Religious arguments

I've seen a few debates between theists and atheists and I would like to add my replies to the main theistic arguments for the existence of a god, multiple gods or whatever. The arguments are always the same and I will present some of them.

1. The cosmological argument.

This argument states that the Universe must have a cause and that cause is a god. I've seen a nice way of dismissing this argument with Occam's razor: “God created the Universe, God just exists.”. Yes, it's that easy, the simplest explanation is better, that the Universe just exists.

Even if the Universe has a cause, why would that cause be intelligent? Even if the Universe has an intelligent cause, why would it be interested in us, humans? These questions can go on forever.

I talk more about the beginning of the Universe in this post.

2. The argument from design.

The argument from design states that the Universe or what it contains is too complex to exist by chance, therefore, a god designed everything. Before the theory of evolution, this argument was about biological beings and some people still use it. Nowadays it's mostly about the fine-tuning of our Universe, so as to sustain life and most importantly human life.

My first reaction to the fine-tuning argument was that it's an awful waste of space, matter and energy to create an entire Universe with billions of billions of stars and planets, all just for us. Another obvious problem with this argument is that life is rare in the Universe, so if it is fine-tuned to sustain life, it's incompetently done. Life occupies a tiny portion of even the Earth, only the surface area and humans are not well adapted to live in the oceans, which cover most of the Earth. There is no need to mention other planets. So, it really is a sloppy job if it is the work of a creator.

Another problem with this argument is that a god needs to be a very complex being, it cannot be as simple as a boulder. This god needs to be far more complex than the Universe, so, basically, they want to explain the complexity of something by postulating something even more complex, without evidence. I talk more about this in this post.

3. The argument from morality

This argument states that there is objective morality and the source of that morality is a god. I disagree with this, I don't believe there is objective morality. Morality has changed a lot over time. In ancient times it was moral to kill a sinner with stones, slavery was moral and even religious war was moral.

We can't take our morality from the bible and thankfully, we don't. We don't kill people because they work on Sunday, we don't kill homosexuals as the bible tells us to do, we don't kill witches and so on.

In ancient Rome people used to go and watch gladiators fight till the death. In the Dark Ages, people used to gather and watch the burning of witches. We don't do this anymore and some of us are even revolted by animal cruelty. What changed? Did religion change? Has the bible been modified since then? No, religion is not the cause of our morality improvements. The cause is civilization, we are becoming more civilized.

4. The argument from miracles.

This argument states that miracles occur (or have occurred) and that they are created by a god. I have never seen something I would call a miracle and even if I did see something like that, it might be just trickery, I've seen a magic show once, and some people would call those tricks miracles if they did not know it was just a magic show. There are a lot of cases of charlatans, so I won't go into that.

Medical miracles always fall within what is possible. There has never been a case where someone who lost a limb grew it back, no matter how much he/she prayed. That would be no problem for an all-powerful god, but it never happens.

The miracles presented in the bible should not be believed more than you believe in Harry Potter. They are just books and believing that those stories are real makes you naive. A lot of people cannot discern reality from fantasy. You should read this post. You might say that people don't believe in Harry Potter, well, that story is not meant to be a religion, it's not meant to be believed. The Iliad is a better example, because people did believe in the gods of mount Olympus. You can take any religious book. All religious books are fairy tales, and I don't need to read all of them to know this.

By the way, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” - Carl Sagan.

 

5. The argument from religious experience

This argument states that some people have had religious experiences and that proves that at least one god exists. The problem I see here is that people from different religions, even contradictory religions have had religious experiences, so who is right? Which religion is correct? I believe that all religions are wrong.

I do believe that some people have religious experiences and I don't believe they are necessarily crazy. Lots of things can cause religious experiences, but I believe they are just hallucinations.

I was laughing one day, when I read this: “religion is a result of malnutrition”. I can't remember who said this, but it's probably true. In the bible, some jews went into the desert for long periods of time, they had little to eat, some got close to starvation. Hallucinations are known to be caused by malnutrition and isolation, so it was the perfect recipe, religious people going into the desert to find god and finding hallucinations because of malnutrition and isolation. Even Jesus went into the desert for 40 days, where satan appears to him and tempts him in various ways, another hallucination, I believe.

 

6. Pascal's wager

It goes like this:

“If you believe in God and God does not exist, you lose nothing.

If you believe in God and God exists, you gain everything.

If you do not believe in God and God does not exist, you gain nothing.

If you do not believe in God and God exists, you lose everything.”

