Contents

• What is God?
• Some bad reasons for belief.
• The problem of pain.
• Some bad ideas of God.
• Proving that God is.
• The Anthropic Principle
• Appendix I: A Critique of the Cosmological Argument.
• Appendix II: A commented version of "God is Silent" by Richard Carrier

This question has been central to the life and concerns of humanity since the earliest days. Perhaps it was at first taken for granted that God or "the gods" existed. How else could primitive men and women explain the wonders and horrors of life and the world in which it was played out? Over time the question has become more contentious as many have come to believe that belief itself is at least misguided and delusional and at most pathological. Before considering the arguments in favour of "the existence of God" (not all of which I approve of or agree with!) I shall review some of the arguments against belief in God, and before that I shall address the prime issue "What is God?"

What is God?

Some believers are happy to attribute to God dependencies upon the Cosmos that make the "divinity" nothing more than the most elevated of all things: not absolutely distinct from everything else, but only the greatest thing of all. This is normally done on the basis of portraying God as compassionate, loving and caring: all of which I believe God to be, in a fundamentally important but not simple sense. The ultimate version of this doctrine is "patripassionism", the notion that God the Father suffered in the crucifixion of Jesus; something that was unequivocally condemned by the Early Fathers of the Church. Such a "divinity" is simply not divine. At best it is the "demi-urge" of Gnosticism, an instrument that God might use to do the dirty work of creation. There are echoes here of Arianism, the doctrine that the Christ was not God, but only "divine" in the sense of (very) god-like. There are understandable motives for such a view of God, as I shall describe in my brief treatment of the "Problem of Pain", but these do not excuse the simple metaphysical mistake. If God is not absolutely independent of the Cosmos, utterly other and sovereign then God isn't God and we are talking incoherent nonsense.

What is existence?

Some misexplanations of Theism

An emotional crutch

Of course, the fact that some people entertain the notion that "God is" from personal inadequacy does not mean that "God is not." The fact that many people find such an inadequacy within themselves is rather some sort of an argument for God's being: but not a very good one, I think.

A support for sanity

I find this highly plausible, except for the fact that there are many people who profess to be agnostic or atheist, have no notion that their lives have any lasting or objective significance and yet seem to maintain their sanity well enough. I'm not sure that I could do this, if I became unconvinced of God's being: after forty years of theism!  However the fact that they can and do invalidates this argument, it seems to me. In any case, I would argue that belief in God doesn't really answer this purpose. The futility of final extinction is no more mitigated by the fact that "God is" than by the fact that friends and family may survive one's death - for a while. The horror of the termination of my particularity of personhood can only be mitigated by a belief in some kind of continuity of life, experience and activity after death!

Of course, this has most definitely not been a core feature of all religions. While the Egyptians had a sophisticated doctrine of the immortality of the soul, the Hebrews got by very well for over a millennium with no belief in any kind of worth-while after-life. Even in Jesus' day, the elite Sadducees rejected the novel doctrine of the populist Pharisee party in this regard [Mat 22:23]. For the Sadducees it was good enough to be faithful to God, that was its own reward [Psalms 1 & 118]. It was enough to do what was right, because it was right, and to expect no reward or recompense except - hopefully - some tranquility and prosperity in this short life [Job 1:8-11, 42:10].

An externalization of parenthood

Moreover, I suppose that there is a core element of truth in it. If God was not, then perhaps we would invent God. However, this analysis tells us nothing whatever about whether God is or is not: only about what our response might be if God was not! In any case St. Paul admits the relationship between parenthood and God when he says "....I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named" [Eph 3:14,15].

Finally, I want to say that problems an individual has with their own parents tend to have a detrimental affect on their attitude towards God, especially when God is presented to them as a Father (or Mother!) that they cannot choose and did not choose them as persons, rather than as a Friend, who they can choose and has chosen them knowing exactly who and what they are.

A projection of the Super-Ego

I am quite sure that this process takes place. I think it is manifest in some of the most extreme forms of fundamentalist religion such as Calvinist Christianity or Conservative Catholicism.

The opium of the masses

A conceptual virus

1. symbioticaly: by helping their mental owners to survive and prosper,
• but not especially procreate - ideas are passed on by conversation not by copulation;
2. parasiticaly: by diverting much of their proponents' energy into propagating them,

perhaps even contrary to their own self-interest.
• Perhaps by wasting many leisure hours generating pages of web-site material

Theologies majoring in "guilt" and "threats of damnation", certainly have the required characteristics: but this theory hardly explains the undoubted success of more gentle religions like Shikism, Buddhism (where there is no real basis for a concern for the "salvation" of anyone else other than oneself, and no tradition of missionary zeal) or Judaism (where no strategy to spread beyond the national boundary of the Jewish people has ever taken off, other than in the more aggressive "Jewish heresies" of Christianity and Islam.)

I suspect that it is a dim awareness of the second possibility (of mental parasitism) that makes many people wary of "The God Squad". Some forms of religion certainly match up well with the model of a contagious "social disease". The evangelical preoccupation with proselytism conforms closely to this paradigm.

Of course, Christianity claims to be "good news": to have a message that gives the clue to the living of a fulfilling life. The simple pleasure and satisfaction of seeing others discover the same truth and delight that oneself has benefited from is a coherent motive for "passing it on". A shared joy is a joy multiplied. A problem that I agonize with is how much I do or don't wish various close non-Catholic friends to become Catholics. As a faithful Catholic, I believe that it is objectively right for them to do so. As a realistic person I fear that it may be subjectively harmful for them to do so. In the present state of the Church, they are liable to receive only emotional hurt and intellectual misdirection; and to suffer greatly for no clear purpose. I cannot wish that fate on anyone.

The problem of pain

The problem is familiar to any but the most callous and hard-hearted soul. It is this: "How can a God that is supposed to be both good and omnipotent tolerate evil, death, sickness, suffering, injustice and pain? Either God mustn't care about such matters: in which case God isn't good; or God is unable to do anything: in which case God isn't omnipotent."

