Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne makes a virtue of the fact that he finds typical, widespread points of view hard to comprehend:
I’m always puzzled when people who show reasonably high intelligence confess that they’re religious—even deeply religious. These people include Andrew Sullivan, NIH head Francis Collins, and NYT columnist Ross Douthat. Though I usually disagree with Douthat and his conservative views, at least they’re based on data, however misinterpreted. But his deep faith (pious Catholicism), which he displays in embarassing detail in his new NYT essay, is beyond my ken. For here Douthat not only advances some of the common and unconvincing arguments for God (many taken from Intelligent Design), but also makes many of them, and says that they’re based on science itself.
Jerry Coyne, “Douthat: Science gives us more reason than ever to believe in God” at Why Evolution Is True (August 15, 2021)
Some have suspected that Douthat has been reading Steve Meyer’s The Return of the God Hypothesis.
Back to Coyne:
In this long piece, Douthat makes five arguments for God that I’ll summarize and discuss briefly. But first lays out his claim: that, in fact, believing in God, especially these days, is the most parsimonious thing to do. Atheism is less parsimonious than faith. And, even though science has advanced and explained via naturalism a lot of things once imputed to God, Douthat sees these advances as simply confirming God’s existence even more strongly.
Jerry Coyne, “Douthat: Science gives us more reason than ever to believe in God” at Why Evolution Is True (August 15, 2021)
Actually, Douthat is right. Atheists, to be consistent, must believe in an infinite array of universes, just one of which happens to be law-like enough to work. It would be simpler to believe that a Mind, greatly superior to our minds, created the laws that our minds can recognize.
Significantly, once naturalism runs up against even the human mind, it sputters most painfully. See, for example, “Why do some people’s minds become much clearer near death? Arjuna Das and neurosurgeon Michael Egnor discuss the evidence for terminal lucidity at Theology Unleashed. Dr. Egnor argues that the brain and body constrain the mind. When dying, they may constrain it less, resulting in sudden end-of-life lucidity” and the previous posts in the series.
Uncommon Descent to Jerry Coyne: Come in Coyne, are you reading us?: Buckle that seatbelt, man! This is the BIG roller coaster, Flyin’ Annie. Not the little ones you are used to. Over and out.
You may also wish to read: At Evolution News: Twilight of the Godless Universe. If so, fashionable atheists must all just want to kill Meyer for busting up a sweet faith-and-science racket. Whatever any establishment figure with a PhD in science wants to call science is science and obedient religion profs mostly just bumble along, glad to be noticed. Actually, with all the stuff we have discovered that does not confirm what everyone thinks, it’s a pretty decrepit racket now.
Coyne apparently cannot see any alternative to his blinkered worldview. “I’m always puzzled when people who show reasonably high intelligence confess that they’re religious—even deeply religious. ” If you are truly puzzled Jerry, why not take a closer look, with an open mind, at what these people actually believe and their reasons for their faith? Any scientist who finds a “puzzle” and is unwilling to explore further, or look closely at ALL the evidence is not much of a researcher. Perhaps the source of your “puzzle”, Jerry, is your own narrow views?
He doesn’t seem to know anything about religion or philosophy.
As above, trying to understand theology is “above his ken”. But he reduces all of life to a blind, mindless output, so that makes sense. I
He wonders where the infinite, timeless, immaterial cause of all being comes from.
There’s simple idea of causality leading to a first cause and quite a lot of people, even those who write on blogs every day, have no understanding of this.
I’ll agree that Douthat’s argument was a little strange – he missed the target. A multiverse would be evidence for God simply because one still has to explain its origin. More importantly, it’s unknowable and therefore illogical to use it as a substitute for the God hypothesis.
Interesting that he believes creationism to be the best argument for God. It’s a good reason to continue to attack the absurdity of evolution, because if that falls, then right-thinking can prevail again.
Again, just basic high school philosophy that he fails on here. None of his fan club ever corrects this. He uses a non-naturalist argument to claim that naturalism is the only path of understanding. As for Laplace’s dismissal – obviously, when you have to believe in a fantasy-world multiverse simply because you removed God from your equations, then your dismissal is self-refuting.
“Someday we’ll understand consciousness when we can break it down into little bits and pieces of matter and see those bits interact. It’s a very hard thing to do, but it’s not a hard problem to solve. Consciousness obviously evolved from a simpler feature through mutations. Just trust us.”
