The following is an interview that will appear in the book How to Prove God Does Not Exist by Trevor Treharne, to be released in September by Universal Publishers.
What is the fundamental conflict between science and religion? Is it one that will never be resolved?
The two have opposing views on what constitutes reality. Science finds no need to include any substance beside matter in order to describe our observations of the world. Religion holds that there is a world beyond matter. Religion claims it has a way of obtaining knowledge that is separate from the scientific method of observation and experiment. The religious believe that we have an inner faculty of some sort that enables us to learn about the world, the universe, and reality without such observation. It is hard to see the two ever resolving this conflict.
One of your more recent books, The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning, is certainly a timely one based on how common that argument is currently proving. What is your summary on what is wrong with the fine-tuning arguments?
As I have said before, the universe is not fine-tuned for us--we are fine-tuned to the universe. I claim that the statements made about fine-tuning are not accurate. When theists talk about something being fine-tuned to one part in ten or a hundred orders of magnitude, they are simply incorrect. If you look more closely at the physics and cosmology, you will see that there is plenty of room to vary their various parameters and still maintain some kind of life. Our form of life is certainly sensitive to the parameters and if the parameters of the universe were different, our form of life wouldn't exist; I agree with that. But our form of life is not the only form of life one can imagine.
Two rather traditional arguments still persevere amongst theists today, firstly that "something" could not come from "nothing"...
When tackling this question in the past, I was often forced into a philosophical discussion on defining what one means by nothing. Once you define it, give it some property, then it becomes "something." So, I don't really know how you define "nothing," when you start talking philosophically. The way I handle that question now, which is consistent with all existing knowledge of cosmology and physics, is that the universe is eternal. It didn't come from nothing, or something for that matter, because it always existed and it always will. Our universe began with the big bang. I don't dispute that, but it could have come from an earlier universe and there are proposals available in literature--written by reputable scientists, published in reputable journals, and fully worked out mathematically--that provide scenarios for how our universe could have come from an earlier universe. They don't prove it really happened that way. However, they serve to refute any claim that our universe had to be supernaturally created ex nihilo.
And secondly, how can "order" come from "disorder"...
That's an easy one since you don't have to rely on complex biological arguments. You can go back to simple physics and look at something like water. Water appears in three phases: gas, liquid, and solid. If you are out in space or in a polar region, then the natural state of water is solid--ice. But that occurs only after water vapor, which is a gas, is condensed into liquid water, which is then frozen into ice. That original vapor has little structure and is about as simple as it could be. Then when it becomes a liquid, it develops some structure but can still flow and change shape. Finally, when it becomes solid ice it has considerable structure--crystal layers and so forth. So, there is this tendency in nature, in physics, for physical substances to go from simplicity to complexity. That is actually the natural trend of physical processes.
Much is made of Christian apologist William Lane Craig today, yet your debate in Hawaii seemed to set him straight on several of his arguments, in particular his first cause argument. What do you make of his challenge?
I've debated William Lane Craig a couple of times. I've written about his views, he has reviewed one of my books, and I have also spoken to him personally a number of times. So, we have had a fair amount of interaction. He is basically a very evangelically minded Christian theologian and philosopher. He uses a lot of cosmological arguments, but they don't hold water. They are already ruled out by existing science.
"Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings" - what reaction has that view garnered since you suggested it? What made you think of it?
I sent it into Richard Dawkins when he was trying to come up with bus slogans. He was delighted with it and said it was the best one he had received. Other people have picked up on it since, so it has worked out pretty well. It is one of those sound bites which people have made use of.
What do you define as what is new about the New Atheism?
When my book The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason came out in 2009, I took a lot of flak from old-time atheists who resented that all the work they had done promoting atheism, secularism, and humanism was not fully recognized. But there was a difference. When, starting in 2006, a whole series of bestsellers appeared by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and myself, these all got a lot of attention. In The New Atheism, I was focusing on those works and asking what it was about these bestsellers that were different from the old atheism, which I did acknowledge.