It is possible to avoid this difficulty by taking one of the two gambits offered. Now, it may be possible to make some sort of a case for either a good but impotent God, or for an omnipotent but disinterested God: but I have no interest in doing so. This paper is not an attempt to score debating points, but rather to make an attempt on the truth. My intuition, fostered by the Judaeo-Christian Tradition, is that God is both good and omnipotent. I wish to explore how this can be, given our undoubted experience of sorrow and sickness and death.

Defence 1: Evil is a means to an ultimately good end

"One attempt by theologians to answer the question is to claim that evil is just a means to an ultimate end, which is always good. An example is given where a doctor amputates a patient's leg, an 'evil', in order to prevent gangrene from spreading throughout the patient's body, 'the ultimate end', which is 'good'. Yet this example is only justified on the basis that the doctor has limited powers. With the limitations of medical technology at his disposal, he of course chose the lesser evil; since there was no way of saving both the patient's leg and his life. However, this analogy cannot be applied to God and the problem of evil, since God, unlike the doctor, has unlimited powers. In fact, a more accurate analogy is a doctor who first actively infects the leg of his patient (God is the cause of all things), and then decide to amputate his leg when a less severe cure was available (God is all powerful). We would call such a doctor wicked and mad. Why do we call such a God good?"
[A MySpace Friend (June 17, 2008)]

Defence 2: Moral evil is an inevitable consequence of free will

"Another argument brought forward by theologians is that evil is a natural consequence of God allowing man free-will. This argument may be allowed to explain some moral evil caused by man such as theft, murder and rape. But how does giving man free-will relate to physical evils such as earthquakes, famines, plagues and floods? Thus, the free-will explanation cannot explain the existence of natural calamities that befall man. In fact, the free will explanation cannot even satisfactorily explain moral evil. If God is all powerful, he could have created all man with free will and with a predisposition towards doing good. But according to the same theologians, man is sinful by nature, with a predisposition for doing bad. God's action in giving man free-will and at the same time giving him a predisposition towards doing bad is no different morally from a man who drinks, on purpose, in front of a recently reformed alcoholic! If we describe such a man as irresponsible and immoral, why do we persist in calling such a God good?

The abstraction 'man' used above is also misleading. All of mankind have free-will; some, a small minority, some men-and women-, chose evil and rob, kill, cheat and maim. Are the more numerous victims to be consoled by saying that this is a consequence of their (the victims) having free will? In other words, are the innocent victims somehow responsible for the crimes on themselves because they have free will? The right to be protected from crimes is basic for all citizens in the world; any government that fails to deliver a reasonable amount of protection from these would be condemned and duly removed from power. Yet somehow it is okay for the all powerful God to give men free will and allow them to suffer the consequences from the minority who misuse it. To say that all will be rectified in the afterlife where the good will be rewarded in heaven and the bad will be punished in hell does not resolve the issue. No appeal to an afterlife can actually eradicate the problem of evil. An injustice always remains an injustice, regardless of any subsequent effort to comfort the victim. If a father, after beating his child unmercifully, later gives him a lollipop as compensation, this does not eradicate the original act or its evil nature. Nor would we praise the father as just and loving. Yet, this is exactly what the Christians claims their God to do. He allows the faithful to suffer (remember Job!) and later rewards them. This God cannot, by any moral yardstick, be called good." [A MySpace Friend (June 17, 2008)]

According to Catholic (as opposed to Protestant) theology, the "predisposition towards evil" that is called "concupiscence" and which results from "original sin" is not something that God placed in the nature of mankind. It is the state of affairs of any finite contingent moral agent. It is nothing more than an expression of the "Second Law of Thermodynamics" which states that any system - left to itself - will tend to become disordered.

"this evil influence .... comes from a source .... innate in mankind as a result of crimes of long ago that remain unexpiated .... you should take precautions against it .... seek the rites that free a man from guilt .... seek the company of men who [are] virtuous .... run from the company of the wicked .... if by doing so, you find that your disease abates somewhat, well and good; if not then you should look on death as the preferable alternative." [Plato "Laws IX" (854b)]

"The good is susceptible to becoming bad... but the bad is not susceptible to becoming; it must always be.. It is impossible to be a good man and continue to be good, but possible for one and the same person to become good and also bad; and those are best for the longest time whom the god's love." [Plato "Protagoras" (344d-345c)]

The second paragraph fails because it strives to distinguish two populations - the "pretty good folk" who deserve to be protected from the "wicked folk". In fact, no such destinction is possible. The actual spectrum of wickedness is continuous. Even the kindest and gentlest person has a dark side and even the greatest sinner has some positive features. Moreover, if God were to regularly and effectively protect the "better folks" from the "worse folks" this would become obvious very rapidly and I take it as axiomatic that God's purposes in creating the Cosmos - whatever they are - require that God remains largely hidden and out-of-sight.

Some suffering and pain is self-inflicted, and is not God's responsibility. For God to prevent this pain would involve Him substantially interfering with human Free-Will. A loving but omnipotent God has to accept such suffering in His Cosmos and respond to it as an independent agent: that is by miraculous intervention, as God judges to be appropriate. The only alternative would have been to refrain from creating at all.

Defence 3: Physical evil is a means to increase moral urgency

"One theistic attempt to explain physical evil is that its existence helps to increase the 'moral urgency' in the world. This 'moral urgency' will bring out the heroic, the virtuous and the good in people. Thus the theist W.D. Niven in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics argues:

'Physical evil has been the goad which has impelled men to most of the achievements which made the history of man so wonderful. Hardship is a stern but fecund parent of invention. Where life is easy because physicals ills are at a minimum we find man degenerating in body, mind and character...Which is preferable-a grim fight with the possibility of splendid triumph; or no battle at all?'

