Atheism on trial
By Oday Shahin September 28, 2010 at 8:04 pm 
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The Big Question is that of our creation.
“One can’t prove that God doesn’t exist,” physicist and Professor Stephen Hawking told ABC News in early September. “But science makes God unnecessary.
Stephen Hawking is an accomplished physicist and glorified academic, but can science alone answer the Big Question?
Hawking with his latest book, “The Grand Design,” went from scientist to preacher, in comparison to his previous books that showcase the fascinating nature of black holes and the cosmos.
But the agnosticism that Hawking is projecting is really atheism.
It indirectly negates the notion of the “supernatural” because science may not have the necessary tools to answer the question.
By creating this gray area that widens the definitions of agnosticism and atheism they become the same in principle. Both ideas don’t attribute to the belief of a supernatural power or God. Atheism just seems more assertive than agnosticism by a little bit.
Hawking is certainly more knowledgeable in the biological and cosmological sciences than I am, but he states that, due to gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. But what is nothing? Even if nothingness can be measured, where does it come from?
This double-edged sword Hawking uses bleeds arrogance with atheist philosophy sprinkled with some science.
Newton saw God as the master creator whose existence could not be denied in the grandeur of creation.
It is important to note that if God is the creator of the universe, then he has the ability to create the universe in a way where empirical evidence will not trail back to him.
In Abrahamic scripture, man is being tested to use faith or rational intuition based on authority of God rather than by humans’ conclusions.
The universe with its complexity is nearly impossible to not have existed without order. If the earth was a couple of degrees closer to the sun, we would all be dead.
Obviously there are physical and mathematical constants found to be universal in nature and constant in time.
For example, the speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second, the earth made of four layers, and humans have 46 chromosomes in their DNA.
I humbly ask who set these constants with which our Earth and life could not have existed?
To say the universe was created randomly out of nothing is to say a wind whipped through a warehouse of airplane parts and blew the pieces around until they formed a perfect, functional 747 jet airplane. This scenario is possible, but it’s highly improbable.
According to Al-Gazaliwho is , a respected Muslim philosopher and pioneer of methodic doubt and skepticism, noted that whatever begins to exist has a cause.
Thus, by using metaphysical intuition, it is extremely difficult to believe that something can come into being from nothing.
Because of the Big Bang, the universe has a cause. Similarly, the earth is aged 4.5 billion years and must have a cause. The burden of proof comes on nonbelievers to answer the question of what or who is the cause.
A Sufi scholar once that said using science to prove God exists is like using a flashlight to prove the sun.
Science is not contradictory to God, but making science godly by daring to answer these questions is intellectually dangerous.
Reach Oday at oshadin@asu.edu
The author writes, “The Big Question is that of our creation.”
Is it? I don’t think that’s true by your own standards.
If God created the universe, that creates much bigger questions, doesn’t it? Why did he do it? What does he expect of us? What lies in store for us? The actual creation of the universe only merits a few lines in Genesis, and rightly so, if the entire universe is created by a god.
But more to the point, per Al-Gazaliwho, if “whatever begins to exist has a cause”, then crediting God as the cause of the universe simply leads us to the bigger question, “what is the cause of God”? Maybe he was created by a meta-God, in which case we have important questions about that entity. And he, in turn, may have been created by a meta-meta-God.
The standard cop-out reply is to define God as not having a beginning to his existence; he’s always been. But if you find that to be a satisfactory explanation, why not say that gravity has always existed, and gravity, per Hawking, was the cause of the universe.
If we’re searching for some entity that transcends even our notion of time and existence, surely a simple force like gravity is a more likely solution than a fantastically complex entity like a god.
By the way, science doesn’t discount the supernatural because we can’t measure it. We discount it because it doesn’t matter. Whether it exists or not, it doesn’t interact with us in any way humans can detect, let alone control. So it may as well not exist.
Why do people still insist that this planet was designed for life to exist when this planet is constantly trying to kill everything on it? Only the resilience and adaptability of living things lets them survive here. The same will be said about every place you find in this grand Universe where life can be found.
