Question from John:
I’m having difficulty grasping the concept of an “atheist.” Perhaps you can clarify it for me.
The concept of a person who doesn’t have belief in a particular god, or a person who is certain that a particular god doesn’t exist, is quite clear. (For example, a person who doesn’t believe in the Judeo-Christian god, or who is convinced that the Judeo-Christian god doesn’t exist.) That’s different, though, from someone who doesn’t believe in ANY god of any sort.
A person might claim that they are an “atheist” because there is no scientifically-acceptable evidence for ANY god. Fair enough, as long as that person is also agnostic. But, is there really no evidence for any sort of god? Most atheists would challenge the claim that there is no evidence for the existence of dinosaurs in spite of the fact that no (non-feathered) dinosaurs exist today, and in spite of the fact that there is no direct evidence of them. (So-called “dinosaur bones” dug out of the earth aren’t bones at all. They’re stones with impressions or forms that resemble bones.)
Wouldn’t a highly technologically-advanced extraterrestrial meet every criterion for a god, as dictionaries define the word “god”? (Like many English words, the term “supernatural” has multiple definitions. Some popular dictionaries define “supernatural” as defying natural law in principle, while others define it as appearing to, or seeming to, defy natural law. Go ahead and do a survey of dictionary definitions for yourself.) If “appearing to defy natural law” is one popular definition for the term “supernatural,” then technologically-advanced beings have “supernatural” powers and meet any and every definition of a polytheistic god.
Modern, technological humans have “supernatural” powers, too, compared to tribal peoples. We can bring the dead back to life, fly through the air faster than the speed of sound, and vaporize a forest with the push of a button. Could Zeus or Thor do much better? Even if our powers don’t seem fully god-like now, they will be in a few generations. Additionally, is there not ample evidence supporting the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations with technology far superior to our own? We don’t need to see and touch a living dinosaur to accept the reality of their existence. Do we need to make first contact with an extraterrestrial species to accept the reality of their existence, given the data we do have?
Is the claim that there is no evidence for the existence of any sort of god a reasonable justification for being an “atheist.”
Answer by SmartLX:
The more you broaden the definition of a god, the more likely it will include something which exists, because more entities both known and hypothetical fall into the category. Hyper-advanced aliens are one thing, but you talk about counting modern humans as gods, which means you’re taking into account practically any possible use of the word “god”. In a nutshell, atheists do not.
Atheism is literally the absence of theism, which is religious belief in a god figure. You could broaden that too, but belief in humans or belief in aliens doesn’t generally qualify as theism. The ontology of a true “god” is often debated, but enough of its hypothetical qualities are near-universally agreed upon by believers and non-believers alike that they can have a coherent discussion about gods together, and one more or less settled point is that a god does not have a natural origin. As Richard Dawkins wrote, advanced aliens might well appear to be gods, but they wouldn’t BE gods because they would have come about naturally like we did, probably via a process like Darwinian natural selection – unless of course they had a hand in our development, in which case they came about MORE naturally than we did.
To look at this from another angle, consider that if there were no religion, no one would bother to identify as an atheist, any more than the term “abolitionist” persisted in America after slavery was successfully abolished there. Vocal, activist atheism is a reaction to religious faith, and thus concerns itself with the same kinds of gods that people believe in, the gods people worship, and importantly the gods in whose names people act. In other words, theistic gods. Atheists claim that there is no good evidence for the gods which are the subjects of religious faith. This is not redundant or circular because the faithful do not define their gods in terms of atheism. They’ll happily tell you what their gods are like, what they’ve done and what they want from us.
Since you mentioned agnosticism: Most atheists are also agnostic because they do not claim to KNOW there are no gods (as gods are defined above). They will make the positive claim that there’s no available evidence for gods, but absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. Besides, incontrovertible evidence might turn up tomorrow in Guam for all we know.
Incidentally, you completely lost me when you said there’s “ample evidence supporting the existence of extraterrestrial civilisations”. There’s currently no unambiguous evidence at all, just a lot of probability-based arguments along the lines of the Drake equation and the unsupported claims of a community of UFO enthusiasts.
