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Answers to Your Questions

Entry 2283, on 2023-07-17 at 20:58:03 (Rating 3, Religion)

I am a member of an atheist group on Facebook, and we are constantly being trolled by believers in various religions (mainly Christianity) who think they are "destroying our religion of atheism" or something similar.

Initially, I countered their points in a reasoned way, just to show them why they were wrong, but the same old nonsense appeared over and over again, as if they have learned nothing. Of course, that is exactly what the situation was, because they never consider anything contrary to their beliefs seriously.

So I thought, why not write a blog post on this subject, that I can refer these people to, so they can ignore that, instead of ignoring my Facebook comments! In addition, this could act as a summary of my current thoughts on religious ideas, and other "big questions", or what the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy calls the question of "life, the universe, and everything".

So let's get the most common one out of the way first: is there a god?

Well, I err on the side of skepticism in all things, including this. My initial assumption on everything is that it doesn't exist, until evidence is shown which makes assuming the thing does exist seem reasonable.

Note that this doesn't involve absolute 100% proof of existence, because I don't believe that sort of proof exists, outside of formal logic and maths. In other words, nothing about the real world can ever be proved beyond question, but to make discussion on these things possible, I approximate truth by saying I believe something if the evidence is good enough to being close to a proof.

So I think evolution is true although I don't think it is proved. I would say the evidence equates to 95% proof, which is good enough for it to be an explanation which I strongly suspect will never be disproved. And similarly for the Big Bang. I think proof of that is 80%, which is good enough to say there are major elements in truth there, but that some of the details or interpretation of the results might change over time (see later).

So I don't think there is single good piece of evidence for a god's existence. There are anecdotes, and conflicting results of studies though. For example, people say miracles have happened which fit a religious view, and contradict current science. But when we study these miracles objectively we see nothing, so my assumption would be that the person experiencing what they thought was a miracle misinterpreted what happened, or deliberately or accidentally exaggerated the facts, or that some other mundane explanation applied.

Other results are conflicting, some positive, some negative, and some showing no effect. For example, studies of whether prayer helps sick people show that sometimes prayer makes people better, sometimes worse, and sometimes it makes no difference. The only fair conclusion from this is that there is no effect. That doesn't mean there is no god, but it does exclude one possible source of evidence that there is.

I could go on about that subject all day, but let's move on: how did life originate?

Here we have to distinguish between two related questions: how did life got started, and how did all the different varieties of life we see today, including extremely complex varieties, come about?

As I said above, there is no reasonable doubt that evolution is the explanation for the variety of life we see today, but that doesn't help so much with how it got started.

The problem is that life started on Earth billions of years ago, and initially really just took the form of self-replicating molecules. So there is nothing that we could expect to see in the fossil record today. This means that exactly how life got started here might always be a mystery, because all the evidence is permanently destroyed.

So the answer is currently we don't know, and may never know with any level of certainty. But recent discoveries of organic molecules, including the nucleotide, uracil, in space and in samples of meteorites, show that the building blocks are life are synthesised by natural processes in space. Uracil occurs in RNA, the molecule which builds proteins based on the information contained in DNA. In fact RNA is the information transmitting molecule in viruses, so there is a very feasible path where naturally synthesised molecules might form more complex ones with the ability to replicate themselves, and that's really all that is necessary for life to get started.

So I think that some humility is necessary here, by saying that we don't know how life started, but there are numerous clues about how it might have, so this is really a matter of the evidence being lost rather than it not existing.

The origin of life is a big question, but the origin of the universe is even bigger, so what are my thoughts on that?

Well it seems to me that there can't have been a time when there was literally nothing; not even quantum fields, or the laws of physics, because then there really is both nothing for the universe to be created from, and no causal mechanism where it could have been.

So I think the greater universe, or multiverse if you prefer, must be infinite in space and time. There is no doubt that something happened 14 billion years ago, during that event that we call the Big Bang, but I don't think that can be where literally everything started.

Again, the evidence for what actually happened might be lost, both because of the effects of that long period of time, but also because of the chaotic start the universe had, in an apparent singularity which destroyed any information which might have existed earlier.

Multiverse theories might sound like science fiction, but that isn't entirely the case. I freely admit they are speculative, but the concept arises naturally from both string theory and inflationary theory, so it doesn't exist entirely without context. I do have to say here that whether string theory has any merit is highly debated, although inflationary theory is widely accepted.

