God and Faith and all that

In a recent entry in his own journal, Al Schroeder talked about his belief in God and an argument in favor of God's existence based on the origin of the universe. Now, I'm not picking on Al, who I like quite a bit (for someone I've never met!) and who is one of the few on-line journalists who talks about comic books and science fiction (so he's not all bad) (that's - ah say - that's a joke, son!), but a couple of thoughts came to mind which I wanted to discuss here.

As you may know, I'm an agnostic. I'm what I technically call an "atheist-leaning weak agnostic", which means that I neither believe nor disbelieve in the existence of a god or gods, but I lean towards the side of believing against. (A "strong" agnostic is someone who actively believes it's not possible to demonstrate for or against the existence of god. I don't believe that sort of thing, so I'm a "weak" agnostic, which is what most people mean when they say "agnostic".)

Basically, I've never felt any real need to believe in a Higher Power. Indeed, a girlfriend of mine once called me the least spiritual person she'd ever met. I tend to find most Christian activist groups repugnant (that I disagree strongly with them is a given).

Al takes the interesting approach of reasoning out whether or not God exists, based on the existence of the universe, with physical laws working the way they do and intelligent life existing at all. Take a look at his article and then come back here. (I'm mainly interested in the foundational argument for the existence of a god.)

Al quite reasonably dismisses one option out of hand: There doesn't seem to be any reason to believe that physical laws have to be the way they are. And the argument for "greater probability" doesn't seem to be a distinct argument to me: If the probability is large enough, then it collapses into the "laws have to be this way" argument (only a little fuzzier), and if it's not, then it collapses into the "pure chance" argument.

The other two arguments are the "multiple realities" argument (fairly reasonably dismissed by Occam's Razor), and the "godlike creator" argument.

Ah, but notice that I've skipped over one: Al easily dismisses the "pure chance" argument with the comment, "Pure chance. But on one try? hat's all the universe has, so far as we know. Like breaking the bank at Monte Carlo on the first and only try." This is where I think Al goes wrong, making a fundamental error of probability: He's essentially assuming that because the event did happen, he's assigning it a disproportional degree of importance relative to other possible events.

This sort of error is made all the time in (tah-dah!) the study of baseball. Just because some weak-hitting player (Bucky Dent, for instance) happened to hit the game-winning home run in a critical game - against all odds - his contribution to the team over the course of the season is maximized in the press and by the fans. Yeah, it makes a great story, and part of baseball is great stories, but the real story is that he was in the right place at the right time. People win the lottery, too, and I don't think it's reasonable to ascribe their good fortune to the intervention of a Grand Designer.

The fact is, just because the chance was small doesn't mean that the chance was zero. You could break the bank at Monte Carlo on only one try. It's possible.

I personally believe that Al also makes an error in suggesting that the universe has only rolled the dice once. I don't think there's any really concrete evidence for this, and indeed Stephen Hawking, in A Brief History of Time, suggests (quite reasonably) that a singularity at the beginning of the universe essentially squeezes space and time so that the concept of "what happened before" has no semantic meaning; the singularity erases the notion of "before". So it doesn't seem at all a leap to believe that there have been many, many other universes before/besides/whatever this one. (Not that this concept is necessary for the "pure chance" argument to be valid; but it is a useful supporting notion.)

So why do I pick the "pure chance" argument over the "godlike creator" argument? Occam's Razor, of course. Presupposing intelligence - much less godlike intelligence - seems a terrifically huge leap beyond supposing none at all. (In finest Stephen Jay Gould fashion, I could also point out that making this presupposition is the height of anthrocentrism.)

(Never mind that one still has to ask the question, "Where did God come from?", whereas if one accepts the Big Bang Theory - or something like it - then the question of "come from" has no meaning. This was a matter which had always bothered me, and I was thunderstruck when I read Hawking's suggestion. It makes a certain intellectual sense, to me, at least.)

So it seems to me that unless you reject Occam's Razor, a rational approach to the question must lead one to conclude that there is no God.

Of course, Occam's Razor is just an argument of convenience; why make things tougher than they need to be? It's doesn't prove anything, certainly it doesn't prove or disprove the existence of God (whether you favor Al's argument or my own). And that's why I'm an agnostic. Occam's Razor makes me "atheist-leaning".

For instance, I have faith that my senses provide a reasonable accurate view of the world around me, within certain limits that everyone learns with experience. I have faith that my cat is lying on my desk, that my watch reads 9:37:38, that the Brewers are losing to the Cardinals, that it's bloody hot in here, that I haven't lit any incense in a while.

I also have a certain faith in my memory, although my faith in my short-term memory is somewhat lower, I think, than some peoples'. I'm forever going back to my apartment door to make sure I really did lock it, especially when I go to sleep. When I send sensitive, eyes-only e-mail to someone, I often go back to double-check that it went to the intended person, even when there's nothing I could do if it didn't.

I could probably enumerate some other small faiths I have, but most of them are very basic things like senses and memory, and most of my other beliefs are founded on experience and logic resulting from those basic faiths. I don't make any "high-level" leaps like believing in God.

Obviously, faith works well for some people. Al seems to have his head screwed on better than most people I've encountered, and he clearly has religious faith, so who am I to question that it works for him?

It's a nebulous idea, which is the main reason I haven't written it.

The other idea is based on the notion that there was a godlike creator of the universe, who put all the physical laws in place, but who found upon creating the cosmos that those laws stripped him of his godhood. Oh, he might still be immortal, or immensely powerful, or something, but he might end up stranded on a planet somewhere until discovered by some starfaring race, or he might forever travel the stars, looking on his handiwork, and perhaps lamenting having made some colossal mistake.

Obviously, there are not strongly faith-positive stories, although in truth that's more because my story ideas run sharply towards either the melancholy or the melodramatically heroic. But I still think they're interesting ideas.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)