Twenty questions atheists struggle to answer: How theism does better on the first six

Last week I put together a list of twenty questions that, in my experience, atheists either ‘won’t or can’t answer’ and invited coherent responses. I was not, in posting these, saying that atheists have no answers to them, only that as yet in over forty years of discussion with them I am yet to hear any good ones. 

The post generated 2,400 page views and 52 comments in a week and ten people attempted to take up the challenge by answering the questions. 

Three of these (John Saucier, Kees Engels and Bagguley) posted responses on my own blog whilst seven others (Rosa Rubicondior, Richard Carrier, DoubtingThomas, Dude ex machina, Lady Atheist, Sarah Elizabeth and Dead-Logic) posted on their own blogs.

Of these Richard Carrier and Rosa Rubicondior were the most comprehensive and the former also included extensive cross-references to other material by both himself and other authors. Some opted to answer all twenty questions and others were more selective but all seemed to think they had done a good job. I am grateful to them for their time and effort.

Several Christians also posted the twenty questions on their own blogs but as far as I know only one, ‘A Christian Word’, posted some answers in his Responses to Rosa Rubicondior .

I promised to post my own observations about the questions soon and start doing so now with the first six. 

However, let me first make some preliminary comments.

First, atheism and theism are mutually exclusive world views which both deserve careful consideration. They cannot both be correct and yet each world view is held by a large number of leading academics and scientists and large proportions of the world’s population (there are 3.9 billion theists and 1.1 billion atheists). This alone should lead us to approach the question of which, if either, is correct with a degree of humility and respect for those who hold a contrary view.

Atheists are materialists, believing that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of physical phenomena. They accordingly believe that God and the supernatural do not exist and that there is therefore no judgement and no afterlife. Both physical and biological complexity (including both the universe and human beings themselves) are simply the product of chance (random processes) and necessity (the working of physical laws) over time.

By contrast theists (including Christians, Muslims and Jews) believe that the universe was created by an all-powerful, all knowing, rational, omnipresent, benevolent, and personal God who is both transcendent (separate from it) and immanent (intimately involved with it). They believe that human beings were made for relationship with God, that death leads on to judgement by God and that there are two destinations for human beings, either enjoying God’s company in paradise/heaven or separated from him forever in Hell. So, theists believe that, in addition to chance and necessity, the universe was also the result of intelligent design.

Second, many atheists and theists hold their beliefs with considerable tenacity. Just as there are theists who reject out of hand observations, theories and worldviews which challenge their theistic convictions, so many atheists have an a priori commitment to atheism which leads them to seek exclusively materialistic explanations (and reject wholesale supernatural explanations) for all phenomena from religious experience to the origin of the universe and biological complexity.

As Richard Lewontin, a world famous geneticist at Harvard, has said: 

‘ We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs… because we have a prior commitment...to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover that materialism is absolute for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door.'

In other words many atheists assume the truth of the atheistic world view as a non-negotiable starting point and are accordingly strongly resistant to questioning it.

My question, however, is whether the atheistic world view has the explanatory power of the theistic one for the available evidence. I don’t believe that it does and have posed these twenty questions to make that case.

Third, I challenge atheists (and agnostics) reading this blog not to adopt the view, as a matter of faith, that the atheistic world view is some sort of neutral default position and that the burden of proof lies solely with theists to prove their case. Let’s not have any of the usual allegations of ‘meaningless questions’, ‘God of the gaps’, ‘appeals to authority’ or the mockery, ridicule and ‘face-palming’ that often accompanies any attempt by theists to advance their case. 

Start instead with the admission that theism is a plausible, internally consistent world view held by intelligent people that might indeed be true, and ask yourselves which of atheism and theism is the best fit for the phenomena raised by the twenty questions. I am not claiming that any of these answers constitutes a knock-down proof of theism or rebuttal of atheism, just that theism explains these phenomena better than atheism does. So let’s hear respectful sound argument (devoid of patronising putdowns and ad hominem attacks) as to why you think that is not actually the case.

Fourth, I am aware that each of these twenty questions has occupied minds far finer than mine over many centuries and that different people have come to different conclusions. I am aware that books have been written about each one, but also that few of us has the time to examine in detail all the arguments advanced by each side in the debate. I myself am a generalist not a specialist. I am neither a philosopher nor a research scientist but simply a doctor. Therefore, in the interests of dialogue and in making these arguments more accessible I have tried to keep my replies brief and to keep cross-referencing to a minimum. 