Author: SmartLX
Christianity vs Science
Question from Moonrunez:
Yo, talk about cover ups and denying bull, I have been trying to find books that list how Christianity killed and abused science, the study thereof, the torture and death of people studying science, and all I get is how Christianity started science, really, who was Hypatia? N.american Indians practised Tesla mathematics thousands of years before Tesla, look at the serpent mound, or the astro-mathematics of Chaco canyon, not one ounce of land has been gained in N. or S.america except by killing American Indians for practicing witchcraft. this was commonly done to get land, Christians from pagans, Christians from Christians, no one seems to know that one half the town of Salem was accused of witchcraft, the ones who admitted as much lost all there land to the other Christians, why? Why the bullshit, or how Christianity is the cause of extinction and justification for animal abuse and scientific study, animals don`t have souls, Black Beauty was written by a man who witnessed the abuse of animals in his time and wrote about it, and I conclude do you know why I have the right to face my accuser, because in the witch burning times you could accuse your neighbor of heresy have them killed, via torture first to get land, that is why the constitution has this, I can`t find a single book listing groups of scientists, and the types of science destroyed, all I find is Christian websites stating they created science, those idiot Egyptians never built pyramids, had math, science, knew the world was round, star charts, physics, medicine, herb lore, surgery, writing, read 42 laws of Mayet! Can you recommend books that tell the truth of how science etc. was held back by Christianity, thanks.
Answer by SmartLX:
Firstly, Christians appear to have a lot of material for arguing that Christianity was responsible for the rise of science because so many of the great scientists were Christians. Where the argument stumbles is in establishing that their Christianity actually helped in their work, rather than that they were simply great scientists who, like nearly everyone else in those times and places, happened to be Christian. People like Hypatia, who was a fourth century Egyptian pagan scholar, demonstrate that plenty of good work was going on outside of “Christendom”.
Anyway, the persecution of individual scientists isn’t good material for a lot of books because there aren’t many well-known cases. There’s Galileo, of course, and in very much the same category there’s Giordano Bruno who was burned at the stake for claiming there were planets outside the solar system (possibly with life on them). William Buckland, Charles Lyell, Louis Agassiz, and Adam Sedgewick set out to investigate the Biblical flood, but ended up dispelling their own beliefs in it and brought condemnation upon themselves from the Church. Feel free to add more, folks, but that about does it for the famous ones.
It’s worth being very specific about the measurable effect Christianity has had on science, rather than simply saying that it held it back. For as long as Christianity has seen itself as a political power in the world, it has encouraged technological advances to keep itself powerful. Strong armies, good medicines and so on were extremely important.
The issue is that Christianity contains a number of doctrines (claims, if you like) which we now know contradict the scientific evidence and have been accepted by the majority as simply false. Special creation of each plant and animal is a big one, but there’s also the idea that the Earth or the Sun is the centre of the universe, that diseases are caused by demons instead of germs and that stars are small enough to be capable of “falling from the sky” onto the Earth. Some of these are claimed outright by the Bible, others were added later by popes and other authorities. Once the reality became clear in each case, even if the scientific community accepted it, majority Christian populations were very slow to adopt the new thinking because it contradicted something that was supposedly sacred. This wasn’t enough to stop the science from advancing, but it sure slowed it down. Scientists need funding and freedom, and the religious tend to be in positions where they can allow or deny both.
And now a little surprise: I didn’t say there weren’t any books at all. In 1896, Andrew Dickson White wrote A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, summarising every conflict he could find. That link is to the entire book, hosted at the University of Michigan. It’s been derided by theologians and accommodationists as propaganda, but whatever you think of it you can’t deny that it’s all there.