This wager has never impressed me because it's based on fear and fear is the mind killer. But, imagine that this wager was available for every god, like Zeus, Thor, Bumba, Chinigchinix, Allah, Brahma or any other. This should be the case, as no god has more proof than any other. But you can't believe in all the gods for fear of the consequences of disbelief. Furthermore, christianity and islam don't accept belief in other gods, so if you believe in Jesus and Vishnu you will still go to hell, according to christianity.

So, there is no way to get out of it, there are no valid arguments for the existence of any god. Usually, people try to squeeze their gods in the gaps of our knowledge, like the beginning of the Universe, the laws of nature and any other place where we are still ignorant. This is why I call it “the god of ignorance”, whatever we can't explain, we attribute to him.

What makes us human?

What is it that makes us different from other animals? Is it the skin, hair, eyes? Not really, all our organs are present in other animals too, but our brain is truly unique, so you might say that our brain makes us different from all the other animals. But the brain itself is useless without other features.

Let's imagine, for example, that dolphins are smarter than humans. This might even be true, but it's not my point. What could they do with that intelligence? They would not be able to do anything interesting with it, really. They can't discover fire under water, they have no use for wheels or clothes, they couldn't use tools even if they had them, they can't grasp anything, they don't have hands.

Throughout the ages, people have often tried to find a definition for the term “human”. Obviously, there is no such thing. These definitions often contained the fact that we are bipedal, we have opposable thumbs, we wear clothes, we are capable of abstract reasoning, and so on, but, obviously, this is silly. There are lots of bipedal animals, some animals with opposable thumbs, such as apes.

This reminds me of a story, when some biologists or philosophers said that “humans are bipedal beings with no fur”, or something like that, someone said: “I'll pluck a chicken and that will make it human.” So, even if a human is not bipedal, if he lost a leg, he is still human, if a human does not wear clothes, it is still human, and so on.

Some people might say that we have religion and that makes us really different. But from my point of view, religion is superstition and other animals also have superstition, a famous example being Skinner's experiments with superstitious pigeons.

There may be a case for a DNA definition of a human, but DNA is unique to each individual (except some cases, like monozygotic twins). But I think it is possible to say that a being is a human if he is within a certain deviation from a human DNA strand.

Anyway, from my point of view, the only thing that makes us different from all the rest of the animals is technology. Some other animals create and use simple tools, but nothing that compares to what we do. I believe that a technological civilization is what stands out from the crowd.

You might say that there are still primitive tribes of humans in the Amazon rainforest. Obviously, they are human, but, from my point of view, they are not much different from other animal groups. This is probably how a technologically advanced alien species would see things also, they would probably search for radio signals.

Dream world

One day I read “The Lion of Comarre” (I listened to it, I like audiobooks), it is a short story. It gave me a lot to think about.

There was a city where people could go and fall asleep and sleep until the end of their life but the dreams were created by a machine which designed their own paradise, based on preferences, wishes and hopes. Whatever gave them pleasure and made them happy was there, so it was a paradise. Moreover, it was very realistic, non-distinguishable from reality. Of course, they were kept alive by some means and they did not starve to death.

So, I asked myself the question, if I had the chance to dream my life away in a realistic paradise, would I do it? I realized quickly that I would not do it. The more complicated part was realizing why I would not do it. It seems that I am a reality addict, I believe that truth is important.

What is the difference between living your life in a dream world and taking drugs to feel better? I believe that they are very similar, they give happiness by taking you out of this reality and I decided some time ago that happiness is not one of my priorities, but I do understand that people want happiness.

So, would I choose a real hell over an unreal paradise? I probably would. I don't like this world and yet I'm not trying to find refuge in dreams or drugs. Maybe some books that I read provide that relief. I would rather live in the countryside than in big cities, but maybe nature is the reality and cities are places where we run away from the reality of nature.

But is this reality real or is it just another dream? I have no choice but to consider this reality real.

Probabilities

Imagine that you are at a table with me and some friends. I can raise my closed hand and say: I have a coin in my hand. What is the probability that I really have a coin in my hand? In fact, the probability would be rather high, because a coin can fit in my hand and there are lots of coins around. This probability depends on a lot of things, like my habit of telling lies or the truth. Without knowing my habits, you may reasonably say that there are 50% chances that I have a coin in my hand.

If I say that I have a rare coin in my hand, what is the probability then? Obviously, the probability drops, because the chances are lower if the object is rare. If I was a coin collector, there would be reasonable chances that I really have a rare coin in my hand. If I said that the coin I hold is a famous coin (not a copy) and everyone knows that the only such coin is kept in a museum, the chances would be far lower. You did not read in the newspaper that the coin was stolen. Maybe I'm an archeologist and found another one just like it but this would still be very improbable. So, the probability that I hold a famous rare coin is very low.

