Read to Death blog

Here’s the link to this article by Merle Hertzler.

We come now to the key question: Is there a God? Here is my answer: I don’t know.

If you have been reading through this series, you have seen that, if God exists, I do not find him doing many of the things that have been claimed about him. He did not create the world in seven days. He did not inspire the Bible. He did not raise Jesus from the dead. He is not preparing a home for us. He is not in intimate control of our circumstances. He is not speaking to us. What is left for him to do?

Some will claim that he created the universe, and that he still occasionally responds with miracles and answers to prayers. Let’s look. If God exists, we certainly would want to get to know more about such a powerful being. So, let’s honestly look at the evidence.

We will begin our search in the present, and work our way backwards through time, looking for evidence for God. We will look for God in four places.

1. The present.
2. The first humans.
3. The origin of life.
4. The origin of the universe.

1. Is God working today?

Some might suggest that God is performing occasional miracles. Where is the evidence? In the past, many people claimed to have seen miracles, but a funny thing happened as time went on. More and more, people realized that there were scientific answers for the unexplained. In modern times, when people can search claims using science, miracle claims are readily debunked. Past claims of miracles could have been sheer fabrications, or misunderstandings from people who didn’t have the backgrounds to scientifically examine the claims.

Suppose God does work miracles. Why would he limit himself to occasional miracles? If he loves everyone, knows we suffer unjustly, and easily works miracles without getting tired, why do so many of our pleas go unanswered? Even if there were a few answered prayers, how can you explain a God who is so absent?

And why does he not readily display that power for all to see? If God can do anything, and wants us to believe in him, why does he not clearly show himself?

Do you remember the story about Elijah demonstrating God’s power? The Bible says Elijah gathered the people together and set up a contest to see who could call fire down from heaven. According to the Bible, Elijah won the contest. Fire came down and burned up a water-soaked sacrifice on an altar. Could you have God duplicate that feat? No? Why not? If God did it once in answer to prayer, why won’t he do it again?

You might say that you are not allowed to test God. Then why does the Bible say that Elijah was allowed to do that test? If he was allowed to do it, why not you? Why wouldn’t God want to make his power clearly known? Or is it possible he isn’t there?

Years ago, magician James Randi had a challenge where he offered a million dollars to anybody who could prove a supernatural or paranormal phenomenon. Over a thousand people tried to do this. All failed. When put to the test, all the claims of supernatural miracles brought before James Randi failed.

So maybe there are no verifiable miraculous events happening today.

Prayer

You may tell me that you have personally seen God answer prayer. I once made similar claims. But it is not enough simply to say that you were once sick, prayed, and get better. After all, many people got sick and got better. Some of them did not pray. And so, you would need to show that prayers actually made a difference. Ideally, you would show that people that were prayed for were more likely to recover compared with those who didn’t have anybody pray for them.

In science, we verify claimed cures by testing them. Preferably, we set up a large study in which some people get the proposed cure, some may get alternate cures, and some just get a placebo. Ideally the patients and the examiners do not know who got which treatment. In the end of the study the researchers reveal who was in which treatment group. They compare the results and see which treatment, if any, worked best.

How would prayer work in a controlled study? Would it work better than a placebo? Recently, researchers did several such studies. When the methodology and statistics were examined, they found no good case for prayer. By contrast, new drugs regularly show evidence of being effective after such trials. Why does prayer not also show a clearly significant effect when tested?

Although your experiences may be very convincing to you, many of us see it as a case of special pleading. We would not allow a new drug on the market based solely on the testimony that somebody once tried it and got better. Why should we accept the claim of miracle with no better evidence for it than similar testimonial evidence for quack cures?

Does Prayer Work? by Dariusz Jemielniak Have Christians Accepted the Scientific Conclusion That God Does Not Answer Intercessory Prayer? by Brian Bolton Efficacy of Prayer by Irwin and Jack Tessman How Christians Can Test Their Own Prayers Objectively by John W. Loftus This article is behind a paywall at Free Inquiry. Loftus explains how you can test for yourself if your prayers work. The Science of Prayer by Victor J. Stenger Debunking Medical Prayer Studies: Let Us Pray That People Stop Praying by James W. Williamson, M.D. Miraculous Cures by Anthony Campbell The Study of Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer by Jeffery A. Dusek, PhD et. al. How to properly study prayer.

Shall we pray? Links to research on the effectiveness of prayer.

In your heart

Others will tell me that they know he lives, for he lives in their heart. I understand. I was once there. I thought my experience proved that it was God working inside me. But I found out later there were many people with quite different experiences, with each thinking his experience proved he was right. Does this prove all are right? No. Simply trying something and feeling better does not prove that what you tried is best for all, or that it is based on truth. Sometimes simply trying, with the help of others, is already a huge part of what it takes to find a better life.

2. Did God create humans?

Many will turn to creation as their proof of God. They will look at something like the greatness of the human mind, and come up with an argument that looks something like this:

1. There must be an explanation for why the human mind exists.
2. One explanation is God.
3. I cannot think of any other good explanations.
4. Therefore, God exists.

This argument is faulty. There is indeed another good explanation for why the human mind exists: evolution. We met up with evolution back at the beginning of this series. There I explained how I became convinced that we evolved. You may perhaps agree that there is evidence for evolution, but you just don’t see how this could happen on its own. Something or someone must have been guiding it. Hence, God is still involved in the process.

What do we see if we look at the fossil record? If God is behind it all, gradually transforming life into the humans he wants, one would expect to see most incremental changes be specifically in that direction. Instead, what we see are widely diverging branches in all directions. It sure looks like evolution is trying many different approaches, some of which work, and some of which just branch out to a dead end. This does not look like anybody is actually guiding the process.

Why all the dead-end paths? Dinosaurs, for example, were a major branch of evolution that later died out. Only one small group of dinosaurs survived, becoming modern birds. All the rest died out with no living descendants. If God was guiding evolution to lead to humans, why bother with thousands of species of dinosaurs over many millions of years? Why did that unspeakable carnage in the struggle for existence need to occur? They all died out anyway. A small group of competitors to the dinosaurs, the early mammals, eventually took over and now rule the world that dinosaurs once dominated.

