Why I Don't Care About God

2010-09-03

I do not believe in god. I do not not believe in god. Most of the time I simply do not concern myself with god because I have no reason to believe that god does or does not exist. But a fair number of people try to argue one way or the other.

Many arguments for the existence of god revolve around the idea the universe is so mind-blowing that god must exist. Personally, the fact that the universe is mysterious indicates that we shouldn't use the concept of god to pretend that we understand things more than we really do.

On the other side, arguments against the existence of god often rely on pointing out contradictions in religion. But these arguments do not actually prove anything beyond that religion is alogical (outside of logic) and illogical (uses incorrect logic). Even many religious authorities acknowledge this. And being alogical isn't always a bad thing. Most philosophical questions involve contradiction, which logic can not deal with.

Other arguments against god point to scientific explanation, claiming that the universe is the result of the unfolding of a few mathematical equations. But as Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins so sharply argue in their book Biology Under the Influence, equations about microscopic particles can not tell us about larger phenomena.

People also like to point to the big bang theory (the idea was original conceived by a Catholic priest) as the answer to how the universe was created. But the big bang theory is not a theory at all in the sense that there is no reproducible experiment. The big bang theory also doesn't answer the question of how the universe came about or why, or what exactly it means for the universe to have a "size" or to be "expanding". The big bang theory is just a loose attempt to explain what happened after the universe came into existence. Science doesn't prove much if anything in respect to god and shouldn't use science to pretend that we know more than we do about the universe.

Instead of worrying about whether god does or does not exist, maybe we should be comfortable with not completely understanding the universe and that it is a mysterious thing.