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Marley Blancpain, A Reflection on God and Certainty
A REFLECTION ON GOD AND CERTAINTY
by Marley Blancpain
Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennet and Christopher Hitchens. Four names that evoke anger in the devout and dread in religious leaders tasked with defending the beliefs to which billions around the world adhere. Dubbed the four horsemen of New Atheism, these men have helped solidify and popularise a new brand of scientific atheism that many consider to be the final shudder of religiosity in the West. Armed with eloquence and the mass-dissemination facilitated by modern media, they have coordinated a campaign of interviews, videos podcasts, debates, publications and lectures proclaiming with evangelical certitude the proposition that God does not exist.
For many, this is a highly rational and realistic approach. After all, the world is full of horrors. Millions suffer every day and the physical sciences continue to prove fruitful in providing more convincing explanations for phenomena long confined to religious accounts. A key contributor to the success of the new atheists has been their subscription to materialist principles. As a philosophy, Materialism holds that the universe comprises of nothing but matter and its processes and interactions. It is true that scientific inquiry gives no indication that the universe and consciousness consist of anything but ordinary matter and its more enigmatic forms (take dark matter or space-time). Neuroscience has shown us that the human capacity for love does not require a divinely imbued soul, but only the electro-chemical transmissions which promote reciprocal behaviour between mates and kin. Evolutionary biology firmly demonstrates that humankind was not created on the sixth day, but is the resultant product of approximately 3.9 billion years of evolution; a process that requires not divine providence, but merely natural selection, genetic variation, and a heathy dose of time. Materialism and the physical sciences are fundamentally complementary to Atheism by providing an overarching framework that explains how the world works without diverting to any form of Theism. Indeed Dawkins, a seminal evolutionary biologist, recalls his understand-
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ing of evolution by natural selection as the catalyst leading to his atheistic philosophy. One often hears evolution thrown down as a ‘trump card’ in discussions concerning the validity of God or religion. Evolution is as universally accepted among scientists as the heliocentric model of the solar system. While rationality demands accepting its role in birthing the incomprehensible complexity of biological life, must we necessarily unite with the new atheists in the conclusion that God does not exist?
A natural leap committed by New Atheism seems to occur from the proposition that humans are wholly material and arose through evolution, to the assertion that there is no God. While their stance is highly tenable, their approach is problematic in its unwavering commitment to the certainty of its own assertions. Knowledge taken to be certain – even when founded on a bedrock of objectivism, rationality and science – remains perilous in its tendency to promote intellectual deafness. Accept for a moment the well-evidenced proposition that your consciousness is physical and arose autonomously via evolution. Accept fully the premise that you are solely an agglomeration of atoms, chemical secretion and sensory input. Does it now naturally follow that there is no God? Perhaps one could partake in the view that evolution and the physical laws comprise an intricate and self-contained system used by God to bring about each and every one of our unique existential experiences. If God does exist, I would admire more greatly her genius in creating a universe that gave rise to life and consciousness by the properties of that very system, rather than by simply snapping fingers and willing us into being. It appears plausible and elegant to at least consider the potential for the physical laws as a symphony of coordinated interaction, calibrated perfectly so as to give rise to and maintain the magnum opus that is our universe.
A material conception of reality and a firm belief in evolution is not incompatible with God, and it is both contrary to rationality and intellectually arrogant to sneer at even the very possibility of her existence. We must remain vigilant in the face of any metaphysical certainty. Out of certainty is born dogma, and out of dogma, fertile ground for ignorance is laid bare. The Great British philosopher Bertrand Russel remarked that “the demand for certainty is natural to man, but it is nevertheless an intellectual vice.” This quote echoes a story my grandfather recounted to me about my mother. She once came to him as a child and exclaimed boldly “I know God doesn’t exist!”, to which he retorted “do you know, or do you think?”. Her eyes widened, she stopped, looked at him, nodded understandingly and walked away. It seems even a child had grasped something so fundamentally intuitive that it did not necessitate reiteration or confirmation. Nothing can be proven or disproven. Perhaps God exists, perhaps she doesn’t. Perhaps the laws of our universe were finely tweaked to give rise to sandy beaches, chocolate and music, maybe it was simply chance.
Whether you choose to believe or not believe in God, take no heed of anyone who claims to proclaim only the truth, for there are far too many uncertainties in this world to be certain of that which lies beyond it.
