God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion (6 page)

No one should expect particle physicists to answer every question. However, speculations are being widely bandied about that some emergent principles have the power to control entities at lower levels by way of “top-down causality.” At the very top of the pyramid, of course, is God up in heaven, acting down on us particles below. In this model, emergence by bottom-up causality is considered trivial. Emergence by top-down causality is considered world-shaking. We will see what can be made of that.

On the cosmic scale, twentieth-century cosmology also has been distorted by theists as constituting evidence for a creation of the universe when, in fact,
modern cosmology points in just the opposite direction. Some previous gaps in our understanding of the physics of the cosmos provided some temporary comfort for those seeking evidence for a creator. However, these gaps were decisively plugged with astronomical discoveries as the century progressed. Today, cosmologists can provide a variety of plausible, mathematically precise scenarios for an uncreated universe that violate no known laws of physics. Furthermore, we have every indication that, despite the well-confirmed big bang, the universe, defined as all there is, had no beginning and thus no creator. We will see that so-called proofs that the universe cannot be eternal are erroneous.

Many theist authors, combining a naive understanding of physics and cosmology with their preformed unscientific beliefs, have been trumpeting that the constants of physics are so delicately balanced that any deviation would make life impossible. From this they conclude that the physical constants could only have been fine-tuned by God. This claim also can be shown to be erroneous, as we will see in
chapter 7
.

Believing scientists and theologians have also said they see evidence for divine purpose in the universe. This claim is likewise not supported by the evidence.

The fundamental religious belief is that transcendent reality beyond matter exists. Evidence for this reality is supposed to be found in human experiences termed mystical or spiritual. Specifically, a large amount of data has been accumulated over the years, and published in journals and books, on near-death experiences (NDEs). These experiences occur in about 20 percent of people resuscitated from clinical death, or something close to it. These people return with a memory of light at the end of a tunnel that they are convinced was a glimpse of heaven. (Few ever glimpse hell). We will look carefully at the data and conclude it has more plausible natural explanations.

We will also evaluate the data on reincarnation and psychic phenomena. Many dramatic claims have been made for well over a century now that evidence for these wonders exists, but these claims have never been independently confirmed. This discussion will be brought up to date with a critique of a recent highly publicized claim of retroactive causality published in a peer-reviewed psychology journal.

At the current stage of scientific development, we can confidently say that no empirical or theoretical basis exists for assuming anything other than that we inhabit a universe made entirely of matter (and energy into which matter can be transformed, and vice versa). Please understand that this is not a dogmatic position. Of course we don't know everything, and never will. The essential point is that within our existing knowledge we do not have a credible reason for requiring anything transcendent to explain anything we experience or observe. All science is provisional, and if sufficient evidence that meets all the most rigorous scientific tests were to come along to demonstrate the existence of a world beyond matter and energy, then nonbelieving scientists will change their minds. We will challenge the wide array of current claims that scientific observations and theories are already pointing toward transcendence. We will see that these claims have no basis.

We will also see that other metaphors for the “stuff” of the universe, such as information, do not diminish the need for, and primacy of, matter.

The one major area where we do not yet have a plausible physical model that satisfies a consensus of experts in the field is the question of the nature of consciousness. We can now ascribe much more of human thinking processes to the material brain than ever imagined in the past, when the mind was universally believed to be composed of some immaterial, spiritual substance separate from the body. However, the door to some immaterial reality in human consciousness is still open a tiny crack, and we will have to await further developments to see whether it, too, closes upon further scientific investigation.

Another important issue where fundamental disagreement between science and religion exists concerns the source and nature of morality. Believers cannot see how our notions of good and evil can come from any source other than God. They are joined by many nonbelievers who think science has no right to say anything on the question. But scientists are investigating morality anyway and coming up with discoveries that few believers will like. While a primitive morality can be found in animals and early humans that evolved
biologically
, our modern ideas of morality more likely evolved
socially
as humans found ways to overcome some of their animal instincts by force of intellect. Not only did these developments allow people to live together in some semblance of order, they also allowed us to use the ability to act cooperatively
to obtain resources from the environment, to protect ourselves from predators and other natural dangers. The incompatibility between science and religion becomes especially striking on the question of the origin of morality and ethical behavior.

While the viewpoints of science and traditional religious beliefs are irreconcilable, contemporary science-savvy theologians are seeking to develop a model of a deity that fits in with science. However, as we will see, such a model is necessarily more deistic than theistic, as it has little in common with the God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, or with other ancient gods such as those of Hinduism and other faiths. All of those Gods can be ruled out beyond a reasonable doubt by the absence of evidence for their existence, evidence that should be there but is not.

Finally, we will see why the incompatibility of science and religion is more than just an intellectual debate among scholars. Faith is a folly. It requires belief in a world beyond the senses with no basis in evidence for such a world and no reason to believe in it other than the vain hope that something else is out there. While a false belief may be comforting or even temporarily useful, it is a dubious guide to life or for the foundation of a successful society.

