You Can't Prove Atheism and Naturalism are Correct!

In shifting from defense to offense, theists sometimes attempt to turn the tables by attacking with, "you can't prove atheism is true!", or "you can't prove naturalism is true!", or "atheism and skepticism require just as much faith as Christianity!" The unstated premise in such attacks is that, without an iron-clad proof, atheism/naturalism/skepticism are no more reliable a guide to understanding the world than religion - that all of them ultimately rely on belief and faith. They say that one is faith in god, and the other is faith in science or empiricism, faith in the continuity and predictability of nature, or faith in man. This equating of religious faith and empirical faith is "false balance" or "false equivalence". It so distorts and dilutes the word, "faith", as to render it practically meaningless. If "faith" means having any expectations at all about how the future will turn out based on inference (such as "faith" that the sun will rise, or "faith" that a red hot burner will hurt if I touch it, or that an apple will fall when dropped), then the meaning of that word has been so altered as to be completely useless. I don't think any objective and fair-minded person should call the trust we put in those sorts of expected outcomes to be "faith". Rather a better word for the second type is "trust". It is trust in natural processes which are the essence of naturalism. It is a set of true, justified, expectations that allows all living creatures to interact with the world and to move safely through it.

At first, this may simply appear to be an attempt by religious believers to bring science down to the their level – i.e., having no firm and provable basis for belief. But it is more than that. It is the first step in a process of the destruction of the scientific/rational worldview. That first step to to equate their foundations. The next shoe to drop would be to show that scientific faith is weak and lost without reliance on god; that it is an inferior form of faith, that science "presupposes" god, or that Christianity somehow is responsible for the Scientific Revolution. Next would be to persuade the scientific minded to abandon their principles and join the “saved” and those who subscribe to the “true” faith.

Belief based on empiricism, logic, theory, evidence, testing, and outside review is not at all like a faith whose first principles are inscrutable deities, personal revelations, mystical, myth-filled text, cultural traditions, strong personal emotions, societal pressure to conform, and priestly admonitions. The objects of rational belief – the real world entities to which those beliefs refer - do not reveal themselves only to the privileged few. They are not matters of taste, preference, bias, opinion, tradition, culture, and custom. The truth of these beliefs is easily demonstrated and reproducible by anyone who cares to test them. They are not culturally dependent, and not learned at the foot of priests. If specialized education is required to comprehend some of the more arcane topics, anyone with the aptitude, intelligence, resources, and interest can obtain the training and experience of that knowledge, firsthand. As Phil Plait wrote:

“Trust is when you accept what well-sourced evidence tells you. Faith is believing in something despite evidence to the contrary.”

To put it another way, where there is good evidence, there is no need for faith. And where faith is needed, it is principally due to a lack of evidence. It is simply a devious and dishonest language game when apologists use very broad term, "faith", to describe both kinds of activities. Skeptics approach religious claims, and other faith-based beliefs, very carefully to avoid being taken in by every new idea that is proposed. Skepticism, itself, is not a faith or a belief system. It does not represent an active desire to disbelieve what others believe. It is a very reasonable approach to evaluating truth claims. Skepticism is the hallmark of an adult who thinks for himself. If after approaching a truth claim with skepticism, it survives, then the skeptic has good reasons to accept it. A skeptical approach filters bunk from reality. Skeptics only accept truth claims that pass through the filter. Without that filter, practically any claim would have to be accepted. We see non-skeptical gullibility in popular culture, and we see it in religion.

But what about the proof they request? Is a request for proof of atheism and naturalism reasonable? Can we really prove anything in the real world to a sufficiently high degree as to be convincing to a theist? The atheist, taken off guard, may begin to feel a little queasy at the idea that his antagonist actually may have a good point. But this attack is a smokescreen and is without merit. Of course you can't prove either way of viewing reality - as surely as we can't prove with complete, 100% certainty anything in the world (although there are some things we can be certain of...). Solid proofs and deductive reasoning are applicable primarily in highly controlled scenarios such as in deriving and proving mathematical theorems, formal and symbolic logic, and in applied areas of technology such as software and circuit design - all areas where the conclusion is completely contained in the premises, and the premises are totally clear, unambiguous, and universally agreed to. In other words, rock-solid deductive proofs only can be obtained in extremely constrained and "clean" scenarios. Math and logic, though they lend themselves to the deductive proof, don't reveal truths about the actual world. Instead, they reveal the consequences of their axioms and premises. They start with an axiomatic structure and set of rules, and from those building blocks, theorems can be derived. They don't tell us which of the axioms are actually true. For that you need to go into the real world and look around.

So, what can we be certain of? We cannot be certain of the uniformity of nature, of the existence of other minds, of the external world, the reality of the past - that doesn't leave much does it? But we can be certain of the outcomes of our own logical systems. Logical propositions, do have certain truth value (binary true/false), and we can be certain of their truth - certain in the real sense of the word. The certainty I am talking about depends on the difference between Hume's "statements of fact" or Kants "synthetic" statements (about phenomena in the world) and Hume's "relations of ideas" or Kant's "analytic" statements, which deal with entities that exist in the abstract, non-physical realm (the world if ideas, propositions, and concepts). Relations of ideas do have true/false values. Certainty doesn't play into that kind of knowledge. Analytic statements say nothing of the outside world, but only express the consequences of axioms which we have the ability to define. The truth of their conclusions can be known with certainty - for example, if we define "bachelors are unmarried men", and posit a hypothetical man "John, who is unmarried", then we know with certainty that our hypothetical "John" is a bachelor. However, if we actually met a flesh-and-blood man, John, on the street who claimed to be unmarried, we could only say he is probably a bachelor, because he might be misrepresenting himself, or forgot he was married, or developed rapid onset amnesia, is is a spy, or is cheating on his wife, or something messy like that. The same with the rules of arithmetic. We know, by definition, that 2 + 2 = 4 is true, not just "probably true". But if someone gives us 2 apples and 2 oranges, and we want to determine how much fruit we have, we can't be sure - one of them might be made of wax, or a hologram, or some kind of magic trick, or the giver may have taken a piece back before we get a chance to count them. Usually we will have 4 pieces of fruit, but not always. The real world is messy, the analytic world is not. So for "relations of ideas" we can have certainty, but not for "statements of fact" and one statement of fact is "God told me thus and such" or "I know Jesus died for my sins". You can't know that with any type of certainty, even if you feel certain about it. These are assertions of existence (about god) or some recollection (god talked to me), and we can be, and often are, mistaken about those sorts of things.

Further, science doesn't attempt to "prove" its theories. This has been well understood ever since Karl Popper wrote The Logic of Scientific Discovery in which he introduced the concept of "falsifiability" instead of relying on "verifiability". Nor does science claim that it can "prove" that its Scientific Method is the most reliable way to discover new information - it uses the methods that seem to work best. The Scientific Method and Methodological Naturalism, allow us to create tests about hypotheses that can be disproved, but never really proved with 100% certainty. We have not "proved" that all apples will fall to the ground when dropped, but every experiment done so far to test the hypothesis that gravity acts on apples has failed to be disproved. The results are so consistent that no one is interested in making additional observations of this phenomenon.

As David Hume first clarified 250 years ago, we cannot have "absolute certainty" in some basic things that we must take for granted. Among these are the existence of the external world, of the past and our memories, of other minds, that the sun will rise tomorrow, etc. But we have "reliable knowledge" that these things exist, enough confidence to allow us to get out of bed and proceed with the day. According to Hume, even though our belief in the reality of an external world is irrational, although it is utterly unjustifiable, that belief is natural and unavoidable. It is just something that humans do. We are in the habit of supposing that our ideas correspond to external entities, even though we can have no real evidence for it. Now, Hume thought that there really was an external world, but just felt compelled to note the disquieting fact that you can't really prove it. He recommended that we fall back on a "mitigated skepticism" that readily concedes the limitations of human knowledge, but still continue to pursue our lives, our investigations, and in pushing the frontiers of knowledge forward. We should not be immobilized by the fact that much of life is uncertain, but should press on.

Life is not like a mathematical formula. Deductive proofs are not really of much practical use in daily living, and certainly when trying to understand the nature of reality. They never convince anyone who didn't already believe. If we want to understand our universe, it is going to involve going out and looking at it. When, during that investigation, certain "facts" are discovered, we can go back to the mathematical and logical systems that were invented before the discovery, and find one or more of them that logically map onto the new aspects of the universe that were discovered, and at that point we can follow the logic to the conclusions to try to predict what the consequences of these new facts will be. As Sherlock Holmes put it so well:

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

That describes the apologist approach to their various proofs exactly. Apologists don't do empirical investigation. They engage in this armchair philosophizing in trying to explain "life, the universe, and everything". They think about all of the possible ways the world could be, and conclude that those ways must somehow include the idea of god. There is no step in their thinking process in which they actually go out and look at how the universe actually is, and experiment with their ideas. You don't need to do that in their way of thinking, because they are just interested in finding ways to argue to the conclusion that they have already reached, which is that god must be the centrual hub of the universe. This kind of reasoning has never has never taught us anything true and interesting about the actual world. The early religious cosmologists saw the universe as being made of the flat, circular surface of the earth (the land circumscribed by the horizon), a heavenly firmament (a solid celestial sphere with stars rigidly embedded in it) above, a world of water above the stars and firmament, and another world of water below the surface of the earth. In the complete absence of data, they reasoned their way to this based on the bible:

"And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven."(Genesis 1:6-8)

and

"In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened." (Genesis 7:11)

Here, I offer some proofs...
Getting back to the much desired deductive proof of atheism - there is a form of logical reasoning called “denying the consequent” (AKA - “modus tollens”), which is valid form of reasoning in Propositional Logic. It can be used to "prove" god doesn't exist. But of course, this will convince no one who is already committed to Christianity. The abstract form of the argument is:

• If P, then Q.
• Q is false.
• Therefore P is false.

where "P" is the premise, and "Q" is the conclusion. Used in a simple example:

• If it is raining, the sidewalks will be wet.
• The sidewalks are not wet.
• Therefore it is not raining.