Thus, according to this argument, war brings out the heroic in men, and earthquakes, famines and plagues brings out the virtuous in those people who fought to odds to bring relief to the victims. It is also implicit in this argument that the total evil of these calamities is outweighed by the occurrence of good and virtue brought about by their occurrence. There are three main defects to this argument for the existence of physical evil; which together shows the argument to be untenable.

1. Isn't it better to eradicate forever the occurrence of physical evils-such as famine and plagues-than to simply treat the victims when they occur? It is clear to everyone that the former is more desirable. But if that is the case, this would mean that eliminating physical evils would make the world a better, not a worse, place. Accepting that the presence of physical evil makes the world a better place would mean that the elimination of smallpox, the discovery of the polio vaccine and the discovery of the antibiotic are three of the most disastrous events to have happened this century! This is, obviously, an absurd proposition. Therefore the idea that physical evil generates more good is immediately put into question.
2. The action that results from physical evils are not always due to morally praiseworthy reasons. Thus the formulation of a drug to cure a certain pestilence may be due purely to the profit motive of a pharmaceutical company and has nothing to do with any heroic struggles to do good.
3. Some physical evil simply cannot be squared away with promoting virtuous actions. The resent outbreak of the ebola virus in Africa is a case to point. The disease kills within a couple of weeks and no cure is possible. What possible good could have resulted from that? Earthquakes volcanic eruptions, floods have been known to kill thousands people instantly, leaving the people behind to simply pick up the pieces. What good came out of those?" [A MySpace Friend (June 17, 2008)]

1. The fact that it is good to eradicate physical evils does not mean that the initial presence of those evils might not have served the purpose of evoking heroic virtue. The main way in which the world was better after erradication of Smallpox was in the heroc virtues inculcated in those people who fought hard and long to erradicate the disease, not so much in the mere fact that the disease no longer existed. After all, there are plenty more horrid diseases to go! Moreover, the "world being a better place" is not clearly the proper criterion. "Better for what?" it must be asked. It would not be better for "evoking heroic virtue" to have no opportunities for heroic virtue to be evoked and exercised!
2. This is true and of no significance. The fact that a response is found that is not "heroic virtue" does not mean that the original cause was not appropriate for the evokation of heroic virtue.
3. This is largely true - except that in the case of floods and similar there is generally the opportunity for charitable response.

Some forms of pain are essential parts of life. The very concept of "animal life" implies the destruction of other life (food) in order to construct and preserve itself. Even plant life is competitive and strives against other plant life to obtain and secure resources, as any gardener well knows. Life as we know it necessarily involves suffering. According to my definition of life: "order in flux", competition for resources is inevitable. Nature is red in tooth and claw neither because She wants to be so, nor because God chose for Her to be so: but because there is no other way for life to be!

"For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies." [Rom 8 19-23]

"The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it." [Gen 1:15]

"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall feed; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea." [ Isa 11:6-9]

Some additional considerations

"For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of  weeping and the cry of distress .... They shall not labour in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the LORD, and their children with them. Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; and dust shall be the serpent's food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, says the LORD." [Isa 65:17-19,23-25]

"Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away." [Apoc 21:3,4]

"I consider that the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us" [Rom 8:18]

The Christian God does not stand by as an impassive onlooker. In Jesus, God chose to experience the last dregs of physical and intellectual and emotional pain [Mat 27:46]. Whoever is to blame for suffering, the impassible God chose to become passible and so bear the whole of the pain of physicality, finitude and futility in his own Sacred Heart. This is the core message of the doctrine of the Incarnation.

It should also be noted that even though we have seen that God is impassible, this does not mean quite what it might seem. Just as the Incarnation enables God the Son (and through Him, the other persons of the Trinity) to experience first hand the joys and pains of human life; so God could more generally experience what it is to be contingent through various energies: created effluences/eminations which God inhabits and through which God interacts with the created order. Examples might be Abraham's Angelic visitors [Gen 18]; the man who wrestled with Jacob [Gen 32:22-52]; Moses' Burning Bush [Ex 3:2]; the Cloud of God's Glory [Ex 24:15-18, 40:34-35; II Chron 5:14]; and Ezekiel's Throne of Majesty [Ezk 1].

Much pain and suffering can be transformed into a positive experience, if only a suitable attitude is adopted towards it. Hence the problem of pain isn't quite as bad as it would seem. However, I do not think that this partial truth does justice to the sufferings of starving children in Ethiopia or sub-Saharan Africa, for example. They are too young to comprehend such a philosophy or to draw any comfort from it. I do not think it proper to tell someone who is starving to death that their suffering is all a matter of perspective, and that they should exercise themselves in adopting a "positive attitude" to their hunger. Neither do I think that it proper to tell the starving that they are suffering as a result of "bad karma" accumulated in earlier lives. Jesus tells us explicitly to seek to alleviate suffering, not just accept it as part of reality [Mat 25:32-46].

It can be hoped that God has created "The best of all possible worlds", no matter how unconvincing this may seem. We cannot judge this, for the following reasons.

1. We don't know the alternatives open to God (apart from "this world" and "no world").
2. We can't conceive with any degree of certainty what God's objective was in creating the Cosmos. All simple answers, such as "God was lonely" are too naive to be given any credence.
3. We can't justify any measure of what "best" might be! Even if it was clear that it was the overall sum of all joy and pleasure and fun minus all sorrow and pain and misery (which it isn't!) then how such a formula be evaluated? The philosophical problems involved are immense and varied. I will restrain myself from discussing them here.

Some mistaken ideas of God

Deism

Dualism

According to the Christian tradition, evil is not a "thing in itself", a "substance" that can infect, possess or subvert other things, as vividly portrayed as a smoking coal in the film "The Time Bandits" [Terry Gillian] or as the "Illearth Stone" in the book of that name [Steven Donaldson]. Rather evil is a defect in reality, a distortion of the truth: a disordering of things that are in themselves  entirely good, simply because they are. Evil is a lie, as good is the truth. It is not true to say that good and evil are two sides of the same coin, or that each requires the other in order to exist: stand out from its background. Good is peace, harmony and wholeness: "Shalom", and has no need for conflict, discord or disease for its excellence to be manifest. On the contrary, even in the greatest evil there is necessarily a core of good. The most perverted act is a misguided attempt to obtain what is perceived to be of benefit. Evil wishes for its own good, and is (sadly) reinforced in its wickedness by its inevitable failure to achieve this desired end.

