The Asymmetry of Pain and Pleasure

Jeffery Jay Lowder at the Secular Outpost blogged an excellent piece last year detailing 25 lines of evidence against theism. I think all of them bear consideration, and, if I remember correctly, one or two more lines of evidence against theism popped up in the comments.

I would like to add another modest line to this list, or maybe just an adjunct to his No.8: The Biological Role (and Moral Randomness) of Pain and Pleasure, following Paul Draper. It is prompted by a trivial injustice that surely everyone experiences on a daily basis, but that perhaps points to a bigger issue. The minor injustice is this: the fact that the more one experiences a pleasure the less it satisfies and, indeed, it can turn to pain, while the more one experiences a pain it is not relieved, and it never turns into a pleasure.

Now, for the purposes of this discussion, I am taking a pretty simple view of pain and pleasure as things that are, in order, fundamentally bad and good. I will not consider the paradoxes of people seeking out pain for pleasure, for example, although, granted, this does suggest we have a complicated relationship with pain and pleasure. I think it's also true to say that one can become numbed to further pain to a degree. But this numbing doesn't seem as effective as the numbing of pleasure. Note too that people who feel chronic pain report it as a bad thing, while people who feel chronic pleasure also report it as a bad thing.

These things are pretty understandable on, and consistent with, Naturalism; we are the products of a natural selection that favours survival and reproduction over all else, so pain and pleasure are regulating systems that have evolved to help bring about gene persistence through that survival and reproduction. The particular fate of the gene vehicles is not so important as the gene persistence, so, as we see in nature, any number of strategies to achieve this persistence is possible, including ones which serve up pain and pleasure to the gene vehicles unequally (are there any animals that experience an asymmetry of pleasure over pain, I wonder?*). On an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent account of theism, these pose a problem; why would an omnibenevolent god allow an asymmetry of pain and pleasure, leading to more pain than pleasure?

What these observations lead to relates somewhat to our attitudes to death. I wrote recently defending Bernard Williams's thoughts on eternal life, that it would end up become meaningless because categorical desires would be exhausted. I recently heard Shelly Kagan expressing a similar opinion on Philosophy Bites:

I do think that eventually life would grow excruciatingly dreadful, boring, tedious no matter what it was filled with, but for all that it would still have been true that during the initial satisfying, richly rewarding 100 years, 500 years, or however long it would take before it got boring, those initial 500 years will still have been worth living, they were still good. To give a humdrum, everyday analogy: if you offer me a piece of chocolate, I love chocolate, thank you, thank you, thank you; if you give me a second piece of chocolate, I love chocolate; you offer me a third piece of chocolate, I say thank you thank you thank you. Now there must be some number...of pieces of chocolate at which I would say: no more. Chocolate is no longer a good thing for me at this point, I'm not enjoying it.

He goes on to claim that the initial period before the boredom is worth living, and I think that's right. But what is going on here? Why do some of us think that these pleasures will stop? Pleasures derive from the satisfaction of desires. But once a desire is satisfied the pleasure stops. I guess that means that, in the Bernard Williams scenario, we are saying that over time all our desires will be satisfied. So no more pleasure will be possible.

Conversely, we could say that pain derives from the imposition of 'undesires'. But there is an imbalance: there is an effectively never-ending supply of 'undesires', while there is no never-ending supply of desires. So pain is inevitable in a way that pleasure is not.

This perhaps derives from our nature: we need a fine balance to maintain our health - nutrition, warmth, water - so evolution has shaped us to maintain that fine balance. If the pleasure was never turned off we would soon over-indulge and do ourselves serious harm. Chronic pain does not pose the same immediate risk to our health, (although, granted, it can lead to damage in some circumstances), so stopping pain is simply not as important or pressing as stopping pleasure. *Perhaps this answers my question in parenthesis above.

So I think the asymmetry can be expressed simply as:

Satisfaction of desires is inevitable, so pleasure must end, but relief from undesires is not, so pain never will (end).

I think this is clear evidence for naturalism over an omnibenevolent god. Not a knock-out blow, to be sure, just another strike against God. Further, I think this asymmetry is inevitable given our nature. God need not have given us a nature that results in this asymmetry, so it's more likely we are not products of such a divine being, but of indifferent Nature.

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Philipse on Theism - Revealed or Natural Theology?

In God in the Age of Science?: A Critique of Religious Reason, Herman Philipse examines what he considers to be the best arguments for God today. As we saw in his preface, he plans to examine Richard Swinburne's arguments for God.

