A Dumb Proof for God

Here is Bob Dutko’s “proof” that a creator-god exists.

1)  Either God exists or He doesn’t.

2)  If he doesn’t, then the only thing we’re left with are the Laws of Physics to describe the beginning of the universe.

3)  The Laws of Physics don’t allow for matter to be created from nothing.  That would break the first Law of Thermodynamics.

4)  Therefore, God must exist.

He has a second proof that says why this god is actually the Christian God.  The proof is that in the Bible, Jesus says he is the one true God.  Period.  Apparently no other god was smart enough to proclaim themselves the one true god.

And he really sounds so sincere when he doesn’t understand why atheists don’t get it.  He truly claims that he’s proven God by using SCIENCE and LOGIC, and it’s so simple!

There are two issues I have with his proof.

The first is that I don’t believe anyone’s opinion on physics, biology, astrophysics, geology, etc, except for people who have actually studies and trained in the those fields.  A huge amount of Christian apologists will lay out what sounds like real facts from all those areas of study.  I dismiss them out of hand, and you should too.  At best, they’ll cherry pick data to support their claims (weird radiometric dating instances, for example).  Or worse, they’ll present a falsehood as fact.  In this instance:  The law of conservation of energy, which Bob is referring to, only applies to CLOSED systems.  So it doesn’t apply to the creation of the universe (if, indeed, the universe isn’t eternal and was created).

Now if Bob could demonstrate that matter or energy was actually created or destroyed WITHIN the confines of the universe, then we’d have something to talk about.

The second thing I note is that I really get the sense that theists come from a position of absolutes.  There is such a thing as absolute good and absolute evil.  Things are very black and white.  And I think they project these notions onto the secular world where they may not fit.

What I don’t think he’s understanding is that scientific stuff, even “laws” and “theories”, are flexible.  They are merely descriptors of the universe around us, and can (and should!) change if they aren’t doing an adequate job of describing reality.  If we did find something that “broke” the laws of physics, that doesn’t mean all of physics is now meaningless.  It just means we need to refine our understand and description of reality.  And clearly we’re doing this as we discover new things at the fringes of our understanding of the universe (quantum physics, notably). 

Science works.  It is the very best way of refining our understating of reality.  In fact, if someone proposed a new way of ascertaining reality, we’d use the scientific method to figure out if it was actually better or not!