God only exists in the shadows the light of truth, knowledge, and science has not yet lit. ‘God’ used to ride from horizon to horizon in a flaming chariot because the sun was unknown. In time, the current god will be pushed out of his throne at the ‘beginning of everything’ as well.
The ’cause’ of the Universe will be found.
Believers only look as far as God but not beyond. Most people angry about Hawking’s assertion that “something can come from nothing” laugh and say “how can something come from nothing” as proof that God must exists as the “creator”. But when questioned “who then created God” simply shrug aside the question with “he has always existed”, which, to me, implies that God too therefore spontaneousness came from nothing. This would seem to negate the need for God since if he did come from nothing then Hawking’s assertion is backed up as they have proven that nothing did indeed create everything.
Atheists can’t explain morality… that’s why it fails. There’s no objective basis for right and wrong under atheism.
Also, Eric, eternality would have to be one of God’s instrinsic qualities if He is, in fact, God. If God weren’t eternal, He’d cease to be God in the first place… so your point is invalid.
Ah yes, the old “Morality has to come from god” fallacy. This falls so short of reality to be laughable. It is both arrogant and ignorant at the same time.
I am an Atheist, and I will explain morality to you. The ‘big gun’ of theists is to claim that morals must come from god because it does not make sense for an individual to not steal, cheat, and kill anything or anyone that gets in its way in order to survive. ‘Morals’ are what theists like to think of as going against ‘instincts’ of self profit and survival. It would not make sense for an ‘instinctual’ person to jump into freezing water to help a stranger and risk their own lives, yet we do.
Why? Where does this urge to help out others even when it could mean the end of our own life come from? Surely not ‘instinct’ which only provides the means to self preservation, right?
WRONG!
We are a social species. And like ALL other social species, we have developed ‘instincts’ to continue the propagation and heath of that species. Your ‘morals’ of helping others, not raping randomly, having empathy for others’ feelings, and even sacrificing your own life for another are actually -all- instinctual. When you look at a species as a -whole-, and stop looking at the individual, it does not make any sense at all to not have these instinctual ‘morals’.
‘Morals’ are not even the realm of humans alone. The appearance of right and wrong exist throughout the animal kingdom. Adult elephants will circle their young to protect them, putting themselves in danger. Primates other than humans have been seen to share and to show kindness to strange members introduced to their group. Countless species of animals from ducks to cats to bears are absolutely KNOWN to adopt other female’s offspring, when ‘instinct’ would tell you you had to kill them to have more chance of passing on your own genes to the next generation.
The thing is, sometimes these animals will kill the offspring rather than adopt. This shows that it is not purely driven DNA instinct, but a choice. That choice may help the entire species survive.
Another aspect of social species is self governing. Simply put, if you don’t act within the rules of your herd/pack/social group, you get kicked out. This dramatically lowers the chances of getting a mate and passing on your genes and ‘instincts’ to another generation. In effect, your bad ‘morals’ stops your line.
The same exact thing goes for humans. We feel empathy for others for the good for the species. We put ourselves in danger for the good for the species. We share for the good of the species. We follow the rules that we create for the good of the species. This is how a social species evolves successfully.
God did not create right and wrong. The battle for our species to survive on this harsh little planet did.
If you are an atheist, according to your logic it is perfectly acceptable for me to commit whatever crimes I want and to hurt as many people as I can because nothing matters. There is no objective right and wrong. Morals don’t matter, even if they do exist. If I did “go against” my species (lets say I murder someone), it ISN’T right or wrong. Do you see my point? Under atheism, murder is neither right or wrong; murder just IS.
Without positing the existence of God, morality is impossible to explain because there is no objective basis for it.
Sean, would you mind explaining to me what is “God”? I grew up in a cheerful place where I never heard that word before and have no idea what you are talking about. Please enlighten me!
You said the same thing twice, only this time you used more words. If we go back and forth long enough, you might just write the entire bible. ;)
You are making assumptions on what atheists think, and assumptions, my lad, are very dangerous things.
