richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion
A R G U M E N T S F O R G O D ' S E X I S T E N C E 77Arguments for the existence of God have been codified for centuriesby theologians, and supplemented by others, including purveyors ofmisconceived 'common sense'.THOMAS AQUINAS' 'PROOFS'The five 'proofs' asserted by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenthcentury don't prove anything, and are easily - though I hesitate tosay so, given his eminence - exposed as vacuous. The first three arejust different ways of saying the same thing, and they can be consideredtogether. All involve an infinite regress - the answer to aquestion raises a prior question, and so on ad infinitum.1 The Unmoved Mover. Nothing moves without a prior mover.This leads us to a regress, from which the only escape is God.Something had to make the first move, and that something wecall God.2 The Uncaused Cause. Nothing is caused by itself. Every effecthas a prior cause, and again we are pushed back into regress.This has to be terminated by a first cause, which we callGod.3 The Cosmological Argument. There must have been a timewhen no physical things existed. But, since physical things existnow, there must have been something non-physical to bringthem into existence, and that something we call God.All three of these arguments rely upon the idea of a regress andinvoke God to terminate it. They make the entirely unwarrantedassumption that God himself is immune to the regress. Even if weallow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator toan infinite regress and giving it a name, simply because we needone, there is absolutely no reason to endow that terminator withany of the properties normally ascribed to God: omnipotence,omniscience, goodness, creativity of design, to say nothing of suchhuman attributes as listening to prayers, forgiving sins and reading
78 THE GOD DELUSIONinnermost thoughts. Incidentally, it has not escaped the notice of logiciansthat omniscience and omnipotence are mutually incompatible. IfGod is omniscient, he must already know how he is going to interveneto change the course of history using his omnipotence. But that meanshe can't change his mind about his intervention, which means he is notomnipotent. Karen Owens has captured this witty little paradox inequally engaging verse:Can omniscient God, whoKnows the future, findThe omnipotence toChange His future mind?To return to the infinite regress and the futility of invoking Godto terminate it, it is more parsimonious to conjure up, say, a 'bigbang singularity', or some other physical concept as yet unknown.Calling it God is at best unhelpful and at worst perniciously misleading.Edward Lear's Nonsense Recipe for Crumboblious Cutletsinvites us to 'Procure some strips of beef, and having cut them intothe smallest possible pieces, proceed to cut them still smaller, eightor perhaps nine times.' Some regresses do reach a naturalterminator. Scientists used to wonder what would happen if youcould dissect, say, gold into the smallest possible pieces. Whyshouldn't you cut one of those pieces in half and produce an evensmaller smidgen of gold? The regress in this case is decisivelyterminated by the atom. The smallest possible piece of gold is anucleus consisting of exactly seventy-nine protons and a slightlylarger number of neutrons, attended by a swarm of seventy-nineelectrons. If you 'cut' gold any further than the level of the singleatom, whatever else you get it is not gold. The atom provides anatural terminator to the Crumboblious Cutlets type of regress. Itis by no means clear that God provides a natural terminator to theregresses of Aquinas. That's putting it mildly, as we shall see later.Let's move on down Aquinas' list.4 The Argument from Degree. We notice that things in the worlddiffer. There are degrees of, say, goodness or perfection. Butwe judge these degrees only by comparison with a maximum.
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A R G U M E N T S F O R G O D ' S E X I S T E N C E 77
Arguments for the existence of God have been codified for centuries
by theologians, and supplemented by others, including purveyors of
misconceived 'common sense'.
THOMAS AQUINAS' 'PROOFS'
The five 'proofs' asserted by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth
century don't prove anything, and are easily - though I hesitate to
say so, given his eminence - exposed as vacuous. The first three are
just different ways of saying the same thing, and they can be considered
together. All involve an infinite regress - the answer to a
question raises a prior question, and so on ad infinitum.
1 The Unmoved Mover. Nothing moves without a prior mover.
This leads us to a regress, from which the only escape is God.
Something had to make the first move, and that something we
call God.
2 The Uncaused Cause. Nothing is caused by itself. Every effect
has a prior cause, and again we are pushed back into regress.
This has to be terminated by a first cause, which we call
God.
3 The Cosmological Argument. There must have been a time
when no physical things existed. But, since physical things exist
now, there must have been something non-physical to bring
them into existence, and that something we call God.
All three of these arguments rely upon the idea of a regress and
invoke God to terminate it. They make the entirely unwarranted
assumption that God himself is immune to the regress. Even if we
allow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator to
an infinite regress and giving it a name, simply because we need
one, there is absolutely no reason to endow that terminator with
any of the properties normally ascribed to God: omnipotence,
omniscience, goodness, creativity of design, to say nothing of such
human attributes as listening to prayers, forgiving sins and reading
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