As another example, we talked earlier about the amazing mammallike reptiles that developed mammal features over many millions of years. If we look closely at them in the fossil record, we see this is not a guided evolution toward modern mammals. Rather, there were a whole series of trials and errors in many directions before the group we now call mammals evolved to dominate.

None of this looks like deliberate, guided evolution. We are not seeing the man in charge here.

Hominids

Similarly, when we look at human evolution, we see many fossils, but we don’t see a clearly directed path to Homo sapiens. The lines branch out in many different directions.

We are often not sure which of those branches are our direct ancestors. In fact, since there were many species besides the ones we have found in the fossil record so far, then most likely it is one of these unknown species that is our true ancestor. Unknown species were cousin species to the ones we have found. By studying these cousin species, we can get a good idea how we got here. But what we are seeing may just be dead end species that are cousins to our true ancestors.

But aren’t humans so very different from other animals? Were earlier animals really capable of evolving into Homo sapiens? Yes. In essence, our anatomy is very close to the anatomy of other apes. We share 98.8% of our DNA with chimps. Even that part of our anatomy that we value most, our brain, has clear connections to all animal brains. Other animals experience thoughts, emotions and will just like we do. Their brains store memories just like us. There is a quantitative difference, yes, but the forerunners of all these functions are in the other great apes also.

How can an animal we would class as an ape walk out of the forest and become human? It’s a long story. It appears that, in The Great Rift Valley in Africa, a unique stretch of grasslands opened up as the continents moved. Certain apes ventured out of the woods, perhaps searching for food. They found a different world, one in which they could survive using the high intelligence inherent in all apes. Problem solving was so important out here, brains began to evolve for higher intelligence.

Likewise, out in the plain, there was an advantage to standing upright. One could travel more efficiently, look out over the tall grass to see predators, and use one’s hands for many tasks. The combination of increased intelligence with increased availability of the hands worked out quite well in this new environment, leading to strong evolution of these traits.

But intelligence and dexterity alone would have left our ancestors helpless in the vast grassland. They found that, like us, they needed each other. It’s true. We all need somebody to lean on. So, our ancestors, which we refer to as hominids, used their new brainpower for more than just individual problem solving. They used their brains to communicate with other hominids. This turned out to be quite difficult. Understanding others is hard. If you want to communicate effectively with me, you need a big brain. Likewise, our hominid ancestors needed big brains to communicate.

With effective communication, we learn from each other. You learn things from me. I learn things from you. Together, the combined knowledge can lead to new ideas. The end result can be far greater than simply adding two experiences. And so, there is a huge advantage to good communication. This requires a lot of brainpower.

As human cooperation and brainpower became ever more important, brains became larger, and that can be a big problem for the mothers. There is only so much head that can squeeze down the birth canal. Unfortunately, many hominid females must have died in childbirth–may they rest in peace–as evolution drove brain sizes larger.

But, once again evolution found a solution. If the skull can wait to finish its growth until after birth, then it is easier to give birth to a child who will have a large adult brain. For the mothers, this was good news. They could give birth to babies that then grew up with big brains capable of better supporting the mother, her other offspring, and her grandchildren. This solution was a winner.

But there was a big side effect to all this. Hominid babies are quite helpless while their brain grows. They go through a prolonged childhood before emerging as super-intelligent hominid adults. Other animal babies can walk and begin caring for themselves soon after birth. Not so with hominids or our close ancestors. Nevertheless, when intelligence is a primary necessity for survival, the sacrifice can be worth it. The mother devotes herself to her helpless baby, yes, but oh what a wonder this produces.

How can a mother afford to spend all this effort raising children? It takes a village. That’s right. Child raising requires a team: mothers, fathers, grandparents, siblings, cousins, neighbors, anybody. And that is the beauty of the intelligence and social communication that had evolved. It allowed these hominids to develop as a team, caring for each other and for the young. That led to longer childhoods; to larger brains; to more intelligence; to better communication and cooperation; and back around to longer childhoods and still larger brains. It was an endless upwards spiral.

This led to all the wonderful adaptions of hominids: better tools to hunt and get the needed protein to feed these demanding brains; fires to scare away predators; fires to cook meals; loss of hair, which allowed more persistent hunting without overheating; clothing and blankets to stay warm without all that hair; language; structured social interaction; and yes, partying into the wee hours of the morning while sitting around the campfire. Keep that up for hundreds of thousands of years, and before long we see a big change.

None of that requires direct intervention of God. It is simply the working of nature, driving one evolutionary line in a unique direction after a number of prior adaptions had given that genus a unique survival strategy. No miracle was required.

Human Evolution –Encyclopedia Britannica Introduction to Human Evolution–Smithsonian Institution Human Evolution–Berkeley University Why Are There Still Apes? A debate at Christian Forums site. How Did Humans Evolve?— History.com Fossil Hominids— TalkOrigins

Human Evolution Links

3.Did God create the first life?

Years ago, when I was a Creationist, I was losing the argument attacking evolution, so I turned to the origin of life. Here it was much easier to make convincing arguments. For evolution, there was all that pesky evidence that shut me down whenever I tried to bring in creation. But as to the origin of life, here was a gap in which I could insert God. My argument went something like this:

1. There must be an explanation for why life exists.
2. One explanation is God.
3. I cannot think of any other good explanations.
4. Therefore, God exists.

That argument should look familiar. It is the same argument I wrote above about humans; except this time I changed the word in italics. It is the same argument from personal ignorance: I cannot think of another explanation; thus, the only explanation I can think of must be true.

This argument is also faulty.

It is true that there are limits to what we understand about the origin of life. It happened long ago and did not leave a lot of evidence. But we have learned a lot about this since the 90s, when I had argued for God as the originator of life. And yet, even back then, I could see that my arguments were losing.

