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If you are a believer may I suggest you try a short thought experiment. You may like to set an egg timer or alarm clock to allow yourself a few minutes of THINKING without a safety net. You must purge your brain totally of all thoughts of God and faith. This is where the timer may come in. To do the experiment properly you have to unload all the ideas in you head that come from religion, including those small TSR (terminate and stay ready) programs that run all the time in the background, like virus checkers, stopping you from thinking properly. Write down "I believed in God" on a piece of paper and then put it near the timer, when the time is up you can remind yourself, and if you want you can then reboot your religion. But to do the experiment correctly you have to wipe out all those messages in your head.

Now relax, take a deep breath and imagine.

Imagine there is no God. Imagine that the Universe we see is there for no specific reason, or if it has a reason we are not the reason. Then look around you. Is the Earth any less beautiful than it was before? I suggest that it is just as beautiful and also infinitely more magnificent, wonderful and mysterious."God made it like that" is not really a deeply satisfying answer to any question any person has ever asked. Don't reboot just yet.

Next imagine a little bit of slime that replicates itself. Don't ask why, there does not need to be a theological explanation for a chemical reaction. Replication leads to proliferation. Then corruption within the replication leads to modification. Most of that corrupted slime is less capable of replication, but some is more capable. Naturally that which is better at replicating replicates better. This is true by definition. Some people think that a statement that is true by definition is a weak argument, they call it by the BAD WORD, tautology, this word condemns it. It should not. Three is three by tautology, it is still three. Evolution is an extremely powerful force for progressive change. Do not read "progressive" as a value judgement, as I mistakenly did for nearly twenty years. Progressive taxation, it only dawned on me a few months ago that it simply means taking a progressively larger proportion of the taxpayer's income or wealth, simple as that, no value judgement implied.

Evolution leads to a progressive series of changes. No design, no plan, no teleology. "Evolution" is not a force with a plan any more than "coastal erosion" is. It is a process that is only revealed by hindsight. Both evolution and coastal erosion are of course "just theories". By a series of non random changes the replicating slime became better at replicating by becoming animals and plants, or staying as bacteria. Do not even try to comprehend the timescales involved in this process, the human brain is merely the most elaborately organized matter in the Universe, it is not capable of grasping clearly the concept of the number 1,000,000 never mind the concept of billions of years.

Certain animals developed more powerful brains, in one species that process of increasing brain power took off in a near exponential rise.

The rise in the brain power of our species was probably caused by competition between members of our species. The intelligence that we have used to wreak havoc across the planet was used originally to help us outwit our competitors for food, status and mates. We needed to outwit our siblings, neighbours and the people of the next tribe. Evolutionary forces helped us to increase our raw data processing power. A better brain helped us to see into the thoughts of others, the first step to manipulating is understanding. When we possessed self awareness we could imagine what our rivals would do, and use that insight to advance our own cause.

The raw brain power that our ancestors developed for basic survival in a competitive social environment was soon put to puzzling out different problems, to running new software. A brain that evolved to develop survival and social strategies could be utilized to develop moral codes and to create stories, myths and religious culture. This pattern of running new software on hardware developed for another purpose can be clearly seen in the world of computers. Nobody invented a computer to distribute pornography or calculate horoscopes, but once the hardware is in place it can be used for many other purposes than the one which drove its development.

Religions all began with ideas bandied about, the ideas that got bandied about more were the ideas that had what it takes to get bandied about more. Here is another tautology, another truth. Weak ideas in religion go to the wall. New stronger packages of ideas take their place which come equipped with better explanations of the imponderables of life plus little error checking and protection devices which help keep the ideas pure, allowing them to be replicated without corruption.

That, in a few brief paragraphs, is a summary of the evolutionary approach to the great mysteries of life. Based on the ideas of great scientists and thinkers such as Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins. It is a view of the world that is full of magnificence and has a much better place for us than the right hand of an illusory God. It is a view of the world that does not answer all the questions man is wont to ask but all the answers it does give hold together without the tortuous explanations that the religious people use. It explains why mankind has hundreds of different supernatural explanations for creation and also why we can dismiss all of them as myths with no deep significance, no relevance and no grain of truth.

If you have a religious view you have to answer why your deeply held religious view revealed to the chosen ones is correct while other ideas also claimed to come from God via different prophets are misguided. Usually when a person claims to have heard the voice of God we make the correct judgement that the person is mentally ill. Taking your people away to the South American jungle is a sign of being a dangerous psychopath who should probably be shot in the interests of public safety, while leading your followers across the seabed in response to the inaudible word of an invisible God puts you in line to found a Nation based on your teachings.

A prophet is just a deluded maniac with followers.

If you try to argue that God exists from some idea of first principles you may convince yourself and a few followers that there must be a beneficent all powerful creator God but that does nothing to show whether Mohammed is His Prophet or that there is no way to God except through Jesus, or by handling rattlesnakes or marrying sixteen of your nieces. All the metaphysical arguments I have ever read seem very heavy going and do not achieve what they set out to do, that is, prove anything.

If I postulate two separate Universes, one created by a God and one not, and in them two separate Universities and in the Universities two different sets of philosophers I cannot imagine them having different conversations or observations. They would both be talking the same metaphysics, both would be wasting their time and other people's money.

The next part of the thought experiment is a bit harder. The TSR programs will kick into gear big time. You have to imagine that you are God. You are alone in infinite space and time with infinite power. What would you create? Would you create something with lesser powers than yourself in order that the lesser being would worship you? If you did, would you then feel good about yourself? Would you think it was a neat idea then to punish with eternal torment any of your creatures who did not worship you?

One of the most powerful set of religious error checking, virus preventing pieces of memeware is the idea that you cannot look into the mind of God and know why he does what he does. If you do let your brain off the leash you will soon realize that if there is a God like there is supposed to be he must be rather sick. A non-sick God would create true companions who could interact with him as equals, or as close to it as his unique status would allow.

Are we God's toys? Pets? Experiments? Or just a practical joke?

I am glad I don't have to believe in a sick God or a God who is so beyond my comprehension that I am not allowed to wonder whether he is sick. Given a choice between never existing and being pitched into a world in which I had to worship my creator without question I would prefer non-existence. Give me liberty or give me death.

© 1999 - 2008 by Martin Willett.

mwillett.org: Debate Unlimited