1001. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #47033 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 2, 2007 at 9:06 pm

The great teapot (80):

I see your point. On the other hand consider that God is supposed to be something entirely different than teapots, or electrons, or the curvature of spacetime. So, why do you think it is reasonable to believe that the evidence for the existence of God should be similar to the evidence for the existence of teapots, electrons, or the curvature of spacetime?

Or consider this: Suppose God had given us evidence for His/Her existence that is similar to the evidence we use to ascertain the existence of teapots or electrons. Wouldn't this misguide us into thinking that God is similar to teapots or electrons? And don't you think that God, being benevolent, would abstain from misguiding us in this way?

1002. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #47030 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 2, 2007 at 8:48 pm

Miri (68):

You write: "the evidence that atheism (or naturalism) has in its favor is religion's failure to prove the supernatural realm."

First of all "prove" is a loaded word, because strictly speaking proofs in the sense of demonstrations that offer complete certainty do not exist. In that absolute sense, for example, we don't have any "proof" that Abraham Lincoln has existed, or that electrons exist, or that the Pythagoras theorem is correct. So what religion should produce is not so much such a "proof" but rather a sufficiently good reason for somebody to believe in the existence of the supernatural realm.

And here is an indisputable fact: Contrary to what popular atheism dogmatically believes there are several good arguments for the existence of God, and knowledgeable atheist philosophers have to struggle long and hard to try to counter them. Examples of such arguments are the argument from morality and the argument from consciousness. Even the traditional argument from design (or teleological argument) that appeared to have been buried by Darwinism has found new life recently in the form of the argument from the fine-tuning of the universe. But there are also good arguments that justify the atheist worldview including the argument from evil and the argument from non-belief. So the question of how reasonable it is to believe either in the existence or the non-existence of God is far from settled. There is a good book I can recommend you read in this context: "God? A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist" by William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong.

Having said that the fact remains that most theists do not justify their belief in the existence of God based on such intellectual arguments but on what is commonly called "faith". Now "faith" is a difficult word because it is used with many different meanings. In fact the original meaning of that word as used in the gospels is "trust in God". When atheists speak of "faith" they often mean "irrational belief". I think that when theists use "faith" as their justification of their belief in God they normally mean one of three things:

1) Their trust in revelation, in which supposedly God directly reveals spiritual truth to some chosen few, and they in turn teach or write it down to inform the rest of us. I personally find it very dubious that God would work in such roundabout ways and tend to agree with atheists that much of scripture is primitive and plagued by inconsistencies, superstition, mythology, and even plain evil. On the other hand it is a fact that the written word (or in general other peoples' testimonies) can be a very powerful motivator and can change peoples' lives. And I also find that that some religious texts display sublime beauty, in fact unrivaled beauty.

2) The direct experience of God. It is a fact that many people have such religious experiences so the remaining question is what one can reasonably deduce from such experiences. Atheists of course argue that such experiences are produced by some accident in our evolutionary history which causes our brain to create them (see for example "The God gene: How faith is hardwired into our genes" by Dean Hamer, or "Breaking the spell: Religion as a natural phenomenon" by Daniel Dennett). But another obvious way to interpret such experiences is that the experience of God evidences the existence of God, and if our brains are hardwired for such experiences the more the better as God is the creator of the physical world and has hardwired our brains for us to experience Him/Her.

3) That without the existence of God their own condition as human beings (i.e. how it is to be a human being) makes no sense, and that the absence of objective evidence for the existence of God changes nothing in that fact. In this sense of "faith" all normal people (theist and atheist alike – the only possible exception would be solipsists) believe many things on "faith". For example we all believe on faith in the existence of other minds even though there is no objective evidence for that. Similarly we all believe on faith that the physical universe did not come into existence 10 minutes ago, and so on.

Finally I would like to turn the table on you, and argue thus: The evidence that theism has in its favor is that atheism (or naturalism) is unable to deal in a satisfactory manner with fundamental questions such as the existence of consciousness or ethical truth. It even fails to account for such basic concepts as "meaning" or "value". It even fails to offer any objective means to decide how physical reality actually is (is there one universe or a huge number of them, is the universe deterministic or not, etc). Naturalism is much shaker than naively believed by many. Alvin Plantinga (one of the most important philosophers of religion alive today) has even written a paper that shows that naturalism is incompatible with Darwinism. This is a highly technical not to mention highly contested paper, but you can get an inkling of the idea in Plantinga's review of Dawkins's "The God delusion" here: http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/002/1.21.html

Part of the confusion about the strength or weakness of naturalism stems I think from the fact that "naturalism" can be understood as a methodology but also as an ontology. Methodological naturalism is the basic assumption of science, namely that all physical phenomena can be fully explained by natural causes, and indeed history has shown that methodological naturalism is extraordinarily successful. Ontological naturalism on the other hand is a claim about how reality actually is, and here naturalism fails very badly.

