A. C. Grayling
I’ve enjoyed reading The GOD Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism, in spite of the fact I disagreed with much of what author A. C. Grayling wrote. As I asserted in my earlier blog about the Scopes Monkey Trial, Professor Grayling is an excellent writer.
At times, his book forced me to exercise the little grey cells in my head quite vigorously.
For example, at first I couldn’t figure out why Professor Grayling described the problem as ‘logically impossible’ when he wrote:
Consider the sentence, ‘I can trisect a Euclidean angle using only ruler and compass.’ This is a grammatical and even in one sense an intelligible sentence, but it claims something that is logically impossible to do — and therefore to think.
I must confess that relatively simple sentence initially befuddled me.
After all, I could envision drawing a two-dimensional right angle with a horizontal line intersecting a vertical line at 90 degrees, and then trisecting it at 30 and 60 degrees rather easily with a compass. However, I sensed that I was missing something that must be obvious and could not be understanding the problem correctly, if what Professor Grayling wrote was true. And my instincts were correct.
It turned out the operative word in that deceptively simple sentence was ‘Euclidean’ — apparently referring to a three-dimensional angle, like what you would find in the corner of a room formed where two walls meet. Then I realized what Grayling must have meant, and he’s right: the task is impossible to perform using only a ruler, pencil and compass. On the other hand, it’s a piece of cake for me to trisect such an angle using only one tool, that being my miter saw, to cut a piece of base moulding or quarter round. Solving a difficult problem merely requires two things: that you understand the real nature of the problem, and you have the ideal tools for the job.
[CORRECTION: a math professor friend has informed me that I was completely wrong about Euclidean meaning a three dimensional angle. However, my right angle example is the exception to the “impossible” rule, according to the link he gave me. Lucky guess on my part.]
But I like books that force me to think.
Professor Grayling divided his book into two parts: the first section is devoted to his argument against religion, and the second half extols the perceived virtues of humanism.
He uses phrases such as “to see the human mind liberated from religion and superstition…” [emphasis added] as he lauds the work of militant antitheists and evangelists for atheism such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Dan Barker and Christopher Hitchens.
In a chapter titled “Naming and Describing a ‘God'” Grayling suggested that we could just as easily refer to God as ‘Fred’ or ‘the supreme egg’, obviously mocking the concept of a supernatural creator.
Coincidentally, in my book I suggested that readers with an atheistic worldview like Professor Grayling’s should do exactly that — refer to “supernatural intelligence” with any substitute moniker for God they felt most comfortable using, whether that name be Jesus, Allah, Krishna, Zeus, Thor, the celestial teapot, or even the flying spaghetti monster, for all I care.
Professor Grayling wrote:
One line of thinking in the theory of knowledge has it that belief is not an all-or-nothing affair, but a matter of degree. The degree in question can be represented as a probability value. [emphasis added.]
We seem to agree that belief is best measured in relationship to probability.
In my book Counterargument for God, I said: “[T]he probability of any form of supernatural intelligence should initially be set very low, like one-half of one percent. Then the probability of good luck would be extremely high: 99.5 percent. Remember, there is a direct, inverse relationship between the two variables.”
We also agreed that the initial probability of God may be set quite low.
Interestingly enough, Grayling also said this, mirroring something I wrote:
The initial probability of there being a deity is not fifty percent, as some try to argue. There is a hidden assumption of agnosticism, which premises the thought that there is insufficient evidence to settle the matter either way.
Keep in mind that the initial probability we assign God isn’t a value of particular importance to me — it’s only the end result that matters.
My counterargument to atheism relies primarily on logic, common sense, and scientific evidence. If we assume the universe had an origin, there are only two logical alternatives: either the universe came to exist through a series of accidents, or it was created on purpose.
Grayling also wrote:
But it is not rational to bet on something’s being the case that has a probability of 99.9 percent chance of not being the case, and since acceptance of a belief is exactly comparable to taking a bet, the question ‘is it rational to bet on x’ and ‘is it rational to believe in x’ alike admit of unequivocal yes/no answers.
The problem is that Professor Grayling has expressed the probability problem exactly backwards. He clearly doesn’t understand the relationship between the probability of a creator God versus the probability of good luck being responsible. To suggest that the probability of God is nearly zero would mean the probability that unbelievable good luck explains our existence is virtual certainty, nearly 100 percent.
However, Sir Roger Penrose has calculated the odds that the Big Bang would create this universe were 1 in 10^300th power, which is an infinitessimally small fraction of one percent.
Because of the remarkably low probability that our universe was created in the Big Bang by random chance, multiverse theory exists, mainly to solve the improbability problem of a fine-tuned universe just right for life conveniently existing so that we might also exist.
And the Big Bang is only the first highly improbable event that we must consider in our quest to answer the existential questions.There is also the relative probability that luck also caused inflation, the origin of life, and even the differentiation of primitive life into the diverse forms we see today.
