Has Science Eliminated God?

Certainty is a feeling, an emotion. Reason, on the other hand, gives rise to doubts and uncertainties.

Science is rational, and exactly for that reason it is uncertain, which is what many people fail to appreciate. A widespread myth is that reason brings about - and knowledge means - certainty.

This is what causes all the confusions of the kind that surrounded vaccines and autism in Britain a few years ago, for example, and the general confusions about probability and risk: what causes them is the fact that people expect certainties from science. Instead, in reality science is made up of theories and hypotheses, which may be refuted now, or temporarily confirmed until they are refuted and replaced by a better theory later. That's how science progresses.

Reason can be used to arrive at certainties, but not at pieces of knowledge. This is the case when reason is used in logic, but only because in logical deductions we never arrive at new knowledge.

It is certain that, in a logical deduction, if the premise is true the conclusion is always true, but only because the conclusion does not say anything which was not already contained in the premise. A very simple example is: "If A and B are both true, then A is true".

The logical conclusion makes what was already contained in the premise explicit, that's why, if the latter is true (or better, well founded), so is the former. But this process does not originate new knowledge. It is a process of transformation of one statement into another, not of discovery.

This is why non-philosopher atheists like Richard Dawkins generate confusion among their followers: because they themselves are confused in the first place.

To identify science with rationality, although correct - even if we must add that science is only one among the various rational activities of the human intellect, not the only one as Dawkins et al seem to believe, and a religion like Christianity, for example, is another -, condemns science to perpetual uncertainty.

Furthermore, science does not establish the limits of rationality, but only those of possibility. In other words, what science does is to say: "This is not possible because it goes against the laws of nature". But it doesn't tell you, within the multiple, mutually-contradicting possibilities, which is the true one.

It must remain understood, however, that the best scientific theory we have could be wrong and one day refuted.

But even presuming that it won't be, science - both as a whole and as single scientific theories - rules out, as I was saying, physical (or empirical) impossibilities, namely the phenomena that go counter to the laws of nature (i.e. the laws of science), but among the various remaining possibilities cannot tell you which is the true one.

That's why saying that science has eliminated God (a creator of everything) is absurd. For as long as a creator of everything remains compatible with the laws of nature, as it has always been and it is even more now that the Big Bang theory presumes a period preceding the birth of the universe in which laws of nature did not exist, the hypothesis of God as creator is a possibility. Science can ony tell you that it is possible, and not if it's true or not.

Atheists, and not only the people that Dawkins managed to mesmerise but the British zoologist himself, don't seem to properly grasp what they are saying. And I'm not referring to God or religion, but to science: they misunderstand science itself.

I am willing to admit that Dawkins is aware of many of the things I said, that's why he always uses qualifiers like "almost certainly" or "probably" when he says that God doesn't exist or that science leads to that denial. However, he doesn't act or write as if he had any doubts at all. And, as I said at the beginning, certainty is an emotional state, not the product of rational thought.

Who knows, maybe science, born out of Christianity, with the first scientists wishing to understand God's work - the creation - through it, after a period in which it's been dominated by naturalism (only nature exists) aka materialism (only matter exists), will turn out to be just the way in which in the end humanity arrives at God, which was science founders' original intention.

Photo "Sunset" courtesy of the website Human Health and Animal Ethics

Nothing Is Wrong with Satanism, You Bigot

We've gone full circle now.

First, Christianity was the main spiritual force of the West, so much so that the latter was known as Christendom.

Then, atheism prevailed, followed by paganism, and now it looks like Satanism is being recognised as a legitimate... what? Religion? Faith? Spiritual orientation, which anyone is entitled to practice as much as a sexual one?

And why not? After all, why should we discriminate? Discrimination is the last, or one of the last, remaining sins. And this applies to every sense of the word, good as well as bad, as in "taste discrimination" to indicate refinement, or in "discrimination between right and wrong". The only exception is reverse discrimination, which is always a virtue because it is meant to fight discrimination - if it sounds absurd it's because it is.

