Why belief in unicorns is more logical than atheism
Comparison of belief in God to belief in unicorns is pervasive in the atheist blogosphere. But the history of belief in unicorns has an extremely interesting lesson to teach, in regards to atheism. Bo Jinn brilliantly explains in Illogical Atheism how belief in unicorns is actually significantly less superstitious than atheism:
It is not enough to refuse the evidence given in support of the hypothesis, the atheist must substitute a hypothesis of his own and give evidence for it as well. To illustrate this point, let us assume the case of an atheist favorite; the unicorn:
…The myth of the unicorn first came about when ancient nomadic people of Europe discovered strange objects washed up along their shores. These objects were long, pointed, conical and had the weight and texture of bone. So, the nomads inferred that they must have been the horn of some kind of animal. The only animals they knew of with horns were land animals like the antelope and the elk. But these horns looked like they could not belong to either. The ancient nomads would have proposed the best possible explanation for what animal the horns might have belonged to by observing their own surroundings and reasoning things out.
So, they concluded that the best explanation was that the horns must have belonged to a large and powerful species of horse that roamed some far away land. If one considers the position of the ancient nomad, one might appreciate that this is hardly an illogical explanation. A horse was a land creature, it was large enough and strong enough to bare the weight of the big horn and since the horns were found washed up on shore one may assume the nomads would have thought that these large horses died at sea, their bodies were devoured by sea beasts and that the horns floated to their coastal waters. And that is how the myth of the unicorn came about.
Now, it is entirely beside the point whether this theory is actually true or not. We only need notice two things: First; the unicorn was not thought up randomly by the nomads to fulfill some secret natural inclination to believe in mythological creatures. The unicorn was an explanatory hypothesis for a set of facts. Secondly, the unicorn hypothesis was not refuted simply by saying “I need more evidence that these unicorns exist.” Rather, the unicorn hypothesis was refuted, because many years later it was discovered that the horns were not horns, but tusks; belonging to a small whale we know today as the ‘narwhal’. The more evidence was brought against the unicorn hypothesis, the more the unicorn myth faded into obscurity. Notice, also, that the nomads were not completely wrong with their hypothesis. The horns did belong to an animal, also a mammal, which died at sea, just as they had thought! It just so happens that the animal was not precisely the kind of animal they had imagined.
Rational intuition never completely succeeds, but it seldom completely fails either. The point of the metaphor is that atheists have yet to find their narwhal. They do not have a substitute explanation for the existence of the universe which removes from any of the attributes by which theists have traditionally come to understand God. There has been no evidence that some other possible explanation exists.
Jinn continues by pointing out that the atheist has only two alternatives to the unicorn hypothesis, which are particularly bad, and more superstitious by far than belief in unicorns:
- The horns popped out of nothing.
- The horns exist eternally.
Where in our experience do we have examples of material things which have existed eternally? And where in our experience do we witness material things just popping into existence from nothing? And if our universe just popped into existence, why don’t we experience other material things (such as giraffes, refrigerators, or rocks) popping into existence from nothing? Why would only universes pop into existence from nothing? A modern-day person has no more logical justification to propose either of the two above explanations than an ancient nomadic European trying to explain mysterious horns lying on the beach.
However, according to atheist physicists such as Laurence Krauss, simpletons like myself just don’t get it: Krauss argues in his book A Universe from Nothing that a universe CAN just pop into existence out of nothing. Since particles pop into existence all the time in what is known as a quantum vacuum state, a universe, too, can pop into existence from nothing. But as David Albert, who holds a PhD in theoretical physics, points out in his New York Times book review of A Universe from Nothing, this is an absurd equivocation on the term nothing. (As an aside, please read my post about equivocation fallacies). A quantum vacuum state is not nothing, and it is an open-and-shut equivocation fallacy to suggest otherwise. Rather, a quantum vacuum state consists of space replete with energy fields. Suggesting that a particle can pop into existence from nothing in a quantum vacuum is philosophically equivalent to suggesting that a person can cause his fist to pop into existence from nothing by rearranging his fingers, as Albert sardonically explains:
Krauss seems to be thinking that these vacuum states amount to the relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical version of there not being any physical stuff at all. And he has an argument — or thinks he does — that the laws of relativistic quantum field theories entail that vacuum states are unstable. And that, in a nutshell, is the account he proposes of why there should be something rather than nothing.
