Friends,
In our recent dialogue I have noticed a consistent theme. It was frequently remarked that religious lines of argumentation lack reason. The contention seems to be that most, if not all, religious systems rely solely on wholly unsubstantiated faith to support their beliefs.
Is this contention in fact true? From a theistic perspective the reality seems quite inverted in that it would appear to require an unreasonable commitment to naturalism to maintain a denial of the transcendent.
Rabbi Moshe Averick has done yeoman's work in deconstructing the popular arguments in favor of naturalistic explanations to the origin of life and has concurrently demonstrated the high degree of intellectual vigor of theistic reasoning. This post is a paraphrase of his analysis of the origin of life problem that confronts the naturalist camp within the scientific community. A full treatment is available in his indispensable book Nonsense of a High Order.
One might suppose that in the six or so decades since the discovery of the DNA molecule by Watson and Crick during which researchers have been investigating the origin of life they might have come up with some pretty solid leads to explain it. The truth of the matter is that we see scientists coming up surprisingly empty-handed and that even within scientific circles, the few hypotheses they do have are shredded to ribbons by their colleagues within the scientific community.
So how is a non-religious scientist expected to contend with this dearth of hard evidence? Some seem to have recognized the dead ends within the maze and the subsequent outgrowth of a scientific version of a "faith" in light of the problem:
"One must conclude that ... a scenario describing the genesis of life on Earth by chance and natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact and not faith has not yet been written." (Dr. H.P. Yockey, physicist, information theorist and contributor to the Manhattan Project)
"The theory behind theory is that you come up with truly testable ideas. Otherwise it's no different from faith. It might as well be a religion if there's no evidence for it." (Dr. J. Craig Venter, Biologist and one of the first people to sequence the human genome)
And there's the rub: There just is no evidence for it. Not one of them has the foggiest notion about how to answer life's most fundamental question: How did life arise on our planet? The non-believer is thus faced with two choices: to accept as an article of faith that science will eventually arrive at a reasonable, naturalistic conclusion to this intellectual black box or to choose to believe in the vanishingly small odds that the astonishing complexity, intelligence and mystery of life came about as a result of chance, which of course presents its own problems:
"Suppose you took scrabble sets, or any word game sets, blocks with letters containing every language on Earth and you heap them together, and then you took a scoop and you scooped into that heap, and you flung it out on the lawn there and the letters fell into a line which contained the words, 'to be or not to be that is the question,' that is roughly the odds of an RNA molecule appearing on the Earth." (Dr. Robert Shapiro, Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Chemistry at New York University)
Ask yourself, do you believe in the RNA molecule? Do you accept Dr. Shapiro's scrabble analogy as an actual possibility? Most people intuitively recognize that it's not a reasonable position to hold. Everybody knows that too many good hands at the blackjack table will get you kicked out of Vegas and that arguing to casino security that your three hours of consecutive 21s are theoretically possible will not be accepted as a valid defense. Nonetheless, these odds are what many are suggesting we accept. The resulting cognitive dissonance seems to have a negative effect on some of those making the argument:
"It is this combative atmosphere which sometimes encourages scientists writing and speaking about the origin of life to become as dogmatic and bigoted as the creationist opponents they so despise." (Dr. Andrew Scott, Chemist and science writer)
This inescapable conundrum is what has driven otherwise brilliant minds to concoct such exotic (and evidence-averse) theories as directed panspermia -- the notion that life was seeded on Earth by space aliens -- posited by Nobel Prize winning biologist Francis Crick and at times seconded by Richard Dawkins. The (unfalsifiable) multiverse theory is another example. At times these researchers, despite themselves, seem to grasp the sheer unlikelihood of the whole enterprise and start groping for the most unscientific of words to explain themselves:
"An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle." (Francis Crick)
Amazingly, even Richard Dawkins has written that, "I could not imagine being an atheist at any time before 1859." Why? Because in 1859 Darwin published his Origin of Species. But so what? This entire discussion is taking place outside of an evolutionary context. Evolution can only begin once we already have a dazzlingly complex, self-replicating, living cell with which to work. That -- the origin of that first cell, not what happened thereafter -- is the fundamental basis of disagreement between theist and atheist. I make that statement with a full awareness of the fact that scientists hypothesize the prior existence of "simple" self replicating molecules that led up to the emergence of the DNA based bacterium; but this just pushes the question back a step. There is no conclusive evidence that such molecules ever did, or could, spontaneously self-assemble on the prebiotic earth. Again, even Dawkins candidly admits regarding this notion that, "I don't know how [it started], nor does anyone else."
I posit to you that all the evidence points, in an obvious and inextricable way, to a supernatural explanation for the origin of life. If there are no known naturalistic explanations and the likelihood that "chance" played any role is wildly minute, then it is a perfectly reasonable position to take that a conscious super-intelligence (that some of us call God) was the architect of life on this planet. Everyone agrees to the appearance of design. It is illogical to assume its non-design in the absence of evidence to the contrary.
