But that is not what we have. Not even close. Therefore, I do not have enough evidence to justify believing in Christianity. Again, this could easily be changed, even without the evidence above. If Jesus appeared to me now and answered some of my questions, I would believe. If he often spoke to me and I could perform miracles through his overt blessing, I would believe. If everyone all over the world and throughout history, myself included, had the same religious experience, witnessing no other supernatural being—no other god, no other spirit—other than Jesus, and hearing no other message than the Gospel, I would believe. If we got to observe who makes it into Heaven and who doesn’t, and thus could confirm the consequences of belief and unbelief, with the same kind and quantity of evidence as we have for the consequences of driving drunk, I would believe. But we get none of these things, or anything like them.
This is a state of evidence that a “loving” God, who “wanted” us to accept the Gospel and set things right, would not allow. Therefore, the absence of this evidence not only leaves Christianity without sufficient evidence to warrant our believing it, but it outright refutes Christianity, because Christianity entails the prediction that God would provide enough evidence to save us, to let us make an informed decision. Since this prediction fails, the theory fails. A loving God would not hide the life preserver he supposedly threw to me, nor would he toss it into a fog, but near to me, where it was plain to see, and he would help me accomplish whatever I needed to reach it and be saved. For that is what I would do for anyone else. And no Christian can believe that I, a mere human infidel, am more fair and loving than their own God. So there is no way to escape this conclusion. Christianity is fully refuted by its own dismal state of evidence.
Wrong Universe
Before now I briefly mentioned that the Christian hypothesis actually predicts a completely different universe than the one we find ourselves in. For a loving God who wanted to create a universe solely to provide a home for human beings, and to bring his plan of salvation to fruition, would never have invented this universe, but something quite different. Whereas if there is no God, then the universe we actually observe is exactly the sort of universe we would expect to observe.
In other words, if there is no God then this universe is the only kind of universe we would ever find ourselves in, the only kind that could ever produce intelligent life without any supernatural cause or plan. Hence atheism entails exactly the kind of universe we observe, while the Christian theory predicts almost none of the features of our universe. Instead, any Christian theory of the world predicts the universe should have features that in fact it doesn’t, and should lack features that in fact it has. Therefore, naturalism is a better explanation than Christianity of the universe we actually find ourselves in. Since naturalism (rejecting all that is supernatural) is the most plausible form of atheism I know (richardcarrier.info/naturalism.html), this is what I shall mean by “atheism” from here on out. I give a formal demonstration of all this in a chapter of John Loftus’ The End of Christianity (2011), but here I shall outline enough to make the point. Let’s look at a few examples of what I mean.
Origin and Evolution of Life
First, the origin of life. Suppose there is no God. If that is the case, then the origin of life must be a random accident. Christians rightly point out that the appearance of the first living organism is an extremely improbable accident. Of course, so is winning a lottery, and yet lotteries are routinely won. Why? Because the laws of probability entail the odds of winning a lottery depend not just on how unlikely a win is—like, let’s say, a one in a billion chance—but on how often the game is played. In other words, if a billion people play, and the odds of winning are one in a billion, it’s actually highly probable that someone will win the lottery. Now, if the game is played only once, and the only ticket sold just happens to be the winner, then you might get suspicious. And if the game was played a billion times, and each time only one ticket was sold and yet every single time it was that ticket that happened to be the winner, then you would be quite certain someone was cheating. For nothing else could easily explain such a remarkable fact.
Therefore, the only way life could arise by accident (i.e. without God arranging it) is if there were countless more failed tries than actual successes. After all, if the lottery was played by a billion people and yet only one of them won, that would surely be a mere accident, not evidence of cheating. So the only way this lottery could be won by accident is if it was played countless times and only one ticket won. To carry the analogy over, the only way life could arise by accident is if the universe tried countless times and only very rarely succeeded. Lo and behold, we observe that is exactly what happened: the universe has been mixing chemicals for over twelve billion years in over a billion-trillion star systems. That is exactly what we would have to see if life arose by accident—because life can only arise by accident in a universe as large and old as ours. The fact that we observe exactly what the theory of accidental origin requires and predicts is evidence that our theory is correct.
Of course, we haven’t yet proven any particular theory of life’s origin true. But we do have evidence for every element of every theory now considered. Nothing about contemporary hypotheses of life’s origin rests on any conjecture or assumption that has not been observed or demonstrated in some circumstance. For example, we know porous rocks that can provide a cell-like home were available near energy-rich, deep-sea volcanic vents. We know those vents harbor some of the most ancient life on the planet, indicating that life may well have begun there. And we know these vents would have provided all the necessary resources to produce an amino-acid-based life, and that they had hundreds of millions of years of time in which to do so. In a similar way, we have evidence supporting every other presently viable theory: we know homochiral amino acids can be mass-produced in a supernova and thus become a component of the early comets that bombarded the early Earth; we know that amino acids that chain along a common crystalline structure in clay will chain in a homochiral structure; we know simple self-replicating chains of amino acids exist that do not require any enzymes working in concert; and so on.†
So by the rules of sound procedure, the accidental theory is well-grounded in a way intelligent design theory is not. We have never observed or confirmed the existence of any sort of divine actions or powers that God would have needed to “create” the first life—nor have we demonstrated the existence of any such agent, not even indirectly (as we have for all the natural theories of life’s origin). So the intelligent design theory is completely ad hoc, in exactly the way our accidental theory is not, and is therefore not presently credible.