That is an absolutely sound and valid set of propositions. Translated into a concrete set of propositions concerning god:

• If GOD EXISTS, then GOD'S PROMISES will be kept.
• GOD'S PROMISES were NOT kept.
• Therefore GOD EXISTS is false.

So, what is it that constitutes GOD'S PROMISES? How about the promise that Jesus would return within one generation? Specifically:

• Matthew 24:34 - Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.
• Luke 21:32 - Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all has taken place.
• Mark 13:30 - Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

These passages all look pretty similar, but that is just because Mark wrote it first, and then Matthew and Luke plagiarized him. But that is for a different chapter... In any case, we have three prominent new testament writers communicating a promise from god - that Jesus would return before "this generation" passes away. If you read the preceding verses, you can see that "these things" refer to his second coming. The chapter starts with his disciples asking, "what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?". He answers them with references to "the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory", "heavenly bodies will be shaken", "the stars will fall from the sky", and "he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds".

Obviously Jesus didn't come in that or any other generation. So this appears to be a very serious set of broken promises. This bring us to the conclusion: GOD DOES NOT EXIST. Apologists have accomplished some of their most impressive verbal gymnastics explaining this serious problem away. I won't get into every one of their rebuttals, but among them are:

• the kingdom of god DID come in "this generation", when Jesus died, his spiritual kingdom began.
• "this generation" refers to some future generation. The story is not about the present but about some set of future events.
• "these things" that were going to take place refer to the fall of Jerusalem to Rome in 70AD, not the return of Jesus.
• Jesus did return spiritually before that generation passed away, in judgment on the nation of Israel, when Titus besieged and destroyed Jerusalem in 70AD.
• etc.

Here is yet another proof that god does not exist:

• If GOD EXISTS, then he would not allow gratuitous evil to exist.
• Gratuitous evil does exist.
• Therefore GOD EXISTS is false.

What is "gratuitous evil"? It is evil that has no possible redeeming value, like a fawn being slowly burnt to death in a forest fire (not caused by man), where no one ever learns of the fawn's suffering and agonizing death. Of course Christians have an answer for that - we cannot know god's mind, and there may yet be some underlying good that results from something that (on the surface) seems entirely unnecessary. There are other ways they justify it which I won't go into. But once again, they bend over backwards to show the argument does not work.

So, will these "proofs" convince any Christians that god does not exist yet, that atheism is true? No, I didn't think so. That is because no one really wants to use deduction for this type of problem - there is no deductive proof that would convince a believer. And likewise, there is no deductive proof of God's existence that would convince a confirmed atheist. As the philosopher, Immanuel Kant said, there is a sharp distinction between "analytic judgements" (analogous to Hume's "relations of ideas") and "synthetic judgements" (analogous to Hume's "matters of fact"). He showed that no collection of deductive analytic statements (for example proofs about god's necessary existence) could establish a synthetic conclusion (such as god really and truly exists). Because neither scenario (his existence or his non-existence) causes a logical contradiction, no deductive proof can be brought to bear on it. Each are logically possible, so to prove his existence, we will have to go out and find him, the way we would prove the existence of Bigfoot by going out and catching one. Likewise, if our naturalistic worldview is all an illusion and we are being fooled in a devilishly consistent manner by some devious alien intelligence or malevolent demon (e.g., Descartes' Evil Demon), this would cause no logical contradiction. The truth or falsity of the religious and of the naturalistic worldview do not lend themselves to deductive argument. Instead, I would recommend that one apply the "Criteria Of Adequacy" to decide which world view (religious or naturalistic) is a better fit with our experience. Which has better explanatory power, or explanatory scope; which is more fruitful, consistent, conservative, and modest? Which "fits the data" of our experience better?

Of course no Christian would concede and say, "well, those look like good deductive arguments - I'm convinced!" There are so many opportunities to redefine the details of an argument's premises, interpret events differently, make it seem like it is not a problem, that any offered proof becomes useless. But we already knew that - it is utterly futile to try to use deductive logic to "prove" god doesn't exist. No matter what set of formal propositions you come up with, there will be some way for the motivated theist to find a loophole.

Again, using the argument form of “denying the consequent” (aka “modus tollens”) we can offer a positive deductive proof that naturalism is correct. The argument that we can rely on empirical evidence and naturalistic (rather than supernatural) explanations follows:

• If (P) "using naturalism and induction from sense experience to make inferences about the world" is invalid and unjustifiable, then (Q) "science (which relies on inference and naturalism) has no hope of working".
• However, "Q" is false! Science does work! There are countless examples of the progress that it has introduced, discoveries that it has made, and new technologies it has spawned. There are no counter examples to its success during the centuries it has been practiced.
• Therefore, (P is false) "using naturalism and induction from sense experience to make inferences about the world" IS valid.

Obviously if there was significant evidence in support of the claim that drawing conclusions through the scientific approach was invalid, then opponents would have a case. But such evidence is entirely absent, and there is overwhelming counter-evidence. Nor is there any competing theory as to why science tends to produce correct, useful, consistent, predictive, and informative results. Barring the existence of a competing explanation that accounts for its success (trickery by Satan to test our faith is one such untestable explanation, as is Solipsism), it’s plain, obvious, common sense to accept as fact that inference from the real world is valid, and these real-world experiences are not interspersed with miracles. It would require agonizing logical contortions to explain away the falseness of statement “Q” above (i.e., “science has no hope of working”) using some other argument. The rule of Parsimony would indicate that the obvious explanation, above, is the correct one. Still, this does not convince Theists. Though they may ask for conclusive proof, when it is provided, they reject it.

So, the theist request for the atheist to "prove god doesn't exist" or "prove atheism is true" are just blocking tactics. When such a proof is delivered, the theist rejects it, debates it, and finds ways to redefine the problem so that the proof doesn't satisfy them. I am quite sure that there is no proof that could be provided to the theist that they would accept. To quote Massimo Piggliuci from his Rationally Speaking blog, when discussing a recent lecture by Richard Dawkins, the famous "New Atheist":

"Dawkins still appears to be convinced that religion will be defeated by rationality alone. Were that the case, David Hume would have sufficed."

This is in reference to Hume's Dialogs on Natural Religion, in which he systematically shows how miracles and the resurrection of Jesus almost certainly didn't happen. Logic, reason, and empirical evidence will not be what eventually move Christians away from their faith, if that ever happens. If they were effective, then theism would have died out 250 years ago.

Is God the basis for our ability to know the world?

One Christian argument goes back to the philosopher, David Hume's book, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In it, he concluded that our reliance on inference and induction about our experiences in the world, and that the existence of the world itself, cannot be logically proved, but are known to us only through custom and habit. In the 250 years since he wrote this, philosophers have tried numerous techniques to give induction a legitimate, firm basis, but that goal has not been achieved. It seems to be the case that there is no way to conclusively prove that we can reliably depend on science and nature to behave the way we have come to expect - that tomorrow the sun may decide not to rise or an apple may not fall to the ground when dropped. A Christian argument is that only by belief in god can we make the firm statement that our inferences about the world, about causality, about the uniformity of nature, are justified. God, in his moral perfection and desire for us to live fully, does not hide reality from us, but reveals it through nature, and in fact is the basis for science!

This hopeful, but desperate (and in my opinion naive), assertion seems to overlook a few unpleasant historic facts. Since the beginning of the modern era science 500 years ago, religious institutions (both the Catholic and Protestant branches) have systematically opposed many important scientific advances. Among these are the facts of biological evolution, cosmology and the extreme age of the universe, and heliocentricsm. They resisted the implication of how geological processes work (case in point - the flood), new discoveries addressing the problems of consciousness and neuroscience, the search for the origin of life, etc. Secondly, apologists regularly allow god to revoke the uniformity of nature and the universality of physical laws by permitting him to break those rules whenever and however he likes. So, on the contrary, their god does NOT care about presenting a uniform face of nature to humans, but arbitrarily violates those laws whenever it is convenient. This shows not a promise to reveal nature to us, but a disdain for consistency regarding laws of nature.

Vincent Torley, an apologist, writes,

"...Even if we assume that objects <in the universe> somehow instantiate rules, there remains the epistemic problem of knowing whether we’ve chosen the right model, or identified the right mathematical equation (i.e. laws of Nature) for characterizing the rules that define a certain kind of object – be it a tiny electron or a star, like the sun. But if we <assume> that God wants to make intelligent beings, and that God wants these intelligent beings to reason their way to God’s existence – then we can infer that the rules which are embodied by objects in the natural world must be tailor-made to fit the minds of intelligent beings that are capable of contemplating their Creator. In other words, the universe is designed to be knowable by us. Hence we don’t need to concern ourselves with the theoretical possibility that the rules which characterize things might be too complicated even in principle for us to grasp. God, then, is the ultimate Guarantor that science can work ... Either God exists or scientific knowledge is impossible."

He is invoking Descartes' attempt to prove that god would never deceive us:

"God ... a being having all those perfections that I cannot comprehend ... and a being subject to no defects whatever ... cannot be a deceiver, for it is manifest by the light of nature that all fraud and deception depend on some defect."

Nevermind that god is a known deceiver (e.g., he told Adam and Eve they would die if they ate the fruit and they didn't, he told Abraham to kill Issac, and then stopped him at the last minute, he planted a "deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets", and in the new testament, "sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie"). The truth is that we don't know why or how it is that humans, and humans alone, have figured out how to probe the secrets of the universe. We do have the curiosity, and we seem to be slowly figuring it out. Religionists are talking nonsense when the confidently credit god with giving us this skill. There is absolutely no basis for making and defending such an unprovable claim. Anyone could make a similar claim about their own personal creator entity, whether it is the Christian god or some super-intelligent alien race, or the result of an experiment by an other-worldly cosmic hacker who threw some rules together and hit the "start" button.

