{"id":8634,"date":"2020-03-18T17:14:04","date_gmt":"2020-03-19T00:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=8634"},"modified":"2020-10-18T11:38:15","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T18:38:15","slug":"john-allen-paulos-iireligion-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2020\/03\/18\/john-allen-paulos-iireligion-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"John Allen Paulos, IRRELIGION (2008)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/PaulosIrr.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-8636\" src=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/PaulosIrr-300x205.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"642\" height=\"439\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/PaulosIrr-300x205.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/PaulosIrr-768x525.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/PaulosIrr-1024x700.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/PaulosIrr.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 642px) 100vw, 642px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nJohn Allen Paulos, <b>Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don&#8217;t Add Up.\u00a0<\/b> Farrar, Straus and Giroux\/Hill and Wang, 2008.<\/p>\n<p>John Allen Paulos is a professor of mathematics who\u2019s become, over the past three decades, well-known as an author who applies basic mathematical reasoning to everyday topics. His first hit was <strong>Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences <\/strong>(1988), exploring how misconceptions about math, especially statistics and probability, leads to errors in public policy and personal decisions. A later book, <strong>A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper<\/strong> (1995), extended the theme. (Understanding basic mathematical ideas like these and applying them to everyday things is part of my general concept of being \u201csavvy.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>The book here, slender and breezy, applies mathematical reasoning and simple logic to the various arguments for the existence of God, and finds those arguments wanting (of course). Appearing in 2008, this book can be seen in the context of the various \u201cnew atheism\u201d books by Harris, Dawkins, et al, that appeared in the mid-2000s. There was obviously an audience for books that dismantled the presumptions of religious faith.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brief Summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Four classical arguments for the existence of God are examined and dismissed for logical incoherence and\/or statistical implausibility: arguments from first cause, from design, from the anthropic principle, from ontology.<\/li>\n<li>Four subjective arguments, from coincidence, prophecy, subjectivity, and interventions, are dismantled on statistical grounds.<\/li>\n<li>And four Psycho-Mathematical arguments &#8212; on redefinition, cognitive tendency, universality, and gambling &#8212; are also dismantled.<\/li>\n<li>With asides about a personal pseudoscience, recursion, emotional need, Jesus and CS Lewis, a dream conversation with God, and the idea of &#8220;brights.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Detailed Summary: [[ with comments in brackets ]]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Preface<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This book addresses if there are logical reasons to believe in God. (Author is droll: \u201cThere are many who seem to be impressed with the argument that God exists simply because He says He does in a much extolled tome that He allegedly inspired.\u201d) Author claims an inborn materialism\u2014that matter and motion are the basis of all that there is. Recalls adolescent skepticism about Santa Claus, and God\u2014what caused or preceded him?. The inherent illogic to all arguments for the existence of God are addressed here. The book will be informal and brisk, with no equations. Author always wondered about a proto-religion for atheists and agnostics that would still acknowledge the wonder of the universe: the \u201cYeah-ist\u201d religion, \u201cwhose response to the intricacy, beauty, and mystery of the world is a simple affirmation and acceptance: Yeah.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Four classical arguments\u2014<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Argument from First Cause (and Unnecessary Intermediaries)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Argument: Everything has a cause; nothing is its own cause; there had to be a first cause; call it God.<\/p>\n<p>The problem here is the first assumption\u2014either everything has a cause, or it doesn\u2019t. If the former, God has a cause too; if the latter, why invoke God?; maybe the universe itself has no cause. Related is the natural-law argument, that something must have caused the particular natural laws we see in the universe.<\/p>\n<p>The very notion of cause has its problems. And perhaps the assumption that nothing is its own cause is the problem.<\/p>\n<p>[[ the other problem with arguments like this is that, even if valid, what does the \u2018god\u2019 of this argument have to do with any particular conception of what god is? ]]<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Argument from Design (and Some Creationist Calculations)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Argument: The universe is too complex (or beautiful) to have come about by accident; it must have been created; thus God exists. (Alternatively, the universe seems to have a purpose; thus God.)<\/p>\n<p>Example of William Paley and the watch on the beach.