A Conversation with Baden on the Existence of God

After reading the post below on defining religious positions, Baden emailed me. Our conversation took a lot of key-strokes to produce and it seems a waste not to post it here. Baden begins:

On your blog, you say:

This means that while many rationalists are also atheist or agnostic, there are also Christians who claim to be rationalists

- this includes the deists, right?

Also, I wanted to ask about this comment on the same blog entry:

I, too, use both terms when I think them more appropriate but tend to use "athiest" more often because there is a preponderance of evidence against the existence of gods and I like to give that some weight -- to use the term "agnostic" suggests to some people that the evidence is equal both ways, which is not what I believe. I think many Christians would agree when it's the Homeric gods that are being questioned ie they are (for all intents and purposes) athiests about those gods, not agnostic.

What scientific evidence does exist, really? Obviously evolution and origins of the universe type stuff, but before all this - what of where it all began? Is there even a theory on this yet? I have not heard of one myself, and read that a major deist argument relates to first cause argument, or cosmological argument.

Whilst I find it hard to justify the existence of God, per se, I personally acknowledge that there must be something "unknowable" (for want of a better term) going on, or that once went on. It sounds semi creationist, I know, though I certainly don't mean it to - I just can't fathom the automatic existence of matter by itself, personally, hence this belief. I guess I am fishing for something to prove me wrong. I really wish I tucked into those books you lent me more so now, depsite my teetering to-be-read piles...as I say, my current stance is that there are questions that will never really be solved. Is that too defeatist?

I reply:

Of course deists can be rationalists. (If a theist can be a rationalist, anyone can!) It just means that they base their belief in the deity on some sort of argument (preferable scientific or philosophical and not mystical) rather than blind faith.

I don't think I said scientific evidence to the contrary exists; what I had in mind is more common-sense evidence about what the world is like. What I mean is the argument from evil. Not sure if you're familiar so here it is: Christianity (and many other religions I know less-well) claim that God is Good, All-Knowing and All-Powerful. They also acknowledge that there is a lot of evil in the world. Therefore they believe that God is good, knows the evil exists, can stop the evil, but allows evil to continue. Allowing evil seems to conflict with the good claim.
The Christian Reply: Many things are good. Free-will is the greatest good. Free will leads to some evil. But God created a world with free will, knowing some evil would result, because, in His infinite wisdom, He saw that free will is more good than any evil could counter-balance. (They don't get this from the Bible and I'm not sure who thought of it first but it's a traditional response.)
When I first heard this argument I was in my first year at uni. A few weeks before there had been a landslide in South America that crushed a school, killing dozens of kiddies. So it occurred to me that some evils are not caused by free will nor could I believe that a good god would punish kids like that. (I'm not the first to think of this argument, the 1755 Lisbon earthquake was used too.)

As for more scientific pieces of evidence, people are right when they say you can't prove a negative, even if it's the Loch Ness Monster. If an interventionalist god existed (now I've got Nick Cave stuck in my head) you'd expect His creations to be a little more elegant than they actually are. I mean while creationists tout the eye as being such a great thing, it's really quite fragile. The number of people who need glasses as their eyes age and suffer from things like detached retinas make a mockery of the idea of a divine engineer. Various vestigial organs are very inefficient eg whale foetuses grow teeth that are then reabsorbed before birth! This all makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective (which may just as easily include a deist god) but god who made these things deliberately seems more a tinkerer than a deity.

That is what I meant by a preponderance of evidence. Of course I have to admit that this doesn't disprove the existence of gods or Loch Ness Monsters, but it makes it a lot less plausible. I would probably use the term "agnostic" more often than Russell had I not read NR Hanson, "The Agnostic's Dilemma" (can't find a net version, but it's in one of his collections of essays), which made me feel that the all-intents-and-purposes definition of atheism is more reasonable.

