Notes
1 On Armstrong, see Campbell 2004; Asimov, Asimov 1995, pp. 314-320; Barry,
Fort Worth Star-Telegram (25th November, 2001); Bartók, Demény 1971, pp. 76-83, 84-86; Buffett, Lowenstein 1995, p. 13; Penn and Teller, Gagnon 2006; Hepburn,
Ladies Home Journal (October 1991); Mencken, his
Treatise on the Gods; Orwell,
Complete Works, Volume 16, pp. 437-442, Volume 19, pp. 63-64; Rand, Rand 2005, pp. 149-150; Sartre, Sartre 1965; Szasz, his ‘An Autobiographical Sketch’, in Schaler 2005; Twain, his
Letters from the Earth; Wells, Wells 1934, pp. 568-578; Whedon, Nussbaum 2002.
2 See the discussion of Galactus in Taliaferro and Lindahl-Urben 2005.
3 Orwell,
Complete Works, Volume 19, p. 379.
4 Among many other writers who include agnosticism as a variety of atheism are Smith (1974) and Martin (1990)—and of course anyone at all before 1869.
5 Genesis was probably assembled and edited from several earlier documents around 700 B.C.E. Very likely, the people who first compiled
Genesis knew perfectly well that the position of the Sun accounts for day and night, but included some passages already hallowed by great antiquity. Thus, the story of day and night existing before the Sun may well be a folk tale inherited from a primitive early stage when the dependence of day and night upon the Sun, though known to the astronomers of Mesopotamia and Egypt, was not known to the Hebrews.
6 Or, if you
really want to get literal, “gods” [
elohim].
7 ‘Darwinism’ is the name both for a scientific theory and for what Popper calls a “scientific ideology.” I use the term ‘ideology’ to mean system of beliefs, without any implication that the beliefs are necessarily false (or true).
8 For several decades after Darwin’s death, his theory of natural selection was widely disbelieved, while
Origin of Species was admired as a highly eloquent case for the fact of gradual evolution. Only in the period 1900-1940 was it finally recognized that Darwin had been right about natural selection, which fit beautifully with the new science of genetics.
9 For example, one can read the first sentence of
Genesis as a kind of heading summarizing the next few sentences, rather than as an event preceding them.
10 See Whitcomb and Morris, Appendix II.
12 Darwin’s and Wallace’s theories are not identical. Where they differ, Darwin is right and Wallace wrong.
13 The same goes for the
Bible.
15 Adams 2001, pp. 69-70.
16 A simple way to make the distinction is that monkeys have tails; apes don’t.
17 Cairns-Smith 1985, pp. 58-61.
19 Estabrooks 1941. Olshansky, Carnes, and Butler 2001. See the discussion in Williams 1997, pp. 124-141.
20 Dawkins 1986, p. 93; Williams 1997, pp. 138-141.
21 The stages are laid out very simply in Smith and Szathmáry, Chapters 3-6.
23 This doesn’t mean that one report of an event contrary to the proposed law will cause scientists to abandon it. In some branches of science, the convention is that decisive experiments be repeatable. This should be viewed as an attempt to make really sure that at least one contrary event has been observed, not as acceptance of the view that more than one contrary event is required. The
logic of refutation by a single contrary instance is unaffected.
25 The majority of American scientists either disbelieve in God or express agnostic doubt. Among scientists of the highest caliber (“greater” scientists), the atheist majority is overwhelming. A 1998 study of greater scientists found that 7.0 percent believed in a personal God, 72.2 percent disbelieved, while 20.8 percent were doubtful. The level of belief in God was much lower than for comparable data in 1933. Larson and Witham 1998.
26 Stenger has devised a computer program enabling anyone to randomly ‘create’ their own virtual universes. The program is based on minimal physical assumptions. Stenger claims that most virtual universes generated last long enough for planets with heavy elements to form.
27 The probability of a tossed coin coming up heads is one-half. The probability of its coming up heads twice in two tosses is one-quarter, which we get by multiplying one-half by one-half. We would not be able to do this if there existed some mechanism making it more (or less) likely that the second toss would yield the same result as the first. The two tosses would not then be independent.
28 According to a popular legend, medieval philosophers debated how many angels could dance on the point of a needle (or, even more fatuously, ‘on the head of a pin’). Medieval philosophers were not so idiotic. The legend of such debates probably arose because some philosophers argued that angels had no spatial dimensions which, put picturesquely, means that any number of them could dance on the point of a needle.
29 There are other possibilities, such as independent universes not commensurable in time, but this doesn’t affect the argument here.
30 For a fuller discussion, see Sorabji 1983, pp. 219-223; Craig 2002; Guminski 2003.
32 This is different to terms like ‘multiverse’ or ‘megaverse’ which have been used as names for a bunch of universes of which ours is one. Conceivably physicists might find that the multiverse or megaverse is part of a larger conglomeration, whereas I want to
define ‘metaverse’ as the totality of everything that exists.