1003. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #46643 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 1, 2007 at 1:20 am

I think that this interview very well illustrates the fact that theism and atheism represent radically different worldviews, i.e. different ways to understand reality. This is evidenced by how often Dawkins and McGrath simply talked past each other. Dawkins apparently thinks that the issue of God's existence is a matter of scientific investigation or of applying the scientific method (for example where he compares the existence of God with the existence of the eye, and thinks that the complexity of both must be accounted for by some naturalist explanatory means) – whereas McGrath repeatedly insisted the religion is about understanding reality and our place in it beyond the scientific investigation of, and resulting knowledge about, physical phenomena.

I was also struck with the big issue about the single child that is not killed in some natural catastrophe. Even though I don't quite agree with McGrath's position that God directly saved that particular child, neither do I find his position incoherent. His position seems to be this: God as a rule does not interfere with the natural order; after all if God did as a rule interfere with the natural order then we would be living in some kind of magical Mickey Mouse kind of world and clearly the world we live in is nothing like that. But God does in some rare occasions, and particularly in the midst of great calamity, directly interfere, for example to save that one child. So I don't understand what Dawkins found so hard to grasp in McGrath's position. The question that I wished Dawkins would have asked at this point is this: If God does in some cases interfere in the natural order then there should be objective (albeit statistical) evidence for God's existence (for example that prayer is sometimes effective), but no such objective evidence has been found.

1004. Those fanatical atheists

Comment #42089 by Dianelos Georgoudis on May 17, 2007 at 3:32 pm

Taken at face value quantum mechanics describes a physical universe in which only potentialities exist (the wave function) until some conscious being makes an observation, at which instant one potentiality is instantiated into reality. That's why Einstein made his famous question "You don't really believe that the moon is only there when you look at it?". Indeed Einstein was sure that reality can't be the way quantum mechanics describes, for example pointing at "spooky actions at a distance" which quantum mechanics predicts; but he was proven wrong. In fact recently such spooky actions at a distance were experimentally demonstrated.

Now physicists who think that part of their job is to describe reality have tried to device so-called interpretations of quantum mechanics, i.e. descriptions of physical realities that would produce the quantum mechanical phenomena we know of. There are at least three problems in this endeavor:

1) These descriptions (there are at least half a dozen of them) wildly contradict each other and there is no objective way to decide which is the correct one, falsifying the belief that science gives us an objective description of reality.

2) Each description is wildly fantastic. In fact the many worlds interpretation (which is probably the most popular among working physicists today) is too fantastic to be really taken seriously as a description of physical reality. For example it implies that in many of these universes each one of us will never die (and all suicide attempts we may try will fail). Even worse it implies that in some of these universes the eschatological events described in John's Apocalypse will indeed literally happen. I agree with mjr1007 that such an understanding of reality is far less plausible than the Universal Observer (prophetically suggested by Bishop Berkeley long before the discovery of quantum mechanics) - not to mention fails Occam's razor many times over. It does work well as a conceptual model though.

3) According to "Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness" by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner (two professors of physics of the University of California at Santa Cruz), there is no way around the view that "consciousness creates reality" no matter which interpretation of quantum mechanics one might choose.

This is clearly a mess. I personally think that the reason for this mess is that "scientific realism" (i.e. the view that science describes reality) is false. The job of science is to model physical phenomena (i.e. find stable patterns in the phenomena we observe) and nothing more. How reality is is a metaphysical question (the respective philosophical field is called ontology) that need not concern science - indeed must not concern. In fact if it turned out that in reality the physical universe does not even objectively exist (say because we all exist within a computer simulation, or because God directly feeds us conscious experiences at the absence of anything physical) absolutely nothing would change for science; e.g. the rest mass of the electron would stay exactly the same. Neither does the scientist need to worry what happened to gravitational force fields when Einstein came up with his general relativity, and neither how mass bends spacetime. These, after all, are simply models of phenomena - not models of reality and even less descriptions of reality.

---

As an aside I disagree with the proposition that "Nonexistence proofs are very difficult" - even though that's a very common belief in atheist circles. In fact there are many nonexistence claims that are easy to justify, such as there is no greatest prime number, or that the moon is not made of solid gold, or that there is no second moon of a similar size orbiting the earth, or that no nuclear bomb has exploded 100 meters over my house 10 minutes ago, or that no stable atoms exist with a 1000 electrons, or that no humans exist who can run 100 meters in less than one second. Closer to the issues at hand, the nonexistence of a supernatural being can easily be argued if one shows that the concept that refers to it suffers from internal contradictions.