Speculation about such untestable ideas is fruitless. Barring evidence to the contrary, it is most reasonable to provisionally conclude that we humans have developed this talent ourselves despite a steady religious headwind blowing us back, discouraging scientific investigation and any stifling questions whose answers don't come from accepted religious dogma. As a species we happen to be gifted with large brains and dexterous hands and the ability to think about abstract models. It is supremely presumptuous for apologists to now start giving god credit for what man has done with no help from them or their god.

It is true that our expectations of the future matters of fact lies in the relation of cause and effect, say both Hume and common sense.

"By means of that relation alone, we can go beyond the evidence of our memory and senses."

The only way we could obtain knowledge of causality would be to infer it from our past observations of regularities. Our prediction of future events based on the past observations is not a rational activity, but just a matter of habit and an intuitive sense of probability – the odds of the sun not rising are infinitesimal. When we project findings about these relations into the future, we must use an intermediate premise, the uniformity of nature, which is risky, because it can change at any time and be proven false. The chicken thinks that the human will always bring it grain until the day he comes with a hatchet. According to Hume:

"It is impossible, therefore, that any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance of the past to the future; since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of that resemblance. All inferences from experience, therefore, are effects of custom, not of reasoning."

For some reason, there is a trend in modern western thought to obsess with obtaining absolute, complete certainty - in particular it drives Christians to find a god who they can have utter confidence in. It seems to the apologists that unless you can deductively prove your theory (in this case, that the inductive method is reliable), you have failed. Employing the fallacious argument from consequences, Torley and others like him posit a god to save us from the uncomfortable position of not really being sure about our knowledge of the world.

But we should consider this need for a rigorous proof that we are not misperceiving the world - is it really essential to be able to produce such a proof? The problem of induction doesn't have to be seen as such a large obstacle. Pragmatists are not worried by it at all. They see the uniformity question as falling out in one of these ways:

1. Nature really is uniform and regular, or
2. Nature is “somewhat” uniform and regular, or
3. Nature really is not uniform at all, and there is no significant pattern or connection between past and future.

For cases (a) and (b), induction would be a wiser rule to follow than not. Only for case (c) is induction of no help. But in cases (a), (b), and (c) abandoning induction is NEVER helpful. So, the pragmatic approach would be to use the method which produces the most success, which is to act as if induction is warranted.

Yet another approach to "disappear" the problem of induction is to approach it through "Coherentism". This model of knowledge asserts that scientific statements can be said to be valid if they fit cleanly into an existing coherent system of other known facts or beliefs. If they form part of a coherent whole (such as the existing body of science), they can be said to be correct. So, whether or not induction is warranted is irrelevant - it is the integrity and coherence of our theories that matter. In this view, there is no requirement that scientific statements always be supported by more fundamental statements (a la infinite regress), or that we make assumptions about the uniformity of nature. Instead our theories and worldviews can be said to be provisionally “true” if they successfully serve their role in a network of mutually supporting scientific disciplines. Similarly, the fundamental statements that support more complex concepts in several disciplines are buttressed by their repeated successful application.

Wittgenstein advises us to stop trying to talk about things that we will never be able to decide. Some things must simply be observed in awe and admiration. The metaphysics of reality falls into that category. In his view, philosophy had nothing to say about it. He demonstrated that when people try to gain certainty or to convey it to others by making controversial, confusing, or debatable propositions they are engaging in confused thinking and semantic nonsense that hinders understanding instead of helping it. Through his work, he attempted to clear the table of philosophical double-talk (such as the nature of causality and reality) by dismissing it and the majority of philosophical questions as simple misuse of language. He saw a human tendency to become trapped in the language we use to describe our ideas to such a degree that the ideas become more important than the reality that they may or may not actually refer to. Our conceptual confusions involving our use of language are the cause of this, and most other problems in philosophy. To Wittgenstein, the search for certainty of our perceptions is a waste of time.

“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”

In more recent times, probabilistic approaches have been brought to bear on the problem of induction - specifically Bayes Theorem, which bring in the concept of "prior probability". Of course it is "possible" that the laws of nature are not what we think they are, but is it "probable"? This is a key distinction which some Christians tend to overlook both in this context, and in Pascal's Wager (where they worry about the possibility of going to hell, versus the probability of it not happening). If these laws were going to change at some time, and that time has not occurred in the last several billion years, there is not a shred of evidence that indicates that it is going to occur in the next few seconds, years, or centuries. From a purely probabilistic framework, the odds of everything being turned topsy-turvy in the near future are very, very, very slim when measured against all of the opportunities for change that came and went in the past. For this reason it would be rational to assume the present trend is likely to continue, and highly irrational to assume it will not. The chances of something like this which never occurred in the past, and shows no sign of occurring in the future, are infinitesimally small - below any threshold of concern. Although we can't prove that the continuity of past/present/future will persist, a betting man could reliably count on it.

There appears to be no deductive proof of uniformity of nature or for the inferential process which requires it, and as has been said again and again, you can't use induction to prove itself. But for all the reasons given in the 250 years since Hume, the existence of a uniform and predictable universe is very likely to be the case - so likely that any other possibility is vanishingly small. Whether we choose to defend this assertion with foundational axioms, coherent and mutually supportive lines of evidence, acceptance of an infinite series of increasingly more subtle explanations, relaxing of the requirement for a firm deductive proof, probabilistic methods (such as Bayes Theorem), relying on the "Criteria Of Adequacy", or inference to the best explanation, rejecting the basic principle of uniformity and the inductive method which assumes it requires a far greater effort than accepting it. An obsessive need for utter certainty drives Christians like Torley (and his fans) to invent a god who tells us that everything is OK, that we are OK, that we can have absolute certainty.

In any case, the scientists who are moving the intellectual football down the field are probably not concerned too much with any conclusions philosophers and theologians may or may not reach regarding their work. While we are debating, they are at work unraveling the secrets of the universe for us. Hey - Thanks Science!

Occam's Razor

Applying the "Law of Parsimony" (aka - Occam's Razor) to Christianity highlights its fundamental lack of credibility. For each of the thorny challenges to Christianity (the problem of evil, the failure to answer prayers, god's invisibility and elusiveness, the lack of solid and uncontroversial evidence, god's ability to defy laws of physics, the existence of an afterlife, angels and demons) Christian apologists have handy, glib, overly ornate, ad hoc explanations:

• God doesn't let us see him because he is testing our faith
• If god gave us incontrovertable evidence it would interfere with our free will
• He allows evil in the world for a whole variety of stunningly incompatible and far-fetched reasons
• The fossil record gives the appearance of an ancient past to test our faith, or even that fossils were planted by the devil
• Atheists don't accept miracles because they have closed their mind and heart to god.
• God sometimes does and sometimes does not answer prayers, depending on his mysterious mood, etc.
• The bible is inerrant - you're just mis-reading it!
• Why would someone (i.e., Christian martyrs) die for a lie?

Each of the above explanations favors an active god to account for experiences that could better be explained by the complete absence of a god. The god explanation is strained and reeks of artifice. That is, it feels ad hoc, designed merely to cover the facts but provides no additional predictive or descriptive power over and above the secular explanation. It is designed to provide a cover story for what has already happened in our universe (e.g., the six days of creation, the flood, etc), but is utterly incapable of making novel predictions about future events, or even mundane predictions. It is completely untestable, and designed to be immune from refutation. Philosophers would say that the secular theory and the religious theory are "underdetermined" by the facts (i.e., the observations underdetermine several competing theories), in that each accounts for the facts so far. Occam's Razor is a tool that can be used to help decide between competing, seemingly equivalent theories.

It was named after William of Ockham, who is thought to have originated the most well-known version of it 700 years ago. The word, "razor" is part of the name because this principle is used to "shave away" needless embellishments and unnecessary assumptions from from hypotheses and explanations. A formal phrasing of it is,

Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity

which means we would be wise to seek out the most economical explanation that will fully account for the facts. We see this restated and reinvented from time to time, as with the "KISS" principle ("Keep it simple, stupid"), and a phrase commonly used in medicine where there can be a tendency to over-diagnose, “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras”. It is also called the "Law of Economy" or the "Law of Parsimony". They all mean basically the same thing - choose the explanation which requires the smallest number of "inventions". For the teacher hearing a student's story about why they didn't turn in an assignment, the explanation which involves the student being lazy requires a smaller leap of faith than that the dog ate the homework.

This guideline does not PREVENT us from denying the existence of these extra entities (i.e., the destructive dog, the rampaging zebra). Dogs are occasionally the guilty party, and probably there has been the rare case of the zebra on-the-loose. But experience shows that it is usually the simpler explanation - the student procrastinated, the hoofbeats were those of a horse. However, it allows us to refrain from including superfluous ornamentation of the explanation in the absence of a compelling reason. In part, this is because human beings can never be sure they know what is and what is not “beyond necessity”; the necessities are not always clear to us.

The application of the principle can help shifts the burden of proof in a discussion to the party making the exaggerated claims. The Razor is a "best practice" for approaching problems. It states that one should utilize simpler theories that can fit the evidence and explain the process or phenomenon under investigation. The simplest available theory need not be most accurate. The exact meaning of "simplest" may be debatable, and people will argue of what "fitting the evidence" really means. Also, since the only reason to abandon the guideline is be confronted with a "compelling reason", the apologist will therefore construct such reasons, typically using one of the standard arguments such as the Cosmological Principle, the Fine Tuned Universe, the Ontological Argument, or the Design Implies a Designer argument. These, and others, are discussed in other sections of this blog.