The difference was that we are far more uncompromising towards religion. The term "accommodationists" is used for the people who were saying that they wanted to promote atheism, humanism, and science--but at the same time, we should respect the opinions of believers and, in particular, we shouldn't get into fights with them since we need their support for, say, the teaching of evolution in public schools. Moderate Christians tell us that they believe in evolution. But surveys show they really don't, since they claim evolution is God-guided, which isn't Darwinian evolution. In Darwinian evolution, humanity is an accident and that is unacceptable to Christians. They sure as heck don't want that taught in school.
Scientists are very reluctant to criticize religion. They are afraid of a backlash that might affect scientific funding, which for a research scientist is critical. The new atheists understand that it makes sense to have as many friends as possible, but ultimately it came down to the fact that religious belief is based on magical thinking and ideas that cannot be supported empirically. This serves to retard the progress of science. There is a lot of antiscience built into the religious enterprise and we felt we had to take a strong stance and argue that when someone says something contrary to our best existing knowledge, whether religious or not, then we should not hesitate to respond to it. Not that we have to call them fools or idiots, but we have to present an intellectual arguments that explain the flaws in their reasoning. We needed to come out and say something and not pussyfoot around it.
The antiscience that is so prevalent among conservatives in America today, and is occasionally found among liberals as well, is driving the world toward economic and environmental disaster.
Richard Stearns: Show More Religion on TV to Bridge the Cultural Divide
However in response to this new book to be released I would like to just ask a simple question.
What if I can show you MATHEMATICAL evidence of God, in an equational format?
I stumbled upon an equation in simple mathematics provides this evidence. In all honesty, I was not searching for god, merely I was trying to answer a question that has eluded mathematicians since the idea was first perceived.
My goal was to answer; can we have an equation that the answer equals infinity, in totality?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpVHJJMxZa8
Please with a non-biased opinion due to religious beliefs, prove to me I'm wrong in regards to this finding. I have provided a link. Enjoy
The invention of a Messiah has compounded the paradox by creating a Man who is God and yet who has none of the attributes of a god; he is mortal, mutable (born of a woman, he ages), he is not omnipotent and many more. Scriptures then inevitably appear as a pitiful stone-age attempt to make god seem accessible, though He is not by religion’s very definitions.
Theology (the study of god-s) is aberrant and Theologians therefore are not qualified interlocutors for a debate in a scientific context on the subject of a universal deity. Their place is in a metaphysical debate where their ignorance of god is but a dogmatic issue.
thats not because we bury our heads in the sand, its because we are far more rational than atheists on their own pet subject.
we are biological computers essencially. we have remarkbly the same set up.
we have a center for computing..... we both have the need for a power source....we both have a system of wires or nerves to send signals thru the system to tell a certain part what to do,we have an area for memory,we run down eventually as parts fail.
its all there. yet where we the religious.... rationally ....see a need for a person to come up with the concept of the computer...here...the atheists suddenly reverse everything we know about computers,or cars,or airplanes needing something to create the concepts....they now believe POOOF..its magic.they become like us.
anotherwords, while making fun of us for virgin birth accounts , they essencially push a virgin birth account fo the creation of life. welcome to the club.
Very enlightening indeed.
what makes your version any less miraculous than me?
See, no need for Science!
There is just one little thing wrong with this and that is there is no such thing as a miracle (no evidence for them).
science says...energy is neither creator...nor....destroyed. try and figure that one out...that it always was ....or if it wasnt it somehow just came to be. eitherway, you are talking a cosmic virgin birth.something thats going to essencially be looked on as a miracle occurence
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/national-progressive-talk-radio/2012/06/25/nptr-7--the-folly-of-faith--dr-victor-j-stenger
One myth: Goddess Sophia (Wisdom) breaking from the realm of the true Father, "births" a Son; the ignorant "demiurge" who fashions the world badly True God has occult connections to humans. The "gnostic" wants to get out of this prison-world. Redeemer Christ is sent by the "Alien" Father; his mission is to REVEAL to the "gnostics" the spark of Spirit hidden in their souls, which IS the eternal "gnosis" ("esoteric mystic knowing") whereby they ascend to the divine realm. Jesus has no physical body, and only SEEMS to die on the cross-a trick to fool the "Rulers".