But you’re puzzled as to why people accept that there is a First Cause, a law-maker who designed and created the laws?
We have no evidence for blind evolution.
He asks questions about why God would do something in a certain way while he can’t even accept that the ways of God are worth taking the time and effort to study. He disrespects philosophy and theology but he has to rely on both of those fields for his own denial of God. It’s a childish approach.
He floats a loaded question out there with no interest in gaining an understanding. It’s one of those defensive things that atheists do – protecting themselves from having to invest time and energy in understanding God. “Where can I flee from Your spirit, where can I hide from You?” – asks the Psalmist. God loves all people, atheists included, and He calls us – not to punishment but to freedom and new life. People are afraid of God so they create stupid arguments and pretend that they don’t have “the ability to believe in God”.
Religion generally means to take subjective issues seriously, in a dedicated grand organized way.
Obviously Coyne does not consider subjective issues in a dedicated way. Like all the atheists his personal judgements are smarmy.
Basically he states that in the end science will also incorporate subjectivity. That beauty becomes to be a matter of fact, or that the earth is round will become a matter of personal opinion about what you like. Something like that.
The guy has no clue whatsoever about the way things in the universe are chosen by the spirit.
It is so tragic that now we have these smarmy people as scientists, where before we had the creationists in science, with a kind of stately personal opinions. People with real personal character, an emotional life, a feeling for the spirit. It is just disgusting.
The NY Times is not a place to debate anything. But after reading some of the comments there defending atheism, they are as certain of their beliefs as people are here sure of theirs.
The major difference is that no atheist has ever come here with a coherent argument for their beliefs. There have been many that tried but all have failed.
Jerry, I hope the entertainment is worth whatever you are paying the NYT to continue to exist.
I didn’t pay them anything. I was able to read the article on an incognito page.
One of the interesting things about the NY Times article is how shallow are their readers or at least those who comment and are then highly rated.
The top one rants on about conservatives not believing in science and Douthat writes an opinion on religion. Received 1850+ recommendations.
The next highest rated one is someone bringing up the God of the Gaps argument. Received 1670+ recommendations.
The next highest rated on is someone who says there is no evidence or at least Douthat provided none and said God does not provide any explanatory power. Received 1475+ recommendations.
The next was just sarcastic. Received 1325+ recommendations.
So these are what the NY Times readers rate as the best. It says more about who reads the NY Times. None of them. could justify their atheism. It wasn’t the point of their comment to justify atheism but the shallowness of the replies indicts the readers.
The sad thing is they all probably believe the science supports them. But few mention evolution. For example only a couple mention Darwin as support for their beliefs. One actually said that antibiotics work and this proves Darwin.
Douthat believes Darwin provides some problems for the Fall. Which means he gives it some credence. He may be unaware of what is known about evolution and what is not. Or he may believe it is a third rail to keep away from.
As to:
Yet, considering these following blatantly self-refuting claims that Jerry Coyne himself made,,,
,, considering those blatantly self refuting claims, then I think Jerry Coyne should be a little more circumspect and humble in his evaluation of the intelligence of other people who believe in God.
Of related note:
Verse:
Bornagain77/8
Which means little unless we can place it in the context of the number of great scientists and Nobel Laureates who were atheist.
I don’t think only idiots believe in God but it is a typical theistic strawman which believers love to beat up.
And were these “difference-making products” prayed into existence or the result of materialistic science?
And how many of your wonderful colleagues are believers?
So this “God of unfathomable greatness and love” who has the power to alleviate or even eliminate all “medical struggles” chooses not to do so for reasons – if there are any – that He chooses not to divulge to us.
So why are you not asking this Companion the obvious questions such as those raised above?
Maybe if he did all what you suggest, life would be meaningless.
Coyne said:
Materialist science hasn’t explained anything. Materialist science is the process of describing behaviors of phenomena it has no explanation for. Describing behavior is not explaining that behavior.
For example, “gravity” is a model of the behavior of phenomena, using words like “mass” and “curvature of space-time” as descriptive labels for observed behaviors. Those words are descriptive, not explanatory. “Mass causes a curvature in space-time” does not explain why mass would cause such a curvature. In fact, there is no reason that it should do so; there is no materialist-science-provided reason why anything behaves the way it does. To say that it is not God that causes the apple to fall, but rather “gravity,” is to say that it is your descriptive model of the falling apple that causes it to fall, not God.