Applied to Christian apologetics, we are presented with two explanations. One posits god's involvement vs. one that does not. The second is less complex and should be preferred in the absence of a reason not to. It does not require the invention of a super-being who is certainly is far more complex than the universe he created and continues to control (although I have heard Christians perversely argue that, on the contrary, god is the simplest of beings!). So, barring any compelling evidence to the contrary, the non-supernatural reason should be preferred. By the standard of Occam's Razor, the explanation that does NOT involve a god, afterlife, heaven, hell, virgin births, parting seas, pillars of salt, burning bushes, talking snakes and donkeys, exorcisms, stopping the sun, walking on water, resurrections, salvation and assorted miracles is, by far, a superior explanation for what we see here in our lives. As additional confirmation, it doesn't hurt that the naturalistic explanation has a perfect 500 year long batting average (I am starting with the Renaissance, here, though it could be argued that it began with the Greek philosophers). Never has a natural explanation fallen to a supernatural one, though the opposite frequently occurs.

If we have no good evidence for likely candidates for a supernatural event, then we clearly have no reason to postulate supernatural causation. Refusing to accept the existence of supernatural causes, however, is not equivalent to rejecting their existence. Accepting the natural explanation requires us to deny the existence of supernatural causes altogether. Occam's Razor provides us with grounds for denying the existence of supernatural causation rather than remaining agnostic about it. If we have no convincing evidence in support of the supernatural explanation for our experiences, the simplest explanation is that there are no supernatural causes influencing the natural world. Second-hand testimony, apocryphal stories, ancient documents, testimony based on personal experience, revelation, and other weak evidence for possible supernatural events can always be explained more simply than the actual occurrence of such events. It is far more likely that the testimony or evidence can be more cleanly explained in terms deception, fraud, exaggeration, imagination, poetic license, hallucination, memory errors, misunderstanding, wishful thinking, propagandizing, perceptual errors, mistranslation, or misinterpretation.

Issac Newton, although a very devout Christian, had no tolerance for what he called “occult causes” both because he saw them not only as unnecessary, but positively unhelpful. They had no explanatory power, but were simply excuses for explaining away what we didn’t yet understand. In his day, the nature of magnetism, electricity, gravity, optics, cohesion, friction, thermodynamics, fermentation, cell biology, and other natural phenomena were not well understood. Pretty much 80% of what is in a Freshman College physics textbook had not been discovered yet (he did have Galileo to rely on, but not a lot more). He envisioned that from the confusion that then reigned, laws of nature would emerge to resolve those mysteries. He criticized the Aristotelians (as we criticize Christians) for ascribing occult causes to incomprehensible natural phenomena by correctly observing that “such occult qualities put a stop to the improvement of natural philosophy, and therefore of late years have been rejected. To tell us that every species of things is endowed with an occult specific quality by which it acts and produces manifest effects is to tell us nothing”. Even so, he himself subscribed to two seemingly occult entities – the invisible force called “gravity”, and the luminiferous ether through which he believed light traveled.

However, it is important to keep in mind that he lived on the historical edge of the scientific revolution. During his lifetime, there was not a clear distinction between chemistry and alchemy, between the natural and the supernatural, between science and magic. He helped to refine those distinctions in many ways, not the least of which was an often reprinted work of just a few pages called “Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy”. It was a simple guide to help thoughtful observers make sense of their experiences in the natural world.

He enumerated four rules for understanding real world “natural philosophy” (i.e., science) problems. I won't present all of them, but one in particular applies in this context:

We are to admit no more causes of natural things such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. To this purpose the philosophers say, that Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain, when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.”

Newton was not alone in originating his own version of the Razor. Other philosophers such as Aristotle, Scotus, Maimonides, and Ptolemy restated this principle. According to Ptolemy, "We consider it a good principle to explain the phenomena by the simplest hypothesis possible." Phrases such as "It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer" and "A plurality is not to be posited without necessity" were commonplace in the middle ages.

Even religious scholars such as Thomas Aquinas followed this rule. He said, "it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many".

Anselm's Ontological Argument

Around 1100 AD, the theologian/philosopher, Anselm, proposed the following set of propositions which seem to flow logically and prove the existence of god. This was among the first (of many) "ontological arguments" for the existence of god. Ontological, in this context, means the use of logic to prove that god is metaphysically necessary. In other words, using pure logic to show that there is no alternative to god's existence:

1. Our understanding of God is that he is a being, a being greater than any other being that can be imagined or conceived.
2. The idea of God exists in the mind.
3. A being which exists both in the mind and which exists in reality is greater than a being that exists only in the mind.
4. If God only exists in the mind, then we can conceive of a greater being, a being which also exists in reality.
5. We cannot be imagining something that is greater than God.
6. Therefore, God exists.

QED, right? Not so fast. This is a perfect example of Christians' slippery and dangerous use of logic to prove that their fiction is reality. This was the first of many attempts to show god to be "logically necessary". It was followed by other ontological proofs by Descartes, Kant, Leibnitz, Godel, Plantinga and many others, which I won't repeat here. They are extremely tedious and academic. However, they can easily be found here on the web if you are interested.

Immediately after Anselm presented his case, a contemporary named Guanilo showed the argument to be nonsense, or to result in absurd consequences if the same argument were to be applied to the "greatest island" or the "greatest pencil". There is an infinity of "greatest" entities that can be shown to "exist" using the above logical "recipe". This fact does not necessarily disprove Anselm, but shows that its application results in assertions that we cannot reasonably accept. For example, Guanilo's reply to Anselm was along these lines:

1. The "Lost Island" is an island greater than any other island that can be conceived, full of riches and beauty and joy.
2. It is greater to exist in reality than merely as an idea.
3. If the Lost Island does not exist, one can conceive of an even greater island - that is, an island that does exist.
4. Therefore, the "Lost Island" exists in reality.

When reduced to this trivial form, or even sillier ones such as a "greatest pencil" or "greatest bar of soap" you can easily see how what appears to be a valid and sound argument can lead you to ridiculous conclusions. Hume, Aquinas, Kant, and others have picked it to shreds, pointing out problems with several of the assumptions that go into the premises. Kant said (and most philosophers since then agree, though it continues to be contested by apologists),

‘Being’ is obviously not a real predicate; that is, it is not a concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing.…. By whatever and however many predicates we may think a thing…we do not make the least addition to the thing when we further declare that the thing is.

In other words, existence is not a quality that something has, like size or shape or color. Existence does not add to the essence of a being, but merely indicates its occurrence in reality. Though syntactically, a statement about existence is structurally identical to to a statement attributing qualities to a thing, it is a very different type of statement. The two statements, "the tree exists" and "the tree is tall" have a similar sentence structure, but they are saying two very different types of things about the tree. Kant concluded that it is conceivable for a completely perfect being to not exist in reality - only conceptually, like a perfect triangle or Guanilo's perfect island.

David Hume argued that nothing can be proven to exist using only a priori (purely logical) reasoning. You could only prove this sort of existence if its opposite (non-existence) generated a contradiction with one or more of the premises. With the god argument from Anselm, the non-existence of a perfect being is just as viable as its existence, so the argument fails to accomplish its goal. Simply imagining a perfect being doesn't cause that being to exist. This is starting to sound like Anselm was into the same wishful thinking as followers of "The Secret" and the "Law of Attraction", who believe that if you imagine things hard enough, they become true!

Despite the deficiencies and logical shortcomings of this type of argument, early ontological arguments like Anselm's serve as a model for today's crop of apologists (such as Plantinga and Craig), who continue to defend the logical proofs for god's existence which they have derived from it and augmented with their own additions.

False Balance / False equivalence

It is a case of "false balance" (assigning equal weight to two sides of an unbalanced argument) to argue that Christianity and Naturalism are just separate world views, each one making extraordinary claims - that they each have their share of pros and cons, that they are equivalent, but opposing views or "belief systems". Naturalism, although admittedly a worldview, is specifically not a belief system. Or if it is a belief system, it is one that attempts as much as possible to avoid overlaying human beliefs on reality. To the largest degree possible, it suspends and puts aside preconceived, agenda-driven explanations, and attempts to let reality speak for itself. It does not impose human expectations on nature, but lets nature teach us. Obviously any human interpretation of reality will involve some biological and psychological filtering, but naturalism is the least intrusive one imaginable.

Naturalism removes Animist preconceptions require that all natural events have a purposeful agent behind them. It removes supernatural preconceptions that spirits, both benign and malevolent, manipulate nature. It removes Aristotelian preconceptions that events unfold according to their purpose - fire "wants" to go up, and stones "want" to go down, because that is where they belong, they seek their "natural places". It removes religious preconceptions that god is behind all natural events. It removes teleological expectations that nature has an conscious, agency-driven agenda and purpose which it is trying to achieve. It removes New-Age preconceptions that everything unfolds and develops for a reason (i.e., a mystical, hidden reason). One could argue that naturalism does have one fundamental preconception - which is that it is preferable to avoid imposing human preconceptions on our observations. That is a charge that I can live with. It's like admitting you have just one flaw - and that flaw is excessive modesty :).

Naturalism does not approach nature randomly, naively, and blindly, though. Obviously, there are filters that underlie this interpretation of the universe. Without some sort of expectations and preconceptions and categories, all experience would be a blinding mix of colors, sound, and movements. It would be as William James described the experience of the infant, "as one great blooming, buzzing confusion". We investigate and categorize according to our interests, not randomly or purely objectively. Because of our human self-interest, we find some things more worthy of inspection than others, some questions more interesting than others. Naturalism generally assumes the rules of logic are valid tools for learning and understanding, that the world is real and is full of objects and forces, both with properties that can be described and understood, that these objects that interact with each other, of processes that unfold in a manner that can be understood, that the world is knowable and comprehensible, that the universe is orderly, having regularity, pattern, and structure known as "laws of nature", that all phenomena have natural causes (some known, and some yet unknown), unexplained things can be used to explain other phenomenon (e.g. gravity is thus far unexplained but it is used to explain the movement of planets and the bending of light), etc. It does not presume to catelog all of the entities, properties, and phenomena which exist in the universe, but that when we encounter them, they can be understood as natural entities, properties, and phenomena.