33 For something to be a conceivable thing, we don’t have to be able to picture it in our minds, and being able to picture it in our minds does not make it a conceivable thing. We may really believe we can picture a square circle, but a square circle is not a conceivable thing. We may be unable to picture a world with many more than three spatial dimensions, but as long as we can specify such a world in a consistent set of equations, that world is a conceivable thing.
34 My view is that while the structure of moral theory is just as objective as the structure of, say, medical theory, practicing morality, like practicing medicine, requires an input of subjective values. In the case of morality, these values derive from empathy for other conscious beings. This empathy is, as a matter of fact, almost but not quite universal among humans. Among many atheists who disagree with me and favor ‘moral realism’ are Martin (2002); Wielenberg (2005).
35 Here and throughout the book, I sometimes simplify by saying ‘matter’ instead of ‘matter and energy’.
36 The book I have found most helpful on this is Ellis 1995.
37 Yes, this is what Plantinga says. Plantinga 1993, pp. 225-26.
38 Most recently in Mawson 2005, pp. 163-64.
39 H. Benson
et al. 2006; Sloan 2006, pp. 168-69.
40 See the discussion in Kenny 2004, Chapter 9.
42 O’Leary-Hawthorne, pp. 124-28.
43 This statement is probably false. We all make mistakes. And while it would be illogical to assert something and then add that it is false, it’s not necessarily illogical to say that somewhere, among a whole slew of assertions I assert, there are probably some which are false, as long as I don’t know and can’t specify which ones they are.
44 For instance Paul quotes a line from the comic writer Menander at
1 Corinthians 15:33.
45 Some verses in the New Testament refer to scriptures which have not survived. If you think that all scripture is infallible, then you think God guaranteed the infallibility of certain documents and then quite soon permitted them to be lost.
46 See the discussion in Wells 1999, pp. 196-200.
47 The erudite Christian scholar Origen (around 185-254 C.E.) refers to Josephus in a way that suggests that possibly neither of these passages was in the copy of the
Antiquities he read, though there was another mention of Jesus, presumably a scribal interpolation which did not survive later Christian editing.
48 See the discussion by Wells (1996, pp. 43-44).
49 Like the incompatible genealogies of Jesus (
Matthew 1;
Luke 3:23-38) or the incompatible datings of the crucifixion in relation to the Passover (
Mark 14-15;
John 13-19).
50 Several examples are given in Nineham 1969.
51 Asimov, Introduction to Evans and Berent 1988, p. xiv.
52 Brown 1993. And see Wells 1999, pp. 115-122.
53 Later church tradition ascribed some early epistles to Paul which were not in fact by Paul. Letters now accepted by most scholars as genuinely by Paul are
Romans,
1 Corinthians,
2 Corinthians,
Galatians,
Philippians,
1 Thessalonians, and
Philemon. The others are all disputed and (except for
Colossians, a borderline case) considered by most scholars to be not by Paul. Claims that these letters were not really by Paul go back to before the formation of the
New Testament canon. Some of the disputed letters are significantly later than the ones genuinely by Paul, others are almost equally early.
54 This is a standard fundamentalist argument. For one example see Collins 1995, p. 58.
55 There is one likely exception to this, the reference to a still-living person, “James, the Lord’s brother” (
Galatians 1:19; see
1 Corinthians 9:5). This is usually taken to refer to a male sibling of Jesus who was personally known to Paul. But “the Lord’s brother” could easily mean something else. G.A. Wells has proposed that there might have been a sect or order known as ‘Brethren of the Lord’.
56 If the canonical gospels were at least roughly accurate, then Jesus and his closest companions would have been illiterates who knew only Aramaic.
57 Early in World War I, there were numerous reports attributed to British soldiers, that angels had been seen in the heavens over the town of Mons, fighting against the Germans, and that this angelic intervention had saved the day for the Allies. These ‘sightings’ originated in a short story published six months earlier, ‘The Bowmen’, by Arthur Machen.
58 For instances, rubbing spittle into a blind man’s eyes before miraculously curing him of blindness.
59 ‘Cephas’ is Aramaic for ‘stone’. ‘Petros’ (Peter) is Greek for ‘stone’. Both words were used as personal names before the appearance of Christianity.
62 A simple and familiar example of this universal process is the story of the ‘wise men’ (astrologers) who presented gifts to the baby Jesus, recorded in
Matthew 2:1-12. Later the astrologers, of indeterminate number, became three (presumably suggested by the fact that the gifts mentioned are gold, myrrh, and frankincense). They then became kings, though their kingdoms have never been found, and in time acquired names: Caspar, Balthasar, and Melchior in the western churches, totally different names in the eastern (where there were supposed to be twelve of them). These later legends accumulated after
Matthew was written (or at least, there is no earlier trace of them), so Protestants have generally rejected them. But such legend-building did not begin on the date that
Matthew was compiled. Notice that ‘Matthew’ assumes that astrology is true.
