Why do I bother?

I suppose that it helps me to clarify things for my own benefit, but it's a waste of time responding to creationist claptrap like this letter from Mr George Gardner. He wrote to the local paper in reply to a letter I'd written about something or other related to religion, and when the paper closed the correspondence, he wrote to me. I threw that letter away after I'd replied to it, hoping I wouldn't hear from Mr G again. A vain hope. He'd told me that he's in his eighties, and that he "comes alive" when debating issues like this. Good for him. Now I'm therapy for geriatrics, but it still doesn't endear me to the old fool.

Click on the image to read his last letter:
I've replied (again), but it'll be the last time.

Dear Mr Gardner,

I thought I’d answered your question about creation. There is no “of course” about your assertion that the universe was either created or happened accidentally, since no one really knows how it began. Few people, myself included, understand theoretical physics or cosmology, which is one reason why we shouldn’t assume that there was anything “accidental” about the origin of the universe. Some scientists subscribe to the Big Bang Theory (a term coined by Fred Hoyle, who didn’t accept the theory) while others offer alternative ones. I think one of the biggest problems we have, in contemplating the vastness of the universe, is considering whether it might be finite or infinite, since either possibility is mind-boggling.

However, the fact that we don’t know with certainty what happened at the beginning (or maybe there never was a beginning, but a constant cycle) doesn’t lead me to believe that the universe was “created”. The idea is absurd, based on myths written in an anthology known as the Bible. These myths began when primitive humankind, without any scientific understanding, sought explanations for natural phenomena that appeared magical. They’re lovely stories, but they’re not true.

Your assertion that I have an “illogical position of believing that you can reason in an irrational world” doesn’t make sense. What do you mean by an “irrational world”? Do you mean the physical world; the planet? Or do you mean the sphere of human activity? Or the world of secular or material matters? If you mean, as I suspect, that a world that wasn’t created is “accidental”, hence “irrational”, and therefore reason can have no influence in it, I think you’re straying into Alice in Wonderland territory. On the contrary, I regard the idea of creation as thoroughly irrational.

If the universe, our world, and everything in it, had been created, how do you explain the imperfections of this creation? Why not make it perfect? Why create parasitic worms that invade the bodies of African children and make them blind? Why create predators that inflict horrible cruelty on their prey? Why allow so many things to go wrong with our bodies, so that some of us die so horribly? I’ve heard creationist Christians assert that suffering and death are punishments for sin. The God who’d make us suffer like this, if he, she or it has the power to relieve suffering, strikes me as a nasty, vindictive sadist. Why would anyone want to worship it? You wrote about morality; a God who allows these things wouldn’t be moral at all.

There are many creation myths, not just the Genesis myth. They vary but often share similar themes. What they all have in common is that they’re passed down by word of mouth or through religious writings, but that there’s no proof for any of them. If you have faith, you’re expected to believe things without proof. That’s up to you – at least it is, if you’re an adult capable of making up your own mind. When children are taught these things as fact, that’s an abuse of your position as a parent, teacher or whatever.

You wrote, “Morality is a whim in the absence of a God”. I’d argue that a morality determined by an authority, such as a religious authority, is not truly moral. If your only reason for attempting to live a good life is to follow the rules laid down by such an authority, rather than to satisfy your own conscience, you’re no better than an obedient child. Obedience is all very well, when a child’s welfare is involved, but it isn’t appropriate behaviour for grown-up people. It’s infantile. Certainly, many who live without religion aren’t bothered about morality, but suggesting that all who live without religion are immoral is as absurd as suggesting that all who live with religion are moral. The history of Christianity is a bloody history of war and persecution, cruelty and horror. Women have been the victims of so-called “morality” throughout Christian history, and are still persecuted today by religious authorities in the Christian and Muslim worlds. The “morality” that seems to preoccupy so many nasty moralisers is about an unhealthy obsession with sex, and seldom about how we might behave in a civilised, enlightened world. You can keep your Christian “morality” – it stinks of pious hypocrisy.

You’ve mentioned H G Wells a couple of times. You might just as well mention anyone who’d describe him or herself as an atheist; you can’t generalise from the particular in this respect. Wells is irrelevant to your argument. He was a great story-teller but didn’t really understand a lot of things and, like many (including religious obsessives) with fixed ideas about how life should be lived, he became disillusioned. The tone of his writing became more pessimistic as he grew older. Like other clever men, Wells wasn’t particularly clever in his emotional life, which appears to have been a disaster. He was human, with human frailties. His lack of religion had nothing to do with it.

I don’t “believe in scientists” in the way that you believe in God. Science provides one way of understanding who we are, where we came from, and where we might be going. Scientists hypothesise, and then have to provide the evidence through observation and experiment to back up their hypotheses. If the evidence doesn’t fit, they may reject their original hypothesis or consider an alternative. Sometimes, the process of observation and experimentation can lead to unexpected results. There are many other ways to try to understand the world and our place in it, but when it comes to the physical world, the fact that scientists must validate their theories or be challenged by their peers gives me far more confidence – 100% more – than the assertions of the religious, based on faith.

You wrote that, in medical science, “if things go wrong, they go wrong in an orderly fashion.” Where did you get that idea? It’s not true. You also wrote, “Presumably, you would argue that the existence of order in the universe [sic] not evidence of mind.” I assume you’ve made an error in that sentence. Perhaps you meant, “… is not evidence of mind,” but I have no idea what you mean. Anyway, I wouldn’t argue that there is any order in the universe; quite on the contrary.

Finally, no, it’s never bothered me that even the cleverest of men can’t “make” a small bacterium. They can (and do) create the conditions for the development of bacteria. Many people do it every day, in their fridges, toilets, or bedrooms. Some bacteria can survive for hundreds of thousands of years in suspended animation, by the way.

It seems that we’ve come back to your basic lack of understanding of evolution. I suggested that you might read “Climbing Mount Improbable” by Prof. Richard Dawkins, which provides an easy to understand explanation of evolution, but it seems you prefer to remain ignorant.

Please don’t bother to reply, as I’m not interested in continuing this correspondence.