"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to understanding the real struggle between Science and the Supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community of unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to naturalism ... for we cannot allow a Divine foot in the door." (Richard Lewontin, Geneticist)
Follow Rabbi Adam Jacobs on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RabbiAdamJacobs
Roy Speckhardt: Celebrating Darwin Day
Rabbi Moshe Averick shreds Christopher Hitchens and the new atheists
“Everyone agrees to the appearance of design. It is illogical to assume its non-design in the absence of evidence to the contrary.”
No, not everyone agrees to this. But even if everyone did, it is absolutely NOT logical to assume design just because of its appearance. In fact, upon close examination of the appearance of design and the numerous examples we find of poor design, it becomes clear that no such (intelligent) design exists, only design by the blind forces of nature, which has no plan, no foresight. If an intelligent designer did design us, then “it” did so very poorly with great incompetence. Yet in our observations of our design we find ample evidence of our evolution through natural selection and our connection to all other life forms on Earth.
Also, your problems with the chance component of life’s origins have been solved before. Improbable events happen all the time in a universe where billions of events are happening every second. There is nothing at all problematic about the formation of life from non-life having small odds, even vanishingly small. Even if there was only a 1 in a trillion chance, given how many stars and planets there are, this is an event that probably happened several times in the cosmos.
YET!
This is not a rub for scientists, because, to their credit, when there is no evidence for or against something scientists keep thinking about it, and keep doing science in search of either supporting or refuting evidence. Scientists don’t take the intellectually lazy way out and say, “Well, we can’t figure it out, so goddidit.” No, that’s what religions do.
“Not one of them has the foggiest notion about how to answer life's most fundamental question: How did life arise on our planet?”
More profound dishonesty on your part? or is it just wishful thinking? – as in, you WISH this statement were true as it would somehow give you reason to believe your preferred version of reality. The links above provide the latest in quite un-foggy notions about the origins of life on Earth. And even if each of those hypotheses is proved wrong, the science behind them will almost certainly lead to the truth, or as close to objective truth as we ca get, as this is what science does, like no other human endeavor.
To suppose that science will eventually arrive at a reasonable, naturalistic conclusion takes no faith (i.e., blind religious faith) at all – it just takes a look at the history of science and the thousands of times it HAS discovered the natural causes behind phenomenon that were once thought to be supernatural.
No, this is not the truth of the matter! Scientists are not at all empty-handed (even though there is no reason to expect them to be otherwise). This is either an extremely ignorant, or extremely dishonest, thing to say. After starting at the link above, go here: (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html).
BTW, scientists shredding the hypotheses of other scientists is how science progresses. Eventually we will find some hypotheses that survive the attempted shredding and get elevated to the status of theory. Again, have some patience.
This is actually not true. I can simply admit that I don't know how life came to exist on this planet, and I may never know. And what's so wrong with that? Why is it so bad to admit that you don't know? Will knowing make you love your family any more or work harder? Do you need an invisible man threatening you with eternal damnation in order to be a good person?
The truth is that the rabbi doesn't know either. He has his beliefs, but he does not know the origin of life. I am certain that he does not know, because billions of other people also have beliefs, and they frequently contradict one another. They can't all be right.
So the rabbi says life is too complex to happen by chance. Fine. By why would its creation be the product of only one designer? When men design large projects, they work in teams. Why only one god? Why not 70 gods? Beavers build very complex dams. Maybe the universe was built by a giant, super-intellegent beaver. Maybe Terry Jones is right, and there is an invisible man, and he wants us all to burn Korans. Who knows? Who cares?
Who created god?
It must be nice to make a living just spewing fantasy as absolute truth.
Even if we never gain the evidence regarding the origin of life, this in NO way points to an intellectual super-person or entity, especially what people call God. Also, your analogy to the scrabble and blackjack game is ridiculous (and has been said MANY times over). We are talking about MILLIONS and BILLIONS of years of evolution, "chance" has pretty strong opporunity to take something simple and make it complex.
Have you even read of the Miller-Urey Experiment BTW? Many amino acids and carbohydrates were formed from inorganic elements...imagine that
However, that said, there are developments in the scientific explanation of the origin of life that the Rabbi evidently omits. Robert Shapiro (Scientific American, Feb 12, 2007) has advanced a very interesting hypothesis in which energy exchange by small molecules existing on the early earth before nucleic acid evolution may have been prevalent and formed the basis for the eventual development of autonomous cells. Moreover, some of these same energy reactions may have survived to form the core reactions in the biochemistry of energetic process such as the Krebs cycle. This is a very exciting idea and will form the basis of much future research.