Stephen Hawking has asserted that even the slightest variation in the inflationary period that immediately followed the creation of the universe, even a minor change as small as one in a million-million, would have caused the new universe to collapse. The improbability of inflation is both dependent and independent of the Big Bang event.
What I mean by that is inflation could not have happened without the Big Bang occurring first. Therefore inflation requires the Big Bang.
The Big Bang did not require inflation, however. We cannot simply assume that inflation had no choice but to occur, unless we are prepared to accept the teleological ramifications that arise from it.
In his book the good professor conceded that the ‘Goldilocks enigma’ exists, meaning our universe is extraordinarily, even uniquely apt for life.
But Professor Grayling attempts to counter this scientific observation with an argument based on incredulity — maintaining that no matter how hard it is to believe in good luck, it is even more difficult to believe in a supernatural God. He does this while completely failing to realize that God and incredible good luck are our only two probabilities.
Those probabilities are inversely related to each other. In other words, as the probability that sort of good luck increases, the probability of God decreases in direct proportion.
Unwittingly or not, Grayling has merely attempted to replace the concept of a supernatural deity with Time as the god that solves all of our existential problems.
Frankly, that isn’t exactly a new idea. Not to mention, it’s a very flawed idea.
Nor does Grayling break any new ground with his argument against religion, parroting much of what Dawkins wrote to evangelize his atheism in The God Delusion.
But Grayling is correct about the importance of relative probability but wrong about its application when he writes:
It is of course the case that it is sometimes uncertain whether something is or is not so, because the evidence pushes both ways, or is insufficient. Then the rational course is either to suspend judgment (this is what agnostics mistakenly think they are doing; see below) or to take a chance, helped by any external considerations that give some inclining help. This typically happens when the probability of something is about 50 percent. But it is not rational to bet on something’s being the case that has a probability of 99.9 percent of not being the case, and since acceptance of a belief is exactly comparable to taking a bet, the question ‘is it rational to bet on x’ and ‘is it rational to believe in x’ alike admit of unequivocal yes/no answers.
However, Grayling couldn’t have been more wrong…and, of course, there are gradations of wrong — when he wrote:
Depending on your point of view it is just a lucky or unlucky result of how things happen to be. The universe’s parameters are not tuned on purpose for us to exist. It is the other way around: we exist because the laws happen to be as they are.
Academic credentials or not, I can’t simply give Professor Grayling a pass on this one. How could such a baseless assertion be considered any more valid than a religious person invoking a creator God? And who made these ‘laws’ that are being applied?
Grayling also defines the moral argument improperly to say “there can be no morality without a deity.”
But no one really questions whether or not morality exists. The issue is whether morality is relative or objective.
Another reason I liked Grayling’s book is because he delves into another topic of apparent mutual interest — the near death experience.
Unfortunately, Grayling misinterprets the evidence about NDEs at his disposal just as badly as he bungled the probability argument. He attributes belief that life after death to two possible motives: fear, or a desire to seek justice. I will admit that those are two common reasons why people might want to believe in life after death, but neither is the best reason.
The best reason to believe life after death is possible is this: a phenomena known as corroborated veridical NDE events, which involves a person very near death learning new information that can be investigated and verified, information they should not have known — indicating that the spiritual mind and physical brain were briefly separated, and the mind continued to learn.
Discussing these areas of sharp disagreement with Professor Grayling could prove quite interesting. A written debate could be very challenging, if he were to agree to such a proposition.
One of us would surely be humbled by the experience.
Hi,
I’m obviously a bit late to the party but I was wondering about something you wrote:
“If we assume the universe had an origin, there are only two logical alternatives: either the universe came to exist through a series of accidents, or it was created on purpose.”
It seems you’re setting up the dichotomy “purposeful design or pure luck”. How do you know these are the only options?
Thank you for the comment, and reading my article.
Something may happen by accident. Or, something may happen on purpose.
I’m not quite sure what a purposeful accident would be…once “purpose” is introduced into the equation, does that not infer a cause?
“By accident” to me indicates something unpredictable. This seems to go to the heart of your probability argument. If we have no way of predicting what the outcome will be, any particular outcome would have to be assigned a low probability. But that doesn’t strike me to be how nature works. If you hold a rock in your hand and let it go, would you consider its trajectory to be accidental (i.e. unpredictable)?
Yes, unpredictability is an important facet of the probability argument.
However, using your analogy with the rock, presuming the rock is being held in my hand and I turn my palm down toward the ground with my fingers open, the normal, expected result would be for the rock to fall to the ground, adhering to the “laws” of gravity.
Should the rock “fall” in the other direction, I should have to form a new theory of gravity, or take into consideration the possibility that I’m in an environment where gravity does not apply, like the space station. Logic and common sense should dictate whether or not we accept the theoretical possibility that something is true — is it merely possible, or is the idea plausible? That seems to also be something to consider.
