“The existence of god has been fiercely debated for centuries.”
Actually, millennia.
“But regardless of what you think or feel is true, can we use math, the universal unbiased
language, to come to a conclusion?
Can math prove god’s existence?”
That’s a good question (which has been asked by many great people), but I wonder – do
you have what they didn’t?
That is, do you have the necessary information and knowledge to ask such a question?
And further still, do you know how to do so in a logically valid way?
Spoiler… the answer is no!
However, before I delve into why, let me lay down a bit of groundwork.
ASAP Science is an excellent YouTube channel that’s ran by Mitchell Moffit and Gregory
Brown, who both do a fantastic job of making science accessible to the general public,
but every once in a while they make a profound mistake, and unfortunately, in their video
titled ‘Can Math Prove god’s Existence?’ they made many.
This is ASAP Science’s Can Math Prove god’s Existence? Debunked
“The most famous argument in favour of a god-made world using logic and reasoning is
the Argument by Design.”
Not to pedantic, but there’s not just one Argument form Design – there’s many, and
they come under the umbrella of teleology.
“Simply put, given how complex and amazing everything around us is, can we really believe
that dumb luck put it together?”
Okay, so this is a fair summary of most Arguments from Design, but the reason I’ve decided
to interject is because I want to make the massive Black and White Fallacy that it commits
abundantly clear, because, believe it or not, despite ASAP later exposing it themselves,
they fail to do so sufficiently (and I’ll explain exactly why when we get to it).
Anyhow, put simply, a Black & White Fallacy occurs when someone presents two states as
if they are the only possibilities, when more may exist.
For example, if I was to say that the pyramids were built by either an ancient alien or by
spontaneous randomness, and not justify why these two states are the only possibilities,
then I would be committing a Black and White Fallacy.
Furthermore, I would be outright ignoring a third possibility that just so happens to
have an overwhelming amount of evidence in its favour – that being that they were created
by humans.
And likewise, the vast for majority of Arguments from Design (and indeed ASAP) also outright
ignore a third option that just so happens to have an overwhelming amount of evidence
in its favour… that being Evolution by Natural Selection.
But, I’m getting ahead of myself now, and so I’ll explain this in detail later.
“Even from a scientist’s perspective life is amazing, incredibly rare and took a monumental
amount of steps, chance happens and time to come about.”
What do you mean by ‘even from a scientist’s perspective?’
Scientists tend to be more in awe of life than the average person, and to the contrary,
many of them are convinced that life is not rare, but is actually abundant.
“So a religious person might argue, doesn’t it seem more much more plausible that there
was some driving force behind it all?
This type of argument is called Reductio Ad Absurdum.
Which simply means it attempts to disprove a statement by showing that it inevitably
leads to absurd or impractical conclusions.
In this case it suggests that 1) If there’s no god, humans developing is very unlikely;
2) Humans did develop; therefore 3) It is unlikely that there’s no god.”
Okay, so this is simply a syllogistic rendition of the argument that places specific emphasis
on the existence of humans, and it’s a pretty bad one, because its conclusion is within
its first premise, meaning that it’s Begging the Question… it’s comically circular.
“But, let’s take this logic one step further and imagine the universe before anything has
been created.”
Wait… so you want us to just assume that everything was created?
Because scientifically, as I assume you’re aware, we don’t have sufficient reason to
do so.
In fact, we’ve never seen anything be created from nothing, and so you’re asking us to
make one hell of an assumption.
“Here we have a base box where we have our two possibilities of god existing and no god
existing, on the other side are possibilities that humans exist or that humans don’t exist.”
Right, so here we have a base box where we have our two possibilities of an alien existing
and no alien existing, and on the other side possibilities that pyramids exist and pyramids
don’t exist.
“If no god is true then most would agree that human existence takes a lot of specific
factors to come about.”
Yeah, except for the billions of religious people who don’t believe in a god, oh – and
the billions of people that acknowledge evolution by natural selection… you know, the non-random
and unconscious process that is the very bedrock of biology.