Satan worshipers want 7-foot-tall statue of devil put at Oklahoma state Capitol, headlines the UK's Daily Mail:

• The New York-based Satanic Temple formally submitted its application to a panel that oversees the Capitol grounds
• The application includes an artist's rendering of Satan as Baphomet, a goat-headed figure with horns, wings and a long beard
• They want it to sit where a Ten Commandments monument sat in 2012
• In the rendering, Satan is sitting in a pentagram-adorned throne with smiling children next to him.

This satanic group claimed that, if the Ten Commandments could have a monument, so should their idol figure. Thinking otherwise would be discrimination. Now, tell me: how can anybody these days object to such an argument?

It's the same line of reasoning that led to the passing of homomarriage laws in various countries: if people of different sex can get married, why discriminate against same-sex couples?

And, if the West is now post-Christian, why should we give Christianity a special place, especially after the influx of so many cultural enrichers who adhere to different religions, sometimes having a moral code directly opposite to our own - Islam springs to mind -, which is derived from Christianity but people have forgotten where it comes from and think it arose from nothing, the same as the universe, life and cosnciousness? We are used, by now, to the idea that something comes from nothing: that this is so counter-evidential, that nobody has ever experienced, witnessed this type of occurrence doesn't trouble our "scientific-minded" atheists half as much as the idea of a creator of all that exists.

'The statue will also have a functional purpose as a chair where people of all ages may sit on the lap of Satan for inspiration and contemplation.'

The Satanic Temple maintains that the Oklahoma Legislature's decision to authorize a privately funded Ten Commandments monument at the Capitol opened the door for its statue.

The Ten Commandments monument was placed on the north steps of the building in 2012, and the Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has sued to have it removed.

Perhaps we should have Nelson removed from his column in Trafalgar Square, and demand in his place a statue of Hitler, Stalin or Britain's own serial killer John Christie.

Why the Satanist statue should be allowed, or even considered as it seems to be, but not Hitler's, I doubt that anyone can provide good reasons for, that can be accepted outside of psychiatric hospitals of course.

On its website, the Satanic Temple explains that it 'seeks to separate Religion from Superstition by acknowledging religious belief as a metaphorical framework with which we construct a narrative context for our goals and works.

'Satan stands as the ultimate icon for the selfless revolt against tyranny, free & rational inquiry, and the responsible pursuit of happiness,' the website says.

Exactly. Call a nurse, please.


Photo by Patrick Nielsen Hayden (Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0).

First They Came for the Christians and I Didn't Speak Out Because I Wasn't a Christian

I am reproducing the last two paragraphs from Raymond Ibrahim’s fundamental book Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (Amazon USA), (Amazon UK ):

The return of the persecution of Christians under Islam is the most visible aspect of a larger and more dangerous phenomenon: the return of Islam as a global force. The West ignores those being crucified again at its own peril — bringing to memory the words of German pastor Martin Niemoller, who came to understand — but only after being sent to a concentration camp during World War II — what it meant to face a totalitarian ideology hostile to all who reject it:

First they [the Nazis] came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the socialists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

It may seem relatively peaceful now in Western countries, and we all have a natural tendency to avoid facing problems if we possibly can.

What happens to Christians at the hand of Muslims (the massacres of villages, burning of churches, beheadings, climate of constant fear) in remote parts of the world - even assuming that we somehow got to know about it amidst the silence and dissembling of our media and leaders - doesn't touch us, we think, so we prefer not to be troubled by it.

Even when something closer to home occurs, like the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby by a Muslim jihadist in a London street, or the use of British white girls by Muslim paedophile and sex slave rings, we continue to believe that these incidents are not part of a major trend, and we keep sleeping serenely.

But history has repeatedly shown that we should take the first hints because, if we wait for the macroscopic signs, they may be easily recognisable for a reason: the problem has become so big that we can no longer address it without violence and tragedy.

Muslims Killed 500 Christians in Nigeria

The religion of peace in action in Nigeria.

A quarter of the inhabitants of a village, about 500 Christians, were killed by Muslims. Some Muslim villagers who knew of the premeditated attack left without warning the Christians.