Because evil is not a substance (any more than is good, for that matter!) there is no need to hypothesize a source for it. While good isn't a substance, the Christian tradition identifies it with "being in itself": the ultimate good of any-thing is simply to exist, the purpose of Life is to Live! God, while no-thing: is Being [Ex 3:14] is Good [Mk 10:18] is Love [1Jn 4:8]. This analysis contrasts starkly with that of Buddhism, which tends to identify existence with striving, suffering and pain (so: existence is evil, not good; and God is not!) and prescribes the pursuit of passivity and non-existence (blending back into the background) as the practical answer to the Problem of Pain.

The source of order and meaning

Of course, as God is, ex hypothesis, the basis, origin and creative source of the Cosmos: it is God that determined (to within whatever freedom logic allowed) the specifics of its constitution. God inevitably decided "what was good", in the sense that God may have chosen to create one of a number of possible self consistent realities. To this extent, God rules His Cosmos by diktat. God decided which Universe to make: this one and no other (setting aside the possibility that God has made many Universes). God is answerable to no-one other than God, outside of the Act of Creation: though in that very act, God took on board a moral responsibility for and towards what God created. The fact that God made a Cosmos in which sentient beings consider that a maker has a responsibility of care towards the made [Pinnochio, the film "A.I."] tells a great deal about the character of God.

Finally, it is good simply to be. God cannot possibly vary or spin this. God is being in itself. From this point of view, God has no choice in setting up the ethics of the Cosmos. Contrary to my (inadequate!) understanding of the tenets of Buddhism, the foundational principle of ethics is the goodness of existence, and all detailed morality flows from that once the specific nature of the ethical agents and objects are known.

Urizen the Lawgiver

Some arguments for God's being

Descartes' metaphysical argument

Consider total perfection. If it did not exist it would not be totally perfect. Therefore it must exist. This is God. God Exists.

The essential flaw in this argument (which can be made much more convincing by being decorated and extended in various ways) is that it tacitly assumes that it is impossible to conceive of something that is not. As many a theoretical physicist will sorrowfully tell you, this is simply not true: hence Descartes' ingenuity was in this regard misplaced.

The argument from Design

The Five Ways of Aquinas

The teaching of the Oecumenical Council of the Vatican

A physicist's view of contingency

So, the Cosmos requires explanation: or "cause", speaking metaphysically. Why is it the Cosmos that in fact it is? Why does it have the dynamics that it has? Why is it governed by the Laws of Physics that it is governed by and not by others? Why do the fundamental constants that feature in these Laws have the values that they do have? Why does space-time happen to have the dimensionality that in fact it has? Why is the Cosmos in the particular state now that we find it to be in?

One can label the required explanation for all this "God: the UnCaused First Cause; the UnMoving First Mover; the UnGoverned Law Giver, etc. etc."

All things that are so, are equally removed from being nothing; and whatsoever hath any being is by that being a glass in which we see God, who is the root and the fountain of all being. The whole frame of nature is the theatre; the whole volume of creatures in the glass; and the light of nature, Reason, is our light. [John Donne]

What Causes God?

God is not part of the Cosmos. God does not interact with physical reality in the sense of exchanging energy and momentum. After all, this would contradict the law of energy and momentum conservation. Although God is the foundation of all that physically is, God is not physically at all! While God underwrites the Laws of Physics, God is not governed by them: God is no thing and they simply do not apply to God. It is improper to conflate God with the Cosmos as some larger whole (perhaps on the basis that God acts miraculously within the Cosmos) and then ask what is its cause?

We can have no expectations of  God: except, it would appear, that God is. Unlike all physical things, one can presume that God is noncontingent; that God is necessary being: God is what God is because God is unavoidably so. God who is no thing is so, just as nothing else is so!

Of God himself can no man think. And therefore I would leave all that thing that I can think, and choose to my love that thing that I cannot think. For why: he may well be loved, but not thought. By love may he be gotten and holden, but by thought never. And therefore, though it be good sometime to think of  the kindness and the worthiness of God in special, and although it be a light and a part of contemplation, nevertheless yet in this work it shall be cast down and covered with a cloud of forgetting. And thou shalt step above it stalwartly, but listily, with a devout and a pleasing stirring of love, and try for to pierce that darkness above thee. And smite upon that thick   cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love; and go not thence for (any)thing that befalleth.
[Anon "The Cloud of Unknowing"]

Every being that exists either exists by itself, by its own essence or nature, or it does not exist by itself. If it exists by its own essence, then it exists necessarily and eternally, and explains itself. It cannot not exist, as a triangle cannot not have three sides. If, on the other hand, a being exists but not by its own essence, then it needs a cause, a reason outside itself for its existence. Because it does not explain itself, something else must explain it. Beings whose essence does not contain the reason for their existence, beings that need causes, are called contingent, or dependent, beings. A being whose essence is to exist is called a necessary being... God would be the only necessary being - if God existed. [Peter Kreeft: "The First Cause Argument"]

