Encounter
(Point/Counterpoint, Vol. 1, No.
4, 1996)
Encounter
(Point/Counterpoint, Vol. 1, No.
4, 1996)The web journal of Godsearch, Inc. (journal formerly entitled Point/Counterpoint).
The skeptic and seeker's guide for investigating religions and world-views through debate, interview, analysis, and discussion.
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Bertrand Russell Meets his Maker
Quotes from the Famous Agnostic Show How Such an Encounter Might Appear
Astral Projection
Antony Flew
Richard Dawkins
Interview with Famed Atheist and Scientist: "Did Darwin Make the World Safe for Atheism?"
Encounter
Encounter
Richard Dawkins
Interview with Famed Atheist and Scientist:
"Did Darwin Make the World Safe for Atheism?"
With his book, The Blind Watchmaker, Oxford Zoology professor, Richard Dawkins, has come to be seen as a major voice for naturalistic or nondirected evolution and the belief that Darwin made the world safe for atheism. Our short interview with Dr. Dawkins has provided some insight into his thinking but has left us with other questions which remain as perplexing as ever.
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Note: The questions following Dr. Dawkins' responses were initially submitted to him but without response. Only the shortened summarized questions in italics were again later submitted and directly responded to. We include the longer original questions since this was the original context Dr. Dawkins would have been aware of from our earlier communications. Lastly, this final article was submitted to Dr. Dawkins but without response. We hope it is understood that Professor Dawkins' inability to respond to all of our questions very possibly reflects more upon the constraints of his time schedule than his ability to answer the questions. |
: Professor Dawkins,
let's suppose, for the sake of the argument, that theists were to
concede that evolution is quite as certain as you believe and that
there is no need to conjecture an original intelligence to make
evolution work. Let's suppose further that other scientific evidence
theists have looked to--say the evidence for the big bang or the fine
tuning of the universe that is necessary for the allowance of
life--suppose all this is also given up?
Theists have done without such recent scientific arguments for thousands of years and have still found what they believe to be powerful arguments for God's existence in other areas such as philosophy and history.
Now because a theist could make all of the above concessions, doesn't it seem that an intellectually consistent theist who doesn't need science to prove his or her views would be a more honest scientist than an intellectually consistent atheist?
The consistent atheist couldn't simply let the evidence lead where it will. One can no longer be a consistent atheist if the evidence happens to lead to God. If someone so values being an intellectually consistent atheist, would he or she be tempted to misevaluate that evidence on just the possibility that it could go the wrong way?
Dawkins: That's much too long and involved just to answer on the phone. We see the world so differently. I don't think that there has ever been any good argument of any kind for theistic belief. Even before Darwin, although it would have been difficult to be an atheist, as I've said, if you actually think logically, as for example Hume did, you would realize that even before Darwin there was no good argument in favor of theism. After Darwin you not only realize that, you also realize what is the true explanation for the existence of life which had always been the most emotionally persuasive argument even if not a very good intellectual argument. There has never been a good intellectual argument in favor of theism. There have been pre-Darwinian emotional arguments. Darwin destroyed even those.
:We are supposing that
evolution is quite as certain as you believe and that there is no
need to conjecture an original intelligence to make evolution work.
Philosopher Peter van Invagan (Buell, p.
187) comments,
If unaided natural selection really is capable of producing the ordered diversity we see in the terrestrial biosphere today, I see no reason why a God who wanted such ordered diversity should not have used this very elegant mechanism. If I doubt that God did this, it is only because I doubt that unaided natural selection could do the job. I think that other mechanisms would be required and that he therefore must have used them. But if unaided natural selection would work--well, why shouldn't God use something that would work?
It seems to be a widespread opinion that something about natural selection unfits it for use as a divine instrument. I have never been able to see this. When I was an agnostic, I was a Darwinian. When I became a Christian, a very old-fashioned, orthodox one, I was a Darwinian still. . . . My doubts about Darwinism began only when I discovered the "smoothness" of the fossil record that I had always believed in was not there.