There’s Nothing, And Then There’s NOTHING
Question from Cherry:
I’ve heard the theory from Krauss about how you get something from nothing, but if you don’t have multiverses, laws, quantum mechanics, vacuums, particles, empty space, energy, matter, infinite singularity, or potential how can something come into existence? I’ve heard the whole thing about when antimatter and matter cancels itself out or positive and negative cancel out and then you have nothing, but if that pops back into existence it couldn’t have been long gone, it had to have just changed form and I’m not referring to nothing as a zero vacuum or being unstable. I’m referring to nothing as NO THING existing. If you START at the beginning with nothing I listed above existing, I don’t see how it could pop into existence. Say your hand is absolutely no thing existing and you want a chicken egg to pop into it, or like and unborn child that is not conceived, it doesn’t come into existence unless someone makes it happen. It just can’t appear because if you have nothing, nothing can make it. and don’t say it was in a zero vacuum. Again, I’m NOT referring to Krauss’ definition of nothing. I’m saying if you START with the absence of anything, nothing, like the examples I gave, then tell me how something can come into existence?
Answer by SmartLX:
I honestly don’t know. This does not matter, for three reasons.
1. To take the lack of an answer as an argument that it’s impossible without a god is an argument from ignorance; just because the explanation is not known does not mean there is no possible explanation. This particular fallacy has been coming up a LOT.
2. We don’t know that we did start with nothing, either in the way Krauss means or in the way you mean. Even if it’s completely impossible for something to come from nothing, this doesn’t necessitate an extra entity like a god until we establish that there ever was actually nothing. The simpler explanation, working solely from the ordinary law of conservation of matter and energy, is that there was always something.
3. God isn’t nothing. To posit that God started the universe and then immediately say God didn’t have to come from anywhere or anything is to make two assertions where one will do: that the universe didn’t have to either. Divine creation is not a simpler explanation, it’s just the one that meets the religious criterion that a god be necessary to the process at some point. I often say that any restriction you place on the universe to necessitate a god must immediately be broken to allow for a god.
From Soup To Fish
Question from Wilson:
I am not an expert in biology just warning you, so feel free to enlighten me!
Correct me if I am wrong but evolutionists believe that life originated from a soup filled with amino acids or something along those lines. But there are a whole range of complex and simple microorganisms each with precise roles and functions almost like a program? And correct me again if I am wrong, now the cells function in a certain way due to a specific set of instructions in their DNA…how do you explain the exact precise instruction that each one of these different microorganisms have without there being an intelligent creator…finally I am also wondering how a bunch of amino acids decided to come together to make a microorganism and how that tiny cell decided itself that it needs to reproduce and how the heck microorganisms turn into a fish without a creator and if you’re gonna use time as an answer then what is the probability of such an event occurring for even a simple cell?
(Just as a lot of atheists find the idea of God absurd I find Evolution completely absurd)
Answer by SmartLX:
I’m not an expert in biology either, but a little research in response to things like this can teach you a lot, and I’ve been at it for a few years now. I’m still learning of course; while I write these answers I’ve usually got multiple other tabs open for reference material.
Before I go into details, the same logical problem applies here as to the last question I answered: the argument from ignorance. That’s not an insult, it’s the proper name for a specific fallacy where because you personally don’t know how something could happen, you assume it didn’t. Even if I had no answers for any of these, we would not be justified in jumping to the conclusion of a god until any other possibilities were not just dismissed but actually ruled out (or at the very least, actual probabilities were assigned to them).
I’ll try to address each of your points, but each of my points may not correspond to just one of yours or to the order of yours.
– There are multiple hypotheses about the origin of life from non-life (abiogenesis), and the “primordial soup” idea is one of the classic front-runners. Here’s a list of the current ones.
– Amino acids could occur naturally, as was demonstrated in the 50s, but a lot of different amino acids and other materials had to come together in just the right way to make the first simple proteins and genes. That’s a big factor reducing the probability that it would happen. However, there are three factors of a comparable scale which raised the probability: the sheer amount of material being constantly shoved against itself by natural forces, the huge number of different combinations that could have had the same effect, and finally the vast amount of time you mention – by current estimates, about one billion years from the formation of the Earth to the emergence of the first life form.
– The first life had DNA, or an equivalent like RNA, with one simple instruction: “Use the material around you to make another of yourself.” This was not an intelligent command, it was just something its physical makeup drove it to do, like a pinwheel spinning in the wind because of its shape. If it was in an environment full of the same material of which it was made, then this was straightforward: break evenly in two, then have each half absorb its own weight in raw material, then repeat. This is how microorganisms still do it today.