The situation is even worse than that, really. For the Christian theory does not predict what we observe, while the natural theory does predict what we observe. After all, what need does an intelligent engineer have of billions of years and trillions of galaxies filled with billions of stars apiece? That tremendous waste is only needed if life had to arise by natural accident. It would have no plausible purpose in the Christian God’s plan. You cannot predict from “the Christian God created the world” that “the world” would be trillions of galaxies large and billions of years old before it finally stumbled on one rare occasion of life. But we can predict exactly that from “no God created this world.” Because if there is no God, then life could have arisen only in a world that large and old. So that would be the only world we would ever see around us. And lo and behold, that’s exactly the world we see around us.
Therefore, the facts confirm atheism rather than theism. Obviously, a Christian can invent all manner of additional ad hoc theories to explain “why” his God would go to all the trouble of designing the universe to look exactly like we would expect it to look if God did not exist. But these ad hoc excuses are themselves pure concoctions of the imagination. Until the Christian can prove these additional theories are true, from independent evidence, there is no reason to believe them, and hence no reason to believe the Chri
stian theory.
The same analysis follows for evolution. The evidence that all present life evolved by a process of natural selection is strong and extensive. I won’t repeat the case here, for it is enough to point out that the scientific consensus on this is vast and certain, so if you deny it you’re only kicking against the goad of your own ignorance.† And as it happens, evolution requires billions of years to get all the way from the first accidental life to organisms as complex as us. God does not require this—nor does taking so long make much sense for God, unless he wanted to deliberately fabricate evidence against his existence by planting all the evidence for evolution—all the fossils, all the DNA correlations, the vast scales of time over which changes occurred, everything. Again, there is no credible reason to believe the Christian God would do this, and no actual evidence that he did. It would make him a liar in any case, which by definition the Christian God cannot be, as a “lover of love” would hardly be the prince of lies. In contrast, the only way we could exist without God is if we lived at the end of billions of years of meandering change over time. Lo and behold, that is exactly where we observe ourselves to be. Thus, atheism predicts the evidence for evolution, including the vast time involved and all the meandering progress of change in the fossil record, whereas Christian theism does not predict any of this—without adding all manner of undemonstrated ad hoc assumptions, assumptions the atheist theory does not require.
Even DNA confirms atheism over Christianity. The only way life could ever arise by accident and evolve by natural selection is if it was built from a chemical code that could be copied and that was subject to mutation. We know of no other natural, accidental way for any universe to just “stumble upon” any kind of life that could naturally evolve. Also, as best we know, the only chemicals that our present universe could accidentally assemble this way are amino acids and related molecules like nucleotides. And it is highly improbable that an accidentally assembled code would employ any more than a handful of basic units in its fundamental structure. Lo and behold, we observe all of this to be the case. Exactly as required by the theory that there is no God, all life is built from a chemical code that copies itself and mutates naturally, this code is constructed from amino-acid-forming nucleotide molecules, and the most advanced DNA code we have only employs four different nucleotide molecules to do that. The Christian theory predicts none of this. Atheism predicts all of it. There is no good reason God would need any of these things to create and sustain life. He could, and almost certainly would, use an infallible spiritual essence to accomplish the same ends—exactly as all Christians thought for nearly two thousand years. Instead, we have fallible and malfunctioning DNA that mutates regularly (in life, causing cancer; in reproduction, causing death, disability, or unplanned novelty).
Again, the only way a Christian can explain the actual facts is by pulling out of thin air some unproven “reason” why God would design life in exactly the way required by the theory that life wasn’t designed by God—a way that was demonstrably inferior to what he could have done. Either God must have a deliberate intent to deceive, which no “good” or “loving” God who “wanted” us to know the truth would ever have, or God has some other motive that just “happens” to entail, by some truly incredible coincidence, doing exactly the same thing as deceiving us into thinking he doesn’t exist, which at the same time just “happens” to require adding needless imperfections in our construction. In the one case, Christianity is refuted, and in the other it becomes too incredible to believe—unless the Christian can prove from actual evidence that this coincidental reason really does exist and really has guided God’s actions in choosing how to design life and the universe it resides in. The possibility is not enough. You have to prove it. That has yet to happen.
We can find more examples from the nature of life. For example, a loving God would infuse his creation with models of moral goodness everywhere, in the very function and organization of nature. He would not create an animal kingdom that depended on wanton rape and murder to persist and thrive, nor would animals have to produce hundreds of offspring because almost all of them will die, most of them horribly. There would be no disease or other forms of suffering among animals at all. Yet all of these things must necessarily exist if there is no God. So once again, atheism predicts what we see. Christianity does not.
