Grumpy Old Atheists

There's nothing in the world quite like a grumpy old atheist. I deal with them every day in various forums, and I can tell you now they're getting grumpier than they were a few years ago. From what I can see, it's fuelled by the gnawing realisation that things are not going their way. A couple of incidents in the past few weeks provide a good example.

There's a man named "Jim" who calls me up on Radio Pacific talkback most weeks, usually to attack my views on this, that or the other. Nothing wrong with that - it's what makes for challenging debate and interesting radio. But Jim is getting rattled, and the other day he lost it.

Earlier that week, the Herald had published a couple of articles on the co-discovers of DNA, Watson & Crick, being largely motivated in their work by atheism and a desire to prove God didn't exist. The irony being, of course, that fifty years after their discovery science now realises just how complex DNA is, and many scientists are suggesting DNA is proof of the existence of God. This news isn't going down well with Crick and Watson, and to dig himself out of his theological hole Crick now makes a living by trying to convince people that aliens created humans. Anything to avoid using that "G" word.

The Herald articles came hard on the heels of a recent Listener magazine profile of yours truly, and this magazine's decision to publish the rapidly accumulating evidence behind Intelligent Design - the scientific theory of origin that is likely to replace Darwin's obsolete Theory of Evolution within only a few years.

All of this was too much for my talkback caller Jim. He'd never discussed religion before, but this time he did his nut. "Did you read those articles on Watson and Crick?" he queried before continuing sarcastically: "Isn't it wonderful that you are so much more intelligent than they are, because you know God? Isn't it wonderful that you know more than the mighty Professor Richard Dawkins [a passionately atheist zoologist] who put electrodes on his head to feel the kind of religious experience that you claimed to have - only he didn't have them? - isn't it wonderful that you are so much smarter than all of those great men put together?"

Before I could rustle up the Bible passage about the fate of those who proclaim themselves wise among men and ignore God, or quote Jesus when he said "And how do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul in the process?" [Matt16:26], Jim's tortured soul had clearly got the better of him. All radio listeners could hear was mad, maniacal laughter, of the kind we used to see in Sunday night Hammer Horror movies starring Vincent Price.

I was reminded of this anguished atheist when I saw a couple of letters to the editor in the Herald a day or two later, criticising Christians for daring to point out that scientists are starting to take God seriously. "The root of the problem," opined crusty old atheist number one, George Pirie of the Rationalist movement, "is that the subject begs the question of what (or who) made the gods, of whom the biblical God is but one of thousands invented by man." Lionel Aspden, the other atheist, struck a similar pose in his letter: "[Your correspondent] David Balchin proposes that science explains how things work and God explains why things are. If he is correct, can he please explain, scientifically, how God works? For example, how did God come to exist?"

It is a hoary old question. "Who made God?" Atheists trumpet the question with a flourish thinking, perhaps like Jim, that they've been very, very clever.

Allow me, if you will, to burst the bubble. Both questioners labour under a misunderstanding of theology, when they ask "Who created God?" It is an invalid question, in the same way as "who made that square circle?" The ancient Greeks, fond as they were of philosophy and chewing over the big issues of life, naturally turned their attention to the existence of the world around them. It became obvious, from looking around, that everything that came into existence had a cause. From that point it was only a matter of logic to deduce that the entire world, because it was "something" and not "nothing", must in turn have been created by "something" else.

It has taken several millennia to scientifically confirm what the Greeks suspected and what the Bible had taught hundreds of years before the Greeks were a glimmer in anyone's eye, but NASA research has recently confirmed our universe is a finite, "created" space-time continuum that began in a "Big Bang" whereupon an infinite universe so small you could hold billions in your hand, exploded out within milliseconds to become the void we now know as Space. NASA has also confirmed, for the first time, that contrary to some of Stephen Hawking's theories, we do not live in a rebounding universe. According to satellite imagery of the edges of the universe just released, this is the only universe that has ever or will ever exist as far as its inhabitants are concerned, and it won't bounce back and forth - it will die. It had a created beginning. It will have an end.

The Big Bang theory has been a knife in the back for atheists. After a century of so-called scientific "Enlightenment" where new discoveries were meant to disprove the existence of God, the more scientists dig the more God they find. And finding out that the universe was "created" has been a terrible blow. Now to have NASA confirm that the universe will only exist once has rubbed salt into the wound, relegating atheists to relics of history where, ironically, they will share the stage with some religious nutters who still have meetings of the Flat Earth Society.

But I digress. One of the key points missed by the letter writers is that when the universe was created by God, so were certain natural laws that humans and all matter and energy are bound by. This much has been confirmed by the best scientific brains on the planet - you wouldn't be reading this unless the laws of physics and chemistry existed, making possible the machinery that this magazine depends on. But interestingly, Stephen Hawking and other scientists are also certain that the laws of Time were created when the universe began as well.