It sounds like you fancy yourself a deist. Well, it is the best way to believe in science and allow yourself a little mysticism. The Wikipedia page seems a good summary of the cosmological argument. The open question of whether the creator continued to exist is a good one, I've heard the example of the pyramids given to illustrate. The science here can get very complicated and difficult to grasp in a way that can sometimes obscure the logic of the situation. I prefer to stick to the simple "Who created God?" argument. Personally, when the Christian asks me "what caused the Big Bang?" I find it no more difficult to answer "nothing, that was the beginning of time" than the theist or deist does when asked what caused their god.

Baden responds:

I don't know about deism - perhaps it is an apt description, but it implies a belief of some sort whcih I cannot subscribe to without rational evidence presented to me. An unanswerable question about the birth of the universe is not rational evidence to me, simply a muddying of the waters. It is like being told that there is gold in a stream, which is muddied - simply because

(a) I have been told there is gold
(b) I can not prove there is no gold

is not rational argument to me. Rather, it is an argument based on speculation. I am sure this kind of argument has a technical term for philosophers, but I don't know it.

As I always say, if God, or some other mystical being appeared to me in a burning bush of course I would believe. If some ethereal power seized a mountain and presented itself to me through a prophet, of course I would believe. If I witnessed the death of a man and saw him three days later I would concede there is something remarkable about him. If he touched folks with cancer and cured them, I would be even more inclined to "follow [him]".

Another example I borrow from Sam: in Days of Our Lives when Marlena was the devil incarnate, John Black cast the devil out and was congratulated for the strength of his faith in the Lord. Now I don't know about you, but put me in a room with the fallen archangel Satan and a faith in God would not be too difficult to find based on biblical teaching. Presented with conclusive evidence, I can believe - without it, I am left a little mystified, if nothing else.

Me again:

Certainly the Big Bang is the most coherent theory based on the evidence. I haven't heard of anyone trying to disprove it (well, no real scientists). But whereas it is normally thought incomprehensible that anything could have happened before that, I have heard of some people looking into it: M-Theory (based on string theory), whereby membranes of space occasionally touch and create universes. Can't say I understand it, though. Sounds to me a lot like CS Lewis, The Magician's Nephew. (Have you seen The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe? I have to say I was disappointed. It's been years since I read it and I'd forgotten how sickly sweet the story was.)

I'm not sure of the name for that logical error but there probably is one. I notice that it's the same form as Lisa Simpson's specious argument that a certain rock repels tigers (causing Homer to offer to buy the rock!).

Your point about burning bushes is a good one. So many modern apologists talk about the testimony of miracles by respectable men as though it were the same as Caesar's reports of winning battles, nothing out of the ordinary. When Akura Nitavilla tried this one on Joel he promptly confirmed my modest claim to have walked across the Nepean the previous day. (She did point out that, unlike Joel, many of the apostles willingly died for their beliefs, but so did the followers of David Koresh.)
Similarly, Tacitus, one of the most respected Roman historians, records that the Emperor Vespasian once cured a blind man with his spit (he records this only because it was witnessed by hundreds of people).

David Hume pretty much demolished this argument in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding back in 1748; but of course apologists still trot it out as often as possible. He says:

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. Why is it more than probable, that all men must die; that lead cannot, of itself, remain suspended in the air; that fire consumes wood, and is extinguished by water; unless it be, that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and there is required a violation of these laws, or in other words, a miracle to prevent them? Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happen in the common course of nature. It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation....

The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), 'That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish....' When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.

In the foregoing reasoning we have supposed, that the testimony, upon which a miracle is founded, may possibly amount to an entire proof, and that the falsehood of that testimony would be a real prodigy: But it is easy to shew, that we have been a great deal too liberal in our concession, and that there never was a miraculous event established on so full an evidence.

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, L. A. Selby Bigge, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), pp. 114-16.

But I guess he never saw a miracle himself. However, a few years ago I was fortunate enough to witness the divine holiness of the Coogee Madonna!