Maybe if I latch on to the most vague and theoretical of sciences, perhaps the new wild frontiers of quantum theory that few people understand well enough to discuss in detail, I can hide the fact that my fantasies and superstitions are still not based on any evidence and are not consistent with scientific reasoning. Or at least wallpaper over the same tired arguments with a fresh form of vague reasoning by using terms like "Quantum Realism".
The best argument against this line of reasoning is that any God that is consistent with science is a "God of the Gaps." That is a formidable argument if you believe that the universe is made up of areas that science completely explains and areas where it cannot explain. Beyond the quantum limitation on knowledge, the best counter argument is that "its all gaps."
I'm about half way through the book, and I love it so far -- full of wit, sarcasm, righteous indignation and an amazing attention to detail. I will post a review here when I'm done. Thanks for recommending it!
That would be called research, trial and error, theory and other disciplines of science in search for truth, or the road to it. Science admits when it is wrong, that is why it advances. Religion pontificates and only admits error when forced to.
I suppose your theories and beliefs are infallible and absolute?
In our recent dialogue I have noticed a consistent theme. It was frequently remarked that religious lines of argumentation lack reason. The contention seems to be that most, if not all, religious systems rely solely on wholly unsubstantiated faith to support their beliefs.
Is this contention in fact true?"
Is this fact truly a point of contention? Since when is believing based on faith a religious taboo? Isn't faith considered a virtue in most religions? To believe in a religion in most cases means believing in miracles, ie supernatural suspension of the "normal" laws of physics. So, what do the details of the "normal" laws of physics have to do with your faith? Once you have decided to believe that they can be suspended, it doesn't matter what the rules are. You have your faith about your god and it shouldn't have anything to do with any evidence about the "normal" laws of physics.
Atheists consistently call for "evidence" of the supernatural to support a belief in God. It is logical to infer that only some event or act that is supernatural itself can be evidence of a supernatural being, which is by definition of the term supernatural is "above nature" or "superior to nature."Speaking as a Christian, I have faith in the testimony of people from the Bible, primarily the 4 Gospels that record the ministry of Jesus Christ, to having witnessed supernatural events called miracles. The 4 Gospels tell of over 35 miracles involving control over natural elements & healing that Jesus performed, by his own accounts, through the power of God. These represent suspension of & control over the "normal laws of physics." As I see it, the evidence from miracles is one of the primary reasons why atheists make such an effort to try to discredit the Bible. This is without even addressing the questions of the hand print of Designer & Creator God who is above & superior to our natural world we study through science & which science cannot disprove.
CodyGirl:
'Atheists consistently call for "evidence" of the supernatural to support a belief in God... Speaking as a Christian, I have faith in the testimony of people from the Bible, primarily the 4 Gospels that record the ministry of Jesus Christ, to having witnessed supernatural events called miracles.'
I only critique what is presented to me as "evidence" and you're not doing that. You're admitting (acknowledging, whatever -- from your perspective, declaring proudly I suppose) that you take it on faith. How could I argue with that? You say you take it on faith, and I take your word that you do.
No, what I take issue with is when somebody proclaims "I have proof of (faith-based belief)" or "the evidence of (faith-based belief) is just the same as the scientific evidence of evolution and gravity" but then what follows is a pile of faulty logic, falsehoods and ad hominem attack against whoever states the fact that they are in error. I have no interest whatsoever in undermining anybody's faith, nor in their faith at all.
I *am* interested in acknowledgment all around of the bright line dividing faith from reasoned analysis of evidence.
They are distinct, non-overlapping modes of thought and if that fact troubles anybody's faith, I am not sorry, it is still a fact and it's important. If there was really evidence of it, we'd be wrong to separate it from government. But there is no evidence.
I notice that you use the word "evidence" but I don't believe I have any problem with it, in the sense that you're using it.
CG: 'As I see it, the evidence from miracles is one of the primary reasons why atheists make such an effort to try to discredit the Bible.'
I notice the word "from" looks carefully selected, and it looks crucial to the meaning of that sentence. If I misunderstand why you chose it, I might disagree with you after all. But if I understand you correctly, you consider the miracles in the Bible to BE evidence, but you don't claim to HAVE evidence of those miracles. Because you already said that you "have faith in the testimony of people from the Bible" so I don't believe you're using "evidence" in a way that I would. You're talking about how those miracles fit into the sum total of your faith, right?
Then that and what follows is beyond the scope of my interest and it doesn't really matter to me that you use "evidence" in a way that's strange to me.
PPS
I speak for one atheist, myself. The only reason to ever want "to discredit the Bible" is when it is alleged to be, not a collection of things some take on faith, but literal fact that we all must accept. And I realize that does not come from mainstream Christianity, it comes from a few corporate "think" tanks including Discovery Institute.