A quite irate Christian once challenged me with, “If you think you’re so smart, I’d like to see you make a tree… or a bird… or a cow… or even just explain how that would be done. How would you make any of these out of absolutely nothing?” I have to laugh, for while on the surface this appears to be quite the witty banter, it is, in the end, just another example of faulty logic.

First and foremost, my claim is that there is no god, not that I, myself, am god. If I went around telling people that I was responsible for creation, this would certainly be a valid response. (Interestingly, this challenge was never posited to Jesus, but then again—as was shown in Chapter 6—he never claimed to be god either.) I do not have to have full knowledge of something’s inception or production to know that it was not of divine origin. For example, although I could not even begin to explain the source code for the word processor I am currently using, this bears no implication that Bill Gates is God.

“Aha!” the Christian will interject. “But you’ve just acknowledged that it is software that was created!” Absolutely. However, this does not diminish the validity of my response since the Christian’s initial challenge implied that God’s handiwork is evident solely from the fact that I myself cannot explain every nuance of “creation.”

So, if the standard concept of God is not responsible for the creation of all we know, then what is? Intelligent Design? Evolution? Panspermia?[1] The Flying Spaghetti Monster?[2] Two giant green lobsters named Keith and Esmerelda who bore our rhombus-shaped world through their pincers?[3] The answer is actually quite simple: no one knows.

This seems to be an absurdity in the mind of the theist. The quick retort is that you know a painting had a painter by the existence of the painting itself; the painting is evidence of the painter. Likewise, you know a building had a builder by the existence of the building itself; the building is evidence of the builder. It should be evident, therefore, that creation must have had a creator.

The problem with this is the fact that we cannot automatically know that a building had a builder or that the painting had a painter unless we personally witnessed the act. We can only make an assumption based on our limited experience. This might seem like semantics and belligerence in the face of evidence, but it is something that even Christians have acknowledged with statements such as:

[W]e arrive at most decisions in life… through observation and induction. For example, we don’t have perfect information about the liquid in a Campbell’s Soup can—we think it’s edible and won’t poison us—but we’re not 100 percent certain. We are relying on our prior experience that Campbell’s Soup is trustworthy, and we are concluding that there’s actually Campbell’s Soup and not poison in the can… Are we 100 percent certain? No, because we are generalizing from our limited number of experiences. Our conclusion may be highly probable, but it is not certain.[4]

In contrast to a simple painting (or even quite an elaborate painting for that matter) the universe is much too grand to make such assumptions based on our limited knowledge. While inferences regarding the contents of a soup can may be “highly probable,” assumptions regarding the universe are not necessarily so. Likewise, if the assumptions of the contents of a can of soup are “not certain,” how much more so would this be the case regarding the universe? Thus, it would seem obvious that we are warranted in the simple conclusion that we don’t know and almost certainly never will.

Creationists, however, will continue to try to force a response, contending that, based on the limited knowledge we have, and based on the aforementioned observance and induction, we can deduce that the universe—like every painting and building we have, in our experience, seen—must have been made by someone or something. The Christian will maintain that if you are walking through the woods and you find a pocket watch laying on the ground, you would not assume that the watch had been created randomly by the forces of nature. This would be absurd—and much more so if the same conclusion were derived about the intricacies of the universe.[5]

The flaw in this argument is that it uses for its example an item that is widely known and recognized, a very common item indeed. However, the analogy parallels this against an item that is largely unknown and uncommon. This creates several problematic elements in the logic:

• While I may have seen buildings being built and paintings being painted, I have never seen a universe being formed. Hence, I cannot make the same assumptions on the nature of its formation.

• Every creation that I have personally witnessed—a creation by any being, man or animal (and in my limited experience, these are the only beings I have encountered)—is extremely limited and highly inferior in comparison to the wonders of the universe. Therefore, it would be unreasonable to automatically conclude that any form of being created the universe.

• Derived from the concept of “every painting has a painter, therefore…” we can look at the fact that every designer uses a medium, yet God allegedly had no medium. Since the universe was formed out of absolutely nothing, it would follow that such a god would not fall under the category of creators.

• Likewise, every material creation came from something, yet the universe came from nothing. Therefore, the universe, although material, is obviously not a creation.