While not all believers have an uncompromising faith, and many recognize the power and value of science, we will see that an influential minority of American Christians see materialist science as an enemy that needs to be “renewed” so that God is restored to his rightful place in the scheme of things. Backed by the financial resources needed to get their opinions heard and to help elect officials who will legislate their line, this minority wields far more political power than its numbers justify. It has succeeded in watering down or eliminating the teaching of evolution in most high schools. Holding extremely conservative views that they justify theologically, the members of this minority join with unscrupulous politicians to protect the shortsighted economic interests of their financial backers. In this way they help thwart government actions recommended by scientific consensus that are needed to reduce the gradual destruction of the planet by the exponential growth of our species and its increasingly wasteful use of Earth's finite resources.

If we go back to the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them; and that custom, respect, and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve its own interests.

—Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach (died 1789)
¹

The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.

—Edward Gibbon
²

ORIGINS OF RELIGION

N
eanderthal burial sites indicate that hominids buried their dead ritually as far back as fifty thousand years ago. Graves have been found containing tools and flowers, suggesting a belief in some sort of afterlife. Bodies were buried in the fetal position, perhaps indicating a notion of rebirth.

Archaeologists recently discovered a stone python twenty feet long that was carved seventy thousand years ago in a cave in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana. The modern San people living in the area have a legend that humanity descended from a python. Near the figure, digging uncovered colored stone spearheads that were not accompanied by any other signs of human habitation. The spearheads were evidently brought to the cave from
hundreds of miles away and burned in some kind of ritual. A secret chamber was found behind the python where a shaman could remain hidden and speak as if his voice came from the snake.
³

Not only does this discovery show that humans have been thinking abstractly for at least seventy thousand years, it also demonstrates that superstition has been used as a means of control from its very beginning. We can easily imagine a shaman discovering some black powder that, when tossed in a fire, caused an impressive explosion. Using this in a public ritual, the shaman could convince the members of his tribe that he had supernatural powers, which then justified his right to tell them what to do.

Now, you might be inclined to say that such shamans were not only the first priests but also the first scientists. After all, the shaman just described must have been exploring nature when he found the black powder. He must have been experimenting when he discovered its explosive properties. And during the ritual, he was applying his knowledge the way a modern bomb maker applies chemistry or nuclear physics. However, as we will see, science is more than bomb building. As historian David Lindberg puts it, “It is one thing to know
how
to do things, another to know
why
they behave the way they do.”
⁴
An electrician does not have to know Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism to wire up a new house. And, as invaluable as an electrician is to modern society, we do not regard such a tradesman as a scientist. Science develops out of technology but goes beyond mere practical application toward a deeper understanding of the world.

By the time civilization arose, supernatural beliefs were rampant in every nation, with complex rituals, human or animal sacrifices carried out to appease the gods (and to please the priests), and great temples of worship constructed. While only symbolic sacrifices are carried out in the present age, belief in a transcendent, controlling reality, one beyond the phenomena that present themselves to our senses, has remained a dominant feature of human thinking. As we will see, while this conviction, along with the accompanying rituals, has impeded human progress over the ages, the great temples of worship that were constructed and the sacred music and art that were produced constitute some of the finest achievements of humankind. I am not unappreciative of the positive elements of religion; I am just convinced that the positive elements
are far outweighed by the negative and that the positives of religion probably would happen on their own anyway without religion.

CAVEMAN LOGIC

Today, a vast literature exists attempting to explain humanity's continuing obsession with religion. See, for example,
Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought
, by anthropologist Pascal Boyer,
⁵
and
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion
, by anthropologist Scott Atran.
⁶

No doubt the full story of religious obsession is complex. However, for my purposes I need only mention one human quality that affects
all
of our thinking, not just our religious thinking. Many authors have commented on the tendency of humans to ascribe animate agency to natural phenomena and argue that this was a natural inheritance from our ancestor animals in the evolutionary process.

As philosopher Daniel Dennett explains:

A system or organization within the brain…has evolved in much the same way our immune system or respiratory system…has evolved. Like many other natural wonders, the human mind is something of a bag of tricks, cobbled together over the eons by the foresightless process of evolution by natural selection. Driven by the demands of a dangerous world, it is deeply biased in favor of noticing the things that mattered most to the reproductive success of our ancestors.
⁷

Boyer calls this bag of tricks “gadgets,” and Dennett notes that some of the patterns look like religion.

As Dennett points out, even the simplest animals have what psychologist Justin Barrett calls a
hyperactive agent detection device
, or HADD.
⁸
For example, a clam will retreat its foot into its shell whenever any vibration or bump is sensed. Most such disturbances are harmless, but the clam's motto is “Better safe than sorry.”
⁹

Animals with greater mobility than the clam have developed the ability to detect unusual motions that might be made by a predator but more often
are not. This tendency toward imagining invisible causes of events leads them to sometimes engage in ritual behavior that serves no necessary purpose. In a famous experiment conducted in 1948, psychologist B. F. Skinner showed that pigeons exhibit what he called “superstitious behavior” in which they carry out repeated, stereotyped patterns of conduct to get food even when those patterns are not required.
¹⁰

Humans have inherited the hyperactive agent detection device. In
The Believing Brain
, psychologist and prominent skeptic Michael Shermer provides evidence from many different areas of human behavior—from politics and economics to religion and conspiracy theories—that support the formation and reinforcement of beliefs in patterns and agency that have limited or no evidentiary support.
¹¹