In Chapter 1, though, he wants to establish 'that for religious believers, natural theology has an epistemological priority over a revelation and revelation theology' (p.3). Natural theology is the approach that Swinburne takes.

Philipse draws the common distinction between natural theology and revealed theology. Natural theology can be examined through evidence available to everyone, non-believers included. As the SEP explains, it 'aims to adhere to the same standards of rational investigation as other philosophical and scientific enterprises, and is subject to the same methods of evaluation and critique'. Philipse defines revealed theology as 'the endeavour by believers to interpret and systematize the contents of texts that are considered divine revelations, such as the Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, or the Book of Mormon' (p.3).

Richard Swinburne himself points out that there is another notion that is now considered popular, particularly among Protestants:

Religion, they will tell us, is a matter not of affirming creeds, but of a personal relationship to God. The religious man may tell us that he knows that he at any rate has such a relationship, and that he knows what he means when he says that he has this relationship; on these points he ‘cannot be mistaken’. (The Coherence of Theism, p.6)

Philipse examines perhaps the most well-known defence of this sort of position, Alvin Plantinga's Reformed Objection, in Chapters 3 and 4.

Philipse notes that most believers come to their belief because they are brought up in a religious tradition; the truths of it are a given. But these days we are exposed to scientific knowledge that often contradicts such received opinions, and are also made aware of the full diversity of other received opinions. Consequently, it is necessary to appeal to the arguments of natural theology if one aims to be rational and reasonable.

Establishing the epistemological priority of natural theology is also important so that non-believers can engage on a level playing field with believers; that is, they should both be approaching the subject using the same tools to analyse and justify their beliefs. This is not to exclude the possibility that divine revelation occurs and people may know something about God apart from natural theology. But it is to suggest that when we justify our beliefs in public discourse, we do not need to appeal to that divine revelation, and, in fact, the knowledge derived from natural theology is better in some way than other methods. For example, someone may know that they haven't murdered someone, but if accused of murder they must defend them-self in court by appealing to methods that everyone can access; simply appealing to their inner knowledge that they are innocent will be insufficient.

Philipse gives 6 reasons for thinking that natural theology has epistemological priority over revelation, which I summarise as:

(A) There are contradictions within revealed texts.
(B) Many revelations are shown by science to be untrue.
(C) Many revelations are based on sources and cultures that are not considered divinely inspired, leading to...
(D) Revelations contain nothing that could not have been established without divine assistance.
(E) Revelations contain moral norms which many of us now find unacceptable.
(F) The revelations of other religions provide a potential defeater for a believer in divine revelation.

I would endorse this list, although in my experience (A) is pretty hard to categorically establish. With a narrative like the Bible the language is ambiguous enough to prevent the establishment of a formal contradiction. Just consider Philipse's first example; the supposed contradiction between Paul describing Jesus' resurrection as spiritual rather than corporeal, as maintained by subsequent Christian tradition:

Paul seems to deny that Jesus was resurrected with his earthly or physical body, arguing that he was raised with a new, spiritual and heavenly body (sooma pneumatikon), since ‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God’. (p.5)

 Paul's words 'sooma pneumatikon' and 'flesh and blood' allows for multiple interpretations; see this discussion by William Lane Craig, which includes this quote from Robert Gundry:

The soma denotes the physical body, roughly synonymous with 'flesh' in the neutral sense. It forms that part of man in and through which he lives and acts in the world. It becomes the base of operations for sin in the unbeliever, for the Holy Spirit in the believer.

And 'flesh and blood' is considered synonymous with 'frail human nature'! Craig concludes that 'we have seen that Paul's evidence serves to confirm the gospels' narratives of Jesus's bodily resurrection'. So clearly he sees no contradiction here, and one might expect similar analysis from apologists on other claimed contradictions.

Generally, though, I think the accumulation of Philipse's reasons gives us good reason to doubt revelation. To counter this general conclusion, I think I would point to the vital role that testimony plays in our knowledge creation, and that biblical revelation cannot be dismissed any more than can be the many non-biblical revelations that are handed down to us. For example, we have established a sophisticated education system which pre-supposes the validity of handing down common knowledge, mostly documented in textbooks; we don't expect anyone to literally support all these 'revealed' truths.

