When searching for truth, we often find that smart people are divided on the answers to any particular question. Truth, it turns out, is not always obvious, and finding it requires careful consideration of all reasonable possibilities. That’s why I’ve decided to start writing discussions about the best arguments against my points of view. We will start today with the existence of God.
I’ve written before about God the fictional archetype and God the principle of existence. The God I don’t believe in is God the real person, so that is what we will be talking about today.
There are many arguments in favor of God’s existence, some ancient, some modern. Very few, however, are persuasive to anyone who does not already believe God exists, and they are almost no one’s personal reason for their belief; rather, they are almost always used as rationalizations under the guise of “apologetics.” You can read some of them here if you would like.
Before we get to the argument I find most persuasive, let’s look at one often pointed to by other atheists, the argument from apparent design, also known as the Teleological Argument. I do not find it persuasive at all, and I will explain why. The best version of it goes like this:
A. Within the laws of physics, there are a number of parameters that sit on a razor’s edge. Just a small nudge upward or downward, and life could not exist.
Note: There are probably many configurations that would allow life of some kind, but they are vastly outnumbered by those that would not.
B. The probability that these parameters randomly landed on values that permit life is so low as to be nonexistent. It couldn’t have been coincidence.
C. Therefore, our universe was intentionally designed for life to exist.
The premises A and B are true. The universe is finely tuned for life to exist, and it couldn’t have been coincidence. But the conclusion that God made the universe does not follow from the premises. Just because it is a possible explanation doesn’t mean it is the true explanation. We also have to consider other possible explanations, and the more we find, the less likely God is to be the answer.
First, the laws of physics and the shape of our universe as we currently understand them suggest that there are at least four possible types of multiverses, each of which might have variations in the physical parameters. Perhaps even five or six, depending on how quantum gravity behaves in black holes and in higher dimensions. If even a single one of these exists, we have another possible explanation. If the chances of life existing in a given universe are 10 to the power of a big number, but the number of universes that exist are 10 to the power of a much bigger number, then there is no surprise that we exist. So if we allow the four most plausible types of multiverses as possible answers, then what the Teleological Argument really says is that there is a 1/5 chance of the universe being intentionally designed.
I want to pause for a moment and deconstruct a myth often heard from religious apologists: “Scientists posit multiverses as an excuse not to believe in God.” This is baseless slander. Multiverses are predicted results of physics theories—some of them quite well-established—or philosophical deliberations that are not related to the question of God. Physicists who want there to be only one universe have to add extra fluff to the theories in order to force the multiverses to go away; a practice that is scientifically sketchy. Furthermore, there are many scientists and other people who believe in the existence of both God and a multiverse.
Back to the argument, Multverses are not the only possible answers. If we’re going to consider intentional design as a possibility, we have to consider other supernatural explanations as well. For instance, the universe might have been unconsciously created by a sleeping God. Or, it might be impossible for conscious observers not to exist, so the universe was required by necessity to have parameters such that conscious observers would come to exist.
These possibilities mean that the real results of the Teleological Argument at best give intentional design a 1/7 chance of being the answer. That’s less than 15%. And it doesn’t factor in all of the billions of different kinds of gods and supernatural creatures which could have intentionally created the universe. It also runs into the problem of deduction: even if we could definitively rule out all of the possibilities we have thought of except for God, we could never rule out the possibility that there are more we have not thought of yet. This is why I do not find the Teleological Argument the least bit persuasive.
If the argument most people point to as the most persuasive is not persuasive at all, then what is? Well, there is one thing that keeps me questioning every once in a while. It is the same reason most believers really believe: a feeling that God is talking to me. Sometimes, I have intuitions that I should or should not do something. I don’t know why, I just know it is true. When I ignore it, I suffer. When I listen to it, things go well. These intuitions have a natural explanation: our senses take in much more information than we can consciously process, so our unconscious takes over and feeds our conscious minds its results in the form of feelings. There is also no reason to believe they are from any particular god over any other. Yet the feeling, when trained upon itself, feels like it is the voice of God. Others may not find this convincing, and it may not be rational, but to me, this is the most compelling argument for the existence of God.
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