₦airaland Forum

The Improbability of God

by Richard Dawkins

The following article is from Free Inquiry MagazineVolume 18, Number 3.

Much of what people do is done in the name of God. Irishmen blow each other up in his name. Arabs blow themselves up in his name. Imams and ayatollahs oppress women in his name. Celibate popes and priests mess up people's sex lives in his name. Jewish shohets cut live animals' throats in his name. The achievements of religion in past history - bloody crusades, torturing inquisitions, mass-murdering conquistadors, culture-destroying missionaries, legally enforced resistance to each new piece of scientific truth until the last possible moment - are even more impressive. And what has it all been in aid of? I believe it is becoming increasingly clear that the answer is absolutely nothing at all. There is no reason for believing that any sort of gods exist and quite good reason for believing that they do not exist and never have. It has all been a gigantic waste of time and a waste of life. It would be a joke of cosmic proportions if it weren't so tragic.

Why do people believe in God? For most people the answer is still some version of the ancient Argument from Design. We look about us at the beauty and intricacy of the world - at the aerodynamic sweep of a swallow's wing, at the delicacy of flowers and of the butterflies that fertilize them, through a microscope at the teeming life in every drop of pond water, through a telescope at the crown of a giant redwood tree. We reflect on the electronic complexity and optical perfection of our own eyes that do the looking. If we have any imagination, these things drive us to a sense of awe and reverence. Moreover, we cannot fail to be struck by the obvious resemblance of living organs to the carefully planned designs of human engineers. The argument was most famously expressed in the watchmaker analogy of the eighteenth-century priest William Paley. Even if you didn't know what a watch was, the obviously designed character of its cogs and springs and of how they mesh together for a purpose would force you to conclude "that the watch must have had a maker: that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use." If this is true of a comparatively simple watch, how much the more so is it true of the eye, ear, kidney, elbow joint, brain? These beautiful, complex, intricate, and obviously purpose-built structures must have had their own designer, their own watchmaker - God.
So ran Paley's argument, and it is an argument that nearly all thoughtful and sensitive people discover for themselves at some stage in their childhood.

Throughout most of history it must have seemed utterly convincing, self-evidently true. And yet, as the result of one of the most astonishing intellectual revolutions in history, we now know that it is wrong, or at least superfluous. We now know that the order and apparent purposefulness of the living world has come about through an entirely different process, a process that works without the need for any designer and one that is a consequence of basically very simple laws of physics. This is the process of evolution by natural selection, discovered by Charles Darwin and, independently, by Alfred Russel Wallace.

What do all objects that look as if they must have had a designer have in common? The answer is statistical improbability.

If we find a transparent pebble washed into the shape
of a crude lens by the sea, we do not conclude that it must have been designed by an optician: the unaided laws of physics are capable of achieving this result; it is not too improbable to have just "happened." But if we find an elaborate compound lens, carefully corrected against spherical and chromatic aberration, coated against glare, and with "Carl Zeiss" engraved on the rim, we know that it could not have just happened by chance. If you take all the atoms of such a compound lens and throw them together at random under the jostling influence of the ordinary laws of physics in nature, it is theoretically possible that, by sheer luck, the atoms would just happen to fall into the pattern of a Zeiss compound lens, and even that the atoms round the rim should happen to fall in such a way that the name Carl Zeiss is etched out. But the number of other ways in which the atoms could, with equal likelihood, have fallen, is so hugely, vastly, immeasurably greater that we can completely discount the chance hypothesis. Chance is out of the question as an explanation.

This is not a circular argument, by the way. It might seem to be circular because, it could be said, any particular arrangement of atoms is, with hindsight, very improbable. As has been said before, when a ball lands on a particular blade of grass on the golf course, it would be foolish to exclaim: "Out of all the billions of blades of grass that it could have fallen on, the ball actually fell on this one. How amazingly, miraculously improbable!" The fallacy here, of course, is that the ball had to land somewhere. We can only stand amazed at the improbability of the actual event if we specify it a priori: for example, if a blindfolded man spins himself round on the tee, hits the ball at random, and achieves a hole in one. That would be truly amazing, because the target destination of the ball is specified in advance.

Of all the trillions of different ways of putting together the atoms of a telescope, only a minority would actually work in some useful way. Only a tiny minority would have Carl Zeiss engraved on them, or, indeed, any recognizable words of any human language. The same goes for the parts of a watch: of all the billions of possible ways of putting them together, only a tiny minority will tell the time or do anything useful. And of course the same goes, a fortiori, for the parts of a living body. Of all the trillions of trillions of ways of putting together the parts of a body, only an infinitesimal minority would live, seek food, eat, and reproduce. True, there are many different ways of being alive - at least ten million different ways if we count the number of distinct species alive today - but, however many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead!

We can safely conclude that living bodies are billions of times too complicated - too statistically improbable - to have come into being by sheer chance. How, then, did they come into being?

