March 13, 1984

Dear John Clayton:

     I don't like shot-gunning either. It's a tendency we all have that we let get away with us too often, and in a discussion of this type it is most unconstructive. So, I will put everything else on the back burner, set it on warm, and proceed with first things first. I want to mention that I just have all these ideas pent up inside of me, and, I must admit, you are the first person with whom I have been able to intelligently (or any other way) discuss these things in a manner approaching a real study. I just got carried away. I did not intend to sound closed-minded in my last letter. It's just that when I have heard an argument over and over and have studied it and found it to be inadequate, I have a tendency to become impatient with it and begin to "rant and rave" against it. I will, however, stand by the ideal of intellectual honesty proposed in my essay. Also, I apologize for the personal remark about seeing an anthropologist. I should not have made it. I try to avoid these types of statements, and I will try to keep it from happening again. I still do, however, hold forth my statements about the inaccurate and misleading ideas of your chapters 14 and 15 (regardless of their source). These chapters do not represent current archaeological and anthropological information and study. But, I must remember the back burner before I carry on.

     I did decide to keep (for a while at least) your new edition after I recognized the number of changes that had been made. I will not use the previous edition, then, but just stick with the new one in our discussion.

     After reading your book, it seems to me that you are basing your arguments for the existence of God on two basic ideas:

1. Since so little is known about the origins of things such as the universe, the earth (and its suitability for living organisms), and living organisms, we must resort to the idea of God to explain their origins.
2. So many things around us show design, and this implies that there must have been a designer.

     The first argument is not any kind of an argument at all. If theists have to resort to this kind of argument as-evidence for the existence of God, then God is a very weak concept indeed. First of all, to say God originated these various things does not provide any explanation at all, "That which explains anything, explains nothing." If we want to bring this idea into a truly testable realm (the "similar techniques" that you mention, pp. 15,16), then we must say, "If God originated A, then the tell-tale signs of his creation process would be B, C, D, etc." In other words, if God did it (as opposed to some other process), then (to be scientific) there must be certain observable consequences of this hypothesis (it must be independently testable). Does the conjecture of God provide solutions (explanations) to problems that we have in understanding the why's and wherefore's of the processes in question? Will this God conjecture provide us with new insights into possible routes of inquiry for exploring what we are interested in?

     But The Source does not show that this hypothesis of the existence of God does any of these things. It goes on and on for dozens of pages mentioning complexity upon complexity that exists in the universe, then asserts that, since present physical theories do not explain the observable complexities satisfactorily, we must postulate the existence of God to account for their existence (even though The Source does not even propose a cause-effect relationship). This is nothing more than a leap in the dark. This is an argument that relies on ignorance for its basis. "We cannot explain this naturally, so God must have done it." Mystics and theologians have used this argument innumerable times to extol the wonders of whatever spiritual forces they were praising and invoking for "explanation."

     God, of course, is very convenient because his existence explains anything. "What? We can't explain why planets go around the sun? Why, God, of course!" As a matter of fact, Leibniz chastised the person who finally did put forth a natural explanation of the motion of the planets because it left God too far out of the picture. Personally, though, Newton was simply trying to solve the riddle of how God's will was carried out in the motions of the planets (and in the motions of other objects, for that matter, for Newton was quite mystical in his own way, as was Bruno). This very complex problem was explained before Newton as spiritual, mystical, supernatural forces at work in the cosmos, but today we have a much more sophisticated view (and solution) of the complex problem of motion due to forces. Even the "force at a distance" view has been explained with quantum field theory and the requisite gravitons. These modern ideas are of a complexity that was not even guessed at 400 years ago.

     The Source asks us to accept God because the complexities of many problems have up to the present time prohibited scientists from working out natural (physical and testable as opposed to mystical and supernatural) explanations and solutions. In other words, in lieu of an explanation we shall resort to a non-explanation. In lieu of a coherent explanation for the motion of the planets, it was said that God (or some other supernatural force or forces) did it, but this did not provide an explanation. It provided (and still provides) a psychological satisfaction that is not provided by saying, very truthfully, we don't yet know. The television program Nova interviewed the great physicist Richard Feynman and he discussed some of these ideas toward the end of the interview and stated that honesty compelled him to say "I don't know," and curiosity compelled him to say "but I will try to find out if I can." Maybe I'm too idealistic, but these ideals seem credible and valid to me.

     The point of the second chapter of The Source is a speculation, to say the least. It is true we can extrapolate back to a "big bang" in which the universe, as we know it, began. What the chapter seems to be implying, though, is that, since we don't know how it could have happened or where it (the singularity) came from, this gives evidence for God. The idea that it came from God is pure speculation. We may continue to believe that the big bang had a cause (because it seems that everything we've explored so far in the natural universe is explainable in terms of a cause-effect relationship and things don't seem to make much sense otherwise), but what that cause was is something no one knows or has any information about. There is no evidence for God here.