Similarly, philosopher Richard Swinburne (p. 135) believes Darwin has driven design from biology but holds that there is still sufficient evidence for God's existence. He finds bountiful evidence in the physical sciences. For example, one major area theists have looked to has been the claim that the universe had an absolute beginning, which would require a cause from something other than the material universe. A second major area of investigation involves the increasing number of "design parameters" science is discovering which seem to indicate that the universe had to be very "fine tuned" to allow for life. As just one example, the expansion rate of the universe must be precisely what it is now (to an accuracy of one part in 1055) (Guth, p. 348). If it had been larger, no galaxies and thus no stars could form, but if it were smaller the universe would have collapsed prior to star formation. The chance that the universe just happened to perfectly fit this and several dozen other similar parameters is just too small. It is far too unlikely that life could have originated without intelligent intervention.
Now even this mass of evidence from the physical sciences could be given up. Theists have done without it for thousands of years and have still found what they believe to be powerful arguments for God's existence in other areas such as philosophy and history. Indeed, even if we knew that the universe had eternally existed, it is still conceivable that God eternally sustains the universe only, and that evidence for God's existence can be found in other areas. (If God only sustains a beginningless universe, then without this sustaining power everything would simply cease to exist, or, perhaps, return to God its eternal source.) So if we thought the sciences could sufficiently explain the universe without resorting to God (an intelligent uncaused being) theists might feel disappointed. They might feel sad that so much evidence they thought they had is no longer there, but they shouldn't be too upset. They might feel that there is plenty of evidence elsewhere for God's existence.
As we can see, science doesn't seem to give any positive evidence against God's existence. It might be that it could show how the universe could exist and function without a need for God (as, in fact, you believe it does and I believe it does not). Thus it is conceivable that science could provide reason for the atheist to feel he or she is being intellectually consistent.
Now because a theist could make all of the above concessions, doesn't it seem that an intellectually consistent theist who doesn't need science to prove his or her views would be a more honest scientist than an intellectually consistent atheist? Theists would be more open to follow the evidence where it leads. If the evidence leads to belief in God, they could accept that. If it leads to an understanding that there is no intelligent activity observable in the causes of nature, they would have no problem with that either. They would simply say that the evidence for God's existence is to be found elsewhere. On the other hand, the consistent atheist couldn't simply let the evidence lead where it will. One can no longer be a consistent atheist if the evidence happens to lead to God. If someone so values being an intellectually consistent atheist, would he or she be tempted to misevaluate that evidence? Without such a bias one might more honestly deal with such evidence.
[The following paragraph was added to the final letter to Dawkins.]
It should be added that although science cannot disprove God's existence, as I have shown, it could potentially disprove or give evidence against certain specific theistic views. For example, a religion that says that the universe has not always existed would be disconfirmed to the degree, say, a "steady state" cosmology is supported by scientific evidence. Likewise science could potentially support or confirm such religious views.
:
How can the Darwinist account for human consciousness, for minds? It
seems that ultimately the only thing evolution can account for is new
arrangements of matter. What arrangement of matter, however complex,
can cause there to be consciousness?
Dawkins: If I knew that I'd get a Nobel Prize. Clearly it must be accounted for because we have consciousness. And it is probably the most difficult problem facing biological science at the moment. And obviously it hasn't been solved or we would know the answer.
: This seems to me to be
one of the simplest arguments against secularism that relates very
directly to evolutionary thought. Ultimately the only thing evolution
can account for is new arrangements of matter. The neo-Darwinism you
espouse holds that we can potentially account for life and all of its
characteristics by the chance formation of certain molecules and
their development by natural, nondirected processes. Such processes
created living organisms and caused them to become continually more
and more complex.
How can this, or any purely mechanistic process, account for human consciousness? What arrangement of matter, however complex, can cause there to be consciousness? Imagine trying to create an android, or even merely a computer, programmed to be aware, to be conscious. To begin, the computer/android is programmed to follow simple instructions such as to engage the motor and cause the machine to take a step forward when a green light is sensed on photosensitive cells. Incoming information may even be recorded on magnetic tapes for memory. As the computer becomes more complicated it simulates human behavior more and more precisely. But how do you get consciousness by having photosensitive cells pass electrical impulses on to magnetic (memory) tapes? No matter how complicated the processes become, you still cannot transcend such essentially mechanical and nonconscious processes to reach consciousness.