The answer is that chance enters into the story, but not a single, monolithic act of chance. Instead, a whole series of tiny chance steps, each one small enough to be a believable product of its predecessor, occurred one after the other in sequence. [/b]These small steps of chance are caused by genetic mutations, random changes - mistakes really - in the genetic material. They give rise to changes in the existing bodily structure. Most of these changes are deleterious and lead to death. [b]A minority of them turn out to be slight improvements, leading to increased survival and reproduction. By this process of natural selection, those random changes that turn out to be beneficial eventually spread through the species and become the norm. The stage is
now set for the next small change in the evolutionary process. After, say, a thousand of these small changes in series, each change providing the basis for the next, the end result has become, by a process of accumulation, far too complex to have come about in a single act of chance.

For instance, it is theoretically possible for an eye to spring into being, in a single lucky step, from nothing: from bare skin, let's say. It is theoretically possible in the sense that a recipe could be written out in the form of a large number of mutations. If all these mutations happened simultaneously, a complete eye could, indeed, spring from nothing. But although it is theoretically possible, it is in practice inconceivable. The quantity of luck involved is much too large. The "correct" recipe involves changes in a huge number of genes simultaneously. The correct recipe is one particular combination of changes out of trillions of equally probable combinations of chances. We can certainly rule out such a miraculous coincidence. But it is perfectly plausible that the modern eye could have sprung from something almost the same as the modern eye but not quite: a very slightly less elaborate eye. By the same argument, this slightly less elaborate eye sprang from a slightly less elaborate eye still, and so on. If you assume a sufficiently large number of sufficiently small differences between each evolutionary stage and its predecessor, you are bound to be able to derive a full, complex, working eye from bare skin. How many intermediate stages are we allowed to postulate? That depends on how much time we have to play with. Has there been enough time for eyes to evolve by little steps from nothing?

The fossils tell us that life has been evolving on Earth for more than 3,000 million years. It is almost impossible for the human mind to grasp such an immensity of time. We, naturally and mercifully, tend to see our own expected lifetime as a fairly long time, but we can't expect to live even one century. It is 2,000 years since Jesus lived, a time span long enough to blur the distinction between history and myth. Can you imagine a million such periods laid end to end? Suppose we wanted to write the whole history on a single long scroll. If we crammed all of Common Era history into one metre of scroll, how long would the pre-Common Era part of the scroll, back to the start of evolution, be? The answer is that the pre-Common Era part of the scroll would stretch from Milan to Moscow. Think of the implications of this for the quantity of evolutionary change that can be accommodated. All the domestic breeds of dogs - Pekingeses, poodles, spaniels, Saint Bernards, and Chihuahuas - have come from wolves in a time span measured in hundreds or at the most thousands of years: no more than two meters along the road from Milan to Moscow. Think of the quantity of change involved in going from a wolf to a Pekingese; now multiply that quantity of change by a million. When you look at it like that, it becomes easy to believe that an eye could have evolved from no eye by small degrees.

It remains necessary to satisfy ourselves that every one of the intermediates on the evolutionary route, say from bare skin to a modern eye, would have been favored by natural selection; would have been an improvement over its predecessor in the sequence or at least would have survived. It is no good proving to ourselves that there is theoretically a chain of almost perceptibly different intermediates leading to an eye if many of those intermediates would have died. It is sometimes argued that the parts of an eye have to be all there together or the eye won't work at all.
Half an eye, the argument runs, is no better than no eye at all. You can't fly with half a wing; you can't hear with half an ear. Therefore there can't have been a series of step-by-step intermediates leading up to a modern eye, wing, or ear.
This type of argument is so naive that one can only wonder at the subconscious motives for wanting to believe it. It is obviously not true that half an eye is useless. Cataract sufferers who have had their lenses surgically removed cannot see very well without glasses, but they are still much better off than people with no eyes at all. Without a lens you can't focus a detailed image, but you can avoid bumping into obstacles and you could detect the looming shadow of a predator.

As for the argument that you can't fly with only half a wing, it is disproved by large numbers of very successful gliding animals, including mammals of many different kinds, lizards, frogs, snakes, and squids. Many different kinds of tree-dwelling animals have flaps of skin between their joints that really are fractional wings. If you fall out of a tree, any skin flap or flattening of the body that increases your surface area can save your life. And, however small or large your flaps may be, there must always be a critical height such that, if you fall from a tree of that height, your life would have been saved by just a little bit more surface area. Then, when your descendants have evolved that extra surface area, their lives would be saved by just a bit more still if they fell from trees of a slightly greater height. And so on by insensibly graded steps until, hundreds of generations later, we arrive at full wings.

Eyes and wings cannot spring into existence in a single step. That would be like having the almost infinite luck to hit upon the combination number that opens a large bank vault. But if you spun the dials of the lock at random, and every time you got a little bit closer to the lucky number the vault door creaked open another chink, you would soon have the door open! Essentially, that is the secret of how evolution by natural selection achieves what once seemed impossible. Things that cannot plausibly be derived from very different predecessors can plausibly be derived from only slightly different predecessors. Provided only that there is a sufficiently long series of such slightly different predecessors, you can derive anything from anything else.