I think, however, that we should have to justify this knowledge if it turned out that around the world we were teaching different truths from radically different textbooks. The project of science has been to universalise knowledge, so that textbooks converge. If natural theology were any better than revealed theology, one might expect it to achieve a greater convergence too. I think that, in the sense that the conclusions of natural theology are more modest than those of revealed, perhaps it does. A discussion for another time, maybe.

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Philipse on Theism - Preface

In God in the Age of Science?: A Critique of Religious Reason, Herman Philipse examines what he considers to be the best arguments for God today.

In the preface he notes that the arguments produced in analytic philosophy of religion in the last fifty years are worthy of consideration. His reasons for addressing religion are:

1. The world's population is growing, and the demographics are against the secularist. The non-theist minority is getting smaller and smaller, in global terms.
2. Globalisation means that cultures are mixing more, and this brings incompatible beliefs together more. The cognitive dissonance this produces causes more religious conflicts than we have seen in the past.

He also sets out his approach; he will be considering beliefs, not rituals; he doesn't want to be accused by believers of not attacking the best cases for theistic belief, so he will consider some of the arguments of D. Z. Phillips and Alvin Plantinga. He will spend most time, however, looking at the arguments for 'bare theism' by Richard Swinburne. This is because:

1. The monotheism that Swinburne defends is common to the three great Judaeo-Christian religions.
2. Swinburne's strategy seems the most promising to Philipse, since Swinburne pursues a natural theological approach to the question (compared with, for example, the foundationalist approach of Plantinga). As Philipse puts it, 'If he exists, that god is a divine person with many kinds of causal powers, whose existence can best be argued for on the basis of his alleged empirically detectable doings' (p.xiii).

Swinburne eschews a proof of God, but considers his existence highly probable.

Philipse notes that many religious beliefs have been refuted by modern science, such as origin of Earth stories, which means the 'intellectually responsible believer' cannot rely solely on scripture. For the believer, three interlocking dilemmas, he says, arise:

1. Between (a) cognitive and (b) non-cognitive interpretations of religious beliefs. For example, does 'God exists' amount to a proposition that can be assessed for truth or falsity, or not? For an interesting discussion of non-cognitive approaches (often called Wittgensteinian), see this post by Stephen Law.
2. If (a) is chosen, then between (c) evidential/rational support for beliefs, and (d) a non-evidential/rational approach. Under (d), Philipse will consider what he thinks is the most promising approach, offered by Plantinga, of a basic warrant for religious belief.
3. If (c) is chosen, then between (e) following a method of gathering evidence and reasons that is 'quite unlike the methods used by scientists and scholars when they investigate a factual hypothesis of existence' (p.xv) and (f) following a method like the scientific methodology.

Philipse thinks that Swinburne offers the most sophisticated solution to dilemma 3 above, and, given the title of his book, this seems to be the best place to consider religious belief 'in the age of science'.

Part 1

In Chapter 1 he argues that religious faith can only be grounded by natural theology (that is, on the basis of natural facts).

In Chapter 2  he summarises the history of natural theology.

In Chapters 3 and 4 he addresses Plantinga's 'reformed objection' to natural theology.

In Chapter 5 he investigates the type of rationality in which natural theology should engage.

In Chapter 6 he considers if religious faith can be refuted, or not.

Part 2

Chapter 7 explores the problems that analogical language introduces for the religious believer.

Chapter 8 examines the properties of the putative monotheistic god.

In Chapter 9 considers the predictive power of the god hypothesis.

In Chapter 10, he sees if theism has predictive power, can it avoid being refuted?

Part 3

Chapter 11 examines the problems that face a Bayesian like Swinburne.

Chapters 12 to 14 consider the accumulative probabilistic arguments for theism.

In Chapter 15 he assesses the argument from religious experience.

The Conclusion then attempts, based on what has been discussed, to answer the question 'which view concerning religious matters has the best credentials: theism, agnosticism, some version of atheism, or perhaps a polytheistic creed?' (p.xvi).

What I think is excellent about the book is that, like a bus driver late for his dinner, Philipse relentlessly drives the reader towards a particular destination. This destination is atheistic, of course, as might be expected (he makes no bones about arguing from this viewpoint). This is probably a weakness too, since I'm sure many a theist reader will insist on stopping the bus and heading off down another road. For example, Jim Slegle in his review of the book accuses Philipse of not just adopting an atheistic approach, but a scientistic one, and of 'taking the unreflective, knee-jerk reaction to religious claims, ‘informed’ by the biases and urban myths of contemporary culture'. This seems an uncharitable interpretation to me, especially considering that Philipse is quite open about the project of assessing god based on modern science, which approach surely Swinburne and many theists would concur, to a degree?

