Letters to the Editor
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All you need to know:
God is the guy that feeds the turtles.
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Interesting, but...
Giberson should read Steven Pinker. That might help him with the mysteries of consciousness. I also think Giberson would mock Dawkins if Dawkins strayed too far into his domain (physics), yet he seems to think he can have cart blanche on biology? I am not a dogmatic atheist... more of a pragmatic rationalist. Religion has yet to adequately fill any gaps I have in my "search for meaning."
-sfo
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Failure to engage ...
The subject of this article is not a firebreathing fundamentalist, and that's all to the good. But he's failed to engage a large number of areas which refute traditional doctrines of his religion. Not the least of which is evolution of the nervous system and intelligence, the issue of the distinction between "universe" and "hubble volume", and much else. Science and religion come into conflict in those specific areas (and others) but most importantly in method. A scientific world view does not permit authority (ancient texts, clergy) as a big determiner in the merit of an argument, nor revelation. The latter is especially interesting: consider the (perhaps legendary) story of Kekule, discoverer of the structure of benzene. How did he find it? It came to him in a dream. Many religions arose in a similar way. But the religious of all ages have then claimed divine or other inspiration and proclaimed the revelation. Kekule, at least in this respect a man of science, went and tested his new view, in this case vindicating it (more or less).
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I don't ask for much...
Just one little fact. "I believe in God" tells me a fact about the speaker, not about the existence of God. Darwin gave me facts and verifiable theories based on those facts. Giberson gives me nothing but his own fervent desire to believe in the unverifiable.
I've studied the Scriptures. I've read inspirational literature. I've been a faithful church member for most of my life. I desperately wish that God exists. But there are no facts. And in the end, I come to the sad conclusion that wishing doesn't make it so.
I've heard enough empty, self-important preaching about how sophisticated and mature your faith is. Just give me one single fact.
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Darwin and (fill in the blank. please.)
Karl Giberson is the brightest of the believers you have interviewed, and I applaud his fine-grained defense of evolution. He is the first of these I would welcome at a lively dinner and not consider a fish in a barrel.
Nonetheless the interviewer, as usual, does not confront him on the essential issues, nor catch the opportunities to deepen the conversation. Perhaps he was intimidated by Karl's ability to "counteract your best arguments".
Would that this was just a dinner party game among the erudite. Giberson's healthy rationality puts him well outside the main body of Christianity as practiced and expressed, and nowhere influential or useful. And the stakes are not the prize for best bon mot or clever finesse on philosophical conundrums but rather the fate of science and critical thinking in western culture.
I am with Karl when he says "religious experiences are very common and meaningful for a lot of people", and with him when he questions their "genuineness". Citing fraud and seizures covers the waterfront, if seizures can stand in for brain (mis)functions that trick us into false beliefs. But the very next statement is his belief in a personal God. It is here where anyone asserting this must be made to account for the simple and profound arguments against such a ludicrous idea, that a sentience has the physical properties necessary to simply interact with humans, much less the inclination.
These arguments are well-defined from many sources, and learning them should be part of the interviewer's due diligence for this series. They are in fact the essential issues:
-- The problem of Evil. If God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-wise, then why does evil exist? Any sane person who reads on this, and declines to wave hands at "God's will" or "mystery" explanations, will ultimately confess it breaks down the inanity of a personal God definitively. The issues are more complex than meet the eye, too: if all-powerful and all-knowing, then all pain and suffering are a result of deliberate inaction. Spina Bifida, child slaves around the Red Sea, 12 months of excruciating death by facial cancer, millions of Mesoamericans dead; all were deliberate. But if all-knowing is invoked as the answer -- he has a "plan" -- then his entire creation was deliberately established as a hothouse of death and torment, a clockwork where free will is illusory. Huh?
-- Since recent studies show no evidence of the effectiveness of prayer, and history itself proves this even more dramatically, in what sense is "personal God" meaningful? If we believe God cares, how do we rationalize God soothing us (the only, and very subjective, benefit of prayer) as we sit in our Lexus, or watch our kids play softball, or pity at a distance the tsunami victims as they slosh about in the surf on our plasma screens, while no succor, no relief or pity is shown to children whose pleas must in fact be the most heart-tearing on earth, in the Congo, the slums of Rio, sweatshops in Malaysia.
There is only one prayer worth making: to end the extreme suffering of those most helpless among us. The only moral choice for any religious person who believes in supernatural forces is to exert maximum effort to bending those forces toward that end.
But again and again the believers, following clear instructions in their holy books, obsess over the minutiae of their own behavior, or the petty wrongs of those around them, or their own selfish needs. If a personal God exists then, having so instructed his followers, he is a vile and despicable monster.
-- No God can interact with human beings without a physical method or agency. At some point there is an interface. All falls apart with this. First, demonstrate the existence of something outside of existence. Something independent of physical laws, but with definable features and structure and dynamism of its own. Uh-huh. Pretending that this can be proven for the moment, now identify how it interfaces with the physical world. M-hmm.
-- If "beyond" physical reality then space AND time are mooted. Thus God is eternal, I guess, but he also has ways of "descending" into time's arrow, and once he does he is subject to physical laws. Like death. And if "outside of time" then how is he is connected so profoundly to consequences?
I am startled and delighted by his understanding that Dawkins and Gould "are very energetic people who love life and do lots of fun things. I don't think Christians are wise to say we've got the corner on purpose." Not only is this outside normative Christian thinking but it seems to undermine the principal tenet of Christianity, making him not "authentically" Christian. That is, if our deeds are sufficient to determine morality, and quality of life, then what of "way, truth, and the light" and "but through me"? And what do we need belief for if it is a moral quagmire, and we live energetic, purposeful, fun lives without it?
He concludes on a very sour note, and it explains perhaps all that precedes it, in fact explains Karl himself: "People come to religious faith in a variety of ways." In fact almost all people are indoctrinated in specific religious beliefs from an early age, when magical thinking is part of our wiring. It is deliberate, methodical, and it works. For the rest of our lives we filter life experiences through this (other)world(ly) view. Once we leave wish-stories behind we see the majesty and awesome, terrible beauty of our universe more clearly.
Karl would have us pretend atoms and molecules are secondary to fantasy. No thanks.