– Once life existed and was able to reproduce, it began to diversify. Slight imperfections in the self-copying process produced different offspring, and some of those differences were carried forward to the next generation. Whichever differences made it easier to survive and procreate, the creatures with those features tended to grow in number relative to the others. At some point a set of single-celled organisms joined together and shared their genetic material; the experiment was successful, and the first multicellular life came about. (Perhaps it had occurred before, but in the wrong conditions, and everything that tried it died.) At a certain point, small amounts of calcium became part of the essential material in the “body”, forming rigid structures; this helped with self-defense, and the viability of bones was established. Every tiny change that came about had to compete with other changes and come out on top, so every change that persisted had to have some benefit (or at least not be a hindrance), and thus a number of useful features began to accumulate. It’s been so long now that living things and their genes seem to be made of nothing but useful features, though some superseded components (like the appendix) have yet to be eliminated entirely.
I recommend reading at least a couple of books on evolution, just so you can know what the theory actually says before deciding whether it’s so unlikely. Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin is about to be accompanied by a TV show. Richard Dawkins’ early book The Blind Watchmaker is a great primer, and has little or none of his recent anti-religious material that puts believers off him. Just don’t restrict yourself only to books on evolution by creationists and/or Intelligent Design proponents, because all they do is claim that various things are impossible when at worst we just don’t know how they happen – and sometimes when we actually do know.
The Human Body: The Amazing Multitudinous Dichotomy
Question from Robert:
Message: To whom it may concern: How can you explain the amazing complexity of human beings? The average human body has between 75 to 100 trillion cells. If no God, how could trillions of cells, which have no brain, collect themselves together and then change into all the highly specialized cells of the human body?
Also it takes a man and woman to create a baby. Therefore, a male and female body would have had to evolve at exactly the same time~! And a hermaphroditic human being still poses the same problem. The male and female parts would have needed to evolve — AT THE SAME EXACT TIME~! That is absolutely impossible.
Answer by SmartLX:
Didn’t actually go looking for answers to these, did you? You immediately took them to be ideal rhetorical blunt objects to beat any “Darwinist” into silence. The second one isn’t even a question, and you claim it’s impossible; this is not the language of someone who genuinely wants to know. Even if there were no answers to either one, to assume that there is no possible explanation without actually ruling any out is an argument from ignorance. Thing is, there are quite reasonable answers to each.
Today there are plenty of living things with no brain, and they assemble themselves just fine. Even the creatures with brains must start their self-assembly before the brain is formed, so brains have little or nothing to do with it. One cell automatically divides into two, then four, then eight and so on, held together with membranes. The DNA contained in each and shared by all contains the necessary information to allow each of these “stem cells” to metamorphose into a skin cell, a brain cell, a liver cell or whatever is needed. The cells can send biochemical signals to each other, so for example a cell is informed that there are enough lung cells for the moment and it becomes a bone cell instead. Once enough of an organ has come together, it reflexively begins its specific function: the brain manipulates electrical energy, the kidneys process liquids, the bones produce blood cells.
As for why there are so many cells in a body, there are many factors that limit the size of a living thing but for us none of them really kick in until the trillions. There’s enough food to feed them, they’re light enough not to collapse under their own weight, they’re strong enough not to break apart without significant force. There are obvious advantages of having so many of them together, too: they can defend themselves against similarly large threats, huge numbers of cells can be cut away or killed while the rest survive, they can reproduce fast enough to replace short-lived cells like skin cells. Once early single-celled organisms first fused together and shared their DNA about one billion years ago, there was nothing to stop them from amassing more and more cells per organism for all that time. Exponential growth has led to the huge conglomerates that are modern plants and animals.
