Back during the initial public phase of my Darwin apostasy, I was regularly trolled by an atheist who presented himself as friendly and reasonable, someone who called himself "Dan S" who I got to admit to the actual meaning of the viciously eugenic character of what Darwin, himself, had written and endorsed but who, nevertheless said I should stop talking about it for the good of science. I have to say that the idea of "lying for the good of science" struck me as incredibly decadent and, considering it was a sciency atheist guy who was telling me that, incredibly hypocritical. My months of interaction with "Dan S" on a number of science blogs and the blog I wrote for, back then, was a milestone in my disillusion as to the good-will and good-faith of atheists and the general phenomenon of English language atheism.
When I expressed my skepticisim about the validity of natural selection, "Dan S" fell back on an argument from utility, that natural selection was so useful for biological theories on so many topics, that it provided biology a framing which provided a sense of coherence and an explanation of how species arise. The answer to that is that since that sense of coherence wasn't any kind of evidence that natural selection is an actual thing in reality, that sense of coherence could be as illusory as any other sense of coherence based on any other chosen framing. I also expressed my skepticism that Darwin delivered what he said he had, that he had come up with an explanation of the evolution of species, what he had come up with is a demonstration that species evolve from other species, something which natural selection doesn't explain. And the appearance that natural selection did explain it is based in an extremely naive conception of what that means and the irrational belief that the evolution of species is attributable to one single "force" or "thing" when that "thing" is an imaginary construct of calling far different events and things (the myriads of ways in which animals either die without offspring or leave fewer offspring than others of their kind) the same thing. The whole effort depends on buying a whole catalog of assumptions, unfounded beliefs, willful disregard of problems, etc.
But it's that argument of utility that isn't all that rarely given as to why someone should adopt claims of science that, on inspection, aren't founded scientifically, such a claim "works" to get you something or, more often, appears to get you something. I have had that argument made to me as to why I should ignore the blatantly pseudo-scientific character of psychology and sociology as practiced at universities and research institutions and through reviewed publication. What, I've been asked, are we supposed to do about mental illness if the very sciences that are supposed to cure them are held up to skeptical review and found wanting? The answer to that is that psychology has had a dismal track record of success in treating mental illness, psychiatry has had some success in suppressing some of the symptoms of mental illness, at times, but the results in that aren't any validation for the psychological studies that fail to meet the most basic requirements of science. I've seen a number of people get far worse under such scientific treatment, I've seen patients of such scientific treatment dumped on the street to either commit crimes and become the responsibility of the prison systems or to die. Like they used to say of the old scientific regime of the Soviet Union, they bury their failures, or, rather, leave it to others to bury them.
I bring all of this up because, as happens once or more every week or two, I am challenged to produce a "proof" of the exitence of God, something which I'm tired of pointing out, I've said I don't do because God is not susceptible to "proof" as some object or event or principle of mathematics is held to be. Though atheists are nothing if not persistently stupid in exactly the same way. So, inspired by my study of Hans Kung's great book, Does God Exist? I'm going to give you something from that. In the book Kung goes into the matter of "proofs" of the "existence of God" and more effectively than I can imagine any but the smartest of the current crop of atheists doing, he gives their strengths and defects, showing that, in the end, all such proofs are a matter of persuasion, not of arriving at a truth which one is compelled to accept, even against your own preferences. Really, everything we accept as true is accepted on that matter, including mathematical proofs, the human gold standard in the business of proof. After doing that, however, Kung rather brilliantly gives a very good reason why even atheists might want to believe in God, something right in line with the smarter atheists favorite argument from utility, in fact, a far more persuasive form of it than I've ever had an atheist present for something far more contingently hoped for.
Does God exist? Here we want to address expressly even the unbeliever. For even someone who does not think that God exists could at least agree with the hypothesis of which the inner meaning has become clear in the previous section and which nevertheless by no means settles the question of the existence or nonexistence of God. The hypothesis runs: If God exists, then a fundamental solution of the riddle of persistently uncertain reality is indicated, in the sense that a fundamental answer - obviously needing to be developed and interpreted - will have been found to the question of the source of reality. This hypothesis, of which the implications have become clear from our thoroughgoing discussion with atheism and nihilism, can be set out in a very succinct form:
- If God exists, then the grounding reality itself is not ultimately groundless. Why? Because God is then the primal ground of all reality.