More reasonably, Father Andrew Pinsent suggests that in discrediting the methods of theology Philipse is in danger of discrediting the sciences of more complex phenomena, such as biology and zoology, and the humanities in general. Which would include philosophy and presumably Philipse's own book too! Well, perhaps, and I know of a few atheists who would agree that philosophy should be jettisoned too, but I still think that rational analysis of concepts allied with an acknowledgement of the power of science can yield results, even if it struggles to be falsifiable (not the defining criterion of science, in my opinion). 

Pinsent concludes that Philipse attempts too much, and that may be a valid criticism. I found his reasons for the tight focus mostly convincing, so the book should still give theists pause to consider carefully the route they have followed in the past, and the one they follow in the future.

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CFI UK Debate - Does God Exist?

God and the Bible was the title of an all day event held by CFI UK at the Conway Hall in London.

A morning talk was given by Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou on what she called The Real Religions of the Bible, or The Uncensored Bible. The theme of this talk was those bits of the Bible that are rarely mentioned. Most likely because they are rather priapic, or, at least, that is how it seemed, as the 'penis' references moved into double figures. The God of the Old Testament used to put it about a bit, it seems, and it's not at all clear how immaterial he was. Stavrakopoulou was very articulate and, to every issue raised, thoughtful and nuanced.

In the afternoon Professor Stephen Law and Professor Keith Ward debated whether God exists. This being the CFI, it was clear where the sympathy of the audience lay, and it wasn't with Professor Ward. His presentation was familiar to many of us who have read liberal theologians; his God is a mutable, vague beast that seems to be specially designed to reify the art of goal-posting moving, so that wherever one shoots, one is bound to miss. A couple of things, at least, defined this concept: first, that his God could not do anything he felt was immoral; and second, that his God concept could not run counter to scientific facts. In this way he inoculates his belief from attack, I suppose, because his God is bound to conform to his (Ward's) moral beliefs, so no awkward silences when the Canaanite genocide is mentioned, and if science shows some aspect of his belief to be factually wrong, he will simply change his belief, so no awkward silences when talking snakes are mentioned.

The panel, with some minor celebrity spotting thrown in.

Obviously this means that as Ward's moral sensibilities change during his life, so does his God, and as science changes our view of the universe, so does his God change. I got the impression Ward is distinctly relaxed about this, seeing it as an enlightened approach. I think it is to be encouraged amongst believers, because it seems to be almost the opposite of dogmatic, and comes close to the Humean ideal of proportioning one's belief to the evidence. But I suspect that few Christians would find this Will 'o the Wisp deity satisfying, and, as Stavrakopoulou pointed out, it lacks magic.

Later, in response to the problem of evil, Ward renounced omnipotence as a feature of his God, which puzzled many in the crowd who assumed Ward was a Christian. Someone asked him outright if he were, and his reply was that he was a priest in the Anglican Church. 'Not enough information!', I shouted.

In the end it seems there is something about Ward's experience of the world that renders him a believer; a sense of the noumenal, morals and beauty were mentioned.

Stephen Law did not specifically address Ward's talk, but presented his excellent Evil God challenge, which, briefly, points out the empirical fact that no-one (? Satanists?) believes in an evil god, although practically all (if not all) the arguments for God do not give us any clue to His goodness. If a theist can see that belief in an evil god is ludicrous (and they seem to), they should likewise agree with atheists that belief in God is too, since the arguments for both are effectively the same (although often mirrored).

I think here Ward falls back on his subjective experience; in a discussion of HADD, for example, which Law was citing as a defeater for Ward's belief in a hidden agent, Ward said he thought he had HADD, but it was given to him by God so he could sense Him! How could one argue anyone out of these sorts of beliefs?

An interesting debate, but I think I would have liked to have heard more from Ward about why he doesn't give up his God's benevolence, as well as His omnipotence, given Law's Evil God Challenge (or, indeed, His existence!). Presumably he just has an undeniable intuition that this thing he senses the existence of is good. That may be, but it seems a wholly unsatisfactory response to anyone who does not have that feeling.