1005. Those fanatical atheists

Comment #42087 by Dianelos Georgoudis on May 17, 2007 at 3:31 pm

Major Bloodnok (112):

Some quick comments:

A cockroach is a physical system. How do you suggest we detect whether there is consciousness in it? Incidentally, don't let the physical facts of our own universe limit you in any way, but feel free to propose the existence of any universe, for example a universe where classical physics applies, or a universe where the speed of light is infinite, or whatever. Can you suggest how a test for consciousness even in such a custom-made universe might work?

An example of a system with consciousness but no intelligence would be that of a newborn baby. An example of a system with intelligence (albeit vertical intelligence) but no consciousness would be IBM's Deep Blue computer that beat Kasparov in chess.

If a personal God of limitless goodness exists then it is reasonable to expect that personal goodness (i.e. virtue) is the greatest good, and that God would want us to have that greatest good.

Human like intelligence is not difficult to define; in fact we have a very good test for it, namely the Turing test.

What scientific arguments have you seen that explain why the universe is not swarmed with intelligence?

Most probable by the measure that all other alternative explanations are very unlikely.

The evidence for that assertion is that it is the best explanation I know of for the objective evidence that the cosmos is so quiet as far as signs of extraterrestrial intelligence goes. If you have a better explanation I would very much like to hear it.

1006. Hitchens' flat world

Comment #41922 by Dianelos Georgoudis on May 17, 2007 at 9:53 am

KRKBAB (35):

Well, some of you atheists do care quite a bit about what Christianity's official dogma states, for example Dawkins makes a big fuss about how absurd this and that official Christian dogma is, e.g. the virgin birth of Jesus, and so on.

Severalspeciesof (36):

You are right – I overlooked your reference to "De Souza's God" and thought you were making a general argument. My apologies. Still, I think that De Souza too would object to your proposition #5. Assuming that De Souza follows the official San Augustine theodicy the fact that the world is in a fallen state does not imply that it is not the best possible world from God's point of view. The argument is that God values genuine freedom so much that s/he created a world in which we are genuinely free - while knowing perfectly well that we would abuse that freedom and require redeeming. And God did not create humankind with a more virtuous character to begin with because genuine virtue must be freely chosen.

Phasmagigas (52):

Certainly morality is a hugely important matter both for one's personal well-being as well as for humanity's and for the environment's. Now it may turn out to be very difficult on technical grounds and maybe undesirable on ethical grounds to objectively compare how ethical non religious versus religious people are. Nevertheless atheism has two important problems related to morality:

1. The theoretical argument from morality. It is a virtually conclusive philosophical fact that atheism is incompatible with objective morality. (For a good exposition of this see the best book for atheism I know, the rather ill-titled "The Miracle of Theism" by the late university of Oxford prof John Leslie Mackie; or see how the argument from morality is effectively used by Craig in "God? A debate between a Christian and an atheist"). Incidentally, "objective morality" denotes the view that some ethical propositions (such as that one shouldn't cause gratuitous pain) are objectively true, i.e. their truth does not depend on personal opinion or social convention. Now for atheists such a Mackie the answer is clear: morality then must be subjective. The problem is that we all have some axiomatic or foundational beliefs, and the vast majority of people, including I suppose most atheists, understand that morality *is* objective. When they find out that atheism is incompatible with an objective understanding of morality atheism will look much less a viable worldview for them. (Some atheists point out the fact that sociobiology can explain how ethical beliefs evolve on purely materialistic grounds, but this is entirely irrelevant. All ethical beliefs have evolved in this way, but this says nothing about which of these beliefs are true and why.)

2. The practical (or psychological) argument from morality. At bottom (and beyond all mythology and all institutional dogmas) religion represents the view that the order of nature (i.e. of the phenomenal world) is subsumed and explained by a deeper spiritual order. Whereas the order of nature is value-neutral, the underlying spiritual order is understood to be intrinsically good. Theism moreover has it that this underlying spiritual order is caused by the will of a person called God. So religion represents an intrinsically positive view of reality and such a view is more conducive to the humane behavior all civilized people aspire too. Why? Because reason dictates that when a theist and an atheist confront an ethical dilemma, and if all other personal factors are the same and no fear of retribution applies in the situation, the theist is apt to behave more ethically than the atheist, because the theist will have one more reason and the atheist one less reason to behave in an ethical manner. On plain terms when one believes that reality is not intrinsically good, that there is no underlying meaning in one's existence, and that one's experiential life ends at the death of one's body after a short while, then one has one less reason to behave in an self-transcendent manner.

