omniscience, or compassion, or even monotheism. And Aristotle, in fact, deduced several dozen first causes in his theology.
The second standard Western argument using reason for God is the so-called argument from design, which we have already talked about, both in its biological context and in the recent astrophysical incarnation called the anthropic principle. It is at best an argument from analogy; that is, that some things were made by humans and now here is something more complex that wasn't made by us, so maybe it was made by an intelligent being smarter than us. Well, maybe, but that is not a compelling argument. I tried to stress earlier the extent to which misunderstandings, failure of the imagination, and especially the lack of awareness of new underlying principles may lead us into error with the argument from design. The extraordinary insights of Charles Darwin on the biological end of the argument of design provide clear warning that there may be principles that we do not yet divine (if I may use that word) underlying apparent order.
There is certainly a lot of order in the universe, but there is also a lot of chaos. The centers of galaxies routinely explode, and if there are inhabited worlds and civilizations there, they are destroyed by the millions, with each explosion of the galactic nucleus or a quasar. That does not sound very much like a god who knows what he, she, or it is doing. It sounds more like an apprentice god in over his head. Maybe they start them out at the centers of galaxies and then after a while, when they get some experience, move them on to more important assignments.
Then there is the moral argument for the existence of God generally attributed to Immanuel Kant, who was very good at showing the deficiencies of some of the other arguments. Kant's argument is very simple. It's just that we are moral beings; therefore God exists. That is, how else would we know to be moral?
Well, first of all you might argue that the premise is dubious. The degree to which humans can be said to be moral beings without the existence of some police force is open at least to debate. But let's put that aside for the moment. Many animals have codes of behavior. Altruism, incest taboos, compassion for the young, you find in all sorts of animals. Nile crocodiles carry their eggs in their mouths for enormous distances to protect the young. They could make an omelette out of it, but they choose not to do so. Why not? Because those crocodiles who enjoy eating the eggs of their young leave no offspring. And after a while all you have is crocodiles who know how to take care of the young. It's very easy to see. And yet we have a sense of thinking of that as being somehow ethical behavior. I'm not against taking care of children; I'm strongly for it. All I'm saying is, it does not follow if we are powerfully motivated to take care of our young or the young of everybody on the planet, that God made us do it. Natural selection can make us do it, and almost surely has. What's more, once humans reach the point of awareness of their surroundings, we can figure things out, and we can see what's good for our own survival as a community or a nation or a species and take steps to ensure our survival. It's not hopelessly beyond our ability. It's not clear to me that this requires the existence of God to explain the limited but definite degree of moral and ethical behavior that is apparent in human society.
Then there is the curious argument, unique to the West, called the 'ontological argument,' which is generally associated with [St.] Anselm, who died in 1109. His argument can be very simply stated: God is perfect. Existence is an essential attribute of perfection. Therefore, God exists. Got it? I'll say it again. God is perfect. Existence is an essential attribute of perfection. You can't be perfect if you don't exist, Anselm says. Therefore God exists. While this argument has for brief moments captured very significant thinkers (Bertrand Russell describes how it suddenly hit him that Anselm might be right-for about fifteen minutes), this is not considered a successful argument. The twentieth-century logician Ernest Nagel described it as 'confounding grammar with logic.'
What does it mean, 'God is perfect'? You need a separate description of what constitutes perfection. It's not enough to say 'perfect' and do not ask what 'perfect' means. And how do you know God is perfect? Maybe that's not the god that exists, the perfect one. Maybe it's only imperfect ones that exist. And then why is it that existence is an essential attribute of perfection? Why isn't nonexistence an essential attribute of perfection? We are talking words. In fact, there is the remark that is sometimes made about Buddhism, I think in a kindly light, that their god is so great he doesn't even have to exist. And that is the perfect counterpoise to the ontological argument. In any case, I do not think that the ontological argument is compelling.
