In Response to Rob: Part 1 – Thomas Paine.

Someone going by the name Rob recently left a series of comments to my post about the California judge who ruled that Universities can deny science credit to schools teaching “Christian Science”. There was a whole series of quotes from various sources, followed by a single line asking if I had the courage to challenge my beliefs. Since rhe responses are likely to be lengthy and the discussion might be of general interest, I thought I would respond to them in a series of posts rather than in the comment section to the original post.

It began with a quote from Thomas Paine, from “The Existence of God (1810)” [1]:

It has been the error of the schools to teach astronomy, and all the other sciences, and subjects of natural philosophy, as accomplishments only; whereas they should be taught theologically, or with reference to the Being who is the author of them: for all the principles of science are of divine origin. Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles: he can only discover them; and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.

The evil that has resulted from the error of the schools, in teaching natural philosophy as an accomplishment only, has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism. Instead of looking through the works of creation to the Creator himself, they stop short, and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of his existence. They labour with studied ingenuity to ascribe every thing they behold to innate properties of matter, and jump over all the rest by saying, that matter is eternal.

Paine’s words essentially boil down to an assertion that schools should not only teach the natural laws as we understand them but also cite their source. It is a classical theist argument – there are natural laws in this world so clearly someone must have acted as a law giver. And that someone is God. There are two main objections I would raise to this assertion. The first is the most obvious; if I grant, for the sake of argument, that the existence of natural laws necessitates a law giver then how do I determine which version of God is the responsible party? I literally have an unlimited number of alternatives from which to choose.

One could temporarily dodge this question by saying that at this point we are not out to select a particular God, but rather we are starting simple and only trying to argue for the existence of a god. After all, inquiry starts with the big details and works to the finer points as our understanding is improved. But this brings me to the second objection, which is by far more fundamental; Paine makes the implicit assumption that the source of the natural laws was a someone.

If you are interested in discovering the truth about the origins of the world you should start with asking questions that don’t immediately narrow your scope of inquiry. In stead of asking “who is the source of the universe’s natural law”, you should be asking “what was the source of the universe’s natural laws?” This leaves open the possibility that the source was a who but doesn’t immediately preclude the possibility that it wasn’t cause by any intelligent agent.

It’s not hard to see why thinkers are prone to making this error. Humans are, by nature, pattern seeking individuals and there is ample scientific evidence indicating that humans tend to see intelligent causal agents in their surroundings. If our ancestors sense a rustle in the bushes due to the movement of a predator then it is in their benefit to flee. By assuming an agency to movements precious seconds can be gained even in the event of a false positive. It’s better to run from a wind moving the bushes than to say for a clumsy lion stalking through the bushes.

Science is not closed minded to the existence of God, despite theist claims to the contrary. If evidence were presented for the existence of an intelligently created cause for the universe then it would be explored. However, to this day, no one has produced any reliable evidence pointing to anything beyond the current natural explanations. If Thomas Paine want’s me to teach that the natural laws have come from some intelligent agent, then he first must demonstrate that such an agent exists. Until that time, I will continue to work with what I have evidence for.

For anyone interested, the original post and comments are here.

[1] I am not familiar with the original quote and I have not looked it up to confirm it due to lack of time. If the quote is inaccurate then I am sorry.

Some Questions for Creationists

Here is a good video that appeared on youTube today, by the user DonExodus2. It poses a number of interesting questions to creationists regarding their objections to the theory of Evolution.

I would love to hear some comments from the creationists.