The world shifted, catching lots of smart people off guard, churning up issues you had thought had settled forever beneath the earth’s crust. loc: 67
Now it’s all gone unforgotten, and minds that have better things to think about have to divert precious neuronal resources to figuring out how to knock some sense back into the species. loc: 73
It’s a tiresome proposition, having to take up the work of the Enlightenment all over again, but it’s happened on your watch. loc: 75
None of this is particularly good for the world, but it has been good for Cass Seltzer. That’s what he’s thinking at this moment, gazing down at the frozen river and regarding the improbable swerve his life has lately taken. loc: 78
For close to two decades, Cass Seltzer has all but owned the psychology of religion, but only because nobody else wanted it, loc: 105
The sexy psychological research was all in neural-network modeling and cognitive neuroscience. The mind is a neural computer, and the folks with the algorithms ruled. loc: 108
Time magazine, in a cover story on the so-called new atheists, had singled him out as the only one among them who seems to have any idea of what it feels like to be a believer—“to write of religious illusions from the standpoint of the regretfully disillusioned”—and had ended by dubbing him “the atheist with a soul.” loc: 115
Ambition doesn’t have to be small and self-regarding. It can be a way of glorying in existence, of sharing oneself with the world and its offerings, of stretching oneself just as wide to the full spread of its possibilities as one can go. loc: 133
His life has become strange to him. loc: 173
What has happened is that Cass Seltzer has become an intellectual celebrity. He’s become famous for his abstract ideas. And not just any old abstract ideas, but atheist abstract ideas, which makes him, according to some of the latest polls, a spokesperson for the most distrusted minority in America, the one that most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry. loc: 176
“As if,” as Cass often finds himself saying into microphones, “the only reason to live morally is fear of getting caught and being spanked by the heavenly father.” loc: 183
No wonder, then, that Cass undergoes moments when he feels he’s lost the feel of his own life, its narrative continuity, the very essence of which was insignificance and an obscure yearning in many directions. loc: 192
a matter of the rare intersection of the preoccupations of his lifetime with the turmoil of the age. loc: 222
set about writing a book that would explain how irrelevant the belief in God can be to religious experience—so irrelevant that the emotional structure of religious experiences can be transplanted to completely godless contexts with little of the impact lost—and loc: 222
included as an appendix thirty-six arguments for the existence of God, with rebuttals, his claim being that the most thorough demolition of these arguments would make little difference to the felt qualities of religious experience, loc: 225
The old-time intellectuals, who were mostly scientifically illiterate, not knowing their asses from their amygdalas, have been rendered worse than dead; they’ve been rendered irrelevant by the scientists and techno-innovators, who are the only ones now offering ideas with the power and sweep to change the culture at large. loc: 274
At moments like this, could Cass altogether withstand the sense that— hard to put it into words—the sense that the universe is personal, that there is something personal that grounds existence and order and value and purpose and meaning—and that the grandeur of that personal universe has somehow infiltrated and is expanding his own small person, bringing his littleness more into line with its grandeur, that the personal universe has been personally kind to him, gracious and forgiving, to Cass Seltzer, gratuitously, exorbitantly, divinely kind, and this despite Cass’s having, with callowness and shallowness aforethought, thrown spitballs at the whole idea of cosmic intentionality? loc: 359
Here it is, then: the sense that existence is just such a tremendous thing, one comes into it, astonishingly, here one is, formed by biology and history, genes and culture, in the midst of the contingency of the world, here one is, one doesn’t know how, one doesn’t know why, and suddenly one doesn’t know where one is either or who or what one is either, and all that one knows is that one is a part of it, a considered and conscious part of it, generated and sustained in existence in ways one can hardly comprehend, all the time conscious of it, though, of existence, the fullness of it, the reaching expanse and pulsing intricacy of it, and one wants to live in a way that at least begins to do justice to it, one wants to expand one’s reach of it as far as expansion is possible and even beyond that, to live one’s life in a way commensurate with the privilege of being a part of and conscious of the whole reeling glorious infinite sweep, loc: 370 • Delete this highlight
Note: From Rebecca Goldstein's "Thirty Six Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction." Edit
What interests me more is the phenomenology of religion in all its varieties. What does it feel like from the inside? What sorts of terrors does it address, and what sorts of emotional growth does it both block and enhance? And how does the religious response manifest itself, even in ways that may not seem religious?” loc: 750
It was the love of the impossible that made everything possible. He was battered by the beating wings of unlimited desire, but they lifted him, too. Battered, emboldened, and exalted, and all at once. loc: 775
for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; loc: 1284
Just like the lyrical narrator, he, too, had been paddling around oblivious on the surface of a sea of faith that he had presumed was infinitely benign, only to submerge his ears below the waves and hear the eternal note of sadness, like the mermaids singing each to each that Alfred Prufrock says he had heard once—no, maybe not like Prufrock’s mermaids—and to wonder, along with the poet, what’s left to believe in? and to grasp at the same answer that the poet had seized on: love and love alone. Love is the only solace. Not just any love, of course, not an easy, superficial love, but the love of the like-minded, the like-souled, the one who hears the eternal note of sadness in the same key and register as you. loc: 1311
