This weekend I am in Vegas sampling some great shows, food and shopping. I took math in college, and so I know exactly why I shouldn't play the casinos. (It's not a question of morality; it's a question of knowing when you're being shafted.) Besides, I'm saving my brain for a bruising man-to-man debate against Christopher Hitchens. Every survey taken following one of my debates with leading atheists has me the winner, and I'd like to keep it that way.
In this blog I want to return to one of Hitchens's favorite arguments, one that he used in our New York debate last October and also in an Orange County debate last spring. In fact, in the Orange County synagogue event that also featured Jewish radio host Dennis Prager, Hitchens came out swinging with precisely this argument. Essentially Hitchens noted that Homo sapiens has been on the planet for approximately 100,000 years but for most of that time God seems to have been indifferent and inactive, choosing only to intervene in human history a few thousand years ago. What kind of a God, Hitchens contemptuously asked, behaves in this way?
When Hitchens first sprung this on me last year, I was surprised. But since then I've given some thought to it. When Hitchens brought it up a second time I was ready for him. Here I want to show how Hitchens' argument completely backfires on atheism. Let's apply an entirely secular analysis and go with Hitchens' premise that there is no God and man is an evolved primate. Well, biology tells us that man's basic frame and brain size haven't substantially changed throughout his terrestrial existence.
So here is the problem. Homo sapiens has been on the planet for 100,000 years, but apparently for more than 95,000 of those years he accomplished virtually nothing. No real art, no writing, no inventions, no culture, no civilization. How is this possible? Were our ancestors, otherwise physically and mentally undistinguishable from us, such blithering idiots that they couldn't figure out anything other than the arts of primitive warfare?
Then, a few thousand years ago, everything changes. Suddenly savage man gives way to historical man. Suddenly the naked ape gets his act together. We see civilizations sprouting in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, and elsewhere. Suddenly there are wheels and agriculture and art and culture. Soon we have dramatic plays and philosophy and an explosion of inventions and novel forms of government and social organization.
So how did Homo sapiens, heretofore such a slacker, suddenly get so smart? Scholars have made strenuous efforts to account for this but no one has offered a persuasive account. If we compare man's trajectory on earth to an airplane, we see a long, long stretch of the airplane faltering on the ground, and then suddenly, a few thousand years ago, takeoff!
Well, there is one obvious way to account for this historical miracle. It seems as if some transcendent being or force reached down and breathed some kind of a spirit or soul into man, because after accomplishing virtually nothing for 98 percent of our existence, we have in the past 2 percent of human history produced everything from the pyramids to Proust, from Socrates to computer software.
So paradoxically Hitchens' argument becomes a boomerang. Hitchens has raised a problem that atheism cannot easily explain and one that seems better accounted for by the Book of Genesis.
Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 35)
1.
I wouldn't try that in a debate. neanderthals had art and maybe music. The caves at alta mira show an immense amount of sophistication. Refinement of sentience has been going on for longer than the 8 thousand years or so they've been able to write it down.
In genesis, god hasn't figured out that bats aren't birds or that there aren't any creatures with two wings and four legs. He never seems to know any more about the universe than the people he's god of. Nope, genesis would have several billion pages of 'splainin' to do.
Clif Kuplen at 1:57AM on Jul 11th 2008
2. sure, if double d can't figure it out it must be the work of the easter bunny. what was i thinking? and hitchens owns you every time so get over yourself. you blood sucking neo con.
DarthAardvark at 2:36AM on Jul 11th 2008
3. DoubleD your argument will boomerang on you.
The only 'miracle' that occurred was the natural/accidental hybrid of wheat that developed during the glaciers receding. Man eventually recognized this food source and developed agriculture.
Agriculture and trade developed the sciences.
JefFlyingV at 2:53AM on Jul 11th 2008
4.
DoubleD, you like extremely simplistic answers to your questions, so stick with your bible and lose.
JefFlyingV at 3:04AM on Jul 11th 2008
5. This is a rather disingenuous argument. It's overlooking thousands of years of accomplishment in which our species was struggling simply to survive; let alone advance. Neither neanderthals nor Cro Magnons went around naked. Heck, "cave men" were well out of caves and into their own fabricated structures. And Clif has all ready mentioned that at this time humanity had all ready made artistic recordings of history.
So my counter argument is this. Just like with intelligent design, at what part was human society, intellect, culture, or whatever determiner you care to name, so complex that it was incapable of arising without the assistance of this diety? If God really did need or want man for something, why let humanity languish for millenia, almost going extinct following a cold climate shift, before this intervention. There is no deliniation or point where all of humanity is interceeded by this supposedly universal being. If there were then in the historical archeological record there would be evidence of this supposed event. Since no such evidence exists, his argument is largely superficial.
