I just finished David Berlinski‘s outstanding book, The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions

This book is a great read and I highly recommend it. Berlinski is a secular, agnostic philosopher with a great sense of humor and amazing writing style. There is no way I can write an adequate review of this book so I can only say, “get it, read it, and enjoy it!” Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

Within mathematical physics, there is no concept of the evidence that is divorced from the theories that it is evidence for, because it is the theory that determines what counts as the evidence. What sense could one make of the claim that top quarks exist in the absence of the Standard Model of particle physics? A thirteenth-century cleric unaccountably persuaded of their existence and babbling rapturously of quark confinement would have faced then the question that all religious believers now face: Show me the evidence. Lacking access to the very considerable apparatus needed to test theories in particle physics, it is a demand he could not have met. (p. 50)

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It may seem that a conclusion has been reached that will appeal to physicists and religious believers alike: Nothing can be said. Those who believe in God and those who do not may resolve their differences by agreeing to say nothing. There is nonetheless a striking point at which Big Bang cosmology and traditional theological claims intersect. The universe has not proceeded from the everlasting to the everlasting. The cosmological beginning may be obscure, but the universe is finite in time. This is something that until the twentieth century was not known. When it became known, it astonished the community of physicists–and everyone else. If nothing else, the facts of Big Bang cosmology indicate that one objection to the argument that Thomas Aquinas offered is empirically unfounded: Causes in nature do come to an end. If science has shown that God does not exist, it has not been by appealing to Big Bang cosmology. The hypothesis of God’s existence and the facts of contemporary cosmology are consistent.

The uncertainties surrounding the origin of the universe have led certain writers to find comfort in a companionship with Aquinas they would not otherwise dream of enjoying. In writing about the first cause to which Aquinas appealed, and which he identified with God, Richard Dawkins argues that “it is more parsimonious to conjure up, say, a ‘Big Bang singularity’ or some other physical concept as yet unknown” to account for the existence of the universe. The word parsimonious is meaningless in context: Whatever it might denote, how could it be measured? But conjure is the right verb, suggesting as it does both misdirection and inattention. Misdirection: The Big Bang singularity does not represent a physical concept, because it cannot be accommodated by a physical theory. It is a point at which physical theories give way. Inattention: The physical concept in which Dawkins has placed his confidence is something that is either infinite and inscrutable, or otherwise unknown. Men have come to faith on the basis of far less. This is, I suppose, not surprising. His atheism notwithstanding, Dawkins believes that he is a “deeply religious man.” He simply prefers an alien cult. (p. 80-81)

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Speaking of to contemporary scientific concepts of The Landscape and the Anthropic Principle that people like Dawkins place their faith in, Berlinski points out…

Writing with what I think is characteristic honesty, Leonard Susskind has this to say:

If, for some unforeseen reason, the landscape turns out to be inconsistent — maybe for mathematical reasons, or because it disagrees with observation — I am pretty sure that physicists will go on searching for natural explanations of the world. But I have to say that if that happens, as things stand now we will be in a very awkward position. Without any explanation of nature’s fine-tunings we will be hard pressed to answer the ID [intelligent design] critics. One might argue that the hope that a mathematically unique solution will emerge is as faith-based as ID.

This remark has unintended daring. It gives a good deal of ground away. it is generous. And it suggests oddly enough that a conflict in thought that scientists have almost universally dismissed retains a strange, disturbing vitality nonetheless. Do not be misled by the phrases such as “faith-based as ID.” It is the word awkward that counts. If the double ideas of the Landscape and the Anthropic Principle do not suffice to answer the question why we live in a universe that seems perfectly designed for human life, a great many men and women will conclude that it is perfectly designed for human life, and they will draw the appropriate consequences from this conjecture. (p. 135-136)

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Less demanding critics might observe that shoveling problems backward until they are out of sight is not only the tactic of common sense but the only tactic in common use. When scientists appeal to various unobservable entities — universal forces, grand symmetries, twice-differential functions as in mechanics, Calibi-Yau manifolds, ionic bonds, or quantum fields — the shovel is in plane sight, but what is to be shoveled is nowhere to be seen. Why physicists should enjoy inferential advantages denied theologians, Zuckerkandl does not say. (p. 143)

***

If Darwin’s theory of evolution has little to contribute to the content of the sciences, it has much to offer their ideology. It serves as the creation myth of our time, assigning properties to nature previously assigned to God. It thus demands an especially ardent form of advocacy. In this regard, Daniel Dennett, like Mexican food, does not fail to come up long after he has gone down. “Contemporary biology,” he writes, “has demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that natural selection–the process in which reproducing entities must compete for finite resources and thereby engage in a tournament of blind trial and error from which improvements automatically emerge–has the power to generate breathtakingly ingenious designs.” (italics added).

These remarks are typical in their self-enchanted self-confidence. Nothing in the physical sciences, it goes without saying–right?–has been demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt. That phrase belongs to a court of law. The thesis that improvements in life appear automatically represents nothing more than Dennett’s conviction that living systems are like elevators: If their buttons are pushed, they go up. Or down, as the case may be. Although Darwin’s theory is very often compared favorably to the great theories of mathematical physics on the grounds that evolution is as well established as gravity, very few physicists have been heard observing that gravity is as well established as evolution. They now better and they are not stupid.

I mention these obvious points not in order once again to abuse poor Dennett, an activity that I never weary of undertaking, but to make a point of my own. The greater part of the debate over Darwin’s theory is not in service to the facts. Nor to the theory. The facts are what they have always been: They are unforthcoming.  And the theory is what it always was: It is unpersuasive. Among evolutionary biologists, these matters are well known. (p. 190-192)

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The God of the Gaps may now be invited to comment — strictly as an outside observer, of course. He is addressing us. And this is what He has to say: You have no idea whatsoever how the ordered physical, moral, mental, aesthetic, and social world in which you live could have ever arisen from the seething anarchy of the elementary particles.

It is like imagining sea foam resolving itself into the Parthenon.

And even though is is speaking strictly as an observer, perhaps He will be forgiven for asking of Christopher Hitchens, who as wandered into this discussion prepared to dispute anyone at the bar, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou has understanding.” (p. 201)

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When asked what he was in awe of, Christopher Hitchens responded that his definition of an educated person is that you have some idea how ignorant you are. This seems very much as if Hitchens were in awe of his own ignorance, in which case he has surely found an object worthy of his veneration. (p. 208)

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