The End of Christianity (42 page)

There isn't anything left that qualifies even for consideration. The arguments from beauty and intelligibility come to mind, but they are directly fallacious for failing to take into account the relevant science. The claim that our “experience of beauty” and “the universe being intelligible to us” are more likely on NID simply isn't true. These things may be likely on NID (I won't query that here), but they are just as likely on the absence of NID. Humans evolved to see beauty in certain properties of the universe (including the beauty of languages, efficiency, and puzzle solving, three skills of incalculable value to differential reproductive success), not the other way around. Thus the universe was not designed to be beautiful. We were designed to see it as beautiful—by natural selection.
⁴⁶
There is no evidence here for NID. Even at best, NID's probability on the existence of “beauty” is simply its prior probability, which can be no better than 25 percent.

Likewise, humans evolved to understand the world they are in, not the other way around. Even then, the universe is so difficult to understand that hardly anyone actually understands it. Quantum mechanics and relativity theory alone try the abilities of someone of above average intellect, as do chemistry, particle physics, and cosmological science. Thus neither was the universe designed to be easily understood nor were we well designed to understand it. We must train ourselves for years, taxing our natural symbolic and problem-solving intelligence to its very limits, before we are able to understand it,
and even then
we still admit it's pretty darned hard to understand. If you have to rigorously train yourself with great difficulty to understand something, it cannot be said it was
designed
to be understandable. To the contrary, you are then
making
it understandable by searching for and teaching yourself whatever system of tricks and tools you need to understand it. Our ability to learn any system of tricks and tools necessary to do that is an inevitable and fully explicable product of natural selection; that ability derives from our evolved capacity to use symbolic language (which is of inestimable value to survival yet entails the ability to learn and use any language—including logic and mathematics, which are just languages, with words and rules like any other language) and from our evolved capacity to solve problems and predict behaviors (through hypothesis formation and testing, and the abilities of learning and improvisation, which are all of inestimable value to survival yet entail the ability to do the same things in any domain of knowledge, not just in the directly useful domains of resource acquisition, threat avoidance, and social system management).
⁴⁷

Thus the
actual
intelligibility of the universe is not at all impressive, given its extreme difficulty and our need to train ourselves to get the skills to understand it—indeed, our need even to have discovered those skills in the first place: the universe only began to be “intelligible” in this sense barely two thousand years ago, and we didn't get much good at reliably figuring it out until about four hundred years ago, yet we've been living in civilizations for over
six thousand
years, and had been trying to figure out the world before that for over
forty thousand
of years. Given these facts (our universe's actual intelligibility), NID is actually improbable: the probability of the degree of intelligibility we
actually
observe is 100 percent if there is no NID, but substantially
less
than 100 percent if NID caused it, in fact no more than 50 percent at best. It is almost certainly far less, since a God could easily have made the world far more intelligible by making the world itself simpler (as Aristotle once thought it was), or our abilities greater (we could be born with knowledge of the universe or of formal mathematics or scientific logic or with brains capable of far more rapid and complex learning and computation, etc.), or both, and it's hard to imagine why he wouldn't. God gave us instead exactly all the very same limitations and obstacles we would already expect if God didn't exist in the first place.
⁴⁸
Given his prior probability of no more than 25 percent, once again we end up with a posterior probability of NID that's no greater than 15 percent on the evidence of an “intelligible universe.” In other words, there's probably no NID here, either.
⁴⁹

CONCLUSION

Once we consider
all
the evidence, no reasonable and informed person can reject the conclusion that it's simply improbable that any god designed life or the universe. Even at its best, that can have no greater probability than 15 percent.
⁵⁰
And as argued from the beginning, that's assuming an absurdly high prior probability of 25 percent and an unreasonably high consequent probability on the God hypothesis in every case of 50 percent. From the point I made about prior probability, it would be unreasonable even to imagine the prior probability was as high as one in many trillions, but outright irrational to think it any higher than 1 in 100, since 1 in 100 things in this universe not made by known life are certainly not known to have been made by God (prior to any of the evidence examined here). And from the case made in each section about the consequent probabilities, it would be unreasonable to allow God even a 10 percent chance of bizarrely doing things exactly the same way as a godless universe would. Which gives us a result on any one of the above arguments of 0.001 (rounded), only a one-tenth of 1 percent chance that NID exists. The actual probability is surely far lower. Either way (whether we stick with generous estimates or not) it's so improbable that this particular universe, with this kind of life, would be produced by a god, but so very certain that this is exactly the kind of life and universe that would exist if none of it were planned at all, that there can be no rational basis for believing a god exists (at least as here defined: “a very powerful self-existent being who creates things by design”).