An old Twilight Zone television program brought out this point very graphically. An astronaut is assigned to do research on a desolate planet. He must remain here alone for a long period of time. To ease his loneliness, his commander, before he leaves, gives him a robot to help him and to keep him company.
The robot is an android; to all appearances it's a normal woman. Knowing it's just a machine, the astronaut is not comforted. His constant rejection brings it/her to tears. With this, something of his perception of her changes and he accepts her as human and accepts her love.
In the next scene his commander's spaceship lands and the astronaut is told that it's time for him to leave. But there is only room for one person on the spaceship other than the commander. The problem now before him, how to persuade the astronaut that this woman is just a machine and must be left behind. She hears the men talking and comes out of the house to see what is happening. The commander pulls some type of gun and blasts open her face revealing wires and metal parts. Her voice slows like a tape on a disengaged tape player and comes to a stop.
As the astronaut stares the realization comes back to him that it was just a machine after all. It was never really conscious at all. All the semblance of awareness, of feeling, of sadness, of happiness--these were all mere modes of external behavior programmed into the computer to occur under the predetermined stimuli. The android was no more aware of anything than a blasting fire alarm is aware of the fire that triggers it. Only a child might think the burning building is screaming with pain.
This is not a problem that can be solved by any increase of scientific knowledge. Consciousness cannot even potentially be explained by mechanistic processes. Strict secularism, belief that there cannot be anything other than the material universe, cannot be true. That consciousness was given us by God does explain it. This argument need not cause us to reject evolution but it does cause us to see mechanistic evolution as inadequate in itself to account for all characteristics of life.
I suspect that your response to this last argument will reflect something of your stated reasons for your rejection of theism. If we need a God to explain life, wouldn't we need something to explain God? Isn't God far more complicated than life? If we need God to explain human consciousness, wouldn't we need something else to explain God's consciousness? "A deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the world . . . must already have been vastly complex in the first place" (Dawkins, p. 316).
My first response would be, "Why should we see God as complex?" High, Thomistic theology, for example, sees God as pure, complete, changeless actuality; the most simple being conceivable. Admittedly, the creator/designer of the universe must have, as you say, prodigious intelligence. And it seems to me that intelligence involves complexity insofar as it involves or deals with complex subject matter. But is there some reason God cannot choose that at least one facet of divine thought become other than purely monistic? (Also, we can conceive of God as being timeless and changeless as God's thought and choices are changeless.)
Secondly, because something needs an explanation does not mean that that which explains it must in turn need an explanation. Might our consciousness not come from a changeless, timeless source of all consciousness which itself has no cause? Because all changing beings need an explanation does not mean that a changeless being does.
References
John Buell and Virginia Hearn, ed., Darwinism: Science or Philosophy? (Richardson, Tx.: Foundation for Thought and Ethics, 1994). A symposium in 1992 at Southern Methodist University between traditional Darwinists (those who see no evidence of intelligent design in nature) and intelligent design proponents (many of whom are evolutionists).
Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1986).
A.H. Guth, "Inflationary Universe: A Possible Solution to the Horizon and Flatness Problems" Physical Review D23 (1981). Hugh Ross (see below, p. 110) points out that Guth's proposal to remove this vast improbability merely trades "one exquisite balance (the expansion rate of the cosmos) for another (the values of a set of several constants of physics)." So in fact, we still cannot get around these incredibly large numbers.
Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford: OUP, 1979). See the 1991 revised edition for a more scientifically current study by this accomplished Oxford philosopher.
For Further Investigation
Hugh Ross, Creator and the Cosmos (Colorado Springs, Co.: Navpress, 2001) for an excellent summary of the evidence for the fine tuning of the universe and bibliography, as well as the other evidences from the physical sciences. (The above quote is from the 1993 edition.)
Also see Reasons to Believe's web page at http://www.reasons.org
Reasons to Believe is the organization Hugh Ross heads up that primarily examines scientific findings and theories as they relate to biblical Christianity and the existence of God.
Astral Projection
Randall Baer was a leader in the New Age Movement. His two books were, for the most part, "channeled" through (dictated by) spirit guides during meditation. The first was long considered the top book in the field of crystal power in New Age circles. The New Age magazine, East-West Journal, pronounced his second book on the same subject "light years beyond the rest."
