Disagreeing about God is easy. If we are going to make headway in our
conversations about God, however, we’d do well to focus first on our common
ground. At the risk of getting abstract
and boring: Suppose Smith and Jones
disagree about matter p. And suppose that
S and J are both reasonable, thoughtful people with the intention of getting
their beliefs to align as well as they can with the facts and the canons of inductive
and deductive reasoning. Smith will have
one body of information that Smith takes to be relevant to deciding the issue
and Jones will most likely have another.
There will no doubt be some overlap between, but the disagree is often
related to different pieces of information in those two bodies of
evidence. Smith and Jones need to share evidence, and come to some
agreement about what the complete list of facts are regarding p, or at least
the most complete list that they can acquire.
The disciplines of physics, astronomy, cosmology,
anthropology, biology, psychology have converged on this short summary of the
history of everything. A staggering and unsurpassed amount of work, critical
reasoning, skeptical scrutiny, vetting, and aggressive efforts at
disconfirmation that have gone into justifying this account of the history of
everything. That is, the story is the
result of the greatest minds in human history using our best methods for
investigating the world.
The arguments that one might make for some other version of
events, or the evidence that one might cite to justify a contrary picture of
reality, are all inferior. To prefer one
of those alternative accounts of reality is, plainly stated, flagrantly
irrational.
So discussions about God need to start with this bit of
evidence sharing as their starting point.
Here’s a summary of what we know about the universe, the
Earth, life, humanity, and evolution.
Approximately
13.7 billion years ago, the universe went from a singularity state of infinite
curvature and energy to a rapidly expanding chaotic state, the Big Bang. During the first pico and nano seconds of
this period of rapid expansion, the types and behavior of particles that
existed rapidly change as the energy levels dropped. Within a few nanoseconds, the kinds of matter
and the ways they behave settled into, more or less, the sorts of material
constituents we find today. At this
point, only hydrogen, helium, and lithium exist. The matter continues to expand outward and eventually,
several billion years later, gravitational pull congregates clumps of matter
together to form stars. These heat and
energy at the cores of these stars cook the early forms of matter, transforming
it and creating many of the other, heavier elements on the periodic table. Some of these stars are of sufficient mass to
ultimately collapse on themselves, exploding outward and spraying the new elements
formed in their cores out into space.
That matter eventually coalesces into smaller stars, planets and moons
like our own.
The Earth formed
about 4.5 billion years ago. Simple, self-replicating molecules appear on
Earth around 4 billion years ago (abiogenesis).
Once there is replication, natural selection and random mutations over
billions of years lead to the evolution of more and more life forms, many of
them of increasing levels of complexity.
The dinosaurs emerge from this
process. The Triassic, Jurassic,
and Cretaceous periods range from about 208 million years ago to 65 million
years ago. There are boom and bust cycles
of rapid proliferations of life (e.g. Cambrian explosion) and mass extinctions,
such as the asteroid event that we think was responsible for the extinction of
the dinosaurs. The ecological gap left
by the dinosaurs provides the opportunity for placental mammals to expand and
diversify.
The earliest known stone tools originate with hominids 2.5 to 2.6 million years ago. Estimates about the emergence of language range from 5 million years ago to 100,000 years ago. Modern humans (homo
sapiens) originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago, 60 million
years after the dinosaurs have gone extinct.
A variety of early hominid groups vie for survival until all related
lines except homo sapiens are extinct. We
are still piecing together many of the connections and relationships between
these species.
There
is evidence of human religious behavior such as burial rituals dating back
approximately 300,000 years.
Only very recently have one of the hominid species--homo sapiens--on the planet developed cognitive faculties that were sophisticated enough to be able to discover these various facts about the universe. Some of those discoveries are landmarks of vast significance in our develop, although not in a cosmic scale: Darwin’s The Origin of Species is published in 1859. In 1929, Edwin Hubble published his paper, “A Relation
Between Distance and Radial Velocity Among Extra-Galactic Nebulae,” in which he
showed that the universe is expanding.
Extrapolating backward from its rate of expansion made it possible to
date the explosive beginning of the universe at approximately 13.7 billion
years ago. In 1953, James D. Watson and Francis Crick published their
discovery of DNA in Nature: “A Structure
of Deoxyrobose Nucleic Acid.”
Sharing Evidence
Now
it seems to me that any religious doctrine that portends to give an accurate account
of the nature of the universe, the origins of the universe, the existence and
development of life, the origins of humanity, or the relationship between
humanity and the rest of the cosmos must, at the very least, accord with this
history of everything. If a religious
account of the world presents us with different details about the order, span,
or nature of these events, then we must conclude that is it mistaken. 4 in 10 Americans are young Earth
creationists
http://www.gallup.com/poll/145286/four-americans-believe-strict-creationism.aspx where young Earth creationism is the view the
universe, the Earth, and all life on Earth were created in their more or less
present forms within the last 10,000 years.
So that 40% of the population believe a number of things that are flatly
disproven by our best evidence and scientific work. (The oft repeated claim that religious views
and science are perfectly consistent or compatible is also plainly false in
this light.)
Responsible
and mature discussions about God should start with this mutually agreed upon
list of basics about the universe we inhabit.
Denying these basics, given the quantity and quality of evidence we have
in their favor, is irrational and irresponsible. Someone who would deny the basics is either
grossly misinformed, or perhaps he is more committed to the religious ideology
than to believing that which is reasonable and best supported by the
evidence.
- The Big Bang occurred 13.7 billion years ago.
- Only hydrogen, helium, and lithium exist for millions of years
until large stars form and create many of the other, heavier elements on the periodic
table.
- Some of these stars go supernova and distribute these new elements
into space.
- That matter eventually coalesces into smaller stars, planets and
moons like our own.
- The Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago.
- Life in the form of the simplest, self-replicating molecules
occurs on Earth around 4 billion years ago.
- Once there is replication, natural selection and random mutations over
billions of years lead to the evolution of more and more life forms, many of
them of increasing levels of complexity.
- Dinosaurs live from about 208 million years ago to 65 million
years ago.
- Life on the planet goes through several mass extinctions.
- The Cambrian explosion—a rapid proliferation of the kinds and
numbers of living organisms on the planet, occurs about 540 million years ago.
- Mammals begin to expand and diversify significantly about 54
million years ago.
- Modern humans (homo sapiens) originated in Africa
about 200,000 years ago.
- Human religious behavior starts approximately 300,000 years ago.