“The central metaphor in ‘Dover Beach’ is the ocean, and the poem itself is like a bridge passing from lush Romanticism to the brave new world of Modernism, where we aren’t shaded from the hard truths of the natural world, and we have to create what meaning we can get from our relations with one another. That’s all we have, in the end. The sublime has abandoned us, and what sublimity we have remaining we have to make for ourselves, subliminally, from the material of our own self.” loc: 1326
“Scientism is the dogma of our day. It’s the sacred superstition of the smart set that savors its skepticism. It’s the product of the deification of the stolid men of science, so that the arrogance of the illiterati knows no bounds. More particularly, it’s the view that science is the final arbiter on all questions, on even the question of what are the questions. Science has wrested the questions of the deepest meaning of humanity out of the humanities and is delivering pat little answers to all our quandaries.” loc: 1595
“Suffering provides us wonderful opportunities for character-building. Yes, I’m familiar with this line of reasoning. The only people who push it are the God-apologists, who are trying to make excuses for what an insufferable world this is, even though there’s supposed to be an omnipotent, omniscient, and well-intentioned Big Boy running the show. Any suffering the apologists can’t rationalize away as a product of our having the ennobling capacity for free will, including the free will to inflict unspeakable atrocities on one another, they try to explain with this character-building song and dance. I find the song pornographic and the dance macabre. loc: 1910
I think that ‘Suffering is bad’ is as obvious as it gets. And even if people don’t think it’s so obvious in the generic case, they catch on fast enough when the suffering is theirs. loc: 1925
“I just wonder whether coming to terms with one’s own mortality isn’t a necessary part of seeing oneself with the proper objectivity. Understanding that you have your time here on Earth, as the others that came before you had theirs, and as those who will come after will have theirs. You weren’t for ages and ages, you are now, and soon enough you won’t be anymore. There’s nothing special about you just because you happen to be you. There’s nothing special about your time just because it happens to be your time.” loc: 1943
Genius itself is diseased and self-destructive, antisocial and ill-mannered. It’s also the only thing that redeems us. loc: 2020
In the metaphor of the Great Chain of Being, man is assigned a place between the angels and the animals, but that isn’t exactly right. Between man and the angels there’s another ontological stratum, vanishingly slim and eternally endangered, occupied by the men and the women of genius. loc: 2021
The need to acquire a self had been a sustained theme in the thought of Jonas Elijah Klapper, surviving every paradox shift. All of Klapper’s students understood that education is a desperate business, psychopoiesis, the making of the soul of which they would have been otherwise bereft. loc: 2083
the famous words from Götzen-Dämmerung, or Twilight of the Idols: “Our true experiences are not at all garrulous. They could not communicate themselves even if they tried. Whatever we have words for, that is already dead in our hearts. In all talk there is a grain of contempt.” loc: 2165
the longing for spiritual purity, its source in the primitive emotion of disgust. loc: 2478
Other people can potentially harm us and so are perceived as potential defilers, and their practices or values are viewed as contaminated. And they—sometimes judged as individuals, and sometimes in swarming aggregate—can become elicitors of disgust. This went hand in hand with the evolution of the sense of our selves as immaterial souls distinct from our bodies—a purer self avoiding contamination by ever-more metaphorical defilers. So disgust is also triggered by upsetting reminders of our own embodiment—for example, contact with the decay of death, or with deviating sexual practices (so often described as animalistic), or with violations of the envelope of our bodies. loc: 2484
“Instead of thinking the thought, just let it be thought,” which he thought sounded pretty close to what was usually going on in his head, and it certainly had never led to any nirvana, and in all likelihood it wasn’t going to help him now. loc: 3732
The Valdener Sage had the capacity to speak the liminal words that transported the Self through the narrow threshold within the Self to enter into the hushed precinct where the Sublime sat on its throne of glory, an ecstatic knowledge that transformed the Self even as it revealed the Self, for it awoke within the Self the knowledge of what is immortal in the Self, not in the sense of duration, definable by time, but, rather, the Self that dwells, like the Place—or Ha-Makom, one of the monikers for YHVH— outside of time, the Self that cannot die because it was never born, begotten by no seed of man. loc: 4378
“But the thing about reason is that, if you’re truly consistent, which is the first rule of reason, then you will be able to prove that reason has its own strict limitations. The claim that everything must be legitimated through reason is self-refuting. How, after all, can you legitimate that claim? Through reason? That would be viciously circular. In other words, we have to accept reason on faith. We have to accept logic on faith. loc: 5764 • Delete this highlight
Note: Felix Fidley's first proof of God in the debate? Edit
“Now, I’m not going to argue tonight—at least, not right now—that any of the recent and most sophisticated of scientific discoveries, coming from the best physicists and cosmologists of our day, are showing that the deeper we go into the mysteries of the physical universe the closer to religion we get. The line away from religion reversed itself in the twentieth century, right around the time that the biggest breakthroughs in physics and cosmology were happening. loc: 5789
But when we find out that some particular law of nature isn’t quite right, we don’t give up on the lawfulness of nature. We never give up on that. We just give up on our old formulation of the laws of nature, and start searching for a new formulation that can accommodate the new evidence. And so we can ask—this is what David Hume in effect did ask—what would make us give up on the lawfulness of nature? Is there any kind of empirical evidence that would make us give up on that belief—not just give up on our belief that this or that is a law of nature, but on the whole belief that nature is lawful? Of course not. Anytime we get some counterevidence against a law, we go off searching for the right law. loc: 5800