Evolution, then, is theoretically capable of doing the job that, once upon a time, seemed to be the prerogative of God. But is there any evidence that evolution actually has happened? The answer is yes; the evidence is overwhelming. Millions of fossils are found in exactly the places and at exactly the depths that we should expect if evolution had happened. Not a single fossil has ever been found in any place where the evolution theory would not have expected it, although this could very easily have happened: a fossil mammal in rocks so old that fishes have not yet arrived, for instance, would be enough to disprove the evolution theory.

The patterns of distribution of living animals and plants on the continents and islands of the world is exactly what would be expected if they had evolved from common ancestors by slow, gradual degrees. The patterns of resemblance among animals and plants is exactly what we should expect if some were close cousins, and others more distant cousins to each other. The fact that the genetic code is the same in all living creatures overwhelmingly suggests that all are descended from one single ancestor. The evidence for evolution is so compelling that the only way to save the creation theory is to assume
that God deliberately planted enormous quantities of evidence to make it look as if evolution had happened. In other words, the fossils, the geographical distribution of animals, and so on, are all one gigantic confidence trick.

Does anybody want to worship a God capable of such trickery? It is surely far more reverent, as well as more scientifically sensible, to take the evidence at face value. All living creatures are cousins of one another, descended from one remote ancestor that lived more than 3,000 million years ago.

The Argument from Design, then, has been destroyed as a reason for believing in a God. Are there any other arguments? Some people believe in God because of what appears to them to be an inner revelation. Such revelations are not always edifying but they undoubtedly feel real to the individual concerned. Many inhabitants of lunatic asylums have an unshakable inner faith that they are Napoleon or, indeed, God himself. There is no doubting the power of such convictions for those that have them, but this is no reason for the rest of us to believe them. Indeed, since such beliefs are mutually contradictory, we can't believe them all.

There is a little more that needs to be said. Evolution by natural selection explains a lot, but it couldn't start from nothing. It couldn't have started until there was some kind of rudimentary reproduction and heredity. Modern heredity is based on the DNA code, which is itself too complicated to have sprung spontaneously into being by a single act of chance. This seems to mean that there must have been some earlier hereditary system, now disappeared, which was simple enough to have arisen by chance and the laws of chemistry and which provided the medium in which a primitive form of cumulative natural selection could get started. DNA was a later product of this earlier cumulative selection.
Before this original kind of natural selection, there was a period when complex chemical compounds were built up from simpler ones and before that a period when the chemical elements were built up from simpler elements, following the well-understood laws of physics. Before that, everything was ultimately built up from pure hydrogen in the immediate aftermath of the big bang, which initiated the universe.

There is a temptation to argue that, although God may not be needed to explain the evolution of complex order once the universe, with its fundamental laws of physics, had begun, we do need a God to explain the origin of all things. This idea doesn't leave God with very much to do: just set off the big bang, then sit back and wait for everything to happen. The physical chemist Peter Atkins, in his beautifully written book The Creation, postulates a lazy God who strove to do as little as possible in order to initiate everything. Atkins explains how each step in the history of the universe followed, by simple physical law, from its predecessor. He thus pares down the amount of work that the lazy creator would need to do and eventually concludes that he would in fact have needed to do nothing at all!
The details of the early phase of the universe belong to the realm of physics, whereas I am a biologist, more concerned with the later phases of the evolution of complexity. For me, the important point is that, even if the physicist needs to postulate an irreducible minimum that had to be present in the beginning, in order for the universe to get started, that irreducible minimum is certainly extremely simple. By definition, explanations that build on simple premises are more plausible and more satisfying than explanations that have to postulate complex and statistically improbable beginnings. And you can't get
much more complex than an Almighty God!

TaniCarr:
We all have theories on different things concerning the bible,I was wondering when it really boils down to it do the details matter? Is the most important thing, that Jesus died for or sins and that's it?does the history and all that comes with it really matter?What do you think?I really don't know what to think.

Yes dear, the details are very important because of the outrageous claims made in the bible.  It is supposed to be inerrant and infallible and authored or inspired (depending on your perspective) by a perfect god. In that case when there are elementary errors in the the bible, it is important in refuting claims of divinity. Religion has many absurdities and in this day and age more absurdities are added to explain the existing illogicality.

Others have given examples of the death of Jesus and at least you can see where details and facts differ.
Let me then point you in the direction of another. Consider the genealogy of Jesus. From which son of David is he allegedly descended (hint the bible doesnt agree with itself on this issue )? We have two different genealogies in the bible each strenuously striving to link Jesus to the line of David in order to fulfill the prophecy and authenticate Jesus as the messiah. In so doing, the supposed divinely inspired book collides with itself. To make things worse, after trying so hard to prove that Jesus is the son of David through Joseph, they forget that they have strenuously claimed elsewhere that Jesus had no human father (and therefore cannot possibly be said to be of the line of David).
You see how details matter OP ?
Now, if you invite certain christians here, you will witness their excuses for things like this (there are many many more).
Also, there is a passage in Timothy that says all scripture is given for inspiration, to correct and for reproach (or something like that) . That makes details important.
My final word for now is a question. How come a perfect god saw fit to inspire men to write his word for the salvation of mankind, and yet did not see it proper to keep the same word from errors (whether of translation or willful corruption )?