In other words, linear time with a beginning and an end didn't and doesn't exist outside of the physical universe we're all trapped within. Outside the boundaries of the universe, it's a different ballgame. It is only Time, which lays out events in sequence, that requires causation. The concept of "what came first?" is explicitly timebound. Everything within our universe requires causation in a sequence of events over a time period.

But why would God, existing in a dimension where Time is meaningless, need to be caused? He was, and is, and ever shall be. No wonder he referred to himself in the Bible simply as "I AM".

When we make up a cardboard box and, for argument's sake, put a mouse inside it, that mouse is bound by whatever terms and conditions we build into the box. The mouse is restricted in what it can do. We, the boxmakers, on the other hand, can come and go from the box at will. We can reach into it and interact directly with the mouse, even though the mouse can't return the favour of its own initiative, or we can go away and talk on the phone, have dinner, do a million things while the mouse remains unaware of our existence or activity. It knows it is confined to a box, but that's about all.

Now substitute Universe for Box, Humanity for Mouse, and God for Boxmaker. Get the picture? The laws that apply inside our box bind us, they don't bind God. And because science knows that all the laws of science only exist within our universe, there is no scientific reason to assume that a God who exists external to the universe is in any way subservient to the laws of nature like we are.

Perhaps that's why creating the universe with a snap of the fingers, breathing life into Adam and Eve, a virgin birth and raising people from the dead are child's play. For God, it's no more than giving toys to the mouse in the box and mixing things around a little. The agnostic Christian-hating philosopher Bertrand Russell gets most of the credit for coining the "Who made God" question. But like all atheists who cling to their outdated beliefs through sheer bloodymindedness, he refused to hear the rational answers.

Messrs Aspden and Pirie may not like it, but scientists are increasingly realising that not only does God exist but - as Harvard University's Patrick Glynn says - "ironically the picture of the Universe bequeathed to us by the most advanced twentieth century science is closer in spirit to the vision presented in the Book of Genesis than anything offered by science since Copernicus."

It's OK to be a grumpy old atheist if that's what you want. Just don't rely on science to back up your position anymore. The Flat Earth Society is looking for new blood anyway.

Comments

[Neil]

Me, grumpy, how can you say that, we have never met. And what about Arthur Miller, John Malkovich, Kramer, Woody Allen, Richard Bransen, Angelina Jolie, Griff Rhys-Jones, Bill Gates, Katharine Hepburn, Barry Manilow, Sir Ian McKellen, and Jack Nicholson – just to name a few famous atheists. Hardly grumpy folk these. Rather, let me give you an alternative example of grumpy – fundamentalist christians and their obsession with other people’s sex lives. Hey, a lot of us are having fun! Forget about us – live a little; love a little; lick a little; ingest a little, drink a little! Enjoy with us – you only get one life!

Atheists, some of us love laughing. We used to love laughing at the absurdity of young earth creationists, until the more astute of their lot spoiled our fun and repackaged it as intelligent design. Call it what you may, at the end of the day you still have to try and explain – with a straight face –the garden of Eden, Noah’s menagerie and the rest. Which reminds me – Ian you are an enigma! As an investigative journalist you apply reasoned, objective discipline into most things bar the supernatural realm of your christian faith. You denounce the conviction of Scott Watson, yet you fail to apply the same rigorous objective review to the bible’s account of the history of the world (all 6,000 years of it!). If the evidence against Scott Watson is thin, then, hey, surely it screams out against the biblical account of the young earth creationists!

[Ian Wishart]

Ah Neil, what makes you think I don't have a sense of humour...I reckon this could be fun!

Perhaps you can show me where in the Bible it claims the Earth is only 6,000 years old... :)

Ian

[Neil]

I can’t show you where the Bible claims the Earth is only 6,000 years old. I haven’t personally done the sums. Rather, I have relied on Creationist claims that the earth’s maximum age of 6,000 to 10,000 years “is a consequence of accepting the authority of the Word of God as an infallible revelation from our omniscient Creator.” This quote is from ‘answersingenesis.org’ which I linked to directly from this site (so I have assumed that they must have some credibility in the Christian world). Elsewhere in the discussion forum you claim the universe is 13 billion years old. I am confused?

On another note, I noticed that you haven't included any links to web sites which refute intelligent design, so though I should balance the scorecard and offer at least a couple: ‘http://www.ncseweb.org/icons’ and ‘http://talkdesign.org’. Happy surfing.

[Ian Wishart]

You can't show me because nowhere in the Bible is the claim made, and I have done the research. With respect to AIG, there are gaps in the recorded genealogy of the patriarchs, and therefore anyone who claims they can put an age on the Earth is, strictly speaking, stepping outside of Scripture.

