Why Atheists and Theists Can’t Agree

“I feel the Spirit.” “No, that’s just neurons firing.”

Recently, I published The Faith of Militant Atheism as a response to Benjamin Cain’s essay, The Feebleness of the Backyard Church’s Argument for Theism, which itself was a response to Dan Foster.

In that essay, I argued that atheists like Benjamin Cain could benefit from some humility when debating the divine. No human can claim absolute certainty about anything beyond our material world.

Here, I suggest that atheists and theists will never see eye-to-eye because their views of “valid evidence” fundamentally differ.

Science and Faith

Cain and other atheists point to science to skewer theistic and spiritual beliefs. They say, “Look at everything we know about the origins of the universe, the evolution of species, quantum mechanics, climate patterns, germs, and all the things pre-scientific people turned to superstitious religion to understand.”

However, science does not even attempt to answer questions about the divine. Science deals with the natural and the testable, not the supernatural and untestable. It addresses “what” and “how,” not “why.”

To be fair, sometimes religious people deny basic science and attempt to demolish mountains of evidence for the Big Bang, dinosaurs, and evolution. Some engage in outright quackery and irrationality.

To be even more fair, ancient peoples did interpret plagues, famines, and wars as the result of displeased gods. Apollo’s arrows infected many a Greek with plague. Zeus impregnated many unwed daughters.

But many religious folks embrace all that science tells us about creation yet continue to believe in God. Why? They don’t base their belief on a literal understanding of Genesis or any other sacred text. They don’t base it on childhood indoctrination or superstitions.

They base their beliefs on personal experience of God, witnessing the presence of the Divine in others, and their wonder at the mind-boggling scientific details of creation.

Interpreting the Evidence

In Cain’s words, a “fluctuation in quantum chaos somehow existing outside of space and time” is physicists’ best guess as to The Big Bang’s cause. According to Philip Rolnick in Origins, scientists still can’t penetrate the first nanoseconds of the universe’s existence and expansion.

No matter how you slice it, though, something existed for no apparent reason, cause, or purpose. Maybe it was mindless quantum particles. Maybe it was God. Perhaps it was some combination of both. We don’t know.

So, Benjamin Cain learns that physicists think a “fluctuation in quantum chaos somehow existing outside of space and time” sparked The Big Bang, and he chooses to believe, “See, there’s no Creator.”

I consider a “fluctuation in quantum chaos somehow existing outside of space and time” — a fluctuation that didn’t have to happen, in quantum material that didn’t have to exist, that existed outside of the material realms of space and time — that condensed all the universe’s known matter and energy into a ball smaller than an atom, which then exploded into the infinite expanse we see today and settled into stars, planets, and raw materials that eventually became human beings, and I choose to believe, “Wow, there’s a Creator.”

Some learn about the exquisite “fine-tuning” of the universe from its earliest state and decide, “Oooh, so that’s how things just happened to happen.”

I think about gravity being “fine-tuned” at 10 to the 60th power — that’s a 1 with 60 zeros behind it — from the earliest meaningful moment of space and time, and I decide, “I don’t have enough faith to believe something like that just happened.”

If gravity had been the tiniest bit stronger, the universe could not have expanded beyond its initial explosion. If gravity had been the tiniest bit weaker, the universe would not have held together enough to form anything.

A change of just one part [zero] in 10 to the 60th power in either direction, too much gravity or too much outward force, would have prevented the formation of a life-bearing universe. — Philip Rolnick, Origins

It’s a bit strong, then, to attack someone’s argument for the existence of a Creator by citing scientific evidence and claiming that theists lack zero credible, rational evidence for their beliefs.

Except.

Theists don’t have any evidence or interpretations that atheists value.

What Constitutes Valid Evidence?

Atheists interpret the theist’s evidence differently than the theist.

They hear about a believer’s personal, subjective experience of the Holy Spirit, and they interpret it as neurons firing, not a supernatural presence.

They listen to descriptions of people who radiate Christ, and they wonder how much we’re projecting traits onto that person.

They interpret the universe’s fine-tuning as random chance. They reject — a priori, or as an assumed fact — any role for a Creator “somehow existing outside of space and time,” outside or inside the material universe.

Theists and atheists will never agree because they possess fundamentally different standards for what constitutes “valid evidence.”

Consider the following excerpts from comments on my article, The Faith of Militant Atheism. Added emphasis is mine.

We have yet to observe even one astronomical phenomenon, that could only be explained by supernatural means.

I feel like we should at least leave open the possibility of explaining a quantum “egg” existing outside space and time through supernatural means.

I feel the same about quantum entanglement, something Albert Einstein described as “spooky action at a distance.”