First, let’s address that assumption. By making that assumption, you obviously do not have the ability to ‘think’ like the other side. This is a key trait of a good debater. Learn it. If you read my previous post, which I am going to make the dangerous assumption you did actually read, and the less dangerous assumption that you did not understand, you would see that I already said, by implication, that it is completely illogical to go around doing whatever bad things you want in a social species.
By dong bad things, you become an outcast. I’ll equate it to something you -might- understand (another dangerous assumption). On the reality show ‘Survivor’, if you do bad things to others ALL the time, you are likely to get kicked off the island and have less chance of winning. You have to help others at some point. Even though it lessens your own chance of winning in some ways, it makes up for it by keeping you in the game longer.
The same things works for behaviors either learned though culture or gained through instincts. The ‘bad’ members of a group are outcast, either literally for an individual creature, or figuratively for a gene mutation and instinct trait that is superseded by a better socializatable trait.
Now, does it work this way all the time? Not in the slightest. There are grand examples of what happens when a species kills everything in its path, including its own kind and own offspring other than to mate with it. Certain spiders, are a great example of this. They are solitary killing machines. They never evolved the traits that pushed for the instinctual need to bond with other members of their species in a social group. If spiders had the intelligence of humans, and you asked them why they don’t try to get along with each other, you would likely get this answer:
“Why? I am doing fine as I am.”
And they are. They are designed to propagate their species by being as brutal as possible to the main competitor for passing on their genes, which are other spiders of their own kind.
If humans had taken a path closer to spiders, we would not be a social species in the least. We would be loners, fighting anything that posed a threat to our territory. We would not have been able to build our civilization. We would not be able to work together to protect our family groups and pass on our genes through them even if we perish ourselves. Frankly, we would not be humans. We would be spiders (figuratively).
So do morals matter? Yes, they do. They matter to the way we developed to help each other in order to continue the species. Did we actively choose do this? No. It has been a gradual change based simply on “What works better?” Would it make sense for you logically to openly commit any crime you want in a species that has evolved to -mostly- get along together and work for common goals?
For your final points, I am going to agree with parts of them, and adamantly disagree with others. You are looking for an objective answer to a subjective question. Is murder wrong? Well, first define ‘murder’. Then have everyone in the world agree with that definition. ‘Murder’ is wrong, yes. Why? Because the word ‘murder’ is a term used in our social species defined as killing for the wrong reasons. Otherwise it would would be ‘execution’, ‘accidental death’, or, most simply, ‘killing’.
Is killing wrong? Again, a question with a very subjective answer. Some people will say killing is murder under any circumstances. Most don’t. There are always circumstances where killing is needed to keep social order. I am not talking about terror. I speak of the police officer who’s only choice in saving a child’s life from a kidnapper is to put a bullet in his head before he plunges a knife into the child.
Now, let’s go back to that kidnapper. Why would it be wrong for him to kill the child in the first place? “It is just wrong.” is not a valid answer. We have to look deeper. Murder in this manner is disruptive to our social order. Our social order is important to our species continued survival as it is now. If we do not view this murder as ‘wrong’, then how could we trust any random person not to kill us? If everyone walked around the streets knowing that anyone could kill them at any point, out entire collaborative social structure would break down. There are examples of this in the world now, sadly. Humans as they are now would not survive. Only spiders would. Spiders have no morals.
So, yes, murder is wrong by our definition. Is killing wrong? No. Is it right? No. Killing, by definition, just IS. Actions just ARE. It is how you view them in juxtaposition to the health and well-being of not only society, but your place in it, that defines if they are right or wrong.
Morals change based on location, culture, condition, and mostly, viewpoint. What is murder to one person is mercy killing to anther. What is theft to one person is taking what is owed to another. Atheists can not explain morality on an objective basis for one simple reason that you fail to grasp…
NO ONE CAN!
God or no, morals are the quicksilver of human (and even some animal) society. There is not a magic bullet of right and wrong that applies to ALL contingencies. The ‘bible’ does not even come close.