There is a related problem with atheism, which one might call the esthetic problem: Most people used to think that atheism, contrasted to religious fundamentalism at least, is a civilized and tolerant worldview. But the recent popularity of intolerant and hate filled books – especially Hitchens's latest – will I think disperse this impression. When Hitchens subtitles his book "how religion poisons everything" he is displaying the worse kind of absolutist, fanatical and intolerant passion - not to mention is claiming an obviously wrong proposition. One to one comparisons will be made. In the recent debate between Hitchens and Sharpton (rtsp://helix.nypl.org:554/live/070507/070507.ra) the former got the more laughs from the audience, but I think there is no question who displayed the more beautiful mind. I think that people who read the much deeper debate between Harris and Sullivan (see http://richarddawkins.net/article,536,God-Is-Not-a-Moderate,Sam-Harris-and-Andrew-Sullivan-Beliefnetcom or http://www.beliefnet.com/story/209/story_20904_1.html) will make a similar judgement in favor of theism. Beauty is important in our life; and the beauty of theism's best worldviews and best minds will be found to be superior to atheism's. Dawkins points out how awe inspiringly beautiful the images taken by the Hubble telescope are, but forgets that they are even more beautiful when seen from a theistic point of view, because they remind one of the beauty of their creator and inspire one to long for the beauty that is to come.

At this point a theist is apt to point out that with all that theism represents a false worldview as evidenced by the discoveries of science. But this is a very weak argument. What science has demonstrated is the falsity of many traditional religious beliefs, typically of a mythological or superstitious nature, such as contained in ancient and primitive religious writings. But science does not contradict and cannot contradict theism, because science studies the order of the phenomenal world and according to a foundational understanding of theism this order was created and is sustained by God. Religious knowledge and scientific knowledge operate on different levels. Maybe a concise way to describe this difference is that science describes the syntax of the world and that religion describes its semantics.

1007. How dare you call me a fundamentalist

Comment #41599 by Dianelos Georgoudis on May 16, 2007 at 11:33 am

I must say I agree with some of the criticisms.

To use intolerant language is not helpful in human discourse, and that others do use such language or that the use of such language is common in some areas in no way changes this fact.

To attack strawmen and argue about religion without having made your homework - because these strawmen beliefs are the most popular ones and because you judge that the learned books about religion are not worthy of study - is not what somebody who cares about truth would do.

Dawkins defends his passion, but it's passion that makes fundamentalists believe things that would otherwise easily found to be wrong. For example, here Dawkins claims that religious fundamentalists never change their minds, but this is trivially wrong as evidenced by the many atheist posters in Dawkins's own website who state that they have been fundamentalist Christians before. So, obviously, many religious fundamentalists do change their minds. I am afraid that passion is able to cloud even the most brilliant mind.

1008. Hitchens' flat world

Comment #41566 by Dianelos Georgoudis on May 16, 2007 at 10:02 am

ferfuracious:

Scientific materialism is not he same thing as science. In fact science would have evolved exactly as it did even if scientific materialism is wrong.

BNcC:

You misunderstand the questions; for example "Why we are here?" does not ask for the physical process that explains the existence of our bodies. In fact you misunderstand the whole issue at hand. Virtually all people, axiomatically if you will, believe that there must be meaning and purpose in our lives. To simply answer "here is no meaning and purpose in our lives unless we create them ourselves" is tantamount to affirming nihilism, and, believe me, atheists do not want to claim that atheism is a nihilistic worldview. In fact atheist philosophers go to great lengths to explain how meaning and purpose exist in an atheist world.

phasmagigas:

You make a good point. It's a fact that the most religious society in the world today is also the most wasteful, not to mention the most aggressive in its external policy (where the ethical dictum "a hundred eyes for an eye" appears to be the norm). Still, what goes for the goose goes for the gander. When atheists are confronted with the fact that the worse crimes against humanity have been perpetrated by atheist regimes the standard answer is that it was not atheism but other factors that moved these regimes to commit these crimes (a correct answer albeit one that is arguably not conclusive). By the same measure, the capitalistic system, the culture of consumption and the glorification of wealth, the military power, the fact that Americans tend to vote with their wallets, the fact that the democratic system itself tends to punish politicians who care too much for the long run – are all better explanations for America's wastefulness and aggressiveness than religion. The question to ponder is this: If American society were less religious and more atheistic would it be more or less wasteful and aggressive?

cassdenata:

