Advanced apologizing: Proof of the existence of God

2009 December 20
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By Nicholas Covington
Article ID: 1349

Let’s examine the evidence for a god’s existence. Some arguments are well-known and very well covered, like the Problem of Evil, the First Cause Argument, the Argument from Design. Instead, let’s look at four lesser-known, overlooked oddities. Welcome to the strange world of religious apologizing.

1) “The common consent to God”

Catholic theologian Peter Kreeft offers the following argument for God’s existence: [1]

  1. A belief in God—that Being to whom reverence and worship are properly due—is common to almost all people of every era.
  2. Either the vast majority of people have been wrong about this most profound element of their lives, or they have not.
  3. It is most plausible to believe that they have not.
  4. Therefore, it is most plausible to believe that God exists.

As Kreeft says, “the majority is not infallible.” Big groups of people can make mistakes. He concedes this point, citing the fact that once upon a time most of the world believed the sun revolved around the Earth, rather than the Earth revolving around the sun. However, people back in those days could directly experience the sun and Earth. But in the case of God, what exactly is it that people experience and possibly misinterpret?

This argument fails to convince me. For one thing, “belief in God” is not common to people of every era. Today, at least one third of the world’s population does not subscribe to any of the major monotheistic faiths. [2] It is my understanding that before the rise of Christianity (which covers almost all of human history), almost everyone was polytheistic or engaged in some form of nature worship. If Kreeft is right about the majority being an indicator of truth, he can’t also argue for the existence of God (with a capital ‘G’). His argument, if correct, actually supports polytheism!

Another big problem is when Kreeft attempted to refute the “majority is not infallible” objection. Kreeft admitted that ancient people misinterpreted their experiences and so came to believe that the sun revolved around the earth. Apply this to present day religion: A religious worldview could simply be the result of misinterpreting reality.

Animism (personifying nature) seems to grow out of falsely attributing human characteristics to impersonal things (like regarding the moon as an “Earth Mother”). Polytheism appears to have grown out of animism, since the gods of ancient polytheistic religions were originally often just aspects of nature.

We human beings, in our modern monotheistic societies, still personify inanimate objects. This supports my theory that religion is based on a fundamental misinterpretation of reality. Have you ever seen someone get angry at their car because it won’t start? Have you ever seen someone plead with or threaten a faulty computer? Think about what this person was doing: She was personifying inanimate objects. How rational is it to get angry at something with no will of its own, an object utterly incapable of being persuaded by curses or violence? It isn’t rational. It makes no sense, unless this person believes, even subconsciously, that the inanimate object is actually animate.

2) “The singularity argument against God”

The “Big Bang singularity” is the moment, after we extrapolate backwards in time, when we see that the Big Bang was infinitely dense, infinitely hot and was so tiny it consumed no space at all. The singularity is a cosmic “division by zero” error, where physics and general relativity break down.

Philosopher Quentin Smith [3] says that the Big Bang singularity was a lawless, chaotic, and unpredictable state. In principle, it is impossible to predict whether such a thing could ever evolve life.

Smith argues that God would not create the universe this way: a life-creating God would not leave open the possibility of a lifeless universe.

There’s a flaw here. Since God is omnipotent, He could have created the Big Bang, and then miraculously intervened to ensure that it evolved to create life. But, Smith argues that God wouldn’t create a lifeless universe, then later change it to become a life-creating universe. Such an action, after all, could be called a mistake. God does not make mistakes (although we can bring up Noah’s Ark in another article).

The evidence that the Big Bang occurred is overwhelming. [4] But, one could deny that there was a Big Bang singularity. Some physicists, including Stephen Hawking, think this is the case. They no longer believe that there was a Big Bang singularity. Even though the Big Bang theory is correct, they say that the universe expanded from a very tiny point that wasn’t quite small enough to be a singularity. So, a theist could rationally maintain that the Big Bang singularity did not exist. It is for this reason that Smith’s argument fails.

3) “The idea of God was intelligently designed”

The physicist and philosopher René Descartes had a very strange argument for the existence of God. [5] Descartes observed that he had ideas of things. Where did those ideas come from? Descartes reasoned that some ideas came from within himself, and other ideas come from outside himself. He began to wonder where he obtained his idea of God. He reasoned that he could not have made it up, because no effect can be greater than its cause. The idea of God was much greater than he was. God is perfect and infinite. He was not. Descartes concluded that he could not have invented his idea of God, because he did not possess the greatness contained within the idea of God.

