Dear jdelphiki42,

I am going to consider each question separately. I apologize for not giving definitions up front, but they’re at the points where I considered them most relevant.

Does God’s non-existence imply pure materialism?

No, it most certainly doesn’t, just as religion doesn’t imply some form of anti-materialism. The reason for this is simple: it is possible that God created or is lord over a materialistic world, and it is possible to deny the existence of God and still have a dualistic or esoteric worldview, or some other anti-materialist notion. For example, you could believe that the human spirit is the entity that guides everything in the world and that matter is only secondary to it, if it truly exists at all. If you think God doesn’t exist, you’d still be an atheist even though such a view is not materialist.

History confirms that there is no automatic connection between the two. Most importantly, materialism grew from within christianity, primarily from 18th-century deists. The so-called ‘mechanistic worldview’ (often erroneously ascribed to Newton, but more developed under influence of his work by others) was basically materialistic, even if it did acknowledge God. At the same time, in the 19th century, modernists and spinozists would sometimes move away from religion and materialism through pantheism, which is the opposite of deism. An example would be German biologist Ernst Haeckel, who claimed that atoms had souls.

I want to make an adjustment to your use of the term ‘materialism’. I crudely define materialism as the idea that matter is the only thing that exists and within which all non-material phenomena are virtually present. This does not mean that everything is caused by movement of sub-atomic particles – that would be a specific kind of materialism, namely ontological reductionism. Within materialism, it is thinkable to hold an anti-reductionist position, which I will call holism. This typically entails recognition of processes on certain reductionist ‘levels’. For example, you may say that all my decisions are ’caused’ by collisions of subatomic particles, but if I decide to turn on a particle collider, the collisions are ’caused’ by my decisions. One approach to this is to say that neither causation is more true than the other. Note that this is a very short description of a position that is not my own, so I am doing it terrible injustice and for anti-reductionist philosophy I recommend a book by Stuart Kauffman (At Home in the Universe) and I’m also interested in Nancey Murphy’s Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning. When I label such authors as ‘holist’ it is purely to distinguish them from reductionists.

Does materialism allow for free will, or is it all inevitable?

Ontological reductionism, which is the kind of materialism you refer to, is not automatically deterministic. It could be indeterministic. This means at the very least that ‘inevitability’ is not automatic, but that doesn’t save the notion of free will.

On the concept of free will there are two very good lectures on youtube which are both in favour of reductionism but against the kind (in)determinism that excludes free will (more precisely: against the dichotomy). Daniel Dennett argues why, according to him, free will is possible in a deterministic universe. Sysiphusredeemed argues that the question of free will dissolves if the question is deconstructed into bits that can be handled by neurology. Both men make excellent points and the simplified conclusion of their lectures is that your question can be answered with ‘Yes, materialism allows for free will’.

What implications does determinism have for epistemology?

This is the most complex matter and my motivation for tackling your question in the first place. In your explication, you introduce the idea of everything being caused by moving particles (ontological reductionism) again, basically repeating some arguments concerning free will. But this is about epistemology and I think that this makes for a different case.

Coincidentally, I’ve been thinking about the issue since Thunderf00t made a video talking about the ‘rationalist’ community. This made me wonder: is Thunderf00t a rationalist? Actually, I don’t think he is. This is because materialism, in a broad sense, both holistic and reductionist, implies irrationalism.

When we apply rational reasoning, we rely on understanding things. When has understanding been achieved? In a materialist universe, this has been achieved through a cognitive process; the brain does the understanding, reductionist or not. However, when we claim to understand a logical conclusion, we submit ourselves to a law that we consider to be larger than our single minds. We assume that the laws of logic are true and that we cannot change them. We also assume that once we see them, their reflection on our minds causes the sensation of understanding, the feeling of ‘I get it’.

In a materialist universe, this would mean that our brain contains an accurate and objective ’snapshot’ of reality, and that our language for describing that ’snapshot’ is simply an impartial translation. Language would transform the snapshot into a second representation that we can then communicate. This series of events has been severely criticised by philosophers, and I don’t think it’s correct.

One argument I would bring in is that our brain and its cognitive functions were never developed in accordance with impartial logic. They were developed by evolution and aimed at making us survive and reproduce. We know that we have tendencies hardwired into our brain to make us change what we see into a more coherent picture, even when that is not justified. Our sensation that logic is correct is not guaranteed within a materialist universe. The ‘I get it’ sensation can be a hardwired adaptation that takes some shortcuts over reality and that at times misleads us.