If, to use John Hick's phrase, the world is religiously ambiguous then people can reasonably hold both religious and non religious worldviews. (They can't reasonably hold fundamentalist religious worldviews but that's another matter.) I think De Souza's point is this: That to hold a non religious worldview, especially one of the type expounded by Hitchens in his book, is to assume an emotionally and intellectually uninteresting and ignoble human condition (a flat world). The deeper point may be a version of Pascal's wager: That even if God does not exist to assume a religious worldview (as we reasonably can) is conducive to a more fulfilling and humane life.

severalspeciesof:

I have a problem with your #5. First of all, even though Christianity's official Augustine dogma says so, theism does not entail that humankind needs redeeming. For example the so-called Irenaean theodicy says that the world does not need redeeming because it is not in a fallen state. Rather, according to that theodicy, the world is a place for humanity's self-transcendence. (And Christ's ministry was not redemptive but educational: to show the path towards that self-transcendence.) Secondly, even if humankind needs redeeming it does not follow that this is not the best possible world. Remember that we must think which is the best possible world from the point of view of its creator and not from our point of view – and it is not quite clear to me why a world where humankind needs redeeming cannot be the best possible world from the point of view of God. To argue the contrary you should know what God's values and motivations *must* be, and that's not easy to argue conclusively.

1009. Those fanatical atheists

Comment #41364 by Dianelos Georgoudis on May 16, 2007 at 2:30 am

Major Bloodnok:

Consciousness is not a phenomenon. Consciousness belongs to an entirely different category. Rather than being a phenomenon itself, consciousness is what enables us to know about phenomena. In other words consciousness is necessary for phenomena, in the sense that if consciousness did not exist the very concept of phenomena would be meaningless.

Another way to see that consciousness is not a phenomenon is this: If consciousness were a phenomenon there would be objective ways to find out whether consciousness is present in a physical system or not. But this appears to be impossible.

What is a phenomenon is intelligence, and we have an objective test for the presence of intelligence (the so-called Turing test). And as is the case with all other phenomena science can at least in principle explain intelligence without recourse to the God hypothesis. But we must not confuse the concepts of intelligence and consciousness. After all it's possible to conceive of a system that has intelligence but not consciousness, or else consciousness but not intelligence. Now all intelligent systems will also appear to be conscious. The question is how to find out whether they are really conscious. And that's a question that appears impossible to answer objectively.

You ask "Can you now come up with some experiment or further observation to test your hypothesis [that God explains consciousness]?" First of all it's wrong to believe that you need to be able to perform an experiment to justify a claim. This is not even true for scientific knowledge. For example science has no experiment to confirm the hypothesis of the big bang or the hypothesis of natural evolution (a fact that creationists abuse).

But alternatively you ask for a "further observation" and I think that's very reasonable. After all a hypothesis must make a difference. If whether a hypothesis is true or false would make no difference at all then this hypothesis is vacuous or meaningless (this principle is called "logical positivism"). So some further observation is required. For example, if the big bang happened we should observe a particular kind of background radiation. And lo and behold we do observe this kind of radiation, and this confirmed observation increases the probability that the big bang happened.

Now there are many observations that increase the probability of the existence of God in this sense. Trivially, according to the argument from consciousness, if God did not exist then consciousness wouldn't exist, but consciousness does exist. But this argument might strike an atheist as circular (even though it isn't). So here is another one: If God exists then our experiential environment should be optimized for us becoming better people - and our experiential environment is optimized in this way. Another observation: If God exists then we should continue to have conscious experience beyond physical death. It's true that one can only make this observation only in death - but this is nevertheless a valid observation that if confirmed makes the existence of God more probable.

Now at this point if I were an atheist I would ask: "Can't theism give more *objective* observations for the existence of God, observations we can potentially make *before* we die?" At first this may seem to be an impossible task for theism; after all science has virtually conclusively shown that all objective phenomena can be understood without recourse to the God hypothesis. Nevertheless I think there are such observations for God. Here is one: If the theistic worldview, as theists claim, is the worldview that gives us more understanding (because it can explain consciousness etc) then we would expect to observe a positive correlation between intelligence and theistic belief. Most atheists firmly believe that the opposite is true (that includes Dawkins as is evident in his recent TVO.org interview). But I think this is an illusory belief for several reasons:

1. Dawkins and other atheists equate intelligence with academic prowess, and it is true that there is a negative correlation between academic degree and theistic belief. But this might only evidence that overspecialization hinders peoples' understanding of reality.

2. Intelligence of the kind that is relevant here (i.e. intelligence that helps people understand reality) should positively correlate with people who achieve more personal well-being. And there are several statistical studies that find that religious people tend to be more happy.

3. We live in era that on the one hand is giddy with the success of science (science as we know it is only a few centuries old) and on the other hand has realized how much mythology is intertwined with religion. So many people commit the double logical mistake to assume that as science is so successful in explaining physical phenomena it will be able to explain everything, and to assume that as religion contains so many wrong beliefs all religious beliefs must be wrong.