A man in the video says that Christians have not retaliated. He wants the world to know that "Christians never fight with Muslims. All that happens is always Muslims attacking Christians, in some cases Christians defending themselves."

We should be aware that whenever we hear or read, on our media, of "sectarian" violence, if it concerns Muslims and Christians it is not true. Violence is only from one side, and is brutal, as in this case, with children slaughtered and people's heads cut in two.

God Is a Not a Delusion but a Sensible, Rational Hypothesis

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what atheism is or entails. The fact that many - albeit not all - atheists declare that they have no faith or believe in nothing, in itself shows that they have not really taken the time and effort to understand the implications of the position they hold.

The question of God is the question of the origin of things. It is a typical philosophical, and more specifically metaphysical, question.

When Richard Dawkins or people like him compare the idea of God to that of fairies, they are hopefully disingenuous - the alternative being downright stupid.

The concept of God is a necessity in one of the two fundamental explanations of the origin of everything. The other explanation is chance. Fairies do not appear in either.

The question of God is also related to the question of what is the ultimate reality: mind or matter.

Philosophers have debated this issue since the beginning of their profession, answering that it is the former in the case of idealists, or the latter if they are materialists.

The vast majority of classical philosophers throughout the ages, including our time, have rejected materialism and think that mind is the ultimate reality. That doesn't mean that all idealists believe in God - although a great proportion does -, but that a simple materialism as the one espoused by Dawkins (I am referring to him because he is, by his own behaviour, the most vocal and visible of contemporary atheists) is generally found deeply unsatisfactory by those whose profession is to critically analyse common ideas and question what is often accepted unthinkingly.

Dawkins is not a philosopher himself. By training and trade he is a zoologist. But when he talks about religion he steps ouside his scientist's boots and puts on a philosopher's hat. Nothing wrong with that, provided he knows what he's talking about.

The first thing to notice here is how much many people, probably taking their cue from public figures like non-philosophers Peter Atkins, Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, have trivialised the issue of belief in God as if it were simply the battle of the old versus the new, the forces of obscurantism v enlightenment, ancient v modern, irrationality v reason, superstition v logic, backwardness v progress, and obviously religion versus science.

The reality is that the battle of ideas surrounding the existence of God has always been present in the history of philosophy, and thinkers have predominantly tended to side with the belief in God.

That Christianity has a solid rational foundation in centuries of philosophical thought is something that - I suspect from the comments they leave in public forums - would surprise many atheists.

That among the greatest philosophers of all time are saints and founders of the Church like St Augustine, St Anselm and St Thomas Aquinas might shock them even more.

But let's get back to the question at the beginning of this article. Numerous - I presume the most naive - atheists appear to be convinced that not believing in God does not entail anything, and that it is just the default non-choice - in the same way as their guide and model Dawkins would consider not believing in fairies the default position.

The reality is different.

There are only three possible answers to the question "Does God exist?".

One, the easiest and probably preferred by lazy minds, is to sit on the fence and declare neutrality explicitly or, simply by not engaging with it, implicitly.

The second is to say that the universe (or universes) have an intelligent designer, God.

The third answer, atheism, in denying the second one is by mere logic taking the opposite view. If there is no design, we are left only with chance. If there is no mind, we are left only with matter.

I'll explore these ideas in more detail in other articles. For now, I'm anticipating that the theoretical, non-observational assumptions are necessary and very strong on both sides of the controversy.

There is no default opinion, no path of less resistance. Both stances require faith, and a belief that has many holes in the evidence for it.

The commonly-held opinion that atheism is not a faith - like a religion of its own kind - is totally unfounded.

Rational arguments live on both sides of the fence, not only one. And so do emotional stances or intuitive statements.

And, if anything, the most logically cogent reasons and scientifically powerful evidence seem to be increasingly supporting the belief of a mind creating all that exists. The progress of science, with theoretical constructs in physics that are necessary for explanation but escape observation, on one side, and the practical impossibility of matter, life and consciousness all originating by chance, on the other, far from supporting the atheist belief seems more and more to confirm the theist one.

The Philosopher Who Gave the New Atheists Their Theoretical Foundations Became Convinced that God Exists

British professor Antony Flew wrote over thirty philosophical works which established the foundations for atheism for half a century.

