MORE THAN A FEW YEARS BACK, when the new atheism was preening in its incorrectly assumed newness and freshness and boldness, I listened to the atheists arguments against God quite a bit and was unimpressed. I will say right now that if the new atheism hadn't happened I might never have looked hard at the religious dimension of the failure of the left, what I've since come to recognize is the secular left. It's a half century of failure. One of my earliest posts online shows my reluctance to take on the issue. I got some backlash to which, you won't be surprised, I responded and so have written about why I wasn't impressed quite a bit over those years. The arguments that rose somewhat above the ignorant barroom atheism of the vulgar past, now the kind of junk so often posted on so many blogs and comment threads, were the arguments made by actual scientists. By which I don't mean Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, their arguments tended to be, if anything, stupider than those made by those old-timey barroom atheists. I mean the cosmologists. Most of those centered around the assumption that Einsteinian physics and quantum mechanics were "the end of physics," itself a rather absurd assumption, considering that neither of them was a full and all inclusive explanation of even known physical phenomena. And they are famously not entirely compatible with each other. Some of the most important and impressive discoveries of physics in the early decades of the 20th century indicated that human beings will never be able to achieve an absolute view of material existence, something which many of the most materialist-atheist-scientististic sci-guys don't seem to like much.
One most troublesome aspect in physics for dedicated atheists including some of the biggest names in physics and cosmology was the Big Bang, a theory derived from Einsteinian physics and inconveniently supported by some of the subsequent physical observation of the rate of movements of distant galaxies. It was a theory resisted by some physicists from the start on the most unscientific basis that it reminded them too much of the first few verses of Genesis in which "God created the heavens and the Earth." It implied the universe had an absolute beginning of both time, space and material existence. Many of them didn't like that at all and denied the validity of the theory, especially hating the fact that its discoverer was a Catholic Priest, Georges Lemaître, who happened to be an eminent physicist as well as a priest. In response they came up with many different theories that would get past it and its consequent conclusions that didn't go along with their materialist-atheist religious ideology, in other words, doing exactly what they suspected he was doing. I suspect some of them suspected that he would have been a Biblical fundamentalist as his motive for coming up with that when it's pretty unlikely that you'd find one of that naive, anti-papist Protestant ideology within the Catholic priesthood. Most atheists hold a pretty uninformed and bigoted conception of Christianity, especially Brit-atheists and their American white Anglo-Saxon, ex- Protestant wing when it comes to Catholics.
I will raise something that came to me when I was thinking about the complaints that led me to write this, that for scientists to act on an ideological basis of materialism, of atheism and of scientism is especially funny because the scientism part of that is a self-defeating point in the entire debate. SCIENCE WAS CONSTRUCTED WITH RULES THAT WERE SUPPOSED TO EXCLUDE IDEOLOGICAL CONTENT FROM SCIENCE. From the time of Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes and Galileo, the rules of the right way to do science couldn't more explicitly make ideological content in science illicit, yet when it comes to materialism and atheism and scientism - ALL OF THOSE IDEOLOGICAL POSITIONS - they've gotten away with that from well into the early 18th century. And it happened during the same period when it was religious thinking that was routinely and severely kept out of the formal literature and discourse of science but nothing was ever done to exclude those other ideological pollutions along with that thing I think it has been a disaster to exclude, morality, moral considerations and moral actions. I'd love to go into the meat-headed attempt to replace that with the idiocy and moral catastrophe of utilitarianism but that's for another post.
In relation to that, it's quite an irony that "Lemaître was opposed to linking particular scientific theories, including the Big Bang theory, to theological ideas, as each field must respect its own methods and competences." As I said, materialist-atheist-sceintism has never practiced that kind of intellectual integrity.
In the cosmologists' and physicists' ideological rejection of the big bang theory, even as it was gaining physical confirmation, all kinds of reasons to reject the indication that our universe had an absolute beginning of time and space were invented, in both tribes of physicists, the standard model physicists and the quantum physicists. Fluctuating universes, bouncing universes, some of the most far fetched of those the various "mulitiverse" conjectures in which there were jillions of universes so as to account for the calculated improbability of a universe like the one described in Genesis, that would generate and support life and, as we like to kid ourselves, "intelligent life." You know, the one and only one we live in and know is real. So far as we know the only one we will ever have observational confirmation of. Perhaps the most absurd of those was the one invented by Hugh Everett, in which every action which happens in our universe generates jillions of universes in which every possible alternative mathematical equation describing alternative universes would come into existence. Where the energy to create those universes and out of what they were supposed to be made and how whatever caused them was supposed to know the motivating action had happened and how to do all of the calculations to do all of that doesn't seem to have mattered much to them as long as it wasn't someone called "God" who did it. I'd love to argue at who was supposed to notice the precipitating event to make that happen, who was supposed to do all of the infinitely expanding range of calculations - I assume that the existence of those new universes and the actions that happen in them is supposed to generate even more new universes - but I'll leave that point for now. Back to the problematic Big Bang.