My aim is that this will encourage good debate and discussion and I remain very open to expanding individual answers in subsequent blogs as and when responses call for a more detailed case to be made on any particular question. Can I suggest in turn that readers keep responses brief and if necessary link to more detailed material elsewhere. But even better make the case yourself.

Fifth and finally, whilst it is absorbing, even fun, to discuss questions of this kind, let’s bear in mind that the position we take on them may have far-reaching consequences. If God does indeed exist, and if there is a judgement and a heaven and hell, then to reject a theistic view and to persuade others to follow is a very serious matter indeed. On the other hand, if atheism is true, then well over half the world’s population has been, at least seriously, and perhaps, even dangerously, misled. Just as many atheists are committed to defending their convictions because they believe that theism is a damaging deception, so my own commitment to defending Christian theism is motivated by a desire that many who do not currently hold to it will change their minds and come to share my belief in Jesus Christ as God incarnate, the creator and sustainer of the universe, visiting our planet in human form with all that that involves.

Many of my replies however are advanced in defence of theism generally, rather than in Christian theism specifically. And I have taken care not to assume belief in the Bible, or any other religious text, as infallible, whilst still drawing on it to help answer one or two question as a historical record.

And so to the twenty questions: Why is it that I believe they point more to theism than atheism as the correct world view?  Here are my answers to the first six.

1. What caused the universe to exist?

Astronomers currently estimate the age of the universe to be 13.7 ± 0.13 billion years. This is based both on observation of the oldest stars and by measuring its rate of expansion and extrapolating back to the Big Bang. Whilst this consensus may be challenged in the future virtually all scientists now accept that the universe did have a beginning.

Given that all known things which began to exist have a cause it seems reasonable to assume that the universe itself had a cause. But unless we are to believe that the universe somehow pulled itself up by its own bootstraps, this cause must have been extrinsic to the universe (space-time continuum) itself.

Anything extrinsic to the universe must be both immaterial, beyond space and time and must have unfathomable power and intelligence. Moreover, it must be personal, as it made the decision to bring the universe into existence, and decisions only come from minds.

It is therefore not unreasonable to believe in the existence of a timeless, spaceless, immaterial, powerful, intelligent, personal Creator of the universe. 

2. What explains the fine tuning of the universe?

For the universe to exist as it does and allow intelligent life to exist, it requires an astonishing series of ‘coincidences’ to have occurred. Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, has formulated the fine-tuning of the universe in terms of six dimensionless constants (N, Epsilon, Omega, Lambda, Q & D) including the ratio of the strength of electromagnetism to that of gravity, the strength of the force binding nucleons into nuclei and the ratio of the gravitational energy required to pull a large galaxy apart to the energy equivalent of its mass.

According to Rees, these numbers govern the shape, size and texture of the universe and would have been defined during the Big Bang. His conclusion, based on the scientific evidence available, is that these six numbers appear to be unerringly tuned for the emergence of life. That is to say, if any one of them were much different, we simply could not exist.

In the closing chapters of his book, ‘Just Six Numbers’, Rees concedes that science cannot explain this fine-tuning. The reasons for it lie beyond anything within our universe and therefore beyond anything we can ever measure.

There are three possible explanations for it, namely, chance, physical necessity and design. Chance is overwhelmingly improbable. Physical necessity also seems to be ruled out on the basis that contemporary physics has indicated that these constants exist independently of each other and the laws of nature. It seems therefore not impossible that intelligent design might account for them.

Alternative theories, such as Stephen Hawking’s multiverse theory, are not provable and with a complexity that runs wildly contrary to Occam’s razor’s demand for succinctness and simplicity.

3. Why is the universe rational?

I don’t mean by this that the universe thinks but that it is rationally intelligible. The universe operates according to physical laws such as Boyle’s law, Newton’s laws of motion and the law of the conservation of energy. But these are not merely regularities in nature. These regularities are also mathematically precise, universal and ‘tied together’.

Einstein spoke of them as ‘reason incarnate’. He said, ‘I’m not an atheist, and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist… We see the universe marvellously arranged and obeying certain laws…’. He clearly believed in a transcendent source of the rationality of the world that he variously called ‘superior mind’, illimitable superior spirit’, ‘superior reasoning force’ and ‘mysterious force that moves the constellations’.

He said, ‘Everyone who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble’.

Does the intrinsic rationality of the universe prove the existence of God? No. But it is fully consistent with theism and rather difficult for atheism with its limited twin forces of chance and necessity to explain.