In his book
Caveman Logic
, psychologist Hank Davis posits the following scenario:

One of your ancestors is walking through the forest and sees something on the path ahead. It might be a predator. Then again, it might be a random array of shapes and textures that amounts to nothing. If he believes it to be dangerous, he takes appropriate defensive steps. Perhaps he freezes or arms himself or flees. What's the best that can happen? He survives a lethal encounter and gets to live and function another day. What's the worst? A false positive. He finds himself with heart pounding, pulse racing, hiding behind a tree with a spear drawn for no good reason. It was only a pile of twigs on the path. He's wasted some effort and experiences a baseless fear. But he gets to go home, eat dinner, and snuggle with his mate.
¹²

Davis adds, “Perceptual accuracy was not an agenda of natural selection. Survival and reproduction were.”
¹³

Since our brains have hardly evolved physically and biologically since caveman days, they retain this protective agency module that does us more harm than good in the modern age. We no longer have to be excessively alert when taking a walk in the woods, although a city street is another matter. In the meantime, we assign invisible agency and causality to phenomena that have no agents or causes. This leads to behaviors that are a waste of time and energy. To make matters worse, these behaviors are reinforced by widespread
social support—by churches in particular.
¹⁴
And, as we will see, not only religious believers but scientists as well are burdened by this anachronistic brain module.

Davis has this amusing but cogent summary of the situation:

There is a popular bumper sticker that addresses the problem directly. It says
SHIT HAPPENS
. These two words are all but incomprehensible to the majority of people. The sticker does not say
I CAUSED SHIT TO HAPPEN
. It does not say
SHIT WAS DONE TO ME BY A VENGEFUL GOD
. It simply says that…
SHIT
does happen from time to time.
¹⁵

This is not just an account of human reactions to everyday experiences. It also applies on the cosmic scale, where great philosophers, scientists, and theologians—as well as the typical churchgoer—find it difficult to grasp how anything could happen without cause. As I will amplify later, many of our scientific explanations, from evolution to quantum physics to the origin of the universe, are acausal, that is, they describe events that are not the sole result of previous circumstances but are events that just happen. We call these events accidental or spontaneous. Stuff happens. And, as we will see, while some theologians and other authors have woven “God” into this picture, such a god has little in common with the traditional God of Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

THE FIRST SCIENTISTS

While the prehistoric shaman described above resembles the priests we have witnessed throughout history up to the present, he can be distinguished from those we have identified as the first scientists.
¹⁶
Shamans and priests attribute supernatural causes to phenomena, whereas scientists claim they are wholly natural. The meanings of the terms “natural” and “supernatural” will become clear from usage as we proceed, as will “religion” and “science.” I prefer to let words take on their meanings from context rather than attempting to define them with other words, which is always an imperfect procedure. Yet, words were a key to the development of philosophy and science, especially words
written down with alphabetic symbols.
¹⁷
It was the highly efficient Greek alphabet and language that made it possible for philosophy and science to develop in ancient Greece.

Thales of Miletus (ca. 624–546 BCE) is regarded by many historians to have been the first scientist, as well as the first philosopher, in the Western tradition.
¹⁸
Miletus is a city in the region of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) called Ionia. Thales was the first member of a philosophical school known as the
Presocratics
, which is not so much a chronological term but one used to distinguish the members of the school from the most famous and influential ancient philosophers Socrates
¹⁹
(died 399 BCE), Plato (died 347 BCE), and Aristotle (died 322 BCE), as well as just about every other ancient thinker West and East. Indeed, as we will see, the Presocratics were unique, and their differences with everyone else mark the very essence of the eternal conflict between science and religion. Unfortunately, only fragments of their writings survive and we know about them mainly through Aristotle and his successor Theophrastus (ca. 371–287 BCE).

Thales is famous for predicting an eclipse of the sun in 585 BCE (on May 28, according to modern astronomy) that, according to Herodotus, stopped a battle between the Lydians and Medes and ended their five-year war. Thales's prediction, if it really occurred, would have been based on astronomical tables that he likely picked up during journeys to Egypt and Babylonia. In those early civilizations, astronomy was a precise art, but it was used for divination rather than as empirical data upon which to build a model of the cosmos. The early Egyptian and Babylonian astronomers and astrologers were like the shaman: discovering empirical knowledge about the natural world but giving it a supernatural interpretation that could be put to use in managing the social order.

The Egyptians and Babylonians, as well as other early civilizations, had also developed what we now call technology. While today technology is based not only on observations of the physical world but also on the application of scientific theories, it is not what is known as “pure” science. Technology is applied science, while pure science is motivated by a search for understanding that is independent of possible applications (although usually justified by such to funding sources).

Thales's innovation, which we now identify as pure science, was to explain observed phenomena with reference to visible forces rather than to imagined, invisible spirits—which were, in Thales's time, the Greek gods. For example, Thales explained earthquakes by hypothesizing that Earth floats on water and is rocked by waves. After all, we can see for ourselves that the land we live on is surrounded by water.