His 1950 paper "Theology and Falsification" was the most reprinted philosophical publication of the 20th century.

In December 2004 Flew announced in a symposium and subsequent video that he had completely changed his view and now, based on scientific evidence, believed that God exists.

In 2007 he wrote the book There Is a God (Amazon USA) (Amazon UK) , subtitled How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.

This is the man without whose ideas the various Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Dennett, Wolpert, Stenger, (not to mention Christopher Hitchens and Pat Condell) et al, none of whom is a philosopher, would not have had rational arguments to support their faith: atheism.

So it's not surprising that, when on 9 December 2004 the international journalist agency Associated Press gave the world the news about the British Professor of Philosophy's "conversion" with the headine "Famous Atheist Now Believes in God: One of World's Leading Atheists Now Believes in God, More or Less, Based on Scientific Evidence", atheists became hysterical.

Roy Abraham Varghese, in his Preface to There Is a God, wrote:

"One atheist Web site tasked a correspondent with giving monthly updates on Flew's falling away from the true faith. Inane insults and juvenile caricatures were common in the freethinking blogosphere. The same people who complained about the Inquisition and witches being burned at the stake were now enjoying a little heresy hunting of their own. The advocates of tolerance were not themselves very tolerant. And, apparently, religious zealots don't have a monopoly on dogmatism, incivility, fanaticism, and paranoia.

"But raging mobs cannot rewrite history. And Flew's position in the history of atheism transcends anything that today's atheists have on offer."

Photo of sea sunset courtesy of the website Human Health and Animal Ethics

Queen Christmas Message Does Not Mention the Plight of Christians

Happy Christmas everyone!

I watched the Queen's 2013 Christmas message on the BBC.

It would have been nice, if she hadn't told two lies, one by action and one by omission.

The former was: "For Christians, as for all people of faith, reflection, meditation and prayer help us to renew ourselves in God's love, as we strive daily to become better people."

It's quite obvious that not in all faiths believers strive to become better people, unless we consider as self-improvement perfectioning suicide-bombing and beheading skills in order to impose one's faith - to be specific, Islam - to the whole infidel world with whatever available means.

And this takes us directly to the lie by omission. Her traditional Christmas message could have been a good opportunity for the Queen to remind her subjects not just in Britain but also in the rest of the Commonwealth that not all Christians are free to celebrate Christmas.

For years now, Christmas has been a time when Christians in many parts of the world - thanks to some faithful of the "religion" mentioned above, in their striving for self-amelioration - are routinely massacred and have to fear for their lives more than ever.

At least 38 Christians have just been killed and 70 wounded in Baghdad by two car bombs, one on Wednesday targeting a Christian market and the other on Christmas Day outside a church, targeting the faithful after a service.

On December 21 in Syria, some of those heroic freedom fighters that Obama and Cameron are so eager to help, anti-Assad "rebels" - otherwise known as bloody, murderous, kill-the-infidels-wherever-you-find-them jihadists - fired multiple mortar shells on a church, killing 12 Christians and injuring many others.

The Christians, clearly having a different concept from Muslims of what self-betterment is, were distributing charity help to the local population.

And, to get closer to the Queen's own home turf, the Commonwealth includes superb examples of countries whose Muslim majority takes a special pride in becoming better and better people at discriminating against and ferociously persecuting the Christian minority.

One of them is Nigeria, which has been rightfully called the most deadly country to be a Christian. Another is Pakistan where, after many years of continuous attacks on the Christian community, 2013 has been one of the worst of them. In September, 96 people were killed and 130 wounded in twin suicide attacks on a church in Peshawar, the most deadly attacks of this kind since independence.

Why hasn't the Queen, who always talks about the Commonwealth in her Christmas messages and this year expanded on the Commonwealth Games, found in herself the courage to speak up for the millions of her fellow Christians who are subjected to psychological and physical torture just for their belief in the same Jesus Christ whose birth we are today celebrating (in case someone, among the trees, cards, shopping and central London's "winter" lights, had forgotten)?