Because the Christian God by definition is the Creator God and only made the world for life, and only made life for humankind, the fact that NID is improbable entails the Christian God is improbable (whereas any god who had different plans will not be the Christian God). The actual evidence of life and the universe thus argues against Christianity and in fact effectively refutes it. The universe clearly was made for neither us nor life in general. We barely arrived in it, and barely survive in it. And life was clearly not made for humankind, as we appeared only billions of years after life had already been thriving without us. We gained dominance only through our own initiative and only against great and ceaseless opposition from the forces of nature and its nonhuman inhabitants. This is all as we should expect if, and only if, we and our world are a natural accident. Thus I have proved in this chapter that neither the nature of the universe nor of life or its origin, are predicted or explained by Christianity, which sooner predicts entirely different observations in all three domains. Instead, all that we do observe is fully predicted by there being no god at all. Hence I have demonstrated with logical certainty that the truth of Christianity is very improbable on these facts. And what is very improbable should not be believed. When enough people realize this, Christianity will come to an end.

Even more importantly, once we realize that the universe and life and the human race are all accidental, a very crucial conclusion follows that Christians often avoid reaching or outright resist: if this is all an unplanned accident, then we need to roll up our sleeves and get to work learning how to control the universe in order to make it the way an intelligent engineer would and should have made it. We must work to eradicate disease and avert natural disasters, to increase habitability and joy and justice, to achieve immortality, and every other thing a well-governed universe would have, because no one else is going to do any of this for us. And to protect us from our own error and hubris, we need to remake ourselves into responsible creators, self-critical, attentive to all the consequences of what we create, and acting and designing wisely in light of what we learn. Prayer and faith and rituals are of no real use and only distract us from what we should be doing instead to make the world a better place. We should instead devote our lives to science and learning, and the well-informed contemplation of our own selves and our social and physical world.

by D. Victor J. Stenger

INTRODUCTION

D
inesh D'Souza is a well-known right-wing policy analyst and author who recently has taken on the role of Christian apologist. He has a degree in English from Dartmouth. From 1985 to 1987, he was editor of
Policy Review
, a conservative journal published by the Heritage Foundation, now part of the Hoover Institution. He served as a policy adviser to the Reagan administration until 1988 and followed this with stints as a fellow for the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution.

D'Souza has summed up the cause of Christianity with books, speeches, and high-profile debates with famous atheists such as Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Peter Singer, Michael Shermer, Dan Barker, and John Loftus. His recent books include
What's So Great About Christianity
¹
and—the primary reference for this essay—
Life After Death: The Evidence?

In
Life After Death
, D'Souza insists that he is making the case for an afterlife purely on the basis of science and reason and not relying on any spooky stuff. He promises “no ghosts, no levitations, no exorcisms, no mediums, no conversations with the dead” and a case that “is entirely based on reasoned argument and mainstream scholarship.”
³
Although he does not always stick to this promise, he does give a good summary of arguments for life after death, some of which I had not heard before. So the book provides a framework from which to discuss both evidentiary claims and claims that rely more on extrapolations from observed facts.

D'Souza revels in his role as a “Christian cage fighter,” challenging “the honest and thoughtful atheist to consider the possibility of being wrong, and…open his mind to persuasion by rational argument.”
⁴
I am perfectly happy to accept that challenge.

Life after death can be identified with the ancient notion that the human mind is not purely a manifestation of material forces in the brain but has a separate, immaterial component called the soul that survives the death of the brain along with the rest of the body. This is a hypothesis that can be scientifically tested. Evidence for its validity could be provided by a verifiable glimpse of a world beyond obtained while communicating with the dead or during a religious experience. All the believer claiming such knowledge has to do is provide some knowledge that neither she nor anyone else could have previously known and have that information later confirmed. Let us investigate whether such evidence has been produced.

