Faithroots is a blog about theology and apologetics that posted “God in the dock: objections to his greatness and goodness (part 2)”. The post covers several arguments for and against the existence of God. It’s interesting to me for a couple reasons. For one, it appears to be a good faith effort to present the atheist side fairly. Two, it treats several of the “big arguments” appropriately. These include the cosmological argument, the ontological argument, and the problem of evil. By “appropriately,” I mean that they are all treated as neither conclusively sound nor conclusively unsound.

There are a few particular sections, however, that I want to respond to.

Atheists have two real options. The first is that there was a when, when there was nothing, in which case, they’ve still got to explain how that primordial soup turned up. Or alternatively, they’ve got to say that matter itself is eternal, that there’s been some form of energy around in what we might call the “previ-verse.”

Or, a third option, perhaps the question doesn’t even make sense because we don’t understand time, space, and matter. Science has demonstrated that humans are adapted to think about things of “medium” size, duration, and velocity. Nothing too massive like a black hole and nothing too fast or too small. Outside of the range of our ordinary experiences, physics does not behave in the ways we would intuitively expect. Relativity suggests the Big Bang as a cosmic origin, but there is much we still don’t know about the origin of the universe.

A fourth option is just “I don’t know.” I don’t have to claim anything about the origin of the universe. This approach is sometimes criticized by theists, but the fact is we don’t and can’t know everything. Some things are just unknown.

I think the best argument in favor of the dichotomy Faithroots describes is the law of excluded middle (LEM). This logical axiom says that for any proposition P, either P is true or P is false. Notice however that not all statements in English are logical propositions. Statements can be vague, such that they could be true or false depending on your interpretation, or statements can be paradoxical (like “this statement is false”) with no defined truth value. So can we say that it’s the case that either the universe began at some time t=0 or the universe has existed forever? Maybe. All that being said, I’m not strongly opposed to either of the options presented by Faithroots. I don’t find either of them to be outright absurd to the extent of being impossible.

So when I’m looking for a credible metanarrative, I don’t find that the “atheistic evolution” story hangs together. It doesn’t make sense of the things it is meant to make sense of. For example, we talk about “evolutionary progress,” but without a sense that there’s a standard to measure how we are doing against and a goal to go towards. So then the idea of progress becomes meaningless. It’s like taking a walk without either a map or an intended destination. You can’t call that “progress.” It’s just wandering around!

I agree that there is no evolutionary progress. However, I don’t think any working biologist is likely to talk about things in terms of progress (except in the sense of “a progression”). This idea was abandoned a long time ago. Instead, evolution is just a process. Where evolution goes depends on the environment and how organisms are able to adapt. We don’t talk about “progress” with other natural processes. We don’t say that gravity makes progress by bringing massive objects together, or that a river makes progress by eroding the riverbed. These are just things that happen within the natural world.

In fact, this is what we’ve seen in recent times. That metanarrative collapsed. If ontologically everything is random, if we are just here by chance, then epistemologically things end up the same way too. We find that we can’t actually tell a story to describe who we are, why we got here and what we are doing. The metanarrative collapses. Stories and even language itself become arbitrary. That’s why you end up with postmodernism.

This is reminiscent of Alvin Plantinga’s argument against naturalism and evolution. He says that the probability of developing reliable senses (capable of discerning truth) given naturalism and evolution is low, meaning we should have a low confidence in evolution and naturalism being true. The problem is that reliable senses are clearly more adaptive in a wide range of circumstances, so we would in fact expect reliable senses to evolve naturalistically. Ad hoc adaptations that don’t reflect reality will always fail in different contexts, whereas adaptations that do reflect reality will still be useful if things change. Moreover, we know many of the specific ways in which our senses can be limited or misleading. These “flaws” of perception also make sense evolutionarily as we wouldn’t expect something perfect, we’d expect good enough.

I think Faithroots is actually getting at something different here, more the idea that humans have no inherent purpose in light of “atheistic evolution.” The next paragraph clears this up:

You see, the story in the end is not about humanity at all, but about these things called genes that replicate and mutate and supposedly do what they need to in order to survive – but no one can actually tell me why these genes should exist or want to keep on existing. There is no meaning to existence. So I think that the other story carries more credibility; I do better to go back to revelation.

There is no real accounting for what a person subjectively finds credible. However, the lack of meaning here is not evidence against evolution and naturalism.

Genes indeed have no reason why they “should” exist, nor do they want to keep on existing. Genes that promote self-replication just win out against genes that don’t promote self-replication, because self-replication creates more self-replicating genes. Genes exist because of chemistry, not for any purpose or goal.

Further on, Fathroots describes the related is-ought problem.

Now, this is a perfectly logical conclusion for atheists to come to. If all we have is the Universe around us, then there is nothing greater than it, nothing beyond or outside of it. We have on way of telling how things “ought” to be. All we can do is describe how things are. 

This is in effect a logical conclusion of belief that the foundational absolute is matter. Words like love justice, compassion, mercy, forgiveness, retribution, restoration really are just words to describe the reality. They are just labels for observable chemical processes and interactions between organisms but we should not load them with any value.

The problem is that not many people really want to do this. Generally speaking, people want to talk about goodness and morality.  Generally speaking, as well, we tend to talk about evolution in terms of progress.  It’s not just that things change, mutations are meant to lead to improvements. 

I disagree with “the problem” here. First, the statement “we should not load them with any value” is an ought statement. From the atheist perspective being described here, it doesn’t apply. We can, and in fact do, load these words and concepts with value. And there’s no reason why we shouldn’t. Seeing things in terms of value and meaning is just how humans are. This is an is statement about what humans actually do when behaving morally.

Second, I’ll reiterate that it’s not correct or proper to talk about evolution in terms of progress. Regardless of your religious beliefs, this is an inaccurate understanding of the modern theory of evolution. There are about as many positive mutations as negative ones (with most mutations being neutral). “Positive” and “negative” here are contextual, as an adaptation that is needed to survive in one environment may be deadly in another. For example, a thick layer of fat and dense fur may be necessary to survive arctic winters, but would rapidly cause an animal to overheat and die in the desert.

I find the Faithroots’ broader points about the Bible unconvincing, but for what it’s worth it seems like a theologically reasonable position.