Why things behave the way they do does not become evident until you get to and apply non-materialist science, or quantum physics. It is there that we find out that the reason why phenomena behaves the way it does is due to consciousness interacting with the information potential and making choices.
Coyne doesn’t realize that science (non-materialist science) has proved God (in one form or another) not only exists, but is in fact the actual explanation for why phenomena behaves the way it does.
In response to this citation,,,
Seversky states,,
HUH? First off, I was simply making the point, directly contrary to what Jerry Coyne was implying,
that you don’t have to be an atheist to be a great scientist. Far from it. Secondly, in my reference to “FOUNDERS OF MODERN SCIENCE (16th – 21st Century) – page 89” in particular, I was pointing out that virtually all the founders of modern science were devout believers in God.
Indeed, many of the founders of modern science were devout Christians who thought of science, i.e. the study of nature, as a way to worship God and to bring glory to God. Here are a few quotes to that effect,
In fact Seversky, if you go through the list of founders of each branch of modern science, (i.e. chemistry, physics, geology, astronomy, etc.. etc..), you will be hard pressed to find even one atheist who lay at the founding of a major branch of modern science.
So Seversky, if atheists are so much smarter than people who believe in God, as Jerry Coyne directly implied, why is this?
The reason why you will be hard pressed to find even one atheist at the founding of each major branch of modern science is because science itself is based upon Theistic, even Christian, presuppositions, and modern science is certainly not based on atheistic presuppositions.
As Paul Davies stated, “So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.”
Although atheists repeatedly, and falsely, claim that science is based upon the assumption of naturalism, i.e. methodological naturalism, the fact of the matter is that all of science, every nook and cranny of it, is based on the presupposition of intelligent design and is certainly not based on the presupposition of methodological naturalism.
From the essential Christian presuppositions that undergird the founding of modern science itself, (namely that the universe is contingent and rational in its foundational nature and that the minds of men, being made in the ‘image of God’, can, therefore, dare understand the rationality that God has imparted onto the universe), to the intelligent design of the scientific instruments and experiments themselves, to the logical and mathematical analysis of experimental results themselves, from top to bottom, science itself is certainly not to be considered a ‘natural’ endeavor of man.
Not one scientific instrument would ever exist if men did not first intelligently design that scientific instrument. Not one test tube, microscope, telescope, spectroscope, or etc.. etc.., was ever found just laying around on a beach somewhere which was ‘naturally’ constructed by nature. Not one experimental result would ever be rationally analyzed since there would be no immaterial minds to rationally analyze the immaterial logic and immaterial mathematics that lay behind the intelligently designed experiments in the first place.
Again, all of science, every nook and cranny of it, is based on the presupposition of intelligent design and is certainly not based on the presupposition of methodological naturalism.
In fact, assuming methodological naturalism, instead of Christian Theism, as the basis of modern science, as atheists insist that we should do, drives modern science itself into catastrophic epistemological failure,
It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science, indeed more antagonistic to reality itself, than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
Perhaps the clearest, and most direct, way to demonstrate that the atheistic worldview undermines science itself is by pointing out the fact that atheists, in their denial of the reality of God, end up denying that they themselves have free will. To requote Coyne’s blatantly self refuting quote,
Yet in denying the reality of their own free will, atheists end up undermining any claim that they are, or that they can be, rational in their ability to reason. (And, as should be needless to say, if people lack the capacity to be rational in their reasoning, then science itself is dead in the water).
Moreover, although atheists deny the reality of their own free will, (which is a denial that ends up undermining science itself), the reality of free will comes screaming back to us in quantum mechanics and is now experimentally confirmed to be a real and tangible part of reality.
As Steven Weinberg, who is an atheist himself, states in the following article, “In the instrumentalist approach (in quantum mechanics) humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure,,, Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,”
In fact Weinberg, again an atheist, rejected the instrumentalist approach precisely because “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” and because it undermined the Darwinian worldview from within. Yet, regardless of how he and other atheists may prefer the world to behave, quantum mechanics itself could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave.