64 Brooks and Brooks 1998.
66 Boller and George 1989.
67 For an interesting example, see Dummett 2007, pp. 5-6.
68 Hume 1992. This is explicitly part of an argument, voiced by the character Cleanthes, that we do get evidence like that, but Hume undermines that argument.
69 Swinburne 1991, pp. 211-12; Van Inwagen 2006, pp. 146-48; Murray 2002, pp. 69-76. This defense is similar to the ‘soul-making’ defense advanced by John Hick.
70 Technically known as a ‘theodicy’.
71 Mackie 1982, p. 161-62.
73 There is a theory that when we think we make choices we’re always deluded, but since no theist is likely to accept that, I won’t take up space here to argue against it.
74 He doesn’t explicitly state this, but his argument fails if he accepts that it isn’t true. Reichenbach 1982, pp. 87-118.
75 I question this theist belief here, but since it is the overwhelmingly predominant theist assumption, I also accept it, for purposes of argument, in my further objections below.
76 For example, Reichenbach 1982, pp. 131-33.
77 My argument on page 201 can be completely answered by accepting that God is confined within ‘our’ time, and is not capable of knowing the future. This would also rule out Molina’s ‘middle knowledge’—God’s knowledge of what choices persons would freely make in any hypothetical circumstances.
78 That is, I’m assuming that one of the following three things is true: a. that these two conditions are all that free will means; b. that free will means something more than these two conditions, but that these two conditions are reliable markers for free will; or c. that free will means something more, and that these two conditions are not reliable markers, but that in all the examples where I mention free will and these two conditions hold, it’s clear that there is or there might be free will.
79 A conclusion of economic theory: financial intermediaries increase output and therefore income.
80 Swinburne 1996, p. 113.
81 Carneades (around 213-128 B.C.E.) apparently argued that, since God is defined as all-virtuous and yet cannot exercise virtue, this proves that God doesn’t exist. Carneades’s argument is developed by Douglas Walton (1999). I prefer not to include virtue in the definition of God, and simply to point out that God, if he exists, cannot be virtuous or vicious, and therefore departs from what we normally expect of a person.
82 Fulmer 1977. To say that this law is “a pre-existing natural regularity,” is not to say that this regularity existed before God did. If God has always existed for infinite time, or if God exists outside time, it remains necessary that this law must exist if God is to exist. This natural regularity is logically prior to God’s existence (there could be no God without it) not necessarily prior to God’s existence in time. Similarly, we can say that ‘if any person understands square roots then he must understand multiplication, whereas a person can understand multiplication without understanding square roots’. This is necessarily true, even if the person in question, along with his understanding of square roots, has existed for infinite time past.
84 Everitt 2004, pp. 290-91.
85 There might not be a unique solution, and God might have to choose one of many, but to humans the difference would be imperceptible.
86 Blackmore 1993, 49-66, 81-93, 106-110.
87 Blackmore 1993, pp. 127-28.
88 Blanke, Ortigue, Landis, and Seek 2002.
89 Dingwall, Goldney, and Hall 1956; see Hines 1988, pp. 62-64.
90 Hines 1988, pp. 64-65.
91 For brevity’s sake, I have to move without warning between two uses of the word ‘science’, roughly science as it ought to be if it is to make the best stabs at the truth, and science as a real human institution, which is prone to various errors, sometimes caused by bias from various ideological preconceptions. I do not recommend that any of us uncritically accept the pronouncements of ‘scientific experts’ on anything whatsoever. On this see Steele 2005a.
94 Squaring the circle means constructing a square the same area as a circle, using standard equipment like compasses and a setsquare. It has been proved to be impossible.
95 A view voiced by Jacob Joshua Ross, in Howard-Snyder and Moser, p. 183.
96 Psalms 14:1 and also 53:1. The whole of
Psalm 53 is a slightly different draft or variant of
Psalm 14.
98 Bartlett 2000, p. 478.
99 Calvin 1960, Volume 1, p. 45.
100 This tendency has aroused most comment when it occurs in ‘cults’. In my view, there is an element of the cult in all associations united by a common set of ideas, including professional societies, academic disciplines, families, business corporations, and nation-states.
101 In other words there are no clinical trials in this area, but only epidemiological studies. When testing drugs, clinical trials are generally considered more decisive than epidemiological studies. If a clinical trial fails to confirm the findings of an epidemiological study, it’s usually concluded that the findings were spurious.
105 Sloan 2006; see also Sloan, Bagiella, and Powell 1999.
106 I have summarized some of the high spots of this research in Steele 2005b.
107 ‘Secularization’ is associated with various sociological theories, some of which I don’t endorse. The
fact of declining theistic belief and declining religious participation in the more industrially developed countries is documented by a vast weight of evidence, such as that assembled in Norris and Inglehart 2004.
Recent increases in theistic activity in a few European countries are due either to the removal of Communist governments or to Muslim immigration.
108 Bruce 2002, pp. 214-17.