Is Christianity Rational? - Part 1

Is Christianity Rational?- Part 1 Dr Frank Stootman f.stootman@uws.edu.au

Atheism- An increasing intellectual influence …

Common arguments presented … • Technical arguments • Naturalism is both necessary and sufficient • Quantum gravity and inflationary universe • The self organising universe • The completeness of Evolutionary explanation • Time + chance + natural selection • The poor quality of evolutionary results are consistent with random mechanism • The weak anthropic principle and the multiverse • Religion is a psychological projection • An emergent evolutionary property from the size and complexity of our brain • We need to recognise that our ability to want to explain things in terms of design is a by-product of the evolution of our brains • We need to stop hiding behind God and take on our own challenges as humankind

Common arguments presented … • Morality does not require God – it is inbuilt • You can be good without being a Christian • History shows that religious ideology lies behind, and, has caused many wars • Faith in God is not rational • God is only good when good things happen • Faith is the enemy of reason • God is an absentee landlord • The problem of pain and suffering • The pitiless indifference of the world • The apparent hiddenness of God in day to day life • Unanswered prayers

The Neo-Enlightenment • The Neo-Enlightenment society is … • undergirded by scientific truth • The voice of reason and education • Free from the drawbacks of religion • In the West freedom from Christianity • A society in which we determine our own standards of moral agency • A society in which we control our own ultimate destiny • Christianity is seen as the party of faith; atheism is the voice of reason • Christianity is an unnecessary value-add on • Christianity is simply a belief system based on improbable mythology

A shift to moral argument … • Richard Dawkins is aggressively atheist • “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, blood thirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynist, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, etc. ... and malevolent bully” (p31) • Christianity is therefore fundamentally : • Bad for moral development of children because it is based on irrational nonsense • Indoctrination and propaganda • If children are given all the (scientific) facts over time and not indoctrinated (by teachers, clergy, parents) then (his hope is that) atheism is the obvious intelligent choice • Many websites are listed to help you escape from this childhood indoctrination

Practical Atheism • Whilst the aggressive atheist arguments are not widely adopted, Western society now operates as if God is irrelevant • Political institutions • No more a sense of accountability to a higher power • Virtue in office is increasingly irrelevant • Democracy is used to force through political & social agendas • Scientific institutions • Philosophic Naturalism prevails - God is not necessary • Atheism is fostered and favoured by many scientists • Financial institutions • Only consideration is the economic growth of economies, companies, stock and shares • Social responsibility is secondary to personal wealth

Practical Atheism • Ethical considerations • Ethics is now interpreting legislation, rather than debating our moral agency and sources of ethics • Counseling • Counseling is now provision of psychological consolation from within (therapy) rather than from a larger external story • Educational institutions • University education means God & Christianity are passé in philosophy, philosophy of science, humanities & Sciences • Personal choices • For many, marked by apathy and personal peace • The most important people are “I, me and myself” • Glamour, beauty, self indulgence, celebrity • Sentimentality - self referential love • Is Christianity therefore irrelevant?

Pathway to Disillusionment … • Common to many people is: • Started life believing in God as a child • No-one starts as an atheist! • The form of the universe can be attributed a maker like everything else we see • Grew out of it as time progressed • Biblical revelation became less credible • The miracles of Jesus, parting of red sea, the signs and wonders to Egypt, standing still of the Sun, inaccuracy of Genesis • God is not obvious, life is a struggle • Logical flaws in belief system and in the followers • Agnosticism • Disillusionment, apathy, it’s all too hard • Atheism • Disillusionment masquerading as the triumph of truth and liberation

A Modern View … • A welcoming voice for the current age … • “It is high time we took charge of, and responsibility for, our own destinies without God, or God’s priestly interpreters, coming between us and our decision making. The voices assembled in this volume have a great deal to offer regarding these questions” • (50 Voices of Disbelief: Why we are Atheists, R. Blackford & U. Schüklend, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, p3)

Consequences • Man is a complex machine with no cosmic meaning, significance or purpose • Degeneration to the brute and animal in us • Sensual gratification of base desires • Boundaries are taboo, because gratification creates pleasure • Sexualisation of culture • Voyeurism – desire to experience in the inner experiences of others to cross check the validity of one’s own desires • Food – gastronomic delights • Endless cooking shows and celebrates • Body – eye pleasing and flawlessly air-brushed

Consequences • No grounding for our transcendent identity • The Copernican Principle maintains • humankind is nothing special • Just a complex animal only different by degree • Living on a planet around an ordinary star • The problem is that for the modern, human identity (=sameness) is at stake • Where do we place great music, literature and art? • Where do we place engineering, architecture and science? • We imagine ourselves more than animals • We can time travel in our heads • We can be both subject and object • What is it to be human?

