Isaac's Meandering Musings

Part VIII: The Magic of Large Numbers I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the Heaven and say there is no God – Abraham Lincoln In recent decades, the book of arguments for the existence of God has had a couple of new chapters written. These two chapters deal with what is generally referred to as ‘fine-tuning’, a term used to describe just how unlikely the existence of life, and particularly intelligent life, is in the cosmos. Gone are the days when Carl Sagan could enthusiastically declare that the universe, even our own galaxy, must be teeming with intelligent life. There are two lines of argument against the view that the universe is simply the product of chance and necessity. 1.)     The argument from the fine tuning of the cosmological constants, in physics. 2.)     The argument from the extreme improbability of intelligent life in ...

Part VII: Darwin’s Unwitting Nemesis, or Paley Reborn William Paley died in 1805. He was one of the greatest intellects of his generation. Charles Darwin was born in 1809. He would become perhaps the most influential figure of the modern era. The two men never met, never talked, never wrote to each other. Paley had no idea that his Natural Theology would be used as a punching bag by atheists for the next two centuries, and more. Or, at least, he had no idea why that would be so. For that, he had Charles Darwin to thank. For Paley, unwittingly, was Darwin’s greatest nemesis; and Darwin, consciously, wrote his Origin of Species , at least in part, as a refutation of Paley’s work. What was Paley's argument, that it attracted so much attention? See below: In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone , and were asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer, that, for any thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever: nor would it ...

Part VI: Tolle, lege Finally, we come to the ‘argument from scripture’.   Here, Dawkins starts of by citing C.S. Lewis’ ‘Mad, Bad or God’ trilemma regarding Jesus’ alleged claim to be divine. Of course, this trilemma leaves out a possible (indeed, probable) alternative: legend. Perhaps Jesus never claimed to be the son of God, or perhaps, if he did, his claim to be the son of God was not intended as a claim to actual divinity. He might, instead, have been referring to a general sense in which humans could be said to be children of God. So, we are left with four possible options: Lord, Liar, Lunatic or Legend. Dawkins’ ‘honest mistake’ alternative is actually the very option that Lewis was arguing against. Lewis’ point was that a man who claimed to be God , couldn’t just be honestly mistaken. Such a delusion (if it were a delusion) would be far greater than just a belief in God or miracles – which Dawkins himself believes is certifiable. A person might be honestly mistaken about...