Some logical alternatives

• The Cosmos as a whole is (somehow) noncontingent, even though its parts are contingent. This theory is identifiable as Pantheism. It does not explain why the Laws of Physics are what they are, and more importantly why there are any Laws of Physics at all.
• Many modern physicists pursue this possibility further, conceiving of an infinity of parallel universes each having its own arbitrary set of laws. In such a plethora of possibilities, everything is certain and nothing unlikely - let alone impossible!
• It seems to me that this way lies madness, as there is no possibility of explaining or understanding anything: everything is what it is just because it is so, in this arbitrary world in which we happen to live, which is indefinitely similar to an infinity of other worlds only destinguished from it by vanishingly small discrepancies.
• I suppose that it might just about be possible that everything has a Platonic "participation in being", and that the "larger" something is, the more fully it "participates in being": requires less external explanation. On the Microscopic scale of Quantum Mechanics, existence is fragile: hence all the problems that physicists have with "the collapse of the wave packet" and "wave-particle duality"; on the Macroscopic scale of normal human experience existence is experienced as robust but contingent; and on the Cosmic scale existence is necessary. Personally, I like this theory as a poetic sequence of pleasant words, but don't think that it could be made to mean anything!
• The fundamental presumption of Physics is wrong. In fact, there is one or more noncontingent things (rather like inverse Black Holes) within the Cosmos: sources of being (the metric itself, space-time and the Laws of Physics) which are the uncaused causes of everything else. In effect this is Polytheism. Rather than postulating one transcendent omnipotent and omniscient God, one postulates an indeterminate number of local deities. This is, it strikes me, much less tidy; restrained, economical and generally satisfactory than the Monotheistic hypothesis.
• The Cosmos is an illusion and does not really exist. All that exists is my mind. I am therefore God. This is an extreme form of the Philosophical system called "Idealism" (named in contrast to "Materialism"). Although irrefutable, the fact that it implies that I can imagine geniuses such as Bach and Einstein who are capable of work that is utterly beyond my own competence makes it implausible, in my view.

The Argument from Design revisited.

Although the specifics of carbon chemistry ..... may not be necessary for life .... a living being must contain organized complexity, or information. The minimum requirements for information content can be determined by fundamental mathematical theory, and it is clear that it requires .... a local decrease in entropy. Entropy is .... the disorder in a system, and for a closed system .... entropy always increases ..... cups fall and shatter, they do not coalesce and jump back onto their saucers. More importantly, without sustenance and breath, bodies die and decay, while corpses do not come back to life. A living being with the ability to ask the question "why am I here?" must contain an incredible amount of order to be able to frame such a deep, information filled thought, whatever kind of chemistry or physics underlies the being. So the question is, "what kinds of universe could allow such order to arise?" If the answer is "just about any" then we should not be so surprised about our universe - the right, well suited type of order would arise to fit the environment in any universe. However, if the answer is "almost none," then we do need to question why the universe is so special.

Many cosmologists are attempting to find what explanation they can within science, in preference to invoking a Creator .... the ripples left on the cosmic background radiation .... provide strong evidence for a period of .....   exponential expansion .... in the first 10-33 seconds of the universe's existence. If such an era existed, there is no reason that the universe we observe is all that condensed .... There could be a plethora of .... sub-universes, that are completely unobservable to us ..... it is not so surprising that one of a multitude of sub-universes happens to have the right conditions for life.

It is well known that all life on Earth (barring the strange sulphurous life arising around deep-sea volcanic vents) is ultimately dependent on the inflowing energy from the sun. The sun is an average star, and, like all stars, can provide the power for life, by providing vast amounts of energy (as heat and light) at very low entropy (from a small region much hotter than the rest of the universe). Hot spots, such as stars, are necessary to allow any form of organized complexity to arise. Living things must all take in low entropy (hot or organized) energy and release it at high entropy (useless waste heat) in order to increase or at least maintain their internal information. The "hot spots" which allow any living being to survive, must also be there for it to evolve, so must remain stable over a large period of time, compared to typical physical processes in the life cycle of the being. Now, in our universe there is a specific resonance in the nuclear reaction process, which enables stars to burn at all, and endure for the billions of years that have been necessary for life to develop. In a universe almost the same as ours, but perhaps with a slightly different electron mass, the resonance would not occur, stars would not shine, and the universe would be dark, dead and dull.

There is a multitude of similarly finely tuned properties of our universe .... The delicate balance between the original expansion of the universe and the gravitational attraction, which tends to pull everything back together, ensures that the explosive debris from one star can arrive in the vicinity of another star which forms separately. All life on Earth is made from atoms of debris from the first star, and relies on heat and light from the second star, namely our sun. In a gravitationally stronger universe, the first star would swallow the second, while in a .... more spread out universe, the debris would never reach another star.

A similarly untestable possibility put forth by scientific sceptics is that the universe is really infinite in time, and just bounces in and out of big crunches and big bangs. There is supposedly a new set of laws of physics each time round (though, this is rather implausible in my view, as the new mashed up fundamental laws must always lead to another bouncing universe, without being specifically tuned!).

In contradiction with any form of the MultiVerse hypothesis, it is the hope of many physicists that only one consistent set of Laws of Physics is possible. Finding this unique set together with the principle that gives rise to it would complete Einstein's programme of reducing dynamics and gravity to generalized geometry or the principle of continuity: "No Action at a Distance", known to the Ancient Greeks. It would require extending the treatment somehow to all the forces of Physics  withn the aim of   unifying General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

If, in addition, these Laws featured no arbitrary parameters, then everything would be explained (except for the fundamental question: "why is anything?") It would be astounding (though not "improbable"), if  the only possible set of laws and fundamental constants is exactly the one that gives rise to life in such a delicately balanced and baroque manner! This would mean that logic itself indirectly and obscurely necessitates life! Of course, the prologues of Genesis and John's Gospel could be taken as suggesting exactly this doctrine.

The Weak Anthropic Principle

The Strong Anthropic Principle

While scientific sceptics deny the strong anthropic principle, many theologians and religious scientists embrace it, as it points to a Creator who stimulates life and enables us to flourish. The uncovering of such a fertile universe, which is so clearly conducive to beauty, encourages process theologians, as it appears that the universe follows a very thin line between rigid order and incoherent chaos. Other religious thinkers remain wary of the whole argument, and following the "contrast" viewpoint, are loathe to incorporate any scientific evidence, which may be later reinterpreted, in their vision of God. As the "many universe" theories are not completely outside the realms of falsifiable evidence, it is perhaps right to be patient before hailing the fine-tuning as proof of God. Nevertheless, I for one do not cease to be amazed by the transcendent beauty inherent within the laws of nature. These will always speak to me of the Nature of God.