<\/p>\n<p>The problem with this argument is knowing what\u2019s \u2018too\u2019 complex to come about randomly. In any event, wouldn\u2019t the creator be even more complex in order to have created the universe? Who created the creator\u2019s complexity? It\u2019s a metaphysical Ponzi scheme. Like a mnemonic more complicated than what it\u2019s designed to remember. In contrast, we have a well-confirmed explanation for the origin of life\u2019s complexity: evolution.<\/p>\n<p>Those opposed to evolution who cite calculations of improbability of a given occurrence (like the eye) miss the point. The argument is deeply flawed; any particular development is unlikely, just as any particular arrangement of a shuffled deck of cards is unlike. Then there is Michael Behe\u2019s irreducible complexity, applied to, say, the clotting of blood. Again, such complexity is explained by evolution; yet those who reject evolution are immune to such explanations.<\/p>\n<p>Further, we can compare evolutionary matters to free-market economies\u2014were those economies set into place, someone determining every rule in advance? Of course not; the system emerged and grew by itself. Odd that opponents of evolution usually support free-markets\u2014they reject the idea of central planning (yet presume such central planning by the omniscient creator). So too does software like the game of Life and Wolfram\u2019s cellular automatons show how simple rules result in great complexity; these ideas are not new. Someone who claimed the economy was the result of a detail-obsessed, all-powerful lawgiver might be thought a conspiracy theorist.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A Personally Crafted Pseudoscience<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Digression. To anticipate the following arguments: Take any four numbers associated with yourself\u2014height, weight, birth date etc\u2014and consider various powers and products of them. (It\u2019s straightforward to set up a computer program to generate thousands of combinations of product and factors, etc.) It\u2019s likely that some of these combinations will be close to the speed of light and other such universal constants\u2014especially if you juggle units. Does this imply you have a personal relationship with creation?<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Argument from the Anthropic Principle (and a Probabilistic Doomsday)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Argument: the physical constants are such that if they were slightly different, humans wouldn\u2019t exist; humans exist; so those contants must have been fine-tuned by God.<\/p>\n<p>Well, maybe other creatures would exist if the constants were different; one can\u2019t know. There may be many universes, each with different laws and constants.<\/p>\n<p>Related is the phenomenon of self-selection, applied to the Doomsday argument\u2014example to judge why doomsday, that might happen anytime, should happen in any particular person\u2019s lifetime.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Ontological Argument (and Logical Abracadabra)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Examples of this go back to Plato\u2019s <em>Euthydemus<\/em>. This concerns paradoxical, self-referential statements. e.g., If this statement is true, then God exists. Such statements can be used to prove, or disprove, anything.<\/p>\n<p>Argument: The classic argument is that by definition God is the greatest and most perfect being; it\u2019s more perfect to exist than not; therefore he exists.<\/p>\n<p>The same argument could prove that a perfect island exists. Hume observed the only way words can prove anything is where a contradiction can be shown, e.g. that God is both omnipotent and omniscient. But no such disproof of God\u2019s existence is possible.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Self-recursion, Recursion, and Creation<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Digression: Recursion is a powerful concept key to computer programming. Examples are virus-like; example of Pete and repeat. Or von Neumann\u2019s recursive definition of positive whole numbers. A lot of religious arguments are similar. If you assume a false thesis, you can prove anything.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Four Subjective Arguments\u2014<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Argument from Coincidence (and 9\/11 Oddities)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As in <strong>The Celestine Prophecy<\/strong> [a bestselling book]: coincidences impress some as evidence of God. The assumption is things don\u2019t happen by accident; everything happens for a reason, etc.<\/p>\n<p>Examples relate to 9\/11\u2014all sorts of numerical derivations. But of course you can do similar things with any date or set of words. Verses attributed to Nostradamus relating to 9\/11 were simply made up. Photos were circulated on the internet.<\/p>\n<p>People look for patterns and see them whether they\u2019re there or not. People remember positive examples and forget counterexamples. What are the odds of some uncanny coincidence occurring? Quite high\u2014there are so many potential events. A passage from Clarke\u2019s <em>Rendezvous with Rama<\/em> told of a fireball on Sep 11<sup>th<\/sup>, 2077&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>[[ there\u2019s also the point of *why* coincidences would mean anything to anyone; there\u2019s a psychological undercurrent that no one ever seems to discuss ]]<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Argument from Prophecy (and the Bible Codes)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Of course, some prophecies from holy books come true, but not enough of them to mean anything. Oddly, the more details a holy book contains, the less likely they might *all* be true, no matter than people \u2018accept\u2019 the book as true. Just because it\u2019s in the Bible doesn\u2019t close the matter; just because a holy book claims it\u2019s true doesn\u2019t make it true. People who think it does sometimes resort to the argument from red face and loud mouth.