Since Descartes felt he could not have invented the idea of God himself, it must have come from outside. So then, what could have given him his idea of God? Once again, since no cause can be greater than its effect, no being less than God could have come up with the idea. The cause of the God concept must have been equal to or greater than God. No being can be greater than God – God is perfect and by definition can not be improved upon. So, the cause of Descartes’ God concept must have been equal to God.

Does ‘equal to God’ translate to ‘identical to God’? It would seem so, for how could a being of limited power come up with the idea of unlimited power? Using the same reasoning: How could a being of limited goodness come up with the idea of unlimited goodness? Whatever caused Descartes’ concept of God must have had all of the familiar attributes of God: omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, omnipresence, and a being with all these attributes is, by definition, God. So, according to this theory, we have established that God caused Descartes to have the conception of God, and it follows that God must exist.

Did Descartes succeed in proving the existence of God? No.

Suppose I write a story about an author who was greater than any author on earth who had ever lived, including me. Using Descartes’ reasoning, I couldn’t have gotten the idea of such an author from observing the world, for by definition no living author would have been sufficient to inspire the idea of an author greater than all living authors. I also could not have created this idea myself, since the author is, by definition, greater than me. Where did I get such an idea?

I could never claim to have an utterly complete idea of what this author would be like. If I had a complete idea of this author, then I could write all of the books that he would write if he existed, because I would know exactly what he would write. Obviously, I cannot do that. If I could, I wouldn’t be writing articles for Digital Bits Skeptic. I’d be writing that author’s books so I could collect millions in royalties. My idea of this author must be some type of abbreviated representation of what the author is really like.

I agree with Descartes that I can’t have a complete understanding of the greatest author in the world, since I am not equal to or greater than the author and cannot observe such an author. However, is my intellect sufficient to come up with an abbreviated and incomplete mental representation? It would seem so, since coming up with the idea only requires being able to think of an author, and mentally ranking that author’s skill. Human beings certainly know what authors are, and what it means to be “greater than” something else. It is therefore within our power to combine those two concepts. Therefore, we can conceive of an idea that is greater than ourselves. Ask any science fiction writer. This fact completely destroys Descartes’ argument for God.

4) “The Big Bang argument for atheism”

Current observational evidence indicates that the universe began in a state of chaos and maximum entropy, maximum disorder. Quentin Smith argues that this is inconsistent with the hypothesis that God created the universe. He sums up his case better than I ever could:

“It is perfectly reasonable to expect a very good, wise, and powerful person to begin his creation in a very beautiful and magnificent way that exhibits an admirably high degree of naturally good order. ‘Complete chaos is just ugly,’ and a perfectly rational finite mind would predict that ugliness is not the very first thing that a good, all-powerful person would want to create. This expectation is so natural and obvious that the belief that the early universe contained the Garden of Eden persisted in Jewish and Christian thought for nearly two thousand years, requiring extensive scientific evidence to be falsified.

“This is why the current observational evidence [that the beginning of spacetime is a state of maximal chaos] falsifies theism. The theistic hypothesis is predictively unsuccessful and is explanatorily valueless, since ‘Because God created it’ is not an explanatorily informative answer to ‘Why is the first state of spacetime totally chaotic rather than ordered in a very beautiful and admirably good way?‘” [6]

I find Smith’s argument highly convincing.

Conclusion

It’s fascinating as I look at these peculiar arguments, and realize that religious philosophy is much broader than I thought. No longer must the debate be limited to reformulating old arguments. No, philosophers of each camp have the opportunity to come up with an argument that is truly novel, which could change the whole debate forever. This is one reason philosophy of religion is so exciting: the debate is like a sword fight with random variables that keep one guessing as to what will come next. Maybe a grenade will appear out of thin air and drop into the hand of one fighter, allowing him to settle the debate in his favor, once and for all. Or maybe it will blow up in his face.

Science is constantly delivering new facts to the philosophers, facts hardly imagined just a century ago. Those facts are the raw material for constructing new arguments, and those arguments are the raw material for deciding the winner of the fight, and the truth. En Garde!

REFERENCES

[1] http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm#19

Accessed 12/6/09

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_world_religions

Accessed 12/6/09

[3] Quentin Smith, “A Big Bang Cosmological Argument for God’s Nonexistence,” Faith and Philosophy, April 1992, Volume 9 No. 2, pp.217-237.

Accessed 12/5/09

[4] See chapter 9 in Nicholas Covington, Atheism and Naturalism (2009)

[5] For a good review of Descartes’ argument, I recommend Daniel Dennett, “Descartes’s Argument from Design,” The Journal of Philosophy, Volume CV, Number 7, July 2008, pp. 333-45.