Appendix I: A critique of the Cosmological Argument

1. There are particular things and events.
2. Any event in the history of a thing happens at a certain time.
3. All events are in need of explanation.

1. Such explanations always involve a reference to general laws as well as to particular things, persons, and events. Now the general laws are themselves facts, with no trace of self evidence or necessity about them.
2. Earlier events require explanation, just as much as the event which they supposedly explain. No extension of this kind of explanation to remoter and remoter epochs can remove this defect.

1. There is a Cause which is neither a part of nature nor the Cosmos as a collective whole,
2. The existence of this extra cosmic Cause must be necessary. It is an uncaused cause.
3. This Cause brings all Cosmic events into being via a metaphysical dependence different from the physical dependence of a later state of affairs on an earlier.

1. No explanation in terms of ordinary causation is capable of giving the kind of intellectual satisfaction about natural things and persons and events which is obtainable about purely mathematical facts.
2. If the universe is such that this kind of understanding is theoretically obtainable about nature, then its structure must be very much as philosophic Theism says that it is.

• It may be divided into two parts, negative and positive.
• At the transition from the negative to the positive part, it is arguable that there is a suppressed premise.
• This suppressed premise is false.
• Therefore the argument fails.
• Moreover, the conclusion is not only unproven but is either false or meaningless.

There is at least one necessary existential proposition: the "Uncaused Cause".

All other true existential propositions then follow necessarily: "Absolute Determinism".

The Cosmos is such that mathematical intellectual satisfaction concerning events is possible.

Moreover, it seems there can be no necessary existential proposition of the kind envisaged in the first premise. Such propositions always concern the connexion (or disconnection) of other propositions. They are always conditional, taking the form: 'If P is true, then Q is true'.  It follows that the conclusion of the Cosmological Argument is not only unproven but also false.

Even if this objection be waived, an equally formidable one remains. The difficulty is as follows. Anything whose existence was a necessary consequence of its nature would be a timeless existent. Now nature is composed of things and persons and processes which begin at certain dates, last for so long, and then cease. How could a temporal fact, such as the fact that there began to be a person having the characteristics of Julius Caesar at a certain date, follow logically from facts all of which are non-temporal? The necessary consequences of facts which are necessary are themselves necessary, and the necessary consequences of facts which have no reference to any particular time can themselves have no reference to any particular time.

An Answer to this Critique.

1. It falsely portrays the Cosmological Argument as concerning mathematical certainty.
2. It thereby treats the Cosmological Argument as a disguised form of the Ontological Argument.
3. It misunderstands the role of Physical Law.
4. It confuses a cause with a proposition.
5. It confuses determinism and causality.

Nevertheless, the Cosmological Argument is more an abstraction from Physics and Epistemology, rather than a deduction within Ontology. It reflects on human experience of what it is to know, rather than working from supposed a priori truths concerning being in itself. To treat it in terms of a formal axiomatic structure is to mistake its import.

The Cosmological Argument is not about positively "completely satisfying the intellect", but rather concerns itself with highlighting the defect in all contingent being. It asserts that this deficit must be supplied: or else one admits that in once case "Why?" is not a legitimate question. It continues that this can only be done by hypothesizing some non-contingent being: Being unlike any being to be encountered within the Cosmos: being that is entirely beyond our experience and is almost entirely beyond our comprehension.

The Theist should not contend that the Act of Creation was necessary, in the sense that Dr. Broad implies that he must. Though the uncaused-cause be necessary, the Cosmos is not created of necessity. It is not necessary for the truth of the Cosmological Argument that it be so! Neither should it be maintained that every detail of the Cosmos is pre-determined by the Divine Act of creation, as Dr. Broad insinuates it must be. The prime deficit in contingent being is the contingency of the Laws of Physics, rather than that of events in themselves. It is this contingency that the hypothesis of the uncaused-cause primarily addresses.

On the one hand, it may prove possible to package-up the contingency of events altogether in the initial- and
boundary-conditions of the Big-Bang, which may in turn transpire to be inevitable: if anything is to be at all. On the other hand, it may turn out that a radical contingency characterizes all epochs of the Cosmos. Although all events are caused: in the sense that they obey the Laws of Physics and that "one thing leads to another", it may be that some, and perhaps many, event sequences converge backwards to singularities in space-time. In which case, the reason why one such sequence arises rather than another must be looked for either in its future rather than its past: and it be admitted that causality runs backwards as well as forwards in time, or outside time altogether: that is either to God or some Conscious Agent.

If God wants something from me, he would tell me.

All that God "wants from you" is your fulfilment - which will require you to be in fellowship with God.

Indeed. Moreover he couldn't "leave this to someone else". Only God knows the mind of God.
Still, God might use intermediaries, for any number of reasons; some are pretty obvious, and others might exist that are beyond our understanding.
It is impetuous and conceited to lay down the law as to what God has to do or must do.
We simply do not see things from God's perspective.

I beg to disagree. This would subvert the basic intention of God.
God's fundamental intention for us is to "educate us into being His friends" and "seduce us into being His lovers", not to "instruct or train us into being His servants".
On the other hand, I believe that for those with the right outlook (and who are at the right point on their spiritual journey) the fact of God's being is sufficiently obvious to produce such an exclamation of "eureka!"

No it doesn't. You are adding a gloss of your own and it is this gloss that allows you to make the prediction which you then - correctly - say is inconsistent with experience. However, all that you have done is falsify your own gloss; which, while being a worthwhile thing to do, is not what you are claiming to have done!

