bits twice weekly. To make random access easier, my next post in the series will be a table of contents that’s updated as I go.

The Odds of Elvis Being an Identical Twin

This one demanded to be shared ASAP. Here’s what you need to know:

  1. Identical or monozygotic twins occur in roughly four births per 1,000.
  2. Fraternal or dizygotic twins occur in roughly eight births per 1,000.
  3. Elvis Prestley had a twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley, that was stillborn.

For simplicity’s sake, we’ll assume sex is binary and split 50/50, despite the existence of intersex fraternal twins. What are the odds of Elvis being an identical twin? The answer’s below the fold.

[Read more…]

The Odds of Elvis Being an Identical Twin?

This one demanded to be shared ASAP. Here’s what you need to know:

  1. Identical or monozygotic twins occur in roughly four births per 1,000.
  2. Fraternal or dizygotic twins occur in roughly eight births per 1,000.
  3. Elvis Prestley had a twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley, that was stillborn.

For simplicity’s sake, we’ll assume sex is binary and split 50/50, despite the existence of intersex fraternal twins. What are the odds of Elvis being an identical twin? The answer will pop up on my blog in two days.

Welcome to The Community

I’m a long-time lurker. I prefer to sit back and skim through comment sections, passively absorbing, and over the years I’ve seen a fair number. After a while, you start to get a feel for their dynamics. Typically, a blog post plays out something like this:

  1. Blog author posts something.
  2. Long-time commenters pop by with their two cents.
  3. Their chatter starts to wander off topic.
  4. Someone pops by with a strong opinion that’s vaguely off-topic.
  5. This kicks up an argument, which gets ugly and spirals away from what the original post discussed.

There are exceptions, of course; endless threads have no topic to wander off of, and if the thread is obscure and the topic well-defined the comments can stay topical indefinitely. The comment community plays a large role in this, too. A small band of thoughtful regulars are a blogger’s dream, while a large number of over-opinionated randos can (and often do) ruin any thread. If acrimony starts to trump argument, even a small community can turn dysfunctional.

It doesn’t help that our tools are few, blunt and prone to breaking. Voting systems can be gamed, while banning users or keywords is an all-or-nothing affair that barely works. Allowing comments for a limited window sounds great, but it doesn’t allow the regulars to build up much of a conversation. Banning all comments kills off the local community.

Aaaaand that’s about the extent of it. Maybe someday I’ll create a browser plugin that provides a personal ranking system, which automatically mutes or even hides users based on how you’ve rated their prior comments, but that’s low in my queue.

How am I going to encourage that small, thoughtful community to form? Here’s my current plan:

  • Regular blog posts don’t allow comments, unless justified by the contents. This prevents comment threads from spiraling away.
  • The “Community” post is an endless thread. Only one of them is active at a time.
  • To provide a little structure, links to the regular blog posts will get dropped into the Community post as they go public. These can be ignored.
  • The Community post will be linked somewhere along the side menu, but it won’t otherwise be advertised. This should keep the randos to a minimum, but without throwing out regulars too.
  • The top of the Community post will outline the moderation rules in play. Those rules stay consistent over the lifetime of the Community post. If I want a significant change, the current Community post is locked and a new one is created. The new will link to the old, and vice-versa.

The first Community post is the one you’re reading right now.

The initial mod rules are fairly ill-defined and flexible, to keep the rules lawyers at bay. My guiding principle is to maximize information; it takes time and energy to read a comment, so you should try to convey as much as possible, as clearly as possible, in the least space. Critiques beat opinions, evidence wins over assertion. Strict enforcement of that doesn’t work with endless threads, but it’s still the ideal you should keep in the back of your mind.

The corollary is another matter, though: quit it with the oppressive language. If you lack the creativity to think up an alternative to “crazy,” you shouldn’t be posting here. Violence in any form is a no-no, and both stalking and harassment are low-grade forms of violence.

Speaking of which, I’d like to swipe an idea from football. They have a carding system to handle misconduct, which I think works in this context too. If you’re handed a yellow card, that’s a warning for unsportsmanlike conduct. A red card gets you banned from this thread, though not the entire blog. A black card is a permanent ban.

Got it? Then game on!