If we were really going to ask for evidence for nature’s lawfulness, we wouldn’t be able to offer up any evidence without already presuming nature’s lawfulness. That’s what Hume showed.” loc: 5809
If I doubt that nature is lawful, then I will never use the past as a guide to the future. Just because light has always traveled at 186,272 miles per second up until today, that would give me no reason to believe that it will do so tomorrow. “The moral: there are faiths that are unavoidable if coherent lives are to be lived. That’s presumably why Cass Seltzer has faith in logic and in science. loc: 5828
“Are there other faiths that are like this, that are comparable to the faith in science and reason? Well, what about the faith that your own individual life has a purpose? What about the faith that human life in general has meaning, that it matters to the universe that we are here and that we survive and flourish? What about the faith in the dignity of human life, your own and others’? How is it possible to live coherently, leading lives that are worthy of us, without faith in a transcendent purpose loc: 5835
“But how can an individual life acquire this seriousness? What can confer it? It requires something outside an individual’s life to make it matter, and that something must itself have agency and purpose. It must have intentionality, which means it must have a mind. And that is exactly what God is. The mind of God is the purposeful agency that confers purposefulness on each of us, loc: 5856
If God makes any difference to the world—and what would be the point of believing in any God that didn’t make a difference to the world?—then we should be able to see indications of his existence when we observe the world we find ourselves in. And the fact is that this world does not present itself as being one in which there exists a powerful creator who cares about us. loc: 5896 • Delete this highlight
Note: Cass's first point to Fidley Edit
theodicy: the attempt to reconcile the existence of God with the facts about our world that seem to suggest his absence. loc: 5900
Believers look for ways of accommodating God’s existence with the searing facts of suffering, but they have to work hard at it, and the hard theodical work they need to do is what I mean by the world’s offering empirical evidence against God’s existence. loc: 5903
If we are truly to be moral agents rather than robots, then we must have the freedom to choose between good and evil. And, given that freedom, the possibility of evil must be there; and, given that possibility, sometimes it will be realized, and when it is realized, suffering will ensue. loc: 5907
“But the requirements of free will can only account for a small part of the suffering we see. loc: 5909
But to speak of the inscrutable ways of God is to acknowledge that the moral complexion of our world doesn’t favor the existence of a benevolent deity, which is the very point that I’m making. loc: 5937
Just because no argument manages to establish God’s existence doesn’t show he doesn’t exist. Both beliefs depend on faith alone. But to this I respond that there is so much about our world—in particular, its moral complexion—that makes it appear to be unruled by a beneficent being, there is so much that we either have to callously ignore or else lay at the feet of God’s inscrutability, that in the absence of any argument for God’s existence so compelling as to overcome these facts of suffering—and I haven’t heard one tonight—the reasonable conclusion is that God does not exist.” loc: 5942
“But grounding morality in God doesn’t work at all. After all, you have to ask the question whether God has any reason for his moral adjudication. Does God have some reason for endorsing a system that enshrines a moral principle loc: 6041
Professor Fidley asked me how we humans can adjudicate between moral systems if we don’t have recourse to God’s adjudication. Now I’m asking the same question about how God adjudicates. Either God has a reason for his moral decisions or he doesn’t. loc: 6044
“Let’s say he does. Well, then, there are reasons independent of his will, and whatever those reasons are provides the justification for what makes those moral decisions the right ones. loc: 6046
Without any moral reasons independent of God, God’s adjudication becomes the whim of an entirely arbitrary authority, and it doesn’t clear up the mystery of morality in the least. Without an independent concept of morality, how can we even say that God is good and that therefore his adjudication is relevant to our moral decisions? loc: 6058
Either God has his reasons and those are the reasons and reference to God is unnecessary, or God has no reasons and then morality consists of the arbitrary diktats of a God who we can’t even say is good. loc: 6062
Of course, we don’t live our life from the perspective of the View from Nowhere. We live inside our lives, where it’s impossible not to feel one’s self to matter. But, still, that View from Nowhere is always available to us, reminding us that there’s nothing inherently special or uniquely deserving about any of us, that it’s just an accident that one happens to be who one happens to be. And the consequence of these reflections is this: if we can’t live coherently without believing ourselves to matter, then we can’t live coherently without extending that same mattering to everyone else. loc: 6158
“The work of ethics is the work of getting one’s self to this vantage point and keeping it relevant to how one sees the world and acts. There are truths to discover in that process, and they’re the truths that make us change our behavior. loc: 6163
“Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the Yes function in man. It brings its votary from the chill periphery of things to the radiant core. It makes him for the moment one with truth.” loc: 6185
He feels as if he hardly has a need to breathe, as if he’s holding his breath as the Yes function is pumping, and that for as long as he can sustain this breathless Yes he is in perfect harmony with the world, no matter the wildness and pang of life. All the irreconcilabilities are melded sweetly together, the pulling-apartness that shreds the human heart is stilled in the yesness that’s resounding, and all manner of things shall be well. loc: 6188