So the objective observation I would like to suggest is that there is a positive correlation between intelligence and theistic belief, while conceding that some time will be necessary before things stabilize. By the way I happen to believe that we shall be able to construct intelligent computers, and I predict that the more intelligent a computer is the more probable it will understand reality theistically.

Now the above does have the disadvantage that we must have to wait many decades and maybe centuries before being able to confirm the proposed observation one way or the other. Is there any objective observation that makes the existence of God more probable that we can make here and now? I think there is:

According to all that science teaches us we would expect that the universe should be swarmed with intelligent civilizations aggressively expanding. But the universe is dead silent. How can we explain that observation? There are several possible answers but I find them all highly unlikely (life is an incredible rare phenomenon; we happen to be one of the very first civilizations in the universe; we exist in some kind of protected cosmic zoo; all civilizations self-destruct; we live in a computer simulation.) By far the most probable explanation is that the universe is quiet because all civilizations (that do not self-destruct) evolve towards a spiritual and therefore humble kind of organization - evidencing that intelligence slowly but surely leads towards theism.

1010. Those fanatical atheists

Comment #41342 by Dianelos Georgoudis on May 16, 2007 at 12:59 am

SRWB:

These are all good questions. I personally find these issues very interesting. Now what we all want first and foremost is understanding; whether at the end of our search for understanding we conclude that God exists or does not exist is secondary to one's love for truth. Have you seen the recent interview of Dawkins by TVO (http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=43)? Dawkins says there, and I fully agree, that if God exists then God is probably not that insecure of him/herself as to put much emphasis on whether people believe in his/her existence.

Now clearly consciousness is the central fact of our existence, and therefore understanding consciousness should be central too. This is a fascinating field - I think I have already mentioned that the best book I know is David Chalmers's "The Conscious Mind".

Another important point is that contrary to what many atheists believe the question of what is real is not for science to answer. If in reality we all exist within a computer simulation (and some people seriously propose this possibility, see www.simulation-argument.com) it wouldn't make the slightest difference to science. These questions are philosophical questions.

I would like to quickly comment on your second question "Can consciousness only be explained by a theistic worldview?" I don't know the answer to that and anyway that is not my claim; my claim was is that the best theistic worldviews are better able to explain consciousness than the best atheistic worldviews. In fact virtually all atheistic worldviews are also materialistic, i.e. are built around the idea that all that exists is physical, or at least that all meaningful questions can be answered based on physical principles. But there are very powerful arguments that show that materialism cannot explain consciousness at all.

Incidentally consciousness is not the only serious problem of materialism. It turns out that, contrary to science, materialism is not objective. So different materialists suggest wildly differing views of reality with no objective means to decide which one is the correct. Apart from the idea that we may all live in a computer simulation, some materialists believe that reality consists of a really huge and growing number of similar universes. (It's a wild idea: it implies that you and I exist in many of these universes and at least in one of those we are unable to die - google "quantum immortality" to read more about this). Some suggest that reality is a two-dimensional hologram and that the fact that we observe a three-dimensional world is a sophisticated illusion created by our brain (see the article "Are you a hologram?" in the August 2003 Scientific American).

I think the reason that so many atheists feel so certain is that they trivialize the issues. I wish atheists would study more. If you don't check on your beliefs you can easily create a mythology of your own.

1011. The Debate: Can We Live by Reason Alone?

Comment #40807 by Dianelos Georgoudis on May 15, 2007 at 3:01 am

L. Minnik,

You wrote: "Imam Shabir Ally argues that without religion, there is no reason to be good. I may be wrong, but I think that having a modern good judicial system is a better deterrent than an ancient fear of god."

But the issue of morality, as Dawkins himself made clear in the interview, is not which system is better for deterrence. After all morality is about wanting to do good. And Imam Shabir's point was, I think, that without God morality loses its objectivity, it becomes a convention that can and will be understood as ultimately pointless. Here is a practical example: Suppose an atheist and a theist confront an ethical dilemma where they must choose between two paths of action, one good and one evil. Suppose further that as is often the case the evil action is the one that better serves each one's interests. Suppose further that there is no deterrence that applies so that both are free to decide without any fear of retribution. Logic dictates that it is more probable that the theist will choose the good action, because the theist, all other personal factors being the same, has one more reason to behave ethically: namely his or her belief that life on earth is just a short prelude to a much larger life, and that therefore to behave badly for some gain in this short earthly life is rather pointless. In contrast to that the atheist who believes that all there is is one's earthly life will have one less reason to behave ethically.