There are examples of this. In his lecture, Sysiphusredeemed gives the example of a student who explains the properties of opium by claiming it has a ‘dormative’ quality. What is not touched on, however, is that the student truly believes he understands why opium makes us sleep. This is no small matter; all science contains some measure of this reformulating of problems to make scientists think they understand problems. Some epistemologists of the 20th century have called attention to the ‘psychology of research’, i.e. the fact that understanding is at least partially reliant on cognitive processes.

According to materialism, these cognitive processes are taking place within matter; shaped by evolution, caused by moving particles, if you wish. It doesn’t really matter as a part of what principles of causation you recognise it. In the end it comes down to the sensation of understanding, the feeling one has understood something, rather than the rational thought that our brain and our language are a reliable depiction of impartial logic.

That is why I think materialism implies irrationalism. This doesn’t mean materialists can no longer use rational arguments; rationality is common even among anti-rationalist philosophies. Rather, I would define irrationalism as the idea that there is no true rational mind behind our behaviour. It’s not a comforting thought and surely not a done deal for me either, but I hope it gives you an atheist viewpoint of the kind you were looking for.

Galileo Goes to Jail is a book I would highly recommend, as an accessible and quick-reading introduction to many historical aspects of science and religion. The book will challenge any reader’s presuppositions through a series of nuanced and educated essays.

The historical approach to issues in science and religion is both useful and misleading. Useful, because it gives insights into how the relation between the two has actually developed as opposed to how any single person thinks they are principally related. However, history can be misleading when it is used as a normative benchmark for what should be or even what is normal. Sometimes I fool myself into thinking that extensive knowledge of history will make people act more sensibly. In reality, however, such knowledge is only what it is; it does not necessarily lead to anything.

Still I am convinced that the contributors to Galileo Goes to Jail had a good measure of idealism when writing this book. Surely they are convinced that knowing about the past relation between science and religion will make readers reconsider some radical or absolute views and think more nuanced about the subject. Christianity was not science’s enemy, but neither was it the sole driver of scientific curiosity. Islam has made important contributions to science. Religious scientists did not ‘outgrow’ a set of naïve superstitions in order to become rational champions, but neither were they blessed with a fully worked out research program based on whatever tradition they believed in. The book tries to find a middle ground between views and confront every reader with his or her bias. Nuance can be confrontational, as it turns out.

The approach of the book is chronological. Each short chapter starts with a bluntly formulated myth. In the context of the book, a myth is synonymous with a falsehood. Each myth is accompanied by two or three quotes from reputable or well known sources that, to some degree, perpetuate the myth. These chapters all have different authors.

The first chapters deal with the medieval period, which means that there are no chapters about the classical period. Out of twenty-five myths, Copernicus is already the subject of myth number six, so there is a strong emphasis on the periods known as the scientific revolution, the enlightenment and the modern period. The subjects are not completely balanced. There is only one chapter about Islam, the others are explicitly about or most relevant to the relation between science and Christianity. Another imbalance lies in the myths generally adhered to by Christians and those that live among atheists. I think there are quite a few atheists who think that ‘the scientific revolution liberated science from religion’ (myth #10), that ‘copernicanism demoted humans from the center of the cosmos from the center of the cosmos’ (#6), or that ‘the Scopes trial ended in defeat for antievolutionism’. Christians may be slightly less confronted by ideas alien to them, although they will have to let go the notions that  ‘Einstein believed in a personal God’ (#21) or that ‘Christianity gave birth to modern science’ (#9).

This latter myth, dealing with the question of science having been helped or hindered by christianity during the scientific revolution, carries a rather ambiguous message. The author is Noah J. Efron from Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv. On the first pages of his essay, he makes it clear that there is a kind of consensus among historians that Christianity’s role was ‘crucial’ in the development of science. What then, is his point in debunking the myth that Christianity gave birth to modern science? Efron apparently tries to walk a fine line between considering Christianity irrelevant or damaging to science on one side and giving it too much credit on the other. This kind of message doesn’t lend itself well to a format that gives the impression of bluntly debunking a myth. In this case, the book’s format is hindering the message of the author.

The book discusses twenty-five myths. Out of these, I counted seventeen that are most likely to be held by atheists. The theme that runs through these is: Christianity was not destroyed by science and has never been in conflict with science. This is not an easy message when publishing a book with the words ‘evolution’ and ‘religion’ in its title will bring you death threats, as neurologist David Linden once stated during a lecture. However, hostilities from christians towards science are not typical for history and that should mean something to everyone. Nobody can prescribe exactly how history should be translated to personal meaning, but a good understanding is available. Galileo Goes to Jail offers exactly that.