But that’s just not right. Relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical vacuum states — no less than giraffes or refrigerators or solar systems — are particular arrangements of elementary physical stuff. The true relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical equivalent to there not being any physical stuff at all isn’t this or that particular arrangement of the fields — what it is (obviously, and ineluctably, and on the contrary) is the simple absence of the fields! The fact that some arrangements of fields happen to correspond to the existence of particles and some don’t is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that some of the possible arrangements of my fingers happen to correspond to the existence of a fist and some don’t. And the fact that particles can pop in and out of existence, over time, as those fields rearrange themselves, is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that fists can pop in and out of existence, over time, as my fingers rearrange themselves. And none of these poppings — if you look at them aright — amount to anything even remotely in the neighborhood of a creation from nothing.
Krauss, mind you, has heard this kind of talk before, and it makes him crazy. A century ago, it seems to him, nobody would have made so much as a peep about referring to a stretch of space without any material particles in it as “nothing.” And now that he and his colleagues think they have a way of showing how everything there is could imaginably have emerged from a stretch of space like that, the nut cases are moving the goal posts. He complains that “some philosophers and many theologians define and redefine ‘nothing’ as not being any of the versions of nothing that scientists currently describe,” and that “now, I am told by religious critics that I cannot refer to empty space as ‘nothing,’ but rather as a ‘quantum vacuum,’ to distinguish it from the philosopher’s or theologian’s idealized ‘nothing,’” and he does a good deal of railing about “the intellectual bankruptcy of much of theology and some of modern philosophy.” But all there is to say about this, as far as I can see, is that Krauss is dead wrong and his religious and philosophical critics are absolutely right.
Atheist physicists such as Krauss haven’t found their “narwhal” by boldly redefining nothing as space replete with energy fields (a quantum vacuum). Rather, they have engaged in what amounts to superstition gleaned from amateurish philosophy. Like Krauss, atheist physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow’s equivocation on the concept of nothing is PAINFULLY evident in their interview regarding their book The Grand Design with Larry King on Larry King Live as William Lane Craig points out:
Hawking: “Gravity and quantum theory cause universes to be created spontaneously out of nothing.”
King: “Who created the nothing? Where did the nothing come from?”
Mlodinow: “According to quantum theory, there is no such thing as nothingness.”
WLC notes that, in this utterly ridiculous exchange, Hawking is using “nothing” to refer to the quantum vacuum, whereas Mlodinow uses “nothing” in the traditional definition of nothing as non-being (no time, space, matter, or energy, etc).
So maybe option 2 above, the universe existing eternally, does away with the need for God. But, as Jinn points out above, the atheist must produce evidence that the universe has existed eternally, not just a bald and unsupported assertion. Unfortunately for the atheist who leans on an eternal universe as his “narwhal,” all of the evidence points to a universe that is NOT eternal. For example, the fact that our universe is continually expanding (as verified by telescopic observation) implies that it began with a “Big Bang”, as this post describes.
The natural universe (which includes the properties of space, time, matter, and energy) came into being at the cosmological event known as the Big Bang. Because it is a logical absurdity to suggest that something can cause itself, the cause of the universe must necessarily be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and energy-less. Indeed, it would every bit as absurd to suggest that a person could give birth to himself as it would be to suggest that something within the natural universe could be the cause of the natural universe.
Scientific confirmation of the universe’s beginning has caused much sorrow among scientists ideologically committed to atheism because, for centuries, most atheists have hung their hat on belief in an eternally existing universe in order to do away with God….no beginning, therefore no Beginner. Robert Jastrow is an astronomer, physicist, and the founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. As a self-described agnostic, Jastrow found the theistic implications of the Big Bang distasteful, yet inescapable. He therefore describes his realization of these theistic implications as “like a bad dream” in his book God and the Astronomers:
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.’
