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You are here: Home > Forum > A Place of Safety > General Talk > Reasons and Grounds - very long
Reasons and Grounds - very long  [message #30140] Fri, 24 March 2006 05:00 Go to previous message
JFR is currently offline  JFR

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Location: Israel
Registered: October 2004
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I apologise for starting a new thread but what I wanted to contribute to the discussion spans more than one of the existant threads. Ted and Deeeej (and others) have been having (yet) another discussion about science and religion. As someone who "is not now and never has been" a Christian but does subscribe most emphatically to a religion I find myself seeing good points on both sides of the argument. I apologise for the inordiante length of this post, but it is something I wanted to "get off my chest".

I can see no point in religious fundamentalism: if God created us and gave us our intellect surely God wanted us to use it! One of the greatest philosophers of my religion (Judaism) was Moses Maimonides [Egypt, 1135-1204]. Besides being a religious 'giant' of his age (and ever since) he was also a 'scientist' and physician. He was an out and out Aristotelian. Aristotle had held that 'matter' had always existed, so there was no creation. The Bible (read: Old Testament), which Maimonides held to be of divine origin, says that the universe was created. He was faced with an 'immovable object' (Aristotle) and an 'irresistable force' (Bible) and intellectually he was caught between a rock and a hard place. In his resolution of his problem he says something which is typically Jewish and is an object lesson to all fundamentalists. He says that he can reject Aristotle's teaching of 'the eternity of matter' because it is only a theory and he prefers to accept a different theory (that of the Bible); BUT, if Aristotle had been able to prove his theory he (Maimonides) would not have hesitated to 'interpret' the Bible accordingly: "The gates of interpretation are not closed". God gave us a brain and meant us to use it. Any religious person who accepts every statement of the Bible as unerring truth is not using his divinely given intellect.

I found a site on the web where there is a very long essay about God and Creation from a Jewish point of view. The author first deals with the question of belief:

Basically we may divide thinking people into four groups:

those who believe in God (or think they do) and have no problems with their belief;

those who do not believe in God (or think they don't) and have no problems with their disbelief;

those who believe in God but with reservations;

and those who do not believe in God but would like to, if only they could find a formula that is intellectually and emotionally acceptable.

Our study here will not deal with the first two groups: the members of the former group, who have a traditional belief in God, do not see themselves as being in need of our help, and the members of the latter group, who do not believe in God at all, ask none. In both these cases the question at issue is reasons for belief: for the believer they are already irrelevant and for the non-believer acceptable ones cannot be offered, for what he requires is 'proof'.

Our concern here is oriented towards the problems that face the members of the other two groups. They are not looking for 'reasons' for belief; they are seeking 'grounds' for belief. (For this distinction between reasons for belief and grounds for belief see "Sacred Fragments", Niel Gillman, 1989.)

To substantiate the 'grounds' for belief he brings several statements from respected scientists:

It is, however, interesting that the more science learns about the universe and its origins the more science seems to be pointing in the direction of a deity in order to explain the origin of the universe. It is not just the old Aristotelian 'proof' of the 'unmoved mover' that requires an uncreated originator of everything else that exists. Fred Hoyle [1915-2001], one of the greatest astro-physicists of recent times, was an ardent proponent of the 'steady state' theory, which could have obviated the need to posit an original creation. However, subsequent discoveries led in the opposite direction, and the 'working hypothesis' of astro-physics today is the so-called 'big bang' which posits an origin for the material universe and therefore re-opens the discussion concerning an 'originator'.

It was the discovery of radiation background by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in 1965 that was the first step in the growing realization that it certainly could be that the existence of the universe and life in it is not just happenstance. Many highly respected names in the world of modern science have expressed opinions that point directly and clearly in the direction of a 'purposeful originator' of the universe and of life that exists in it. The likelihood that life 'just developed' in the universe is so improbable that Michael Turner, a renowned astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and Fermilab in USA has said of the conditions that prevail in the universe that permit the existence of life:

the precision is as if one could throw a dart across the entire universe and hit a bullseye one millimeter in diameter on the other side.

Perhaps we can better understand what has prompted Turner's remark if we consider the following statement by Dr. David Deutsch, from the Institute of Mathematics at Oxford University, England:

If we nudge one of these constants just a few percent in one direction, stars burn out within a million years of their formation, and there is no time for evolution. If we nudge it a few percent in the other direction, then no elements heavier than helium form. No carbon, no life. Not even any chemistry. No complexity at all. If anyone claims not to be surprised by the special features that the universe has, he is hiding his head in the sand. These special features are surprising and unlikely.

Sir Fred Hoyle, once one of the most ardent advocates of the steady-state theory, later revised his views in the opposite direction, and is even more explicit:

A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintendent has monkeyed with the physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. I do not believe that any physicist who examined the evidence could fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce within stars.

Dr. Paul Davies, professor of theoretical physics at Adelaide University, Australia, concurs:

The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge, and would be total chaos if any of the natural 'constants' were off even slightly. You see, even if you dismiss man as a chance happening, the fact remains that the universe seems unreasonably suited to the existence of life - almost contrived - you might say a 'put-up job'.

There are many other such statements available, but I think that I have given enough room to substantiate the claim that those who believe in God (whether their belief is theistic or deistic) certainly have "grounds" for their belief, grounds that derive from highly respectable scientific opinion. (These grounds were not available only a mere 40 years ago.)

If you have read this far you have my thanks - and you deserve a medal! Over and out.


The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
 
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