FALSE ADVERTISING

D'Souza begins his second chapter by accusing atheists of engaging in false advertising when they say there is no reason to believe in an afterlife. Their view is based, as is most disbelief, on the absence of evidence. D'Souza asserts, “The atheist has no better proof that there isn't life after death than the believer has that there is.” He says that new atheists Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins reject the afterlife “on the basis of no evidence whatsoever.” The believer, on the other hand, has a reason to believe: “divine revelation as expressed in a sacred text.” The believer is “trusting in what is held to be an unimpeachable source, namely God.” So much for basing his case on “reasoned argument and mainstream scholarship.”
⁵

Of course, if we are to assume as a prerequisite for our discussion that God exists and he has revealed truths in the scriptures, then there is not much left to say and there would be no purpose in D'Souza's book or my essay. I am going to summarily reject D'Souza's assumption that God and revelation exist and require that, along with the afterlife, they be demonstrated by empirical evidence.

None of the claimed prophetic revelations of the Bible have been confirmed, and many have been disconfirmed. Independent historical and archaeological sources have already established that the most important stories of the Bible are myths.
⁶
This is a long and contentious debate, and I need not get into any of the details. Quite simply, if a scholarly consensus existed that biblical revelations were confirmed, then we again would have no need for this discussion. We would all believe in God and the afterlife for the same reasons we believe in neutrinos and DNA—a consensus among scientists and other scholars that there is sufficient empirical evidence buttressed by careful, objective, rational analysis.

D'Souza accurately quotes me as saying that life after death is a scientific question and that “no claimed connection with the hereafter has ever been verified…in controlled scientific experiments.”
⁷
He also quotes a similar statement by the Nobel Prize winning biologist and codiscoverer of DNA, the late Sir Francis Crick: If religious believers “really believe in life after death, why do they not conduct sound experiments to verify it?”
⁸
D'Souza's weak response is that “most religious believers don't believe in the afterlife on the basis of scientific tests.”
⁹
Surely they would believe with greater conviction, and many more would become believers, if such evidence were ever produced.

D'Souza further asserts, “There are no controlled empirical experiments that can resolve the issue either way.”
¹⁰
Of course there are. Since the nineteenth century, reputable scientists have been performing experiments to test the alleged powers of so-called psychics and mediums who claim to talk to the dead. Not a single report of communication with the dead has ever been verified.
¹¹
Once again, just have the psychic tell us something he and we did not know that later was verified. Suppose a medium speaking to the dead Isaac Newton in 1890 came back with the information that a weapon of immense power would destroy two cities in 1945. Then we would be forced to believe in a world beyond, whether we liked it or not.

ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE

D'Souza refers to what he calls the “popular atheist slogan,” “The absence of evidence is evidence of absence.”
¹²
D'Souza objects, arguing that “not found” is not the same thing as “found not to exist.” Of course this is true, and atheists agree. In fact, legendary atheist Carl Sagan was often quoted as saying, “[A]bsence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” However, I claim that absence of evidence
can
be evidence for absence,
when the evidence should be there and is not found.
We can apply this principle to the question of life after death. There should be evidence, and there isn't any.

D'Souza points out that scientists believe in the existence of many things that are undetectable by scientific instruments, such as the “dark matter” and “dark energy” that pervade the universe.
¹³
However, if these exist, we can expect that eventually they either will be detected or falsified. In the meantime, we have indirect evidence that is sufficiently robust for us to include these two components in our models until new data should rule otherwise.

This is a common circumstance in physics. For example, physicists in the late 1920s discovered missing energy in nuclear
beta-decay.
The more parsimonious hypothesis, proposed by Wolfgang Pauli, was that a previously unknown particle is emitted in the reaction even though that particle was not directly detected. Enrico Fermi dubbed it the
neutrino.
The less parsimonious alternative was a violation of the fundamental physical principle of energy conservation. It was not until 1956 that the neutrino was detected in an experiment conducted by Fred Reines and Clyde Cowan. They observed the reverse beta-decay process induced by neutrinos from a nuclear reactor.

So D'Souza is right that scientists do accept the possibility of phenomena that are not directly observed. But they at least demand some indirect evidence before they are taken seriously. In the case of dark matter and dark energy, both are postulated to explain observed gravitational and astronomical effects that are otherwise unexplained. While alternate explanations might yet be found, these two substances of still unknown (but still clearly material) nature currently provide the simplest known account for what is observed. We will see if we have comparably strong indirect evidence for life after death.