And it is actually more than just theologians who have postulated God as the spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and energy-less cause for the universe. Physicist George Stanciu and philosopher Robert Augros provide an excellent nutshell explanation of why a mind (read: God) is the cause for the natural universe in their book The New Story of Science:
“In the New Story of science the whole universe–including matter, energy, space, and time–is a one-time event and had a definite beginning. But something must have always existed; for if ever absolutely nothing existed, then nothing would exist now, since nothing comes from nothing. The material universe cannot be the thing that always existed because matter had a beginning. It is 12 to 20 billion years old. This means that whatever has always existed is non-material. The only non-material reality seems to be mind. If mind is what has always existed, then matter must have been brought into existence by a mind that always was. This points to an intelligent, eternal being who created all things. Such a being is what we mean by the term God.”
Some readers may be inclined to think that a mind which exists independent of time, space, matter, and energy is just an ad hoc explanation, arbitrarily cooked up in the heads of religious folks. But such readers would be greatly mistaken. An immaterial conscious mind is required to explain the famous observer effect in physics. The observer effect refers to the conclusion of modern physics that, prior to observation by a conscious observer, particles exist only in an immaterial form known as a possibility wave (or probability wave). It is only after an observation is made by a conscious observer that these possibilities “collapse into actuality,” thereby taking on material form. Readers who find this bizarre or difficult to understand are in good company. Even the world’s most elite physicists are amazed and puzzled by the observer effect. But it has been repeatedly scientifically verified. (Please read Johns Hopkins University physicist Richard Conn Henry’s article The Mental Universe, and University of California, Berkeley physicist Henry Stapp’s book Mindful Universe for a more thorough exploration of this subject). Physicist Richard Conn Henry explains how people with atheistic leanings recoil at the clear theistic implications of modern physics :
“Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism.” [“Solipsism” is defined as “the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist.”]
Indeed, the founder of quantum physics himself, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Planck, was referring to a mind which exists independent of (and serves as the cause for) space, time, matter, and energy, when he wrote:
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
Planck also wrote:
“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”
An atheist is free to cook up alternative explanations for a “mind [which] is the matrix of all matter,” in the above words of the founder of quantum physics. But, unless such an atheist can produce evidence, and a logical argument to support such an alternative, he has not found his narwhal.
If it would allow God to get a foot in the door, distinguished, molecular biologist, Richard Lewontin made it clear that he considered that truth should not even be an issue, in relation to a scientific controversy with religious believers. So, it seems that he knew he was addressing the id of his atheist confreres, which would receive such a warning with the greatest enthusiasm. Only thing is, it gives wilful ignorance a bad name.
In order to explain the most fundamental question of “why there is something rather than nothing”, atheists must address two concepts 1) the finitude of the past 2)the infinite regress fallacy.
Akin to the unicorns fantasy is Hawkings hypothesis that “a law such as gravity, can and will create the universe out of nothing.”. But that major theme did get his last and final book on the best sellers list. If he was still around I would ask him 1) how does an abstract law like gravity exist in the absence of mass and time, 2)how do such laws stand in causal relationships with the physical realm, 3) what better explains the origin and existence of all the universal and immutable laws of science that make for a rationally intelligible universe? Is it Atheism’s philosophical commitment to materialism or theism which cites a rationally intelligent cause beyond space and time?
The theist also has the infinite regress problem to deal with as saying there’s an entirely arbitrary end/begining to it is no different to saying there is none… There is no argument that backs your claimed limits existance other than you claiming it’s there which ironically is the whole point of the whole theistic argument…
Janna Levin, from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University writes:
“The universe had a beginning. There was once nothing and now there is something.”