Although we do not know exactly how it happened, we have many good hypotheses and understand how many of these processes may have happened. There are other explanations besides God.

A leading view suggests that self-replicating RNA molecules began to compete to be the best self-replicator, building more elaborate support until they put molecules together as cells. See The Origin of Life.

We don’t understand it all. Can we therefore insert God? What we have here is a God of the Gaps argument. We find a gap in our knowledge. In this gap, we conveniently insert God. The problem is that these gaps keep getting smaller as science fills in our previous lack of knowledge.

If you elect this defense of the faith, you keep on needing to back down as the gaps disappear. So, unless you enjoy doing a moonwalk, constantly going backwards while appearing to go forward, I would suggest avoiding arguing for a God of the Gaps. After several steps backwards, arguing for ever smaller gaps, you may eventually come to the point that I did, where I could no longer take myself seriously when moonwalking backwards while pretending I was making progress defending God.

From Soup to Cells: The Origin of Life at Berkeley University site Biogenesis and the Laws of Evidence by Richard Carrier

Biogenesis links

4. Did God create our universe?

So maybe we just better go back further in time, back beyond the story of life on earth, and ask about the beginning of the universe. How could a universe pop up out of nothing? We might frame an argument for this based on the format we had used above:

1. There must be an explanation for why our universe exists.
2. One explanation is God.
3. I cannot think of any other good explanations.
4. Therefore, God exists.

You may only be able to think of one explanation for the universe–God. But God is not the only possible universe maker. Perhaps natural forces could also do it.

So, before tracing back to the ultimate cause of everything, let’s look at how whatever or whoever it was that made the universe did it.

Let’s cut to the chase and state how the universe began: with a Big Bang. Regardless of who or what caused the Big Bang, we know the broad overview of what it (or he) did. First there was no universe. Then boom, a Big Bang. And the rest is history.

How do we know there was a Big Bang? Well, for one thing, when we look at distant galaxies, we find that they are all soaring away from us at a high rate of speed. This is exactly what we would expect if they had all originated from matter that was concentrated at the same spot and scattered in the Big Bang. In fact, if we trace back the trajectories of galaxies, we find they all came from the same spot in space 13.72 billion years ago. (That’s right, we now know the answer to 4 decimal places.) They must have all left that location simultaneously at high speed in different directions.

As the galaxies spread out, gravity slowed them down. We can conclude that they must have been going quite fast when the scattering started and slowed down gradually as gravity pulled backwards.

If we trace back to the time when the universe was about 1 second old, they would have been bunched together in a huge mass of high velocity particles at 10 billion degrees C. At that temperature neutrons and protons would have been traveling far too fast to make atoms.

But as the universe expanded and cooled, there would have been numerous atomic “marriages”, as particles settled down to form atoms. Almost all of the atoms that were created at that time would have been one of the three lightest elements, hydrogen, helium, and lithium. We can even calculate the ratios of each element created at those high temperatures. Most protons would stay as single protons and unite with one electron to form a hydrogen atom. About 25% of protons would pair up with another proton and with neutrons to form a helium nucleus. And about 1 in a billion would join with 2 other protons, ending up in the nucleus of a lithium atom.

We can compare this to what we observe today. Obviously, those elemental ratios have changed as time marched on. Much hydrogen has fused in stars to become helium. We know how fast this is happening, and so, if we trace back into the past, we can calculate the ratios these elements would have had 13.72 billion years ago. We find, to a high degree of accuracy, that the ratios predicted by the Big Bang theory (the science, not the show) correspond to the ratios that physical observations today tell us must have originally been there. The two calculations agree to a remarkable degree.

So how can you explain this complete correlation between the physics of a Big Bang and what is actually there today? If a creator did it without that superheated mass of the Big Bang, and he could have used a different ratio, why did he pick that exact ratio that the Big Bang would have created?

It is similar to the conclusion we reached at the start of this series where we saw that the earth is either many millions of years old or was created deceptively to look old. Ruling out deception, we concluded that the earth was old.

Similarly, if we rule out a God that deceptively made the element ratios such that they matched a hot Big Bang, then we are left with the conclusion that the elements came from the Big Bang.

A third verification of the Big Bang is the fact that we can see the background radiation from the Big Bang, exactly as predicted.

I won’t explore all the details of the Big Bang here. There are many sources with more details if you are interested.

A Universe from Nothing book by Lawrence M. Krauss. The Big Bang at NASA Spontaneous Creation of the Universe from Nothing He Dongshan, et. al. Quantum Fluctuations in Cosmology by Alan H. Guth

Big Bang Links

Could it be caused by nothing?

Our concern here is not so much the details of the Big Bang, but what caused it. What or who caused it to happen?

One obvious answer is, “God did it”. That is certainly a possibility.

Another answer is that “Nothing did it”. Wait, what? Yes, I said what I mean, maybe Nothing did it. Please note that I capitalize the word Nothing. For it turns out, in our universe, there is no such thing as a spot that is devoid of all forces, all energy, and all matter. Something exists everywhere, even if it is no more than the presence of certain laws of physics. So when I refer to Nothing, I am referring to the specific state of emptiness that is as close to true nothingness as is possible.

The emptiness of outer space is not truly a state of no-thing. For instance, there is that strange dark energy that permeates all of our universe. This dark energy acts in such a way that it tends to force the universe to spread out. Not only is this dark energy within our universe present at every point in space, but it appears to be everywhere, even outside our universe. As the universe gets larger, it contains more volume. Since dark energy is everywhere, the universe is constantly getting more total dark energy as it grows.

A strange thing happened as the universe grew and incorporated more dark energy. Dark energy now overwhelms the rest of the universe. In fact, the total dark energy in the entire observable universe is now 70 times the total energy in the familiar matter that we think of when we think of the universe.