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Magazine Morality Questionnaire

A little while back, I and a few friends posted a thread lampooning the religious world view morality via the medium of a pretend magazine questionnaire; the subject, 'Are you God-good enough to be a good God?!?' These were my contributions:

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You've been fine tuning evolution to ensure maximum hardship for all involved, when you're interrupted by your right hand man who points out that someone has had sex in your garden, and left a used prophylactic in the bushes. Do you:

a) Tidy up the mess and chuckle to yourself about the impulsiveness of youth.

b) Campaign to remove all vending machines from pub toilets.

c) Track the culprits down, light a match and immolate them. For time everlasting.

---

You've spent a glorious day with the kids, playing football in the park, when they see a couple of men kissing. "What are they doing?", the kids ask. Do you say:

a) Looks like they're a loving couple enjoying a day in the park, like us.

b) Don't look kids; you might 'get ideas'.

c) What they do is evil; chase them and impale them on the nearest fencepost! That would be the lesser evil.

---

One of your reps has a problem; some of his undermanagers have freed their wills and abused their young customers. He wants to know what to do; do you tell him to:

a) Dob in the undermanagers to the appropriate authorities.

b) Tell them to stop wearing dresses; that can't help.

c) Promote them and transfer them; duck and dive, a moving target is more difficult to hit. Negotiate with the authorities to turn a blind eye; their punishment will be in the afterlife etc. Nothing must be allowed to damage The Corporation.

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You're playing the Sims, and you see that neighbourly disputes result in much murder and bloodshed. Do you:

a) Reprogram your Sims to be less choleric and more reasonable.

b) Sit back and enjoy the spectacle; who doesn't enjoy a good fight?

c) Summon old man Sim to a mountaintop, chisel 'Thou shalt not kill' on a rock and hope they get the message. Tell them to stop thinking certain thoughts, whilst you're at it. Don't mention rape, or abortion. they'll have to figure those out themselves.

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You've decided on a change of direction, so you organise for one third of you to be sacrificed to yourself to atone for, er, something or other. Naturally you choose the race which has achieved 'favoured' status. Everything goes to plan, and your favoured people follow the plan, as you knew they would. But some people blame them for killing one third of you, despite that being crucial to your plan. Do you:

a) Communicate clearly that they did nothing wrong.

b) Issue an APB to arrest anyone who's got the wrong end of the stick and prevent them acting on it.

c) Let simmering discontent foment for centuries before exploding in a genocidal armageddon that wipes millions of your former 'most valuable players' off the face of the Earth. Then blame it on atheists.

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If you score mostly 'C's, you've cracked God-goodness; well done!

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Homeward Bound

Good dog

A curious article in the occasionally provocative Credo column in The Times, by philosopher John Cottingham, headlined Our restless quest for God is a search for home. Cottingham is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Reading, an expert on Descartes, about whom he's written a number of times. That gives the game away a little about his world view, I guess. He writes:

As we struggle through life, we seem compelled to acknowledge, sooner or later, that our human good, our flourishing and fulfilment, depends on orienting ourselves towards values that we did not create. Love, compassion, mercy, truth, justice, courage, endurance, fidelity — all belong to a core of key virtues that all the world’s great religions (and the secular cultures that have emerged from them) recognise, and which command our allegiance whether we like it or not.

This is more or less true, I guess. But I could equally have written:

Love, compassion, mercy, truth, justice, courage, endurance, fidelity — all belong to a core of key virtues that all the world’s cultures (and the religions that have emerged from them) recognise...

Like many a theist he is begging the question when he states that secular cultures have emerged from religious ones. It is quite possible that homo sapiens was around for thousands of years without religion. It is *certain* that the species was around for thousands of years without the (current) great religions. Given that, it seems more probable that the great religions have arisen from humans. If he thinks otherwise, he should present evidence for why he thinks this is not the case.

We may try to go against them, to live our lives without reference to them, but such attempts are always, in the end, self-defeating and productive of misery and frustration rather than human flourishing. These facts are already, if we think about them, very striking and important ones. We are dependent and vulnerable creatures, who need, for our fulfilment, to orientate ourselves towards certain enduring values.

This would be consistent with an evolutionary benefit to, or at least a *reason* for, such virtues.

If we couple this with an awareness of the obvious fact of our human weakness, and the notorious difficulty humans experience in steadfastly pursuing the good they aspire to...

Yeah, evolution is imperfect unfortunately...

...then one is struck by the extent to which religious belief offers a home for our aspirations.

What?! Why aren't I struck by this? Why is religious belief also a home for the vices - bigotry, pride, avarice, lust and wrath?