[quote author=tpia@ link=topic=756602.msg9134265#msg9134265 date=1315870628]^Dont want to get into all that because i dont really do long theological arguments which are too vague and tend towards agnoticism or esoterism.[/quote]Fair enough.

[quote author=tpia@ link=topic=756602.msg9134265#msg9134265 date=1315870628]As per my previous post, a verse which comes to mind if the one that says when someone is tempted, he or she shouldnt say they're being tempted by God but rather should understand they're being enticed by their own lusts which lead them into sin.

I think that's applicable to this subject matter.[/quote]I'd be glad to debate that but it might lead to the long theological argument which you don't want to go in to.

[quote author=tpia@ link=topic=756602.msg9134302#msg9134302 date=1315871308]Wbb to discuss the tree of life post.[/quote]Till then.
In any case I'm glad we can conduct our discussion with civility. Your maturity is commendable.

NnamdiN:
^^ if I start thinking about all those things, the "little" faith I have left wud disappear. It's better to live a righteous life, die n find out everything were just illusions than to live badly and find out there's hell.
Another question bro, how else do u think human beings, animals,plants, day and night, oceans, sun, moon etc came about, big slam?

Thats practically Paschal's wager rephrased. It has been refuted severally. It  makes sense only if you consider your religion to be the only one. The truth of the matter is that there are several other religions and each claims to be the right one. We know its highly implausible that they are all right and so the real question is how do you know (assuming there is one true religion out of many) that your own religion is the right one? If you look at it from the angle of probability, you realise that you are facing very long odds. The christian goes to the muslim hell and the muslim goes to the christian hell etc for other religions. Many religions dont allow you to combine other creeds to be on the safe side so at the end of the day, wheres the assurance ? There is none.

As for the question about how the world came into being, the truth is nobody knows for certain, but that is not necessarily important. The fact that you dont know something is no reason to say "God" or the devil did it. Your lack of knowledge about something has no correlation with the supernatural. There are plausible theories out there that are more believable than ancient myths handed down and reinforced by tradition. As to those theories, I personally find them interesting (and plausible as I mentioned earlier) but I wouldnt swear by them, neither do I think they are especially relevant. Their relevance lies to me, only in showing the absurdity of creationism.

[quote author=tpia@ link=topic=756602.msg9133244#msg9133244 date=1315858672]i think a problem adam had here was the sequence of events.

he probably didnt eat from the tree of life [which wasnt forbidden], but instead went straight for the forbidden fruit.

showing the issue might have started even before the actual eating.

besides, he was tending the garden and probably there was no fruit on either tree initially until later, which was when the serpent decided to tempt them.

just theorizing here.[/quote]He definitely didnt eat from the tree of life, lets say according to your theory, there was no fruit on either tree. Your theory doesnt tell us if the fruits became available on both trees at the same time and if so, then my post above refers. It would have been more sensible to eat from the tree of life first as a way of indemnifying himself from the punishment of death.
In any case, your theory, brings us to a very important point about the bible. The point is that there are several gaps (being polite here) that humans have to explain away, using different theories, holy spirits and what not, to give a sensible explanation of the said gaps (hardly ever succeeding). These are the kind of errors that cannot be found in a book authored by a perfectionist. "God" shouldnt need his creation to explain his mistakes.

This list is necessary because of the many questions I see being asked. It is not exhaustive and the explanations can be really complex, but this is just an easy guide for those who don't know or who think atheism is a religion. I hope this thread will serve as a starting point of reference before certain folks start making wild accusations borne out of a lack of knowledge.

Atheist F.A.Q.

• Why do you not believe in God?
o There is no credible evidence, just like there is no evidence for Gods you
don’t believe in (Thor, Zeus, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc).

• Where do your morals come from?
o A combination of life experience, family, human nature, and the good
sense to treat others the way I would like to be treated.

• What is the meaning of life?
o There is no “ultimate meaning” to life. However, since we’re here, we can
give our own life meaning through our words and actions.

• Is atheism a religion?
o No— it does not require faith or belief. It can become dogma for some
people, but it’s not a religion in the same way that bald is not a hair color.

• If you don’t pray, what do you do during troubling times?
o When it’s possible, I try to take action to fix the situation. If that’s not an
option, I talk to people I trust and hope that things will get better.

• Should atheists be trying to convince others to stop believing in God?
o Yes, but not because of spite or to “ruin the party.” We should be
encouraging critical thinking and intellectual honesty everywhere we see
faith used as an explanation for believing something.

• Weren’t some of the worst atrocities in the 20th century committed by atheists?
o Some of them, yes (Stalin was one example). But these people did not
commit their crimes because they were atheists. Rather, the radical
political/racist ideologies they held drove them to commit their crimes.