So, what is right or wrong? What are good morals? For the answer to that question, you have to ask your fellow humans. ‘god’ will not answer.
Oh boy, that was longer winded than I though. I can break it down to two simple sentences really, though I don’t know if you will understand.
There is no ‘right or wrong’. There is only ‘better’.
Pardons again. The above is not really to Sean Boy. I know I will not change his worldly view. It is to the other people who might look at his drivel and think to themselves, “Gee, ya know old Sean boy has a point.” and look as silly as he does by passing on his ‘information’. If you want to argue for the religious side, at least use good arguments that are not easily dismissed.
The definition of God is a tricky question, but I concur with the great philosopher St. Anselm and the way in which he defined God. He concluded that God is: “That which no greater can be thought.”
I will respond to your shorter post since, frankly, I don’t really want to read the short essay above it. You stated that there is no right or wrong; there is only “better.” You’re missing my point! Let me explain:
On what basis can you say something is “better” than something else? If you say it’s “better” for the rich to feed the poor and help the homeless than to disregard them and forget about them, you have no basis for that statement. Why is it better? Is it better because it is objectively right to help your brother in need? If you had said yes, you would have just admitted to a moral absolute. If you don’t acknowledge absolutes, helping them wouldn’t matter. Helping ANYONE wouldn’t matter. It would make no difference. If everything is a mistake… if our reality is a mistake… if WE are mistakes… nothing matters. Morality doesn’t matter. Even though you dispute it, you are a moral creature by nature. Humans are moral by nature.
Also, as a side note, I don’t mind if you argue with me but I’d appreciate it if you don’t use the word “drivel” to refer to my points. It seemed a little condescending to me… but of course, being respectful matters not in a world without God because nothing objectively matters.
How can anything be a mistake if it was created without intention?
And no, there are no absolutes like you wish to believe. As I started before, every choice -does- matter. It does not matter in a right or wrong way more than it matters in a left or right way, or up and down, or stay or go.
What does morality have to do with left or right? Well, consider this. You are walking down a path that forks. You take the left path. Later, you learn that if you had taken the right path, you could have averted a disaster of some sort. Was it wrong that you took the left path? No. Was it morally wrong? No. It just would have been better if you had taken the right path.
I will completely agree that humans have -some- morality by nature. We have the same instincts of nurturing and empathy as any other social species. The rest of our ‘morality’ is learned.
I will bow my head to you and start praying to god for forgiveness tomorrow if you can tell me honestly that you KNOW that humans are born knowing what is right and wrong (based on your cultural beliefs). If that were so, if you so believe, then you would not need parents. You would not need to go to school other than to learn knowledge. You would NOT need to go to (insert religious building of choice). You would NOT need to read the bible or koran or (other).
If we are born with ‘god given’ morality and knowing what is right or wrong, then why would we need to be taught morality and right from wrong throughout our lives? Why would a parent ever have to tell her child: “No, it is wrong to hit your brother.”
The only conclusion is that god did NOT give humans morality. It was learned by ourselves through countless generations of just learning to get along in our very social species.
I can see where you are coming from all this, though. You DESPERATELY need to feel that what you do matters. You need to feel that there is a goal to human existence; a reason why we are.
As to your final point, yes, it was wrong for me to call your text drivel. Did god tell me it was wrong through his gift of morality? No. It was wrong because it did nothing to forward the conversation and fostered a feeling of hostility. Hostility is not a good thing to have in a social environment created by a social species. We are taught that by our parents, who were taught by their parents, and so on, all the way back to when our first very distant ancestors started developing groups and a social structure. And by ancestors, I mean little furry creatures living millions of years ago. But evolution is another topic. :)
If you say god gave up morals, then you must also say he gave us the exact hostility that caused me to want to insult you in the first place. Humans also have a strong desire to hurt others who are against them. This IS in our nature from birth, as evident in siblings fighting. Morality is the human taught intervention of these feelings.