One of the most sensible reactions to all of this was to say it was all extra-scientific because, assuming the Big Bang model was true, physics had no way to get far enough to that absolute beginning to theorize what the physical conditions of that earliest time were like and so couldn't have anything to say about that. That was one of the things I read from the cosmologist George Ellis who is a Quaker, perhaps that had something to do with his honesty about the inability of science to have anything to say about it.
If you think I'm making that up, you couldn't have read much of the claims of modern cosmology and, especially, read enough to understand the motives of the alleged scientists who were coming up with stuff like that. I think their ideologies, admitted or unadmitted, are the source of that, not science. That science doesn't do a thing to filter out such atheist ideology as it does a good job of filtering out religious thought, is obvious. Today and well into the past, science, which is in the complete control of those fallible human beings called "scientists," has done nothing to protect the alleged purity of science to keep such ideology out of it. A number of fields are entirely dominated by it, in the physical sciences and in the life sciences and, especially, in the so-called social sciences. And that does have an actual effect in the world.
In the previous two decades of this century the Christian apologists such as the philosopher William Lane Craig and the mathematician John Lennox who studied the claims of such cosmologists had a good time pointing out how ridiculous their claims were and how unsupported by science. Eventually some came to the same conclusion I was coming to, that all the atheists were doing was elevating matter and, quite often, not even something that could possibly be observed physically into full-fledged creator gods, not admitting that's what they were inventing. That atheist pantheon got quite large, including, Probability, Random Chance, Mathematics in general and whatever branch served their temporary purposes, quantum vacuum, according to Hawking "the law of gravity" (which is a human made thing, not the phenomenon it tries to describe!), and on and past Natural Selection . . . About the only one that had actual physical evidence of its existence as an actual thing is "DNA." Only it was DNA as only as conceived by someone who had failed to continue being informed by current science after the early 1970s, if not earlier. It is quite a ridiculous cartoon of DNA as having absurd power and even will, not that much different from the conception of electricity as an anthropomorphic power-company mascot. The evidence is that DNA does some things but it does nothing without a spectacularly extensive and intricate cellular support, it is inert. Such a naive view of DNA is the basis of Richard Dawkins fame and fortune, I won't go into that naive faith in those biological gods because this is about what the cosmologists and physical mathematicians are claiming or, more to the point, what the popular "understanding" of what they're claiming as I perceive it in online postings and Youtubes claiming that The Big Bang has been debunked by those pictures from the farthest past our space telescopes can observe in which large galaxies which according to current theory should not have formed yet, so soon after the presumed Big Bang created the universe and that very new discovery proves that the universe is eternal and wasn't created at any point.
Somewhere in these posts made over those years I warned that depending on whatever the current state of cosmology and physics to make arguments about the reality of God was perilous because I had no faith that physics and cosmology were anything like "finished." My skepticism about the possibility that physicists were on the verge of nailing down a theory of everything* was the other side of that warning. I'd seen signs of the decadence that materialist-atheist-sceientistic ideology was driving modern science into when Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow declared because their theoretical (and transparently ideological) claims about multiverses and string or M theories could not have experimental or observational confirmation that them being able to balance their equations alone should give those the status of scientific confirmation with no physical observation. In other words, reducing the emperor of science, physics, to something like the same status as the various cults of psychology and sociology.
I will note that the best of those Christian apologists didn't base their religious claims on the speculations of science but merely answered the use of those speculations by atheists so as to point out their frequent absurdity. As can be seen on many a Youtube and many a comment thread, neither the pop-atheists who pretty uniformly don't understand the arguments, nor the naive religious posters resist that temptation.
When I read and listened to that and saw little to none of it was founded in observational confirmation, I called it science fiction written in equations the authors of which were insisting those be given the status of actual science. Years later, I don't think that's description is wrong, nor is the idea that it's an expression of scientific decadence. The quality of their math as math is one thing, to claim it is an actual description of something that exists in physical reality - a physical reality out side of any possible observation - is exactly that.
It is as real as the other universe described in Clifford Simak's decidedly inferior novel All Flesh is Grass. Why shouldn't his universe in which purple flowers which communicate with each other through their root systems having god-like powers be as valid as what others create with math instead of words? At least he imagines them as able to break through to our Earth. Those of the cosmologists are forever unavailable to us. It's just a difference of a description in words and those in math. The equations of a Hawking or some other ideologically motivated cosmologist are no more a complete description of an actual universe than the equations of physics can be a complete description of even one electron which can be known to exist through observation in our one and only knowable universe.