the text is written not out there but in here, in the emotions that are so fundamental that we spread them onto a world of our imagining, or onto a world of our making, so that we end up beholding a world that is lavished with our own disgust at the uncleanliness that pollutes us, and with our yearning for a mythical purity that remains untouched, and with our vertiginous bafflement at the self that is inviolably me and here and now, and with our desperate and incomplete sense of the inviolable selves of the others that we need so crucially, and with our fear of all that’s unknown out there and that can hurt us, and with our suspicion that almost everything out there will turn out to be unknown and able to hurt us. loc: 6420
and then what happens? This is what happens, Cass answers him. All of this. The rituals of purification; and the laws of separation, with menner on one seit and froyen on the other. The communities that define themselves in distinction from others, and the hatred in those others who can burn them alive. The young people clashing over sensuality and piety, and the dreams of our bodies or our souls outwitting death. The longings for redemption and for redeemers, and our imbuing others with the perfection that escapes us. The elected circle of disciples, and the ordeals that try their faith, and the sinner born again as a Hasid, a pious man. The signs and the portents of the coming of the Messiah, and the descent into madness of the false messiahs. The forces of our soul that press us outward and dissolve the boundaries of the self and burst us open onto the world, so that all of existence feels the way New Walden feels to a Valdener, an intimate world that will embrace us in coherence and connection and purpose and love, and whose caring is no more open to doubt than is the Valdener Rebbe’s love for his own Valdeners. loc: 6428
extraordinary. Still, if to be human is to inhabit our contradictions, then who is more human than this young man? If to be human is to be unable to find a way of reconciling the necessary and the impossible, then who is more human than Rav Azarya Sheiner? And if the prodigious genius of Azarya Sheiner has never found the solution, then perhaps that is proof that no solution exists, that the most gifted among us is feeble in mind against the brutality of incomprehensibility that assaults us from all sides. And so we try, as best we can, to do justice to the tremendousness of our improbable existence. And so we live, as best we can, for ourselves, or who will live for us? And we live, as best we can, for others, otherwise what are we? loc: 6603 • Delete this highlight
Note: Just finished 36 Arguments. Good read. Edit
1. The Cosmological Argument loc: 6643
The Cosmological Argument Everything that exists must have a cause. The universe must have a cause (from 1). Nothing can be the cause of itself. The universe cannot be the cause of itself (from 3). Something outside the universe must have caused the universe (from 2 and 4). God is the only thing that is outside of the universe. God caused the universe (from 5 and 6). God exists. loc: 6643
Everything that exists must have a cause. The universe must have a cause (from 1). Nothing can be the cause of itself. The universe cannot be the cause of itself (from 3). Something outside the universe must have caused the universe (from 2 and 4). God is the only thing that is outside of the universe. God caused the universe loc: 6644
FLAW I CAN BE CRUDELY PUT: Who caused God? loc: 6650
prime example of the Fallacy of Passing the Buck: invoking God to solve some problem, but then leaving unanswered that very same problem about God himself. loc: 6651
The proponent of The Cosmological Argument must admit a contradiction to either his first premise—and say that, though God exists, he doesn’t have a cause—or else a contradiction to his third premise—and say that God is self-caused. loc: 6652
the theist is saying that his premises have at least one exception, but is not explaining why God must be the unique exception, otherwise than asserting his unique mystery (the Fallacy of Using One Mystery to Explain Another). Once you admit of exceptions, you can ask why the universe itself, which is also unique, can’t be the exception. The universe itself can either exist without a cause, or else can be self-caused. Since the buck has to stop somewhere, why not with the universe? loc: 6654
Once you admit of exceptions, you can ask why the universe itself, which is also unique, can’t be the exception. The universe itself can either exist without a cause, or else can be self-caused. loc: 6656
FLAW 2: The notion of “cause” is by no means clear, but our best definition is a relation that holds between events that are connected by physical laws. loc: 6658
To apply this concept to the universe itself is to misuse the concept of cause, extending it into a realm in which we have no idea how to use it. loc: 6660
The Cosmological Argument, like The Argument from the Big Bang and The Argument from the Intelligibility of the Universe, is an expression of our cosmic befuddlement at the question, why is there something rather than nothing? loc: 6662
2. The Ontological Argument loc: 6665
The Ontological Argument Nothing greater than God can be conceived (this is stipulated as part of the definition of “God”). It is greater to exist than not to exist. If we conceive of God as not existing, then we can conceive of something greater than God (from 2). To conceive of God as not existing is not to conceive of God (from 1 and 3). It is inconceivable that God not exist (from 4). God exists. loc: 6666
Nothing greater than God can be conceived (this is stipulated as part of the definition of “God”). It is greater to exist than not to exist. If we conceive of God as not existing, then we can conceive of something greater than God (from 2). To conceive of God as not existing is not to conceive of God (from 1 and 3). It is inconceivable that God not exist loc: 6666
The very concept of God, when defined correctly, entails that there is something that satisfies that concept. loc: 6675
FLAW: It was Immanuel Kant who pinpointed the fallacy in The Ontological Argument—it is to treat “existence” as a property, loc: 6677
The Ontological Argument relies on a bit of wordplay, assuming that “existence” is just another property, but logically it is completely different. loc: 6679
If you really could treat “existence” as just part of the definition of the concept of God, then you could just as easily build it into the definition of any other concept. loc: 6680
3. The Argument from Design A. The Classical Teleological Argument Whenever there are things that cohere only because of a purpose or function (for example, all the complicated parts of a watch that allow it to keep time), we know that they had a designer who designed them with the function in mind; they are too improbable to have arisen by random physical processes. loc: 6686