Earlier, we said that the expansion of the universe had slowed down since the initial jolt of the Big Bang. But scientists have also found that, as more and more dark energy is being incorporated into the universe, and as this additional dark energy acts to accelerate the expansion of the universe, the universe is now accelerating. And as it accelerates, it incorporates dark energy even faster, and that makes it accelerate even faster. We keep going outward at faster speeds. Buckle up. We are off for the ride of our lives!

All that comes from the dark energy that inherently exists in all empty space. Empty space is not no-thing.

Not only is Nothing full of dark energy, but quantum mechanics predicts that Nothing regularly creates matter and anti-matter. And it turns out that, in every atom of your body, electrons and anti-electrons pairs are constantly bursting into existence, and then, almost instantly, annihilating each other. For that moment in time there is enough energy involved in this process to affect the energy state of atoms.

If we calculate the energy of atoms without taking these particles into account, our calculations are always inaccurate. But if we include these short-lived particles, we find our calculations reflect the actual energies of atoms to extremely high precision. Thus, they must really be bursting in and out of existence, just as quantum mechanics predicts.

So yes, even in empty space, matter and its evil twin, anti-matter, are constantly coming into existence. Most such particles quickly annihilate each other, but it is at least theoretically possible that some of them have continued to exist. The anti-particle could be swept into a black hole, while the particle itself lives on as a truly new something that came out of Nothing.

Yes, Virginia, in the cosmos there is indeed such a thing as a free lunch!

Similarly, at the Big Bang, we would have had these same quantum mechanics and all its weirdness at play. Quantum mechanics could have caused particles to come into existence.

In addition, we find that our universe in its earliest phases was experiencing a tremendous stretching of space-time itself, a period that we refer to as cosmic inflation. It was a brief period of time, far quicker than the blink of an eye. It lasted less than 10^-32 seconds.

As the end of this inflationary period approached, inflation stopped in certain spots quicker than other spots. It was as though those spots had suddenly become frozen and no longer participated in the rapid cosmic inflation that was going on all around them. This caused immense quantum effects in these areas that were dropping out of the inflationary expansion. The quantum events associated with this sudden stoppage could have caused untold billions of particles, both matter and anti-matter, to come into existence.

As the universe continued to expand and cool, these spots multiplied. It was like popcorn: slow popping at first, and then popping everywhere. Eventually inflation stopped completely, and we were left with a boiling broth of matter and anti-matter.

It appears that, for every 1 billion particles of matter created this way, there were also about 999,999,999 anti-particles. As the universe expanded and cooled, most of these particles found mating anti-particles and annihilated each other. But the bachelors, so to speak, lived on to become the universe as we know it.

As mentioned before, the plasma started at temperatures over 10 billion degrees C. How did it get so hot? It appears that, when quantum mechanics creates particles, they start with a velocity equal to their escape velocity. The escape velocity is that speed which is just enough that, if a particle left the brew, it could continue to infinity before gravity finally stopped it. Any slower, and gravity would catch up to it and pull it back down where it started. Any faster, and the particles would easily sail away, to infinity and beyond!

So, the particles were traveling very fast. Since temperature is simply a measure of the average velocity squared of all the particles, that means the brew was very hot.

As the state of this plasma dropped below 10 billion degrees C, the particles then congealed into atoms. These atoms later combined into molecules, then lumps, and finally into stars and planets.

It is possible that this interaction of cosmic inflation and quantum mechanics was much larger in extent than just our universe. Possibly, as our universe “froze” and no longer experienced this wild, inflationary stretching of space-time, all the rest of nearby space-time beyond our universe possibly continued to stretch. And events similar to the Big Bang could have then been happening all over that vast expanse of space-time. We call this a multiverse.

These events could have been separated so far that, if our entire universe were drawn as the size of a period on a map the size of our universe, the nearest neighboring universe might be on the other end of that map. And the total expansion of space time could be so rapid that even light could not possibly make it from one universe to the other. We would never be able to detect any of these other universes. For all we know, we might just be in only one of the possibly infinite number of universes that actually existed or will exist.

If there are many universes being created, they may all be different. They may actually have different physics. Some may be duds, quickly disappearing. Others, like ours, may expand to the point where they can support life. In the dud universes, there is nobody around to observe that space-time creates dud universes. In universes like ours, there are people that ask, “Why is there something rather than nothing at all?”

So, scientists agree that something could come from Nothing in a process similar to that described above. Quantum mechanics produces particles. Empty space itself is full of energy. And a universe that quickly decelerates from cosmic inflation, as our early universe has, could experience a major creation of matter due to quantum effects. All this could have created matter that would be at high temperature and fly rapidly outward to form a vast universe.

This was a brief introduction to the Big Bang. We don’t know exactly how it happened, but we are learning more about it all the time.

What caused the cause of the Big Bang?

For our purposes, we are not so much concerned with how the Big Bang happened, as we are concerned with the ultimate explanation for it. Where did quantum mechanics, cosmic inflation, and all other physical actions come from?

Perhaps quantum mechanics and cosmic inflation always existed. Perhaps it could not be otherwise. Perhaps these physical realities just keep on creating universes.

Or perhaps other physical forces caused quantum mechanics and cosmic inflation to begin. Perhaps there is a multiverse of multiverses. Perhaps there is some innate source of multiverses that is creating multiverses with different physics. These multiverses could be creating universes, each with perhaps distinct versions of the inherited physics of the multiverse they came from.

Ah, but what caused the source of the source of the source of the multiverses? What is the ultimate thing that drove this all? We don’t know. Perhaps there is an infinite series of causation that never ends. Or perhaps, at root, there is a circular causation where A causes B that causes C that causes A ad infinitum. Or perhaps there is some root cause of everything, A, that simply is, and could not be otherwise. Perhaps the root cause is nothing more than, “Things happen.”

Regardless of whether the root cause is a distinct something (A) or a circular something (ABC), an infinite regress, or things just happening, let’s call this root cause of any physics the first cause.

This first cause could either have a mind or not have a mind.