• How could billions of people be wrong when it comes to belief in God?
o Truth is not subject to popular vote, just like the majority of people were
once wrong about the Earth being flat or the center of the universe. Much
of the reason people believe in some God has to do with their religious
upbringing; our beliefs are generally passed down through the
generations.

• Why does the universe exist?
o Just because it exists doesn’t mean there’s a “why?” explanation to it. It
simply exists, period.

• How did life originate?
o We don’t know for sure yet. But the best current theories involve a selfreplicating
molecule (which occurred by chance) that eventually evolved
to become more complex through the process of natural selection.

• Is all religion harmful?
o Only in the sense that religious fervor has the potential to become
disastrous. By avoiding logic and promoting faith when making our
decisions, anything can be justified, good or bad. While there are people
who can separate religious beliefs from scientific truths and respect for all
people, there are many that cannot.

• What’s so bad about religious moderates?
o They teach that faith is a virtue. They use the same reasoning patterns as
religious extremists when justifying their beliefs. If faith is all they need
to believe, today’s moderates could become tomorrow’s extremists.

• Is there anything redeeming about religion?
o Religion can be used as a motivator for good. It can be a source of
comfort in times of need. It has the ability to bring people together and
unite them. It has been the inspiration for much of our world’s beautiful
music and architecture. However, all of these redeeming qualities can be
found outside of religion as well.

• What if you’re wrong about God (and He does exist)?
o It depends on the nature of the God, but it’s hard to imagine a God who
would be upset with a person who honestly searched for evidence but
found none that was satisfactory.

• Shouldn’t all religious beliefs be respected?
o No. Beliefs, ideas, and principles should all be respected based on their
own merit.

• Are atheists smarter than theists?
o Not necessarily. There are smart people on both sides of the religious
spectrum. However, people who can think logically and critically are
generally more intelligent than those who cannot. Many atheists fit that
bill, as do a number of theists.

• How do you deal with the historical Jesus if you don’t believe in his divinity?
o If he was an actual person (and not an amalgamation of many people), he
had some good ideas mixed in with some bad ones. We should be
questioning the documents that refer to him, studying how they came to
be, and asking ourselves if we would believe the miracles he performed if
they happened today.

• Would the world be better off without any religion?
o Only if people stopped behaving the way they currently do because of
religion. Other potentially harmful ideologies could take its place. In a
nutshell, though, we will always be better off without blind faith and
dogma no matter what form they take.

• What happens when we die?
o It’s not a question we can answer. But from what we do know, our bodies
decompose and we live on only through the memories we leave others.

This list was created by the readers at FriendlyAtheist.com and edited by Hemant Mehta. A full list of
responses can be found at http://friendlyatheist.com/2007/07/20/keep-them-short-and-sweet/.

A long post I know, but it became necessary after reading a lot of the arguments here on this religious thread. Clearly a lot of folks here either have little or no grasp of logic, or they throw it out of the window once it comes to religion.

I hope this thread becomes a reference point when arguments for evidence are made. Anybody is free to disagree with Dr. Dawkins.

RICHARD DAWKINS is an evolutionary biologist; reader in the Department of
Zoology at Oxford University; fellow of New College. He began his research
career in the 1960s as a research student with Nobel Prize-winning ethologist
Nico Tinbergen, and ever since then, his work has largely been concerned with
the evolution of behavior. Since 1976, when his first book, The Selfish Gene,
encapsulated both the substance and the spirit of what is now called the
sociobiological revolution, he has become widely known, both for the originality
of his ideas and for the clarity and elegance with which he expounds them. A
subsequent book, The Extended Phenotype, and a number of television programs,
have extended the notion of the gene as the unit of selection, and have applied
it to biological examples as various as the relationship between hosts and
parasites and the evolution of cooperation. His following book, The Blind
Watchmaker, is widely read, widely quoted, and one of the truly influential
intellectual works of our time. He is also author of the recently published
River Out of Eden.

