How We Believe, 2nd Ed.

by Michael Shermer

  Much is made of the fact that the universe is grandly complex, intricate, and apparently delicately balanced for carbon-based life forms such as ourselves. It is here where science and religion meet, say believers who wish to graft the findings of science onto 4,000-year-old religious doctrines. And they have no difficulty in finding observations from leading scientists that seemingly support their contention that the universe does not just look designed, it is designed. “It is not only man that is adapted to the universe,” John Barrow and Frank Tipler proclaim in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, “The universe is adapted to man. Imagine a universe in which one or another of the fundamental dimensionless constants of physics is altered by a few percents one way or the other? Man could never come into being in such a universe. That is the central point of the anthropic principle. According to the principle, a life-giving factor lies at the center of the whole machinery and design of the world.” For theists, of course, that life-giving factor is God.

  The Templeton Foundation has spent tens of millions of dollars promoting a reconciliation between science and religion, including the grant of the single largest cash prize in history for “progress in religion.” On the day I wrote this introduction, in fact, it was announced that physicist Freeman Dyson won the prize valued at $964,000, for such works as Disturbing the Universe, one passage of which is often quoted by ID theists: “As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked to our benefit, it almost seems as if the universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.” Mathematical physicist Paul Davies also won the Templeton prize, and we can understand why in such passages as this from his 1999 book The Fifth Miracle:

  In claiming that water means life, NASA scientists are … making—tacitly—a huge and profound assumption about the nature of nature. They are saying, in effect, that the laws of the universe are cunningly contrived to coax life into being against the raw odds; that the mathematical principles of physics, in their elegant simplicity, somehow know in advance about life and its vast complexity. If life follows from [primordial] soup with causal dependability, the laws of nature encode a hidden subtext, a cosmic imperative, which tells them: “Make life!” And, through life, its by-products: mind, knowledge, understanding. It means that the laws of the universe have engineered their own comprehension. This is a breathtaking vision of nature, magnificent and uplifting in its majestic sweep. I hope it is correct. It would be wonderful if it were correct.

  Indeed, it would be wonderful. But not any more wonderful than if it were not correct. If life on Earth is unique, or at least exceptionally rare (and in either case certainly not inevitable, as I demonstrate in the final chapter), how special is our fleeting Mayfly-like existence; how important it is that we make the most of our lives and our loves; how critical it is that we work to preserve not only our own species, but all species and the ecosystem itself. Whether the universe is teaming with life or we are alone, whether our existence is strongly necessitated by the laws of nature or it is highly contingent, whether there is more to come or this is all there is, either way we are faced with a worldview that is equally breathtaking and majestic in its sweep across time and space.

  In the Touchstone issue on Intelligent Design, Whitworth College philosopher Stephen Meyer argues that ID is not simply a “God of the gaps” argument to fill in where science has yet to give us a satisfactory answer. It is not just a matter of “we don’t understand this so God must have done it” (although to me, and to all scientists I have spoke to about ID, this is how these arguments always appear). ID theorists like Meyer and Phillip Johnson, William Dembski, Michael Behe, and Paul Nelson (all leading IDers and contributors to this issue) say they believe in ID because the universe really does appear to be designed. “Design theorists infer a prior intelligent cause based upon present knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships,” Meyer writes. “Inferences to design thus employ the standard uniformitarian method of reasoning used in all historical sciences, many of which routinely detect intelligent causes. Intelligent agents have unique causal powers that nature does not. When we observe effects that we know only agents can produce, we rightly infer the presence of a prior intelligence even if we did not observe the action of the particular agent responsible.” Even an atheist like Stephen Hawking can be found to present cosmological arguments seemingly supportive of scientistic arguments for God’s existence:

  Why is the universe so close to the dividing line between collapsing again and expanding indefinitely? In order to be as close as we are now, the rate of expansion early on had to be chosen fantastically accurately. If the rate of expansion one second after the big bang had been less by one part in 1010, the universe would have collapsed after a few million years. If it had been greater by one part in 1010, the universe would have been essentially empty after a few million years. In neither case would it have lasted long enough for life to develop. Thus one either has to appeal to the anthropic principle or find some physical explanation of why the universe is the way it is.