Assuming he was talking about the book of Genesis and the order in which the different groups of animals and the plants appear, I did not recall any similarity to the order with which organisms first appear in the fossil record. In fact, the two creation stories (and yes, there are two) can be interpreted with so much ambiguity that one has a lot of elbow room when projecting them on the real world. Having read Robin Lane Fox’s The Unauthorized Biography, I am also wary of a claim that these creation stories contain any singular message, since they contradict each other.

Still I was wondering what a comparison between chapter 1 of Genesis and the fossil record would bring. That would be the first story of creation, since any attempt to make such a comparison with the second story seems doomed even as an intellectual exercise. If you start reading from the second half of Genesis 2:4, you’ll see what I mean.

The creation in six days however, is from the viewpoint of a geological timescale very ripe for comparison. The stepwise introduction of groups is not unlike the way my geological time table (by Haq and Van Eysinga) places the appearance of each clade in its respective period. Of course the big difference lies in the process of evolution: while the bible does not describe what the earliest animals and plants looked like, the earliest members of some groups were hardly recognizable as such. The first fish did not look like your typical salmon.

The dimension of time is also clearly different; modern life is about 3,8 billion years in the making, but recognized groups did not appear at a steady pace. According to the creation story, it took ‘days’ and at a steady rate, almost staccato.

But let’s, for the sake of the exercise, ignore all such issues and see if the authors of the bible really were so inspired that they basically ordered things correctly.

First come the plants, in Genesis 1:11. But not just any plant: the word ‘seed’ always comes back, no matter what translation I bother to read. Using seeds for procreation is, however, a fairly advanced adaptation for plants. The first plants on land used spores, like ferns. That was of course after there had already been a lot of development in marine plants and algae, who did not bear seeds.

Fossil plant remains from the Carboniferous. Scale: width is about 6 cm.

Were the first organisms plants? No, certainly not. Even stretching of what a ‘plant’ is as far as it will go, the first organisms were not advanced enough to be called a plant. There is no word for a prokaryote in the bible.

Disregarding the peculiar appearance of stars after plants, the next living beings to appear in Creation are the creatures of the sea and the birds. While we all know that the oldest fossils are those from marine creatures, birds are another matter entirely. Birds descend from dinosaurs, so there were creatures walking around before any bird took to the air.

Genesis, however, describes how God creates the animals that crawl and the cattle next. Describing cattle as a relatively recent addition to creation is a safe bet, but the bible did get right that the groups of plants, aquatic beings and birds were firmly in place before animals were domesticated.

Going over it, I think Genesis scores rather badly on biostratigraphy. I cannot see how anyone would mutilate this story to such a degree that it is taken to be in relative accordance with what we know from fossils. To shoehorn Genesis into science takes more interpretation than the story can bear.

But there is a very serious reason why the comparison between Genesis and the actual history of nature is important to some Christians, and I think this reason can say something about atheism as well. By recognizing the creation story in nature, Genesis becomes ‘anchored’ in the real world. By an ‘anchor’ for religion, I mean a tangible, universally identifiable thing that gives the reassurance that a certain kind of faith is not just a personal illusion. A relic is a different kind of anchor, but it basically does the same thing: one can point to it and say, that object, that thing, is the bridge between what I believe in and the material world. Isn’t it spiritually immensely fulfilling if all of nature can have such purpose?

The relevance to atheism is this: atheists often deny to have any kind of faith, but I do think they look for anchors for what they believe in. After all, no atheist is defined just by what (s)he doesn’t believe in. Atheism may be reactionary, it is not purely negative or negating, despite the word beginning with an ‘A’.

What else can the atheists’ anchor be, other than science itself?

What does Q-Dragon do when he debunks? The young man (1993) is quite brilliant, and naturally applies his knowledge about physics and the universe. By his own admission, however, Q-Dragon does not read books about philosophy, and that turns out to be a problem here. The pastor’s article makes a clear statement in terms of the philosophy of religion, but Q-Dragon does not recognize this. It follows he doesn’t debunk that part either.

Pastor Rob Daley wrote a small op-ed piece titled ‘Universe proves existence of God’. Note the way this title is phrased with a purpose typical for evangelicals: it’s not the universe proving the existence of God, no, this is phrased like a front page headline. Stop press! ‘Hey,’ readers are likely to think, ‘this is big news.’ Daley wants to activate his readers from the beginning.