Theism, in its traditional form found in the three great Abrahamic faiths, involves the idea of a match between our aspirations and our ultimate destiny. On this picture, the creative power that ultimately shaped us is itself the source of the values we find ourselves constrained to acknowledge, and has made our nature such that we can find true fulfilment only in seeking those values. In the much quoted words of St Augustine, “you have made us for yourself and our heart is restless until it finds repose in you”.

Flat out assertion, with no evidence. Traditional theism certainly isn't represented by the three great Abrahamic faiths in most of Asia. Why should we have any 'ultimate destiny'? Much has been written on the values about which he writes arising from evolutionary and societal sources and, as I've mentioned before, there are really insurmountable problems if one assigns the values to the source he favours.

The natural response to this — to acknowledge that creative source of goodness with joy, and to turn towards it for strength in our struggle — is so basic that it presents itself to the believer as a fundamental and necessary way of going through life. It is not a matter of scientific hypotheses about the precise macro or micro mechanisms that formed our planet or our species, but rather a necessary impulse of trust, something that, as William Wordsworth conveyed in his Lines Written above Tintern Abbey, stems from moments of vivid awareness of the beauty and goodness of the world and our place within it. It is an impulse so deep that we feel that neither abstract intellectual speculation, nor the drudgery or pain of our routine existence Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb / Our cheerful faith that all which we behold / Is full of blessings.

This is a very real claim; that it is *natural* to have faith. The corollary is that anyone without faith is not acting naturally. Theists like to allude to this idea occasionally, but it is fundamentally flawed as an *argument* for theism; I think philosophers (like him!) call it the naturalistic fallacy. (You'd think a professor would be able to avoid such a basic error.) Simply stated, just because something is natural doesn't make it right. It may be, but we need to examine the details more closely; rational enquiry, often including science, is the appropriate response, not a lazy acceptance of our urges, and the 'rightness' of them.

Few have been more eloquent advocates of the benefits of faith: the uplifting sense of openness to beauty and goodness, and the trust that our best and deepest aspirations in life are not arbitrary flailing around in the dark, but are part of the quest for “God, who is our home”. To describe God as our “home” is to conceive of him as the ultimate source from which we come and the point of return to which our restlessness drives us — the final end where our true peace lies. Of course, the cold light of reason may compel us to turn our back on all this — that is a question to be considered. But we need to be aware of what it is we would be rejecting.

I can certainly see why many have thought this; it seemed sensible *to a degree* when I was a theist. But this paragraph is surely just a re-statement of Pascal's Wager? That argument fails completely, and Cottingham's curious article also raises unanswerable questions; what are we rejecting? No two theists seem to share the same theism. What is God? If returning to him is the purpose of this existence, what is the purpose once we are with Him? What purpose did God have in setting up this universe?

I've never been presented with any answers to these questions that even *approached* making sense, and I find it hard to believe that theists have them either, otherwise they would tell me :-), surely? If nothing Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb / Our cheerful faith that all which we behold / Is full of blessings, then I do not envy them, and I'm happy to avoid that particular vice, since their faith is flying in the face of all the evidence around us.

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Intelligent Design Shows God Was Intelligently Designed, Shock

Intelligent Design is the latest incarnation of Creationism, attempting to gain a patina of scientific integrity by doing sciencey type things, but not quite managing it. I found this document by one of its proponents, William Dembski: Ten Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher about Design. Running through its attempts to shoehorn some God into science, it's clear that this is an excellent contribution to refuting the existence of God prior to the appearance of homo sapiens. Consider:

Proponents of intelligent design argue that they now have formulated a precise criterion that reliably infers intelligence while also avoiding Kepler’s mistake— the criterion of “specified complexity.” An event exhibits specified complexity if it is contingent in the sense of being one of several live possibilities; if it is complex in the sense of allowing many alternatives and therefore not being easily repeatable by chance; and if it is specified in the sense of exhibiting an independently given pattern. For instance, a repetitive sequence is specified without being complex. A random sequence is complex without being specified. A functional sequence, like DNA that codes for proteins, is both complex and specified, and therefore designed.

"Specified complexity" certainly seems to apply to God; how could he not be complex? His behaviour is functional, therefore, yeah, specified complexity applies.

Life is special, and what makes life special is the arrangement of its matter into very specific forms. In other words, what makes life special is information. Where did the information necessary for life come from? This question cannot be avoided. Life has not always existed.

God must have information; if not, then he has no life? Perhaps he doesn't? Nevertheless, a *being* containing no information is surely non-existent, so we must conclude that God has information. Another tick for ID.