Gods are beings of mythological origin. There is no reason to think mythological beings or events are real. No reliable evidence for the existence of any god has ever been produced.

What would be reliable evidence for this commenter? Surely not that time I felt the Holy Spirit come upon me.

There’s mystery to the universe and our existence. Call it “God” if you like. That doesn’t help me understand it any better.

What if understanding is not the point? What if calling it “God” is about surrendering to the mystery?

It isn’t irrational at all for the empirical perspective to [regard religion as magical thinking] when there is nothing measurable to support it. Let’s be frank here, there is nothing in the natural world that offers the non-indoctrinated mind any reference.

What measurements of God’s presence in my life would satisfy this commenter? Probably not an answered prayer that couldn’t be chalked up to coincidence.

Claiming something might exist because there is no evidence against it is called the argument from ignorance. It’s a logical fallacy because it could be used to justify anything non-falsifiable.

Yet I’m saying there is evidence for God, not just “no evidence against it.” Oh wait, I forgot. My evidence isn’t valid.

And I don’t mean that sarcastically. I presented evidence in the article. This commentator values different types of evidence and devalues what I presented. From that perspective, I did “argue from ignorance.”

Science tests claims about the supernatural all the time — ghosts, psychics, mediums, faith healers, people who claim to speak to God. With zero credible evidence to support any of them.

I don’t believe in ghosts, psychics, mediums, unicorns, centaurs, or Zeus either. But we’re not talking about any of those things.

We’re talking about whatever happened in the nanoseconds of The Big Bang. We’re talking about whatever fine-tuned gravity. And we’re talking about why.

In short, if one can believe that a cosmic “egg” just existed and then just exploded into an extremely fine-tuned universe, then why can’t one believe that a Higher Power or Creator played some part in it?

Evidence and the Example of “Many Worlds”

Sean Carroll, a renown physicist who hosts the popular science podcast Mindscape, believes the “many worlds” hypothesis best explains the existence of our universe.

Notice as you continue reading that embracing the “many worlds” hypothesis requires both scientific evidence and a ton of faith.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) describes the “many worlds” hypothesis:

Every time a quantum experiment with different possible outcomes is performed, all outcomes are obtained, each in a different newly created world, even if we are only aware of the world with the outcome we have seen.

I’m not a physicist, but here’s my best understanding of the “many worlds” hypothesis based on the SEP and this essay in Nature.

• Subatomic particles interact in “wave functions” that produce results when they are observed experimentally.
• Outside the lab, the results of wave functions create the reality around us.
• There is one wave function in the entire universe.
• Whenever that wave function causes something, its other potential results branch off and create parallel universes that we can’t observe.
• Schrodinger’s famous “cat in the box,” therefore, exists alive in one universe and dead in another.
• If we find a dead cat in the box, we can’t observe and know it’s alive in a parallel universe, but we trust that it is.

If the “many worlds” hypothesis is true, then Avengers: Endgame gets time-travel right.

When the heroes travel back in time, they can’t undo their past and prevent Thanos from killing half the universe. They can only create an alternate reality for themselves, while their past selves continue living in a parallel, inaccessible, unobservable universe depopulated by Thanos.

In summary, there’s some scientific evidence for the “many worlds” hypothesis: quantum experiments demonstrating wave functions and their outcomes, and the incompleteness of existing quantum theories.

But there’s also an explicit faith. We can’t observe the alternate universes. We presume that they exist. Sean Carroll even calls this hypothesis the “courageous” approach for physics.

Sean Carroll, Benjamin Cain, and the commenters above share at least one thing in common: they view scientific approaches to reality as inherently valid but regard spiritual approaches to reality as inherently invalid.

They can believe in unobservable parallel universes branching off quantum wave functions in our universe every nanosecond because it seems to reconcile some problems with the standard model of quantum mechanics.

But they can’t believe in an unobservable being, entity, force, Higher Power, or Creator because that’s just rubbish.

Conclusion

No one ever became a Christian because that person lost the debate about God’s existence.

I’m not trying to persuade anyone to become a Christian. In fact, I’m trying to persuade Christians to stop using apologetics to persuade people to be Christian!

I’m merely saying: Christians have evidence for their beliefs, too. You’re not deluded if you interpret certain evidence as supporting your faith.

We don’t have good evidence of a “young earth,” but Genesis isn’t meant to be taken literally anyway. We don’t have evidence that counters evolution, that a global flood happened, and so on, but the Bible is not a science textbook or the only foundation to faith.

Atheists and believers will never agree on God’s existence. But maybe, just maybe, believers can offer love and acceptance and thereby heal some of the pain many atheists have experienced at the hands of organized religion.

What better way to show God’s existence than to bring His Kingdom to earth.

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