A Friendly Reply to David G. Meyers: Part Three

[This is the third in a series of blogs in which I respond to a recently published book by acclaimed psychology professor, author, and columnist David G. Meyers. The book is called “A Friendly Letter to Skeptics and Atheists”; I recommend the book to anyone interested in religion and the “New Atheism”. It is available for purchase at amazon.com.]

In the first part of this reply, I argued that the distinction between healthy and unhealthy forms of religion does not hold, on the grounds that all religion is unhealthy insofar as it is false. In the second part, I argued that atheists and skeptics do indeed recognize the diversity within and between particular religions, and that this diversity discredits the claims of each religion and of religion in general.

Throughout the first two replies, I stressed the importance of a respect for evidence as to the truth of religion’s claims, especially those regarding the existence of a deity.

Because you did not write your letter “as a sophisticated defense of theism”, it is not surprising that you offer very little in the way of evidence or argumentation supporting the theistic thesis that God exists.

However, in the chapter of your book entitled “The Benevolent, Fine-Tuned Universe”, you did submit some considerations, borrowed from fields of science, which you take to support the idea that God exists.

You write of nature’s “glimpses of transcendent genius” and of “the universe’s staggering biofriendliness, its miraculous-seeming congeniality to intelligent life.”

You refer to a famous book by a famous astronomer, who

described six physical numbers that, if changed ever so slightly, would produce a universe inhospitable to life. If nature had provided a universe with the speed of light a teensy bit faster or slower, or had the carbon proton weighed infinitesimally more or less, you wouldn’t be reading these words (which wouldn’t exist to be read).

Finally, you challenge the reader:

So what shall we make of this? Were we just extraordinarily, incomprehensibly lucky? The utter improbability of our biofriendly universe makes that an unsatisfying answer.

In this blog, I want to explain to you why these considerations, as engaging and even awe-inspiring as they certainly are, do not tilt the balance even slightly in favor of theism.

First, the reasoning implicit in your argument is fallacious. You cannot reason from the conjunction of the occurrence of a phenomenon and the improbability of the same phenomenon, to a conclusion that the phenomenon occurred at the intentional instigation of an intelligent agent.

If such reasoning is allowed, then we must admit that every windfall won at the lottery office and every score on a bet against the odds was consciously designed to happen. Indeed, we must concede, in this case, that every phenomenon the probability of whose occurrence is less than .5 is a direct result of intentional manipulation. Let’s face it: things happen that we would judge unlikely.

Second, you make a pretty big deal out of how narrowly the context of life is defined: if the carbon atom or the speed of light was altered just a smidgen, we wouldn’t have a universe!

If such figures were evidence of a designed universe, they would also be evidence of a universe designed to be extremely fragile. If this universe was designed and created by a benevolent God, why would that God poise it as perilously close to annihilation as you claim it to be? Why would he not have secured it within a broader, less precarious context?

To illustrate what I mean, consider Jesus’s own parable of the wise man who built his house upon the rock and the foolish man who built his house upon the sand. When you Christians tell us how very small an adjustment to our world would result in its complete destruction, you inadvertently depict your God as having foolishly built a house upon the sand.

I’m sure you’ll understand if we don’t fall to our knees.

Third, your argument fails because it leaves out relevant considerations. Your reasoning proceeds from an effect to its cause. However, we cannot be allowed to exclude any aspect of the effect in reasoning from it to its cause. So, as much as the world may contain “improbable” elements, which you claim argue for a “creative benevolent power”, it much more obviously and certainly contains elements of cruelty, suffering, waste, and senselessness that argue against such a power.

Fourth and finally, I would like to remark how peculiar your appeal to scientific fact appears, in light of your approving quotation, earlier in the letter, of C.S. Lewis as saying “impossibility of proof is a spiritual necessity.”

This is an example of the sort of duplicity that frustrates us atheists and skeptics. As long as science supports religion, you’ll cite its conclusions until you’re blue in the face. But as soon as it fails to support, or even discredits, religion, then all of a sudden you “know by faith”. Which is it? Do you know by faith, or do you know by science? If the answer is some combination of the two, then how do you arbitrate the matters on which they contradict one another?

This disgusting two-facedness is written all over Christianity, both now and in the past. As long as government wants to support your religion, then the first amendment can be relaxed. But as soon as the government refuses to fight on behalf of your religion, then you couldn’t hold the First Amendment more closely.

Similarly (as I mentioned in Part Two of this reply), as long as the Old Testament supports your current understanding of God, it’s a holy book. But as soon as it depicts a God contrary to the one you profess to worship, then it has been superseded by a “new covenant”.

Not only is this self-contradiction, but it is also rank opportunism and base hypocrisy. Perhaps you believers would do better to make up your own minds before trying to make up anyone else’s.

To Be Continued