My rather satirical and opinionated series “Know Yer Nuts” has taken aim at three Alberta creationist organizations. Needless to say, they didn’t like it much. In the past few days, two of the people behind these enterprises each asked me in comments to different posts what it would take for me to believe in God. On reflection, it is a serious enough question, and so I thought I would give it a serious answer. I hope neither think I’m being evasive here in this rambling post.
Vance Nelson of the Creation Truth Ministries put it like this: “Quick question…What evidence would you be willing to accept for God’s existence?”
Larry Dye of the Bible Discovery Centre writes:
“I was wondering if there was anything that would convince you that God exists. Even though you are an athiest, with some agnostic leanings, is there anything that would convince you that God is real.“
I find that is not a question that I can answer directly.
“It all depends.”
When Nelson and Dye ask what evidence would convince me of “God’s” existence, they really are asking after a specific conception of a deity that is not shared universally among believers even within the Christian tradition, let alone the other Western monotheisms, Judaism and Islam, or Ba’hai, the Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, monotheistic Hinduism and so forth. And it excludes polytheism. But here let’s just concentrate on ideas of a single god.
The abstract “God” of the ultra liberal Christian or warm-fuzzy theologian, pseudo-philosopher, bad poet, or melodramatist (God is love, God is truth, God is justice, God is beauty) is right out of the running for demonstrability as far as I’m concerned. I can’t see how any proof or evidence is possible.
Yes, people love, some things are true, and some things I regard as beautiful and I have a reasonable sense of justice as do most people. But why not just talk about those things or those qualitites directly and save all the godly waffle and awful hymns? If “God” is just some kind of general purpose, emotionally laden synonym, there is no point bringing it into a discussion on things that matter.
The vague theories of “intelligent design” and their unspecified designer really amount to theistic creationism warmed over and rebranded to be more palatable to secularists and schoolboards. Its advocates play the science card boldly, but its bluff has been called time and again by mainstream science. The rejoinders in defense of ID claims have been unconvincing to say the least.
That being said, I would probably have the least trouble accepting the disconcerned deity of the deists: a kind of pre-big bang intelligence that established the natural laws billions of years ago and then just watched it all unfold. With that kind of deity in view, I’m at the closest point I get to being an agnostic.
I might be convinced of a god like that through science. Perhaps no other explanation for the Big Bang and all that is plausible. The scientists I’ve encountered in books and in person think that the science does not imply the necessity of such a designer. But where did it come from? Can there be a demonstration that it did not have a creator? I doubt it.
I should add at this point that I draw a huge distinction between confidence I place in some people’s competence and what religious folk call “faith” in a deity. That is to say that evolution or other sciences are NOT religions. Confidence in science is not built up through claims of revelation but from getting stuff right and the self-correction mechanism within the scientific methods and institutions when it is demonstrated that something is amiss. It isn’t perfect, but it seems to me to be a lot more reliable than trusting purported revelation, prophets, priests and so forth.
Returning to deism and I.D., even if I could be concinced of one or the other’s liklihood, there is an unbridgeable gap between that indefinite deity and the specific god of Nelson and Dye.
Moving beyond deism, the more “personal” a concept of a deity becomes, and the more power and will to interact in the world it is accredited with, the greater the evidence needed to distinguish that idea of a god from another.
Creationism fails to inspire any confidence in me that the vast majority of modern science can be so consistently wrong in ways that are mutually self supporting. Science produces work that, well, “works”: testable hypotheses, successful predictions, and confirmation and corroboration from a wide variety of different disciplines. Theories change and develop as more is learned. Where is a comparable self-correcting intellectual engagement with empirical data in the creationist movement?
Have creationists ever thought to develop valid scientific experiments to determine exactly what kind of deity created the universe? For example, is the creator best thought of as a trinitarian deity as in most forms of Christianity or a perfectly unique, totally transcendant deity as in Islam? Have the Christians mistakenly corrupted the unity of the god of Judaism? Are humans “made in the image” of the creator or not? Judaism and Christianity would say “yes”, Islam a resounding “no”. Creationists start with the specific god.
