blog response re: God

On another blog Mr. F commented (in red) [partially edited]:

I, too, might believe in a creator if someone could tell me where the creator came from, not to mention the creator's creator, and ....
I'm amused by people who claim things are the way they are because some god "fine-tuned" everything to make it work, not because that's just how things worked out after the big bang.
How come you people aren't out there rejoicing in the fact that their all-controlling god has given us earthquakes, drought, cancer and all the rest of life's goodies?

I responded (in blue)

“…where the creator came from, not to mention the creator’s creator…”
Who created the creator? First, Christian theology has always taught that God is uncreated. This is the definition all (both theists and atheists) accept (even if it turns out that no God exists). There seems to be no point in objecting to a being that no traditional Christian actually believes in.

And asking the question is a category mistake, like asking what the note C# tastes like (with apologies to synesthetes). You’re asking for the cause of an uncaused being. The appropriate response to the christian claim that an uncaused creator exists is not to ask, "Who created god?", but rather to present a counter-argument that states, "Such a god does not exist because of the following reasons...".


Second, as philosophers point out, to recognize that an explanation is the best one, you don’t need to know the explanation of that explanation. If we discovered a complex piece of machinery on one of Jupiter's moons, we would immediately infer that some intelligent being created it, even if we had no clue who these beings were and where they came from.

Requiring an explanation for the explanation would lead us into an infinite regress, and nothing would be explained at all. This type of thinking would end up destroying science.



The late philosopher of science, Peter Lipton wrote:
“The why-regress is a feature of the logic of explanation that many of us discovered as children, to our parents' cost. I vividly recall the moment it dawned on me that, whatever my mother's answer to my latest why-question, I could simply retort by asking 'Why?' of the answer itself, until my mother ran out of answers or patience...

[But] explanations need not themselves be understood. A drought may explain a poor crop, even if we don't understand why there was a drought; I understand why you didn't come to the party if you explain you had a bad headache, even if I have no idea why you had a headache; the big bang explains the background radiation, even if the big bang is itself inexplicable, and so on...
...the [why-regress] argument brings out the important facts that explanations can be chained, and that what explains need not itself be understood...”




Third, there are only 2 explanations for the existence of any being: a) it's explanation is internal to itself (i.e. it is necessary – its nonexistence is impossible) or b) it depends on something(s) outside of itself (i.e. it is contingent – it didn’t have to exist). If one accepts that the universe is the sum total of contingent beings, and since it began to exist, its cause must be a necessary, uncaused being.



“…because that’s just how things worked out after the big bang.”
The fine tuning includes the precise balance of initial conditions given in the big bang itself. The fine tuning did not just work itself out after the beginning of the universe and it is highly improbable naturalistically.



“earthquakes, etc.”
Moral order requires natural order. A world characterized by orderly physical laws is necessary for responsible human action. We need nature to behave in regular ways to know the effects of our actions. If we jump off a cliff we know what will happen based on the law of gravity, for example. These laws are capable of producing both beneficial and harmful effects. The water needed to live can also drown you. Natural disasters and diseases follow these same physical laws.