A universe with a finite past requires a beginning, which in turn requires a transcendent (or supernatural) cause. This is why our universe must be eternal for atheism to be valid. But Big Bang cosmology has shown that the universe is NOT eternal. In New Proofs for the Existence of God, Robert J. Spitzer (who was assisted by Dr. Stephen Barr of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Delaware) reveals that:
“Prior to Einstein’s publication of the General Theory of Relativity, one could have thought that supernatural design was completely unnecessary because it was believed (in accordance with Newton’s postulates) that the universe existed for an infinite amount of time with an infinite amount of space and an infinite amount of interacting content. Therefore, there would have been an infinite number of ‘tries’ [for randomness to produce an orderly universe] to bring about virtually any degree of complexity.”
“Standard Big Bang cosmology totally changed these postulates, and reduced the total number of ‘tries’ in the observable universe to a very finite number…..This comparatively small number of ‘total possible mass energy interactions in the universe for all time’ revealed the extreme improbability of high degrees of complexity arising out of the universe by pure chance.”
Further, this book also states that “David Hilbert (the father of finite mathematics) has given new probative force and depth to the argument for the intrinsic finitude of past time (implying a timeless creator) in his article On The Infinite.”
Hilbert (among the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century) said:
“The infinite [as in infinite past time] is nowhere to be found in reality. It neither exists in nature nor provides a legitimate basis for rational thought. The role that remains for the infinite…is solely that of an idea.”
Many other contemporary mathematicians (such as mathematicians Frankel, Rotman, Kneebone, Zermelo, and Robinson) draw the same conclusion. Mathematicians Rotman and Kneebone state in The Theory of Sets and Transfinite Numbers:
“The conception of an infinite sequence of choices (or any other acts)…is a mathematical fiction—an idealization of what is imaginable only in finite cases.”
But rather than just taking some highly prominent mathematicians at their word, wouldn’t it be nice to understand for oneself just why infinite past time is mathematically impossible? Fortunately, the mathematical concepts herein are easily accessible to non-mathematicians. Below is an excerpt from The Case for the Creator by Lee Strobel and features an interview the author conducted with William Lane Craig:
“Let’s use an example involving marbles,” he said. “Imagine I had an infinite number of marbles in my possession, and that I wanted to give you some. In fact, suppose I wanted to give you an infinite number of marbles. One way I could do that would be to give you the entire pile of marbles. In that case I would have zero marbles left for myself.”
“However, another way to do it would be to give you all of the odd numbered marbles. Then I would still have an infinity left over for myself, and you would have an infinity too. You’d have just as many as I would–and, in fact, each of us would have just as many as I originally had before we divided into odd and even! Or another approach would be for me to give you all of the marbles numbered four and higher. That way, you would have an infinity of marbles, but I would only have three marbles left.”
“What these illustrations demonstrate is that the notion of an actual infinite number of things leads to contradictory results. In the first case in which I gave you all the marbles, infinity minus infinity is zero; in the second case in which I gave you all the odd-numbered marbles, infinity minus infinity is infinity; and in the third case in which I gave you all the marbles numbered four and greater, infinity minus infinity is three. In each case, we have subtracted the identical number from the identical number, but we have come up with nonidentical results.”
“For that reason, mathematicians are forbidden from doing subtraction and division in transfinite arithmetic, because this would lead to contradictions. You see, the idea of an actual infinity is just conceptual; it exists only in our minds.”
And lastly, in 2003, physicists Borde, Vilenkin and Guth corroborated to formulate a proof that demonstrates that an eternal universe is not possible. It is known as the BVG theorem. Alexander Vilenkin is very blunt in regard to the implications of this proof:
“It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.” (Many Worlds in One [New York: Hill and Wang, 2006], p.176).
Because we don’t yet have a quantum theory of gravity, we are not able to provide a physical description of the first split second of the physical universe. BUT, the BVG theorem is independent of any such description of that early moment of the universe. Their theorem implies that the quantum vacuum state of the very early universe (which some popularizers have misleadingly and incorrectly characterized as nothing) cannot be eternal in the past, but must have had an absolute beginning. For example, even if our universe is just a tiny part of a so-called multiverse, composed of many universes, the BVG theorem requires that this multiverse itself must have a beginning.