Early in his teens deep religious questions propelled him on a quest for answers. But his questions seemed to meet only with intolerance and irritation from (apparent) Christians he knew. Sensing that the answers were not to be found there, he began searching elsewhere. From early drug induced unitive (oneness with the universe) and out-of-body experiences he progressed to non-drug induced experiences. He acquired "spirit guides" or "inner counselors" ("familiar spirits" in biblical terminology). He found that the "divine glance" or the bestowed mantra of an eastern master he had studied and meditated under would produce in him an experience of instant bliss. He received "channeled" instructions from spirit beings such as the claimed "Universal Masters" directing him to his part in the believed coming New Age, the "Golden Age of Oneness." From similar instructions to meditate with the use of crystals he was catapulted away to even more expansive realms of "extra-natural light the likes of which I had never before perceived," he says (p. 25). He became obsessed with these experiences. "The mind blowing cosmic power, the glittering good feelings, and the amazing revelations experienced during these times completely captivated me," he writes (p. 53).
Then the truly unexpected happened. In his own words:
One night . . . my spirit was roaming some of the farthest reaches of "heavenly light" that I had ever perceived. . . .
I was surrounded by a virtually overwhelming luminosity--it was as if I was looking straight into the sun. Waves of bliss radiated through my spirit. I was totally captivated by power.
Suddenly, another force stepped in. It took me by complete surprise. In the twinkling of an eye, it was like a supernatural hand had taken me behind the scenes of the experience that I was having. I was taken behind the outer covering of the dazzling luminosity and there saw something that left me literally shaking for a full week.
What I saw was the face of devouring darkness! Behind the glittering outer facade of beauty lay a massively powerful, wildly churning face of absolute hatred and unspeakable abominations. . . .
For a moment that seemed like an eternity, I realized that I was in major league trouble, for this devouring force was now closing in on me.
In absolute stark terror I felt powerless to stop what appeared to be inevitable doom. Horror filled me like a consuming flame.
Then, miraculously, the same supernatural hand as before delivered me from the jaws of this consuming darkness, and hours later I found myself waking up the next morning. . . [p. 55].
At that point . . . I only knew that some force greater than that of the devouring darkness had . . . shown me the real face of the New Age "heavens" and "angels" that I was so deeply involved with. . ..
An openness to reconsider my New Age involvements arose in me out of desperate need. This openness would help me, over the following months, to find a Way, a Truth, and a Life that I had never known before--Jesus Christ [p. 56].
Soon after the horrifying experience, he began regaining his strength only to sense a growing spiritual hollowness and psychological deterioration develop. He tried every New Age psychological and spiritual healing technique he knew of short of any mystical experiences but all to no avail. He had started to read the Bible and even watch some television evangelists (the latter more out of curiosity at first) at this time of new searching and reevaluation. Baer relates what followed.
One day, while watching the 700 Club, I was in awful shape. Pat Robertson called on unsaved viewers who were in need of deliverance from bondage to pray a prayer with him. I was in such a state now that I was way past feeling self-conscious or silly.
There was something about the way Robertson was speaking and looking into the camera that felt like he was talking directly to me. Such a sensation never had happened before, and there was a clarity and conviction that came upon me as I got up from the bed and knelt on the floor with my hands on top of the TV. Somehow I knew with absolute certainty that this was very real, and it was my chance to get out of this maddening bondage. . . .
As the prayer progressed I felt the hand of Jesus reach deep into my innermost being with an almighty power that was both piercing to the core yet completely gentle at the same time. By the end of the prayer I was so filled to overflowing with the power of His presence that a powerful but gentle quaking in the Spirit happened in every fiber of my being. Weeping uncontrollably, I gently dropped to the floor. As this happened I felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit pierce my heart and wept in acute repentance as the quaking in the Spirit continued for almost an hour. Continuously, prayer poured forth from my lips in repentance and in praise of His majesty and saving grace. . . .
With an absolute certainty, I knew that this was what I had been looking for all my life and never found till now. This made even the most powerful mystical New Age experience completely pale in comparison of our Heavenly Father's infinitely greater power and glory [pp. 63-64].
It's commonly assumed that religious experience has no power to show us religious truth because different belief systems have different experiences and each experience verifies only its own belief system. So the experiences contradict each other with no way to decide between them. Experiences like that of Randall Baer and others we have discussed and will discuss in coming issues show the fallacy of this view.