I think that Dawkins is a genuinely good person (this is quite obvious when you see his interviewing the Anglican bishop of Oxford in a non-confrontational setting). On the other hand his atheism is having a somehow blinding influence on him I am afraid. For example in this interview he repeatedly makes clear that he does not see why one should show more respect to religious ideas than to political ideas, but the answer should be obvious: Because the former hurts a lot of people, that's why. Indeed one can equally well, if not better, argue for atheism while showing respect for other peoples' views. So I think that atheism has planted a mean streak into an otherwise excellent person.

But the main thing I criticize Dawkins (and much of popular atheism) for is the tendency to trivialize the issues. The so-called argument from morality for the existence of God is a serious one and knowledgeable atheists must struggle with it when they debate knowledgeable theists one to one. Another example of how the issues are trivialized is when Dawkins in this interview repeats a popular atheist line saying "God is in the same status as fairies". This is not only a disrespectful statement; it is trivially wrong. After all there are no serious arguments for the existence of fairies but there are several serious arguments for the existence of God, so God is obviously not in the same status as fairies. As far as many theists are concerned (including Nada Conic in the panel after the interview) Dawkins is fighting a paper tiger. If you really care about the truth then reason dictates that you must search out and think about the best theistic worldviews and not about the most popular ones or the most official ones. And the fundamental theistic thesis is that the best theistic worldviews have more explanatory power and are more conducive to a fulfilling and ethical life than the best atheistic worldviews.

1012. Those fanatical atheists

Comment #40758 by Dianelos Georgoudis on May 14, 2007 at 11:03 pm

eye of horus:

You claim that dualism is an illusion. What evidence do you have for that?

I am asking this because the theme of this thread is that we should always have evidence for any claim we make. Also one of the sharpest philosophers alive today, David Chalmers, makes a rather powerful case that there is no way around a dualistic understanding of reality.

1013. Those fanatical atheists

Comment #40629 by Dianelos Georgoudis on May 14, 2007 at 3:49 pm

SRWB:

First a small note on nomenclature. I said that consciousness is evidence for the existence of God, not that consciousness is the proof of the existence of God. In reason you start with evidence and then build an argument on it. Finally some arguments are expressed in the format of a proof using propositional logic. For example the falling of apples and the movement of the planets are evidence for the existence of gravity, but they do not by themselves prove gravity. In other words evidence is a necessary building block for arguing for the existence of something, but is not sufficient by itself.

Having clarified that, the obvious question is: What argument based on consciousness is there for the existence of God? Well, as you can imagine it's not easy to expound the full argument in one post here. But I can give you its overall structure and will gladly discuss it further with you if you would like.

The main point is that arguments for the existence of things are normally based on their explanatory power and not on our directly observing them. So, for example, you cannot see, touch or smell gravity; nevertheless it's very reasonable to believe in the existence of gravity because it explains the evidence we have, e.g. the falling of apples or the movement of planets. Now it turns out that no explanation is possible within the naturalistic view of reality (i.e. naturalism). Naturalism, simply stated, is the view that all that exists is of natural (or physical) origin which implies that it can be investigated by the scientific method.

Contrasted to that a theistic worldview can explain consciousness. According to the theistic worldview the most fundamental aspect of reality is not matter but spirit, and the most overarching existent is not the universe but God. The theistic worldview does not deny the existence of matter or of the universe, but rather claims that these are secondary to and contingent on the existence of spirit and of God. And how can God explain our consciousness? Well the basic idea is that God is a conscious subject him/herself and therefore able to create other conscious subjects.

Of course the above is only a very short synopsis but I think can give you a first idea of the argument. Of course probably every sentence I wrote above can be objected to. Indeed there is fierce debate going on about whether science is or isn't in principle able to explain consciousness. The respective so-called problem of consciousness (or mind-body problem) is arguably the most important philosophical problem of today (there are tons of information about it on the web).

1014. Consciousness Comes from DNA

Comment #40239 by Dianelos Georgoudis on May 14, 2007 at 1:25 am

The article claims that "elephants have recently demonstrated they too are conscious and have minds". And how was that demonstrated? "We report a successful mirror self-awareness elephant test".

Really? So mirror self-awareness (i.e. the ability of a physical system to distinguish itself in a mirror) implies that it is conscious and has a mind? Why, if that is so then I can build an artificial consciousness with about 100 Euros and a few days of work.

(BTW, thanks for the recommendation, Duff. This looks like a good book.)

1015. Those fanatical atheists

Comment #40226 by Dianelos Georgoudis on May 13, 2007 at 11:16 pm

sanjiv:

Most atheists ask for *objective* evidence and Gardner's article is a little vague on this point; that's why in my post I tried to explain that to ask for objective evidence is placing the bar too high as we all reasonable believe in propositions for which no objective evidence can be given. I agree with you that all claims require evidence (but not necessarily objective evidence).