So, with a speculative model such as a multiverse model, our universe’s beginning was not necessarily the ultimate beginning, but the multiverse of which our universe is a part DID have an ultimate beginning. All that speculative models (multiverse, loop quantum gravity models, string models, and closed time-like models, etc.) achieve is push the beginning back a step! What makes the BVG proof so powerful is that it holds regardless of the physical description of the very early universe.
Borde, Villenkin, and Guth were able to mathematically prove that any universe which is on average in a state of cosmic expansion throughout its history (Hubble parameter H has a positive value) cannot be infinite in the past, and must have a past space-time boundary. And we know that our universe is in a state of cosmic expansion as a result of observations such as redshift, and other galaxies moving away from us.
“It is not enough to refuse the evidence given in support of the hypothesis, the atheist must substitute a hypothesis of his own and give evidence for it as well.”. — When you fail i. the logic of your first step the rest.is untenable… This is a ridiculous point and just unvalid.
That’s the best a personyou chose to cite could comeup with. Really? In disputing a claim based on it having no valid argument for it’s veracity – theism you don’t have to state a claim of your own to replace it… it’s a non sequitur. Ridiculous.
You can either produce an alternative explanation for the origin of the universe (which includes the properties of space, time, matter, and energy) or you cannot. Since it would be absurd to suggest that an aspect of the universe could be responsible for producing the universe (this would be like suggesting that a person could give birth to himself), the cause of the universe must necessarily be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and energy-less.
Physicist George Stanciu and philosopher Robert Augros provide an excellent nutshell explanation of why a mind (read: God) is the cause for the natural universe in their book The New Story of Science:
“In the New Story of science the whole universe–including matter, energy, space, and time–is a one-time event and had a definite beginning. But something must have always existed; for if ever absolutely nothing existed, then nothing would exist now, since nothing comes from nothing. The material universe cannot be the thing that always existed because matter had a beginning. It is 12 to 20 billion years old. This means that whatever has always existed is non-material. The only non-material reality seems to be mind. If mind is what has always existed, then matter must have been brought into existence by a mind that always was. This points to an intelligent, eternal being who created all things. Such a being is what we mean by the term God.”
But please note that a mind which exists independent of (and serves as the cause for time, space, matter, and energy) is not an ad hoc explanation, arbitrarily pulled out of a hat. An immaterial conscious mind is required to explain the famous observer effect in physics. The observer effect refers to the conclusion of modern physics that, prior to observation by a conscious observer, particles exist only in an immaterial form known as a possibility wave (or probability wave). It is only after an observation is made by a conscious observer that these possibilities “collapse into actuality,” thereby taking on material form. Readers who find this bizarre or difficult to understand are in good company. Even the world’s most elite physicists are amazed and puzzled by the observer effect. But it has been repeatedly scientifically verified. (Please read Johns Hopkins University physicist Richard Conn Henry’s article The Mental Universe, and University of California, Berkeley physicist Henry Stapp’s book Mindful Universe for a more thorough exploration of this subject). Physicist Richard Conn Henry explains how people with atheistic leanings recoil at the clear theistic implications of modern physics :
“Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism.” [“Solipsism” is defined as “the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist.”]
Indeed, the founder of quantum physics himself, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Planck, was referring to a mind which exists independent of (and serves as the cause for) space, time, matter, and energy, when he wrote:
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
Planck also wrote:
“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”
An atheist is free to cook up alternative explanations for a “mind [which] is the matrix of all matter,” in the above words of the founder of quantum physics. But, unless such an atheist can produce evidence, and a logical argument to support such an alternative, he has not found his narwhal.
[…] Belief in unicorns is actually significantly LESS superstitous than atheism, contrary to what atheists would have one believe. — Read on godevidence.com/2019/08/belief-in-unicorns/ […]
[…] Source: Why belief in unicorns is more logical than atheism – God Evidence […]
Atheists don’t automatically have to account for the existence of the Universe, it’s just the rejection or negation of God claims. You claim God exists, and you claim that God created the Universe. But there’s absolutely no evidence in support of either notion, so no requirement for the atheist to accept your claims nor to provide an ‘alternative explanation’. You haven’t actually explained anything, it’s just a story you tell!