Or as it has otherwise been stated:

The analogy, which you attempt to establish between the contrivances of human art and the various existences of the Universe, is inadmissible. We attribute these effects to human intelligence, because we know beforehand that human intelligence is capable of producing them. Take away this knowledge, and the grounds of our reasoning will be destroyed. Our entire ignorance, therefore, of the Divine Nature leaves this analogy defective in its most essential point of comparison.[6]

It is the tendency of all mankind to make such attributions of agency in the inanimate. We beat on our computers and call them ‘stupid.’ We kick our cars and tell them we’ll ‘teach them.’ Maybe it’s self-aggrandizing, but we want to put a little bit of our (‘superior’) selves into everything with which we come into contact. Should it be of any surprise that it is no different with nature itself.[7]

The Santa Claus Mentality

The cries we hear in support of Creationism amount to, “Well someone had to have created it.” However, even if the atheist were to concede that creation occurred at the hands of some divine entity, this in no way indicates that God currently exists. Saying there was a god is not the same as saying that there is a god. From existentialism to deism, it has widely been theorized that God is either dead or on some form of cosmic coffee break. Yet, this is ultimately a moot point, for there is an illogical premise in the original argument. 

I didn’t exactly grow up in the wealthiest of families, so despite what others told me about Santa’s true identity, I knew there was no way my mom could afford all those presents that were under the tree every Christmas morning. My mentality was “well someone obviously puts the presents there on Christmas Morning.” Occam’s Razor says that the most likely solution is the most parsimonious one, and at the time, the simple explanation seemed to be that a magical being had done it. It seemed inconceivable that it could actually be something naturalistic… like maybe my mom had saved and saved all year long. The concept of religion is quite similar. Instead of admitting it doesn’t know a cause, religion creates myths and fairy tales to alleviate the burden of knowledge. While they may see this as being a simpler solution, it is an example of missing the forest for the trees.

From those who tend to reject such naturalistic causes of nature (and really, how can we even question “naturalistic causes of nature” when naturalistic causes are, by definition of nature) it is often queried how we can expect the unintelligent forces in nature to create life when the intelligence of our best and brightest scientists have repeatedly failed to do the same.

This exemplifies the self-aggrandizing view inherent in humanity: we have convinced ourselves (partially through religion, ironically) that we are the supreme rulers of the world. Yet, if you actually take the time to look at nature, it’s not hard to feel totally in awe of its power. Despite our anthropocentric rationale, we the mere human animals are diminutive by comparison. Besides, we should actually expect no different, for if life were easy enough to produce with the Little Chemist’s Home Chemistry Set, then we should expect the universe to be absolutely teeming with life. Since this is obviously not the case, we shouldn’t place such expectations of expediency on science.

As science has continued to make discoveries which compromise biblical teachings—heliocentricity, evolution, the big bang, et cetera—religion has typically responded with outrage. It is for this reason that we find the über-fundamentalists, wildly postulating that the earth really is only 6,000 years old, and that God planted dinosaur bones as a red herring to test our ability to have faith in him despite scientific findings to the contrary.

These fundamentalists will often say that nothing has been found that contradicts the Bible, but this is certainly not the case. Dr. Kurt P. Wise, a young-earth Creationist, has recounted an experiment from high school in which he carefully cut out of his Bible every passage that was not compatible with modern science. At the conclusion of this experiment, what had previously been a Bible could no longer hold form under its own weight. Yet, Wise’ ultimate conclusion was that “if all the evidence of the universe turned against Creationism… I would still be a Creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate.”[8]

Granted not all Christians are quite so unyielding, for the more rational-minded have slowly shifted towards acceptance. Yet they still will come up with inventive ways to incorporate the new ideas into their accepted dogma with minimal compromise: Evolution may have happened, but if so, it was carried out by God’s hand!

Essentially, the Creationist argument only produces the logic of a two-year-old—it continues, much to the annoyance of the grown-ups, to ask “Whyyyy? Whyyyy? Whyyyy?” every time an answer is given. Creationists present the question as to the origins of the universe and receive an answer. The next question is, “Well, how did that happen?” The next question is, “Well, how did that happen?” and this continues on ad nauseam. Eventually, when they elicit the desired response of “No one knows.” they can finally respond with a haughty “Aha!” claiming that it, therefore, must be the work of God if there is no other cause. Even though science may one day reveal the answer to that question, it will not deter their position since it will only add one more “Why?” to the theistic argument. Physicists and Astronomers have acknowledged that the exact origin of the universe is as of yet unknown; however, they will maintain that this in no way implies that there is no way to scientifically account for such origins.[9] Unfortunately when science fails—even temporarily—the Christian seems to think that God has won by default. As Evolutionary Biologist Richard Dawkins sarcastically put it,

If you don’t understand how something works, never mind: just give up and say God did it. You don’t know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don’t understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don’t go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God. Dear scientist, don’t work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries, for we can use them. Don’t squander precious ignorance by researching it away. We need those glorious gaps as a last refuge for God.[10]

Moreover, if God’s existence is said to be proven through lack of scientific understanding, then we have to accept the converse form of the equation: each scientific discovery only serves to put another nail in the coffin of religious lore.[11]