Even within Christian creationism there are big theological differences between “Young Earthism” and “Old Earthism”. Just when did this deity make everything? Are there tests that can be run? “Yes, scientific ones” say once camp, “no” says that other because that would deny the 6000 year timeframe their interpretation of scripture demands.
Needless to say, I’ve got a lot more sympathy for the Old Earthers and the theologians of evolution, since they do not have to rule out so much empirical data while claiming that science is on their side. In one regard it makes thing worse since scripture then becomes unreliable in some respects, so what tests can be run regarding its reliability in others?
In reality, however, I really do not see the necessity of inserting “creation” into the mix at all. That is simply reading a holy book into natural history and cannot have any demonstration. To my mind, it just leads back to deism and the problem of the specific god.
And whose version of that deity should I accept? Revelation seems a poor criteria. People have been having revelations about a wide variety of deities for as long as we have written records of religious thought. Why should I believe the Bible’s claims that Yahweh/Elohim/the Trinity exists? A spectacular miracle could plausibly do the trick but even then, I have some doubts.
Another god could be masquerading as Nelson and Dye’s version of the biblical god. If the world was created by a deity some 6000 years ago, why do the multiple dating criteria and methods used by sceintists all imply that it is much older? Did the speed of light slow down, as some suggest?
The amount of established knowledge and methods that have to be thrown out and the number of odd ideas that have to be accepted to make the young earth a plausible proposal is pretty high. It is far simpler just to throw out the idea of a young earth. If the creator deity creates illusions, then it is little more than a liar, and may well be misrepresenting itself to others as Yahweh, Christ, Allah, Ahura Mazda, or whatever. But a dishonest deity is hardly the kind of god that Nelson and Dye actually believe in!
Their attempts to shoehorn their god into the empirical data about natural history seems to me doomed to fail. The attempts strike me as internally inconsist, incoherent, unsystematic and unresearched. It does not amount to a serious intellectual engagement with anything, including the great intellectual tradition of Christianity itself.
My field of research is biblical and religious study. Each religious formulation is unique, but the content of the Bible is not so extra-ordinary that a fundamentally different kind of explanation is needed to account for its existence. What objective criteria can there be for trusting one scripture more than another? “Truth” is not necessarily inherent to one or any.
Religions themselves come and go, evolve, and change as the circumstances and thought of their adherents change. The rise of modern Christian creationsim is part of that evolution of religion.
Well, I’ve rambled on enough for one non-scientist and non-philosopher with a head cold on a snowy morning.
But I will leave Nelson and Dye with a few biblical questions.
How do you make a consistent and verifiable narrative out of the variety of depictions of creation in the Old Testament: the so-called Priestly account in Genesis 1:1-2:4, the Yahwist one in 2:4ff., the Hokmah passage in Proverbs 8, the storm god imagery in Amos, the Leviathan and Rahab slaying Yahweh of other texts?
Isn’t it just easier to regard the Old Testament as a compilation of a variety of early Judean and Israelit religious literature with the perception of a “unified” whole being a secondary level of interpretation applied to the collection?
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October 14, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Another well-reasoned, well-supported post. Your comments on confidence in science and the self-correcting mechanisms is bang-on. Unfortunately, this is what the ID and young-Earthers see as a failing.
The fact that science is not perfect is why science experiments are still being done today. Newton “discovered” the law of gravity 400 years ago. Einstein “discovered” the General Theory of Relativity in 1915 that explained why gravity caused masses to bend and that it bent a beam of light too. There are still things we don’t know about gravity. We didn’t even know the true shape of the earth until the mid-2oth century.
October 14, 2009 at 6:24 pm
i say again… predestined!
October 14, 2009 at 7:01 pm
October 14, 2009 at 8:02 pm
It really boggles the mind that there are so many people who ask this question but don’t ask it of themselves, regarding the gods of the other great religions. They want to make demands and call others to account, but they don’t want to cause themselves to expend the slightest effort in answering the same question.
October 15, 2009 at 1:04 am
I think the question of whether there is some form of evidence which would cause me to conclude god(s) exist is cart-before-the-horse. It presumes facts not in evidence. The more interesting question in response is, “Can Christianity (or any religion) supply it?” No religion has even come close so far.