So I say the multiverse has always existed and our universe is just one of infinitely many which "split off" from the greater multiverse, which is composed of an infinite number of universes, all appearing and possibly disappearing after a few hundred billion years.

Yes, I know this is highly speculative, but the speculation is based on known physics, and there are potential ways it might be confirmed or disproved, such as looking for the signatures of collisions with other universes in the cosmic microwave background.

The next question is: why is our universe apparently fine tuned to allow life?

Many people answer this by pointing out that only a very small percentage of the universe is suitable for life to exist, at least in the form we know it. So the interior of stars are too hot, interstellar space is too cold, and even most planets aren't particularly hospitable. This makes it look like the universe actually isn't fine-tuned for life.

But the tuning argument should be seen as being pertinent to a deeper level than that: if certain physical constants, such as the electric charge of the electron, and the ratio of the mass of the proton and electron, were much different than they are, we couldn't even have atoms, making stars, planets, and any form of life unlikely.

So how are we lucky enough to have a universe where life can exist? Well, there are possible explanations: there might be reasons we don't currently understand which mean that the constants have to have the values they do, for example. But my favourite brings back the multiverse theory I mentioned above.

If there are an infinite number of universes (or even a very large number, like the 10^500 predicted by string theory), all with slightly different laws and constants, then there must be some where the conditions are right for life, purely based on probability. But what are the chances that ours would be the one with the right conditions? Well since you asked, the answer is 100%, because here we are. If this universe didn't have the right conditions, we would be living in a different one, and asking the same question.

Another interesting speculative theory says that universes are produced sequentially: they expand, then contract back down a point which creates a new Big Bang and another universe, which might have different laws. Since the discovery that the universe is increasing its rate of expansion, meaning it will never collapse, this theory is not as popular as it was, but there is an alternative where new universes appear from black holes in the previous universe, which doesn't require cosmic collapse.

Again, this stuff is highly speculative, but it doesn't necessarily involve any new theory which contradicts existing scientific understanding.

Here's another question: what is consciousness, and how does it arise?

Some people use consciousness as a reason to believe in dualism: that there is a "spiritual" world as well as the everyday physical one, but I don't believe this is necessary.

One problem with discussions of consciousness, is defining what it means, but whatever that definition might be, I think considering it as an emergent property of a complex, functional brain is sufficient.

Emergent properties happen elsewhere, when simple phenomena lead to more complex ones, which seem to be at a higher level than the original. For example, an ant colony exhibits very complex behaviours which would not be expected given the simple activities of the individual ants. The comparison between ants and colony behaviour, with neurons and consciousness should be apparent.

So it seems that simple neural networks might gradually get more complex until they reach a point where consciousness emerges. A bacteria wouldn't be conscious, and a worm probably wouldn't be, but a dog or dolphin would definitely have some form of it, and humans definitely do, as we can all attest to.

Finally the biggest question of all: why is there anything?

I've often wondered why is there a universe, why are there natural laws, and why does anything exist at all? This arises because it is natural to believe that nothing exists until it is formed by some process, but why should that be? Surely it is just as reasonable to say that existence is the default state; that a multiverse has always existed and always will.

The fact that this is even a question might be more an indication of the wrong way to think about it rather than anything genuinely deep.

So those are my answers to the "big questions". If you are a religious person who I directed here, and you actually made it this far, thank you for your dedication! If you still think a god is a better explanation, then I have to say that all the objections to apparent issues with the naturalistic view can also be applied to a theistic one: how did god make life, how did he evolve it, where did he come from, why are his wishes conducive to creating life, what or who made god, and why does a god exist at all?

Claiming there is a god really gets you nowhere, because you just push all the questions back one step, making the whole situation even more complex and problematic. Believe in a god if you wish, but don't try to support your beliefs by using the arguments I've covered here.

Comment 1 (7462) by Anonymous on 2023-07-21 at 16:54:07:

Those are good answers but I have a lot of alternative answers which are as good as yours.

Comment 2 (7463) by OJB on 2023-07-21 at 23:12:35:

Cool. I'm listening. What have you got?

Comment 3 (7464) by EK on 2023-07-22 at 16:05:46:

I admire your patience. Even Sisyphus would have given up.

Comment 4 (7468) by OJB on 2023-07-22 at 18:15:15:

LOL, yes. I often feel that many of my debates are Sisyphean tasks!

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