Consequences • Character and virtue are no longer dealt with • Character and virtue are private • No criticism is allowed of personal choices or lifestyle • The legitimacy of personal autonomy • We control human interaction from the outside, the inside is private • Security cameras and security industry • Endless legislation for acceptable ethical interaction • There is no trust • We drown in modern paperwork

Consequences- vulnerable autobiography • ‘My Bed’ • Tracey Emin - Winner 1999 Turner Prize • £150,000 (2006) Saachi Galeries • Reality is my own story • Tracy Emin (artist) is about self expression • It is honest to me • It is all I know • 'I really know what I'm talking about. I'm a brilliant f***ing artist' 1/7/2008 The Scotman

Consequences- Innocence to darkness

Consequences- Utopian to Dystopian • A typical dystopian film paints a vision of the future end times which is laced with tragedy

An Unintentional Sober View … • The heroism and optimism of modern atheism is actually a historical failure, but forgotten … • In his essay ‘A Free Man's Worship’, Bertrand Russell, an atheist, writes in almost despair about all heroism … • “That Man is the product of causes which had not prevision of the end they were achieving; are but the outcome of accidental collocation of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the age, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins -- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.” Mysticism and Logic (London, 1918) • Though directed at Christianity, it also undermines his own position!

Reprise … • The consequences of dispensing with God ought to make us take stock • Perhaps we are making a mistake? • Perhaps our conclusions about God are wrong? • Perhaps we have created a caricature of God which is not Biblical? • Perhaps we have not understood the story of Scripture properly? • Perhaps we are thinking incorrectly? • Perhaps we want autonomy and it is a question of human freedom? • Perhaps having hit a ‘brick wall’ we should review our assumptions?

Reprise … • Aldous Huxley (author ‘Brave new World’) admission: • ‘I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. … For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.’(A. Huxley, ‘Ends and means’, 1937, p270)

Starting Again • Our culture has lost a sense of a grand narrative in which we all live • Our own story as part of it • Fragmentation is the mark of the modern West • We need to start again and re-interpret the data • From the physical world • From the metaphysical world • From our own identity as human beings • From the perspective of God • We need to think differently • “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2) • ‘As a man thinks in his heart, so he is’ (loosely drawn from Prov23:7)

There is More to the Universe … • “For the scientific message can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other … knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.” ( Albert Einstein, “Out of My Later Years”, p22) • “But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion… I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind” (ibid., p26)

There is More to the Universe … • The universe we live in requires an explanation for: • The material form: laws, principles, mathematical logic … • AND • Its non-material form: the ‘why’, the information, the meaning, the purpose, the function

The Clock Analogy … • A mechanical clock is made of many parts for it to function as a clock • This is the material layer • This is necessary but not sufficient • The relationship of the parts are necessary for it to function as a clock. The parts are: • Engineered • Designed • This is the non-material layer • This is necessary but not sufficient • Together they are necessary and sufficient to explain the clock

The Goldilocks Enigma • “On the face of it, the universe does look like it is has been designed by an intelligent creator expressly for the purpose of spawning intelligent beings. Like the porridge in the tale of Goldilocks and the three bears, the universe seems to be ‘just right’ for life, in many intriguing ways. No scientific explanation for the universe can be deemed complete unless it accounts for this appearance of judicious design” (p3)

Too Good to be True • The standard cosmological model of the universe is severely dependent on relatively narrow windows of a number of key constants ( about 20) • The gravitational constant G – rate of gravitational collapse • The nuclear strong force - nuclear binding • The weak nuclear force - radioactive decay - particularly neutron decay • Electromagnetic forces - forces between charges • Small variations of these constants impact on … • The age of the universe • The production of the elements via nuclear synthesis • The stability of the universe • Possibility of life on planets orbiting stars

Cosmic Microwave Background • The universe appears bathed in a uniform radiation called the Microwave background - discovered accidentally in 1965 • This is thought to be the remnant radiation after the universe inflated from the size of a proton to a grapefruit in <<1 s measured at ~400,000 years when H formed and radiation was ‘free’ • WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) 30/06/2001 was launched to study the uniformity of the radiation • The max variation is <0.0002 K over a large angular distribution

Too Good to be True • The spectrum is a perfect black body at 2.725 K • The anisotropy Q is ~1:100000 at arcmin angles • If Q> galaxies would be denser with lots of stellar disruption for planets • If Q< the formation of galaxies would be disrupted

Dark Energy • Vacuum is not empty made up of ephemeral virtual particles • This is a prediction from QM • This constitutes an enormous pressure on expansion outwards - it should accelerate massively • This is called dark energy • But this is not measured - a very small outward acceleration only has been measured • Somehow the dark energy is almost balanced • The predicted dark energy is 120 orders of magnitude bigger than the measured • Theoretical calculations show that the 120 can’t be 119 or 121 otherwise the universe we know would not exist! • Why the fine balance - like living on a knife edge!