4. How did DNA and amino acids arise?

Cell metabolism and reproduction rely on cooperation between nucleic acids and proteins. DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) molecules are long chains made up from a set of four different nucleotides (A, G, C, T) linked linearly which provide an information store instructing cells how to build their own characteristic sets of proteins. Proteins (also enzymes) are large molecules made up of many amino acids, chosen from a basic set of 20 and also linked together in linear fashion. For proteins to function they need to fold into specific 3-dimensional shapes, which are determined by the order in which the amino acids are linked.

The interdependence of DNA and proteins is remarkable. The coded information in the genomic DNA sequence is useless without the protein-based translation machinery to transform it into cell components. And yet the instructions for production of this translation machinery are themselves coded on the genomic DNA. This presents a chicken and egg paradox. Which came first? The DNA information is needed to build the protein machinery but only the specific protein machinery can read the instructions. Thus far the mechanism by which this might have happened has proved insoluble, but it shouts ‘design’.

Far more fundamental is the problem of the origin of amino acids. Elaborate solutions including ‘meteorite deliveries’ and ‘prebiotic soups’ are highly speculative when the most sophisticated laboratories are unable to produce human life’s 20 amino acids let alone the smallest functional enzymes. In a prebiotic soup environment the total probability of a functional 150 unit protein forming would be 1 in 10 to the 164^th – an impossibly small chance given that the chance of finding one particular atom in the whole observable universe would be only 1 in 10 to the 80^th.

5. Where did the genetic code come from?

The genetic code enables three letter words made up from the four nucleotide letters in DNA (A, G, C, T) to be matched to one or more of the 20 different amino acids used as building blocks of proteins. If these letters are assembled in the wrong order, then like random arrangements of the letters of the alphabet, they do not form meaningful sentences.

But both human language and secret codes involve intricate mapping of one set of symbols onto another that can only be achieved with the involvement of the human mind. Language involves the mapping of words to sounds and secret codes the mapping of one set of letters to another.

How then did the sophisticated genetic code arise? Again we have only three possibilities: chance, necessity or design. The genetic code, like language, gives the appearance of being the product of an intelligent mind.

Richard Dawkins has tried to explain how proteins might be assembled using the genetic code by using the analogy of a multitude of monkeys banging away on computer keyboards and eventually ending up writing a Shakespearean sonnet.

The former atheist Antony Flew recounts hearing Israeli scientist Gerald Schroeder referring to an experiment conducted by the British National Council of Arts in which a computer was placed in a cage with six monkeys. After a month of hammering they produced 50 typed pages – but not a single English word. This is because the probability of getting even a one letter word (I or A with a space on either side) is one in 27,000.

The chance of getting a Shakespearean sonnet (‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’ has 488 letters) is one in 10 to the 690^th. Similarly the chance of randomly assembling nucleotides coding for amino acid sequences forming functional proteins is vanishingly small.

6. How do irreducibly complex enzyme chains evolve?

Metabolic processes require complex chains of linked enzymes in order to work properly. The enzyme chains that convert light into electrical signals in the retina and those that synthesise blood clotting factors are two such examples. But these chains have been likened to mousetraps, which only work if all of their components (eg. base, spring, bait holder, trap etc) are all present and properly assembled. They are ‘irreducibly complex’ in that if we remove any one component the device will not work. How then can such systems evolve in a stepwise fashion if enzyme chains lacking any one component will not actually work and therefore confer no survival advantage on which natural selection can operate?

This is a very difficult question for atheists.

Let’s consider the simplest self-replicating organisms as another example.  The operation of neo-Darwinian natural selection depends on the prior existence of entities capable of self-replication. Before the arrival of organisms capable of reproduction this process could not operate.

Viruses and the smallest living bacteria are not in themselves capable of reproducing by themselves but require enzymes only found in more complex organisms to do so.

The smallest known free-living organism, Mycoplasma genitalium, has a genome of 582,970 base pairs corresponding to about 480 proteins. But its complex membranes enclose a system of organelles including ribosomes, carboxysomes and plasmids along with this information loaded DNA. The organised complexity of these most simple of organisms throws into relief the immensity of the task facing naturalistic explanations of how life originated.

Summary – the first six questions

These initial six questions about the origin and complexity of the universe and life itself pose huge problems for atheists who have only chance and necessity in their explanatory armamentarium.

On the other hand once we allow for the possibility of cosmic intelligent design, explaining them is a different matter altogether.

Atheists, unable to allow a divine footprint, will hurl accusations that I am using God to fill gaps in our knowledge that will be filled in time with naturalistic scientific explanations. But in fact there are gaps which scientific knowledge closes and others that it leaves wide open unable to explain.

These first six questions reveal six such yawning gaps and make theism as an explanation more plausible than atheism.

I’ll move on to the next 14 questions in subsequent blogs.