Do we need God?

"Facts are the enemy of Truth." - Don Quixote

Richard Dawkins, who has by default inherited Stephen J. Gould's mantle of "defender of science from religion," has a very long but interesting post on HuffPo, in which he claims there "almost certainly is no God."

Is he right?

Dawkins first spends a few paragraphs ranting about the craziness of American evangelical Christians, and then logically counters several medival arguments (mostly by Aquinas) asserting the necessity of God's existence. After that, he spends a while explaining the "anthropic principle," the traditional scientific answer to the question "Why are we here?" (anthropic principle says: "So you would ask that question.").

It's not until the end of his article that he gets to his central thesis, which is that God doesn't exist.

Accepting, then, that the God Hypothesis is a proper scientific hypothesis whose truth or falsehood is hidden from us only by lack of evidence, what should be our best estimate of the probability that God exists, given the evidence now available? Pretty low I think...

[H]ow could it ever have been a good idea to postulate, in explanation for the existence of improbable things, a designer who would have to be even more improbable? The entire argument is a logical non-starter...

[The anthropic principle and natural selection provide] a complete and deeply satisfying explanation for everything that we see and know. Not only is the god hypothesis unnecessary. It is spectacularly unparsimonious. Not only do we need no God to explain the universe and life. God stands out in the universe as the most glaring of all superfluous sore thumbs. We cannot, of course, disprove God, just as we can't disprove Thor, fairies, leprechauns and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But, like those other fantasies that we can't disprove, we can say that God is very very improbable.

Dawkins basically says that God doesn't exist for the same reason that the "ether" doesn't exist; we don't need it to explain the world. In other words, if we can't tell if it exists or not, the default is that it doesn't.

That's the scientific definition of "existence" - if it makes no difference if it's there or not, it's not there.

But what if the point of religion is not to explain existence in a scientific way? Stephen J. Gould himself believed in such a dichotomy, claiming that religion and science govern different "magisteria" - that religion answers some questions, and science answers others, and the two never overlap. Dawkins, of course, ridicules Gould and other members of what he calls the "appeasement school" (with the obligatory Neville Chamberlain comparison). But he doesn't refute it.

Here's what I consider a broader way of looking at existence. Why do we use the scientific measure of "existence" at all? Because it's useful to us. If science tells us, for example, that there is a wall in front of us, we believe it...because we want to avoid running into the wall. We don't believe things because they are true, we believe things because believing them is useful. (For the philosophically inclined, this view is called "Rortyan pragmatism").

So assume Dawkins is right, and God doesn't exist in the scientific sense (I will leave this argument to others who have less homework than I). But since we only believe science in the first place because science is useful, that doesn't mean we should not believe in God. For many people, believing in God is clearly, demonstrably, extremely useful.

There are plenty of people in this world whose lives would be meaningless and aimless without their belief in God. I have seen these people, and I am utterly convinced of that fact. The utility of belief in God is obvious and apparent from the fact that belief in God has never disappeared in all of human history, and there are hundreds of millions (and I suspect billions) of people whose happiness, both short- and long-term, is increased by believing that God exists.

If the only things anyone on Earth believed in were the facts of science, people's beliefs would (by definition) be more in line with scientific "truth." But would they be happier than they would be if they also believed in God? I don't think they would be. So by the pragmatist definition of "existence," an anthropomorphic God outside the realm of science certainly exists. By begrudging people a belief that is useful to them, Dawkins basically asserts that his happiness is more important than theirs.

Sorry, Dick, I just can't agree.

(And shame on you for dissing the late Stephen J. after he's too dead to fire back.)

I think it is the responsibility of all people on Earth, theists and atheists alike, to make sure that religion doesn't end up causing violence, slowing down scientific progress, or making people miserable. Religion, like any system of human organization, has the potential to be good or bad. A pragmatist would focus on making religion good instead of arguing over whether or not it's "correct."

And as for what I believe about the existence of God? Well, I think that in this vast and infinite Universe of ours, I'd be extremely surprised if there is no higher intelligence or higher power. What that is, I can't say. I'd like a benevolent, anthropomorphic God, but even if there wasn't one, I'd still try to live my life as best I can and do what's best for me and for my fellow humans.

And as for the Flying Spaghetti Monster, well, I'm agnostic...but just in case, I'm keeping a Super Soaker under my pillow, and it's loaded with balsamic vinaigrette...