FAITH vs SCIENCE

Faith is often defined as believing without evidence. Hebrews 11:1 is often quoted:

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”

I prefer Christopher Hitchens’ take:

“Faith is the surrender of the mind, it’s the surrender of reason, it’s the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other animals. It’s our need to believe and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. … Out of all the virtues, all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated”

Sometimes those who have faith also seek evidence and logic to back up their belief. This is a win-win for them because if the logic and evidence are found wanting, they can always then fall back on their faith. In any case – let’s take a look at alleged five reasons why God exists:

1.  God provides the best explanation of the origin of the universe.

This is the old, “Well, the universe didn’t come from nowhere” argument. He writes:

…it is highly probable that the universe had an absolute beginning. Since the universe, like everything else, could not have merely popped into being without a cause, there must exist a transcendent reality beyond time and space that brought the universe into existence.

Actually physicists debate whether or not our universe had a beginning. This cannot be taken as an uncontroversial premise. Stephen Hawking argued that our universe may be temporally finite yet unbound, just as it is spacially finite but unbound.

Even if we do accept the premise that our universe had a beginning, this may simply be embedded in a deeper physical reality, something to do with quantum fluctuations in space-time, or something equally incomprehensible.

Giving up on understanding space-time and just saying, “godidit” is not even an answer. This then creates the regression paradox of – well then where did God come from. And if God is transcendent and eternal, then why can’t the underlying physics of the universe be?  Postulating a God actually solves nothing, and certainly the existence of the universe is not a-priori evidence for something like a God.

2.  God provides the best explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe.

The anthropic principle again – the laws of the universe are fine-tuned to be compatible with life. Of course they are, because life exists. Craig argues God is the “best explanation” for this fine tuning:

There are three competing explanations of this remarkable fine-tuning: physical necessity, chance, or design. The first two are highly implausible, given the independence of the fundamental constants and quantities from nature’s laws and the desperate maneuvers needed to save the hypothesis of chance. That leaves design as the best explanation.

He is being prematurely dismissive, in order to unfairly favor his preferred explanation.  There are no “desperate maneuvers” necessary – certainly no more desperate than postulating a God. The universe may have the laws it does because they are necessary, for some underlying and yet undiscovered principle of physics. There may be many universes with various assortments of physical constants, and life arises only in those compatible with life.

3.  God provides the best explanation of objective moral values and duties.

This is perhaps his worst argument, because it is entirely circular. It’s not even a gap argument. He is essentially saying that objective morality exists because God gives it to us, and the existence of objective morality proves God exists. 

4.  God provides the best explanation of the historical facts

    Historic religeous facts can best be explained by religion.

5.  God can be personally known and experienced. 

This is more circular reasoning – Christians believe in God and this has transformed their lives, therefore God exists. This is a profoundly naive argument. Human psychology is a far simpler explanation. In fact decades of psychological research have shown that basic human psychology – the need for meaning, control, understanding, etc., all lend themselves to religious faith.

The good thing is that atheists tend to be very passionate people and want to believe in something. If they would only put aside the slogans for a moment and reexamine their worldview in light of the best philosophical, scientific, and historical evidence we have today, then they, too, would find Christmas worth celebrating!

Craig is saying that atheists are biased by narrow “slogan” thinking, when evidence and logic clearly shows that his faith is correct. He has only demonstrated, however, that it is he who is following narrow and fallacious thinking.

For me it is about family, friends, and taking time from our hectic lives to consider how much we appreciate  the people in our lives. Humans are social creatures – we survive and find meaning in our relationships with others. On the darkest day of the year, we shine a little light of love, companionship, and community into each-others lives. No faith required.