For Randall Baer's full story (and the source of the above quotations) we recommend his book Inside the New Age Nightmare (Lafayette, La: Huntington House, Inc., 1989). Quotations are used with permission of Huntington House.
Antony Flew
Debate with Famed Atheist and Philosopher
"Can We Live Without God?"
The following is a portion of a debate between Dennis Jensen of Point/Counterpoint and Antony Flew which originally focused on the problem of the Christian belief in an eternal hell. In discussing this the debate spread to several other topics such as Professor Flew's argument that divine omnipotence precludes human responsibility; moral nihilism and the possibility of finding meaning in existence (the subject of this installment); freewill, responsibility, and the problem of evil; and lastly the subject of the coming issue, whether we have a responsibility to value or worship God if God does exist. The entirety of this debate will be covered in the sixth issue of Point/Counterpoint.
Antony Flew is likely the one philosopher most often considered the top atheistic critic of theism, and Christianity in particular, alive today. He holds an M.A. from St. John's College, University of Oxford, and a D.Lit. from the University of Keele. He has taught for many years, written and edited numerous books, and written dozens of articles. Dennis Jensen holds an M.A. in Philosophy of Religion from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and has written for journals such as Point/Counterpoint..
We will begin the debate with this shorter segment as something of an introduction to the discussion.
Jensen: What we need to see now is something of the implications of separation from God. All that our normal secular existence gives us does not provide us with any substantial reason to continue existing rather than not. Under a purely secular view our desires and goals are nothing more than feelings programed into us through our evolutionary history. I happen to feel love for another person but I know that that person does not possess any true intrinsic worth or value. He or she is, like me, simply a physical body possessing consciousness and mechanical intelligence. I may create for myself a purpose or goals and live for the sake of attaining those goals, but it's really just a meaningless game. It doesn't really matter whether I attain them or not.
If my attained goals make life easier for someone else, what does that accomplish? They, like myself, are equally meaningless. I cannot find significance from another person. Mere physical existence, which is all that secularism can offer, is not its own justification. If a truly justified reason for existence can be found, it must come from something other than anything experienced in the phenomenal world. If there is someone who possesses significance, it might be that we likewise can have significance in relation to this being. Jews and Christians claim that the universe was created by this same being they call God. If it's true, then the deadly absurdity of existence that the honest secularist knows too well can be overcome. Despair is removed by relationship with God. It is hardly the case that belief in God makes no difference to our life in the world.
. . . If there is such a God, if it is conceivable that your accusations of evil against this God are mistaken, and if we can find relationship with God such that our existential despair can be removed, then would you seek such a relationship? (J1 p2, 3)
Flew: For me . . . the only problem arises from the idea of being attracted to a "relationship with God" in order to relieve "our existential despair." For "existential despair" is something with which I am not aware of being myself afflicted. Should I be; and, if so, why? (F2 p9)
. . . I have created a purpose and goals and, up to a point, I do live for the sake of attaining those goals. But why is this supposed to be "just a meaningless game" and why doesn't it really "matter whether I attain" these goals or not? They are my goals and my purposes and they do matter to me and to some others; though not to as many as I could wish.
Part of the explanation may be that for Jensen nothing "really matters" or is truly meaningful unless it either is or is associated with something which will go on forever. But, surely, it is at least equally if not more reasonable to hold that the very brevity of human life makes everything more important; and that today urgently offers us the only chance there will ever be of doing what can only be done today? But the main point of the explanation would seem to be that "existential despair" is a supposedly pathological syndrome custom built (anglice, 'made to measure') to be cured only by belief in God. That must be the reason why Jensen is so sure that "the deadly absurdity of existence" is something which "the honest secularist knows too well." (F2 p10)
Jensen: I have to admit that I do have a very hard time conceiving how anything "really matters" which does not last forever. (Although the fact that something is eternal doesn't in itself mean it has meaning.) It's just that the secular view of the limitation of our existence, our 'death' if you will, makes it so much more obvious that nothing does matter.
Think of those who had died in the holocaust for instance. Since the past is nonexistent and these people are now nonexistent (in the secularist view) all that happened to them does not matter. How can anything matter to nonexistent persons? Only the present exists, not the past.