As for the existence of other minds the issue is very complex. For example you mention the evidence of happily gurgling babies, but one famous atheist philosopher, Daniel Dennett, believes that children who haven't yet learned to talk are not conscious beings (see http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_10.html#dennett). The best book I know about the problem of consciousness is David Chalmer's "The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory".

As for evidence that God exist, in my previous post I argued that the fact that we are conscious beings is such evidence, and is in fact much stronger evidence than anything particular we can see, hear, taste or smell. I find that the fact of our consciousness is overwhelming evidence by itself. But it is not the only one. How beautiful nature is, how it feels when one loves, how it feels when one does a good deed: these are all pieces of evidence for the existence of God, and indeed heart-felt evidence. Other traditional arguments for the existence of God, such as the argument from morality and the cosmological argument, are still going strong. I am afraid that atheists tend to only read books and articles by other atheists and this tends to create an echo chamber in which mythological beliefs easily take root. For example most atheists believe that the non-existence of God is obvious to any educated person. Well, this just isn't so - on the contrary the non-existence of God is far from obvious to any person who studies a little about religion. The problem is rather that many ignorant people in the field of religion (including Dawkins) are publishing books on religion. A good book I can recommend is "God?: A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist" William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. Here two very knowledgeable people (both professors of philosophy) debate the existence of God, each one presenting his best arguments and responding to the other side's arguments. That's an eminently fair format, and if you read this book you will find out that in truth neither theism nor atheism have really conclusive arguments going for them, so the question of God's existence is far from settled.

To see how ignorant Dawkins is in the field of religion read the (admittedly slightly irreverent) review by Alvin Plantinga (who is one of the most important philosophers of religion today) of Dawkins's "God Delusion": http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/002/1.21.html

Incidentally I was delighted to read your "I'm not so smart (seriously)", because this proves that you are smarter than the vast majority of people. Wisdom is not contingent on one's knowledge but rather on one's freedom of thought.

1016. Those fanatical atheists

Comment #40159 by Dianelos Georgoudis on May 13, 2007 at 12:35 pm

pewkatchoo:

You wrote: "Objective evidence, in other words evidence that can be observed, is the only real evidence."

So, what evidence that can be observed do you have for the golden rule?

Or maybe you meant that existential claims require observable evidence. If so then what evidence that can be observed do you have for the existence of the number pi?

You wrote: "All the rest is just semantics."

Semantics is very important. Those who don't care about semantics end up not knowing what they are talking about.

1017. Those fanatical atheists

Comment #40069 by Dianelos Georgoudis on May 13, 2007 at 1:34 am

Gardner writes: "If you claim that something is true, I will examine the evidence which supports your claim; if you have no evidence, I will not accept that what you say is true and I will think you a foolish and gullible person for believing it so."

Depends on what one means by "evidence". If one means objective evidence of the kind that is independent of personal opinion and is relevant in the scientific method then we all believe in propositions for which we cannot offer objective evidence. For example virtually all people believe in the existence of other minds (i.e. that other people are really conscious subjects and not just automata behaving as if they were conscious) without basing this belief on some objective evidence. There are many examples like this. For example I believe that the golden rule is a pretty good ethical rule, but I cannot present any objective evidence for that. Since Kant it is well known that there is no objective evidence for the objective existence of the universe itself; nevertheless virtually all people believe in the objective existence of the universe (i.e. that the universe would exist even if no conscious subjects were around to observe it). Many physicists believe in the so-called many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, namely that the world consists of a huge and furiously growing number of similar universes – but they can't give you any objective evidence for their belief either. So to ask for objective evidence is clearly unreasonable. If that is the kind of evidence that Gardner is asking for then according to him virtually everybody (including himself) is foolish. After all he claims that all claims should be based on objective evidence but he can't offer any objective evidence for the truth of his claim.

If by "evidence" we allow any premise that one could use in a philosophical argument then there is plenty of evidence for the existence of God. The best evidence I know is the plain fact that we are conscious beings. It is a central fact that science cannot explain but the existence of God can. And it is the kind of incontrovertible and overwhelming evidence that stares us in the face every second of our waking lives, precisely the kind of evidence God would have given us for his/er existence.

Incidentally most atheists appear to be unaware that the question of what is real is not a scientific question but a philosophical one. Science is about modeling physical phenomena: strictly speaking the physicist does not care whether gravitational force fields (or the curvature of spacetime for that matter) really exist or are just a concept that only exists within a mathematical model. Reality is the subject matter of the philosophical field of metaphysics (or ontology).