Frank in Cincinnati on EWTN.com, you're up next.
Hello Frank, you're on the air. Yes, hi, hi Trent. Hello. Why are you an atheist
or an agnostic? Well actually, let me better define your argument. You do know the
difference, definition-wise, between a deist and a theist, do you not? A theist is someone who
believes God exists, but He interacts with the world in some way or has an
interest in it-- Well-- Frank, you know what, we're playing a little bit of
"Gotcha" here, let Trent finish his answer. Theism is the idea that God is unlimited
being and so He sustains the universe and interacts in some way with it; deism
is the idea that there is a God that created the universe but either no longer
interacts with it or has no interest in it. That's roughly the
definitions. Essentially you're close, I mean, a deist would be, I would define, as a
prime mover, someone who had a plan who executed the universe the known cosmos; a
theist on the other hand is a personal God, and so the word antitheist is kind
of not only just kind of a misnomer but it's hard to define. So Frank,
we can we can play "Roget's Thesaurus" for a long time, but
really I want to get back to the question that we're asking and Trent just
repeated: are you a atheist or an agnostic, and if so, why? Or a deist,
possibly. Okay, well, I guess to start the
conversation, because I have a lot to say, is that I would
answer I'm an atheist. I don't believe in a personal God. Okay. All right,
so why don't you believe in a personal God? Well first of all, it's a
non-falsifiable argument, either side, to prove the existence of God--a personal
God--or to not. There's no evidence to prove either way, there's no
evidence for the existence of God and you can't disprove it. Frank, this is sort
of the kissing cousin of "Trent, have you stopped beating your wife?"
There's no evidence for God? Yeah, okay so I'm gonna ask a follow-up
question, Frank: how do you know...when you say "There's no evidence for God," that's
so interesting to me-- Well, cite me the evidence. Cite me
one argument. What? Cite one argument. Okay. First, let me say this:
can there be evidence for something, but it doesn't necessarily prove the thing
exists? Which is what I said, it's a non- falsifiable argument. No Frank, here's the thing--and
I find many atheists do this, they say: "There's no evidence for something," but
treat evidence as, something only counts as evidence-- Well, give me the evidence. One piece
of evidence, please. Okay. Well, we could crank through a lot of proofs for God. All right,
well, I can talk about one that's fine, but it's just interesting for me that
you just say--you've made a knowledge claim, "There's no evidence," and you must
have known this before you talked to me, I just want to know how you got to that
point. Like, how you got there. Yeah but you didn't answer my question. I asked you to give me one
argument or case for the existence of God. Okay. I will happily do
that, and then I want you...yeah, it's just funny that you put that claim
out there, but you haven't defended it. So yeah, I would say one piece of evidence
for God is that we have good evidence that all of reality--space, time, matter,
and energy--began to exist at a point in the finite past. And so there there must
be a cause for all of reality. And this cause, if we do a conceptual analysis of
it, it cannot be part of space or time, because those things came into existence
at one point; this cause would be immaterial and eternal, not bounded in
any way; and so that pushes forward to the idea of what we would
call "God," a necessary being or an uncreated being. And then I might put
other aspects of reality itself that tell us more about this creator; the
fact that there are orderly laws that are universal shows there some kind of
plan involved, and that leads towards that the creator is a
planner or a designer; and the existence of moral truths shows that this creator
is goodness itself and desires we ought to be a certain way. Now here's my thing:
I would say that is at least evidence. It may not be persuasive to some people, but
it's at least something to debate, wouldn't you say? Absolutely. Okay. Certainly something
to debate, but I would propose that that's not evidence, it's an opinion.
So I can make an equal argument for how the
the universe came to exist in terms of theoretical physics, you read Lawrence
Krauss' book. I have read Lawrence Krauss' book. I've read Lawrence
Krauss' book, and I've also read the rebuttals from people
like David Albert, who is not religious, who's another theoretical physicist who
says that Krauss does a bait-and-switch in his book. He says he'll explain
how the universe came from nothing, and then he just defines nothing
as "a quantum vacuum" and never explains where the quantum vacuum came from or
why it exists. So that would be my thoughts on Krauss on that. Well, I guess
what I'm saying is, when I was asking you a question I don't mean to dwell, you
know, too long on this call, but it used to be that the best
argument was that "What could create all this complex organic matter?"
Well now we know, Darwin told us. I would disagree with you, Frank, that is
a misnomer, that is a-- So you don't believe in evolution? No, I do
believe in evolution, but I don't think that's been the best argument for the
existence of God. Well I'm saying it was the best argument. Now there's no argument.
Frank, we're getting multiple interventions here on
our answers. This is another--I almost wanna write a book called "The Myths of
Atheism." This is, like, myth number 5: the idea that the best argument for the
existence of God was William Paley's eighteenth-century watchmaker. "Look, you
found a watch, it's complex! Must have a maker! Hey, look at that beaver!
He's more complex than a watch! He must have a maker!" Or "Look at that
universe!" Exactly. But we don't argue the universe resembles a clock, or
argue by analogy; rather I'm arguing, first, if something comes from absolute
nothing--not just from a "quantum vacuum" or something like that, as Krauss would
look forward--absolute nothing has no room in it for any kind of scientific
explanation. Second, the existence of a universe with finely
ordered laws that allow evolution to take place, that points towards a
lawgiver rather than just something that's completely random. Well,
guess what? There's a science argument against that, it's called multi universes.
Have you heard of the anthropic principle? Yes, I have heard it. There's
probably an infinite number of universes with different scientific
laws. Frank, hold on, Frank, we're really trying to go back and then forth
and then back and forth. We have dealt with the multi-universe--
or shorthand, multiverse--theories many many times, string theory, and not just
Krauss and his detractors, but Trent, isn't saying there's a multiverse
doesn't that kick the problem down the avenue? It does kick it down, for multiple
reasons: number one, we are still left with the question "Why does the
multiverse exist at all?" When we look at contemporary physics, but also from
philosophy, there's good reason to think even if our universe came from a
previously existing one, there has to be a terminating point for all of this in
the past. Number two: there's an interesting objection to the multiverse.
So we say, "Oh, it's so improbable, these laws, we just live in a
multiverse, that explains it. But if I got ten royal flushes in a row, I
couldn't say "Well, maybe this is the universe of the multiverse where I win that way!"
Well no, you would think there was design, much the same way I think the design in
our universe that points towards the ability for life to evolve is
evidence of a designer. And Jimmy Akin, in the May 2000
Catholic Answers magazine, covers this, called "What the Heck is the Multiverse?"
by Jimmy Akin. Thanks for the conversation, Frank.