I don't know if old and eminent Roger Penrose is really making the claims that I'm seeing the atheist sci-rangers Youtubing about. I'd be surprised if he's making such rash statements about something so recently revealed. If he is, he might be anxious to convince himself that there is no God and no afterlife he has to worry about as he continues in his tenth decade. The writer, now somewhat faded in reputation, Somerset Maugham reportedly summoned to his deathbed the positivist philosopher A. J. Ayer, who was runner up to Bertrand Russell as Britain's biggest celebrity atheist, to convince him there was no afterlife. I hope Penrose won't be calling on a Dawkings or Grayling to reassure him, my respect for him would suffer enormously if he did that.
There's no reason to suspect that the new observations of those very early galaxies will result in an accurate description of a steady-state universe that will be the new "end of physics" or that even further and more impressive observations of what's out there will not overturn some of the entire majestic cathedral of contemporary physics. Cosmology is such a wacky field of science that it's all over the place all the time, anyway. The theoretical descriptions of physics, the mathematical theories of the 20th century as those of the 18th century, which worked quite well for their time and still do for most of human activity, but they were not complete. I doubt human minds are capable of producing science which is a full and complete description of physical reality, much of that is very possibly forever outside of the reach of human minds because human minds are not infinite, either in abilities of perception and analysis or in the time it would take to come up with a full description of physical reality. I'm not even convinced physical reality is fixed and not changing. Considering some of the cosmological theories that the atheist ideologues have come up with, parts of some of the more far fetched "many worlds" multiverse conjectures (Boltzmann brains, for the love of Mike!) and ask why those aren't more ridiculous than the idea that the universe is evolving, even in what we might imagine as its "laws". If that's true then it is a guarantee that human beings will never have a complete physics because the subject matter of physics, itself, will be evolving.
Any description of even physical reality is bound to be incomplete and biased by the human beings that come up with them because of all that. Whether that description is made by ancient Middle-Eastern mystics as copied, arranged and edited into the Hebrew Bible or by University professors published in the most highly regarded scientific journals. That's just the way things are. Some may be useful for some things including as descriptions, none are useful for all things. Some of it is, in part or in whole, not useful for much of anything. Some of the most deadly dangers to humanity and life on Earth are the product of science. I hold that the human made choice to exclude moral considerations from science and academic credentialing is one of the most perilous choices made in the history of our species.
As to a steady-state universe disposing of God, there's no reason to think that's the case. The idea that the universe is eternal co-exists with many religious ideas. It's not that much of a difference between believing the universe being here because God created it out of nothing and the idea that the universe exists because it is based and founded in God. Since God as described in Christianity is eternal, God's reality is entirely compatible with an eternal universe, especially one that is always changing. The idea that God is unchanging is certainly not based on the Scriptures of Judaism or Christianity nor, I believe I'm right, Islam. It seems more like a speculation of Platonism pr Pythagorean philosophy than the Hebrew tradition. God is said in Scripture to change God's mind and God's actions are not consistent nor entirely comprehensible by human reasoning (which, by the way, is consistent with the history of science). God in the Bible is engaged in a covenantal relationship with People and, explicitly stated, animals, God declaring himself in a covenantal relationship with "all flesh." One of the most impressive ideas to me is that God's covenant making is not exclusive to any one ethnic group but is explicitly stated to include those of other groups, even those opposed to The Children of Israel. God's actions in relation to all of God's creatures is not uniform in its nature. God's fidelity is promised* but what that fidelity is in terms of human perception is not guaranteed to be always what we want it to be or what we might fear it is. We are told to expect that this earth and the heavens we know and are used to are not eternal and will change and even end, as our Earth and our seen heavens certainly came into existence and change. The Hebrew seers who had the insights imperfectly recorded in the beginning verses of Genesis were certainly unaware of much beyond what they could see with their naked eyes and experience over time and the lore of those from previous generations. They were certainly not talking about galaxies - being unaware that the stars they could see were part of a galaxy, other galaxies weren't know of by science until the 1920s.
Despite the extremely impressive concepts contained in it, it is a mistake to believe they were describing more than they knew of. They had no idea of the vastness of the universe, after all even the most sophisticated of currently living scientists have had their concept of that enormously increased in the past year. Those instruments that could show that wouldn't be invented for millennia. The "heavens and the Earth" described in Genesis are exactly that, what they could observe. It's impressive that they intuited that those had a beginning, even the steady-state guys would assert that every star and the planets and the Earth that they could see had a beginning. If the Big Bang model is in some sense true - perhaps those far distant galaxies that science couldn't imagine being there so recently only indicate there was a much bigger bang much longer ago - I still don't think we can relate that insight about Creation in Genesis of what they could see to that event. Though if it annoys the atheist ideologues who want to fit science into their ideology, perhaps it's worth making that speculation. Maybe their mystical insight was of that.