  That explanation, at the moment, is a combination of a number of different concepts revolutionizing our understanding of evolution, life, and cosmos, including the possibility that our universe is not the only one. We may live in a multiverse in which our universe is just one of many bubble universes all with different laws of nature. Those with physical parameters like ours are more likely to generate life than others. But why should any universe generate life at all, and how could any universe do so without an intelligent designer? The answer can be found in the properties of self-organization and emergence that arise out of what are known as complex adaptive systems, or complex systems that grow and learn as they change. Water is an emergent property of a particular arrangement of hydrogen and oxygen molecules, just as consciousness is a self-organized emergent property of billions of neurons. The entire evolution of life can be explained through these principles. Complex life, for example, is an emergent property of simple life: simple prokaryote cells self-organized to become more complex units called eukaryote cells (those little organelles inside cells you had to memorize in beginning biology were once self-contained independent cells); some of these eukaryote cells self-organized into multi-cellular organisms; some of these multi-cellular organisms self-organized into such cooperative ventures as colonies and social units. And so forth. We can even think of self-organization as an emergent property, and emergence as a form of self-organization. How recursive. No Intelligent Designer made these things happen. They just happened on their own. Here’s a bumper sticker for evolutionists: Life Happens. In The Life of the Cosmos, cosmologist Lee Smolin explains how this property of emergence and self-organization out of complexity works:

  It seems to me quite likely that the concept of self-organization and complexity will more and more play a role in astronomy and cosmology. I suspect that as astronomers become more familiar with these ideas, and as those who study complexity take time to think seriously about such cosmological puzzles as galaxy structure and formation, a new kind of astrophysical theory will develop, in which the universe will be seen as a network of self organized systems. Many of the people who work on complexity … imagine that the world consists of highly organized and complex systems but that the fundamental laws are simply fixed beforehand, by God or by mathematics. I used to believe this, but I no longer do. More and more, what I believe must be true is that there are mechanisms of self-organization extending from the largest scales to the smallest, and that they explain both the properties of the elementary particles and the history and structure of the whole universe.

  There may even be a type of natural selection at work among many universes, with those whose parameters are like ours being most likely to survive. Those universes whose parameters are most likely to give rise to life occasionally generate complex life with brains big enough to achieve consciousness and to conceive of such concepts as God and cosmology, and to ask such questions as Why?
r />   REASONS TO BELIEVE

  Self-organization, emergence, and complexity theory form the basis of just one possible natural explanation for how the universe and life came to be the way it is. But even if this explanation turns out to be wanting, or flat-out wrong, what alternative do Intelligent Design theorists offer in its stead? If ID theory is really a science, as they claim it is, then what is the mechanism of how the Intelligent Designer operated? ID theorists speculate that four billion years ago the Intelligent Designer created the first cell with the necessary genetic information to produce all the irreducibly complex systems we see today. But then, they tell us, the laws of evolutionary change took over and natural selection drove the system, except when totally new and more complex species needed creating. Then the Intelligent Designer stepped in again. Or did He (She? It?)? They are not clear. Did the Intelligent Designer—let’s call it ID—create each genus and then evolution created the species? Or did ID create each species and evolution created the subspecies? ID theorists seem to accept natural selection as a viable explanation for microevolution—the beak of the finch, the neck of the giraffe, the varieties of subspecies found in most species on earth. If ID created these species why not the subspecies? And how did ID create the species? We are not told. Why? Because no one has any idea but you can’t just say, “God did it.”

  I presented all these challenges to the leading Intelligent Design theorists at a June 2000 conference at Concordia University (Wisconsin) on “Intelligent Design and Its Critics.” Although there were some critics there, both on stage and in the audience, it was mostly populated by ID supporters. The conference was partially sponsored by the Templeton Foundation, and was clearly structured to make it appear that there is a real scientific debate ongoing about Intelligent Design. However, as I pointed out in my opening remarks, the conference was being held at a Lutheran college and just before I was introduced they announced what time chapel was the next morning and how we can obtain transportation to it. Virtually every ID supporter turns out to be a born-again Christian. Can this really be a coincidence? For these remarks I was later accused of committing the “genetic fallacy,” where one attacks the person rather than their arguments. Nevertheless, my participation at this conference was a debate in which I did address many of their points.

  It is not coincidental that ID supporters are almost all Christians. It is inevitable. ID arguments are reasons to believe if you already believe. If you do not, the ID arguments are untenable. But I would go further. If you believe in God, you believe for personal and emotional reasons (as I show in Chapter 4), not out of logical deductions. But this chapter also shows that highly educated believers, especially men who were raised religious, have a strong tendency to defend their beliefs with rational arguments. And looking out over an auditorium of about 250 ID supporters at this debate it was overwhelmingly educated males.

  ID theorists also attack scientists’ underlying bias of “methodological naturalism.” That is, they feel it is not fair to forbid supernaturalism from the equation as it pushes them out of the scientific arena on the basis of nothing more than a rule of the game. But if we change the rules of the game to allow them to play, what would that look like? How would that work? What would we do with supernaturalism? ID theorists do not and will not comment on the nature of ID. They wish to say only “ID did it.” This is not unlike the famous Sidney Harris cartoon with the scientists at a chalkboard filled with equations: an arrow points to a blank spot in the series and denotes “Here a miracle happens.” Although IDers eschew any such “god of the gaps” style arguments, that is precisely what it all amounts to. They have simply changed the name from GOD to ID.