All your story does is obfuscate, and push the problem back a step. On your view, why did a God exist, rather than nothing? Why the God you claim exists, and not some other God from the infinite possible variations? You’re using something you can’t account for to ‘account for’ the Universe, which is a tactic that falls apart under the weight of its own absurdity.
Now, above you say the following:
“Janna Levin, from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University writes:
“The universe had a beginning. There was once nothing and now there is something.””
So if we accept what she says, I assume that means we accept there is no God, right? There was once ‘nothing’, and God would obviously be ‘something’ I presume. Meanwhile, back in reality, we don’t accept mere stories from anyone, be they mathematicians, theologians, philosophers, politicians OR scientists. Nobody cares what scientists say, what we care about is what they can demonstrate to be the case.
No scientist has ever demonstrated that there was once ‘nothing’, and as has been pointed out on this page, if that was ever the case: no Universe, no Multiverse, no Fairies, no Gods, no material, no time, well then there would not be anything now either.
“You claim God exists, and you claim that God created the Universe. But there’s absolutely no evidence in support of either notion, so no requirement for the atheist to accept your claims nor to provide an ‘alternative explanation’. You haven’t actually explained anything, it’s just a story you tell!”
No, the evidence for God is overwhelming. The real question is whether you are willing to logically engage with that evidence, or just forcefully repeat your empty assertion that there is “no evidence.”
SPECIFICALLY, please logically engage with the following evidence for God by producing a rebuttal:
The observer effect of modern physics (please click the link and watch the video) demonstrates the primacy of consciousness. In other words, mind (read: God) comes first, and matter is the product of mind. This is an alien concept to the modern western mind, but it has been demonstrated by modern physics. Please note that a mind which exists independent of (and serves as the cause for time, space, matter, and energy) is not an ad hoc explanation, arbitrarily pulled out of a hat. An immaterial conscious mind is required to explain the famous observer effect in physics. The observer effect refers to the conclusion of modern physics that, prior to observation by a conscious observer, particles exist only in an immaterial form known as a possibility wave (or probability wave). It is only after an observation is made by a conscious observer that these possibilities “collapse into actuality,” thereby taking on material form. Readers who find this bizarre or difficult to understand are in good company. Even the world’s most elite physicists are amazed and puzzled by the observer effect. But it has been repeatedly scientifically verified. (Please read Johns Hopkins University physicist Richard Conn Henry’s article The Mental Universe, and University of California, Berkeley physicist Henry Stapp’s book Mindful Universe for a more thorough exploration of this subject). Physicist Amit Goswami explains how the famous double-slit experiment (for which I link to a video in this essay) conclusively demonstrates that matter (including the matter which constitutes the human brain) cannot exist without a conscious observer:
“First let’s discuss how the idea that consciousness is the ground of being is forced upon us by quantum physics. Take the idea that conscious choice affects the quantum possibility wave of an object by collapsing it into an actual event of our experience, into a “particle,” so to speak. This idea seems dualistic at first. Why? Because consciousness has to be nonmaterial to effect collapse. To see this, suppose, as materialist biologists believe, that consciousness is a brain epiphenomenon. But undoubtedly the brain is a conglomerate of elementary particles, quantum possibilities, so it must itself also consist of quantum possibilities. Ditto for any epiphenomenon associated with it.”
“Now do you see why consciousness, to effect collapse, must be nonmaterial? A material consciousness arising in the brain is only a possibility wave. A possibility wave acting on a possibility wave just makes a bigger possibility wave. No actuality ever comes out of such an interaction (von Neumann 1955).”
“You may not have noticed, but we can see paradox in the observer effect in another way. The observer chooses, out of the quantum possibilities presented by the object, the actual event of experience. But before the collapse of the possibilities, the observer himself (or herself) consists of possibilities and is not manifest. So we can posit the paradox as a circularity: An observer is needed for collapsing the quantum possibility wave of an object; but collapse is needed for manifesting the observer. More succinctly, no collapse without an observer; but no observer without a collapse. If we stay in the material level, the paradox is unsolvable. The consciousness solution works only because we posit that consciousness collapses the possibility waves of both the observer (that is, his or her brain) and the object simultaneously from the transcendent reality of the ground of being that consciousness represents.”