If it has a mind, how could that mind remember anything before there was any matter that can be arranged to save the memories? All memories we know of (brains, computers, books, etc.) consist of an arrangement of atoms that document things. How can a creator’s mind do this, if there is not yet any matter to arrange to preserve those memories?

If the first cause, the process that started it all, had a mind, we should probably call it God. If it didn’t have a mind, we probably should not call it God.

Did the root cause have a mind? Would it be proper to call it God? Ultimately, we don’t know. Hence, regarding God, I am agnostic.

The Problem with Nothing by Richard Carrier Multiverse Cosmological Models by Paul Davies Six Arguments that a Multiverse is More Probable Than a God by Richard Carrier Cosmological Arguments on the Secular Web. This has many counterarguments to the first cause argument. The God Impossible by Richard Carrier. This explores the question of how a mind could exist if there was no matter. Six Arguments That a Multiverse Is More Probable Than a God by Richard Carrier

Links about the multiverse and God

Is God knowable?

We could get into endless discussion of what or who is behind it all. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Even if a God exists, I find no way of knowing what He wants. I don’t find that the Bible or any book reliably tells us what God wants. And I don’t find that God speaks to us and tells us what he wants. So even if God exists, I have no way of knowing what he wants.

If it turns out the maker of the process that made our universe has a mind, is still alive, and wants to communicate with us, then yes, of course, I would love to be introduced. But as I find no evidence that such a being is communicating, I am not expecting to be contacted.

And besides, even if God did try to speak to me, how would I know it was God? Sure, something like a seemingly miraculous Internet feed could suddenly come through a wormhole in space, complete with unimaginable knowledge and the ability to do things we would see as miracles. Would that prove that the source created the universe? No. It could simply be a super-advanced space alien with powers far beyond human powers. How would we ever know it was the source of the processes that started the universe?

And for that matter, even if you went to heaven after you died, how would you know that the being in charge of this paradise in which you find yourself is actually the originator of the processes that made the universe? Could you prove that the ruler of your paradise was not simply a highly advanced space alien with amazing powers? You would not know. Even though this ruler of this paradise had a Scotty that had beamed you up to this paradise as you were dying on earth, how would you know that there is not actually somewhere a more powerful being than him? How would you know that there are not more powerful beings out there, who will eventually attack your paradise and conquer it? How could you be sure you are on the winning side?

And how would the ruler of this heaven even know that he was really the ultimate God? If a different, more powerful God existed in some other part of spacetime beyond his knowledge, how would he know? If he couldn’t know that which is beyond his knowledge, is it possible that within that “unknown unknown”, as Donald Rumsfeld might have put it, there was some being greater than him?

In summary, I find no convincing evidence that God exists. I find no evidence when I look at the present, at evolution, at the origin of life, or at the origin of matter. If God does exist, I find no way of knowing what he wants. And if someday a being claiming to be the omnipotent creator contacts me, I would have no way to know that he actually was the omnipotent first cause, the creator of all universes.

How COVID-19 Falsifies the God Hypothesis by Gary Whittenberger

other links

All of that is a diversion from the business of living life. We have all we need to make our own lives productive, to build meaning and purpose in life. If a powerful, all-knowing someone from space reveals himself, great, I will be first in line to ask to meet him and learn from him, regardless of whether he actually initiated our universe. But until then, I live my life based on the information I do have.

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We need to ask one more question before I complete this series. Some would think we are lost in hopeless despair without our faith. Are we lost without hope? I will finish this series by looking at hope.

Here’s the link to this article by Merle Hertzler.

You may have been told that you will live forever, but that seems quite unlikely to me. For our brains will one day be gone. All our lives those brains have been the seat of our thoughts, emotions, and memories. So, when the brain is gone, then the lights must go out. Surely then it is all over.

But some will tell me that something else lives on even after the brain has disintegrated. They often call this the soul. And ultimately, they say, the soul is the seat of the mind. And so, even if the brain is gone, the mind can continue as a function of a soul that survives death.

If the soul is really in charge, why do you even need a brain? If thinking is done by the soul, what is left for the brain to do? Some propose that the brain is simply an interface to the body. It gathers information from the senses and feeds it to the soul. There the soul processes the incoming data, saves memories, and makes decisions. The soul then somehow directs the brain to drive the muscles of the body. The soul is in charge, and the brain handles the interface with the body.

But science has shown that it is truly the brain that is in charge. We think with our brains, not with immaterial souls.

Have you got soul?

Let’s look at some evidence that the brain is in charge, and that there is no separate, non-material soul.

First, there is the evidence of amnesia. When elderly people suffer a stroke, or when trauma occurs to the brain, patients often lose the ability to remember things that happen after that tragic event. The person loses an important mental function, the ability to remember new things. But it was not the soul that had been damaged. The brain was damaged. Somehow damage to the brain causes that person to lose the ability to efficiently store new memories. If memories are actually a function of the soul, why would damage to the brain affect the functioning of the soul? Since damage to the brain affects the ability to store memories, then it must be the brain that stores the memories.

You might argue that what happened is that the brain stops giving the soul new data. Thus, the soul has nothing to remember. But that is clearly not what is happening. The essence of the person is still communicating with us. That person sees us, recognizes us, and communicates. The mind’s senses are still working. The mind is still able to observe, but the person forgets what was observed. Why? The brain is damaged. And this damage hinders memory storage. So, it must be the brain that is remembering. When the brain is affected, the mind is affected.

Second, when conditions prevent a brain from developing properly, the personality does not reach maturity. If the soul is distinct from the brain, why wouldn’t the soul go on to maturity?

A third evidence that the brain is doing the thinking is the fact that, if the brain slows down and goes to sleep at night, the soul also sleeps. Suppose your soul is something different from the brain. Why does the soul go to sleep when the brain sleeps? Why can’t it just keep on being your soul, wide awake, even though the brain goes to sleep and has stopped giving the soul input from the world? It doesn’t work that way. When the brain is affected, the mind is affected.