In something of a strange way of speaking someone may say that these victims still 'exist' in his memories. But memories are nothing more than images in our minds. There are no real objects of these particular images anymore. Those having the memories can ascribe as much or as little importance to these images as is desired, just as they can ascribe as much value as they desire to anything else. Even a holocaust survivor, no matter how much she has endured, may, according to the strength of her will and mental abilities, allow those past events to be nonexistent in her mind.
You can ascribe as much importance to such past events as you desire just as you may ascribe as much value to the particular goals you have in your life. This may tell us something about your psychological state but it doesn't tell us anything else. It may 'really matter to me' never to step on a crack when I walk on a sidewalk, but this doesn't say anything about any reality outside of my own mind. Show me that something really matters outside of your own choice to have it matter.
We exist now in this particular moment which will soon no longer be and very soon we will have no more moments given us. Because the present is ultimately past and because soon there will be for us no more future to create the present out of, ultimately we are nothing. If we are nothing, how can we rationally justify our acts attempting to benefit anyone else (who is nothing) and how can we be concerned when someone harms someone else (who is nothing)?
We might cling to the moment and say that at least in the present moment we exist and others exist. But how can we honestly cling to that? Because soon it will not be, we must say that ultimately it is not. Imagine someone on his deathbed aware that he has precisely three minutes to live. Can he savor each moment? Can he cling to them as they vanish into nothingness?
As Dostoevsky said, "If there is no immortality then all things are lawful," and as Shakespeare said, life is indeed "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing."
Immortality alone does not solve the problem however; it is only a necessary, not a sufficient condition for meaning. Why do those in the East desire to leave the wheel of reincarnation? Not simply to be rid of pain. If you build up enough good karma (in their view) you can expect some virtually painless future lives for yourself. One wants to leave the wheel because there is no point to it. We long for something more than mere existence, something to give meaning to existence more than that which we create in our own fantasy.
Schopenhauer said that humankind is doomed to vacillate between the extremes of distress and boredom. Remove pain from existence, and especially an endless existence, and all you will have left is boredom. We are here but there is no reason that we're here. Sartre in Nausea demonstrates how whatever goals or diversions we embrace or create for ourselves, they all lead to an awareness of our futility if we are honest in our secularism. Boredom leads to nausea, perhaps not necessarily, but certainly for anyone who will not suppress their innate longing for significance, their longing to be something more than a pointless, purposeless blob of existence. Our longing for meaning can be fulfilled if there is a God who possesses transcendent worth or significance who can provide it for us, but it cannot be fulfilled in all intellectual honesty by the psychological delusion of self-created meaning.
As you say (p. 10), the brevity of life does give us reason to urgently seek to accomplish something with our lives for others. But it does so only if there is an objective reason for our living and for their living; it does not if our reason is subjective and self-created. And if this is our only life then there can be no objective reason for living. (J3 pp17-18)
Flew: Jensen confesses "that I do have a very hard time conceiving how anything 'really matters' which does not last forever." To this I respond as at one point in his 'First Response' he responded to me: "This may tell us something about your psychological state but it doesn't tell us anything else." But I intend this response not as an objection but as a perhaps illuminating observation. For I do not pretend to be able to meet the challenge with which he concludes the present paragraph: "Show me that something really matters outside of your own choice to have it matter to you" (emphasis original).
The felt need for something to really matter outside of any human choice seems to be--as I said earlier of the supposed pathological syndrome of existential despair--something "custom built (anglice, 'made to measure') to be cured only by belief in God." What more is there to be said other than that feeling a need or a desire for something constitutes no good reason for believing that it is possible to fulfill that need or to satisfy that desire? (F4 p20)
Note: To see where we are on the original 27 page debate, the notation in italics at the end of some of the above paragraphs will indicate first the speaker (F or J) and secondly the numbered response or statement paper. Thus J1 is the first statement paper by Jensen, F2 is the first response by Flew and thus the second statement paper, J3 is Jensen's response to Flew's paper F2, etc. The page numbers will give some indication of where these statements are located within the complete debate.
For more discussion regarding the problem of a secular justification of ethics see "could a rescuer be nonreligious?" Also related issues are covered in "Evil Christians."