Too Good to be True • Leonard Susskind, “String Theory and the Illusion of Design” remarking on this writes: • “Are the laws of Physics balanced on an incredibly sharp knife-edge, and if so, why?” • Davies: • “… the collection of felicitous ‘co-incidences’ in physics and cosmology implies that the Great Designer had better set the knobs carefully, or the universe might be a very inhospitable place” (p166) • Many knobs cannot be varied by <<1%

Too Good to be True • In the early universe there were mainly protons(p), neutrons (n) and electrons • Hydrogen (H) forms readily in the early universe: H = 1p + 1e • Stars form via the ‘gravitational force’ • Too weak and no stars and galaxies form • To strong and stars would burn to quickly for life to evolve • If gravity constant increased by 2 then Sun’s lifetime would reduce from 1010 to108 years - too short for evolution • Helium (He) is created by fusion in stars He= H + H. This is rate limited inside a star by the formation of sufficient neutrons via • This is controlled via the ‘weak force’ and controls the rate of burning stars • Too weak and stars burn too quickly - Stars have to live long enough to allow life to evolve • Too strong and stars would not be able to shed chemicals into space created in the nucleosynthesis via supernovae explosions

Too Good to be True • Carbon is central to life • The creation of carbon through nuclear synthesis is an extremely finely balanced process discovered by Fred Hoyle. • Carbon is created by further fusion and is essentially C= He+He+He • This reaction only works because C has an energy state called a resonance which allows He atoms to combine more readily - this is very delicately controlled by the ‘strong force’ less than 1% variation in the strength of the strong force and C would not exist! • Fred Hoyle: • “a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology” • Davies: • “The fact that the nuclear strong force is just right for life cries out for explanation”

Unanswered Questions … • Science does not explain … • Why the universe has the particular form that it does – we discover these and do not create them • The laws, principles, mathematical logic • Gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear forces, atoms • Conservation of Energy • The information • The DNA triplet code • The first cells? • Function • Protein machinery • The complex cell machinery • The apparent bio-friendliness so life can emerge • ‘It’s too good to be true’ Sir Fred Hoyle – Astronomer • The existence of self conscious life

Simple Rational Answer - there is a God … • The existence of God answers both the material and non-material aspects of the physical universe • The engineering, design, complexity, bio-friendliness, the information, the existence of self-conscious life. • “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth …” (Gen 1:1)

Modern Views on Humanity • The Copernican principle • The principle of mediocrity • We are nothing special – we stand in the long line of evolutionary development – early elements of our anatomy, behaviour, language are found elsewhere in the animal kingdom • We live on a rocky planet • Around a G-Type star (5800K) • In a typical bar-like galaxy • Many organic precursor molecules are found in space • Life may indeed exist elsewhere in the universe • Hence SETI, Mars explorers, and Kepler Telescope

The Anthropic Principle - used in modern cosmology • In some ways an antidote to the excesses of the Copernican Principle • Enunciated by Brandon Carter ~1970 • Cosmological theories of the universe are constrained so that at least intelligent life – like us – can evolve and exist • Two forms • Weak – it’s an accident and we got lucky • Strong – it’s a guided accident – the dice were loaded • Bio-friendliness provides a telos

Being Human in perspective … Music Composition Performance

Being Human in perspective … Art

Being Human in perspective … Architecture Design Building

Being Human in perspective … Science Technology

Being Human in perspective … Justice Moral agency

Being Human in perspective … Human Dignity

Being Human in perspective … Search for external meaning

Being Human in perspective … We want a place We want significance

Understanding Human identity • There are essentially only two choices • Being human with mind and spirit is an emergent property from the parts that make us up • A reductionist view • The emphasis is on the nuts & bolts • Mind and spirit are properties which have legitimate data status and need to be explained holistically • The universe has both physics and metaphysics • Material and non-material properties which are data • The emphasis is on nuts & bolts + engineering, function and purpose

Approach 1 • Being human is an emergent property. Reality is found in the mechanics of the brain • The emergent mind cannot be trusted and is an illusion • ‘The Grand delusion’ • “This might come as a shock, but everything you think is wrong. Much of what you take for granted about day-to-day existence is largely a figment of your imagination. From senses to memory, your opinions and beliefs, how you see yourself and others and even your sense of free will, things are not as they seem. The power these delusions hold over you is staggering … yet … they are vital to help you function in the world” (Graham Lawton, New Scientist, 14 May, 2011, p35) • ‘Freewill the illusion we can’t live without’ • “Why do we cling so tenaciously to the belief that we control our own destiny?” (Dan Jones, New Scientist, 16 April, 2011, p32) • We ultimately refuse to accept who we really are!

Approach 1 • Human dignity too is an illusion • Two questions to consider … • Can we really live – given our capacity for reason and truth - as if we are finally deluded? • The scientists who make these conclusions do not do so in their daily life. Is that relevant? • Why are the conclusions of delusion not applicable to the scientists own work? • If experimental care is their answer, then all their work demonstrates is that we need to build our beliefs carefully • Socrates said “An unexamined life is not worth living” • Proverbs suggests “As a man thinks so he is”

Approach 2 • Being human and transcendent is real data to be explained • Art, engineering, drama, love, music, justice, good and evil, meaning, significance and desire for eternity, human dignity • all are non-material but have data status in their own right and are to be added to any comprehensive explanation • Any worldview which dismisses this as data is destructive to humanity • If you allow the universe to have both material (physics) and non-material (metaphysics) properties, then real significance can be attached to human transcendence • The mind found in the organisation of the material – the brain • Its organisational structure and capacity reflects the image of God • Its structure is able to be modified – within boundaries - like any other organ in our body - You can learn to think differently!!

Is Christianity Rational? - Part 1