The Other Case About God

“All the World’s a Stage” William Shakespeare "As You Like It" Act II Scene 7 Regarding Karen Armstrong’s latest book “The Case for God”, I would suggest that she herself makes a good case against God, or at least in not believing in the need for a deity. First, let it be said that I have nothing but respect and admiration for her intelligence and scholarship. Indeed, to listen to her speak is a delight in the pleasure of experiencing a wonderfully sharp and agile mind at work. However, that said, by using quotations from “The Case for God” which frame her conclusions, I would suggest different, even opposite conclusions. For example: “Religion was never supposed to provide answers to questions that lay within the reach of human reason … Religion’s task, closely allied to that of art, was to help us live creatively and even joyfully with realities for which there were no easy explanations.” I suggest that religion developed precisely to provide answers to great questions — the how and why of existence — and was itself early on a product of human reason. Consider how and when religion was created: in a time tens, perhaps hundreds of thousand years ago by illiterate, ignorant beings grappling to make sense of their world and their place in it. Their existence was barely more than day to day, season to season, their life expectancy short. Yet, the characteristic which separated that early humanity of the rest of life was its capacity to think — to reason, to conceptualize — in however a primitive fashion it may have been. With little or no abstract knowledge, and with no continuity of knowledge other than habit and oral tradition, humanity wrestled with the same philosophical concepts we still wrestle with today: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics, or the studies of being, knowing and acting, both as individuals and as a group. Religion was humanity’s first attempt “to provide answers to questions that lay within the reach of human reason.” What would have been apparent in the world around them was a sense of cause and effect, what we call now the Law of Causality. It was the growing comprehension of that process — similar events followed similar

actions — that allowed humanity to learn and plan with some sense of certainty in outcomes. It was the process that led from chipping a stone to fashion a blade to use as a knife, and then ultimately using that blade to create a furrow and plant seeds. Each set of actions led to reliable results. Causality suggested to our ancestors that many of the phenomena they saw about them, without apparent causes, must be the result of beings like them, but vastly greater, wiser, more powerful but, for whatever reason, unseen except for their effects. It was the only thing that would have made sense, to their limited knowledge and understanding. Thus, the sun and the moon and the stars traveled across the sky because great beings moved them (or were perhaps these beings), just as the humans themselves push rocks, cut reeds and created huts to get out of the rain these great beings showered upon them with seeming regularity. In this sense, religion was also the first science, an attempt to explain what was apparent, by what was not. Causality was humanity’s first guide to knowledge . But when humans started wondering if these beings could be themselves affected, with pleas and supplications, offerings and even sacrifices, modern religion was born, and separated at birth from science and reason. Because there were “no easy explanations” religion was used to invent ever more complicated explanations, creating super beings as the cause for every effect. This was a process repeated over and over again as clusters of humanity eventually created clusters of civilization. Even up to the Romans in the West, and indigenous cultures in Asia and America, there were whole pantheons of gods for love, war, agriculture, the household, etc. In effect, religion became politics, as a means for humans to organize themselves to better sway the will of the greater beings they were sure must be there. Some, like the Maya and Aztecs, did this to a greater degree. Others, like the Greeks, to a lesser degree. Some, like the Egyptians, conflated their gods with their rulers, granting the divinity of the first to justify the actions of the second. By the dawn of civilization in Sumer and Egypt, religion was master of overall existence, and science, such as it was, was relegated to day-today living, used to explain what could be seen and touched, while religion remained to explain what could but not be seen, could not be