October 15, 2009 at 6:05 am
S. A. I think you are right, but I thought I would answer the question anyway.
It is the kind of question hard-sell sales people use to put pressure on people…”What do I got to do to make you walk out of the store with this new diesel powered vibrating rocking chair?” Alas, I’m already out of the store…
October 15, 2009 at 8:20 am
Here is what is funny. Maybe God does exist, even though he is unaware of us. But the Bible-obsessed anti-intellectuals will never know Him, and have consciously chosen not to know anything about Him, because his Name is
Standard gravity acceleration 9.806 65 m.s-2 m/s2
Standard atmosphere 101 325 Pa
Molar mass constant 0.001 kg.mol-1 kg/mol Assigned (exact)
Molar mass of 12C 0.012 kg kg
Electron volt 1.602 176 487[40] e-19 kg.m2.s-2 J
Astronomical unit ua, au 1.495 978 70[30] e+11 m m Mean Earth-to-Sun distance
Atomic mass constant u, mu 1.660 538 782[83] e-27 kg kg Mass of 12C nuclide / 12
Nuclear and particle physics constants
Fermi coupling GF/(hc/2π)3 3.670 336[31] e+48 kg-2 = (1.026 8365[88] e-5) / mp2
Fermi coupling in eV-2 1.166 37[1] e+4 eV-2
Weak mixing angle sin2θW 0.222 55[56] Dimensionless = 1- (mW/mZ)2
Proton rest mass mp 1.672 621 637[83] e-27 kg kg 938.272 013[23] MeV = 1.007 276 466 77[10] u
Nuclear magneton μN 5.050 783 24[13] e-27 m2.A J/T = 2π h e / mp
Nuclear magneton in Hz/T 7.622 593 84[19] e+6 kg-1.s.A Hz/T = μN/h = [Larmor freq.]/[g-factor].
Compton wavelength of proton 1.321 409 844 6[19] e-15 m m λC,p = h / c mp
Proton magnetic moment 1.410 606 662[37] e-26 m2.A J/T μp
Proton g-factor 5.585 694 713[46] Dimensionless = μp / (Sp μN)
Proton gyromagnetic ratio 42.577 482 1[11] e+6 kg-1.s.A Hz/T γp = μp / h Sp.
Proton gyromagnetic ratio shielded 42.576 388 1[12] e+6 kg-1.s.A Hz/T In H2O, standard conditions
Proton magnetic shielding 25.694[14] e-6 Dimensionless Relative value
Proton rms charge radius 0.8768[69] e-15 m m
Neutron rest mass mn 1.674 927 211[84] e-27 kg kg 939.565 346[23] MeV = 1.008 664 915 97[43] u
Compton wavelength of neutron 1.319 590 895 1[20] e-15 m m λC,n = h / c mn
Neutron magnetic moment - 0.966 236 41[23] e-26 m2.A J/T μn
Neutron g-factor -3.826 085 45[90] Dimensionless = μn / (Sn μN)
Neutron gyromagnetic ratio 29.164 695 4[69] e+6 kg-1.s.A Hz/T γn = μn / h Sn
Muon rest mass 1.883 531 30[11] e-28 kg kg 105.658 3668[38] MeV = 0.113 428 925 6[29] u
Muon magnetic moment -4.490 447 86[16] e-26 m2.A J/T
Muon g-factor -2.002 331 841 4[12] Dimensionless
Muon gyromagnetic ratio 135.538 817[12] e+6 kg-1.s.A Hz/T = μn / h Sn
Tau rest mass 3.167 77[52] e-27 kg kg 1776.99[29] MeV = 1.907 68[31] u
Deuteron rest mass 3.343 583 20[17] e-27 kg kg 1875.612 793[47] MeV = 2.013 553 212 724[78] u
Deuteron magnetic moment 0.433 073 465[11] e-26 m2.A J/T
Deuteron g-factor 0.857 438 2308[72] Dimensionless
Deuteron gyromagnetic ratio 6.535903 e+6 kg-1.s.A Hz/T
Helion rest mass 5.006 411 92[25] e-27 kg kg 2808.391 383[70] MeV = 3.014 932 247 3[26] u
Helion magnetic moment -1.074 5532 982[30] e-26 m2.A J/T Shielded
Helion gyromagnetic ratio 32.434 101 98[90] e+6 kg-1.s.A Hz/T Shielded
α-particle rest mass 6.644 656 20[33] e-27 kg kg 3727.379 109[93] MeV = 4.001 506 179 127[62] u
Speed of light c 2.997 924 580 e+8 m.s-1 m/s
Gravitation constant G 6.67428[67] e-11 kg-1.m3.s-2 force = G M1M2 / r122
Planck constant h 6.626 068 96[33] e-34 kg.m2.s-1 J.s = energy quantum / frequency
Angular Planck constant 1.054 571 628[53] e-34 kg.m2.s-1 J.s h/2π
Planck mass mp 2.176 44[11] e-8 kg kg mp2 = (h/2π) c / G
Planck time tp 5.391 24[27] e-44 s s = (h/2π) / (mpc2)
Planck length lp 1.616 252[81] e-35 m m = ctp
Planck temperature 1.416 785[71] e+32 K K = mpc2 / k
Hubble constant 2.29[13] e-18 s-1 Universe expansion rate, 70.8±4.0 (km/s)/Mpc
Electromagnetic constants
Permeability of vacuum μ0 12.566 370 614… e-7 kg.m.s-2.A-2 H/m | N/A2 = 4π.10-7. Assigned.