However, you'd also be aware that the NT records that a day to the Lord is as a thousand years, ergo that could be 365,000 earth years to one God "year", 365 million earth years per 1000 years, and nigh on 4 billion years over 10,000.

I have no problem at all with the age of the universe being 13 billion years as measured by NASA, but I'm also aware that we have no real way of accurately calculating these things, and in fact various dating methods all have their flaws.

Nor is it outside the realm of possibility that God did indeed create the Earth 10,000 years ago, but that to achieve the conditions required to immediately sustain life the universe had to contain built-in obsolescence - ie, for us to exist certain elements had to be semi decayed etc, so that what we have is a young universe that merely appears old.

None of this conflicts with scientific principles, all of it is possible, but we just don't know at the end of the day. We certainly have no proof that the Bible is wrong.

[Ian Wishart]

You state: "Ian you are an enigma! As an investigative journalist you apply reasoned, objective discipline into most things bar the supernatural realm of your christian faith."

Let me tell you a little story. I didn't begin my journey as a fundamentalist, I began as an atheist and a skeptic. What ultmately got me was continuing to investigate Christianity from a journalistic perspective instead of merely taking the opinions of others at face value.

The deeper I dug, the more truth and coherence I found. I'd been well and truly turned off fundamentalists in the early 1980s - imagine my surprise to find I am one!

But here's the rub: Christianity is far more intellectually stimulating and fulfilling than I ever gave it credit for and than I suspect most churchgoers give it credit for.

As for the supernatural, I was a skeptic until God struck me in a way I couldn't weasel out of, forcing me to come to terms with this dimension.

[Neil]

Interesting, I went in the opposite direction. From a start as a ‘born again’ fundamentalist, I moved to agnosticism, then, finally, atheism. Unlike you, the more I investigated the evidence for god, the more I found it to be seriously lacking. Today, I am more at peace than when my time on earth was merely a teaser for a supernatural afterlife – which I now know doesn’t exist, and, quite frankly, sounds rather boring. Wasn’t it Nietzsche who quipped that in heaven, all the interesting people are missing?

Richard Dawkins offers one of the best description I have come across for atheism: “The word atheism sounds negative; let me call it rationalism. It is a rational view of the world where you stand up proudly, in your humanity, you look life straight in the face, you look the universe straight in the face, you do your level best to understand it, to understand why you exist, what the universe is about, you recognise that when you die that's it, and therefore life is very, very precious and you devote your life to making the world a better place, to leading a good life so when you die you can say to yourself I have led a good life. Now, that seems to me to be a worthwhile goal to put in place of the medieval superstition which is religion. Belief in God doesn't have to be a bad thing, but I think it's a very demeaning thing to the human mind to believe in a falsehood, especially as the truth about the universe is so immensely exciting.

At the beginning of the 21st century, we humans have a real opportunity to learn about and understand the universe, the world, humanity, life, in a way that none of our predecessors have ever come close to. That is a huge privilege, and belief in God simply gets in the way of that. Religion is an irrelevance, it's a distraction, it's a rather boring, parochial falsehood that stands in the way of the glories of true understanding.”

[david]

Very well expressed Neil.Despite affliction of a Church School education , but helped by later extensive reading and ,I stress ,tolerance of other`s viewpoint, I have never been more contented within myself than now. Simply because I have grown to become honest with myself. I would never have believed that, to some ,intellectual integrity could be as essential as happiness itself ,not that one seeks happiness per se ,it is a consequence of how we fulfil others in our relationships. A religious belief system is no more tenable simply because "the crowd "pursue it headlong like lemmings .Sheer weight of numbers adds nothing to the veracity of a belief,particularly where fear is an element. The pursuit of organised religion is the very antithesis of selflessness it`s true goal, if examined critically, is selfish. . If it be an ultimate sin to be intellectually honest with oneself faced with the threat of annihilation by some supreme being then I want no part of such a perverse belief and will place my loyalties elsewhere where they are better merited.Organised religion and the way it is and has been practiced by most of it`s adherents ,represents everything base and ignoble in human beings.I do not refer to the Mother Therese`s of this world who forget themselves into immortality by true dedication to others. Give me an Einstein philosophy of reverence for the unknown -uncomplicated but honest presupposing nothing. .Not idolatry of some anthropomorphical divinity capable of the worst of human failings if we read our Old Testament correctly.

[Grant]

I agree with Ian - atheists and the flat earth society have plenty in common and should possibly consider combining their members to beef up numbers at the meetings.

[robk]

Neil:
"and you devote your life to making the world a better place, to leading a good life so when you die you can say to yourself I have led a good life."

So... how are you personally going making the world a better place?

David:
"The pursuit of organised religion is the very antithesis of selflessness "

Forget religion, Jesus was against it. Who has ever been more unselfish than Him? He said "Greater love has no man...than to lay down his life for his friends" then He unselfishly laid down HIS life for... YOU.