Coming soon: some new apologetics

I’ve decided, thanks to a reader’s suggestion, that the strategy of suggesting that one book after another gives the “best argument” for God (if you find one deficient, another one pops up), should be called The Argument from Whack-A-Mole.

The last mole was David Bentley Hart’s book, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, which Sophisticated Theologians™ everywhere touted at the Best Argument for God. My copy has not yet arrived, but based on readers’ comments I’m not sure I’ll be headed for the pews after I read it.  In point of fact, I’m unlikely to be convinced by any argument for God that doesn’t adduce some kind of “evidence” beyond revelation.

But a new mole has appeared—even before the last one was whacked. Reader Cameron informs me of this book, by the author of the popular Fermat’s Last Theorem, that will appear April 15 (tax day in the U.S.):

Here’s the Amazon blurb:

The renowned science writer, mathematician, and bestselling author of Fermat’s Last Theorem masterfully refutes the overreaching claims the “New Atheists,” providing millions of educated believers with a clear, engaging explanation of what science really says, how there’s still much space for the Divine in the universe, and why faith in both God and empirical science are not mutually exclusive.

A highly publicized coterie of scientists and thinkers, including Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens, and Lawrence Krauss, have vehemently contended that breakthroughs in modern science have disproven the existence of God, asserting that we must accept that the creation of the universe came out of nothing, that religion is evil, that evolution fully explains the dazzling complexity of life, and more. In this much-needed book, science journalist Amir Aczel profoundly disagrees and conclusively demonstrates that science has not, as yet, provided any definitive proof refuting the existence of God.

Why Science Does Not Disprove God is his brilliant and incisive analyses of the theories and findings of such titans as Albert Einstein, Roger Penrose, Alan Guth, and Charles Darwin, all of whose major breakthroughs leave open the possibility— and even the strong likelihood—of a Creator. Bolstering his argument, Aczel lucidly discourses on arcane aspects of physics to reveal how quantum theory, the anthropic principle, the fine-tuned dance of protons and quarks, the existence of anti-matter and the theory of parallel universes, also fail to disprove God.

Do we really need to read all these books, which are appearing at an alarming rate? Is there really going to be new arguments for God in them? It appears that Aczel’s book, based on the statement  that it shows “that there’s still much space for the Divine in the universe,” is merely a reiteration of God-of-the-Gaps arguments. To quote Ingersoll, what we understand is science; what we don’t understand is God.

Of course science can’t completely disprove God in either a logical or absolutist sense: that’s not the way science works. And of course we’ll never understand everything. Dick Lewontin (my Ph.D. advisor) told me the other day that the human race would go extinct before we finally learned how our brains work, and he may be right. So if you want to find God in consciousness, for instance, then there’s plenty of time to do that. But it’s a losing strategy, and one that doesn’t even convince many theologians.

But we have disproven God in the same sense we’ve disproven Santa Claus, the Loch Ness monster, and Bigfoot. Extensive observation of the world looking for evidence of the divine has not, as with these other cases, turned up any evidence. That is “proof” in the vernacular (though not mathematical) sense. It’s “proof” in the sense that Anthony Grayling uses it: “Would you bet your house on the truth of a proposition?” If so, consider it proven.

I will read David Bentley Hart’s book, but this one I may skip. All such books should be required to contain a “warning label” saying something like “Note: this book contains NEW evidence for God of the following sort. . . .”  If you don’t see that, don’t buy it. Otherwise, we could see a spate of books showing that science hasn’t “definitively disproven” ESP, Nessie, or homeopathy.

Or maybe we should turn the tables, asking theologians if they’ve read the complete essays of Mencken, Ingersoll, and the atheist writings of Mark Twain, Spinoza, and other authors represented in Hitchens’s The Portable Atheist (buy it if you haven’t yet).  Then we’ll tell them that they can’t talk to us about God until they’ve read all that stuff.