Does God Really Exist ? - Some Thoughts
By Aparthib Zaman
There are always a lot of debates and discussions in various e-forums on this topic, some of those contain a lot of verbiage. But unfortunately those really did not succeed in making any clear case, as far as proving the existence of God, or refuting any argument against the claim of God's existence. No surprise, as that's how it has been for centuries. The main thrust of the article seemed to be that attempts to disprove the existence of God is not scientific. Well, science is not in the business of proving or disproving myths or beliefs, which are vague, ill-defined mental constructs invented by human minds. Science deals with well-defined concepts about reality that are amenable to theoretical or observational study. In the context of God the issue is not whether it can be proven or disproven by science, rather the issue is whether the term God can be defined in a consistent way, that suffers from no logical contradictions. The fact is it does not, all definitions inevitably gets into circularity, mutual contradictions and all sorts of fallacies. (Readers are urged to carefully review the following two articles:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_drange/incompatible.html
and
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_drange/definition.html
)As a belief it can be held privately by individuals, since beliefs do not need to satisfy the requirements of logical consistency. But such beliefs cannot pass the logical criteria to be a unanimously accepted notion in academic fields. The only definitions ( if at all they are accepted) of God that do not suffer from any of the logical flaws are God = Laws of nature (Physics), God = Nature, God=Love etc. But those are just redefinitions of existing words, and hence the existence or non-existence of God of such definitions cannot be an issue of debate. Moreover such definitions do not reflect the religious notion of God that human mind wishes to believe in.
So before even the question of scientific proof or disproof of God arises, the logical question of the consistency of the notion of God needs to be resolved, which it has not been done in philosophy.
Let me present the issue as follows:
1. Has the existence of God been proved scientifically? (Yes/No)? If No, then case closed. If yes, then please provide the proof, or give reference to a "scientific" journal, book where a decisive proof has been provided for God, as understood in religion.
2. Stating some scientific facts does not constitute a proof of God, regardless of amazing that fact appears to human mind. So it is a fallacy to say that "Since only left handed DNA's are observed in nature, hence God exists Q.E.D", or that "Since Carbon has a resonant state that allows triple alpha process to form stable carbon molecule (hence life), so God must exist". This is a non sequitur. (See http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html#sequitur )
The fact is no amount of scientific fact or data can be used to "scientifically" prove God, because the last line of such a "proof" will always be the statement "Therefore God exists", which is not only a non sequitur but also an unscientific statement of faith, not connected to any of the scientific facts and data that precede it. Scientific language does not necessarily make science: (See http://www.positiveatheism.org/faq/faq1115.htm#SCIENTIFICLANG ).
So all the volumes of scientific fact cited in message (Some of those are inaccurate, but it would not make any difference even if they were accurate ) added nothing to prove the existence of God. At the end it remains an a priori belief.
3. The strongest motivation for the belief in God is the argument from design. How can there be creation without a creator? This is a fallacy that results from trying to generalize from human experiences to its absurd limit. Since we know that humans are the designer of many objects that we see, so the generalization is made that the whole universe is designed by "someone". That is stretching human reason to an unrealistic limit. There is no equivalent experience of unknown designer of known objects to inductively generalize from into drawing this conclusion about the ultimate reality. It will be an arrogance to insist on this extrapolation of human reasoning from the known to the unknown and unspeakable. So this is not a logical inference. It is a leap of faith. There is no "logical" reason to insist that the whole universe has to have a designer, just because we know that many objects we know to have human designer. It is a logical fallacy known as Affirmation of the Consequent. Besides insisting so would logically lead to the insistence to a designer of the designer and to an infinite regress. Saying that the designer does not have to have a designer would be arbitrary, and a statement of faith, not logic. An equally tenable, if not more statement would be that the laws of nature itself is the designer and does not need a designer itself. At least we have plausible evidences that point to laws of nature (Physics) giving rise to universe of space time and matter (through nucleosynthesis and inflation of quantum vacuum) and life through evolution. The emergence of living molecule from non- living ones, although not understood, but does not rule out a purely natural process behind that. All the intricacies of life and consciousness may quite plausibly be built into the laws of Physics, and manifesting itself as the workings of a conscious designer, But making a leap of faith to a designer other than the laws of Physics would the case of fallacy of argument from ignorance (See http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/distract/ig.htm ) If one really wishes to get to the bottom of this, they may wish to go through all of the following articles:
1. http://www.positiveatheism.org/faq/design.htm
2. http://home.inu.net/skeptic/design.html
3. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Ithaca/4388/design.html
4. http://skepdic.com/intelligentdesign.html
5. http://www.stargazer.org/refute.txt or http://www.ffrforg/lfif/refute.html
6. http://www.duke.edu/~sdk2/ooze/skeptic/design.html
7. http://riceinfo.rice.edu/armadillo/Sciacademy/riggins/watch.htm
8. http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/design.htm
9. http://skepdic.com/design.html
10. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/cosmo.html
11. http://reason.com/9907/fe.ks.is.html
12. http://www.csicop.org/si/2001-03/intelligent-design.html
13. http://biomed.brown.edu/faculty/M/Miller/TR/Lifes-Design.html
14. http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/dawkins_18_3.htmlFor a more general logical discussion of God's existence see the
following:1. http://www.skeptic.com/archives05.html
2. http://home.inu.net/skeptic/god.html
3. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/ipnegep.html
4. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/logical.html
5. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_drange (AANC-1998)
6. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_drange/aeanb.html
7. http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/philo/drange_1_2.html
8. http://secularhumanism.org/library/fi/smith_18_2.html
9. http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/philo/smith_1_1.htm
10. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/atheism.html
11. http://secularhumanism.org/library/fi/schick_21_1.html
12. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/george_smith/defending.html
13. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/vic_stenger/otherside.html
14. http://freethought.freeservers.com/reason/rationalview.htmlFinally I wish to respond to some specific comments in the above message :
Re:
> "Ghoraar Deem" theory is
> the most uneducated, idiotic theory anyone could give.As for the "most uneducated, idiotic.." part my response is:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-ridicule.htmlNow regarding the "Ghoraar Deem theory is.." part, I don't think that such a "theory" exists or was proposed. The point that was being made that just as science cannot prove that Ghorar deem does not exist, similarly science cannot prove that God as the object of a belief does not exist. That would be proving a universal negative, a logically impossible task and is a fallacy to attempt to do so. And it is another fallacy to turn around that impossibility and conclude that since you cannot disprove that such and such do not exist, therefore they do exist". This is called shifting the burden of proof fallacy (see example 3 of the following link: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/burden-of-proof.html ). It is the (logical) burden of one claiming the existence of some entity to prove it's existence to others to justify the belief. No logical burden lies on others refusing to believe to justify their disbelief by disproving the claim of the existence . Lack of proof of its existence is a sufficient justification for non-belief. I think that's what was meant by Avijit, if not then he must have failed to convey what he meant (At least to the author of message ).
Re:
> There are many examples
>where the creation explanation is more scientific than evolution.This is remarkable. Creationism is scientific? Beliefs have no place in science. Creationism has not been accepted by the scientific community as scientific, that's why it is not taught in any branch of science. An individual scientist can hold creationism as a private belief, that fact does not make it scientific. Evolution on the other hand is. Evolution is a fact supported by evidences. No scientist disputes that. The only disagreement among the scientist are in the theory behind the explanation of this fact. There are various versions of the theory of evolution. But there is no scientific theory of creationism, as Creationism rests on belief primarily. I would like to see a specific example of creationism being more scientific than evolution as agreed to by scientific community as a whole and reflected in the journals or academic text.
For some details on evolution please check the following:
1. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html
2. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html
3. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html
4. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/sciproof.html (Proof of
evolution)
5. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-research.html
(evidences of evol)
6. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil.html
7. http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-qa.html
8. http://www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/u/jjkay/pubs/Life_as/text.htmlRe:
>If not then they need to put in gear and study their own faith and
>come
>up with more believable, scientific evidence, and proof rather then
>attacking us those who believe in The Creator.A refutation of the "logic" trying to prove a belief is not an attack of the believer. If someone mistakes a criticism of the message as a criticism of the messenger then he has to take responsibility for such a mistake. If a believer has the right to gratuitously offer a logical proof of their belief, then so does one who refutes such a proof. The use of the paranoid expression "attack" has no relevancy here. there is no victim, there is no assailant either. The same standard and criteria is applicable and is not disputed in other cases of belief like Astrology, dianetics, homeopathy etc. There is no reason to grant a special privileged status to religious belief. All dialectics has to allow counterpoints to any points.
Thanks
Aparthib