The Human Brain
As a more specific example, consider the size of the human brain. If God exists, then it necessarily follows that a fully functional mind can exist without a body—and if that is true, God would have no reason to give us brains. We would not need them. For being minds like him, being “made in his image,” our souls could do all the work, and control our thoughts and bodies directly. At most a very minimal brain would be needed to provide interaction between the senses, nerves, and soul. A brain no larger than that of a monkey would be sufficient, since a monkey can see, hear, smell, and do pretty much everything we can, and its tiny brain is apparently adequate to the task. And had God done that—had he given us real souls that actually perform all the tasks of consciousness (seeing, feeling, thinking)—that would indeed count as evidence for his existence, and against mere atheism.
In contrast, if a mind can only be produced by a comparably complex machine, then obviously there can be no God (there being no complex machine to produce him), and the human brain would have to be very large—large enough to contain and produce a complex machine like a mind. Lo and behold, the human brain is indeed large—so large that it kills many mothers during labor (without scientific medicine, the rate of mortality varies around 10% per child).† This huge brain also consumes a large amount of oxygen and other resources, and it is very delicate and easily damaged. Moreover, damage to the brain profoundly harms a human’s ability to perceive and think. So our large brain is a considerable handicap, the cause of needless misery and death and pointless inefficiency—which is not anything a loving engineer would give us, nor anything a good or talented engineer with godlike resources would ever settle on.
But this enormous, problematic brain is necessarily the only way conscious beings can exist if there is no God (nor any other supernatural powers in the universe). If we didn’t need a brain, and thus did not have one, we would be many times more efficient. All that oxygen, energy, and other materials could be saved or diverted to other functions (we would need less air to breathe, less food to eat). We would also be far less vulnerable to fatal or debilitating injury. We would be immune to brain damage, and defects that impair judgment or distort perception (like schizophrenia or retardation), and we wouldn’t have killed one in every ten of our mothers before the rise of medicine. In short, the fact that we have such large, vulnerable brains is the only way we could exist if there is no God, but is quite improbable if there is a God who loves us and wants us to do well and have a fair chance in life. Once again, when it comes to our brains, atheism predicts the universe we find ourselves in. The Christian theory does not.†
Finely Tuning a Killer Cosmos
Even the Christian proposal that God designed the universe, indeed “finely tuned” it to be the perfect mechanism for producing life, fails to predict the universe we see. A universe perfectly designed for life would easily, readily, and abundantly produce and sustain it. Most of the contents of that universe would be conducive to life or benefit life. Yet that is not what we see. Instead, almost the entire universe is lethal to life—in fact, if we put all the lethal vacuum of outer space swamped with deadly radiation into an area the size of a house, you would never find the submicroscopic speck of area that sustains life. It would be smaller than a single proton. Would you conclude that the house was built to serve and benefit that subatomic speck? Hardly. Yet that is the house we live in. The Christian theory completely fails to predict this. But atheism predicts exactly this.
The fact that the universe is actually very poorly designed to sustain and benefit life is already a refutation of the Christian theory, which entails the purpo
se of the universe is to sustain and benefit life—human life in particular. When we look at how the universe is actually built, we do find that it appears perfectly designed after all—but not for producing life. Lee Smolin has argued from the available scientific facts that our universe is probably the most perfect universe that could ever be arranged for producing black holes.† He also explains how all the elements that would be required to finely tune a perfect black-hole-maker also make chemical life like ours an extremely rare but inevitable byproduct of such a universe. This means that if the universe was designed, it was not designed to make and sustain us, but to make and sustain black holes, and therefore even if there is a God he cannot be the Christian God. Therefore, even on a successful fine-tuning argument Christianity is false.
Smolin explains how a universe perfectly designed to produce black holes would look exactly like our universe. It would be extremely old, extremely large, and almost entirely comprised of radiation-filled vacuum, in which almost all the matter available would be devoted to producing black holes or providing the material that feeds them. We know there must be, in fact, billions more black holes than life-producing planets. And if any of several physical constants varied by even the tiniest amount, the universe would produce fewer black holes—hence these constants have been arranged into the perfect combination for producing the most black holes possible. The number and variety and exact properties of subatomic particles has the same effect—any difference, and our universe would produce fewer black holes.
Christianity predicts none of these things. What use does God have for quarks, neutrinos, muons, or kaons? They are necessary only if God wanted to build a universe that was a perfect black hole generator. This is so even if the correlation is a coincidence: if only perfect black-hole generators can accidentally produce life, then atheism predicts exactly the universe we observe, whereas God has no need of complex systems of physical constants and subatomic particles to create a place for life. Do you really think everything in heaven is also made of photons, gluons and quarks and subject to the strong nuclear force and radioactive decay? Worse, do you really think God is so powerless he couldn’t build a world except with photons, gluons and quarks and the strong nuclear force and radioactive decay? (Not even heaven?) Surely God has no need of such things.
Why I Am Not a Christian Page 5