Then there's the argument from consciousness. I think, therefore, God exists; that is, how could consciousness come into being? And, indeed, we do not know the details in any but the very broadest brush about the evolution of consciousness. That is on the agenda of future neurological science. But we do know, for example, that an earthworm introduced into a Y-shaped glass tube with, let's say, an electric shock on the right-hand fork and food in the left-hand fork, rapidly learns to take the left fork. Does an earthworm have consciousness if it is able after a certain number of trials invariably to know where the food is and the shock isn't? And if an earthworm has consciousness, could a protozoan have consciousness? Many phototropic microorganisms know to go to the light. They have some kind of internal perception of where the light is, and nobody taught them that it's good to go to the light. They had that information in their hereditary material. It's encoded into their genes and chromosomes. Well, did God put that information there, or might it have evolved through natural selection?
It is clearly good for the survival of microorganisms to know where the light is, especially the ones that photosynthesize. It is certainly good for earthworms to know where the food is. Those earthworms that can't figure out where the food is leave few offspring. After a while the ones that survive know where the food is. Those phototropic or phototactic offspring have encoded into their genetic material how to find the light. It is not apparent that God has entered into the process. Maybe, but it's not a compelling argument. And the general view of many, not all, neuro-biologists is that consciousness is a function of the number and complexity of neuronal linkages of the architecture of the brain. Human consciousness is what happens when you get to something like 1011 neurons and 1014 synapses. This raises all sorts of other questions: What is consciousness like when you have 1020 synapses or 1030? What would such a being have to say to us any more than we would have to say to the ants? So at least it does not seem to me that the argument from consciousness, a continuum of consciousness running through the animal and plant kingdoms, proves the existence of God. We have an alternative explanation that seems to 'work pretty well. We don't know the details, although work on artificial intelligence may help to clarify that. But we don't know the details of the alternative hypothesis either. So it could hardly be said that this is compelling.
Then there's the argument from experience. People have religious experiences. No question about it. They have them worldwide, and there are some interesting similarities in the religious experiences that are had worldwide. They are powerful, emotionally extremely convincing, and they often lead to people reforming their lives and doing good works, although the opposite also happens. Now, what about this? Well, I do not mean in any way to object to or deride religious experiences. But the question is, can any such experience provide other than anecdotal evidence of the existence of God or gods? One million UFO cases since 1947. And yet, as far as we can tell, they do not correspond-any of them-to visitations to the Earth by spacecraft from elsewhere. Large numbers of people can have experiences that can be profound and moving and still not correspond to anything like an exact sense of external reality. And the same can be said not just about UFOs but about extrasensory perception and ghosts and leprechauns and so on. Every culture has things of this sort. That doesn't mean that they all exist; it doesn't mean that any of them exist.
I also note that religious experiences can be brought on by specific molecules. There are many cultures that consciously imbibe or ingest those molecules in order to bring on a religious experience. The peyote cult of some Native Americans is exactly that, as is the use of wine as a sacrament in many Western religions. It's a very long list of materials that are taken by humans in order to produce a religious experience. This suggests that there is some molecular basis for the religious experience and that it need not correspond to some external reality I think it's a fairly central point-that religious experiences, personal religious experiences, not the natural theological evidence for God, if any, can be brought on by molecules of finite complexity.
So if I then run through these arguments-the cosmological argument, the argument from design, the moral argument, the ontological argument, the argument from consciousness, and the argument from experience-I must say that the net result is not very impressive. It is very much as if we are seeking a rational justification for something that we otherwise hope will be true.
And then there are certain classical problems with the existence of God. Let me mention a few of them. One is the famous problem of evil. This basically goes as follows: Grant for a moment that evil exists in the world and that unjust actions sometimes go unpunished. And grant also that there is a God that is benevolent toward human beings, omniscient, and omnipotent. This God loves justice, this God observes all human actions, and this God is capable of intervening decisively in human affairs. Well, it was understood by the pre-Socratic philosophers that all
