Reasons for Everything

My mother is fond of saying, "Everything happens for a reason."  I agree with her, but not in the way you'd think.

She, unlike myself, is a theist.  The "reason" she attributes everything to ultimately boils down to nothing short of a divine plan authored by some all-knowing being.  As a loud, snooty man on Fox News is fond of saying, "the sun goes up and comes down", and that's enough to ascribe an invisible father figure to it all.

I'm somewhat of a determinist.  Now I don't think there's an ultimate plan for anything -- I'm no fatalist.  But I do think things happen for reasons we can either explain, or can't (yet?).  Say, casting a handful of dice.  Natural forces determine how the dice will fall; everything from the strength and angle of your hand, to its height above the table, to the material makeup of the dice and the surface, to air pressure, to the tilt of the earth, and any number of other factors.  But that does not mean that it's written somewhere ahead of time "On March 21, 2011, STA will throw a 2, 4, and 5 on 3d6."  We can't really process all the factors in a seemingly random event, like a dice throw -- that's why we use them to determine random outcomes.  If we really could process it all, it wouldn't seem random.

Therefore, I don't really believe in randomness. We might not know or understand all the circumstances for an event, but I don't think we can accurately say a thing just randomly happens.  Even quantum mechanics might have some extenuating circumstances that lie beyond a certain complexity boundary for its seemingly random goings-on.  I see randomness as a label that we put on too-hard-to-calculate events.

Sure, things happen for a reason.  But those reasons have reasons themselves, and they've nothing to do with gods or magic.  There may be a reason for everything, but it's just a whole lot bigger than you or I can comprehend...without the need for God.

-STA

Not 50/50

Professor Richard Dawkins had a chapter in his recent book The God Delusion that was devoted to the probability of God. The idea is still very much ingrained in the minds of theists (committed or not) that the probability that a god exists is exactly proportionate to the probability that a god does not exist. Many people think it's 50/50. You can't prove nor disprove the existence of god, so that gives him a 50/50 shot at being real, right?


Know When To Walk Away...
Wrong. Those who think so don't truly understand the laws governing probability. Suppose you are in your car driving toward an intersection. The choice is: do you stop at the sign? Well, you either will or will not get hit by an oncoming car, so your chances are 50/50, right? Again, wrong. I hope this simple analogy illustrates the point that just by having two choices doesn't automatically place said choices on equal footing. This should be obvious to anyone -- but if you still don't think so, I hope I won't meet you out on the highway.

In his chapter on the God Hypothesis, Professor Dawkins looks at a "spectrum of probability", with seven benchmarks ranging from "I KNOW there is a god" to "I KNOW there is no god". Both such claims require evidence to be taken seriously. Dawkins then goes on throughout the book showing the so-called "evidence" for God's existence is nothing short of infinitesimal. In short, there is more evidence in favor of no god than in favor for it.


Because We're Here...
But Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Janists, Zoroastrians, or any other God-believing school of thought would say otherwise. It is in the area of scientific inquiry that the claims of evidence for the existence of deities must be tried and tested. So far, those tests have shown absolutly nothing supernatural or God-like. Perhaps one day we'll find a nugget of evidence that can't be explained any possible way other than appeals to God, but such a day would also morn the loss of science itself. For simply concluding "god did it" is not an answer. There will always be questions. How did "god" do it, exactly? With what? And what IS this god anyway? To throw your hands up and say "god" is to embrace ignorance and bemoan true understanding.


-STA