The effect is even more pronounced under anesthesia. In such procedures, one loses virtually all contact with the world and does not sense even severe pain. After waking up, one is not even aware of the passage of time while he was unconscious. If the soul was distinct from the brain, one would think you could simply start counting as you go under and keep on counting into the thousands in your soul while contact with the world goes blank. It would be like losing the connection while on a Zoom call. The soul would still be awake. The person whose brain is sleeping would still be able to count or plan his next day, but the incoming senses of the world would temporarily be blank. This is not what happens.

Fourth, evidence shows that we inherit our basic personality through our genes. How is it that genes can affect our personality? Genes must surely be directing the brain’s physical development, which then influences the personality development. How could genes also change a separate, immaterial soul? That makes no sense. Personality must therefore be a function of the brain, not of a separate entity known as the soul. How else could genes have such a significant effect on the personality? 

Fifth, a patient with Alzheimer’s disease enters a period of altered mental capability due to brain disease. Is the soul of the Alzheimer’s victim also changed by his physical condition? That makes no sense. The disease affects the brain, not the soul. But if the soul is working normally, why are the thoughts so confused?

You may argue that the soul is still normal, but the connection of the brain to the soul is blurred. And yet we can still communicate with the essence of the Alzheimer’s victim, with the part you would call the soul. That spark of the inner person is still there. The communication still works. But we can see that the very essence of the inner person is changing. The part you would call the soul is deteriorating. Why? The brain is being altered. Since the mind is a function of the brain, it too becomes altered.

Are we to believe that death does for the Alzheimer’s victim what no medicine can do? Does death suddenly restore the mind to full functioning? How could that be? The disease gradually destroys the brain, and this deteriorate the mind. How then could the full destruction of the brain at death cause the mind to become restored?  

Sixth, if the soul is separate from the brain, exactly how does a soul interface with the brain? As far as we can tell, brain function consists of movements of electrons and chemicals. How could our soul communicate with this brain? Does the soul somehow start moving electrons around in our brains so that the brain knows to move a certain muscle or to command the mouth to say a certain word? How can the stuff of the soul push matter? Wouldn’t a soul push right through an electron, just like spirits supposedly pass through walls?

And if souls actually push molecules or electrons around, why can’t they push the molecules that are outside of the brain? If your soul can push molecules in your brain, why can’t it push molecules in my brain?

None of this can be observed in nature. Nowhere do we find evidence for souls deflecting molecules. So, how can a non-physical soul affect the movements of the body? It can’t. I conclude the mind is simply a function of the brain.

Seventh, as discussed earlier in my Dare to Question series, we have evolved from other animals. Do apes have souls? Do reptiles, fish and germs have souls? If not, exactly when was a soul inserted for the first time? Was the first being to have a soul raised by someone without a soul? It is easy to see how mind functions could develop incrementally through many generations as we evolved. It is difficult to see how an evolved creature would somehow suddenly get a separate, immaterial soul for the first time. And if apes don’t have souls, how do their brains partially duplicate some of the functions we require a soul to do?

For all these reasons, I conclude that it is the brain, not an immaterial soul, that stores memories and does the thinking. For more on mind-brain dependence see The Case Against Immortality  by Keith Augustine, Mind-Brain Dependence by Steven J. Conifer, and section III.6 of Sense and Goodness without God by Richard Carrier.

Consciousness

Yes, I know, you look inside, and you see your conscious mind is in there telling the body what to do. Your consciousness is in charge, or so it seems to you. And you equate that consciousness with a soul that is separate from the body. So how can you be perceiving this soul inside you to be directing the show, when actually it is brain molecules that are doing the heavy lifting? Good question.

Science has shown that the brain decides to do things before the person is aware that he made the decision. One experiment that verified this involved subjects who were told to decide to bend their wrist while watching a slowly spinning disk. They were told to tell the experimenters exactly where the disk was when they decided to bend their wrist. The experimenters used this information to determine when the subject was aware that he was making the decision. The subjects were also hooked up to sensors that could detect brain activity that occurred when the subjects decided to act.

It turns out that the brainwaves started before the subjects were aware that they were deciding. If you asked the subjects, they would tell you that they made the decision consciously at the moment that they were aware of it. But the instruments they were wired to indicate otherwise. The brain cells had begun to fire and started the process of commanding the hand to move before the person was consciously aware of the decision. [1]

Could it be that our brain cells are running the show, and that what we call the conscious mind comes along later and fills in the story after the fact? This kind of after-the-fact consciousness has been demonstrated in another experiment. Here is how it worked. A red dot was projected onto a screen. Then the red dot was turned off and, a split second later, a green dot was projected near the spot where the red dot had been. When people saw this, they reported that they saw the red dot start to move to the side, then change suddenly to a green dot as it moved along, and then continue to the new location as a green dot. Obviously, this is not what they saw. There was no moving dot that changed colors. The dot had never been in the middle. But the conscious mind told the story that the dot had traveled, and that the dot’s color had changed from red to green at the middle. The conscious mind was convinced that it had observed this happen. It was mistaken. [2]

And so, in that experiment, we find that minds rewrote history, just like the historians in the novel 1984 rewrote history to reflect what Big Brother wanted. A similar thing must have happened in the minds of the subjects. Their minds had known that objects don’t usually just disappear and immediately show up in a new location. They knew that, in such instances, the object probably moved from point A to point B. And if it changed colors, it had to change somewhere. The mind makes up the story that it observed the dot changing color when it was in the middle of its movement. The subject’s minds rewrote their memories and did it so well that they were confident the revised story was true.

Their conscious memory of seeing the dot change color as it moved was a sheer fabrication. The subjects “remember” it, but it never happened.

You have probably observed the mind rewriting memories. A significant event may happen to somebody, and immediately he tells us what happened. Ten minutes later you hear him tell the same story again, but it is a little different this time. An hour later, the story has been modified further. We hear the same story the next day and the next week. Each time we hear it, it is a little different. And often we can observe a trend in the rewrite. What the person thinks he should have said becomes a memory of what he did say.