A COMMON BELIEF

It is a well-known fact that a belief in immortality has been common, although not unanimous, among many cultures throughout history. D'Souza takes this as further “evidence” that life after death exists, once more breaking his promise of rationality. This is like saying that, since a belief that the world is flat was common among all cultures throughout history, it follows that the world really is flat.

D'Souza also tries to dispose of the common atheist argument that, with so many different religions in the world having such diverse ideas about god and the hereafter, how does one know his particular belief is the correct one? It is a fact that the overwhelming majority of people practice the religion of the family and culture into which they were born. Yet most are sure theirs is the “true religion” while all others are false. As atheists like to say to believers, “We are not that much different. You believe every religion but yours is bunk. I just believe one more religion is bunk than you do.”

D'Souza admits that many religions have different views of the afterlife that depend on their geography and culture. Muslims imagine heaven as a desert oasis. American Indians envisage happy hunting grounds full of deer and buffalo. Vikings believed that their eternity would be spent in Valhalla, where they will do battle every day and have a drunken feast every night.
¹⁴
And, of course, the views of the afterlife in Eastern religions are widely different from these, often focused on reincarnation, a totally alien form of an afterlife compared to that imagined in the West.

Nevertheless, D'Souza asserts, “[T]he presence of disagreement in no way implies the absence of truth.” It sure does. He tries to show that the differences are not so great. Basically, he asserts, there are just two types of immortality. In the Eastern version, the soul reunites after death with some transcendent and ultimate reality, losing its individuality. The Western view, on the other hand, is one of individual bodily resurrection.
¹⁵
They both can't be right.

D'Souza refers to a scholarly study by Alan Segal showing that every culture in history has had some concept of continued existence.
¹⁶
I have read Segal, and what strikes me is the vast variety of belief. You would think that if humanity had some revealed facts about the afterlife there would be more agreement. Still, D'Souza insists, humans possess a religious impulse that is rooted in a “sense of the numinous,” that “there is something terrible and aweinspiring and sublime about existence that seems to derive from another kind of reality.” Death, then, is the link between two realities: the world we live in and a more permanent “world beyond the world.”
¹⁷
Those more in touch with reality may conclude it derives from fear of death.

D'Souza makes the interesting observation that each of the three Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—has two different teachings about immortality. The official teaching is bodily resurrection, while the “more contemplative types” hold an unofficial view of the immortality of the soul derived not from biblical or Qur'anic sources but from Greek philosophy. D'Souza tries to make atheists look like dunces for not being aware of this fact—as if none of us ever heard of Plato. Typically, he does not quote any atheists specifically.

While the Torah, the first five books of the Jewish Bible, contains no mention of an afterlife, immortality was adopted into Judaism sometime before the first century BCE. Whereas Plato held that the soul escapes the body after death, the Persians introduced the notion that the whole person, body and soul, survives death, which view the Jews then adopted.
¹⁸
This idea was adopted in turn by Christianity and Islam and given a much more central role than it has in Judaism.

The enormous Greek influence on Christianity that was initiated by Paul (the New Testament was written entirely in Greek) led many Christians to adopt the Greek view that only disembodied souls survive death.
¹⁹
With the Copernican revolution in the Middle Ages, heaven was no longer a place beyond the stars and hell was no longer inside earth, but rather these were viewed as immaterial places inhabited by immaterial souls. Nevertheless, bodily resurrection is still anticipated by both D'Souza's Catholic Church and many Protestant sects. Some Protestant churches, such as former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Pentecostal church, take seriously the Book of Revelation in which the Son of Man (assumed to be Jesus) returns to rule the Kingdom of God on earth. Earth is still the center of the universe to these believers, and the inhabitants of the new kingdom will all have perfect but still fully material human bodies. Why else would the bodily resurrection of Jesus be so important?

But D'Souza is espousing a far more sophisticated picture of the afterworld.
²⁰
He adopts Augustine's view that God created time along with the universe and is himself outside of time. Later Christian theologians formulated life after death as being lived in an eternal realm disconnected from space and time. Actually, this realm should not even be characterized as “eternal” since that is a temporal term. It's kind of a constant “now.” Thus D'Souza notes, “Christianity since Augustine does not espouse life after death, but rather life ‘beyond’ death.”
²¹
1 am not sure of the difference.