In the same fashion that cells differentiate into many different types, the human body as a whole is triggered by its chromosomes to specialise as one of two types, male or female. (Sometimes this goes wrong: the body gets mixed signals and you get intersex babies, or hermaphrodites.) In our evolutionary history this would have started as a much less pronounced difference between two groups in the one microscopic species. Importantly, they remained part of the same species because they exchanged genetic material directly, perhaps by simply pushing it through their cell walls. It immediately conferred an advantage in terms of survival and procreation because the DNA of every new offspring was a recombination of two sets instead of a clone of just one. More new combinations, more mutations and overall faster evolution. (This effect has been observed directly in adjacent populations of small fish, some of which reproduce heterosexually and some unisexually. The ones who have sex with each other build immunity to new diseases in fewer generations.) Once that was happening, the differences within the species were free to develop further, and a similar distinction was already present in every other species that descended from it.
Picking various amazing things about the body (or our planet, or the universe) and claiming they’re unachievable without a god is a terrible way to logically arrive at the necessity of a god, partly because of the argument from ignorance but mostly because there’s usually been a lot of work done to determine the method and it’s liable to be plonked in front of you. This approach is however an excellent way to reassure believers, who are less likely to research a claim that supports their beliefs, that they are justified in their faith. Consider the possibility that this is the spirit in which these ideas were conveyed to you, because they just plain don’t work on atheists.
Three Ducks In A Row
Question from Bryson:
1. Based on Mendel’s work, only genes, not physical acquired traits are passed to the next generation. Now, based on that, what mechanism in nature creates new genetic codes to build an improved animal? None that I know of. none that Richard Dawkins himself can think of as when asked he had no answer. So there would be no inheritable variations for natural selection to choose from. Now I know that some evolutionists have mutation as the answer. But mutation only damages DNA, it doesn’t produce new information and as proved by scientists, there’s no beneficial mutations in existence.
2. Also the Cambridge discovery. The oldest fossils ever found on earth, showing different species of the same “family” suddenly appearing at the same time with no links connecting them. Everyone says evolution is proven fact, when in actuality, evidence is extremely rare, and highly inconclusive at best.
3. Also, when scientists tried, they found that even on paper, you can’t take a cell below 200 genes. And in 06, they concluded in reality, it actually is impossible to go below 397 genes. A cell needs a certain amount of things to live. Scientist call this the minimal gene concept. Well…to find the origin of life you would have to go down to 0 and build up.
What is the atheist response to this?
Answer by SmartLX:
Three very old creationist canards. The word is appropriate because it defines them as unfounded, and slightly funny because it’s also the French word for a duck. I’ve numbered them for reference.
1. Gene duplication, transposable element protein domestication, lateral gene transfer, gene fusion/fission, de novo gene origination, and probably more. Several of these happen during mutation. The Lenski E.coli experiment, despite what Conservapedia has claimed, is a pretty clear-cut example of a positive mutation directly observed. Richard Dawkins wasn’t dumbstruck because he didn’t have an answer, he was furious because the nature of the question made him realise a pair of creationists were in his home under false pretenses. Here’s his explanation of the event. Even if you don’t believe his account, in the same piece he gives a complete answer to the question, and it stands on its own merits.
2. Fossils are rare to begin with, but when you go all the way back to when animals didn’t have skeletons or hard shells of any kind, there are hardly any at all. I’m not familiar with the specific “discovery” you refer to (link to it if you like), but that’s generally why fossils appear to start off already diversified. It hardly matters when we share more than half our genome with all animals and even certain plants, indicating a common ancestry.
3.The “minimal gene set” is a few hundred proteins, not genes, and it was easier for them to come together when they did than it would be now. Naturally occurring amino acids were all over the world and throughout the sea, and there was no other life to consume them or otherwise interfere. The chances of the specific protein set coming together were tiny, but this was more than balanced out by the vast amount of space, materials and time the chemicals had to get it right, and also the number of different possible combinations that would have had the same effect. And of course it only had to happen once.
The Universe and Everything
Question from Bryson:
So based on scientific evidence the universe at one time began to exist right? Explained by What we call the big bang theory. Another law is whatever begins to exist has a cause right? As in there’s something that begins to exist, there’s a cause for it, it existing being the effect. So if a universe existed, logically there’s a cause. Since the universe hasn’t existed yet, there’s no time/space/energy. Which leads to the conclusion that the cause of this “big bang” has to be something outside the laws of time/space/matter.