People who defend the religious worldview say that their view and Naturalism are just different ways of viewing the world and different ways of interpreting same evidence. They assert that proponents of both worldviews have their respective biases and filters which restrict the set of possible conclusions they will reach upon consideration of the evidence. This is emblematic of just how weak a position that the religious worldview is. They may admit that their worldview is not a science, but then they say the same thing about Naturalism - that both are just belief systems - trying to drag Naturalism down to the level of Faith by incorrectly equating them. These arguments are not valid. Naturalism is backed by actual science that makes predictions and could, or can, be falsified. It has multiple independent lines of evidence supporting it, while the religious worldview isn't a scientific theory - it can't be tested at all. There is no equivalence whatsoever. Its defenders are free to make whatever claims they want and are absolved from the requirement to prove them.

However, even with these assumptions, Naturalism is a respectful, humble, and wise way to approach the unknowns of the universe. It avoids imposing ill-informed human biases on nature, and allows nature to reveal its secrets to us. It is an approach that systematically avoids extraordinary explanations. It is, by definition, limited to "ordinary" (or natural) explanations, and it is open to the real possibility that the domain of natural explanations can and will expand as we increase our understanding. In the last 500 years, it has been shown to be the "correct" world view time and again. Going back 2500 years to the ancient Greeks, the explanations of the world that have held up over time are those that were based on an empirical and naturalistic world view (with some notable exceptions, such as "atomism", which was deduced mostly apriori but turned out to be roughly correct). The most rational explanation for the success of science is that the Naturalistic world view, which is intimately tied up with science, is correct. If one has even a single pragmatic bone in their bodies, the success of naturalism in explaining the world we live in (and the failure of all other approaches) speaks volumes!

Everyone is a naturalist at the most basic level. For everyday events, like hearing a noise and looking for its source, or watching out for obstacles to walk around, to looking for food and shelter, to interacting effectively in social situations - we all use the evidence provided by habit, nature, and our senses to try to determine how best to react. Animals do this without thinking - they have no "belief system" in place that allows them to navigate the world, and humans don't need one either. Unique among the animals, humans are driven to figure out how the world works. One thing that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom (with the possible exception of ants, beavers, and a few other creatures) is that we are able to exploit the natural order of the world, leverage it, make tools to manipulate it, and control it. And we do this by understanding the way it works, and then applying that knowledge. Supernatural explanations don't help us accomplish this at all. Even the most devout Christians use this naturalistic approach in all other areas of their lives. Christians make fine mathematicians, engineers, accountants, and even scientists (though the overlap of Christianity and Scientists is smaller than average). It is ONLY in the religious sphere that they add on the superfluous and needless layer of religious belief. It can be completely stripped away with no diminution in our ability to survive, prosper, and be happy in the world.

Religious apologists frequently try to shift the burden of proof to Naturalists, off their own shoulders. OK, we can take that challenge. For the last several centuries, since the Renaissance, and arguably since ancient Greece, Naturalism has made claims for how the world works, and those have been validated and shown to be correct each and every time. Anything new that we have learned about about the world, about the universe, has come through Naturalistic discovery, not religious. Religion is stagnant and unable to discover new information. It has systematically inhibited and sabotaged intellectual growth, and seen forward thinkers as heretics. As an approach to thinking about the real world, as a source of knowledge, as an epistemology, Naturalism continues to chip away at religious (including Christian) explanations of "how things work". Prior to the intellectual advances spearheaded by Naturalism, Science, Empiricism, and Rationality, conventional wisdom informed by religion was that Earth was the center of the Universe, disease was caused by demon possession or "bad air", stars were fixed in the sky in a "firmament" hanging over the flat surface of the Earth, storms and earthquakes were the acts of an angry god or gods, wars were won or lost based on a a deity's whim, comets were signs from heaven, the earth was 6000 years old, that we all descended from Adam and Eve, that slavery, rape, and torture of outsiders were acceptable, that snakes could talk, and that followers of other religions and neighboring tribes were practically sub-human and needed to be either exterminated or, at least, conquered.

Many philosophers and scientists have concluded that the best explanation for our ability to develop successful scientific explanations for such a wide range of phenomena in terms of natural causes is that there are no genuine instances of supernatural causation. As Keith Augustine wrote in "In Defense of Naturalism"

Barbara Forrest, for example, describes Naturalism as "a generalization of the cumulative results of scientific inquiry". In other words, the best explanation for the success of science is that Naturalism is true. Given the proliferation of successful scientific explanations for phenomena, Forrest concludes that there is "an asymptotic decrease in the existential possibility of the supernatural to the point at which it is wholly negligible". If Naturalism were false, there would be some phenomena that could not be explained solely in terms of natural causes. However, because science can explain all of the "uncontroversial phenomena" we have encountered (i.e., known to have actually occurred) in terms of natural causes, there probably are no phenomena which cannot be explained in terms of natural causes. Therefore, Naturalism is probably true.

However, because this is an inductive conclusion, we can never be 100% sure, but as sure as we can be of anything in our experience. The possibility of it being wrong asymptotically approaches zero.

Individual theories may be disproved, but the overall body of science is fundamentally “right”. Its theories are able to explain what we currently see, to anticipate events that will occur in the future, and to predict discoveries about what occurred in the past (as in geology, astronomy, and paleontology). Its epistemological basis is nature itself, rather than mythology, tradition, personal testimony, or revelation. Apologists insultingly disparage the naturalistic worldview as "man centered" while theirs is "god centered". On the contrary, naturalism is not man-centered but focuses on all of nature, which includes man. It is universe-centered. Ironically, the Christian worldview, which claims to be god-centered, is really the man-centered worldview, since god and the bible which are the source of its epistemology, are both man-made inventions.

The increase in knowledge that results from the application of the naturalistic worldview passes through the rigorous filter of the scientific method. It is coherent (it does not contradict itself), self-correcting, consistent, reliable, open and responsive to criticism, and it makes continual progress and theoretical refinement. Further, there is no compelling reason to disbelieve it. The religious alternative is a concoction of ad hoc, dogma-driven, just-so stories that attempts to insert god as the central figure of the universe. Religious explanations contribute no new empirical success to any field they attempt to address. The explanations provided by religions are specifically suited to provide cover for what has already happened in the universe, but are utterly unable to make any worthwhile predictions or theoretical explanation for future events, and are completely incapable of being tested. They also fail in their complete inability to retrodict past events in the geological or biological history of the earth, and in any past cosmological events. They fail because they are terrible models of the universe, and so have none of the predictive power of a useful theory.

No credible competing acceptable explanation, including the religious explanation, has been proposed. And the religious explanation is missing a key ingredient required of all claims about the real world - it is not supported by evidence. This doesn’t constitute irrefutable deductive proof (which is probably not possible for any explanation of reality), instead utilizing “inference to the best explanation”, meaning that among the only set of available explanations Naturalism is by far the strongest both because of its explanatory power, and because all the evidence collected over a span of hundreds of years supports it.

Religion, on the other hand, has done nothing to advance intellectual progress in explaining the source of natural phenomena. They do no research outside of clarifying of old texts, commenting on each others writing, or trying to find fault with non-religious thinking. On the contrary, it has a history of suppressing scientific discovery (Galileo's assertions about atomism and heliocentrism, discoveries in evolutionary biology, new information from geology about the age of the Earth, discoveries from astronomy about the size, age, origin, and extent of the universe, advances in neuroscience that are beginning to uncover the source of consciousness, anthropological and psychological advances in the study of morality, current scientific attempts to unravel the mystery of life and the origin of the universe, and more). Only reluctantly and belatedly does organized religion accept the findings of science that go against entrenched dogma. The primary books they publish for the general public are of two flavors - praise-the-lord books for the already converted, and Apologist books to convert skeptics. So, when they are not celebrating amongst themselves, they are trying to sell something.

The God of the Bible is a moral monster and restricts human freedom

God, particularly as depicted in the Old Testament, is a hateful, violent, self-involved, vengeful, murderous, and immoral criminal. His restrictions on such things as sexual behavior, abortion, personal freedom, euthanasia, and life itself undermines human dignity and autonomy in all its forms. His promotion of torture, murder, rape, pillaging, and cruelty is unconscionable. You can't argue that the new testament god has become more tolerant and should be considered separately from the old testament god. God (of whom Jesus is part, according to the father/son/holy ghost formula) doesn't change his character. All Christians should agree with that because it says so in the bible:

Malachi 3:6 - For I am the LORD, I change not.

Richard Dawkins says in The God Delusion

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

Further, Jesus didn't just come along 2000 years ago and decide to shake things up. Apparently, he always existed, alongside God. In John 8:58, John is having Jesus say he had a pre-human existence as an angelic being in heaven, and that he existed even before Abraham was born:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

So, according to the biblical theory of the Trinity, and by his own words, Jesus was right there at God's side, along with the Holy Spirit, when all the old testament atrocities were occurring.