Good And Bad Reasons For Believing
By Richard Dawkins
Dear Juliet,
Now that you are ten, I want to write to you about something that is important
to me. Have you ever wondered how we know the things that we know? How do we
know, for instance, that the stars, which look like tiny pinpricks in the sky,
are really huge balls of fire like the sun and are very far away? And how do we
know that Earth is a smaller ball whirling round one of those stars, the sun?
The answer to these questions is "evidence." Sometimes evidence means actually
seeing ( or hearing, feeling, smelling, ) that something is true. Astronauts
have travelled far enough from earth to see with their own eyes that it is
round. Sometimes our eyes need help. The "evening star" looks like a bright
twinkle in the sky, but with a telescope, you can see that it is a beautiful
ball - the planet we call Venus. Something that you learn by direct seeing ( or
hearing or feeling, ) is called an observation.
Often, evidence isn't just an observation on its own, but observation always
lies at the back of it. If there's been a murder, often nobody (except the
murderer and the victim!) actually observed it. But detectives can gather
together lots or other observations which may all point toward a particular
suspect. If a person's fingerprints match those found on a dagger, this is
evidence that he touched it. It doesn't prove that he did the murder, but it can
help when it's joined up with lots of other evidence. Sometimes a detective can
think about a whole lot of observations and suddenly realise that they fall into
place and make sense if so-and-so did the murder.
Scientists - the specialists in discovering what is true about the world and the
universe - often work like detectives. They make a guess ( called a hypothesis )
about what might be true. They then say to themselves: If that were really true,
we ought to see so-and-so. This is called a prediction. For example, if the
world is really round, we can predict that a traveller, going on and on in the
same direction, should eventually find himself back where he started.When a
doctor says that you have the measles, he doesn't take one look at you and see
measles. His first look gives him a hypothesis that you may have measles. Then
he says to himself: If she has measles I ought to see, Then he runs through
the list of predictions and tests them with his eyes ( have you got spots? );
hands ( is your forehead hot? ); and ears ( does your chest wheeze in a measly
way? ). Only then does he make his decision and say, " I diagnose that the child
has measles. " Sometimes doctors need to do other tests like blood tests or
X-Rays, which help their eyes, hands, and ears to make observations.
The way scientists use evidence to learn about the world is much cleverer and
more complicated than I can say in a short letter. But now I want to move on
from evidence, which is a good reason for believing something , and warn you
against three bad reasons for believing anything. They are called "tradition,"
"authority," and "revelation."
First, tradition. A few months ago, I went on television to have a discussion
with about fifty children. These children were invited because they had been
brought up in lots of different religions. Some had been brought up as
Christians, others as Jews, Muslims, Hindus, or Sikhs. The man with the
microphone went from child to child, asking them what they believed. What they
said shows up exactly what I mean by "tradition." Their beliefs turned out to
have no connection with evidence. They just trotted out the beliefs of their
parents and grandparents which, in turn, were not based upon evidence either.
They said things like: "We Hindus believe so and so"; "We Muslims believe such
and such"; "We Christians believe something else."
Of course, since they all believed different things, they couldn't all be right.
The man with the microphone seemed to think this quite right and proper, and he
didn't even try to get them to argue out their differences with each other. But
that isn't the point I want to make for the moment. I simply want to ask where
their beliefs come from. They came from tradition. Tradition means beliefs
handed down from grandparent to parent to child, and so on. Or from books handed
down through the centuries. Traditional beliefs often start from almost nothing;
perhaps somebody just makes them up originally, like the stories about Thor and
Zeus. But after they've been handed down over some centuries, the mere fact that
they are so old makes them seem special. People believe things simply because
people have believed the same thing over the centuries. That's tradition.
The trouble with tradition is that, no matter how long ago a story was made up,
it is still exactly as true or untrue as the original story was. If you make up
a story that isn't true, handing it down over a number of centuries doesn't make
it any truer!
Most people in England have been baptised into the Church of England, but this
is only one of the branches of the Christian religion. There are other branches
such as Russian Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, and the Methodist churches. They
all believe different things. The Jewish religion and the Muslim religion are a
bit more different still; and there are different kinds of Jews and of Muslims.
People who believe even slightly different things from each other go to war over
their disagreements. So you might think that they must have some pretty good
reasons - evidence - for believing what they believe. But actually, their
different beliefs are entirely due to different traditions.
Let's talk about one particular tradition. Roman Catholics believe that Mary,
the mother of Jesus, was so special that she didn't die but was lifted bodily in
to Heaven. Other Christian traditions disagree, saying that Mary did die like
anybody else. These other religions don't talk about much and, unlike Roman
Catholics, they don't call her the "Queen of Heaven." The tradition that Mary's
body was lifted into Heaven is not an old one. The bible says nothing on how she
died; in fact, the poor woman is scarcely mentioned in the Bible at all. The
belief that her body was lifted into Heaven wasn't invented until about six
centuries after Jesus' time. At first, it was just made up, in the same way as
any story like "Snow White" was made up. But, over the centuries, it grew into a
tradition and people started to take it seriously simply because the story had
been handed down over so many generations. The older the tradition became, the
more people took it seriously. It finally was written down as and official Roman
Catholic belief only very recently, in 1950, when I was the age you are now. But
the story was no more true in 1950 than it was when it was first invented six
hundred years after Mary's death.
I'll come back to tradition at the end of my letter, and look at it in another
way. But first, I must deal with the two other bad reasons for believing in
anything: authority and revelation.
Authority, as a reason for believing something, means believing in it because
you are told to believe it by somebody important. In the Roman Catholic Church,
the pope is the most important person, and people believe he must be right just
because he is the pope. In one branch of the Muslim religion, the important
people are the old men with beards called ayatollahs. Lots of Muslims in this
country are prepared to commit murder, purely because the ayatollahs in a
faraway country tell them to.
When I say that it was only in 1950 that Roman Catholics were finally told that
they had to believe that Mary's body shot off to Heaven, what I mean is that in
1950, the pope told people that they had to believe it. That was it. The pope
said it was true, so it had to be true! Now, probably some of the things that
that pope said in his life were true and some were not true. There is no good
reason why, just because he was the pope, you should believe everything he said
any more than you believe everything that other people say. The present pope (
1995 ) has ordered his followers not to limit the number of babies they have. If
people follow this authority as slavishly as he would wish, the results could be
terrible famines, diseases, and wars, caused by overcrowding.
Of course, even in science, sometimes we haven't seen the evidence ourselves and