Well since only two things fall under this category, one would be a divine entity, the other an abstract object like the number 1 or something. My question is how would something abstract be a cause? I know Stephen Hawking said something along the lines of because of the laws of the gravity, there is no need for a creator because that proves the universe will create itself from nothing. But, of course, after thinking about it, if the universe hasn’t existed yet, that would mean the laws don’t exist yet. Plus, while the laws of gravity are describe gravity, it has no creative power. If put 1 dollar in the bank, and then next week 2 dollars, I can logically and mathematically explain why I now have $3. But, if I put 1 dollar in the bank and depend on mathematics to increase it, I would never have more than $1.
I know some people have even talked about something to do with a multiverse, but of course that doesn’t disprove god either because logically with a being capable of creating one universe, why would he not be able to create more if it wished.
Answer by SmartLX:
The good old cosmological argument. This argument falls at the first hurdle, but drags on and knocks over all the others regardless.
– No, scientific evidence has not established that the universe began to exist. It has established that it was once concentrated at or near a single point, then expanded outwards. The evidence says nothing about whether the matter and energy in that point was created at that instant or it got there from somewhere else.
– There are two modern perspectives on matter and energy. According to the classical laws of conservation, they may be converted into each other but they are never created or destroyed. Since they exist now, this would imply that they have always existed and didn’t need a creator. On the other hand, according to quantum mechanics matter can emerge spontaneously in certain circumstances as long as the same amount of antimatter does too, because the total amount of positive energy stays the same. Again no creator is needed, so neither way supports the supposed necessity of a creator.
– If the Big Bang was caused by something outside of our universe’s space and time, it doesn’t make the cause timeless or spaceless. It might be a natural entity with its own spacetime and energy, say, another universe.
– We have never unambiguously observed a divine entity, so it is pure assertion to say it can exist outside of space and time. We have only observed the “abstract” (mathematics, logic, etc.) within the confines of a physical universe as it affects the objects in that universe, so we don’t know whether the abstract can exist without the material either. Regardless, you pose a false dilemma because there is at least a third choice: an object in a different system of spacetime. And the whole thing is moot until the necessity of a cause is established.
– No, the possibility of a multiverse doesn’t disprove the existence of a god, but nothing does. A god is a possibility in a multiverse as well as in a single universe. There’s just no good reason to think it’s real, let alone necessary.
Evolution and the Holocaust
Question from James:
Hey thanks for reading this. If evolution is survival of the fittest then why was Hitler considered evil? If he could overcome the Jews then Germans must be better then Jews. In fact racism shouldn’t be a bad thing if you truly believe your race is better. Also why does it matter is animals go extinct? I get cows and animals we use, but who cares about obscure fish and bugs?
Answer by SmartLX:
Your initial question about Hitler is like asking, “If the atomic number of boron is 5, why did two different actors play Darrin on Bewitched?” The first part is true and so is the second, but the two are unrelated.
Evolution is an explanation of what has happened, over the entire history of life on earth, to change it from a single population of similar single-celled organisms to the vast complexity and diversity we see today. “Survival of the fittest” is still an apt simplification, because at all times those organisms which are more fit for survival and procreation are the ones that pass on the most genes. Some kill members of their own species to get along, some don’t have to. Even Darwin thought it was pretty brutal, writing that “nature is red in tooth and claw,” but human morality is difficult or impossible to apply to non-human animals. They’re just doing what their instincts tell them.
Evil on the other hand is a label we apply to actions and people who go against our morals and ethics. Hitler’s genocide violates the morality of such a huge majority of us that society as a whole can label him evil without fear of being challenged. That the act was intended to benefit Hitler’s chosen race does not make it good or ambiguous just because this sounds vaguely evolutionary, because there is no morality to evolution. Evolution is just what happened, take it or leave it, and our morals as applied to Hitler come from other sources.
The Holocaust comparison fails on other levels. Here are two.