Permittivity of vacuum ε0 8.854 187 817… e-12 kg-1.m-3.s4.A2 F/m = 1 / (c2 μ0). Assigned.
Impedance of vacuum Z0 376.730 313 461 … kg.m2.s-3.A-2 Ω Assigned by Z02 = μ0/ε0.
Elementary charge e 1.602 176 487[40] e-19 s.A C
Charge/Quantum ratio 2.417 989 454[60] e14 kg-1.m-2.s2.A A/J = e / h
Quantum/Charge ratio 4.135 667 33[10] e-15 kg.m2.s-2.A-1 J/A = h / e
Fine structure constant α 7.297 352 5376[50] e-3 Dimensionless = μ0 c e2 / 2h. July 2006 [1].
Inverse of fine structure constant 137.035 999 679[94] Dimensionless = 1/α = 2h / (μ0 c e2). See ref.[1].
Magnetic flux quantum Φ0 2.067 833 667[52] e-15 kg.m2.s-2.A-1 Wb = h / 2e
Conductance quantum G0 7.748 091 7004[53] e-5 kg-1.m-2.s3.A2 S = 2e2 / h
Inverse of conductance quantum 1.290 640 377 87[88] e+4 kg.m2.s-3.A-2 Ω = RK / 2
Josephson constant KJ 4.835 978 91[12] e14 kg-1.m-2.s2.A Hz/V = 2e / h . Conventional: 483597.9 GHz/V
von Klitzing constant RK 2.581 280 755 7[18] e+4 kg.m2.s-3.A-2 Ω = h / e2. Conventional: 25812.807 Ω
Electron and atomic physics constants
Electron rest mass me 9.109 382 15[45] e-31 kg kg 0.510 998 910[13] MeV = 5.485 799 094 2[23] e-4 u
Electron charge/mass ratio - 1.758 820 150[44] e11 kg-1.s.A C/kg = e / me
Compton wavelength of electron 2.426 310 217 5[33] e-12 m m λC,e = h / c me
Classical electron radius re 2.817 940 289 4[58] e-15 m m = e2 / (4πε0mec2 )
Thomson cross section σe 0.665 245 855 8[27] e-28 m2 m2 = (8π/3) re2
Quantum of circulation 3.636 947 519 9[50] e-4 m2.s-1 m2/s = h / 2me
Bohr magneton μB 9.274 009 15[23] e-24 m2.A J/T = 2π h e / me
Electron spin Se 1/2 Dimensionless
Electron magnetic moment μe - 9.284 763 77[23] e-24 m2.A J/T Last update July 2006 [2]
Electron g-factor - 2.002 319 304 362 2[15] Dimensionless = μe / (Se μB).