Accessed 12/6/09

I also want to note that my reformulation of Descartes’ argument is ad lib and that I have added in my own thoughts and extensions in order to make Descartes’ argument as strong as possible, and further to illuminate some of Descartes’ thought.

[6] Quentin Smith, “Time Began with a Timeless Point” Published in God and Time: Essays on Divine Nature Edited by Gregory E. Gansall and David M. Woodruff, Oxford University Press, 2001.

Accessed 12/6/09


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12 Comments
2009 December 23
rc_moore permalink

Very good article.  I find none of proofs survive simple tests of logic.
Addressing only argument #1,  “The Common Consent to God”, and stripping away everything but the basic concept:  A person proposes something, based upon a belief they hold, and then repeats it to others.
Others believe the proposal,  and possibly extend it.  Through social networking, it becomes a popular belief, one that for many, cannot be contradicted, even in the light of evidence.
God?  or the Sarah Palin “Death Panels”?   A Deity?  or the Obama “Birthers”?
We see a simple algorithm that only generates belief, not actual truth, as the logic is based upon an unproven premise and a filtering out of contradictory facts.
Therefore,  the “Common Consent” proof is complete nonsense.  It does not matter how long, or how many believers a proposal has,  it only requires that the belief hold some benefit to those who espouse it, so that the will not easily give it up.

2009 December 23
rc_moore permalink

Nicholas –
 
You may find Quentin Smith’s argument convincing, but I find it based upon woefully out of date cosmology!   His usage of the words chaos and order seem to manufactured for some emotional impact,  not a reflection of  their use in physics.
 
The real objection to a singularity attributed to God is that the basis for ending any logical recursion must be specified up front, otherwise one has merely engaged in circular reasoning.  Quentin Smith’s desire to drag cosmology and physic into the argument has more to do with employment in the field of Philosophy than any real breakthrough in reasoning, I’m afraid.

2009 December 23
Ryan permalink

Hi RC,

I think Smith’s argument is a good one. After all, Victor Stenger has written that the universe began in complete entropy, and we know that the first moments of the expansion were violent and chaotic. It just doesn’t fit what we would expect from a perfect and rational being.

2009 December 23
rc_moore permalink

Ryan –
Victor Stenger is a good source on the subject of God and the entropy question,  but would find Smith’s argument quite flawed I think.  (Because the physics is out of date).  He would of course agree that the current cosmological model provides no evidence for the existence of a God.
I find your anthropic word choices quite interesting.  “Violent, chaotic, perfect,  rational”  — these words have no definitive meaning outside the context of the human brain, trained by evolution and communal speciation.
 
Applying them suggests that the universe only has meaning due to the presence of human life,  and therefore is given a purpose.
 
I reject that.  Such words can have no possible utility in describing singularity conditions (especially pre-singularity conditions).   This makes Quentin Smith arguments quite meaningless, and a bit pretentious.        I prefer formal logic,  which defeats any God-created -singularity propositions quite easily, and without all the cosmological clutter.

2009 December 27
Gloria permalink

If the entire universe has  a ‘meaning’, so to speak, I would like you to show what that meaning is.  Does it not only have meaning because I comprehend that it is there…

  To this you may think that there has to be a god, who created ME!   But, am I the god who see it?  Am I the one who understands?  AND IS NOT ALL WISDOM, and understanding from the DEVIL! 
  God is real … god is the person who is responsible to him/herself, to me.    Religions around the world have all proven that the god-syndrome is just a disease that takes people away from responsible behaviour. 
  I see ‘god religions’ as a disease, personally…the ‘chicken little syndrome’

2010 January 5
George Rumens permalink

The ‘Belief by Numbers’ proof of a god,  has been demolished in my 1200 page book called Principia Humanitas, which I am having difficulty publishing. My book talks of the ‘Four Humours Theory’ of how the human body works, which held the imagination of very thinking man, from ancient Greece 500 bc, to about 1850 ad, which is forty seven years before the birth of my father! It was a widespread mass belief which was held by almost every living person, but fell in a few months, after the discovery of germ-theory in 1850-60.

2010 January 15
Merrick permalink

Wow. All of the arguments are poor, but the one selected as best is, by far, the worst. And I guess it basically boils down to the world we now live in in which ANYTHING that doesn’t fit into our own opinion of reality is attacked from the outside using only evidence from the outside without the minimal attempt to understand something based on its own assumptions.
The Smith argument is based on *Smith’s* opinions of what God *must* be, and since Smith’s God doesn’t jump through the hoop that Smith designed Him to be foiled by Smith *proves* that God doesn’t exitst. (Of course, let’s be clear we’re talking about the Judeo-Christian God here, as the article makes clear at a number of points).
But what does Smith’s God have in common with the Judeo-Christian God? Well, in fact, apparently nothing. And what is Smith’s “requirement” for God (as if Smith had this authority)?