- If God exists, then the supporting reality itself is not ultimately unsupported. Why? Because God is then the primal support of all reality.
- If God exists, then evolving reality itself is not ultimately without aim. Why? Because God is then the primal goal of all reality.
- If God exists, then reality suspended between being and nonbeing is not ultimately under suspicion of being a void. Why? Because God is then the being itself of all reality.
When we recall in particular Nietzsche and what was said about the scholastic "transcendentals" (the one, true and good), this hypothesis can be stated more precisely both positively and negatively with reference to the ambivalent reality of the world and man. First the positive questions will be raised, and every word should be noted:
Why, if God exists, can we assume with absolutely reasonable fundamental trust that in all disunion there is ultimately a hidden unity, in all meaninglessness, in all worthlessness ultimately a hidden value of reality?
Because God is the primal source, primal meaning, primal value of all that is.
Why if God exists, can we assume with absolutely reasonable fundamental trust that in all the void there is ultimately a hidden being of reality?
Because God himself would be the being itself of all reality.
It should of course be understood that reality does not then by all means lose its actual hollowness. But a reason would be indicated why, despite the hollowness, man can commit himself to reality and rely upon it.
And now the counter test! If God exists, then the negative aspect of reality, it shallowness, can also be understood:
Why does the grounding reality of the world and man appear itself to be ultimately groundless, supporting reality that is itself ultimately unsupported, evolving reality that is itself ultimately unsupported, evolving reality that is itself without aim? Why, then, is its reality repeatedly threatened by disunion, its meaningfulness by meaninglessness, its value by worthlessness? Why is reality suspended between being and nonbeing, ultimately under suspicion of being unreality and hollowness?
The basic answer is always the same: Because uncertain reality is itself not God. Because the self, society, the world, cannot be identified with their primal ground, primal support and primal goal, with their primal source, primal meaning and primal value, with being itself.
This is part of a far longer argument on this point made by Kung, in a longer series of arguments demonstrating the reasonableness of believing in God, I'm certain I will try to give more of it.
After this point in the book Kung discusses the nihilism of Steven Weinberg which is based in his scientism, itself inconsistent with his belief in the comprehensibility of the universe which his scientism leads him to believe is pointless. I think his nihilism, like that of all of the other scientist-nihilists is influenced by them wearing the blinders that they need to advance far in their career,narrowly focused on exactly those things which Kung identifies as giving the appearance of meaninglessness and worthlessness. Their narrow focus becomes their reality. But that, itself, doesn't explain it. I think in most cases it also has the strongest component of emotional preference attached to it, sometimes based in false historical narratives, bigotry, vainglory and conceit. But on an intellectual level, in terms of utility, there is every reason for a professional scientist to accept God because with a belief in God there is the possibility of them actually finding some measure of actual truth, part of an actual unity of the kind which Weinberg's ideological, emotional atheist commitment leads him to deny.
I don't believe that people just come to believe or disbelieve in God, I think they choose whether or not they will believe. Some might put it in terms of whether or not they accept the grace to believe which is constantly offered, though that can be explained in other ways, too. I don't think that anyone should withhold their belief on a matter of proof anymore than they should base their belief on any supposed proof because it will always deny the essential act in their choice. If they want to argue about something as problematic and likely illusory as natural selection on the basis of it being necessary for the current consensus of a small area in one branch of science, Kung has given them a far greater motive to believe in God because that belief provides the possibility of validity and significance of all of science, indeed of all of intellectual activity.
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The current decadence in the United States is a radical demonstration of a world without significance or purpose or truth, a world governed by debased preference and created desires. It is a result of even "evangelicals" falling from real belief and into a pantomime of it, there used to be a time when evangelicals had some sense of the dangers of adopting the nihilism of the elite materialists. They got duped out of it by TV hallelujah peddlers and appeals to their basest instincts designed with the greatest efforts of social scientists - who have turned lying to the public into, if not an actual science, a skill informed by malignant insight. Jesus said by their fruits you would know their actual relationship with the truth.
What can be said of science being brought to a crisis of faith is probably even worse in academic philosophy which strikes me as having been stuck in a rut of decadence for most of the past two centuries. When I started reading theology a few years back, I was astonished how alive it was as compared to the deadly awful stage that so much of philosophy is in.
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