My religious faith isn't based in cosmology and it's not based on the explanations of those ancient seers being something like proto-science. My faith is based in my experience and my observations of what I can see of human life and life on this planet. It is based in my experience of the good of life and the bad of it, I'm expecting the bad because it is what happens when People are free to act in ways that are bad but I know that in order for that to be diminished over an entire society or in the world it takes religious faith in realities that science has more often denied than it confirmed. I've developed all kinds of ideas about what the bad in life means, but that's not something I feel like sharing in this response. I think that scientists who get pissed off over People rejecting science should consider the role of malignant science and science that promotes a depraved view of life in that rejection. Though that's more to do with the atrocities of ideological biology and its appendages in the pseudo-so-called-social sciences and the most debased of those, economics. In the past twenty years my skepticism about any supposed science that is prefaced by "cog-" or "neuro-" has become nearly complete. My faith doesn't depend on whether Roger Penrose or any other physicist or physical mathematician eagerly and prematurely declares that the universe is eternal or had an absolute beginning.
First, I won't believe their word is the final one and, as I said, I don't base my faith on that kind of claim. I would be surprised that someone like Penrose would make such a claim and show that their hand is and likely always was influenced by their preferred ideology. As I've recently repeated, I think that the role that ideology increasingly plays in science is one of the untold scandals of modern culture. The best thing for scientists to do about that is to admit when it happens and consciously try to keep it out of their science. I have long expressed my admiration for the biologist (his first degree was in physics) Richard Lewontin because he was right up front in admitting that his atheism was purely ideological and based in his faith in scientific method**, that he had a preference for materialism and a dislike for "miracles," I think because of that his science was relatively unaffected whereas his opponents in biology, such as E. O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins, didn't much try to separate out their ideology from their scientific claims. Dawkins is, I think, destined to be known in the future as someone whose ideology entirely guided his science as well as his retirement career in polemical atheism. As even some of his fellow atheists have admitted, when he expresses himself against religion his ignorance is embarrassing. As Lewontin and his colleagues pointed out in 1976, Dawkins' side in the biology wars is more or less a recapitulation of eugenics. But that's inevitable when Natural Selection is your creator god. I don't believe that natural selection is any more real than universes that just pop into existence when I hit the comma key instead of the period key.*** I don't mistake math as being God, either.
Second, I like every other human being has a right to take our own experience of life as being a valid basis for judging reality over what other People claim on the basis of their experience. That's especially true when we have good reason to suspect their claims are based not on experience, such as careful observation, but are a consequence of their ideological preferences. After all, the reason given for why we shouldn't expect our experience to lead to valid conclusions is the accusation that our ideas about that may be biased by our preferences. I think there's every reason to believe that is especially true in the most ideologically driven sciences which are entirely out of hand these days. Cosmology, evolutionary speculations, anything with the prefixes "cog" and "neuro" and all of the so-called social sciences are primarily governed by idology these days. I've got to rely on my own judgement in choosing what any of them claim, anyway. So do the materialist-atheist-scientistic true believers within each of those. I'd rather take my chances on my thinking, the thinking I'm responsible for and have to live with, in the end.
* Among other things, that declaration of God's fidelity leads me to believe that it must become full in the afterlife since it's not manifested here. Though we have a responsibility to do our best to make it happen on the one and only Earth we have access to. I think anyone who feels that way is bound to be easier to get along with than they'd be if they denied that's the case. They'd have nothing to lose by being a mean, selfish bastard. Believing in the God of Moses, Jesus and Paul wouldn't lead to that, which is why I don't believe the "white evangelical 'christian' nationalists" are Christians. They're vulgar materialist Mammon worshipers. "By their fruit you will know them." That truth is more reliable than anything that I've read coming from Darwinism.
** I wouldn't accuse Lewontin of scientism in so far as he admitted the limits of science in ways that his ideological opponents in science never did voluntarily. Lewontin was far more philosophically sophisticated than most scientists of his generation or after have been. His student Jerry Coyne is about as unsophisticated in philosophical thought as Marjorie Taylor Green is. That they share similar rhetorical tactics is not any shock to me.
*** Presumably, in that absurd scenario someone like me is hitting the comma key in another universe which would, presumably, generate jillions of universes and, then, in each of those new universes as well, so the process would have to go on quite literally, eternally. It is probably the stupidest idea I've ever read about that has been seriously entertained as real within science. And you wonder why I say that materialist-atheist-scientism has led science into something like its ultimate decadence.