Consider these passages from the bible that show what a horrible and cruel being god actually is. They demonstrate how strongly he supports genocide, slavery, torture, murdering children, child sacrifice, and oppression:

• 1 Samuel 15:3 - This is what the Lord Almighty says ... Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.
• Psalms 137 - Happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us / He who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.
• Leviticus 20:13 - If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
• Leviticus 25:44-46 - ...You may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you. Then, too, it is out of the sons of the sojourners who live as aliens among you that you may gain acquisition, and out of their families who are with you, whom they will have produced in your land; they also may become your possession. You may even bequeath them to your sons after you, to receive as a possession; you can use them as permanent slaves.
• 1 Peter 2:18 - Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel.
• Exodus 22:29-30 - You shall not delay to offer from the fullness of your harvest and from the outflow of your presses. The first-born of your sons you shall give to me. You shall do likewise with your oxen and with your sheep: seven days it shall be with its dam; on the eighth day you shall give it to me.
• Exodus 12:29 - At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock.
• 1 Ezekiel 20:25-26 - So I gave them other statutes that were not good and laws through which they could not live; I defiled them through their gifts — the sacrifice of every firstborn — that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am the Lord.
• Exodous 21:20-21 - Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod ... are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.
• Ephesians 5:22 - Wives, submit to you husbands as to the Lord
• Deuteronomy 3:6 - And we utterly destroyed them, ... utterly destroying the men, women, and children, of every city.
• Deuteronomy 13:15 - Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword.
• Deuteronomy 7:2 - and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy
• Joshua 6:21 - And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.
• 2 Chronicles 15:12-13 - They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and soul; and everyone who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, was to be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman.
• Deuteronomy 2:34 - And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain.
• Exodus 22:17 - You should not let a sorceress live.
• Numbers 21:3 - And the Lord hearkened to the voice of Israel, and delivered up the Canaanites; and they utterly destroyed them and their cities.
• Numbers 31:15 - “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he <Moses> asked them. “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man."
• Judges 21:10-12 - So the assembly sent twelve thousand fighting men with instructions to go to Jabesh Gilead and put to the sword those living there, including the women and children. “This is what you are to do,” they said. “Kill every male and every woman who is not a virgin.” They found among the people living in Jabesh Gilead four hundred young women who had never slept with a man, and they took them to the camp at Shiloh in Canaan (the Israeli army then gave the captured virgins to the Benjamites to use as sex slaves, with the approval of god, of course.)
• Romans 1:27 - In the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.
• Jeremiah 51:20-21 - You are my hammer and weapon of war: with you I break nations in pieces; with you I destroy kingdoms; with you I break in pieces the horse and his rider; with you I break in pieces the chariot and the charioteer;

Etc. The list is very long, and it could go on here for pages and pages, but you get the point - don't cross god or you'll end up dead or worse. Atheist, John Loftus, wrote:

"Today's Christians say the churches of the past that committed atrocities were wrong. And that's correct. They were wrong. But not for the reasons stated. They claim the Christians of the past were wrong because they misinterpreted the Bible. The truth is that they were wrong to believe the Bible in the first place. They were wrong just like Christians of today are wrong, and just like the Christians of the future will be, too. My contention is that there is not a single statement in the Bible that reveals a divine mind behind the human authors. Everything in it can be more credibly explained by the hypothesis that it's just the musings of an ancient, superstitious, barbaric people--period."

These bible quotes are not god's words, but the words of primitive and pre-scientific human beings. These passages reflect the mores and customs of the violent, xenophobic people who wrote them. The desire to annihilate enemies, persecute individuals who don't respect the power structure, and exact violent retribution don't come from a god, but from man. The bible is the work of men, falsely ascribing their words to a god.

The answer to the question about why the bible is all over the map with respect to its moral guidance (from elevated to depraved) is that it is a book written by men, one that reflects their strengths and weaknesses, their vision and their myopia, their kindness and generosity, and their cruelty and selfishness. It is not inspired, but mundane.

See "Skeptics Annotated Bible" or "Murder in the Bible" for more examples.

Differing worldviews of Christians and Philosophical Naturalists

Philosophical naturalism describes a metaphysical point of view. It is essentially the view that the only reality is nature, as gradually discovered by our intelligence using the tools of experience, reason, and science. Choosing to view the world though the filter of Philosophical Naturalism (or just Naturalism) is not something one does because of the outcome of a debate between supporters of superstitious dogma and supporters of empiricism and rationality. One is not argued or debated into this way of looking at the world. Instead, we are drawn to it because it is right, it works. It is the only "system" that works. All other methods of gaining knowledge and making sense of the world fall far short of the naturalistic approach in their record of success. Naturalists don't reject gods because they want to disbelieve, or have a vested interest in proving that gods don't exist, or want to believe only in Nature. It is because these types of people value having their beliefs correspond to reality, and a Naturalistic world view promotes that goal. It is the only way of looking at things that doesn't require miracles to make everything function the way it does. Quoting Hilary Putnam, a modern philosopher of science, "Realism is the only philosophy that doesn't make the success of science a miracle". This is called the "no miracles argument for Realism". I think that this use of word, Realism, extends to Naturalism.

Philosophical Naturalism has the best track record of teaching us about what we can expect from our experiences living on Earth. People who want to view the world as it really is, not how they wish it were, are naturally attracted to a Naturalistic philosophy. Naturalism is not on trial, and is certainly not on the defensive. Rather, it is on the ascendent in America and throughout the civilized world. It moves our understanding of the world forward not through debate, argument, reference to ancient texts, and arcane, twisted logic. It doesn't spend time on pointless issues such as how many angels can stand on the head of a pin, how many souls can fit into heaven, whether god is one or three persons, whether salvation is through faith, predestination, or good works, or whether or not we should be sprinkled with water or fully submerged. It doesn't attempt to justify the randomness of a seemingly impersonal universe. It doesn't make up unprovable fairy tales about super beings in another dimension who care about us and will save us. It is forward looking, empirical, and methodology-driven. Let the religious faithful continue to throw stones at the unstoppable engine which is Naturalism. They have been losing ground for half a millennia, and their losing battle shows every sign of continuing in all First World countries of Western Europe, and is beginning to lose ground in America as well.

To those who take a reason-based and evidence-based approach to questions about life and the world, the answers to those question come from logical analysis, informed by both reason and empiricism, subject to correction and refinement, and ultimately decided upon by informed judgement which also has to take unknowns and risk into account. To those who approach philosophical questions from a religious or mystical point of view, their answers reflect whatever concepts they feel are enlightening, thrilling, comforting, uplifting, or that allow them to persist in their irrational (by definition) and incoherent (i.e., disorganized and internally inconsistent) god-based world view. The epistemologies feeding our different world views (science/evidence/experience/observation/reason/naturalism vs mystical/religious/irrational/revelatory) fundamental differ. One is better than the other.

Each side thinks the other side is talking gibberish. The religious worldview is based on revelation, inspiration, emotion, ancient texts, community, myth. When logic is employed to support this worldview, it is based on invalid and antiquated premises. The scientific/naturalistic world view is based on observation, experiment, measurement, evidence, theory, review, and methodology. It constantly reexamines its premises and assumptions and reevaluates them. It is difficult, probably impossible, to bridge the gap between these diametrically opposite positions. A debate between people representing these opposing perspectives will be very much like two tennis players, each delivering blistering serves, but on separate courts. It is almost inevitable that they will end up talking past each other, not to each other.

Apologists present the conflict between Naturalism and Theism as being a struggle between two different but equally respectable, "belief systems". This is false equivalence, or false balance. It is an attempt to elevate an evidence-free, faith-based belief system to the same stature as an evidence-based, faith-free way of interacting with the world. Naturalism is not a "belief system", unless you choose to use that word in what would today be called a "Bayesian" sense, as did the philosopher, David Hume:

“In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of ... evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.”

It is economical - it does not create unnecessary complexities. It is parsimonious. Parsimony is not a "belief system". It is a conceptual technique that experience has show to be an extremely reliable guideline for working with the natural world. Failure to employ parsimony (or, Occam's Razor) would put us at liberty to invent any convenient "just-so" stories to help us make sense of things. This is how ghosts and demons get created. On the contrary, Naturalism eschews unwarranted beliefs so that reality can speak for itself. It relies on induction and inference to help us navigate reality. Everyone, even the Christian theist, is a Naturalist when it comes to 99% of their interactions with the world. We all use the evidence of our senses and our experience to stay alive, to avoid disaster, and to prosper in the world. Christians then go beyond that and layer on top of Naturalism a superfluous structure of religious beliefs that account for nothing, but provide a framework for their story of sin and salvation.

No other way of considering reality allows as reliable a path to achieving the goals of discovery, invention, theoretical progress, and publication as Naturalism. It alone is able to generate theories about the world that can actually predict future events, or retroactively predict historical/geological/cosmological events that happened in the past. It is a frustrating, but inescapable, truth that worldviews cannot be "deduced" or proved, as most convincingly demonstrated by David Hume in the 18th century (for more information, see this summary of Hume's philosophy). The best we can do is make inferences based on all our experience as to which is the most reliable way of perceiving the world. Realists, or Naturalists, argue persuasively that a very good reason for subscribing to their view is that it has an unsurpassed record of success and achievement, and no record of being wrong. That is worth repeating - the Naturalistic worldview has never been shown to be wrong. Individual theories may prove wrong, but the overall process is right. The theories produced by this worldview and practice both explain the existing state of affairs and predict future outcomes with unequaled power.

Naturalism's explanatory scope and power are its most compelling features. For a detailed examination of exactly what this means see my other blog entry on "Criteria Of Adequacy". The cumulative set of theories and facts from all the sciences demonstrate extremely high coherence and mutual support that could only be explained by their being correct (or by Descartes' "Evil Demon", which is not even a serious concept, or by some other collection of ad hoc miracles). The related approaches of Scientific Realism and Philosophical Naturalism have a remarkable and unequaled track record that attests to the extremely high probability that they are the right way of viewing the world.

The Fall From Grace

Thanks to my friend, Chuck, for bringing this to my attention!