““It is perfectly reasonable to expect a very good, wise, and powerful person to begin his creation in a very beautiful and magnificent way that exhibits an admirably high degree of naturally good order.”

But, what does the Judeo-Christian text *actually* say about the beginning of creaion?

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”

Now what exactly, I ask, is the relation between “without form and void” in the actual Judeo-Christian account of creation and the “exhibits an admirably high degree of naturally good order” that Smith requires of Him. Well, actually, nothing. So, Smith can’t actually be talking about the same God that Jews and Christians believe in and Smith’s argument therefore fails to have any relevance to the question of His existence.

But apparently philosophers just aren’t what they used to be. The Jesuits did better.

2010 January 15
Merrick permalink

George Rumens, you might actually look into “germ theory” a little more closely. It was, in fact, discovered by Louis Pasteur. Writing a 1200 page book one would assume you’d done a fair amount of research. How did you ever rationalize the fact that a fundamental tenet Louis Pasteur laid as the basis for Germ Theory is that spontaneous generation simply doesn’t exist? That rats don’t spontaneously generate from grain, for instance? Without this axiom you can’t then proceed to the requirements of germ theory – isolating the agent and showing that the agent generates disease.
Pasteur, a devout Christian, then takes the immutable physical law against spontaneous generation and deduces a primary cause. He believed that this principle undermined Darwin’s theory because Darwin at some point requires abiogenesis. From the Catholic Encyclopedia:
“What he could not above all understand is the failure of scientists to recognize the demonstration of the existence of the Creator that there is in the world around us. He died with his rosary in his hand, after listening to the life of St. Vincent de Paul which he had asked to have read to him, because he thought that his work like that of St. Vincent would do much to save suffering children. ”

Germ theory negates belief in God, huh?

2010 January 21
nbjayme permalink

“It is perfectly reasonable to expect a very good, wise, and powerful person to begin his creation in a very beautiful and magnificent way that exhibits an admirably high degree of naturally good order. ‘Complete chaos is just ugly,’ and a perfectly rational finite mind would predict that ugliness is not the very first thing that a good, all-powerful person would want to create.”
This logic suffers from subjective perceptionof what beauty and good order is.  Take for example an abstract art — others see it as a mess but the artists see the beauty,  meaning, and cohesiveness of design.
Even the building of any human endeavor starts from chaos to order.  For example, cooking a certain recipe requires many process of cutting, frying, to create the desired flavor and dish.
When we say that God is order and beauty — it is because out of Nothing, God established order and beauty.  

Therefore, Quentin Smith suffers from the  I-expect-it-this-way argument.

;-)

2010 January 21
Ryan permalink

“This logic suffers from subjective perceptionof what beauty and good order is.  Take for example an abstract art — others see it as a mess but the artists see the beauty,  meaning, and cohesiveness of design.”

If we’re made in God’s image then we should share his vision of beauty. Was it mere subjectivity when God said everything was good in the book of Genesis?

Besides, although there are different tastes in beauty, there is still quite a bit of similarity across cultures over what is beautiful.

2010 January 21
rc_moore permalink

“If we’re made in God’s image then we should share his vision of beauty. Was it mere subjectivity when God said everything was good in the book of Genesis?”
How could it be anything else?  No one’s opinion but God’s was being counted!
 
“Besides, although there are different tastes in beauty, there is still quite a bit of similarity across cultures over what is beautiful.”
I have no idea what criteria you could establish that would support this assertion.  Do you have some objective protocol that could be followed over time?
I agree with nbjayme on this one.   The logic is terrible.

2010 January 24
Morgan-LynnGriggs Lamberth[ Carneades] permalink

Nicholas, I take  Kreeft on @ arguments for God in the Amazon Religion Discussion Forum. I add there that in the introduction to a  debate book about God [Craig  v. Nielsen] that he urges us  seek Him by letting Him into our hearts. That is just as stupid as Pascal’s urging others to practice rituals; that is nothing more than to urge us to self-brainwash- to blaspheme reason!
Nicholas, thanks for this site,sir!
Ryan, yes, Smith rocks! What about his finding that each part of Existence makes for more Existence, and what about any objection to that,sir?

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