• God is not "a supremely powerful being". God is rather "Being-In-Itself". I don't think that this error affects your argument, though.
• God does not want "to set things right" as this would imply that things were not already "set right" and this would implicitly contradict the first statement.
• You later rely on this idea to implicitly justify comparing the God-Man relationship with that between a physician and their patient.
• I agree that God "doesn't want us to get things [even more] wrong."  However, this is subordinate to the fundamental intention that God has; namely to educate us into being His friends and seduce us into being His lovers. If these two intentions come into conflict, then it is the second - which is absolutely prior to the former - that prevails. The reason being that whatever mess we make of things, God can - and will - eventually put it right.
• The gloss that you are adding silently is something along the lines of 
      "What matters is the possession of information or knowledge, not the process by which that information or knowledge comes to be possessed."
  This is pretty obviously false. It is one thing to be able to parrot a set of facts because one has been told them - by an instructor. It is quite another to understand something because one has figured it out for oneself - perhaps with help and guidance from a good teacher.
• Human beings have been busy figuring out mathematics and physics - and all the other sciences and technologies that derive from them - for themselves over a thousand years or more. Even so, there is a great deal of confusion as to the fundamentals of physics, in fact - but I don't think that this error affects your argument.
• Similarly, we have been engaged in a process of philosophical and theological discovery over the same period of time. The only real difference being that - I and other believers hold - God has specifically gotten involved in this process, for exactly the kind of reasons that you have already implied, namely because God is concerned for our well-being.

• It is! What God wants is for us to discover what we can be and then to become that.
• First and foremost this requires us to be anything - that is to continue to exist.
• Second it requires us to understand what beauty and justice are; so that we can come to desire and relentlessly pursue these goods and so be fulfilled and happy.
• God has no need of any goods or benefits from us - how could He, being God? God is entirely adequate to God and lacks no good!
• All that God "wants" is our welfare. God's will for us is for us to do what is good for our welfare and to refrain from doing what is bad for our welfare. What could be easier than this to understand and fathom?
• The only problem is determining in any circumstance and context what this might be, exactly. Of course, this is a big problem - but not something that any set of rules or laws could possibly address, except as understood as guidelines that often have to be broken.

• In fact all human expertise is limited and often two experts will genuinely differ - with good cause - over the course of action to be taken in any circumstance. The contrast you are attempting to set up between technical matters and theological/ethical matters is pretty much unrealistic. However, this error doesn't affect your basic argument.
• Moreover, in theological - and especially ethical matters - the state of affairs you describe would be a bad thing!
• There is a more than sufficient tendency within a fallible Church [as a Catholic, I know this only too well!] to over-state the trustworthiness of human authorities. The effects that such over-statements have is to discourage
• human imagination, questioning and inquiry; in favour of waiting for pronouncements
• thinking for oneself[ in favour of repeating slogans
• personal moral responsibility; in favour of "holy obedience"!
• If there was some manifestly infallible oracle to consult [a supercharged papacy, if you like - God forbid!] this would result in every human being turning off their own judgement and conscience and simply obeying the decrees of that oracle.
• It was precisely in order to avoid this pathological state of affairs [which directly contradicts God's prime intention for Man] that Jesus ceased to dwell in the physical world and instead established the Church - under the guidance and protection (rather than the imperious command) of Holy Spirit. - as His more gentle means of remaining indirectly engaged in human affairs.

No. Only your gloss is false, but this fact should have been obvious from the start!

No. Our souls are "saved" precisely through our free-will. Without our autonomy we cannot become God's Friends.

This is not an excuse. Human autonomy is the foundation of all God's dealings with Man! If you want to "disprove Christianity" you must take the theory as given; otherwise you are simply setting us a "straw man" and then shooting him down - which is rather pointless!

• This is fine, as far as it goes, but that is not very far.
• No believer can reasonably claim that Christianity is anything other than a "reasonable hypothesis" or "rational account" - a theory. It is no "more confirmed by evidence" than is "Darwinian Evolutionism" or "Copenhaganist Quantum Mechanics" or "Einsteinian General Relativity"! Read some [more] Popper if you doubt this!
• Indeed (from the nature of the case), the evidence in favour of Judeo-Christianity [or Catholicism, for that matter!] is more indirect, more experiential and less experimental than that in favour of the typical physics theory; but the way that modern physics is going this is becoming less and less true. Physics and metaphysics are rapidly merging into pure mathematics - just as any good Platonist - such as myself - would hope and predict!
• In the end, all knowledge is based on faith and conviction. Even our acceptance of logic as the basis of this argument is a matter of faith. How can either of us establish that logic is valid when the very idea of validity requires the avidity of logic to have been already established!

Agreed!

• First, because human beings suffer from conceit and don't like to have their favourite (but mistaken) ideas corrected.
• Second, because different perspectives can give rise to different accounts which superficially seem to disagree while being, at a deeper level, compatible.
• "Matrix Mechanics" and "Wave Mechanics" were originally proposed as two competing (and highly antagonistic!) accounts of Quantum Mechanics. Subsequently, it was shown that they were simply two alternative and equivalent viewpoints of the same thing.

• No. As, I've already said, people are wilful. Even those of us who on one level want to understand the things of God are often frightened to give up on ideas which we honestly (but wrongly) think are good and wholesome, but which are in fact exactly the opposite.
• In the end, this doesn't matter - because what God primarily wants of us is that we try to understand and that we struggle and fight with our own ignorance and imperfections. It is the process that is important. What matters is to be of "good will" or to "hunger and thirst for justice", not to be in possession of all the right answers!
• Gods purpose is for us to be morally perfected - sanctified - through this struggle, with His help and encouragement; that is, by His grace.

• The "rational account" that agrees most closely with the evidence available to us at present is indeed "The Inflationary Big Bang Theory"; but note the "at present". Increasingly, however, evidence is turning up which this theory does not satisfactorily account for and we still aren't clear about what caused the "inflation".
• Your "by far" tends to suggest that the "degree of support" (how might one evaluate this?) implies some kind of "probability (or plausibility or reasonable expectation) that this theory will never be overturned." This pseudo-deduction is profoundly unjustifiable.

