Godless (23 page)
The universe (or more properly the cosmos) encompasses all the mass/energy available anywhere. If God possesses energy that not only created but also interacts with the material world, then, by definition, he is part of the natural universe or the universe is part of him, which is the same thing. Whatever God’s source of energy might be, it exists
somewhere,
adding to the size of the cosmos. Supernatural does not mean unnatural. An omnipotent God would make the cosmos infinitely massive, a fact that is contradicted by the expansion of the universe (or, if God is outside our own pocket universe, by the uniformity of such expansion), or by the fact that we are not all instantly compressed by the gravity of infinite matter or incinerated with heat by being in the presence of such a grotesquely massive black hole out there.
somewhere,
adding to the size of the cosmos. Supernatural does not mean unnatural. An omnipotent God would make the cosmos infinitely massive, a fact that is contradicted by the expansion of the universe (or, if God is outside our own pocket universe, by the uniformity of such expansion), or by the fact that we are not all instantly compressed by the gravity of infinite matter or incinerated with heat by being in the presence of such a grotesquely massive black hole out there.
Some argue that it is provincial for us locals to picture God as a huge physical being with infinite mass. God works from a “spiritual” dimension, they say—whatever that means—and therefore does not add to the material world. Somehow, God can manipulate the existing mass/energy in the universe without adding to it, and without sucking everything into himself. But if “omnipotence” is meaningful, it has to indicate something to us humans who do not transcend nature. By definition a “spirit” is nonphysical, so a “spiritual god” should have no power—no real power—at all. According to believers, however, whenever God proves his power it is manifested as a physical act in the tangible world: an earthquake, flood, moving star, sun standing still, plague of locust, a sea opening up to let people cross, a voice from a burning bush that Moses could hear, footballs changing their trajectories, and so on.
If God is “directing” nature from outside, he is still required to do so in a way that causes ordinary matter to react. There needs to be an energy/mass nexus, or connection, for any work to be done. (Of course, claiming that god is “energy” is to deny that he is “spirit.”) If “all-powerful” does not relate to “powerful,” as we humans understand the word, then the phrase is incoherent. We may as well say that “God is rrrghphrrth” instead of “God is omnipotent.” Since we know that an actual infinite mass (not the mathematical “infinite mass” some posit for black holes) would make all life, indeed all existence, impossible, we know that an all-powerful God does not exist, cannot exist. The very idea of existence requires limited power, limited mass, limited energy. Since “spirit” has no power, a powerful spiritual being cannot exist.
Those who would claim that God does not have to be infinitely powerful to counteract the largest possible force in the universe are forgetting that God supposedly
created
the universe out of himself. The argument of limited omnipotence (sufficient power to do anything that would ever need to be done) implies that God has a restriction on how large a universe he could create. Could he have created a universe 20 times more massive than the current one? Five thousand times more massive? If not, he is not omnipotent. The old riddle is not entirely inapt: can God create a stone so large that he can’t lift it? Either way, God emerges short of omnipotence. Avoiding the question by claiming that God would never want to do such a thing implies that God’s power has bounds, and that he is a slave to his own character.
created
the universe out of himself. The argument of limited omnipotence (sufficient power to do anything that would ever need to be done) implies that God has a restriction on how large a universe he could create. Could he have created a universe 20 times more massive than the current one? Five thousand times more massive? If not, he is not omnipotent. The old riddle is not entirely inapt: can God create a stone so large that he can’t lift it? Either way, God emerges short of omnipotence. Avoiding the question by claiming that God would never want to do such a thing implies that God’s power has bounds, and that he is a slave to his own character.
Why should God need power, anyway? Power is what you utilize when you have a problem, a hurdle to jump, a need in your life. If God is able to manipulate matter and energy with some spiritual magic, then what good is power? To admit that God uses power is to concede that God has problems, needs and physical challenges. Why drown the human race with a flood? Why not just make them disappear? Why make the earth split open to swallow the followers of Korah? (Numbers 16) Why not just whisper to Moses to expel them from the tribe? (One answer is that maybe God gets a kick out of seeing people tortured in horrible ways—“That’ll show you not to question the authority of Moses!” That certainly weakens the claim of omnibenevolence.)