If I say that I have a real live horse in my hand, not those little toys, what would be the probability of that? As far as we know, a shrinking device does not exist yet, so the probability is very low. Plus, you have never seen a real live horse that can fit in your hand. It would be reasonable not to believe me. If a shrinking device did exist, the chances would be higher. What if horse sounds would be coming from my hand, would the probability increase? Not really, because a device that can fit in your hand can make those noises, and this alternative explanation is far more probable.

If I say that I have a pixie in my hand, one of those small magical creatures, what is the probability of that? The existence of pixies is not proven scientifically and just one such creature would revolutionize the world, because it would prove that magical creatures do exist. This discovery would be of great value. Yet, the fact that such a creature has never been observed by most of us or by scientists and their devices, makes their existence highly improbable. The fact that no magical creature has been proved to exist makes this point even stronger, for imagine that scientists discovered that ghosts exist, the probability that pixies exist would be higher.

So think about god (or gods), the soul, life after death, heaven and hell, angels and demons. What is the probability that such things exist? From my point of view, and from an objective point of view, the probability is very low indeed.

See this:
The dragon in my garage

The Universe

The Universe started with the Big Bang. There is a large amount of evidence for this. If the law of conservation of energy is correct and energy cannot be created or destroyed (it can only be transformed) then the Universe has always existed in one form or another.

It is said that in the beginning, the Universe was a very small, very dense and very hot "singularity". At this point, the laws of physics break down and the theory of relativity predicts infinities (infinite mass, infinite density, infinite temperature). The early Universe was governed by quantum physics, so we will probably know how the Universe started when there will be a quantum theory of everything.

A quantum fluctuation is the spontaneous creation of particle-antiparticle pairs. Physicists believe that this is how the Universe started, a big quantum fluctuation in which matter and antimatter were created and they annihilated each other but some matter remained by some strange process.

It may be that quantum fluctuations exist everywhere and that some quantum fluctuations give birth to Universes. Maybe the creation of a Universe is a local event, in a much larger picture. Maybe there are other universes, nobody really knows. I've heard that if a quantum fluctuation in our Universe gave birth to another Universe, it would look like a black hole to us, so, inside a black hole there might be another Universe.

The Universe may be an oscillating one, expanding and then contracting again, the final moments of contraction giving birth to the next expansion. The problem with the oscillating Universe is that it violates the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the entropy (disorder) must increase in a closed system, and the oscillating Universe does not have any proof, in fact, the current understanding suggests that the Universe will continue to expand forever.

I cannot believe that the singularity which created the Universe existed like that forever and just "decided" at one point to explode. I cannot believe that something appeared out of nothing. I believe that something has always existed, not a god, not an intelligent being, but something, I don't know what. It seems that nothingness cannot exist, it would violate the uncertainty principle, so, there is something everywhere.

The Universe does not have a center, as odd as it may seem. It can be compared with the surface of a balloon. A balloon does have a center but the surface of the balloon does not. It's difficult to imagine 3D space as the 2D surface of the balloon. The Universe is strange.

"The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." - J.B.S. Haldane

Before the formation of stars, the Universe was not very interesting, just scattered matter and energy. The first stars seem to have formed 400 million years after the Big Bang. Stars and galaxies exist because of irregularities in the distribution of matter. Where there was more matter, gravity caused it to collapse and form stars.

Those first stars were big and very hot and had short life spans, inside them fusion occurred, hydrogen fused into helium but, at the end of a star's life, helium fuses into heavier elements.

Stars attain an equilibrium between gravitational pull, which tends to compress the star and heat, which tends to expand the star. As a star compresses, it heats up, as it heats up, it expands. Most of the action happens in the core of the star, because there's the biggest pressure and the biggest temperature, atoms move very fast and they collide with each other and fuse into heavier atoms, releasing energy. As lighter atoms create heavier atoms, most heavier atoms remain in the core.

Of course, this process cannot go on forever and, at some point the core of the star cannot fuse anything anymore, so the heat stops abruptly, but heat was the only thing keeping gravity from compressing it. This is where the core collapses. The shock wave expels the outer layers into space and the core remains as an extremely dense body. The core can form a white dwarf, a neutron star or even a black hole if the star was massive enough. A teaspoon of material from a neutron star would weigh 10 million tons.