For example, I read an atheist guy who wrote a pretty good article that addressed the probability issue with a useful analogy — imagine you are in a card game with three other players. The deck is dealt, and you discover your hand is all spades. In turn, each of the other players exposes their hand, and everyone has been dealt all the cards in the same suit.
The odds of this happening make the hand virtually impossible, 1 in 500 trillion or so. I can come up with two easier explanations. One, the deck was stacked. Two, the deck was brand new, and not shuffled prior to the deal. Both explanations are much more plausible than the deal simply turned out that way. I’ve been playing cards off and on for 55 years, and I’ve never seen a natural royal straight flush.
I know one is theoretically possible. However, I’d never bet on it.
The question you seem to be asking is this: did the universe have a choice, other than to be what it is? As I tried to explain to an atheist friend on Facebook, I did not “invent” the theory that the universe was fine tuned with incredible precision, and if any of the alleged cosmological constants varied in the slightest degree, the universe would not, and could not exist. You can blame the physicists for fine tuning, the idea of an anthropic universe that like Goldilocks, was just right to exist, and to support complex life forms.
I will be pleased to continue our conversation as long as you wish, but I would also like to offer you a free PDF copy of my book “Counterargument for God” so you can get the whole argument about probability and the science involved without having to ask me a million questions — though that is okay, if that’s your preference. If you want the PDF, simply send an email to john@southernprose.com and put something like “book” or counterargument in the subject line, so I know that’s what the email is about, and I’ll attach a copy to my reply. Either way, you ask good questions.
Thank you for your kind offer of a free copy of your book. I may take you up on that but for now, I’m happy just continuing our discussion, if that’s OK.
My point with using the rock analogy is that there seem to be causes that are at once purposeless and predictable, which would put your dichotomy in question. I think we can agree that it’s not just by luck that the rock always falls toward the center of Earth’s gravity. There’s a reason we call it the law of gravity, not the accident of gravity.
This leaves purpose. Are you saying the rock falls by design? If so, wouldn’t that be just stating that which you wish to demonstrate? If you’re not saying that, then it seems we need to add a third option, making it a trichotomy: purposeful design, pure luck or some purposeless, non-random cause.
This of course puts a new spin on the probability calculations. If there could be a purposeless, non-random cause – maybe some fundamental property of matter and energy that restricts the total range of possible outcomes – then this universe coming about without design may not be all that improbable. If you think such a cause could not exist, how would you demonstrate this?
The problem I have with the fine-tuning argument (which is also a probability argument) is the same that I have with your dichotomy: it excludes the possibility that the range of possible outcomes may be constrained by some force or principle that we’re not aware of. I’ve seen no justification for this exclusion – do you address this in your book?
If there’s nothing to tune, there’s obviously no fine-tuning so I would really need to see this addressed before I accept the claim that the universe is fine-tuned.
I have other problems with the fine-tuning argument but they’re of a more philosophical nature and are probably best left for another discussion.
I highly recommend Chris Impey’s book “The Living Cosmos” and Paul Davies’ “The Goldilocks Enigma” for discussions on fine tuning. Impey is an atheist, and Davies either agnostic or perhaps a deist.
I’d like to point out that I am not the one who suggested cosmological fine tuning exists. That was Sir Martin Rees, in his book “Just Six Numbers.” I’ve never done a physics equation, but I have provided some VERY simple statements that appear to be equations in order to present ideas in very simple terms.
The problem is this: if we assume the big bang was an actual event and the universe has not always existed, then we must look for the explanation of how we got something from nothing. I read Lawrence Krauss’s book “A Universe from Nothing” and he suggested that because of quantum mechanics we can always expect to get something from nothing, but QM is something only observed on the atomic level, and only addresses the possible location of an electron, not exactly how to form a universe from absolutely nothing.
I sort of like “my” version of multiverse theory, because once we accept the idea this universe has not always existed in its present form, then “nothing” had to come from somewhere.
You should watch Richard Dawkins explain his take on the anthropic principle, and HIS improbability argument.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlD-CJPGt1A
Tell you what — I’m writing a book at the moment so I’ll probably only be responding about once a day, until I get the draft closer to where I want it to be. I’m actually a novelist. You can blame Richard Dawkins for my excursion into nonfiction, due to his book “The God Delusion.”
However, I will try to clarify my argument in regard to probability with a new blog later tonight, after I grill the steaks. If I don’t publish tonight, I’ll post it in the morning, before I get back to work.
Right now the plan is to name it something useful, like “The Probability Argument”. Whatever the title, it should be my next post here.
Thanks for the book recommendations and the YouTube-link, I hadn’t seen that clip. I would agree with Steven Weinberg (or at least Dawkins’ account of Weinberg’s view) that we don’t know enough about physics and why the physical constants are what they are to even know if the universe is fine-tuned or not.
Looking forward to reading your blog post.