The combination of omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence is what makes the Problem of Evil such a thorn to traditional theists. Although technically the Problem of Evil is not an incoherency argument—the existence of evil is positive empirical evidence against the existence of an all-good deity—it is the “omni” in omnibenevolence that makes it incompatible with omniscience. If God knows in advance that there will be evil as a direct or indirect result of his actions, then he is not all good. He is at least partly responsible for the harm. Since God has the desire and the power to eliminate evil, why doesn’t he?
If God truly is all-knowing and all-powerful, then he is not omnibenevolent when he does not stop unnecessary harm. This is especially true when he is asked to do so by his children, who claim to love him (and he them) and who pray for his protection, believing he meant it when he said that “All things whatsoever you shall ask in prayer believing, you shall receive.” Since the success of such praying is no better than random chance, we have empirical evidence that God, if he exists, does not care. He cannot possibly be all three “omnis” at once. How could he have created an angel named Lucifer who possessed some quirk in his character that would cause him to go wrong? If this were deliberate, then God is an accessory to evil. If it were accidental, then God is not omnipotent.
Omnipotence contradicts omniscience. To be omniscient means that all future facts are known to the person who is all-knowing. This means that the set of knowable facts is fixed and unchangeable. If facts cannot be changed, then this limits the power of God. If God knows what will happen tomorrow, then he is impotent to change it. If he changes it anyway, then he was not omniscient.
And this brings us to FANG, my Freewill Argument for the Nonexistence of God. (I was not the first to think of this, but I claim the acronym.) Whether theists think God is all-powerful, or merely very powerful, or even self-limiting in his power, they must think that God is at least free to exercise whatever power he has. Whether humans have free will or not is a good question—atheists as well as theists disagree about that. But there are very few believers, if any, who think God himself does not have free will. God is usually defined as a person, after all, and we normally think of a person as having the ability to make decisions, which requires some concept of freedom, whether real or illusory. Since God, according to theists, is not illusory and is the perfect person, then he has perfect freedom, or so you would think. Otherwise, Christians are worshipping a robot.
In order to make a freely chosen decision you have to have at least two options, each of which can be avoided while the other (or “another,” if there are more than two) is selected. To be able to freely choose, there has to be a period of uncertainty or indeterminacy during which the options remain open and during which you could change your mind before it is too late. Free will, if it exists, requires that you not know the future. However, if you are omniscient, you already know all of your future choices and you are not free to change what you know in advance. You cannot make decisions. You do not have a period of uncertainty and flexibility before selecting. You do not have free will. If you do change what you thought you knew in advance, exercising the prerogative of omnipotence, then you were not omniscient in the first place. You can’t have both free will and omniscience. If God is defined as having free will and knowing the future, then God does not exist.
By the way, this contributes to my compatibilist position on human free will. (Not all atheists agree with me.) I am a determinist, which means that I don’t think complete libertarian free will exists. Since we don’t know the future—and it is probably good that we don’t because it is the attempt to anticipate the future that makes our survival-machine minds what they are—we have the
illusion
of free will, which to me is what “free will” actually means.
illusion
of free will, which to me is what “free will” actually means.
I admit that my definition of free will is subject to debate. To me, acting as if we have it while openly admitting that we don’t is a good strategy for getting through life and making moral judgments based on “freely” chosen motives, which also provides for accountability. In any event, if we knew the future we would not be arguing whether free will exists. It shouldn’t bother us that we don’t have actual free will because neither does God, if he is omniscient.
Omnipresence is also a problem. To be “present” means for matter and/or energy to occupy space-time at some spatial coordinates at a particular point in time. Technology extends our senses with machines, allowing viewers, for example, to be “present” at a televised event, but even this requires a physical connection: camera, microphone, sensor, receiver, speaker. God is not “present” at every location in the universe, not in any ordinary sense. To say that God is present in a “spiritual” sense is meaningless until “spirit” is defined. Since spirit is normally described as something “immaterial” or “transcendent” (which merely identify what it is
not,
not what it
is
), this means that being present spiritually is not to be present at all. We may as well say that “God is sshhffhgtyrh” rather than “God is omnipresent.” Those theists who argue that God exists “outside of time” make it even worse. If you live “outside” of temporal coordinates, then you cannot be present “inside” space-time. You are non-present rather than omnipresent. If God is defined as a nonmaterial or nontemporal being who is omnipresent—occupying physical reality—then God does not exist.
not,
not what it
is
), this means that being present spiritually is not to be present at all. We may as well say that “God is sshhffhgtyrh” rather than “God is omnipresent.” Those theists who argue that God exists “outside of time” make it even worse. If you live “outside” of temporal coordinates, then you cannot be present “inside” space-time. You are non-present rather than omnipresent. If God is defined as a nonmaterial or nontemporal being who is omnipresent—occupying physical reality—then God does not exist.