When a massive star explodes as a supernova, it ejects into space a lot of material, including heavy elements. These heavy elements can form planets like our own. Life is carbon based and this carbon was fused in the center of a star, we are made of stardust.

See this:
Supernova

Peak everything

Some people are talking about peak oil, that point after which the production of oil decreases, but everything has a peak, there's peak gas and coal, peak minerals, peak agriculture, etc. We have an ever growing consumption of the Earth's resources, this, of course, cannot go on forever. Nothing can increase forever, not on this planet, at least.

This planet is finite and so are the resources. Peak oil is the most talked about peak because our entire economy is based on oil. The demand for oil constantly increases but the production of oil has not increased for years, we have hit the top of production, it will only go down. The International Energy Agency predicts that production will decline 6.7% per year. This is huge.

Some people say that since 1950, we have consumed 50% of the world's resources: oil, gas, coal, minerals, etc. Others are saying that 2/3 of the Earth's resources have been "used up" (source).

We have become so addicted to oil that we cultivate crops for biofuels, meanwhile a billion people are starving. It seems that we need to drive our cars more than we need to feed hungry people.

This silly system does not stop. You will not hear politicians saying that we should stop buying cars, because we have passed peak oil. Actually, we are encouraged to continue to buy cars, to keep the economy from crashing but gasoline is becoming more and more expensive and people don't have the money to buy it.

The solution, of course, is to stop using our cars and stop buying cars. You may say: "oh, this is crazy, we cannot live without our cars". People have lived for thousands of years without cars and they were fine. We have a pretty good public transportation network and we can improve it, we can go anywhere we want without owning a car. In the current situation, I believe that buying a new car is stupid, as gasoline prices will continue to rise. Electric cars are not a solution either, not yet, because electricity is still produced mostly from fossil fuels.

Minerals are also exploited mindlessly and they will run out. We produce all kinds of gadgets using rare minerals and we should recycle as much as possible. Everything should be designed to be recyclable and durable. We are creating so much trash that the future presented in the movie Wall-E, where the planet is covered in trash, may not be impossible.

Also, agriculture will decline as topsoil erosion increases. Maybe we will find solutions in hydroponics and aeroponics. We will also have problems with fresh water.

The fishing industry has also declined since the 1980's and will continue to decline, industrial fishing is just not sustainable, over fishing is a big problem.

Some of these peaks have already happened, the others will happen very soon. The future will be very dark if we continue like this. One thing is clear, we cannot continue to do things as we are currently doing. We must change the way we interact with the planet, we must take care of our precious resources.

See this:
Peak everything
8 things we are running out of

Uniting the world

People are different from each other but the differences are insignificant in comparison to the similarities. People are being separated by labels. We have created walls and fences instead of bridges.

Groups of people have started wars because of imagined differences, like religion, ethnicity, skin colour, etc. A genocide occurred in Rwanda because of two imaginary ethnic groups, the Tutsis and the Hutu. There was little difference between the two groups, both had the same language, the same religion, the same skin colour, the same traditions. A mother from one ethnic group could have a child belonging to the other ethnic group, so small were the differences, and yet people committed genocide for this imagined difference, 1 million people were killed.

When Europeans arrived in the Americas, they were amazed to find that the native people did not know anything about Jesus or the Bible, they even wondered if these people had souls. Of course, these imagined differences helped them rationalize the genocide that followed.

Religious wars have been constant. Even now religious wars are being fought. Religion has been the greatest creator of conflict in history, its divisive power is unequaled by anything else.

We are being taught as children that there are divisions, like, we are Christians, they are Muslims, although children are no more capable of having a religion than having political or philosophical orientations. This, of course, maintains the groups and these divisions often create conflicts.

People are conditioned to feel that they are a part of the society they live in and to feel separated from the rest of the world. This is nationalism and it is another divisive force and it has also created conflicts. A lot of people really feel that their country is their home. Of course, this is helped by the fact that different countries usually have different languages or accents, different customs and traditions.

This tendency of classifying things and finding differences rather than similarities may be something natural to us, as Richard Dawkins called it: "the tyranny of the discontinuous mind".

I believe that we need to feel as a part of the global community in order to have peace on this planet. We need to communicate more, to travel more, to mix people. This way, they can see that people outside their group are not so bad.

Will we ever give up our divisions and embrace the global community? I don't know, but I sure hope so. This has already begun, it's called globalization, but will we be able to live in peace and harmony or will we keep creating imaginary divisions? The future will tell.

"My country is the world and my religion is to do good." - Thomas Paine