The Ultimate Question

For my second topic introductory post I've decided to go for philosophy (if you hadn't guessed from the title), and I'm diving in at the deep end! See you on the other side...

The Ultimate Question

For £1,000,000, and the key to understanding the universe and the answers countless other philosophical issues, this is your final question:

Dun dun dunnnn...

Does God exist?

a) Yes
b) No

You can ask the audience (about 85% said yes, and 15% said no) or phone any friend you like. You're not allowed to use your 50:50 for this one...

Got an answer? Well when you have, read on, and prepare to think again...


Why God might exist

The Cosmological Argument

This is probably the ultimate argument argument for this side of the ultimate question, and certainly the one that makes your head hurt the most.

Look at the computer, laptop, or possibly phone that you're reading this on. Who made it? Probably an electronics corporation. Who founded that corporation? Most likely Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Who 'made' them? Well. you get the idea. Eventually, assuming you accept current scientific theories, you end up with the (one of) the very first organisms, the amino acids that combined to form this first organism, the individual atoms that bonded to form the amino acids, the hydrogen atoms that fused to makes these atoms in the first seconds of the universe, the energy that made up the hydrogen atoms, and finally the Big Bang itself (or whicheverscientific theory of Genesis you happen to subscribe to).

But what started that? While a physicist, cosmologist or any scientist (who doesn't believe in God) will probably look at you sheepishly and mumble something, anyone with a religious conviction will confidently state, with their head held high, "God". To summarise the cosmological argument with some simple logic:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The Universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the Universe had a cause.

It's hard (well, pretty much impossible) to get your head around it, if you don't believe in God. The universe exists, but why does it have to exist? Has someone determined that it should, or must, exist? Has it spontaneously erupted from absolute nothingness for no reason whatsoever? If your head is starting to hurt, please take a break before continuing.

To elaborate on our previous logical argument we can add a fourth condition - that this cause must not itself have a cause (to avoid an infinite regress of creation). This means that the cause must have always existed and be powerful enough to create the universe - the perfect description of God!

But this argument can only lend any credence to a God that creates the universe, and then buggers off (the foundation of Deism). In fact, the cause, be it God or something else, does not even need to stick around after it's created the universe. It could even be that the 'cause' ceased to exist after the creation of the universe, having expended itself to form the cosmos, thus conserving the energy and matter of reality (how nice).

Like all the arguments in favour of God's existence, I find the cosmological argument flwaed, for reasons that will be explained later...


The Teleological or 'Design' Argument

An argument often brought up in the God question is that the universe and our world seems to have a particular purpose, and that its 'intelligent design' greatly exceeds any human comparisons. Proponents suggest that this implies the existence of a vastly intelligent designer/creator (i.e. God). There are several elements to this particular argument.

The first is that the natural world seems to be designed so perfectly, with ecosystems functioning in harmony, and animals that appear perfectly 'designed' for their function (such as the speed of the cheetah, or the brain power of the human), and therefore there must be a designer.

The 'watchmaker analogy':  "In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer.
But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be enquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed the watch for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.
Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation." - William Paley, Natural Theology
In short, that the sheer complexity of the universe implies a designer.

The 'fine-tuned' universe. This is a form of the teleological argument with a modern, scientific twist, and in my opinion the most significant of the variations of the teleological argument. It argues that all of the constants of the universe are so well tuned for human life to arise, from the ratio of the strength of gravity to that of electromagnetism, to the distance of the Earth from the Sun, and from the strength of the strong nuclear force to the number of spatial dimensions in space-time (wow, that was a tiring sentence to write).


The argument from morality

The final argument I'll be looking at is the argument from morality, which is that we all have a sense of what is right and wrong, so this must have come from an archetype of morality - i.e. God. For instance, we innately know that murder is wrong - even murderers usually understand the immorality of what they've done, even if they feel it's justified for whatever reason.

There's dozens of other arguments that God exists, such as the argument from personal experience, the ontological argument and the argument from love, but I don't feel they're worth going into (but perhaps I will some time!).


Why God probably doesn't exist (in my opinion)

I'm now going to (attempt to) tear apart the previous arguments that God exists (and probably fail).

A Response to the Cosmological Argument

The primary objection to the cosmological argument is the pertinent question of what caused the first cause? Most theists will state that God has always existed, but this raises countless more questions. If God has always existed, it means that he existed an infinite amount of time ago, but then it would take an infinite amount of time to reach the present day (an impossibility!) Or does God exist beyond time and space, so is exempt from its rules and constraints?

What is boils down to is that while establishing a first 'cause' for the universe is a mammoth, if not impossible, task and would require a profound explanation, attempting to explain the existence of some omnipotent, omniscient 'being', who has always existed, is beyond time and space, and created the universe for no discernible reason (at least for a being infinite in every respect), is another kettle of fish entirely - and it's a kettle of vicious piranhas. Invoking the existence of God into the question of why anything exists only serves to immensely compound the difficulty of the problem.

Ultimately we may be able to establish why the universe 'happened', and perhaps we will find that it was God. However, to assume an unexplainable answer to an unanswerable question, just because it is currently the only possible answer, is arrogant and plain lazy!