– Despite the claims of Nazi propaganda which tried to dehumanise the Jews, the Holocaust boils down to a single species attacking itself en masse, which isn’t good for any population. So does any act of ethnic cleansing, which is why racism is unsupportable by evolutionary theory. If anything the Holocaust could be seen as an act of “social Darwinism“, which borrows the terminology of evolution but has little in common with it.
– The six million Jews were murdered in an act of artificial selection, not natural selection. Evolution has no will and no goals, but Hitler decided those Jews should die. This deliberate culling has far more in common with techniques that have been used in animal breeding for centuries, long before Darwin.
Moving on, we actually don’t care very much about fish and bugs, do we? The former we catch live, kill painfully and eat with relish, and the latter we crush on our forearms without a second thought. Fish and insects are alien to us, so it’s hard to empathise with them – especially the insects, as we can’t really look them in the eyes. Once you get to mammals like cows and pigs, we’re still happy to eat them but we start to care whether they are treated humanely on the farm and in the abbatoir. We perceive cats, dogs, apes and monkeys as so like us in behaviour and attitude that most of us wouldn’t even consider killing one, let alone eating it. This empathy is where we get the urge to protect animals and treat them well, rather than some platitude about them all being “God’s creatures”, but there is a sliding scale of how strongly it applies.
That wasn’t really your point though. If you want an evolutionary rationale of why we should prevent obscure species from going extinct, animals that wipe out other animals or plants completely usually do themselves a terrible disservice in terms of survival. They deprive themselves of a food source, or a crucial nutrient is lost which leaves them susceptible to disease, or they allow a new poisonous species to flourish, or they put themselves at war with some other animal that was dependent on the late species. All of the above might apply to us, but additionally human science and medicine might have all sorts of uses for species of any type. Finally, although we can’t muster much empathy for alien-like species while they suck our blood or whatever, the fact that they’re just trying to survive too does engender a broad sense of solidarity with all living things.
Ham vs Nye: Whoever Wins, Who Really Wins?
Question from Jordan:
Hello ATA.
I was wondering how you felt about the upcoming Ham/Nye debate. From what I can tell, most atheists are not happy about the debate. They claim that an atheist should never debate a creationist because there is nothing to debate—evolutionary thinking has already won. They claim that the act of simply debating gives the creationist credibility.
I think it is obvious that this atheistic claim sounds like an excuse. If creationism is so flawed, it should be simple for an atheist to dominate in a debate. Yet creationists keep asking, and many atheists keep refusing. It is as if the atheist is thinking, “I’d rather have people THINK I’m a coward, than for people to KNOW that I’m wrong.” The fact that Bill Nye is willing to debate, shows he is confident in what he believes.
From my experience (as a creationist) on this site, you all seem happy to debate someone on the issue. Are you excited about the upcoming debate (like myself and most other creationists)? Do you see this as a chance for the idea of creationism to be buried, or are you upset with Bill Nye like Dawkins and the many others like him?
Answer by SmartLX:
Whether evolution is or isn’t a fact (it is) is not the reason these atheists don’t want Nye to debate Ham. A debate depends very little on whether one side or the other is objectively correct. It’s the ultimate exercise in rhetoric, where even if you don’t convince a single person you can still be ahead on rhetorical “points” at the end of the debate and thus “win” it.
The mass refusal of evolutionary biologists and other scientists to debate creationists is a relatively new thing. Debates like these went on all the time in the 80s and 90s, which is how people like Duane Gish became famous for doing them. Richard Dawkins even did one at Oxford, when creationism actually had a chance at being taught there. The concerted refusal was later instituted, by Dawkins and other major figures, because of the observed effects of these earlier debates.
– If the audience consisted mostly of creationists or at least devout Christians, as will certainly be the case in the Ham/Nye debate, the debate sounded like a victory for the creationist no matter what was said.
– There are a multitude of creationist “refutations” of evolution (all in the pattern of “evolution can’t explain X, therefore God”) dozens of which can be rattled off in a matter of minutes. Even if there’s a perfectly good evolutionary explanation for each one it takes a lot longer to explain, so some points will necessarily go unanswered and that’s a terrible thing to happen in a debate. The late Duane Gish would throw out as many claims as he could right at the end of a debate, knowing most of them would stand unchallenged purely for reasons of time. To this day, it’s known as the Gish Gallop.