FLAW: loc: 6698
Since no copying process is perfect, errors will eventually crop up, and any error that causes a replicator to reproduce more efficiently than its competitors will result in the predominance of that line of replicators in the population. After many generations, the dominant replicators will appear to have been designed for effective replication, whereas all they have done is accumulate the copying errors, which in the past did lead to effective replication. loc: 6701
Argument from Ignorance: There are things that we cannot explain yet. Those things must be attributed to God. loc: 6729
the mathematician John von Neumann proved in the 1950s that it is theoretically possible for a simple physical system to make exact copies of itself from surrounding materials. Since then, biologists and chemists have identified a number of naturally occurring molecules and crystals that can replicate in ways that could lead to natural selection (in particular, that allow random variations to be preserved in the copies). loc: 6769
4. The Argument from the Big Bang The Big Bang, according to the best scientific opinion of our day, was the beginning of the physical universe, including not only matter and energy, but space and time and the laws of physics. The universe came to be ex nihilo (from 1). Something outside the universe, including outside its physical laws, must have brought the universe into existence (from 2). loc: 6776
FLAW loc: 6786
Cosmologists themselves do not all agree that the Big Bang is a “singularity”—the sudden appearance of space, time, and physical laws from inexplicable nothingness. The Big Bang may represent the lawful emergence of a new universe from a previously existing one. loc: 6786
5. The Argument from the Fine-Tuning of Physical Constants loc: 6792
There are a vast number of physically possible universes. A universe that would be hospitable to the appearance of life must conform to some very strict conditions. Everything from the mass ratios of atomic particles and the number of dimensions of space to the cosmological parameters that rule the expansion of the universe must be just right for stable galaxies, solar systems, planets, and complex life to evolve. The percentage of possible universes that would support life is infinitesimally small loc: 6793
any explanation of the universe must account for the fact that we humans (or any complex organism that could observe its condition) exist in it. loc: 6804
The first premise may be false. Many physicists and cosmolo-gists, following Einstein, hope for a unified “theory of everything,” which would deduce from as-yet unknown physical laws that the physical constants of our universe had to be what they are. loc: 6807
6. The Argument from the Beauty of Physical Laws Scientists use aesthetic principles (simplicity, symmetry, elegance) to discover the laws of nature. Scientists could only use aesthetic principles successfully if the laws of nature were intrinsically and objectively beautiful. The laws of nature are intrinsically and objectively beautiful (from 1 and 2). Only a mindful being with an appreciation of beauty could have designed the laws of nature. loc: 6818
We would find the laws of nature of any lawful universe beautiful. So what this argument boils down to is the observation that we live in a lawful universe. And of course any universe that could support the likes of us would have to be lawful. loc: 6829
7. The Argument from Cosmic Coincidences loc: 6836
The universe contains many uncanny coincidences, loc: 6837
Coincidences are, by definition, overwhelmingly improbable. The overwhelmingly improbable defies all statistical explanation. These coincidences are such as to enhance our awed appreciation for the beauty of the natural world. These coincidences must have been designed in order to enhance our awed appreciation of the beauty of the natural world loc: 6840
When you consider how many coincidences are possible, the fact that we observe any one coincidence (which we notice after the fact) is not improbable but likely. loc: 6853
improbable coincidences that cause havoc and suffering, rather than awe and wonder, in humans: loc: 6854
an example of the Projection Fallacy, in which we project the workings of our mind onto the world, and assume that our own subjective reaction is the result of some cosmic plan to cause that reaction. loc: 6856
8. The Argument from Personal Coincidences loc: 6867
uncanny coincidences, inexplicable by the laws of probability, reveal a significance to our lives. loc: 6872
Confirmation Bias. When they have a hypothesis (such as that day- dreams predict the future), they vividly notice all the instances that confirm it (the times when they think of a friend and he calls), and forget all the instances that don’t loc: 6879
As David Hume pointed out, the self has an inclination to “spread itself on the world,” projecting onto objective reality the psychological assumptions and attitudes that are too constant to be noticed, loc: 6885
9. The Argument from Answered Prayers loc: 6888
There is nothing that is less probable than a miracle, since it constitutes a violation of a law of nature (see The Argument from Miracles). Therefore, it is more reasonable to conclude that the conjunction of the prayer and the recovery is a coincidence than that it is a miracle. loc: 6898
It asks us to believe in a compassionate God who would be moved to pity by the desperate pleas of some among us—but not by the equally desperate pleas of others among us. loc: 6906
10. The Argument from a Wonderful Life loc: 6914
Psychologists have shown that events in our conscious lives—from linguistic intuitions of which sentences sound grammatical, to moral intuitions of what would be the right thing to do in a moral dilemma—are the end products of complicated mental manipulations of which we are unaware. loc: 6923
11. The Argument from Miracles loc: 6929
Miracles can be explained only by a force that has the power of suspending the laws of nature loc: 6930
David Hume in An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, chapter 10, “On Miracles.” loc: 6943
Since, in order to believe that a miracle has occurred, we must believe a law of nature has been violated (something for which we otherwise have the maximum of empirical evidence), and we can only believe it on the basis of the truthfulness of human testimony (which we already know is often inaccurate), then even if we knew nothing else about the event, and had no particular reason to distrust the witness, we would have to conclude that it is more likely that the miracle has not occurred, loc: 6945