we have to take somebody else's word for it. I haven't, with my own eyes, seen
the evidence that light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. Instead,
I believe books that tell me the speed of light. This looks like "authority."
But actually, it is much better than authority, because the people who wrote the
books have seen the evidence and anyone is free to look carefully at the
evidence whenever they want. That is very comforting. But not even the priests
claim that there is any evidence for their story about Mary's body zooming off
to Heaven.
The third kind of bad reason for believing anything is called "revelation." If
you had asked the pope in 1950 how he knew that Mary's body disappeared into
Heaven, he would probably have said that it had been "revealed" to him. He shut
himself in his room and prayed for guidance. He thought and thought, all by
himself, and he became more and more sure inside himself. When religious people
just have a feeling inside themselves that something must be true, even though
there is no evidence that it is true, they call their feeling "revelation." It
isn't only popes who claim to have revelations. Lots of religious people do. It
is one of their main reasons for believing the things that they do believe. But
is it a good reason?
Suppose I told you that your dog was dead. You'd be very upset, and you'd
probably say, "Are you sure? How do you know? How did it happen?" Now suppose I
answered: "I don't actually know that Pepe is dead. I have no evidence. I just
have a funny feeling deep inside me that he is dead." You'd be pretty cross with
me for scaring you, because you'd know that an inside "feeling" on its own is
not a good reason for believing that a whippet is dead. You need evidence. We
all have inside feelings from time to time, sometimes they turn out to be right
and sometimes they don't. Anyway, different people have opposite feelings, so
how are we to decide whose feeling is right? The only way to be sure that a dog
is dead is to see him dead, or hear that his heart has stopped; or be told by
somebody who has seen or heard some real evidence that he is dead.
People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings deep inside, otherwise,
you' d never be confident of things like "My wife loves me." But this is a bad
argument. There can be plenty of evidence that somebody loves you. All through
the day when you are with somebody who loves you, you see and hear lots of
little titbits of evidence, and they all add up. It isn't a purely inside
feeling, like the feeling that priests call revelation. There are outside things
to back up the inside feeling: looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice,
little favors and kindnesses; this is all real evidence.
Sometimes people have a strong inside feeling that somebody loves them when it
is not based upon any evidence, and then they are likely to be completely wrong.
There are people with a strong inside feeling that a famous film star loves
them, when really the film star hasn't even met them. People like that are ill
in their minds. Inside feelings must be backed up by evidence, otherwise you
just can't trust them.
Inside feelings are valuable in science, too, but only for giving you ideas that
you later test by looking for evidence. A scientist can have a "hunch'" about an
idea that just "feels" right. In itself, this is not a good reason for believing
something. But it can be a good reason for spending some time doing a particular
experiment, or looking in a particular way for evidence. Scientists use inside
feelings all the time to get ideas. But they are not worth anything until they
are supported by evidence.
I promised that I'd come back to tradition, and look at it in another way. I
want to try to explain why tradition is so important to us. All animals are
built (by the process called evolution) to survive in the normal place in which
their kind live. Lions are built to be good at surviving on the plains of
Africa. Crayfish to be good at surviving in fresh, water, while lobsters are
built to be good at surviving in the salt sea. People are animals, too, and we
are built to be good at surviving in a world full of , other people. Most of
us don't hunt for our own food like lions or lobsters; we buy it from other
people who have bought it from yet other people. We ''swim'' through a "sea of
people." Just as a fish needs gills to survive in water, people need brains that
make them able to deal with other people. Just as the sea is full of salt water,
the sea of people is full of difficult things to learn. Like language.
You speak English, but your friend Ann-Kathrin speaks German. You each speak the
language that fits you to '`swim about" in your own separate "people sea."
Language is passed down by tradition. There is no other way . In England, Pepe
is a dog. In Germany he is ein Hund. Neither of these words is more correct, or
more true than the other. Both are simply handed down. In order to be good at
"swimming about in their people sea," children have to learn the language of
their own country, and lots of other things about their own people; and this
means that they have to absorb, like blotting paper, an enormous amount of
traditional information. (Remember that traditional information just means
things that are handed down from grandparents to parents to children.) The
child's brain has to be a sucker for traditional information. And the child
can't be expected to sort out good and useful traditional information, like the
words of a language, from bad or silly traditional information, like believing
in witches and devils and ever-living virgins.
It's a pity, but it can't help being the case, that because children have to be
suckers for traditional information, they are likely to believe anything the
grown-ups tell them, whether true or false, right or wrong. Lots of what the
grown-ups tell them is true and based on evidence, or at least sensible. But if
some of it is false, silly, or even wicked, there is nothing to stop the
children believing that, too. Now, when the children grow up, what do they do?
Well, of course, they tell it to the next generation of children. So, once
something gets itself strongly believed - even if it is completely untrue and
there never was any reason to believe it in the first place - it can go on
forever.
Could this be what has happened with religions ? Belief that there is a god or
gods, belief in Heaven, belief that Mary never died, belief that Jesus never had
a human father, belief that prayers are answered, belief that wine turns into
blood - not one of these beliefs is backed up by any good evidence. Yet millions
of people believe them. Perhaps this because they were told to believe them when
they were told to believe them when they were young enough to believe anything.
Millions of other people believe quite different things, because they were told
different things when they were children. Muslim children are told different
things from Christian children, and both grow up utterly convinced that they are
right and the others are wrong. Even within Christians, Roman Catholics believe
different things from Church of England people or Episcopalians, Shakers or
Quakers , Mormons or Holy Rollers, and are all utterly covinced that they are
right and the others are wrong. They believe different things for exactly the
same kind of reason as you speak English and Ann-Kathrin speaks German. Both
languages are, in their own country, the right language to speak. But it can't
be true that different religions are right in their own countries, because
different religions claim that opposite things are true. Mary can't be alive in
Catholic Southern Ireland but dead in Protestant Northern Ireland.
What can we do about all this ? It is not easy for you to do anything, because
you are only ten. But you could try this. Next time somebody tells you something
that sounds important, think to yourself: "Is this the kind of thing that people
probably know because of evidence? Or is it the kind of thing that people only
believe because of tradition, authority, or revelation?" And, next time somebody
tells you that something is true, why not say to them: "What kind of evidence is
there for that?" And if they can't give you a good answer, I hope you'll think
very carefully before you believe a word they say.
Your loving
Daddy