Since most Christians (i.e., all of them except for the Literal Fundamentalists) take the book of Genesis as a metaphorical and poetic account, I think it makes complete sense to also consider the so-called "fall from grace" or "original sin" as a metaphor. Just as God didn't really create the universe in 6 days, and just as Eve didn't really come from a rib, and just as a serpent didn't really make them eat an actual piece of fruit, there was probably no literal fall from grace (i.e., a falling out with god). And even if there were, I don't accept that I inherit a sin one of my ancestors committed - that's not how things work. You might inherit their hair color or nose shape, but not their sins (unless some new discovery in genetics shows how that gets passed between generations).

Given that, there is nothing to be saved from. Religion created a false problem (original sin), and then gives a solution to the problem (salvation through religion). According to the story, Adam and Eve disobeyed god by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Good for them - I'm glad I know good from evil. Clearly, most people feel the same way. We all like being able to make that distinction. There are a couple of terms we use to describe those who don't know good from evil - "insane sociopath" is one, "mentally handicapped" is another. Insanity and incompetence to stand trial are a common defenses in court: the defense lawyer tries to show that the defendant did not have the "ability to determine right from wrong". If god wanted us to remain ignorant, insane, or "mentally challenged", then I have no time for a god like that.

OK, I recognize that it isn't such an easy open and shut case as that. If you listen to what the Christians are really saying about being saved, it is mostly about saving you from a separation from god, and from sin, and when pressed, they kind of gloss over the original sin part. Obviously, when the Genesis reason fell through due to its glaring factual flaws and inherent implausibility, Christians had to fabricate some other reasons to remain relevant. So, we are being saved from sin. I don't quite see how that works. I know lots of Christians, and they are sinning right along with the rest of us - if by sinning you include envy, bragging, coveting, having sex, thinking about sex, looking at pictures of people having sex, lying, cheating, perversion, physical cruelty, psychological cruelty, laziness, anger, stealing, irresponsibility, passing the buck, fraud, neglect, greed, procrastination, abuse, disrespect, gossiping, slander, and all the other naughty behaviors. Being baptized doesn't suddenly stop people from being human and doing that stuff. So, if salvation is such a powerful thing, it is not very obvious by looking at Christians. They are about the same as any other demographic when it comes to the sin dimension.

And as for separation from god - who even knows what that means? On the surface, it seems to make sense. But I would first challenge Christians to come up with a single coherent definition of god that we can all agree to before I start trying to join up with him. If you wonder what I mean by a definition of god, then please go look at a few entries in my other blog, Conceptions of God

Pascal's wager

The wager is:

All humans bet their lives that either god exists or god does not exist. Given the possibility that God actually does exist, and assuming the infinite gain or infinite loss associated with belief in God or with unbelief in god, and the finite effort required to exercise a belief in god, a rational person should live as though god exists and seek to believe in god.

Problems with it:

• First, this wager is childish, superficial, and really just plain silly. This is not how religion and faith are supposed to work. It is so simple-minded, devious, and calculating that seriously contemplating its implementation is revolting. Anyone who would act based on this argument is either naive, not thinking clearly, or dishonest. It's probably more the case that people who accept this argument already are convinced on other grounds, and this just serves to bolster that belief.
• It assumes a 50/50 chance of god existing or not. There is no reason to believe this to be the probability distribution. It is entirely possible that the chance of god existing is infintesimally small, which would completely alter the wager. Or visa versa. Unless one first addresses the prior probability of either outcome, the wager is meaningless.
• The choice in the wager that "god exists" requires us to ask "which god?".

  • If it is the god of another religion, but we choose to believe in a Christian god, we may be punished by that other god if he turns out to be the true god.
  • If we choose the wrong god, the right god might punish us for choosing a competitor, but leave the person who disbelieves in all gods (or in no gods) alone. So, it might be safer to withhold belief.
  • There have been thousands of gods that have been worshiped throughout history. There is no particular reason to think one of them is more likely than another. So, even if we grant that there is a 50/50 chance of existence/non-existence, it is really a 50% chance of non-existence, vs 1/1000 * 50% (or 0.05% chance) that your favorite god exists (if he is competing with 1000 other contenders). So it is not "god exist" vs "god does not exist", but in fact "god exists" vs "one or more of these thousands of gods, demons, spirits, or avatars exists". To even draw the line at 1000 is conservative. I could postulate an infinity of slightly different gods: god #1, god #2, ..., god #n. Is there a version of Pascal's wager for Zeus, Odin, or Ra?
  • what if there is a god that is the true god that actually would punish us for believing in him? I know that it doesn't make sense, but remember, "god works in mysterious ways", and this would qualify as mysterious. If we grant that god is ultimately beyond comprehension, then an apologist could never successfully argue that god would not do that, because that would presume that he could understand god's intentions.
  • Or there could be a god who is indifferent to our belief or unbelief. In that case, all the effort we put into believing would be completely wasted.

• No god worth worshipping would respect a belief based on a cold calculation of the probability of infinite gain/loss in the "truth table" that is ususally drawn up to explain the wager. For those who cannot believe, feigning belief to gain eternal reward is the epitome of insincerity. This would be dishonest and unethical. In addition, it is absurd to think that God, being just, wise, and omniscient, would not see through this deceptive strategy on the part of the "believer", thus nullifying the benefits of the wager.
• Just as there is an potential infinity of other gods who we would have to consider in this wager, there is also a near infinity of other things to worry about that might need to factor into the wager. Most of us are doing nothing to ward off vampires or werewolves. Maybe, just to be on the safe side, we should hang garlic from the rafters, keep a wooden stake nearby, a pistol loaded with silver bullets, and some holy water, as well. Or what about the meteor that might strike our house? The chances are very small of it occurring, but not zero. Would it be wisest to move out now and seek refuge in a bunker? One could add items to this list indefinitely, all items whose occurrence would signal disaster, even if they seem unlikely to occur. We can't reasonably react to all of them. Which should we pay attention to? We can't live our lives worrying about things that are almost certainly not going to occur. We have no way of knowing which of these unlikely scenarios to concern ourselves with, anyway.
• Of course it is "possible" that Pascal was right. We don't really know for sure that he was wrong, do we? Correct - anything is possible - Pascal's scenario is not logically impossible. Likewise, it is possible that the molecules in an apple could simultaneously decide to move straight up and cause a dropped apple to fall up rather than down. It is possible that a meteor could crash through the roof of my house in the next five seconds. Both events are highly unlikely though. Although possible, they are not probable. Pascal's wager deals in possibilities, not probabilities. There is no evidence to suggest that the "possibility" of the Christian version of salvation and heaven is any more likely than any other religious story. This is a key distinction which many Christians overlook. We would be wiser to focus on what is a probable outcome rather than on an infinity of unlikely possible outcomes.
• An irony of Pascal's Wager is that even if it was otherwise completely sound it would become a huge disincentive for convincing an unbiased party to worship the Christian god specifically. By definition, worshiping the Christian God requires you to NOT worship every other deity or potential deity (see the First Commandment). In the absence of evidence for a specific deity, the theist-to-be would be better off directing some worship to one or more proposed deities that do not require exclusive worship. This would increase the overall odds of benefiting by spreading the risk across several gods.

You either believe in god or do not believe it. No sincere person would alter their belief by coldly calculating the odds of certain outcomes. You cannot "will" yourself to believe something you don't. Leave it to a mathematician like Pascal to suggest that we do exactly that. This far-fetched scheme sounds more like a plan that Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory would come up with than a serious proposal by a respected philosopher and mathematician.

Pascal - an excellent mathematician, scientist, and philosopher - was in no position to evaluate the merits of Christianity relative to Islam, Hinduism, or any other religion. He had become a very accomplished Christian philosopher, and "reasoned" his way to the conclusion that of all the religions, Christianity was right and the others were wrong. In fact, the story is more prosaic. Like many people, he had been brought up a Christian, fell away from it for a while, and then came back to it later in life. As much as we can admire Pascal for his mathematical accomplishments, this in no way qualifies him to give us spiritual advice. We can't rely on his authority as a mathematician to translate to equal mastery in the realm of salvation.

The Fine-Tuning argument

This Creationist argument proposes that the constants in physics are so precisely established to support life that the universe could only have been created by god. There is no way these constants could be accidental. To them, this proves that a personal god fashioned the universe so that humans could come into existence and worship him. This argument has much in common with two concepts in Cosmology known as the Weak Anthropic Principle and the Strong Anthropic Principle, though those principles are more philosophical in nature, and not explicitly religious:

One formal statement of the argument is:

1. The combination of physical constants that we observe in our universe is the only one capable of sustaining life as we know it.
2. Other combinations of physical constants are conceivable.
3. Therefore, some explanation is needed why our actual combination of physical constants exists rather than a different one.
4. The very best explanation of the given fact is that our universe, with the particular combination of physical constants that it has, was created out of nothing by a single being who is omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving, eternal, and interested in sentient organic systems, and that he "fine-tuned" those constants in a way which would lead to the evolution of such systems.
5. But such a being as described in (P4) is what people mean by "God."
6. Hence [from (P4) & (P5)], there is good evidence that God exists.