John 7:38 reports: “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” I take this to mean that those who believe in an omnipresent, totally free, all-knowing, all-good and all-powerful god are omni-aqueous: all-wet.
Chapter Eight:
Cosmological Kalamity
“Daddy, if God made everything, who made God?” My daughter, Kristi, asked me this when she was five years old.
“Good question,” I replied. Even a child sees the problem with the traditional cosmological argument.
The old cosmological argument claimed that since everything has a cause, there must be a first cause, an “unmoved first mover.” Today no theistic philosophers defend that primitive line because if
everything
needs a cause, so does God. The only way they can deal with my kindergartner’s question is if they can first get God off the hook.
everything
needs a cause, so does God. The only way they can deal with my kindergartner’s question is if they can first get God off the hook.
One approach has been to claim that only
effects
need a cause. Since a first cause is not an effect, it is exempt from causation. Another attempt conceives of a contingent cause of the universe, resting at the top of a pyramid of relationships rather than at the beginning of a chain of temporal events. But this
a priori
tactic of exempting the conclusion (a creator) from the causality required of everything else—with no evidence that any special “causeless” or “noncontingent” objects actually exist—makes the creator a part of the definition of the premise, which is circular reasoning. These versions fail to get God off the hook.
effects
need a cause. Since a first cause is not an effect, it is exempt from causation. Another attempt conceives of a contingent cause of the universe, resting at the top of a pyramid of relationships rather than at the beginning of a chain of temporal events. But this
a priori
tactic of exempting the conclusion (a creator) from the causality required of everything else—with no evidence that any special “causeless” or “noncontingent” objects actually exist—makes the creator a part of the definition of the premise, which is circular reasoning. These versions fail to get God off the hook.
Today, a more sophisticated version of the cosmological argument is being propounded that connects early Islamic theology with current Big Bang cosmology. According to the Kalam Cosmological Argument—a medieval Islamic argument dealing with the beginning and cause of the universe—infinity is just a concept. An actual infinity does not exist in reality. If the series of temporal events is infinite, we never could have traversed it to arrive at the current moment. Yet we
have
reached this moment; therefore, the series of events must have had a beginning. Today, cosmologists almost universally confirm that our observable universe began at a Big Bang, a singularity
2
that brought into existence not only matter and energy, but space and time as well.
have
reached this moment; therefore, the series of events must have had a beginning. Today, cosmologists almost universally confirm that our observable universe began at a Big Bang, a singularity
2
that brought into existence not only matter and energy, but space and time as well.
Building on this, Christian philosophers such as William Lane Craig are promoting an up-to-date version of the cosmological argument that they think avoids the problems of earlier attempts:
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
This may be seductive to those who already believe in a god. To me, it seems suspicious. The clause “Everything that begins to exist” sounds artificial. It is not a phrase we hear outside the context of theistic philosophy. It appears to be an
ad hoc
construction designed to smooth over earlier apologetic efforts.
ad hoc
construction designed to smooth over earlier apologetic efforts.
The curious clause “Everything that begins to exist” implies that reality can be divided into two sets: items that begin to exist (BE), and those that do not (NBE). In order for this cosmological argument to work, NBE (if such a set is meaningful) cannot be empty
3
, but more important, it must accommodate
more than one item
to avoid being simply a synonym for God. If God is the only object allowed in NBE, then BE is merely a mask for the creator and the premise “everything that begins to exist has a cause” is equivalent to “everything except God has a cause.” As with the earlier failures, this puts God into the definition of the premise of the argument that is supposed to prove God’s existence, and we are in fact begging the question.
3
, but more important, it must accommodate
more than one item
to avoid being simply a synonym for God. If God is the only object allowed in NBE, then BE is merely a mask for the creator and the premise “everything that begins to exist has a cause” is equivalent to “everything except God has a cause.” As with the earlier failures, this puts God into the definition of the premise of the argument that is supposed to prove God’s existence, and we are in fact begging the question.
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