12. The Argument from the Hard Problem of Consciousness loc: 6953
The Hard Problem of Consciousness consists in our difficulty in explaining why it subjectively feels like something to be a functioning brain. loc: 6954
Science often shows that properties can be emergent: they arise from complex interactions of simpler elements, even if they cannot be found in any of the elements themselves. loc: 6973
It has become clear that every measurable manifestation of consciousness, like our ability to describe what we feel, or let our feelings guide our behavior (the “Easy Problem” of consciousness), has been, or will be, explained in terms of neural activity (that is, every thought, feeling, and intention has a neural correlate). Only the existence of consciousness itself (the “Hard Problem”) remains mysterious. loc: 6982
Just as our brains do not allow us to visualize four-dimensional objects, perhaps our brains do not allow us to understand how subjective experience arises from complex neural activity. loc: 6987
13. The Argument from the Improbable Self loc: 6992
I can step outside myself and view my own contingent particularity with astonishment. This astonishment reveals that there must be something that accounts for why, of all the particular things that I could have been, I am just this—namely, me (from 1 and 2). Nothing within the world can account for why I am just this, since the laws of the world are generic: they can explain why certain kinds of things come to be, even (let’s assume) why human beings with conscious brains come to be. But nothing in the world can explain why one of those human beings should be me. loc: 6995
But there may be no reason; it just happened. By the time you ask this question, you already are existing in a world in which you were born. loc: 7009
14. The Argument from Survival After Death loc: 7014
miraculous resurrections after total brain death, and accurate reports of conversations and events that took place while the brain was not functioning, have never been scientifically documented, and are informal, secondhand examples of testimony of miracles. loc: 7026
15. The Argument from the Inconceivability of Personal Annihilation loc: 7029
confuses psychological inconceivability with logical inconceivability. The sense in which I can’t conceive of my own annihilation is like the sense in which I can’t conceive that those whom I love may betray me—a failure of the imagination, not an impossible state of affairs. loc: 7039
Though logically unsound, this is among the most powerful psychological impulses to believe in a soul, and an afterlife, and God. It genuinely is difficult—not to speak of disheartening—to conceive of oneself not existing! loc: 7044
16. The Argument from Moral Truth loc: 7045
objective moral truths are not grounded in the way the world is but, rather, in the way the world ought to be. loc: 7048
The world itself—the way it is, the laws of science that explain why it is that way—cannot account for the way the world ought to be. loc: 7051
why did God choose the moral rules he did? loc: 7056
Either he had a good reason or he didn’t. If he did, then his reasons, whatever they are, can provide the grounding for moral truths for us, and God himself is redundant. loc: 7057
if he didn’t have a good reason, then his choices are arbitrary—he loc: 7059
the God from which people draw their morality (for example, the God of the Bible and the Koran) did not establish what we now recognize to be morality at all. loc: 7064
17. The Argument from Altruism loc: 7073
Natural selection can never favor true altruism, because genes for selfishness will always out-compete genes for altruism loc: 7076
Both parties are better off, in the long run, from the exchange of favors. loc: 7085
Also, in a species with language— namely, humans—committed altruists develop a reputation for being altruistic, and thereby win more friends, allies, and trading partners. This can give rise to selection for true, committed, altruism, not just the tit-for-tat exchange of favors. loc: 7090
18. The Argument from Free Will loc: 7100
To be a moral agent means to be held morally responsible for what one does. If we can’t be held morally responsible for anything we do, then the very idea of morality is meaningless. Morality is not meaningless. We have free will loc: 7106
19. The Argument from Personal Purpose loc: 7128
If there is no purpose to a person’s life, then that person’s life is pointless. Human life cannot be pointless. Each human life has a purpose loc: 7129
The first premise rests on a confusion between the purpose of an action and the purpose of a life. loc: 7139
Premise 2 states that human life cannot be pointless. But of course it could be pointless in the sense meant by this argument: lacking a purpose in the grand scheme of things. It could very well be that there is no grand scheme of things because there is no Grand Schemer. loc: 7148
20. The Argument from the Intolerability of Insignificance loc: 7155
In a million years, nothing that happens now will matter. By the same token, anything that happens at any point in time will not matter from the point of view of a time a million years distant from it in the future. loc: 7156
It is intolerable (or inconceivable, or unacceptable) that in a million years nothing that happens now will matter. loc: 7160
Premise 4 is illicit: it is of the form “This argument must be correct because it is intolerable that this argument is not correct.” The argument is either circular, or an example of the Fallacy of Wishful Thinking. loc: 7165
21. The Argument from the Consensus of Humanity loc: 7170
Every culture in every epoch has had theistic beliefs. When peoples, widely separated by both space and time, hold similar beliefs, the best explanation is that those beliefs are true. loc: 7171
Premise 2 is false. Widely separated people could very well come up with the same false beliefs. Human nature is universal, and thus prone to universal illusions and shortcomings of perception, memory, reasoning, and objectivity. loc: 7176
22. The Argument from the Consensus of Mystics loc: 7182
Mystics go into a special state in which they seem to see aspects of reality that elude everyday experience. We cannot evaluate the truth of their experiences from the viewpoint of everyday experience (from 1). There is a unanimity among mystics as to what they experience. loc: 7183