touched, the realm of no easy explanations, the realm of no proof, just supposition, to be taken on faith (and later on absolute authority) without evidence or proof, In the definition given by Hebrews 11 : 1, faith became “… the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen ... ” But to science and reason in the practical world, after the Greeks had formalized them, a belief with neither sensory evidence or rational proof, was considered a contradiction and meaningless, something to be discarded as useless. I would suggest, as Socrates suggested, that answers or hypotheses which are contradictory or lead to absurd conclusions, are simply without validity, and should be dismissed as unworthy. This should have been a warning. But it was not heeded. For science was no further along in explaining existence and the world than in the early days of human civilization. It had no verifiable alternative for causality. Faith and its beliefs remained as the only explanation for the unexplained. By the Renaissance and the birth of modern scientific principles, faith had ruled for two thousand years. And in all those centuries, many vested interests, both sacred and secular, had formed to keep it that way. The rediscovered works of Hipparcus and Eratosthenes, via the Arabs, led Copernicus and Galileo to begin providing science with the tools and concepts to explore the nature of existence, to begin applying causality in a non-divine way. It did not yet have a final answer, but it was evolving the process by which such answers could be tested and verified. Faith, on the other hand, had nothing but an entrenched continuity of belief, and the comfortable feeling that comes with thousands of years of believing. But belief is not proof any more than a feeling is. The issue is really not about the existence of a deity. It is simply and only about faith versus reason and which can be trusted to lead us to truth, to the recognition of reality, to what exists objectively, independent of our subjective desires. It doesn’t matter what the subject of the belief is. Belief alone is half the process, not the conclusion, but the beginning, an empty vessel waiting to be filled. Proof is what fulfills belief, completes it and turns it into knowledge. And when that knowledge stands the test of time, proves its worth, it becomes wisdom. Belief alone, without proof, becomes myth, fable, the unexplained which becomes the unexplainable. Then it becomes blind faith, devoid

of trust. Secularists believe what they do not just because they want to, but because they must. That is where the evidence leads. That is what the logic tells them. Their beliefs are hard fought by their trust in reason, not uncritically accepted by blind faith. So, how does this affect the problem of causality and in finding unknown sources for supposed effects? Ms. Armstrong’s answer is: “… it is time to return to a theology that asserts less and is more open to silence and unknowing.” This, however, seems to me an abrogation of the very scholarship Armstrong brings to the subject. This seems like an admission that there is really nothing to be said about the subject she spent some 300 pages on. Granted, even thinkers and writers like Steven Jay Gould tried to find an accord between reason and faith by dividing them into their own realms of applicability, what Gould called their “separate magesteria.” But while reason and science have a framework and a procedure for vetting ideas, faith and religion have none, only a blind acceptance of continuity, with neither evidence nor proof. Which of these two offers any hope of understanding anything? Of being, of knowing, of acting? I don’t think that one can use the argument that methods of religion and science are separate and cannot be used on each other. Do not all writings, discussion, arguments about the validity of religion employ the reasoning process of science and its tool, logic? The only difference is in the starting premises. Why should faith have a lower standard of validation than science? My suggestion for the paradox of causality (that there must be a first cause — the Primum Mobile of Aquinas — or else one is faced with an infinite backward path of causes — what mathematics and logic call an infinite regression that becomes a reduction to absurdity) has a simpler explanation, but one that seems outrageously complicated: that causality itself has no cause. It is not the philosophical axiom we commonly think it is. But existence is, both necessary and sufficient unto itself, requiring nothing more. In cosmology, the universe is the sum total of all that exists. But in proclaiming that something caused existence — created the universe — one is also admitting that the supposed entity must have existence as well, and would have had to create itself. But claiming that it somehow created existence from outside of existence is, by definition,

a contradiction in terms. Anything supposed to be outside of existence is non-existent. One is asking for a nothing to cause a something. That cannot be, not without denying and defying all reason and logic — even in the arcane world of quantum physics. The term supernatural, created to make sense of the senseless, reflects the contradiction. To be above the natural world is to be outside it, outside of existence. Always within the concept of a creator as the first cause lies the hidden assumption of existence, the ultimate sine qua non that even a creator is dependent upon. It is so obvious that we miss it, this state of being, even though it is the fundamental attribute of everything. Even supposed deities cannot avoid its necessity. There cannot be a plane or level of spirituality or anything else outside of existence. That is a logical and physical absurdity. Only a blind faith requiring no proof could believe a concept like that. The attributes posited about a supreme deity can just as easily be posited about existence — the eternal, the timeless, the unending — the necessity and font of all else. So why not just say that existence is axiomatic and thus its own cause, just as deities were once so taken by primitive humans, but without all the emotional baggage, and without the psychological crutch humanity has leaned on for thousands of years? This avoids the argument of whether a deity exists or not, but simply points out that a deity independent of an existence it created is a logical absurdity. As one modern cosmologist pointed out, “God is what you get when you don’t ask enough questions.” Further, to posit a divinity responsible for all is to say nothing is our fault but only its will. The concepts of determinism and predestination crash up against causality. But with the axiom of existence a supreme being becomes unnecessary, unrequired, a useless hypothesis — and the source of an endless, absurd regression of logic if you try to prove its existence, and the wellspring of unending debate over its purpose. Being simply is. Accept existence as the primary, the irreducible axiom, the concept without which there is nothing. We know that universe at the quantum level is random, ruled by statistics and probability, not deterministic the way Newton thought and Einstein hoped. In every quantum event, a deity — Einstein’s “Old One” — would have to play dice to make it work, with outcomes still uncertain, only probable. Which contradicts an omniscient, omnipotent divinity. Eliminate the proposition of a divine creator and one still has existence and a universe that works by natural rules and relationships we can know and discover and calculate.