Debunking the Teleological Argument

Next up, the design argument. I'm going to split this into two parts - the conventional design argument, and the 'fine-tuned' universe argument.

So first up, the conventional design argument. Just to refresh your memory, this is an argument that everything seems to be so beautiful, complex and perfectly designed that it must have an immensely intelligent designer. Let's deal with beautiful first. We, on our little planet Earth, have no benchmark for beauty other than the Earth itself. What we see on Earth is all we have ever seen of the surface of a planet inhabited by complex life, so we are in no position to claim that the Earth is so beautiful that there has to be have been a designer. After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and an alien intelligent species might consider our planet as a hideous blight on the galaxy...

Next, how do we explain the apparent complexity of the universe, much like the inner workings of a stopwatch? In this respect, God has become the 'God of gaps'. When, in the past, we have found something that we cannot explain, we can simply invoke the existence of a designer beyond human understanding who made it so. But today we understand much of the workings of the universe, and are able to trace the path from the chaotic burst of energy of the start of the universe to the level of complexity we see today. Since we can see how this complexity arises from the fundamental physical, chemical and biological laws of the universe, there is no longer any need to bring God into the equation, as most things can now be explained simply using scientific discoveries.

Now I'll look at the 'perfection' of life on Earth. Unless you deny the theory of evolution, which is virtually an indisputable fact, the apparent perfection of organisms on Earth is of course a result of the process of natural selection. Those life-forms that are not adapted to their environment die out, and those that are adapted survive to pass on their genetic code, thus gradually 'perfecting' that species.

But there are certainly many imperfections to life on Earth. There are carnivores that brutally hunt, kill and eat their prey - surely not the mark of an omnibenevolent creator. Humanity's technology has, in fact, far exceeded the adaptations of many life forms. For instance, solar cells have a considerably higher efficiency of capturing sunlight than the leaves on plants. In addition, would an omniscient designer knowingly let millions of species die out over time in order to reach this 'perfection'? I don't think so.

And now we come to the 'fined-tuned' universe - that the fundamental laws and variables of the universe seem to be precisely set for the rise of complex life. This fine-tuning doesn't mean that someone set them to values suitable for us, as if they were not we wouldn't even be here to think about it. In other words, having these values set as they are is a perquisite to even being able to think about the fact that they are set in this way (you might want to reread that sentence). Recent cosmological theories suggest the existence of countless other universes, blinking in and out of existence in a grand 'multiverse', most of which will not be able to support complex life as we know it, and some of which may collapse a split second after coming into existence due to a high strength of gravity. It is perfectly possible that some form of life, even intelligent life, could exist with physical laws that are vastly different to the ones in our own universe. Just because we can't easily imagine it doesn't mean it can't exist!

Some proponents have also suggested that the distance of the Earth from the Sun implies that someone placed it there. In fact, the earth could have been a few million kilometres nearer or further from the Sun, and still have life arise on it in a form that we could recognise. It's also possible that complex life could arise if the planet was considerably further from or nearer to the Sun, adapting in a very different way to how it has. And that also leads to the awkward question of why God would have decided to create countless trillions of barren rocks with no discernible use...


A Critical Look at the Argument from Morality

Finally we come to the argument that the inbuilt morality of human beings hints at an archetypal being from which this morality originated. But, like the design argument, this can also be easily explained using the brilliant Theory of Evolution.

Although a lot of our knowledge and beliefs comes from our experiences, much of it is built into our brains. Imagine that, a million years ago or so, one of our ancestors' genes mutated, resulting in the emergence a very violent element to their psyche. What would the reaction be of the tribal or family group to which this individual belonged? If he was aggressive to other members of this community, he would be shunned, or possibly killed, preventing him from passing this mutation on.

We can apply this to most elements of 'morality'. In order for a tribe to survive and propagate, it would have to be able to work closely together to gather and conserve very scarce resources - there would be no space for stealing, murder, unequal distribution, unwarranted violence, etc. if they were to survive long enough to pass on their genetic code.

So morality is probably a byproduct of the forces of natural selection and survival of the fittest, or in this case, the survival of the most moral. No external forces needed whatsoever!


The Ultimate Question (again)

Okay, that first question was unfair, so we've decided to give you another one. For the key to your understanding of the universe and of your existence, this is your final question (no prize for this one...):

Dun dun dunnnn...

Do you think that God exists?

a)  Yes
b)  Probably
c)  Probably not
d)  No

Your not allowed to ask the audience or phone a friend. If you want to go 50:50, try reading all this again. But do try to come to an answer; not based on what your parents, your friends or your community thinks, but on what you think, having looked closely at both sides of the argument (closer than just reading this post!)


Conclusion

Will we ever be able to answer the God question? Probably not, although I certainly don't think it's impossible that we could.

However, we can show the likelihood that God exists - through philosophy, through logic and through science. As these fields, especially science, have developed and advanced over the years, many of the gaps in understanding and phenomena previously ascribed to God have since been shown to arise from the fundamental laws of reality. Eventually there may nothing left for God to do, nothing left that he could have done and nothing left that he can do in the future, suggesting that there is no God at all! The existence of God has been shown to be less and less likely since the Renaissance, and continues to be shown to be less and less likely to this day.


- Daniel