[quote author=tpia@ link=topic=756602.msg9127097#msg9127097 date=1315788266]1. i'm not sure adam was actually created immortal.

2. he wasnt forbidden from eating of the tree of life.


still thinking about the rest.[/quote]He may or may not have been created immortal. We aren't expressly told, but lets look at the implication. He was told that if he ate from the forbidden fruit he would surely die. We are told that through Adam, death came, and it came as a consequence of disobedience. In other words, no disobedience, no death. Correct me if I am wrong.

Just a thought here, if I was the serpent, I'd ask that the tree of life be eaten from first (assuming Adam wasn't already immortal) so that he need not fear the death that would result as a consequence of eating the forbidden fruit. That way, man gains eternal life (again, assuming he didn't already have it) and gains knowledge (the tree of good and evil). Doesn't it seem like man was immortal, hence there was no need to ask him not to eat from the tree (what good would that do) but god asked him to refrain from the tree containing the things he didn't already have (knowledge) ?

As Adam disobeyed, and death was pronounced on him, there was now a need to protect the tree of life (where there was previously no need).

Sorry for going off topic, just thinking aloud.

frosbel:
The FOOL is the one that says there is no GOD despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Now calm down and think before you reply !

How about the words of Jesus proclaiming one in danger of hell if he called another a fool ? Ehn Frosbel ?

He created the heavens and the earth and saw that it was all good. He is omnipotent and omnipresent meaning he knows all that is to come and all that came. Then one of his perfect creations deceived another (also perfect) and they disobeyed god leading to the fall of humanity (and indeed the inferiority of women). He obviously saw this and allowed it to happen. You atheists are a funny lot. I'm sure most of you were christians at one point or the other. Dont you know what happens in heaven ? Choirs of angels singing only one song for eternity. Do you have any idea how boring that is ?

Would you like to live throughout eternity bored ? No you wont.

Look at the world today, very entertaining. He can sit up there causing tsunamis, earthquakes, famine, disease, wars etc all for his amusement. You think he couldnt have placed a flaming sword in the garden of Eden to discourage Adam ? Of course he could have. Remember, nothing is impossible for god. Why did he only do it afterward ?

Please disabuse your mind of any contrary notions because the other options (ie he is omni impotent and omni absent or at best a wicked god) are not worthy of consideration. I know this because its in the bible and must necessarily be so.
So the answer to the question the OP asked is boredom.

One question still bothers me though and I'm waiting for the holy spirit to reveal it to me. Why was there a tree of life in Eden. There was no need for it since we are meant to believe that god intended man to live forever (seems like a flaw in the divine plan, considering the number of men that have walked the earth - over population-) and that death only came to man because of Adams disobedience. Just thinking aloud sha.

I believe he will be crucified again. Frosbel will probably be at the forefront.

italo:
The Bible is actually not a book but a library of many books. And there were so many other books that were written just like the ones in the Bible but are not in the Bible. How are we sure there wasn't, for example, omission of worthy books and inclusion of unworthy books, or even texts. Because if there's any adulteration, we can't really call it the 'word of God', the 'pillar and foundation of truth', can we?

You hit the nail on the head there Sir. Well, almost. The bible is actually mans word about God and not the other way round. As a way of understanding the world and its mysteries, early man created "God" in his own image.

Probably nowhere

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