Over the past couple of weeks an especially determined atheist has been writing me, offering me $1000 if I can make God appear to Him in such a way that he can see and touch Him. The atheist just finished reading my book What's So Great About Christianity and it disturbed him, because it challenged his assumptions. Still, he demands unquestionable empirical confirmation. If I can only make God show his face, my correspondent sarcastically suggests, he would be happy to join the ranks of the believers.
In some ancient religions, where gods were considered to be made of the same material substance as other matter, this would be a reasonable (or at least a meaningful) challenge. But all the great religions, and certainly the Abrahamic ones, regard God as an immaterial spirit. If the atheist is willing to consider the possibility that such a God exists--as all open-minded atheists must do--then the question becomes: how can we know of the existence of immaterial things?
Scientists believe in immaterial things. How about gravity? I should write back my betting friend, offering him $1000 if he can make gravity appear to me in such a way that I can see and touch it. But of course he would indignantly reply that gravity is a force, and the existence of forces cannot be verified through direct sensory experience. Rather, their existence must be inferred through their effects. We know that something is making objects plummet to the earth. We know that something is causing the light from the sun in certain cases to bend. That something we call gravity.
Or consider dark matter and dark energy. I haven't seen them, and I bet you haven't either. In fact, no one has. The reason they are called "dark" is because they don't emit light. So how can we reasonably believe in such invisible, immaterial things? The existence of dark matter is inferred from its gravitational effects on visible matter. The existence of dark energy is inferred from the accelerated rate at which galaxies are flying away from each other. Scientists reason that something is holding galaxies together, and something else is causing them (and space itself) to fly apart. These somethings we call dark matter and dark energy. Interestingly scientists believe that dark matter and dark energy make up more than 90 percent of all the matter in the universe.
Applying the same mode of reasoning, I would argue that some immaterial force caused the universe to come into existence. Here is the proof: a) All material things that have a beginning must have a cause, b) We know from the Big Bang theory that the universe (not just matter but space and time itself) had a beginning, c) Therefore the universe has a cause.
Now that cause can be natural or supernatural, but we can rule out a natural cause since the universe encompasses all of nature. It is simply ridiculous to say that nature, which once did not exist, somehow caused itself to come into existence. Some people like to talk about "multiple universes" or even an infinity of universes but they have to admit that they are just making those up: there is no empirical evidence whatsoever that any universe exists except our own. Much of this kind of talk seems to be a desperate way of trying to get around the idea of God. It's faith-based atheism.
It's must more reasonable--and, invoking Occam's razor, much more intellectually parsimonious--to believe that the universe came into existence because of a non-natural or (as theists would say) supernatural cause. That cause we call God.
Reader Comments ( Page 6 of 33)
76. And that reminds me of another thing. I come down, suffer and die on that thing, and two thousand years later I come again and everybody's wearing one around their neck. It creeps me out. Its like that stupid horrible Mel Gibson film. I came down and said all that good stuff, and this is what you remember? Is my name a front for a cult of sadists now?
Jesus Christ Himself at 2:18PM on Jan 28th 2008
xx
did a bunny at one time look down at you from a cross opposite a briar patch and say, 'hey there, br'er Jesus - how'd you lak to earn a Dollah a Minute?'
hippitus hoppitus....
Clif Kuplen at 2:32PM on Jan 28th 2008
77.
Truly Jesus if Christianity was as you speaks in your earthly post. It would be a better world, maybe there would be more believers. You and I know that churches are no so liberal in being free of thought. You must go to your priest and confess your sins, and be a good Catholic.
TheSourc at 2:34PM on Jan 28th 2008
78. However, please explain how one would make it visible other then a reading on a meter or waveform on an oscilloscope?
M2D5 at 2:33PM on Jan 28th 2008
xx
If you want to see examples, there are beautiful ones on the same array of photos from the hubble and others taken in non-visible ems ranges, like x-rays or infra red to radio waves.
You simply move the emissions data gathered to visible spectrum to put it simply as possible. We can't see through the dust to the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy except in infra-red to radio wavelengths, but multiply the whole mess, do some compression and you'll get an awesome photographic representation in the visible range. It's not exactly a new technique.
Clif Kuplen at 2:39PM on Jan 28th 2008
79. Again: DD does not believe in God. He believes in a dead Jewish guy from Jerusalem. DD is a cult member.
Larry at 3:00PM on Jan 28th 2008
80. There's nothing immaterial.
Thus, Dinesh is simply wrong.
Why is Dinesh such a total idiot?
Knight_of_BAAWA at 2:50PM on Jan 28th 2008
81. #78
"You simply move the emissions data gathered to visible spectrum to put it simply as possible"
Ae you transposing the actual readings ?
Or are you altering the frequency ?
If you play at all with frequencies how does one
deal with things are "frequency" dependent, either directly or inversely dependent?
M2D5 at 3:25PM on Jan 28th 2008
82. Knight...what is your definition of 'immaterial'? I feel a definition coming from Mr. Born, a true lover of definitions ;)
Shannie at 3:50PM on Jan 28th 2008
83. If there is something we can't know, then how can we know?
a born atheist at 3:55PM on Jan 28th 2008
84. If there is something we can't know, then how can we know?
a born atheist at 3:55PM on Jan 28th 2008
85. 81. #78
"You simply move the emissions data gathered to visible spectrum to put it simply as possible"
Ae you transposing the actual readings ?
Or are you altering the frequency ?
xxxx
if you're going to see it, it will have to be transposed into visible light. Each frequency, and there would be many, would be transposed by a constant unless it was necessary to compress the entire spectrum to keep it visible, I would assume. That's how sound would work. You're just now finding out about this?
xxxx
If you play at all with frequencies how does one
deal with things are "frequency" dependent, either directly or inversely dependent?
xxx
like what?
you use a constant. It's the same principle as musical transposition if you think about the process. you can think of it as raising the pitch, or just speeding the piece up - for ems emissions that seems to be intuitively about the same thing.
If you're interested, why ask me? There are far better descriptions and detailed methodology from the people who actually have been doing this for decades. Did you look at any of the photos?
Clif Kuplen at 3:57PM on Jan 28th 2008
86. Whenever I look at the hubble photos, I'm constantly amazed at how much of the universe is NOT "intelligently designed" to support life.
For example, there is a galaxy that blasts other galaxies with energy from black holes.
We are simply very lucky to be here. It's not divine. We should enjoy it more!
Ryan Anderson at 4:06PM on Jan 28th 2008
87. Oh, here is the offending galaxy in case anyone is interested. It's pretty cool.
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/37/
Ryan Anderson at 4:06PM on Jan 28th 2008
88. a born atheist - The 'reality' of virtual particles is somewhat philosophical. I'll put it this way - "we've never, ever seen [net] mass/energy be created or destroyed [over macroscopic, human-detectable timescales]." Even with a Feynman diagram, the particles leaving the interactions total the same mass/energy as the ones entering.
Ray Ingles at 4:08PM on Jan 28th 2008
89. #85,
I have not had a chance to look at photos yet.
As to fequency dependency.
Something whose components are frequnecy dependent, i.e. inductive reactance which is directly proportional to frequency, capacitive reactance which is inversely proportional to frequency, impedance which is the vector sum of the these two forms of opposing reactance.
Others might also include coupling, isolation, insertion loss.
M2D5 at 4:21PM on Jan 28th 2008
90. Antimatter is a reality. They have built antimatter hydrogen out of an anti-proton and a positron. The [net] you added in to your description is actually pretty important in my mind. The implication is that the net existence of matter in the universe is likely zero.
a born atheist at 4:21PM on Jan 28th 2008