True, sometimes the person modifying the story may be deliberately deceptive. But often the person is not trying to lie to us. He is an honest person, and yet his mind is changing the story.

Folks have probably observed a similar thing in you and me. Our minds gradually and unconsciously change the memories of the past so that they conform to what makes sense to us. Thus, we end up with memories of being conscious of something in the past, even though we never actually experienced it that way.

Notice that the memories of the person who saw a dot disappear and another dot appear are just like the memories of the person who truly saw a dot move. One memory reflects what was consciously observed. One is a fabrication. We cannot tell the difference.  Our minds are being misinformed about what we consciously experienced. We believe the lies that are being written to our memories.

Notice also that it is our memory of past events that is fundamental to our consciousness. Suppose that you had no ability to remember anything. You would be constantly aware of your current state at each moment, but you would be totally unaware of anything that had happened a microsecond earlier. It would be like listening to a music CD that was stuck on the same chord. Now that would not be real music. Music requires change, and so does consciousness. To really mean anything, our consciousness must consist of an awareness of the narrative that has brought us to the current state.

But as we have seen, this narrative is often freely being changed. We think we have conscious memories of how the story has unfolded, but somehow what we call our conscious memory is only the modified story that our minds create. What we call consciousness is just the story of how we got to where we are. The problem is, this story is somewhat illusory, since our minds are constantly revising that story, sometimes incorrectly.

So perhaps this explains how our minds can deceive ourselves into believing that there is a soul inside that is making the decision, even though experiments show that the decisions were made before we were aware of them. Perhaps our minds continuously create the story we call consciousness and write it in such a way that we think consciousness is making the decisions.

Where do your words come from?

Think about it. Where do your decisions come from? When you decide to speak, for instance, where do those words come from? You really don’t know, do you?

Think about all that is involved in creating spontaneous speech. Your brain contains information about thousands of thoughts that you could express. You have a vocabulary of thousands of words that you can use, and your mind knows the definition of each. And these words must be put together according to the syntax of your language. But you don’t remember sorting through your mental dictionary to look up the meanings of all relevant words to select the proper words to express the thought you chose. No, you just speak, and the right words present themselves to you. And you and your listeners both hear the sentence from your mouth at the same time. But where did the words come from?

If your soul is the speechwriter, why isn’t the soul aware of how the words came into your consciousness? Why isn’t your soul aware of looking up the meanings of all the words it could have used? Instead, behind the scenes, something must be working to look up available words and form those sentences for you. I contend this something is nothing more than the millions of neurons in your brain. They must be working behind the scenes to write your speech for you. You and I think that our conscious mind is speaking, but the conscious mind isn’t even aware of how the speech is being written.

Even when we slowly deliberate, weighing every word carefully before speaking, we cannot tell where those word options originated. The words just present themselves to us. Something looked through our mental dictionary and pulled those words up for us.

Many Christians seem to recognize that thoughts come to us fully formed. I have heard some ascribe different authors to the thoughts that stream through their minds. It is interesting to hear them describe the experience. They will tell me that Satan was saying something in their minds, and then they responded, and then God said something, and then the old nature argued, and then Jesus said something, and so on. It must be interesting being them! There are enough of people inside to have great conversation. But perhaps they are mistaken. Perhaps various thoughts originate, not from various competing spirit beings inside the mind, but from various competing coalitions of neurons in the brain.

Science indicates that there are millions of neurons working in our brains, and that this activity produces thoughts. It is a cacophony of voices, with many different ideas competing for dominance. But somehow the winning thoughts come to the top and present themselves as a string of conscious ideas. The real work, however, is done among all these competing neurons.

Often our language betrays the fact that things are going on outside of our direct conscious control. We say things like “I didn’t mean to do that,” “The words wouldn’t come,” “I couldn’t help myself,” or “I don’t know why I did that.” In such statements there is a subtle recognition that our consciousness is not really in charge.

The consciousness is along for the ride, observing the finished work that the neurons have put together. And the consciousness rewrites its memories in such a way that it seems to us that our consciousness is making the decisions.

For more on how our brains create consciousness see Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett and my essay, How Can Molecules Think?

I conclude that thinking is done by the brain, and these thoughts produce our consciousness. Consciousness does not come from an immaterial soul.

Life after death

We know that brain activity stops when we die. If our memories are in the brain, how could they remain after death? And how can the inherited personality survive if the very brain that produced it is destroyed? It seems that it too must be gone. If my memories and personality are gone, how can I still be said to exist?

Some will agree that the brain is doing the thinking here on earth, but there is a soul in there also. And the soul just so happens to want the same thing the brain wants and store the same memories the brain stores. So, though the brain is gone at death, the soul that works in parallel remains. How convenient. Seems implausible to me. So, I won’t waste time hoping that it is so.

Ah, but someone might ask if God couldn’t just make a copy of all that we experienced in our brain. When we die, God restores everything from the backup, just like we would do on a computer. Our mind would literally be backed up in the cloud.

If there is a backup of my mental database that will be used to drive a new body someday, how do we know it won’t happen to two bodies, or even a thousand? Will there be thousands of copies of me out there running off the same backup database of me? It is difficult to see how we can refer to any of those backups as “me”. They are copies, not me. The same thing can be said about the first copy made from a backup database of my memories. It’s not really me. Would it be fair to punish or reward a copy of me for what I have done here on earth?

Is it possible a God is making a backup copy of me that can live forever? Perhaps, but I can make hundreds of similar wild guesses as to what might happen someday. For instance, is there a possibility that aliens will land on Jupiter, transform it into a paradise for humans, and then offer free shuttle service back and forth to earth? Perhaps. But I don’t spend long hoping for that to happen. Nor do I spend long hoping that some backup copy of me lives forever.

So it appears that neither a soul nor a copy of the brain’s database survives death.

But what about bodily resurrection? Perhaps the brain lies dormant until God puts it back together and resurrects the body. But how could that happen? What about the bodies of people that died a thousand years ago? Their bodies have disintegrated, and the constituent atoms are spread throughout the world. Some of those particles could be in your brain now. Some atoms may have been part of many people’s brains throughout history. To which brain will they go in the resurrection?