Religion claims that the creator is beyond time and space. But that is the province — again by definition — of non-existence. One theory holds that the Big Bang is the first cause. But that just pushes back the issue, for one is forced to ask what caused the Big Bang. Theism doesn’t solve the problem of priority, but merely postpones it. But imagine a cyclical universe, one that goes from Big Bang to Big Crunch and then back again — and again and again and again… The universe, existence, the sum total of space-time and mass-energy, is all. There is not an instant when existence begins, because it never really ends. Time is part of existence, as are space and mass and energy. Time goes as the universe goes, uniquely so if it is viewed as cyclical or oscillatory, the Big Bounce as the theory is known. Time seems to end with each Big Crunch, and starts anew with each Big Bang as all that mass-energy explodes again, releasing another cycle of energy, mass, space and time. A cyclical universe is the ultimate in recycling, as required by the most fundamental principle of physics, the law of conservation of massenergy. As a cycle ends all mass, energy, space and time coalesce down to the quantum foam, then to a single, dimensionless point, reuniting under the rapidly increasing gravitational pull (which increases with the inverse square of the diminishing diameter of the universe) until there is only gravity and the primordial essence that were once mass-energy-time-space. At the point, at the instant, gravity too ceases, and all explodes outward in a new cycle with a very big bang. With only one assumption — sufficient mass-energy in the universe to cause gravitational collapse — the fundamental forces of nature all emerge again with each bang, and converge again under an overwhelming gravity down to the singularity with each crunch in a cycle that takes tens of billions of years. And in the instant that primordial singularity arises, it dissolves, because gravity dissolves, releasing everything in a new cycle. All from the previous cycle is recycled. This how one can have a dimensionless point containing all mass, space and energy (which actually disappear in the convergence of the last Big Crunch to re-emerge in the instance of the next Big Bang). As for that one assumption of sufficient mass-energy to cause collapse, in just my lifetime I have seen the discovery of the necessary amount go from 10% of what’s needed to 90% today. This has occurred in some 50 years. (Now we talk of dark matter and dark energy. But

these are merely modern guesses to explain existing fact.) But again, this is only a physical parameter. These is nothing mystical about it. Existence, given sufficient mass-energy, doesn’t end and begin again, but rather simply goes through phase changes. It requires nothing but enough of itself to run the process from Bang to Crunch to Bounce and Bang, and supply a physical basis for Causality. This, of course, is a theory, not proved fact. In fact, given the current theories of dark energy and an inflating universe, it is not a particularly popular theory. But it is consistent with what we know now. And what we need to know, to learn, is knowable and learnable, just enough stuff of whatever the universe is truly made of and how it works. If science has taught us anything, it is that there is still a great deal yet to be learned. But the one thing this theory does not require is an unprovable belief. Nor does it require a purpose. Existence exists. The rest follows. Where faith errs is in accepting paradox and contradiction rather than dismissing them. That we don’t have a conclusive answer to the nature of the universe and existence now does not mean we will never have one. I do not think there is “an enlightened call” to follow a middle path. That is an admission that faith has no questions that science cannot better answer. The crucial difference is that science first establishes that a question is valid before it attempts to answer it. Faith merely allows what reason prohibits. In the end, the words were said best by Pierre Simon Laplace, the great French mathematician and early cosmologist. When ask by Napoleon after he had read the mathematician’s great work on celestial mechanics, the emperor opined that he saw no reference in it to the creator. LaPlace replied simply: ‘Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis.’ Finally, I would agree with Ms. Armstrong in her assertion that “…like all religious fundamentalists, the new atheists believe they alone are in possession of the truth.” Without supplying verifiable answers to life’s great questions, I think their atheism is less rigid than it is envious. It is not enough to naysay. They must demonstrate viable alternatives. Tom Cammarata “Nature does not exist for us, had no idea we were coming, and doesn't give a damn about us.”

Stephen Jay Gould