Do any structures in the cell resemble machines designed by humans? How do we account for such structures?

Here ID wants to infer design from the machine like quality of cells. Well, there's certainly a parallel there; God makes lots of things - he's the industrial revolution and then some. An uber-factory. Tick one more up to intelligent design.

What are irreducibly complex systems? Do such systems exist in biology? If so, are those systems evidence for design? If not, why not?

IDers love their irreducible complexity, despite its pretty obvious stupidity. But let's humour them and assume that a thing can really be irreducibly complex. Would it apply to God? It would be a bit of an insult if it didn't, I would think. I suppose they might say, no, God is an extremely simple miasma, and nothing more. Is it this that they want us to worship; something less complex than the bacterial flagellum (but still capable of designing it!)? Surely not. We must all agree that God is irreducibly complex, if irreducible complexity means anything at all.

Reusable parts... By adopting an engineering approach to biological structure, intelligent design explains similar structures in terms of common design.

Excellent! God wrote about this himself, through the Bible:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them - Genesis 1:27

Clearly He has reusable parts; another tick.

To refute intelligent design, it is enough to display specific, fully articulated Darwinian pathways for the complex systems that, according to intelligent design, lie beyond the reach of the Darwinian mechanism (systems like the bacterial flagellum in question 5).

Well, I have to admit I find this impossible for God. Yet another tick for His intelligent design!

Finally:

But the identity and characteristics of a designer lie outside the scope of intelligent design.

Oh well, if you say so; let's just leave it hanging there. I think we can all guess who designed God, though, can't we?

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Do You Sense a Presence?

I thought I would document and comment upon one or two quotes from Antony Thomas' film for Channel 4, How Do You Know God Exists?, since I was struck by how anodyne the answers were.

In response to the question in the title, Rowan Williams says:

I think I'd prefer to talk about being confident that god exists, or trusting that god exists. It's not knowing as you know a state of affairs in the world, it's much more a sense that you're in the presence of something greater than you can conceive, and I suppose since my teens I've been aware of that something greater than I can put words to, in whose presence I live and think and act.

A rather bland expression of belief, as one has come to expect from the Archbishop. He first admits he doesn't know that god exists, but then goes on to claim some kind of different way of knowing - 'a sense'. Well, we all have evolved senses, which we have grown to trust. But we now know that we cannot trust them completely. For everyday matters they will suffice, but for important matters, we need to establish corroborating evidence. Without it, we can treat the Archbishop's 'sense' as seriously as Elwood P. Dowd's sense of a presence.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks says:

You judge an idea by what it does to people who embrace that idea, or are embraced by it, and so I saw god in terms of the people in whom I sensed his presence.

More 'sensing'. One can see the solipsistic nature of this sort of belief come shining through in the heads of their churches. They need to let go of the idea that they are the centre of the universe, even though we all, naturally, think we are. 'You judge an idea by what it does to people who embrace that idea'? How would one judge an idea that drove a father to murder his son?

Vincent Nicholls then weighs in:

Beyond all the distress of this world, beyond all the break up of family life, beyond all the things that unbalance us, there is a father, there is a figure who has our fate in his hands, and we can approach god through the person of Jesus, through the crucified saviour.

He doesn't even bother with an answer to the question, but just asserts his 'knowledge'. Can I suggest that there isn't a figure who has our fate in his hands? How are we to judge who is right?

Professor Tariq Ramadam spoke for Islam:

I really deeply believe that god exists; the world, the creation, all these things are signs, so it's a relationship between what my heart is feeling and my eyes are seeing and my mind is understanding.

Well that last sentence is surely a description of how we all make sense of the world. But why does he take the world, the creation as signs? I think we have a tendency to interpret such things as signs, but it doesn't mean they are. Consider that they might not be signs, Professor. What then?

Swami Pramtattvadas for the Hindus tells us:

Quite simply god is the highest, the purest, most transcendental perfect being there is.

Cool, I think we've got that message; Anthony Thomas presses him to answer the question:

It's faith; it's faith. It really is as simple and as powerful as that. [You take god on trust?] Yes.

Simple, yes; powerful, as an idea, no. Although one has to admit that the effect on people who succumb clearly can be powerful, for good and ill.

So leading commentators for the major religions in the UK really do not know that god exists, but like to think he does. That is fair enough; they are entitled to their unsubstantiated belief. Being unsubstantiated, though, I would like to know what mandate they have for telling us how we should behave?