  Let’s assume for a moment, though, that ID theorists have suddenly become curious about how ID operates. And let’s say that we have determined that certain biological systems are indeed irreducibly complex and intelligently designed. As ID scientists who are now given entree into the scientific stadium with the new set of rules that allows supernaturalism, they call a time-out during the game to announce “Here ID caused a miracle.” What do we do with supernaturalism in the game of science? Do we halt all future experiments? Do we continue our research and say “Praise ID” every couple of hours? The whole system collapses in a risible game of semantics.

  GLADLY WOLDE WE LEARNE

  If there is a God, He has yet to provide incontrovertible evidence of His existence, leaving belief in Him instead to lie in the realm of faith, or emotional preference, which is the very basis of the theological position known as fideism. Because I see this as the most tenable of all theistic possibilities, I have explored it further since I first wrote this book. As Martin Gardner, a fideist and believer in God, noted in his 1983 book The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener: “If ‘evidence’ means the kind of support provided by reason and science, there is no evidence for God and immortality.” Gardner rejects the flood story (“even as a myth it is hard to admire the ‘faith’ of a man capable of supposing God could be that vindictive and unforgiving”), does not believe that God asked Abraham to kill his son (“Abraham appears not as a man of faith, but as a man of insane fanaticism”), and finds wanting most of the stories in the Bible: “The Old Testament God, and many who had great ‘faith’ in him, are alike portrayed in the Bible as monsters of incredible cruelty.”

  If, as I argue in Chapter 4, beliefs are based on emotion rather than evidence, personality instead of reason, upbringing more than arguments, it would seem to vindicate Gardner’s fideism as the most honest of all the reasons to believe in God. In a personal aside, Gardner confesses that he does have some faith:

  Let me speak personally. By the grace of God I managed the leap when I was in my teens. For me it was then bound up with an ugly Protestant fundamentalism. I outgrew this slowly, and eventually decided I could not even call myself a Christian without using language deceptively, but faith in God and immortality remained. The original leap was not a sharp transition. For most believers there is not even a transition. They simply grow up accepting the religion of their parents, whatever it is.

  Gardner is, if nothing else, refreshingly honest about his faith: “The leap of faith, in its inner nature, remains opaque. I understand it as little as I understand the essence of a photon. Any of the elements I listed earlier as possible causes of belief, along with others I failed to list, may be involved in God’s way of prompting the leap. I do not know, I do not know!”[12] We do not know either, but we ought to be able to respect this honest appraisal of how and why you believe, and especially acknowledge what Gardner, as one of the chief teachers of science and skepticism, have offered us for enlightenment on the problem. As the clerk of Oxenford in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales proclaimed: “gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.”

  Part I

  GOD AND BELIEF

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Sometimes I think we’re alone.

  Sometimes I think we’re not.

  In either case, the thought is quite staggering.

  Chapter 1

  DO YOU BELIEVE IN GOD?

  The Difference in Our Answers and the Difference It Makes

  The word God is used in most cases as by no means a term of science or exact knowledge, but a term of poetry and eloquence, a term thrown out, so to speak, as a not fully grasped object of the speaker’s consciousness,—a literary term, in short; and mankind mean different things by it as their consciousness differs.

  —Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma, 1873

  In my senior year of high school I accepted Jesus as my savior and became a born-again Christian. I did so at the behest of a close and trusted friend, who assured me this was the road to everlasting life and happiness. It was a Saturday night and we were sitting, ironically, at my father’s monkey-wood bar, fully equipped to allow a number of guests to imbibe just about any mixed drink their imaginations could create. We read John 3:16 (now infamous for its appearance on handprinted signs at nationally televised sporting events):
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” At the moment of my conversion coyotes began howling outside. We took it as a sign that Lucifer was unhappy at the loss of another soul from Sheol.

  The next day I attended church services with my friend and his family, and when the minister called for anyone to come forward to be saved, I went up to make it official. My friend assured me that I did not need to be saved twice, but I figured maybe it was more official at a church than at a bar. From that moment on everything seemed neatly explained by the Christian paradigm. Anytime something good happened, it was God’s will and a reward for good behavior; anytime something bad happened, it was part of God’s larger plan, and even though I did not at present understand the long-term benefits, these would become clear in due time. Either way it was a neat and tidy worldview—everything in its place and a place for everything.

  A LEAP OF FAITH

  The whole process was premised on faith. With faith in Jesus, I now had eternal life. With faith in God, I was saved. I had found the One True Religion, and it was my duty—indeed it was my pleasure—to tell others about it, including my parents, brothers and sisters, friends, and even total strangers. In other words, I “witnessed” to people—a polite term for trying to convert them (one wag called it “Amway with Bibles”). Of course, I read the Bible, as well as books about the Bible. I regularly attended youth church groups, one in particular at a place called “The Barn,” a large red house in La Crescenta, California, at which Christians gathered a couple of times a week to sing, pray, and worship. I got so involved that I eventually began to put on Bible study courses myself.