What follows is a typical statement of natural theology, or the idea that the existence of God can be derived from nature itself. One might think Daley is a creationist, because the website of his church flatly states those connected to it believe ‘the Bible is the infallible, inspired Word of God and…final authority in all matters of faith and practice.’ The article, interestingly enough, suggests he at least interprets doctrine with at the very least some flexibility in the light of modern science: ‘Scientists are convinced that our universe began with an enormous explosion of energy and light.’ Er…well, sort of. This is like comparing atoms to very small spheres and thinking that turning off the hot water three seconds earlier will lessen global warming a tiny bit. Rather than being blatantly false, it is a lay person’s way of interpreting and describing science. Point is: he is describing, with limited science education, science itself and certainly not creationism.

It’s an observation Q-Dragon fails to make. Rather, he focuses on Daley’s following point: that this must have been caused by a God, because there’s no other credible explanation. Justifiably, Q-Dragon points out that a current lack of an explanation for any phenomena does not mean it must have been miraculously caused by God. But that argument goes both ways – by the same token, a scientific explanation for any phenomenon does not mean it is outside the influence of God. Who knows? What Daley is actually saying is only that the explanation must be a creator God, he doesn’t specify where this God’s influence begins or ends, how God went about His business, nor how His influence can be recognized. It is possible to understand how events took place and still attribute them to God. Religious persons do this all the time. Given the fact that Daley seems to have some conception of the Big Bang and a faith that probably won’t be shaken by new discoveries, it seems likely he will maintain that God influenced Creation no matter what scientists discover.

Q-Dragon claims there are good hypotheses for the origin of the Big Bang. A typical creationist will dismiss them, listen to them and then justify his predetermined dismissal. Daley will probably listen to them, misunderstand them and then accept or dismiss them within his knowledge about physics. Pretty much like the average lay person does, really.

So Q-Dragon debunks less here than he perhaps believes. However, Daley does make a mistake when he uses the term ‘proof’. Does he really believe there is such a thing as proof in theology? I wouldn’t be so sure there is. If so, it is likely not to be the same kind of proof that is accepted in science. Q-Dragon understandably interprets proof in scientific terms, because proving has become connected to measurable and testable things. In other words: science. When Daley talks about proof, he means that which is the most convincing matter of faith. The ‘complexity and design’ of the earth ‘argue persuasively’ for God, which is different from logically proving He exists. What the pastor does is not solving an unknown in an equation, it’s preaching.

Daley makes a more interesting point when he talks about the laws of nature being uniform and reliable. This touches on the basic assumptions of science. According to Daley, the fact that science works at all is because of God. Again, the term ‘proof’ is out of place here, but this does remind of the basic Christian premise of exoteric monotheism – the idea that God exists outside of humanity and is a singular being. This kind of faith is very helpful to science, at the centre of which is the idea that nature forms one system that behaves in a consistent way. If Christians can accept that through religion, I’m all for it, and it is what Daley argues.

Feynman, the atheist who is quoted by Daley, was right: the fact that there are laws that can be derived by observation and the logic of our limited minds seems miraculous. I can completely understand why a christian would consider it nothing short of divine. Atheists should accept that such a belief does not at all prohibit any scientific theory, even if they don’t share it.

So Daley’s letter to the newspaper is not a creationist text, and it seems likely he isn’t a creationist either. Reading this text, he is carefully arguing for his audience to accept what science comes up with and have faith in Jesus. Why the latter? Well, because it’s Jesus, that’s why! Notice how the last sentence of the article – ‘through faith in Jesus we come personally to know the God of the universe’ – actually contradicts the title, in a fashion. If you have come to know God through Jesus, why would you need proof from nature? (Some theologians, like the influential Karlt Barth, answered: you don’t).

Treating religious teachings itself as the source of faith is regarded as a weakness by Q-Dragon, but really, isn’t that what we, atheists, believe to be the case? I don’t think Christians study rocks, planets, animals, oceans and the behaviour of gamma particles, only to conclude ‘hey, 2000 years ago there was a man crucified and he was the Messiah!’. No, we think people become Christians because of a tradition, and we think this was a historical development. Which fits perfectly with a Christian claiming he has faith in Jesus because the bible says so. Again, it is not a logical proof and this is where Daley should consider himself debunked, but at the same time he does admit himself that it’s mostly about what is considered most convincing.

So to conclude, I’m rather disappointed Q-Dragon did not look a bit more carefully at the text; it is not a typical creationist rant. Atheists should be aware of the group of Christian philosophers and theologians who on the one hand claim their faith is rational and defensible, yet at the same time accept modern science. Debating such people is not the same as debunking creationist drivel. On the one hand, we owe it ourselves to step up for atheism because that’s what we think is true, but on the other hand, science benefits the most by being an open process where all religions can participate and when it is understood by the largest amount of people.