If, on the other hand, I am reconstructed from a new set of molecules, is not such a reconstructed me just one of many possible copies of me that could be made? We are left with a copy, or even multiple copies, not a continued existence of my mind. A copy of me is not the same thing as me.

So, it appears that our minds will not survive death. Your mind is a function of your brain, and your brain will someday die. If you and I are going to find the good life, we will need to make the most of what we have here. Let us make this life count.

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Where does this leave God if he exists? If he is not preparing a place for us, what is he doing for us in this life? Let’s explore that next.

Yes, what (on earth) is God doing?

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Addendum: Q&A

WHAT ABOUT NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES?

In an online debate of this page, Mountainmanmike suggested that near-death experiences are evidence for souls. He contended that souls can somehow travel from the body and sense events happening remote from the body.

Near-death experiences are reported by less than 20% of people that were near death. If souls really do these things near death, why do not most people observe this?

There are many things that can cause such experiences. Oxygen deprivation, for instance, will restrict side vision, and make it appear like one is in a dark tunnel. Hence, the reports of traveling through a tunnel.

Did the reported experiences truly happen while physical consciousness was gone? We have no proof of that. There can be a rush of thoughts as one fades in and out of consciousness. So, the reported vague consciousness during the experience can simply be memories as one went in and out of consciousness.

What about the fact that people sometimes have knowledge of things that were happening in the room? Such knowledge can come while partially conscious, from later hearing about the events from others, or by simply making educated guesses about what happened.

WHAT ABOUT PEOPLE WHO SENSE THINGS FAR AWAY?

Mountainmanmike also argued that twins can sense the death of a twin far away.

Although there are many such claims, none can be repeated in controlled studies. Yes, a twin may die, and the other twin may report having a strange feeling at that moment, but how does that prove that the soul of the dead twin travelled to be with the other twin? We are going strictly off the memory of the events. And memories change with time. We selectively remember things that match what we want. We ignore all those times when we felt uneasy, and there was no tragedy elsewhere, or when tragedy happened, and nobody reports this experience.

Such claims of remote sensing were never verified in controlled studies, where we would need to show that the knowledge supposedly transmitted was such that it was unlikely to have happened by chance.

And even if twins are shown to consistently know when a distant twin dies, how would that prove that a soul left a body? How would you know that is not just some yet unknown sense such as a bat’s radar that can sense things from a distance?

WHY DO WE NEED CONTROLLED STUDIES?

Anecdotal evidence is extremely unreliable. For years people were pitching snake oil and all kinds of claims based on anecdotal evidence. But people see what they want to see. So, if they invest in snake oil, for instance, they will often think they see fantastic things happen with snake oil. And they will tell stories of the success of snake oil. That is why scientists got away from trusting such anecdotal evidence and look instead for the results of controlled studies.

If we accept claims of remote sensing without having a controlled study to verify it, we are relying only on anecdotal evidence. Should we also go back to the days where all sorts of flimflam cures were promoted on nothing more than anecdotes? Should we abandon modern medicine based on controlled studies, and instead trust anecdotes? I prefer scientific evidence and controlled studies.

Does paranormal perception occur in near-death experiences? by Keith Augustine How Not to do Survival Research by Keith Augustine Beyond the BICS Essay Contest: Envisioning a More Rigorous Preregistered Survival Study by Etienne LeBel, Keith Augustine & Adam Rock

Links on Near-Death Experience Studies

WHEN A SCIENTIST DESCRIBES AN EXPERIMENT, ISN’T THAT JUST ANECDOTAL?

Mountainmanmike continued with a long list of pseudoscience mixed with descriptions of science. Since all stories can be called anecdotes, is all evidence anecdotal?

He is confusing telling an account of the experimental procedure and uncontrolled anecdotal evidence. When scientists speak of anecdotal evidence, they are speaking of a claim with no scientific methodology to prevent bias from influencing the result. Real scientists use studies that are designed to discover the truth, regardless of any pre-existing bias that they may have. And when they do such experiments, they describe what they did. Such descriptions of experiments are quite different from anecdotal evidence.

Scientific observation is based on getting information that is not the result of the scientist’s bias. For instance, when testing new medicines, the medicine is tested in a controlled double-blind trial. Such studies, when properly done, minimize the effects of bias on the results. So, the studies give valuable information.

When Mountainmanmike reports that a twin had an odd feeling when a distant twin died, what controls were used to keep bias out of the claim?

There is a difference between a properly done statistical study and anecdotal evidence that has no scientific controls. The table listed at Learn How Anecdotal Evidence Can Trick You is a good description of the difference.

WHAT ABOUT DREAMS?

On this thread, Yaaten wrote, “The soul sleeps at night because the brain is asleep?…Don’t you dream when you’re asleep?” 

Yes, of course, I dream while asleep. We can go through stages of consciousness, especially when fading in and out of sleep. But clearly the conscious mind is not in the same state during sleep as it is while awake.

How can you explain that? If you are counting sheep when going to sleep, you will always stop counting when you go to sleep. If your soul or mind is the conscious part of you, and is distinct from the brain, why doesn’t it continue to be the conscious part in a fully alert state while your brain sleeps? Why can’t your independent soul just keep on counting, fully conscious, while the brain dozes?

If the soul is in charge, and the brain is just my connection to the world, why would the soul start dreaming when the connection gets cut off? But if instead, the brain is the seat of the mind, and it goes through various stages of sleep, it is certainly understandable that the brain could then act differently and cause the mind to dream.

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NOTES

1. Dennett, Daniel C., Consciousness Explained (Boston: Back Bay Books, 1991) pp. 162-163

2. Dennett, Daniel C., Consciousness Explained (Boston: Back Bay Books, 1991) p 114

Copyright Merle Hertzler 2002, 2005, 2006, 2022. All rights reserved.