On Balance, From The Evidence Presented… Part 1

Grab a seat and a cuppa, this could be fun!

This is to be the first of three articles on the proofs and disproofs around the question, “Does god(s) exist?”

This was sparked by Stephen Hawking’s recent comments about how the laws of Physics have developed to such an extent that it can be proved that it is no longer necessary to have a god to start the universe.

This first article is going to look at some of the hypotheses suggested to prove god”s existence. These do tend to focus on western-centric, monotheistic religious points of view, and if people want they are more than welcome to contribute alternative points of view. In addition philosophical proofs have been avoided for two very good reasons; the first being that there are a huge variety of philosophical arguments to represent, the second is that it is extremely complex to present the arguments well. So this article has stayed within the confines of a comfortable and easily definable area, science.

The Proofs

Probably one of the most famous attempted proofs which would go some way to support the existent of a god was Dr Duncan McDougall’s experiment to weigh the soul. In 1907, using tuberculosis patients as it was relatively accurate to predict their death, Dr McDougall placed dying patients on a weighing bed and constantly measured their weight. He found that, on average over 6 patients, the human body lost 21 grammes on death (some claim that this has since become a meme). This he could only attribute to the human soul leaving the body. There is some controversy around his experiments but importantly, from a scientific point of view, no one has been able to replicate his results.

To support this indirectly, recent work by Penrose and Hameroff using quantum mechanics and the Plank Scale have identified consciousness down to a sub-molecular level where the laws of gravity and quantum mechanics breakdown. They hypothesise that our consciousness also follows the first law of thermodynamics and that consciousnesses of people long dead could still exist in the universe at this very small level. What this does allow to be implied is the existence of an eternal and indestructible soul.

The next proof is statistical. Dr Stephen Unwin has calculated, using Bayes Theory, that there is a 67% probability that god exists. In  addition, Professor Watson has calculated that the odds on life occuring naturally on this planet over 4 billion years is 0.01%

Ok, I lied… here’s a little bit of Philosophy

There are an additional two philosophical arguments that are science based and are used to support the existence of a god, the Cosmological and the Teleological (there are more but these are probably the most coherent).

The Cosmological Argument starts by presenting that everything in the universe must have a cause and that you cannot have an infinite number of causes. Therefore it must be logical that the ultimate cause, whether you look at the bible being literally correct or descriptively correct, must be God.

The Teleological Argument is where we get the concept of Intelligent Design. Starting with Aquinas’s fifth way, the argument focusses on evidence of order and logic within nature and a deep level of complexity; and that this must have come from a creator. The concept of deep complexity is known as Irreducible Complexity and adherents to this hypotheses point out arguments such as as physical laws exist, there must have been a law maker; that physical laws are fine tuned for life; that the odds of some natural causes are too great to be random. They have used the Bacterium Flagellum as an example of Irreducible Complexity.

These are some of the main points, to this you can add; the archaeological accuracy of the bible and the failure of science to explain such things as love, prophesies and miracles. As a final mathematical rationale, there is always Pascal’s wager.

Time to reflect

There has been made no effort to counter or balance this evidence, this is deliberate. The next article will present proofs for the non-existence of god. The third and last article will hopefully present some sort of compare and contrast… although it will be down to the reader to provide the conclusion.