– Even if the creationist was soundly and undeniably defeated, he (I’d say “or she” but most or all of the prominent ones were men) would be invited by other creationists to speaking engagements and radio shows where he could make the same points again, alone and undisputed, as if the debate had never happened. According to Ray Comfort, the main goal of any evangelist is to spread the message, regardless of context; God supposedly does the rest of the work, or doesn’t. When he talks about his televised debate with the Rational Response Squad, the important thing wasn’t that he adequately defended the Gospel but rather that he reached the audience of Nightline. (Also see his book, You Can Lead An Atheist To Evidence But You Can’t Make Him Think.) Any embarrassments during a debate can be buried under a subsequent succession of appearances with sympathetic hosts and audiences, where the combative “evolutionist” can be demonised.
Besides the above, the claim that creationists gain credibility from debating scientists is a valid one. Credibility among the already devout for not being swayed or cowed by the scientific establishment, and credibility among the neutral for appearing with a qualified professional as an apparent equal, even if he gets trounced. The credibility, however, is secondary to the publicity; Ken Ham may have been mentioned more in mainstream media in the last few weeks than in the previous several years, and far more positively because the news isn’t about the imminent financial failure of his Ark Park project. Speaking of which, the proceeds from DVD sales of this debate will go straight into the coffers of Answers in Genesis and prop up the Park, which all by itself is a reason for non-creationists not to support the event.
To summarise, there are plenty of reasons why Nye should not debate Ham even if it’s assumed that Nye will win. Furthermore, there are plenty of ways for Nye to effectively lose even if he is right and Ham is wrong. On a pragmatic note, the simple fact that creationists everywhere are so eager for this debate to happen (and that Ham set it up in the first place) means that they expect their cause to benefit from it one way or another regardless of the arbitrated outcome (if there’s even a judge), and I don’t think they’re wrong. Nye shows no signs of pulling out, so I guess we’ll see what happens.
Update:
Well, Nye is generally accepted to have won the debate by a mile, but AiG received such a boost in financial support and apparent legitimacy that it is at least claiming that it’s secured the municipal bonds necessary to break ground on the Ark Encounter park. No surprises at all.
The Poorly-Tuned Universe?
Question from Alex:
Hi, this question has the intention to find if there are direct counter-examples of the fine-tuning argument, by this I mean constants that could be adjustable without impeding the emergence of life in the universe; are there such constants?
If the universe was designed by an intelligent creator, we should expect things like the fine-tunings for life we observe, but what if we find there are examples of non-fine tuning? Or have we finally found the evidence for a creator?
Thanks.
Answer by SmartLX:
In Just Six Numbers by Martin Rees, he brings up one direct counter-example: the value of the gravitational constant could vary by up to a factor of 3,000 before it precluded the formation of stars and thus the emergence of life. Some of the other constants would throw out the balance if they changed by themselves, even slightly, but if other constants were also different it could compensate very well. If you consider only the six most well-known constants, and the idea that any of them could be any value positive or negative, that presents an enormous six-dimensional sample space of possibilities which isn’t even close to being exhausted as a source of other viable “settings”.
Even if there were no counter-examples, and every constant had to be exactly what it is for life to emerge, it wouldn’t be evidence for a creator until all other possibilities were eliminated. Contrary to the sample space I’ve described, maybe the nature of the early universe was that each constant could only have been within a small range. Maybe each constant influences the others, such that the current constants are in stable equilibrium for purely physical reasons. Maybe we’re in the one universe out of billions of billions of universes with varying constants where they all came out just right. There are also counter-arguments like the idea that if the universe were actually fine-tuned, such a mind-bogglingly huge percentage of it wouldn’t be empty and/or uninhabitable – it would likely be friendlier or smaller.
To say that the universe supports life is not to say that the universe is fine-tuned for life, because one can happen without a “tuner” and one can’t. Keep an eye out, because many arguments for God based on this idea try to pull that particular switcheroo.