<\/p>\n<p>Biblical codes concern equidistant letter sequences (ELSs), the way \u2018nazi\u2019 is within \u2018generalization\u2019. The discovery of rabbi names, etc, in the Torah was taken as proof of divine inspiration. True, the calculated probability of a particular ELS is tiny; but the discoveries weren\u2019t predicted; they could have been anything. The likelihood of *some* interesting ELS *somewhere* is pretty high.<\/p>\n<p><strong>An Anecdote on Emotional Need<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Digression: Author recalls helping three Thai girls, on Xmas day in 2006, dupe online boyfriends for cash, and considers how desperate those remote boyfriends wanted to believe in their girlfriends is like the intense need people have to believe in God. Author doesn\u2019t believe in God, but doesn\u2019t want to scoff at emotional need.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Argument from Subjectivity (and Faith, Emptiness, and Self)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s hard to address the argument that people simply feel that God exists in their bones, or wherever. Similar is the argument that the idea there isn\u2019t a God is too depressing, therefore there is. But there\u2019s no way of verifying such subjective insight\u2014unlike the way a blind person might verify the directions given him by a sighted person.<\/p>\n<p>Similar is the argument that since all worldviews are valid, god exists. It would be arrogant for an agnostic to belittle someone\u2019s religious beliefs, but usually it\u2019s the believers who attacks the nonbelievers. How would an argument for theism work, to justify particular creeds? Belief in god doesn\u2019t imply divinity of Jesus.<\/p>\n<p>After all, most people are atheists about others\u2019 gods. Atheists and agnostics just go them one better.<\/p>\n<p>Even more absurd is to claim the existence of a personal god who answers prayers, intervenes with miracles, etc., which presumes an overweening sense of self-importance. [[ And yet my impression is that this is by far the most common sort of belief in God! ]]<\/p>\n<p>Even the idea of self is unstable; we are constantly changing throughout our lives.<\/p>\n<p>[[ The reply to this whole line of thought is to realize that millions of people around the world have passionate, subjective feelings about *other* gods ]]<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Argument from Interventions (and Miracles, Prayers, and Witnesses)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Miracles demonstrate the existence of God? Stories of \u2018miracles\u2019 seem to be getting more press lately. But claims are inconsistent; a few saved is a miracle, millions dying is a natural disaster; aren\u2019t both divine or not? A local case (in author\u2019s home Philadelphia) involved a Mother Drexel and two children who prayed to her and recovered. The famous Fatima case, children who experienced prophecies that were so vague they could apply to anything. The idea of miracles is counter to the weight of science\u2014a miracle would simply mean the scientific laws were wrong. And testimony, of course, is not dependable\u2014delusion or lying is more likely than a miracle.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Remarks on Jesus and Other Figures<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The popularity of Mel Gibson\u2019s Jesus movie (<strong><em>The Passion of the Christ<\/em><\/strong>) suggests that many believe the existence of such figures prove God\u2019s existence. But: we often know little about news stories that happen in full view; we realize that and suspend judgment. But not with distant historical events, such as the events of that movie, recorded in the New Testament decades after the fact. Consider the political situation at the time of J\u2019s death. Compare to the death of Socrates. Would one blame contemporary Athenians on his death? Would a film about it one dwell on the agony of him being poisoned?<\/p>\n<p>CS Lewis\u2019 arguments were uncompelling\u2014we don\u2019t know what Jesus said, or if his story is accurate. The flaw in <strong><em>The Da Vinci Code<\/em><\/strong> (the popular book and then film, which presume to identify a modern-day descendant of Jesus) is that any given biological line (e.g. Jesus\u2019) would likely either die out quickly, or grow so that millions could claim to be descendants after centuries. Given parents, grandparents, etc., going back 40 generations we would each have a trillion ancestors; so obviously they were not all different people. If anyone from 3000 years ago has any descendants\u2014it would be all of us.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Four Psycho-Mathematical Arguments<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Argument from Redefinition (and Incomprehensible Complexity)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Some attempt to redefine God as something else\u2014nature, the laws of the universe, mathematics. This may be one reason many people say they are believers. God is Love. Or God is simply incomprehensibly complex. This is equivocation. The theory of everything may be beyond the complexity horizon. Yet nothing can be so complex that patterns aren\u2019t apparent at various levels, enabling descriptions of order\u2014inevitably. And in sufficiently large populations or sets, certain lower-level properties are guaranteed; examples of people at dinner parties who do know or do not know each other. Recall Stuart Kauffman\u2019s work on self-organization. Claims these phenomena prove God are very strained.