The above platitudes occupied the first section of the program, and the narrator went on to ask further questions, which I shall address in future blogs. Next up; is it possible that the creator of this vast universe can have a direct, personal relationship with you and with me?

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The Wright Stuff

Bryan Appleyard's review in The Sunday Times of Robert Wright's The Evolution of God landed on the doormat this morning, containing some interesting insights into the story of the book. This doesn't sound like a volume that I'm going to add to my reading list.

Appleyard betrays the theist's obsession with 'proof' that shows their shallow thinking on matters epistemological. Consider:

In order to make their case meaningful, the Dawkinsians must prove that religion is demonstrably a bad thing — otherwise, why bother to stamp it out? Even after 9/11, they can’t prove this because, especially in the 20th century, non-religious nastiness was infinitely worse than religious, and because the persistence of religion in all human societies strongly suggests that, even in the most basic Darwinian terms, it has been good for us as a species.

Nonsense. Dawkins does not need to *prove* anything, nor does he want to stamp out religion. The persistence of religion *may* mean that it has been good for us, but it is by no means the only *possible* reason it has survived. A human trait may have evolved for a specific reason that no longer exists, or the tendency to religiosity could be a by-product of another evolved trait - religion could be a completely *unnecessary* consequence of our evolved ability to find patterns and agency in the world around us. Modern-day obesity may well be a result of our evolved efficiency to store fat. That doesn't mean that we should now embrace obesity as natural and 'good for us'. Humans often have addictive habits; I'm not sure what benefit this has conferred on us in the past, but just because we are naturally addictive animals doesn't mean it's necessarily 'good for us' *now*.

The persistence of religion also reflects the efficiency of the various religious memes, which is also not decided by overall benevolence of the ideas, but how good the ideas are at surviving and propagating; these are not necessarily the same thing, by any means.

Appleyard addresses Wright's disagreement with Dawkins' attack on Paley.

Dawkins said Darwin destroyed this case by showing how design arose through purely material means — evolution through natural selection is the “blind watchmaker”. Wright says this misses the point. The point is not how the watch was designed but the fact that it is designed. Some process has led to its existence and it is that process that matters because the mechanism and purpose of the watch clearly make it different in kind from, say, rocks.

If that is Wright's point then *he* misses the point. What natural selection provides is an explanation for complexity that is entirely understandable and (pretty) simple that shows that we are *not* different in kind from rocks, at the most fundamental level. We are stardust.

Equally, humans also require a different type of explanation from rocks. It may be natural selection or it may be some innate force in the universe. Either way, it is reasonable to associate this force with morality and God.

The last line is a complete non-sequitur; there seems to be nothing 'reasonable' about that leap. So after Wright has sprinkled nonsense all around, Appleyard feels the need to add some:

This is an entirely decent and persuasive argument against the intolerance of the atheists, in that it shows religion makes perfect sense, and getting irritated because you think it’s “untrue” is just silly.

'Persuasive' only if you have difficulties with assessing what's reasonable. Getting irritated and making accusations of 'intolerance' when people point *this* out is just silly.

The religious share with scientists the intuition of underlying order and neither side is in a position to say the other is wrong.

But the religious *mission* is to tell everyone else that they are wrong, and should behave the way *they* think is the right way. Scientists don't do this. The religious are arrogant *despite* the doubt, science builds humility into its methodology *because* of the doubt.

It's important to keep re-iterating that because religion arises out of human behaviour and culture, non-believers and believers share many, many properties. Theists already believe the things that atheists believe; the logic and reason that underlies our existence. Atheists are just those amongst us who have jettisoned some unnecessary careless thinking. Religious thinking isn't the only unnecessary careless thinking we indulge in; it's just one of the most dangerous, because of the patina of respectability it has been granted by our history.

Appleyard then goes on to discuss Wright's views on moral progress, which do sound a bit dodgy.

But he starts the final paragraph with this line:

Nevertheless, this is an important book in that it is a scientifically based corrective to the absurd rhetoric of militant atheism.

Well, I've yet to read any counter-arguments to the rhetoric of the so-called 'militant' atheists to show it to be absurd; just pre-suppositional theists loudly proclaiming their pre-suppositions as if they were *knowledge*, or post-modernists happily declaring everything invalid, including their own philosophy.

Meanwhile in the real world, sceptics and pragmatists have to continue to fight the good fight for logic and reason.

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