Physicist Richard Conn Henry explains how people with atheistic leanings recoil at the clear theistic implications of modern physics :
“Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism.” [“Solipsism” is defined as “the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist.”]
Indeed, the founder of quantum physics himself, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Planck, was referring to a mind which exists independent of (and serves as the cause for) space, time, matter, and energy, when he wrote:
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
Planck also wrote:
“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”
An atheist is free to cook up alternative explanations for a “mind [which] is the matrix of all matter,” in the above words of the founder of quantum physics. But, unless such an atheist can produce evidence, and a logical argument to support such an alternative, he has not found his narwhal.
“All your story does is obfuscate, and push the problem back a step. On your view, why did a God exist, rather than nothing?”
Because an intelligent agent has causal properties. Nothing cannot cause the universe because nothing cannot cause anything to happen or to exist…otherwise it wouldn’t be nothing.
The cause of the universe must be timeless or changeless, because it created time.
Because it also created space, it must transcend space, and therefore be immaterial.
It must also be personal, for if the changeless impersonal conditions for the existence of the universe existed eternally, then the cause could never exist without its effect. If the changeless impersonal conditions for an effect are timelessly present, then the effect must be timelessly present as well.
To illustrate, the cause of water freezing is the temperature being below zero degrees centigrade. If the temperature were below zero from eternity, then any water around would be frozen from eternity. It would be impossible for the water to begin to freeze a finite time ago.
The only way for the cause to be timeless, and the effect to begin a finite time ago, is for the cause to be a personal agent who freely chooses to create an effect in time without any prior determining conditions. For example, a man sitting from eternity could will to stand up, and thus, we are brought, not only to a transcendent cause of the universe, but to its personal creator.
“Why the God you claim exists, and not some other God from the infinite possible variations?”
The God I claim exists is conscious, intelligent, personal, and moral. I justify this version of God with the following philosophical argument:
Citing a non-conscious cause for consciousness, an unintelligent cause for intelligence, an impersonal cause for personhood, or an amoral cause for morality, (etc.) is impossible to philosophically justify because, as Edwar Feser puts it The Last Superstition, “a cause cannot give to its effect what it does not have to give.” Feser skillfully elaborates:
…the cause of a fire might itself be on fire, as when a torch is used to start a brushfire, or it may instead have the power to produce fire, as a cigarette lighter has even when it is not being used.
The traditional way of making this distinction is to say that a cause has the feature that it generates in the effect “formally” in the first sort of case (e.g. when both the cause and the effect are on fire) and “eminently” in the second sort of case (e.g. when the cause is not itself on fire, but has an inherent power to produce fire). If a cause didn’t contain all the features of its effect either formally or eminently, there would be no way to account for how the effect came about in just the way it did. Again, a cause cannot give to its effect what it does not have to give.
Material things such as atoms and rocks do not contain (either formally or eminently) many of the features we as humans possess…such as consciousness, intelligence, personhood, reason, morality, love, etc. Keith Ward, a member of the Council of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, makes the same point as Feser in his book Doubting Dawkins: Why There Almost Certainly is a God:
“…there is force in the classical philosophical axiom that, for a truly explanatory cause to be intelligible, it must contain its effects potentially in itself. As the classical philosophers put it, the cause must contain more reality than its effects.”
The implication of this philosophical axiom cited by Feser and Ward is that the cause of conscious, intelligent, and personal (etc.) beings such as ourselves must necessarily have the effects of consciousness, intelligence and personhood contained potentially in itself. A cigarette lighter contains the effect of fire potentially in itself (even when not being used), but inanimate material things such as atoms and rocks do not contain the effects of consciousness, intelligence, or personhood potentially in themselves. This is why the only logical option is to cite a conscious, personal, and intelligent cause (read: God) for conscious, personal, and intelligent agents such as ourselves.