The universal human nature that refuted The Argument from the Consensus of Humanity entails that the human brain can be stimulated in unusual ways that give rise to widespread (but not objectively correct) experiences. loc: 7194
The struggle to put the ineffable contents of abnormal experiences into language inclines the struggler toward pre-existing religious language, which is the only language that most of us have been exposed to that overlaps with the unusual content of an altered state of consciousness. loc: 7203
23. The Argument from Holy Books loc: 7205
There are holy books that reveal the word of God. The word of God is necessarily true. The word of God reveals the existence of God. loc: 7206
The first three premises cannot be maintained unless one independently knows the very conclusion to be proved—namely, that God exists. loc: 7210
24. The Argument from Perfect Justice loc: 7219
It violates our sense of justice that imperfect justice may prevail. There must be a transcendent realm in which perfect justice prevails loc: 7222
Fallacy of Wishful Thinking. loc: 7227
25. The Argument from Suffering loc: 7229
There is much suffering in this world. Suffering must have some purpose, or existence would be intolerable. loc: 7230
There are virtues—forbearance, courage, compassion, and so on— that can only develop in the presence of suffering. We may call them “the virtues of suffering.” Some suffering has the purpose of inducing the virtues of suffering loc: 7235
FLAW: This argument is a sorrowful one, since it highlights the most intolerable feature of our world, the excess of suffering. The suffering in this world is excessive in both its intensity and its prevalence, often undergone by those who can never gain anything from it. This is a powerful argument against the existence of a compassionate and powerful deity. loc: 7246
26. The Argument from the Survival of the Jews loc: 7250
The Jews introduced the world to the idea of the one God, with his universal moral code. The survival of the Jews, living for millennia without a country of their own, and facing a multitude of enemies that sought to destroy not only their religion but all remnants of the race, is a historical unlikelihood. loc: 7251
The best explanation is that they have some transcendent purpose to play in human destiny loc: 7256
FLAW: The fact that Jews, after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, had no country of their own, made it more likely, rather than less likely, that they would survive as a people. loc: 7259
Moreover, the Jews encouraged cultural traits—such as literacy, urban living, specialization in middleman occupations, and an extensive legal code to govern their internal affairs—that gave them further resilience loc: 7263
27. The Argument from the Upward Curve of History loc: 7269
There is an upward moral curve to human history loc: 7270
Left to their own devices, a selfish and aggressive species could not have ascended up a moral curve over the course of history loc: 7273
FLAW: Though our species has inherited traits of selfishness and aggression, we have inherited capacities for empathy, reasoning, and learning from experience as well. We have also developed language, and with it a means to pass on the lessons we have learned from history. And so humankind has slowly reasoned its way toward a broader and more sophisticated understanding of morality, loc: 7276
28. The Argument from Prodigious Genius loc: 7280
Genius is the highest level of creative capacity, the level that, by definition, defies explanation. Genius does not happen by way of natural psychological processes (from 1). The cause of genius must lie outside of natural psychological loc: 7281
FLAW 1: The psychological traits that go into human accomplishment, such as intelligence and perseverance, are heritable. By the laws of probability, rare individuals will inherit a concentrated dose of those genes. Given a nurturing cultural context, these individuals will, some of the time, exercise their powers to accomplish great feats. loc: 7290
29. The Argument from Human Knowledge of Infinity loc: 7297
We could not have derived this knowledge of the infinite from the finite, from anything that we are and come in contact with (from 1). Only something itself infinite could have implanted knowledge of the infinite in us loc: 7300
FLAW: There are certain computational procedures governed by what logicians call recursive rules. A recursive rule is one that refers to itself, and hence it can be applied to its own output ad infinitum. loc: 7306
30. The Argument from Mathematical Reality loc: 7316
Mathematical truths are necessarily true loc: 7317
The truths that describe our physical world are empirical, requiring observational evidence. Truths that require empirical evidence are not necessary truths. loc: 7318
Only something which itself exists on a different plane of existence from the physical can explain mathematical truths loc: 7324
FLAW 1: Premise 5 presumes that something outside of mathematical reality must explain the existence of mathematical reality, but this presumption is non-obvious. Lurking within Premise 5 is the hidden premise: mathematics must be explained by reference to non-mathematical truths. loc: 7334
Many people have trouble conceiving of where mathematical truths live, or exactly what they pertain to. But invoking God does not dispel this puzzlement; it is an instance of the Fallacy of Using One Mystery to Explain Another. loc: 7340
31. The Argument from Decision Theory (Pascal’s Wager) loc: 7341
You have much more to gain by believing in God than by not believing in him, and much more to lose by not believing in God than by believing in him loc: 7349
This unusual argument does not justify the conclusion that “God exists.” Rather, it argues that it is rational to believe that God exists, given that we don’t know whether he exists. loc: 7353
the kind of “belief” that Pascal’s Wager advises—a purely pragmatic strategy, chosen because the expected benefits exceed the expected costs—would not be enough. Indeed, it’s not even clear that this option is coherent: if one chooses to believe something because of the consequences of holding that belief, rather than being genuinely convinced of it, is it really a belief, or just an empty vow? loc: 7358
Pascal’s Wager offers no guidance as to which prayers, which services, which creed to live by. loc: 7363
FLAW 2: Pascal’s Wager assumes a petty, egotistical, and vindictive God who punishes anyone who does not believe in him. But the great monotheistic religions all declare that “mercy” is one of God’s essential traits. A merciful God would surely have some understanding of why a person may not believe in him (if the evidence for God were obvious, the fancy reasoning of Pascal’s Wager would not be necessary), and so would extend compassion to a non-believer. loc: 7370