Electron/Shielded proton mag.moments ratio - 658.210 684 8[54] Dimensionless
Electron/Shieled proton magnetic moments ratio - 658.227 597 1[72] Dimensionless In water; standard conditions
Electron gyromagnetic ratio γe 28.024 953 64[70] e+9 kg-1.s.A Hz/T γe = μe / h Se
Rydberg constant R∞ 1.097373 156 852 7[73] e+7 m-1 m-1 = c α2 me / 2h
Hartree energy EH 4.359 743 94[22] e-18 kg.m2.s-2 J = α2 me c2 = 2h c R∞
Bohr radius 5.291 772 08 59[36] e-11 m m = α / (4π R∞)
Physico-chemical constants
Atomic mass constant u 1.660 538 782[83] e-27 kg kg Mass of 12C nuclide / 12
Molar mass of 12C 12 e-3 kg kg Assigned
Molar mass constant 1 e-3 kg.mol-1 kg/mol Assigned
Boltzman constant k 1.380 6504[24] e-23 kg.m2.s-2.K-1 J/K Sets thermodynamic temp.
Boltzman constant in eV/K 86.173 43[15] e-6 kg.m2.s-3.A-1.K-1 V/K = k/e. Electrochemical potential ~ (k/e)T ln(c1/c2)
Avogadro’s number NA 6.022 141 79[30] e+23 mol-1 mol-1 Particles in a mole of substance
Molar Planck constant 3.990 312 682 1[57] e-10 kg.m2.s-1.mol-1 J.s/mol = h NA
Molar Planck constant by c 0.119 626 564 72[17] kg.m3.s-2.mol-1 J.m/mol = h c NA
Electron molar mass 5.485 799 094 3[23] e-7 kg.mol-1 kg/mol = me NA
Electron molar charge -9.648 533 99[24] e+4 s.A.mol-1 C/mol = e NA.
Faraday constant F 9.648 533 99[24] e+4 s.A.mol-1 C/mol = |electron molar charge|.
Molar gas constant R 8.314 472[15] kg.m2.s-2.K-1.mol-1 J/K.mol = k NA
Molar volume of ideal gas Vm 22.413 996[39] e-3 m3.mol-1 m3/mol = (RT/p) at T=273.15 K, p=101325 Pa
Loschmidt constant n0 2.686 777 4[47] e25 m-3 m-3 = NA / Vm at T=273.15 K, p=101325 Pa
Sackur-Tetrode constant S0/R - 1.151 704 7[44] Dimensionless (5/2)+ln[(2πmukT/h2)(kT/p)] at T=1K, p=100 kPa.
Electromagnetic radiation constants
Stefan-Boltzmann const. σ 5.670 400[40] e-8 kg.s-3.K-4 W/m2.K4 = 2 π5 k4 / 15 h3 c2
1st radiation constant c1 3.741 771 18[19] e-16 kg.m4.s-3 W.m2 = 2 π h c2
2nd radiation constant c2 1.438 775 2[25] e-2 m.K m.K = h c / k
Wien displacement constant 2.897 768 5[51] e-3 m.K m.K = λmaxT = c2 / 4.9651423…
Maximum luminous efficacy; absolute 683 cd.sr.kg-1.m-1.s3 lm/W 100% efficient, ideal 555 nm light source.
Maximum luminous efficacy of black-body 95 cd.sr.kg-1.m-1.s3 lm/W Achieved at 7000 °K. See Wikipedia
Solar luminous efficacy 93 cd.sr.kg-1.m-1.s3 lm/W see Wikipedia
Solar illuminance 1.280[10] e5 cd.sr.m-2 lx in the brightest sunlight, on Earth
Solar constant 1.36594[48] e3 kg.s-3 W/m2 total solar elmag irradiation at 1 AU distance
http://www.ebyte.it/library/educards/constants/ConstantsOfPhysicsAndMath.html
October 15, 2009 at 9:14 am
i think that’s the first time ive ever been called an anti-intellectual in my whole life. let me jot the date down. for my memoirs.
October 15, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Dear Dan;
I would have referenced the NIST site myself, but well-said anyway. Religion, religous studies AND physics in one post. Something for everyone!
October 18, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Yet another shallow attack on mature creation. If a deity created something (say the earth), explained in part how they did so (through a religious text), but with a somewhat contrary appearance to those revelations (appearing older than the text describes), it would only be dishonest if that deity wanted us to value our own observational powers and intuitions higher more than their revelations. And what a strange and silly deity would that be!