Orthodox religion-is based on Faith -those who claim "knowledge" are adherents of a "gnostic" heresy! Imposing a scientific model on religious thought that has nothing to do with it, and then criticizing said though for being un-scientific?! Of course it is-but NOT in the way many of those in the discussion think it is!
One of the many lamentable resemblances between New Atheists and scientific creationists is that they're fond of putting words in other people's mouths. You can no more trust a New Atheist to explain to you what theological evolution is than you could trust a young earth creationist. The concept is extraordinarily simple, and doesn't involve contradicting any science or objective observation. It hinges on the fact that science can not observe and make judgments on things that can not be observed, hence the word "supernatural". If something supernatural were to influence or create evolution there'd be no objective way of determining it. Therefore trying to "prove" it one way or the other with science is absurd.
To be sure, fundamentalists can't agree with this view, but even an intelligent and truthful enough fundamentalist could allow that the best current science does not seem to agree with their faith while refusing to accept cooked up and fundamentally untruthful "alternative science" and still maintain their faith. There are a few.
It doesn't lend any intellectual credibility to those who claim that there is guided evolution. If there is guided evolution, it has to leave, by definition, visible marks. If this is what they really believe, guided evolutionists should be actively working on finding these marks. But we don't find any of them in the lab... it's all the same as burning bushes in the past, now it's just called invisible fairies changing DNA.
Please. It's the same old same old, using lame techniques to impress the weak minded.
Your own words explain why theistic evolution DOES contradict science. If you cannot observe a supernatural hand in evolution, it's not rational to conclude there *was* one. There are infinite possibilities science can't exclude, and we have a term for them -- "unscientific." Maybe God guided evolution. Maybe it was alien astronauts. Maybe there's an undiscovered cosmic force that drives it. But it's not scientific to assume any of these ideas is correct, and none of them are necessary to explain our observations.
Stenger is right. Most Christians don't accept the scientific theory of evolution. They've replaced it with a non-scientific belief that's superficially similar.
This is not a trivial distinction. If you understand evolution as a goal-driven string of events, then you misunderstand it and will draw wrong conclusions about it. Could a new microorganism evolve that eradicates human life? I say it's possible. But if God guides evolution, the correct answer depends on understanding God's plan. That's no longer science, it's theology.
If something effects a natural process, then it is by definition itself "natural". There's no logical definition for "supernatural".
If you use it as a replacement for the term "something that cannot be explained", then the tendency is toward creating a logical fallacy because that "unexplained" event becomes an "act of a god" or some other imaginary construct, at which point the argument becomes, "This is unexplained, so the explanation is god."
That's deeply illogical and lazy/weak reasoning.
Could someone explain for me, in a reasonable, factual, and logical way, why science needs atheism? There are, have been, and will be, plenty of successful and important scientists with religious beliefs who aren't involved in any kind of science denial. It would seem, just on the face of it, that "standing up for science" doesn't require New Atheists, or attacks on other people's religious beliefs that go beyond protection of civil rights and separation of church and state.
People only guess. Religions are human institutions. Science is a human institution. For either to claim the other is wrong is like the different religions of the world all of which "know", they have the only unique and entirely correct truth. Like I said, it is God and not humans who know. Do I "know"? Only to the extent that forces within and beyond me have impelled me.
when religions make obviously wrong claims like, say. young earth creationist do, science can easily debunk them using facts, and that is nothing at all like another religion trying to debunk them using belief.
religion is not a guess. it's an acceptance of what is told to you regardless of facts.
science is not a guess. it is logical conclusions based on facts and then repeatedly tested for verification.
You just further proved my rule.
Consider this quote from a well-known Wikipedia page:
"Life on Earth originated and then evolved from a universal common ancestor approximately 3.7 billion years ago."
This statement includes the philosophical point that "nothing supernatural intervened to originate all the diverse forms of life."
If "science finds no need to include any substance beside matter in order to describe our observations of the world", why is this philosophical point included with otherwise scientific teaching?
So are you saying that you are making your philosophy and belief system dependent on superfluous (and editor dependent) statements on Wikipedia?
:-)
:-)
That you have to build a large building, burn incense, put carpets on the floor and go there for prayer between once a year and three times a day to look at a man on a cross or marvelous abstract ornaments because you are forbidden to paint pictures of your man rising to heaven?
:-)