The atheist response:

• One response might be, "why is an explanation necessary?" There is no reason, within anything we currently understand about the ultimate structure of reality, to think of the existence and persistence and regularity of the universe as things that require external explanation. Indeed, for most scientists, adding on another layer of metaphysical structure in order to purportedly explain these fundamental facts is an unnecessary complication. We may discover even deeper levels of explanatory detail that underlie our current understanding, but there is no imperative that we arrive at anything resembling a complete explanation for existence right now.
• No one knows why the constants of physics have the values that they possess (the gravitational constant, the strengths of the weak and strong nuclear forces, the ratio of electron to proton mass, the energy density of empty space, and many others). It could be that there are no alternatives to these values, or if there are alternatives, they are within very narrow bands. We don't have enough information to state what the possible range of values for any of the constants are, so it is impossible to ascertain whether the actual values are likely or unlikely. To speculate about what it would take to find a universe where they are different is beyond our current understanding. Also, to assert that god had something to do with it is appealing to a god of the gaps - ascribing divine influence to yet another thing we don't yet understand. Science taught us about the constants, and science discovered their values. We would be wise to exercise some patience before jumping on the god hypothesis and give science a little more time to figure out where these values came from.
• Although there appears to be about two dozen physical constants that are considered to be fine tuned, science has only recently begun to understand these in any depth. Most particle physicists believe that there is another, more comprehensive theory that underlies the Standard Model of Quantum physics (such as String Theory, Quantum Gravity Loop Theory) that will simplify and reduce both the large number of particle and fundamental constants to a smaller, more manageable number. If such a theory is discovered, it may well be the case that instead of dozens of constants, we have just one.
• You can't say how likely something is or isn't from a sample size of one. We live in the only universe we know, so it is impossible to say if this is a likely universe or not, since we have no other ones to compare it to. We cannot point to other universes and note that they are lifeless and thus affirm that the appearance of life in our universe was so unlikely that a supernatural force had to jump start it.
• How does one use the fact that life exists as a proof of god? It proves nothing. It simply means that life is here. And even if you stipulate that a god created it, who is to say that is the Christian god? It could be some other god (or devil) from some other religion, or a god of no known religion, or an advanced Alien culture so far beyond us that we can't even comprehend their creation process. It could be that we are living inside an advanced simulation, which would explain why all the conditions are right for life. Any one of many unprovable and extreme possibilities could be true.
• We can freely admit that the fine tuning of the physical constants is baffling and intriguing. Physicists and cosmologists are fascinated with these. But instead of, once again, ascribing the things we don't understand to god's influence, this mystery should instead help focus scientific research. There is no doubt a very interesting order to how the universe is structured. Saying that god is responsible for it tells us absolutely nothing. It is just putting all of the unknowns into a black box labelled "god" and having done with it. Instead, we should (and we will) dig in deeper. I have no doubt that in the coming years we will know more about these constants than we do today.
• If god is responsible for all of existence, and if the point of the universe is for Humans to come into being so they could have a relationship with god, and god had an interest in sentient organic systems, why did he take so long to bring them about? And why did he confine his efforts to the planet earth?
• Some say that if a very small change were made to one of the physical constants, life could not exist. For instance, if the strong force (the nuclear coupling force) were 2% stronger than it is, diprotons would be stable and hydrogen would fuse into them instead of deuterium and helium. This would drastically alter the physics of stars, and presumably preclude the existence of life similar to what we observe on Earth. However, if that would have happened (or any of a number of other small changes) then there would be no life, certainly no intelligent life, and no one here asking these questions. So, it is not surprising to find ourselves here, since here is the only place we could be. Of course the universe has intelligent life in it. It would have to in order to generate beings such as us which can ask this question. In any alternative universe where life did not come about, there would be no one to ask it. In that light, it is not that unusual that we find ourselves in a universe capable of sustaining life, even intelligent life, capable of asking metaphysical questions. If the universe had turned out any differently, we would not be here to even ask the question. So, naturally we are in a universe that supports life. We would not be here if this were not the case.
• (From "cdk007 fine tuning" on the web) The universe is mostly very unsuitable human life, or life of any kind. We occupy a small portion of a very thin shell on a single planet in the entire universe. Our presence in the universe is infinitesimally small. To give a sense of proportion, it is analogous to saying that if on 3.5 billion Moon-sized planets we found only a single virus, that those planets were fine-tuned for life! Likewise, it is proportionally similar to having 6 million Olympic swimming pools that collectively contained a single water molecule, and asserting that those pools were fine-tuned for water storage. That is not very fine tuned at all! If the universe were really fine tuned for life, it seems there would be far more of it. In fact, the vast majority of the universe is poisonous, deadly, and hostile to life of all kinds! And also, consider that the span of time humans have lived on Earth is only a small fraction of the elapsed time of the universe. If the age of the universe were a 24 hour clock, Homo Sapiens would have lived just a fraction of a second on that clock. How can the universe be designed for human life, when we have occupied such a minute sliver of its entire spatial and temporal span?
• Some physicists speculate that there may exist parallel universes - that our universe is part of a "multiverse". Each universe in the multiverse would have its own laws of physics and values for the physical constants. Our universe just happens to have the laws and constant values that we find in it. Each universe would be equivalent to the roll of a die. Given an infinite number of universes, one would eventually be created that looks like ours. Some of these would be able to support life, but the vast majority would probably not (or at least not support life as we know it). Because we are intelligent beings, we are by definition in a universe that can support life. Because life would self-select for a universe such as ours, it should not be surprising that we should find ourselves here. Obviously this is all unproven and still being investigated. It should be noted that the multiverse theory did NOT come about as a response to the fine-tuning argument. It was a natural outcome, and predicted by, quantum theory. Numerous physics theories independently point to such a conclusion. In fact, some experts think the existence of hidden universes is more likely than not. It does fit as a possible explanation for why the constants are what they are, but was definitely not contrived just to fit as a response to the fine-tuning argument. It is not currently possible to see these other universes (if they exist), though some experiments involving new analysis of Cosmic Microwave Background have been proposed. The theory does, however, provide an explanation for the state of our particular universe.
• If anything, the excessive amount of tuning that characterizes the immensity of the universe is a bigger problem for the god explanation than for a non-god explanation. If the point of arranging the universe was to set the stage for the eventual evolution of intelligent life, why all the excess represented by the universe’s hundred billion galaxies? Are those other galaxies really necessary for life on Earth? Are they just a side effect of the Big Bang? Was it easier for god to toss those into the mix than to not have them, and if so, does god have to choose the easy route if he is capable of anything? Actually, cosmologists have calculated this - it turns out that almost all other possible histories of the universe that involve Earth as we know it don’t have any other galaxies at all! It’s unclear why God would do so much more fine-tuning of the state of the universe than seems to have been necessary.
• Given the universe that we have, it is not fine tuned for life, rather life is fine tuned for the universe. Given any universe capable of forming matter and having chemistry, and producing life, that life will compete and evolve over generations, bettering itself to survive in that universe.
• It may be that life and intelligence is more generic than we think. It might be the case that in a universe with different constants, a different sort of life may have formed, based on different fundamental principles.
• Many theists believe that life came about by a miracle from god. But if that is the case, then the universe was never fine tuned for life in the first place. According to them, the fact that life exists is literally is a miracle. If the universe was fine tuned just so life could exist, then life would have required no miracle - it would have arisen out of the perfect, fine-tuned, environment which was created specifically for it. Was it fine tuned "almost enough" for life, and just required a little miraculous nudge to get going? If god is real, he could have made life arise spontaneously in this universe, or allowed life to come about any any universe whatsoever, under any conditions, fine tuned or not. So, how can theists look at the conditions in the universe and say that they are evidence for god? Requiring a miracle for life to come about, and also insisting that the universe if fine tuned are contradictory positions.
• The discovery of the existence of these fine tuned constants, as is everything related to astronomy, cosmology, and the search for the origin of the universe, came from theoretical and empirical scientific efforts. Future discoveries that shed light on these issues will also come from these same types of efforts. This is an area that has never been moved forward by religion and armchair philosopy. In fact those have done nothing but to cause us to stagnate and become attached to old and incorrect ideas. We don't know how to unravel the mysteries of the physical constants today, but it is practically certain that input from the religious community is not going to help move the base of knowledge forward.
• Just looking at the prior probability of a god who did all this tuning, we seem to live in a universe that is very different from what I would expect if a god were in charge of putting it all together. One would have expected a far different reality than what we have. There are billions of worlds in billions of galaxies, but humans (who Christians seem to think are the whole point of the universe) live on one small world. Very wasteful. And why would a god with a plan for life come up with a solution that required 14.7 billion years for life to evolve, and to evolve in such a haphazard and seemingly undirected manner. Why would the process of evolution (which is how life is transformed) rely on a mutation process which generates thousands of destructive mutations for every beneficial one? Why would god, the chief executive of the universe, provide such shoddy and ambigous instructions (in the bible and other religious texts) that would cause his worshippers to fight wars over them for the last several millenia? And then after providing such shabby and unclear direction, punish those who didn't know what he was talking about by sending them to hell forever? And to allow all the random suffering and evil that exists. A simple reason is that there is no god, and the bible is the work of men - not the inspired word of god. The Christian religion is the creation of flawed and simple uneducated primitive men two thousand years ago.

Religion has never taught us anything about the structure of the universe. In fact pretty much all the statements that religion has made about physical reality have been shown to be wrong. All this information about physics, the constants, and the cosmos have come from science, not religion. So, I will look to science for any new information about how the universe is organized, about how to interpret the physical constants and determine what they mean. I will look to science to clarify the universe's initial starting conditions, and to shed light on why the universal constants have the values that they do. I certainly won't look to religion. It has been wrong since the childish and naive Genesis story, Noah's flood, Moses parting the red sea, Jonah living inside a "big fish" for 3 days, stars affixed to a solid firmament, and the sun stopping in the sky. Religion is the last place I would look for guidence about how the universe works. It should stick to its particular areas of expertise: singing hymns, hosting bingo games, praying, and the rest.

Finally a paraphrased quote from a counter-apologist podcaster who I follow, Justin Shieber:

Assuming the truth of the existence of a first cause who created the universe and finely-tuned its constants, and absent any argument showing that there is a statistically significant correlation between an interest in tuning-based activities and the practice of necromancy among an acceptable sample size of deities, I see no reason whatsoever to expect that a deity fond of fine-tuning should also be fond of the activities of one species of primate (us), and in particular raising first-century preachers from the dead.