In the end, what we do as humans does not really matter to the ‘big’ picture. This planet will die when it is consumed by our own sun, and we will either have learned to leave it by then and find a new home, or we will perish with everything else. In the meantime, life, the Universe, and Everything are wonderful things to learn about, explore, and just enjoy. god is unneeded.
In the end, what we do as humans does not really matter to the ‘big’ picture. This planet will die when it is consumed by our own sun, and we will either have learned to leave it by then and find a new home, or we will perish with everything else. In the meantime, life, the Universe, and Everything are wonderful things to learn about, explore, and just enjoy. god is unneeded.
Weird comment glitch. :/
“What does morality have to do with left or right? Well, consider this. You are walking down a path that forks. You take the left path. Later, you learn that if you had taken the right path, you could have averted a disaster of some sort. Was it wrong that you took the left path? No. Was it morally wrong? No. It just would have been better if you had taken the right path.”
Better according to who? Well, yourself, of course. It’s subjectively better for you. You can’t use the word “better” in an objective sense because this would imply moral absolutes.
I see your point about morality as it relates to birth and childhood. But just because we don’t have an objective moral sense from birth (and that is debateable, but I don’t want to dive into this side issue) doesn’t mean objective morality doesn’t exist… it means we have to discover these morals for ourselves. I believe, even if children didn’t attend school, their environment would teach them about morality. You, yourself, even said that morality exists within the animal kingdom.
“In the end, what we do as humans does not really matter to the ‘big’ picture.”
What you said here is extremely crucial to your worldview, in my opinion. Let me ask you this: why better ourselves as a global community? Why allow women the right to vote? Why not enslave peoples of other cultures who are inferior to us? Is it because doing so is “wrong”? Not according to you, because what we do here on earth doesn’t matter in the big picture. If doing these things were “wrong,” then you would have to acknowledge a moral absolute, particularly the moral absolute of the golden rule.
Those things are wrong based on our upbringing. In the past (and in certain countries today), it was perfectly all right to have slaves, degrade women, and kill whoever did not agree with you. Those cultures have not advanced as far as ours has (based on what we view as ‘advanced’) because, simply, our set of morals works better.
You keep on bringing the debate back around to an absolute, objective set of morals. Such a thing does not exist outside of a person’s individual opinion. The facts just do not back up and absolute or objective set of morals.
All creatures are born with an instinctual set of possible behaviors. One of those is the drive to succeed. Another is the drive to have offspring. Those things -matter- to us because if we were not born with them, we would not be here today. Does it matter to the rest of the Universe? Not at all, because WE don’t matter to the Universe. It will go on with or without us.
We set goals, try to improve ourselves, and try to adhere to the social standards for the culture we are in because all of these things help us to both succeed and to procreate, as well as insure our offspring has a better chance of success, and….
Well, let’s stop right there. Before I continue this debate, I need to know if you believe in evolution or not. If it is not, and you believe that suddenly a man and a women popped into existence, then it does make perfectly logical sense to have an absolute, objective set of morals. If you do think evolution is possible (even if you have doubts), we can continue.
I love how you mock me for believing men and women simply “popped” into existence, yet you contend that the universe did the exact same thing, yet without a cause. I think the debate should end here, though. It seems like we’re beating a dead horse to me, since both of us see reality in a totally different light.
To answer your question: yes, evolution could very well be possible and could very well work with christian theology (which is what I believe for the most part).
I have not yet made a decision regarding this critical issue; I do, however, think that there are valid points on each side of the evolution debate.
Wish you the best.
I never implied I believe the Universe popped into existence. That is a common myth held by most religious folks I have talked to, that all atheists believe the same thing. I honestly don’t have a solid opinion on which of the many ‘start of the Universe’ theories there are out there, be it Big Bang, Collision of Objects, Intersection of Branes, or any of the others founded on physics. I (and everyone else) just do not have enough information yet. However, I refuse to fill that hole of knowledge with a simple (very deceivingly so) answer of “goddidit” with magic.
I also don’t see how I was being mocking, but then, that could be because of the lack of Universal absolute objective morals. ;)