32. The Argument from Pragmatism (William James’s Leap of Faith) loc: 7385
The consequences for the believer’s life of believing should be considered as part of the evidence for the truth of the belief loc: 7387
If one tries to decide whether or not to believe in God based on the evidence available, one will never get the chance to evaluate the pragmatic evidence for the beneficial consequences of believing in God (from 2 and 3). One ought to make “the leap of faith” (the term is James’s) and believe in God, and only then evaluate the evidence loc: 7392
FLAW 1: What exactly does effecting “a change for the better in the believer’s life” mean? loc: 7402
FLAW 2: The Argument from Pragmatism implies an extreme relativism regarding the truth, because the effects of belief differ for different believers. loc: 7408
FLAW 3: Why should we only consider the pragmatic effects on the believer’s life? What about the effects on everyone else? The history of religious intolerance, such as inquisitions, fatwas, and suicide bombers, suggests that the effects on one person’s life of another person’s believing in God can be pretty grim. loc: 7413
33. The Argument from the Unreasonableness of Reason loc: 7421
Our belief in reason cannot be justified by reason, since that would be circular. Our belief in reason must be accepted on faith (from 1). Every time we exercise reason, we are exercising faith loc: 7422
We are justified in using faith for any belief that is so important to our lives that not believing it would render us incoherent (from 4). We cannot avoid faith in God if we are to live coherent moral and purposeful lives. loc: 7426
FLAW 1: This argument tries to generalize the inability of reason to justify itself to an abdication of reason when it comes to justifying God’s existence. But the inability of reason to justify reason is a unique case in epistemology, not an illustration of a flaw of reason that can be generalized to some other kind of belief—and certainly not a belief in the existence of some entity with specific properties such as creating the world or defining morality. loc: 7435
FLAW 2: If one really took the unreasonability of reason as a license to believe things on faith, then which things should one believe in? loc: 7441
34. The Argument from Sublimity loc: 7449
There are experiences that are windows into the wholeness of existence—its grandeur, beauty, symmetry, harmony, unity, even its goodness. We glimpse a benign transcendence in these moments. loc: 7450
FLAW: An experience of sublimity is an aesthetic experience. loc: 7454
aesthetic experiences are still responses of the brain, as we see from the fact that ingesting recreational drugs can bring on even more intense experiences of transcendence. And the particular triggers for natural aesthetic experiences are readily explicable from the evolutionary pressures that have shaped the perceptual systems of human beings. loc: 7457
35. The Argument from the Intelligibility of the Universe (Spinoza’s God) loc: 7464
All facts must have explanations. The fact that there is a universe at all—and that it is this universe, with just these laws of nature—has an explanation (from 1). There must, in principle, be a Theory of Everything that explains why just this universe, with these laws of nature, exists. loc: 7466
If the Theory of Everything explains everything, it explains why it is the Theory of Everything. The only way that the Theory of Everything could explain why it is the Theory of Everything is if it is itself necessarily true (i.e., true in all possible worlds). The Theory of Everything is necessarily true (from 4 and 5). The universe, understood in terms of the Theory of Everything, exists necessarily and explains itself (from 6). That which exists necessarily and explains itself is God (a definition of “God”). The universe is God loc: 7471
one ends up with the universe and nothing but the universe, which itself provides all the answers to all the questions one can pose about it. loc: 7481
The argument has only one substantive premise, its first one, which, though unprovable, is not unreasonable; it is, in fact, the claim that the universe itself is thoroughly reasonable. Though this first premise can’t be proved, it is the guiding faith of many physicists loc: 7486
It is the claim that everything must have an explanation; loc: 7489
FLAW: The first premise cannot be proved. loc: 7491
Maybe some things just are (“stuff happens”), including the fundamental laws of nature. Philosophers sometimes call this just-is-ness “contingency,” and if the fundamental laws of nature are contingent, then, even if everything that happens in the world is explainable by those laws, the laws themselves couldn’t be explained. loc: 7493
COMMENT: Spinoza’s argument, if sound, invalidates all the other arguments, the ones that try to establish the existence of a more traditional God—that is, a God who stands distinct from the world described by the laws of nature, as well as distinct from the world of human meaning, purpose, and morality. Spinoza’s argument claims that any transcendent God, standing outside of that for which he is invoked as explanation, is invalidated by the first powerful premise, that all things are part of the same explanatory fabric. loc: 7499
36. The Argument from the Abundance of Arguments loc: 7505
The more arguments there are for a proposition, the more confidence we should have in it, loc: 7506
There is not just one argument for the existence of God, but many— thirty-five (with additional variations) so far, in this list alone. loc: 7508
For God not to exist, every one of the arguments for his existence must be false, which is extremely unlikely loc: 7513
COMMENT: The Argument from the Abundance of Arguments may be the most psychologically important of the thirty-six. Few people rest their belief in God on a single, decisive logical argument. Instead, people are swept away by the sheer number of reasons that make God’s existence seem plausible—holding out an explanation as to why the universe went to the bother of existing, and why it is this particular universe, with its sublime improbabilities, including us humans; and, even more particularly, explaining the existence of each one of us who know ourselves as unique conscious individuals, who make free and moral choices that grant meaning and purpose to our lives; loc: 7524