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Argument from Cognitive Tendency (and Some Simple Programs)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Some say the fact that cognitive biases and illusions exist as proof of what they perceive, e.g. God. People have an inborn tendency to search for explanations and intentions. E.g., a thought experiment about a man\u2019s car; or why extraordinary causes seem necessary to explain the deaths of JFK or Diana, to say nothing of the universe.<\/p>\n<p>And we seek confirmation more anxiously than disconfirmation; we can be blind to contrary facts. The source of perpetuating stereotypes.<\/p>\n<p>The \u2018availability error\u2019 is the inclination to view anything new in the context of what is already known\u2014war, scandal, religion. Thus, other religions confirm the existence of God! The reason most people adopt their parents\u2019 religion\u2014cultural traditions. \u201c\u2026religious beliefs generally arise not out of a rational endeavor but rather out of cultural traditions and psychological tropes.\u201d Children are no more Catholic because their parents are, than they are, say, Marxist because their parents are.<\/p>\n<p>The last is the notion that \u2018like causes like\u2019. Complex results must have complex causes. But some computer examples (fractals) show that simple rules create complex results. Stephen Wolfram\u2019s book <strong>A New Kind of Science<\/strong>, e.g. his rule 110 (page 112). Very simple rules result in patterns similar to those in biology and other sciences. Wolfman suggests simple programs might capture scientific phenomena better than equations. [[ this is a profound points, I think. ]] [[ there\u2019s also the entirely subjective notion of what is \u2018complex\u2019 vs \u2018simple\u2019 ]]<\/p>\n<p><strong>My Dreamy Instant Message Exchange with God<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Author had a dream conversation with God, who claims he evolved from the universe\u2019s biological-social-cultural nature.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Universality Argument (and the Relevance of Morality and Mathematics)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>That the moral sense of different cultures is similar is taken as being instilled by God. Though this doesn\u2019t explain blasphemers, criminals, homosexuals, etc. [[ if instilled by God, why aren\u2019t they as invariant as the biological processes of staying alive? ]] Anyway, evolutionary forces explain why moral codes are similar in cultures that survive for long. (cf. Marc D. Hauser\u2019s book\u2014another group theory argument.) Also, if moral laws aren\u2019t arbitrary, then their goodness is true without their being a god.<\/p>\n<p>That leads to the old problem of why God would allow evil to exist; the usual answer, that we don\u2019t understand his ways, explains nothing. And the many other obvious childlike notions in religious doctrine. The Boolean satisfiability problem is about determining if a set of statements, true or not, are consistent. Most sets of religious beliefs are inconsistent.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists have long wondered about the universality of science and math. Is the fact that math works to explain the world really mysterious? Our ideas about math derive from interaction with the physical world. Counting, arranging, then abstracting. Evolution has selected those of our ancestors whose behavior and thought were consistent with the workings of the universe.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Gambling Argument (and Emotions from Prudence to Fear)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Pascal\u2019s wager applies to any religion, of course. And trying to assign probabilities to God\u2019s existence is a futile task. Statements using \u2018is\u2019 are subject to linguistic confusion.<\/p>\n<p>The wager isn\u2019t much different than believing in god just because the idea of dying is dreadful. It\u2019s similar to rallying around a leader in dangerous times. Dick Cheney\u2019s one percent doctrine: even a 1% chance of there being weapons of mass destruction justifies war.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, there\u2019s no evidence that nonbelievers are less moral or law-abiding. In a sense, moral acts by nonbelievers are more moral than those by believers who act to gain some divine reward.<\/p>\n<p>Still, these arguments fail to persuade those whose critical faculties are undermined; and the untruths underlying faith make life more bearable to some.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Atheists, Agnostics, and \u201cBrights\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Despite all this, atheists are the least tolerated minority in the US. Maybe what\u2019s needed is a popular story or film, ala <strong><em>Brokeback Mountain<\/em><\/strong>. Another idea is to use a new term\u2014maybe \u2018bright\u2019 (as proposed in the 2000s). Or at least greater acceptance of the admission of being irreligious. Author isn\u2019t fond of the word bright. Yet hopes that as more people admit to being irreligious, to give up on divine allies and tormentors in favor of being humane and reasonable, the world would be a bit closer to a heaven on earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Allen Paulos, Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don&#8217;t Add Up.\u00a0 Farrar, Straus and Giroux\/Hill and Wang, 2008. John Allen Paulos is a professor of mathematics who\u2019s become, over the past three decades, well-known as &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2020\/03\/18\/john-allen-paulos-iireligion-2008\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,33,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-notes","category-mathematics","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8634"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8640,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8634\/revisions\/8640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}