God speaks everywhere. On one level you are willing to hear His voice, that I gladly acknowledge; but on another you are not.
You want to have the answer given in your own terms - but those terms are wrong and fundamentally exclude the very answer that you seek!

• It is not always proper (consistent with justice, from which flows God's first intention in His dealings with Man) for God to do everything that God could do, just considering God's might.
• Might is not right!
• God wants to persuade and seduce us, not coerce and spiritually rape us!

That's where you are wrong. It is not good for someone to be spiritually raped - "for their own good".
As to whether - in the fullness of time - God does manage to seduce and befriend every soul, I cannot say - I am not God. I hope so, but I cannot know so. It is possible (to the best of my ignorance) that some people get themselves so messed up that they are ultimately unsalvageable.

Later, it turned out that one of the victim's children, her daughter, had survived. She had drifted pretty far from the wreck, but the rescue team pulled her out, and the woman who had beaten the crap out of her rescuer apologized and thanked her for saving her against her will. Everyone in my group agreed the rescue swimmer had done the right thing, and we all would have done the same..--..because that is what a loving, caring being does. It follows that if God is a loving being, he will do no less for us. In the real world, kind people don't act like some stubborn, pouting God who abandons the drowning simply because they don't want to be helped. They act like this rescue swimmer. They act like us.

In analogous circumstances, God will certainly act analogously; but note all the struggling involved.
However, this story only sounds good because of how it turned out. It is logically possible that the "rescuer" might have condemned the "rescuee" to a life of unmitigated loss and misery.

He has done. Read the Bible, listen to the testimony of the Church!

And you clearly sketch out exactly the problem with this vision. It is manifestly incompatible with human autonomy; which you consistently ignore and write-off as of no value; simply because - I suspect - you haven't thought through the implications of the existence of such an Infallible Divine Oracle.

And God doesn't! We have discovered all that we know of meteorology for ourselves - perhaps with some help from God, how would I know? - but certainly not with any violation of our autonomy! The situation is similar with theology and (what is of more practical importance) ethics. Theology and "religious belief" has the prime purpose of underpinning and motivating ethics - this was the amazing and innovative realization of the Hebrews,

• However, the situation we are in is not comparable to the physician-patient relationship (where it is the business of the physician to actively cure the patient who is passive in the physician's care) but rather the teacher-student relationship (which is predicated on a certain equality and on friendship), with the prospect in view of this developing into the lover-beloved relationship.
• The teacher's best tactic at all times is to ask questions and to challenge and to critique their student, not simply to drill and indoctrinate them. Even if the student demands "to be given the right answers to memorize for the exam" (as I have been!) it is entirely wrong for the true educator to do so. Indeed, the first thing that the student must learn - if they are ever to understand anything at all - is that they must not make such demands, or at least never expect them to be satisfied!
• Your problem is that you haven't twigged how high is the vocation that you have received from God. You are assuming a lower vocation (one that seems more reasonable) then discovering that this doesn't fit in with the facts and finally (unreasonably) claiming that because this theory is wrong the very idea of Christianity (which you have never actually considered) is false.

What would count as "the fundamental facts of salvation"? Have you ever tried to express what these might be. I accept that you have gone some way to having done so in this essay, and I have attempted to respond - suggesting where your vision might be extended and broadened, just as your (other) physicist friends helped you to gain some understanding of the "Big Bang Theory".
Perhaps people do agree well enough about "the fundamental facts of salvation". Perhaps this is why you and I are able to have this argument.

St Paul tells us that - in fact - this is exactly the case and Catholics believe that every soul - even that of a pagan - receives sufficient grace [help, guidance, encouragement and support] from God to be saved. Perhaps we should reverse your argument and evaluate what "the fundamental facts of salvation" are more in terms of what is in fact common knowledge rather than stating that because there isn't enough agreement the whole "God thing" is false. Perhaps some humility is called for here!

Agreed, but they are not God and are not infallible! Their answers and advice and help are not ultimately and absolutely authoritative and unquestionable - and you know that. Hence, you would subject them all to your own scrutiny and judgement - except in the case of an urgent emergency This is the huge difference!

• It is wrong to argue from what it is right and proper for a human being to do to what it is right and proper for God to do.
• God is not any-thing-like a human being! Every one of God's actions is necessarily indefinitely puissant and if not moderated and mediated forces the outcome.
• This is why God always acts through intermediaries. When God Himself came into this world, as Jesus, He chose to do so in an obscure way and to teach in parables.
• Even when He rose from the dead, He chose to reveal Himself informally and only to a select group (quite a few, actually, but still select) rather than appear in glory, stepping out of the "Holy of Holies" of the Jerusalem Temple!

God does all these things, if you look in the right places. God has been a great comfort to me in my anguish. God has shown me that I was wrong about things and guides me into better ways of thinking. God simply doesn't do these things in the way that you think that He ought to!

Indeed, it wasn't. For them to accept that what Jesus said was authentic required a step of faith - which many other contemporary people didn't make. It was not utterly obvious that Jesus was the Messiah, else why did both the religious and secular authorities reject Him? Would you have been with Peter and Paul and Thomas in their professions of faith based on evidence; or with Caiaphas and Pontius Pilot in their rejection of Jesus' credentials?

Or various aspects of it - this is in fact the precise basis of "heresy" and the cause of divergence of theological opinion among sincere Christians.

As an Infallible Divine Oracle which would then utterly erase human autonomy. Rather like the vision that the Queen of the Elves foresaw for herself; and which motivated her to refused to take the Ring of Sauron, when Frodo offered it to her.

In fact there is a considerable uniformity about fundamental ethics from one culture to another. In the end: "Be excellent to one another" pretty much sums it all up!
If we truly knew all the facts, there would be no basis for choice - unless we were to "chose" irrationally, which is no choice!
The only basis upon which any kind of free choice can be made is a certain degree of ignorance!

No! Only that your "gloss" is false: namely that it is "the possession of information or knowledge that matters, and not at all the process by which it is to be obtained."