Although there have been several major loopholes in quantum mechanics over the past several decades that atheists have tried to appeal to in order to try to avoid the ‘spooky’ Theistic implications of quantum mechanics, over the past several years each of those major loopholes have each been closed one by one. The last major loophole that was left to be closed was the “setting independence”, “freedom of choice”, and/or the ‘free-will’ loophole:
And now Anton Zeilinger and company have recently, as of 2018, pushed the ‘free will loophole’ back to 7.8 billion years ago, thereby firmly establishing the ‘common sense’ fact that the free will choices of the experimenter in the quantum experiments are truly free and are not determined by any possible causal influences from the past for at least the last 7.8 billion years, and that the experimenters themselves are therefore shown to be truly free to choose whatever measurement settings in the experiments that he or she may so desire to choose so as to ‘logically’ probe whatever aspect of reality that he or she may be interested in probing.
Thus regardless of how Steven Weinberg and other atheists may prefer the universe to behave, with the closing of the last remaining free will loophole in quantum mechanics, “humans are indeed brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level”, and thus these recent findings from quantum mechanics directly undermine, as Weinberg himself stated, the “vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.”
Moreover allowing free will and/or Agent causality into the laws of physics at their most fundamental level has some fairly profound implications for us personally.
First and foremost, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”.
Thus in conclusion, although atheists like to claim that God is a ‘science stopper’, the fact of the matter is that it is their very own worldview, via their denial of free will, that is a ‘science stopper’, and that it is the Christian worldview itself which lay at the founding of modern science and which is therefore a ‘science starter’. And Christianity is also the worldview in which modern science also happens to find a very plausible and successful ‘theory of everything’.
Needless to say, those are not minor details for a worldview to be behind and to lay claim to.
Jerry @ 7
Interesting stats. There was a time when NY Times readers were somewhat sophisticated or at least well-read. To see those kinds of numbers for run-of-the-mill atheistic retorts is a big change.
There are at least 10 strong arguments for the existence of God. ID is one of them – and over time, it keeps getting stronger with more evidence. Atheism really has nothing. Evolution is the backbone of a lot of it, and that just keeps falling apart. It’s been refuted so many times that atheists don’t even bother trying to defend it (we have a few exceptions here, sort of).
There was also a time when arrogant atheists would join UD and proclaim their greatness and how dominant their worldview is. But when they encountered arguments they just got angry and insulting – then, rightly, got kicked out. Now it seems they’re huddling up in their safe-places, like the NY Times comment box.
Seversky
BA77 followed with a person who said, exactly, “I used to think religious people were ignoramuses”. It’s not a strawman when people actually say this. I’ve been in discussions with atheists for 20+ years and it’s very common to find the attitude that religious people are stupid.
Notice in this very OP – Jerry Coyne’s quoted paragraph right at the top of this page:
He’s saying it right here. First, he’s “puzzled” because “people who show intelligence” are are “deeply religious”. He expects only idiots.
He then says that Douhat’s effort to explain his faith is “embarrassing”. Why? Because people of faith are believed to be ignorant, and the cultured-class of the NY Times or the arrogance of atheism gets embarrassed when someone reveals faith in God. That embarrasses them because they expect it only of the most ignorant and uncultured.
So – it’s not a strawman.
They come from resources not created by human hands. Materialistic science cannot explain their origin – nor can it explain it’s own origin.
This question misses the point. It’s about an MIT professor stating that she does good work as a theist. The fact that she might work with atheists only underscores how religion is not an obstacle to science. In her view, it enhances her world. There’s no downside except for the prejudice against religion that we find in society from some people.
Some people believe that if we “eliminated all struggles” in life, then we would be happy and have a paradise and life would be great. Often, many seek to avoid struggles by use of opiates or even plain old excess in alcohol. But many others are greatful for struggles – because these provide an opportunity to excel, show greatness and triumph over obstacles, and realize the inner strength that each person has, which is only shown when tested.
If you look, for example, at Navy Seal training — you’d see soldiers who embrace the hardest struggles. They want to be stronger, not weaker.
God made us so that we desire peace, happiness and joy – and pleasures. But these are only appreciated at their best as a result of conflict.
Some people think that the purpose of life is to get as much pleasure as you can. If there’s no eternity with God, then you don’t have much choice. But that’s the problem with atheism. God made pleasures on earth which are good – but are only temporary. They’re a taste only, of something much better.
There is a wealth of answers to your questions already available, and that without even having to pray personally to find them. But even still, what you asked is far from unanswerable. God reveals answers to the various mysteries of life and has done it for all human history – in every culture.