Religion's bad arguments against the big bang

The day after I wrote my previous blog post, "Mystery of existence eludes both religion and science," I returned to reading Michael Shermer's new book, The Believing  Brain.

I came across a section in his "Belief in God" chapter that reminded me of points made in my post -- which isn't surprising, given that (1) Shermer's arguments are fairly obvious, and (2) almost certainly Shermer and I have read the same ungodly books by Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, and other religious skeptics.

Have a read:

The problem we face with the God question is that certainty is not possible when we bump up against such ultimate questions as "What was there before time began?" or "If the big bang marked the beginning of all time, space, and matter, what triggered the first act of creation?"

The fact that science presents us with a question mark on such questions doesn't faze scientists because theologians hit the same epistemological wall. You just have to push them one more step.

In my debates and dialogues with theologians, theists, and believers, the exchange usually goes something like this for the question of what triggered the big bang, or the first act of creation.

God did it.

Who created God?

God is he who needs not be created.

Why can't the universe be "that which needs not be created"?

The universe is a thing or an event, whereas God is an agent or being, and things and events have to be created by something, but an agent or being does not.

Isn't God a thing if he is part of the universe?

God is not a thing. God is an agent or being.

Don't agents and beings have to be created as well? We're an agent, a being -- a human being, in fact. We agree that human beings need an explanation for our origin. So why does this causal reasoning not apply to God as agent and being?

God is outside of time, space, and matter, and thus needs no explanation.

If that is the case, then it is not possible for any of us to know if there is a God or not because, by definition, as finite beings operating exclusively within the world we can only know other natural and finite beings and objects. It is not possible for a natural finite being to know a supernatural infinite being.

...The burden of prooof is on believers to prove God's existence -- not on nonbelievers to disprove it -- and to date theists have failed to prove God's existence, at least by the high evidentiary standards of science and reason.

So we return again to the nature of belief and the origin of belief in God. I have built a strong case that belief in a supernatural agent with intention is hardwired in our brains, and that the agent as God was created by humans and not vice versa.

Comments

[Willie R]

Blogger Brian - I take some exception to a statement in your last paragraph - that "belief in a supernatural agent with intention is hardwired in our brains". This would seemingly imply that our brains themselves were "intentionally" constructed. My own brain seems to think that, if that is the case, then whatever constructed it did so in order to call attention to itself.

How did some brains defeat their own circuitry and come to the conclusion that there is no supernatural agent with intention?

Maybe Reality itself doubts it's own existence.

[Blogger Brian]

Willie R, the last paragraph, and the whole indented selection, come from Shermer's book. But I agree with what he says.

His argument is that evolution, through natural selection, favored our ancestors who came to have a "theory of mind." Which means in part, the ability to know that others have minds and intentions. People, surely, but also animals.

So a rustling in the bushes instinctively is immediately thought of as, "Tiger!" Only later does the more recently evolved cortex ponder the situation and consider how likely it is that a tiger is hiding in the bushes.

Shermer says that this capability is linked to our overall attitude of "agenticity," finding purpose and meaning in the world, even when events are random or unconnected. Conspiracy theories are a good example of this -- how a World Order supposedly is running things, or 9/11 was the product of a vast governmental conspiracy. God, of course, is the ultimate unseen agent.

Now, we've evolved a capacity to understand how we've evolved our capacities. Science lets us get a glimpse of how we glimpse reality. Pretty cool. But this means that old habits come to be viewed in a new light.

[Bob Bollinger]

OK
So you have fingers pointing at the moon but the finger is not the moon. Words are the map but not the territory. It seems to me any discussion or definition of the Tao, the Great Spirit etc. is like trying to define how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. For what it is worth you stimulate the little grey cells.

[InchAlongCassidy]

Brian:

How does one prove "random"? Really. Random to whom?

We say it is JUST "nature"....or JUST "random" like we know what those things really exist outside our brain and its sensual interface(s) with some electromagnetic field.

[cc]

For the sake of argument, let's say God does exist, but that the human brain must transcend conceptuality to perceive God, and that the transcendence of conceptuality is as arguable as God until it happens.

It makes more sense to believe in the transcendance of conceptuality than to believe in God, but until it happens, there is nothing but Belief.