Yeah, that one…
“So let’s make up a tiny probability and say that there’s a 1 in 4 billion, billion
chance of humanity coming into existence in a world with no god.”
Wha… so you just made that number up?
“That just makes no fucking sense.
It’s just bullshit.
Fuck… oh my.”
“And if god is real, even though we don’t know if god would make humans certainly he
could, so let’s give it a higher probability of 1 in 4 million.”
“It’s just bullshit.”
“Of course, if we examine the evidence we know we exist so we can get rid of the other
row, and as many of you who’ve used the Argument from Design point out, a human-made
world with god seems much much more likely rationally and statistically.”
Yeah, just as alien-built pyramids seem much much more likely than spontaneously-built
pyramids… surely ASAP, you can see the problem here?
This isn’t a logical argument – it’s incredibly fallacious and… lazy.
“And while this is true in some ways, it forgets an important point, that we have assumed
that there are only two major theories, but we know this isn’t true.”
And here folks, is where ASAP exposes the Black and White Fallacy, but somehow completely
ignores evolution.
“Many societies have believed in multiple gods and given that there are some aspects
of this life that aren’t nearly as beautifully complex or seemingly intentional, perhaps
a variety of squabbling gods created the world.
Mathematician Jordan Ellenberg uses the probability of 1 in 400,000 that a universe with multiple
gods would create humans.”
“Fuck… oh my.”
“But it’s important to remember that exact numbers don’t actually matter.”
Oh, now you tell us.
“What does matter is that we can agree, rationally, that a universe with more gods
has a higher chance of creating humans than one with a single god or none at all […] now
let’s take this even further to--.”
No – let’s not.
Let’s go back to the Black and White Fallacy and emphasise that while you acknowledged
that there are many more possibilities on the god side, you failed to acknowledge that
there are many more possibilities on the no-god side... such as evolution!
Now I entirely appreciate that evolution and the existence of a god are not mutually exclusive,
and so my bringing it up might seem like a Red Herring, but since your conclusion pivots
on the probability of humans existing, it’s actually extremely relevant, because the probability
of humans being, like all other known organisms, and as all the evidence suggests, a product
of Evolution by Natural Selection, is significantly higher than humans being a product of dumb
luck (in fact, for all intent and purposes, it’s certain).
And so what this means is that if you want to postulate the probability of the existence
of a god in reference to the existence of humans, then the only way to so is to ask
‘What’s the probability of a god or gods creating humans through the process of evolution?’,
but since in this case you no longer have the ‘dumb luck’ to contrast it against
(that is, because natural selection explains exactly how complex and seemingly designed
organisms can emerge naturally), you’re no longer able to derive any probability whatsoever.
Indeed, you’re left exactly as you were before asking the question – empty handed
with all of your work still ahead of you.
Now in response to this you might want to change your question to, ‘Either a god created
the universe or dumb luck did’, but in such a case I would accuse you of all the same
fallacies, and state that if you just replace the word ‘god’ with any other creation
myth, such as the Giant Spaghetti Monster, then the faults in your logic should become
embarrassingly apparent.
Finally, ASAP goes on to state that the chances of us being in a simulation, like the Sims,
is statistically much higher than us being created by a god or gods, which, to be fair,
is true, but this isn’t the topic I want to conclude with.
Instead, I want to conclude with a serious point on probability.
If we were to roll five six-sided dice, the probability of them all landing on 6 would
be 1 in 7,775 (which is remarkably improbable), but here’s the thing – the probability
of any other outcome would also be 1 in 7,775, and so what makes one role significant and
another not is simply the value that we arbitrarily give it.
And so what I’m getting at here is that the proponents of Arguments from Design (and
in this case ASAP), see the numbers of ‘the dice of life’, calculate the probability
of them landing as they have, and then assume that their improbability is evidence of intention
– when in fact it’s not.
You’re a fantastic channel ASAP, but on this one, there’s no doubt about it –
you blundered.