I don't believe in God, but I also don't believe it possible to disprove his existence. If God created the universe, then he is not a part of the universe. If he is not part of the universe, then he need not obey the logical laws of the universe, and any purely logical argument against his existence fails in the face of the believer's refrain: "God works in mysterious ways." Why bother arguing that God's omnipotence contradicts his omnibenevolence? Perhaps in the realm he inhabits it all makes perfect sense.

For the same reason, I don't believe it possible to prove -- or even to argue persuasively for -- God's existence through pure logic. But that didn't stop me from checking out the The Existence of God by philosopher Richard Swinburne. I quickly found out that Swinburne did not write The Existence of God for reading on lunch breaks while munching a Little Juan burrito:

If bringing about E is a mediated action the answer to the quesiton how it was that P's intention was efficacious will be more complicated. It will be that E was the intended consequence of some basic action of P's, A1, i.e. a consequence which P meant to occur through his performing a certain basic action A1 which consists in bring about some state of affairs S.

Not wanting to spend the months of March and April wading through 322 pages of philosophical jargon, I picked up Swinburne's condensed, non-technical version of The Existence of God, titled Is There a God?

In Is There a God?, Swinburne explains his version of the cosmological argument for God's existence. (The cosmological argument states that the existence of the universe requires an explanation, and the only sufficient explanation is God.) Swinburne takes the step of establishing four criteria for a rational explanation of any given phenomenon:

1. The explanation leads us to expect (with accuracy) many and varied events which we observe (and we do not observe any events whose non-occurrence it leads us to expect).
   
2. The explanation is simple.
   
3. The explanation fits well with our background knowledge.
   
4. We would not otherwise expect to find these events (e.g. there is no rival explanation which leads us to expect these events which satisfies criteria (1-3) as well as does our proposed explanation).

As an example, Swinburne offers that in 1846, to explain an irregularity in the orbit of Uranus (at the time the most distant planet yet discovered), French astronomer Urbain Leverrier proposed that an unknown planet could be pulling Uranus out of its expected orbit. The discovery of Neptune proved Leverrier correct. Swinburne uses this example to establish that rational explanations can include "unobservable entities."

Swinburne then argues at length that God best fits these criteria as an explanation for the existence of the universe; in particular, that God is the simplest such explanation. A sample:

It is extraordinary that there should exist anything at all. Surely the most natural state of affairs is simply nothing: no universe, no God, nothing. But there is something. And so many things. Maybe chance could have thrown up the odd electron. But so many particles! Not everything will have an explanation. But the whole progress of science and all other intellectual enquiry demands that we postulate the smallest number of brute facts. If we can explain the many bits of the universe by one simple being which keeps them in existence, we should do so -- even if inevitably we cannot explain the existence of that simple being.

To his credit, Swinburne never claims this proves the existence of God -- he only promotes God as the most rational and probable explanation for the existence of the universe.

I had to chew on these ideas for a few days. At first I objected that God is always the simplest explanation for any phenomenon. Medieval physicians found it simpler to say "It is God's will" to explain the death of a child from leukemia than to invent the fields of microbiology, organic chemistry, and pediatric oncology.

Then I objected that, as baffling and inexplicable as a godless universe might be, it pales in complexity compared to an all-powerful, all-knowing, eternally existing, and perfectly good being who exists everywhere and yet remains unobservable. Think about that. We humans are so limited in power, so lacking in knowledge, so mortal, so morally flawed, and so locked in time and space that we can never comprehend God's existence, let alone explain it. How can a rational explanation be simultaneously simple and incomprehensible? (A related aside: Swinburne has a frustrating habit of writing things like this: "However, if there is a God, who being perfectly good, will love his creatures, one would expect him to interact with us occasionally more directly on a personal basis..." How does he know? How can any human claim to understand the motives and behavior of a being so thoroughly unlike us?)

Finally, after much hard thought, I objected that Swinburne had left a very important -- possibly the most important -- criterion for rational explanations off his list of four:

5. The explanation must be verifiable or falsifiable.

This renders Swinburne's Uranus-Neptune example useless. Neptune, after all, was not an "unobservable entity," as Swinburne claims -- it simply had not been observed yet. Astronomers were eventually able to find Neptune and verify Leverrier's theory. Had astronomers been unable to find evidence supporting the existence of Neptune, or if they had found evidence contradicting the existence of Neptune, the theory would have been discarded and new theories formed to explain Uranus' irregular orbit.

All rational explanations must submit to the evidence. But nobody can find evidence to support or contradict the existence of God, because he is unobservable. God, then, is not a rational explanation for the existence of the universe. This does not mean that he does not exist. It does mean that Swinburne has no business appropriating the language and methods of science to support his argument.

I'm going to bed.

[WARNING: Do not leave comments like: "I find evidence for God in the laughter of a child." I will find you, break into your house, and force you at gunpoint to copy by hand the complete written works of Bertrand Russell.]

+posted by Lawrence @ 4/11/2004 11:54:00 PM