It also fails to address the qrimary question posed to him: why would this supreme unknowable act in such a manner? There any believers who'd care to propose why God would behave in such a way only to reverse that decision and intervene at some incalcuable moment in time? Why didn't God intervene with the dinosaurs? Or the ice age beasts? In fact why has God willingly allowed countless variety of life to go exinct? More species have died out than currently exist. Is it that this supreme being can not make up his mind? Or is it maybe that God doesn't exist and that life is a process independant of the will or designs of magical beings.
One thing is certain, ignorance is no excuse. Archeological evidence doesn't point to planet wide epiphanies. There is no point where the great game starts. Humans are a product of evolution, just as our societies are products of an evolution of ideas. Ideas and inventions that are helpful persist and spread to other lands. Ideas that hinder humanity slowly become quaint, questioned, and ultimately abandoned.
Perhaps that's why the theists are so worried. They know eventually their church will go the way of the Dodo.
Somber at 3:06AM on Jul 11th 2008
6. I haven't read this blog in about a month, and it seems like its only gone downhill since then.
"Hitchens has raised a problem that atheism cannot easily explain and one that seems better accounted for by the Book of Genesis."
Really.
AndrewV at 3:10AM on Jul 11th 2008
7.
Somber as always well thought out and written.
JefFlyingV at 3:10AM on Jul 11th 2008
8. If college math helps you to figure out exactly why you shouldn't play the casinos, perhaps, it can help you figure out why every survey YOU see has you as the winner. When better than 90% of the world's population believes in God in one form or another, those surveys may be a bit skewed, huh? Also, you're contention that man only took off 2000 years ago, is so incredibly wrong! The Pyramids of Egypt have been around far more than 2000 years. There are hundreds of examples of advanced engineering knowledge demonstrated by man all over the world. Man's development coincided with the discovery of fire. Fire allowed man to eat meat in greater quantities. The meat introduced certain proteins to the human brain which enhanced it's development. Perhap's more importantly, it created leisure time. Instead of constantly gathering and harvesting to sustain human life, homo sapiens could get the necessary nutrition in 3 meals a day. This left the remaining time to be spent on exercising the brain, development of thought, intellect, etc. There-in lies the true birth of developed man. AND, this occurred far more than 2000 years ago. It seems to me that you are so hell bent on being right, that you conveniently ignore facts. I don't believe you're a stupid man, but you're pre-occupation with faith and proving it's value, makes you say some mighty stupid things!
Kagan at 3:12AM on Jul 11th 2008
9. If man's creative spark was the influence of a deity, is it fair to assume that the earliest religions are the truest? In that case, DD, go back to India, find your caste, and know your role.
AndrewV at 3:14AM on Jul 11th 2008
10. So paradoxically Hitchens' argument becomes a boomerang. Hitchens has raised a problem that atheism cannot easily explain and one that seems better accounted for by the Book of Genesis. DINESH
What's to explain, man was a hunter/gatherer for most of this time ... inventing and hauling around a printing press then would have been ludicrous. The simple truth is DD, until the discovery of agriculture, there was no way to substain a large population. And even then, after the rise of Judasim and later Christianity ... population levels did not rise to 1 billion until 150 years ago. Where was God and his knowledge when the plague was wiping out a 1/3 to 1/2 of Europe inspite of all their prayers? Science and not the beliefs of a bunch of desert dwellers from 3000 yrs ago is the reason for where we are at today. How much further would we be today if a bunch of religious nuts refuse to understand what scientists are telling them. Instead they would rather put their faith into a bunch of dead 3000 yr old goat herders that made burnt offerings on alters of stone to please their God. And are still looking for silly arguments to this day to explain why his God has been so absentee for most of history!!!
JimCO at 4:54AM on Jul 11th 2008
11. testing
Normanator at 6:17AM on Jul 11th 2008
12. D'ouche D'bag, every survey taken has you as the winner? Not likely, and not believable. Unless, of course, the survey pool consists of you and your wife. In every debate I've ever seen you, you get your a$$ handed to you. Sorry, D'umbass, but just because you can toot your own horn, that doesn't make you Satchmo.
Normanator at 6:21AM on Jul 11th 2008
13. Holy Mackeral! What a lousy argument!
"Slacker man", who was spending all his time hunting, gathering and otherwise fighting for survival finally figured out this little thing called agriculture which allowed for more defined division of labor and allowed us to "suddenly get so smart".
Wow!!! Unbelievable.
Ryan Anderson at 7:03AM on Jul 11th 2008
14. What was DD's point yesterday again? Seems to me that if there are less people around that less stuff will get accomplished.
a born atheist at 7:11AM on Jul 11th 2008
15. Didn't they find a 5000 year old mummy (presumably of a homo slackerus) with a bronze axe head? They could dig stuff up out of the ground and make alloys out of it. Can you do that?
a born atheist at 7:31AM on Jul 11th 2008