     For example, I can come up with several alternative ideas about the actual origin of our universe, but at the present time (and, yes, maybe even forever) there is no way to test these ideas. We simply do not know enough and may never know enough to test various explanations of the origin of the singularity from which our universe sprang. Sagan's idea is as valid as the idea of a personal, all-powerful, creative being (perhaps even more so in terms of testability and explanatory power). But if we are into speculative ideas that are not going to be subject to normal validation principles, then let's be imaginative. There could have been two (or more) all-powerful beings who, being opposed to one another, caused the singularity and big bang simply as a minor consequence of a major battle between themselves (various and numerable stories have been constructed along this line). Turn these beings into impersonal, unconscious forces and you have another picture. Or, using your example of "flatland," our universe could very well be a minor sub-cell of a much larger universe, and what we see in our sub-cell is a small, minor scenario played upon a much larger stage in which physical laws are vastly different from those that guide processes in our small sub-cell (or in which our physical laws are simply minor manifestations of these "super-laws"). We can imagine anything we want to, but these ideas can be nothing more that speculations for us right now. God, from the first argument, becomes pure speculation. Ignorance does not constitute evidence for God (though it has in humankind's past and does in the present constitute the basis for almost all religions).

     In chapter 3 of The Source this idea is continued: "There are those... who maintain that the universe was not caused — that out of absolute nothing (no force, no mass, no energy) by an unknown principle of science, matter could pop into existence out of nothing." I've never heard this idea from anyone. I have heard that we don't know anything about the origin of the singularity of the big bang because we don't really know much of anything about singularities. But the words unknown and uncaused are not synonymous. From scientists I've read that, of course, the big bang (and the origin of the singularity itself) was caused, but at present we just do not have any information about those causes. Furthermore, I've read both the idea that the energy (and mass, etc.) of the universe popped into existence out of nothing and the idea that the singularity and big bang were nothing more than transition states and all the energy had existed previous to these states. But, to repeat, everything I have ever read about this event always treated it as caused by something that is, so far at least, unknown. And, again, to say God did it is a leap in the dark. We have no information about the cause of the universe (i.e., where the singularity came from and what caused the "bang"). (Notice that I stated in "In Terms Of Finding Out" that the universe, in its present form, is at least 10 billion years old.)

     Carl Sagan wonders, rightly enough, why we must speculate beyond what we know to things that we have no information about:

    If the general picture of an expanding universe and a Big Bang is correct, we must then confront still more difficult questions. What were conditions like at the time of the Big Bang? What happened before that? Was there a tiny universe devoid of all matter and then the matter suddenly created from nothing? How does that happen? In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from. And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and decide that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God has always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed? (Cosmos p. 257)

     The second argument for the existence of God, the argument of design, is a bit more subtle. However, at least one mark against it is the same as that against the first argument. First of all, design has not been given any definition at all, and the book proceeds with this vague notion of design and gives examples of such in the structure of the elements, the earth (as far as its suitability for living things is concerned), and living organisms. But here is the problem. It is the structure, the order, that is evident. The design is not. Propitiousness of function does not promote the idea of design. Douglas Futuyma asked if the order seen in the placement of objects on the beach was evidence of design or evidence of some physical process. The answer, of course, is obvious.

     Whether order exists or not is not in dispute. The question is: Has the order been brought about by design or by unthinking physical processes? Was the earth (and the earth's environment, i.e., orbit around sun, proper sun, position in galaxy, etc.) designed for the living organisms that are on it or were the living organisms that came along naturally selected due to environmental pressures in such a way that they fit the planet? More succinctly: Does the planet fit the life or does the life fit the planet? The Source does not even hint at any such distinction. There are obviously ordered (structured) systems that exist all around us, but order does not imply design. There exist designed ordered systems and there exist undesigned (natural) ordered systems. A distinction needs to be made.

     The Source does imply with its examples the argument that such things could not have come about due strictly to natural laws. They couldn't even have been designed using natural laws (as humans are limited to in their designs). Indeed, such things were designed by supernatural laws. Again, the first weakness is that this completely lacks any demonstration of or hypothesis about a cause-effect relationship. It is not testable, it provides no explanations or solutions, and it does not lead to new avenues of inquiry. In short, it is not scientific (not applicable to explorations of the world around us).

     But, aside from this, The Source constantly assumes conditions to be requisite that are not necessarily so. Instability in our solar system for a change of only 0.25 light-years? Instabilities exist in it now. The structure of the water molecule is so by design? I learned that its molecular structure was due to certain physical laws that atoms follow when they join together. We can ask why this is and go into quantum mechanics and maybe end up in quantum chromodynamics or something like that and still continue to ask why. To say God designed the water molecule that way or to say, more subtly, God designed the physical laws so the water molecule would have the specific characteristics it does is equivalent to other imaginative stories that I or anyone else can come up with that are just as vague and untestable and unexplanatory in nature.

     Now, to ask if it is possible for something to come about naturally, without design, through physical processes only, is to ask a more intelligent question. To flatly state that something can or cannot come about through design when there is little or no information about it one way or the other is not good. To deny facts in order to substantiate a pet idea is unforgivable. For example, creationists used to (and some still do) make the argument that even simple proteins could not be produced from simple chemicals in the laboratory, let alone a replicating, energy-utilizing system of proteins (life). Their argument was made from the laws of probability. But when proteins were finally produced in the laboratory, many creationists backed off this and retreated to what they believe is a safer position. Now they say that life cannot be produced in the laboratory because probability argues against it. Their argument is just as wrong now as it was demonstrated to be before (and I will say why in a bit). Besides, many of the major steps on the road from simple chemical elements to replicating, energy-utilizing organic systems have been demonstrated in the laboratory, and scientists are fast approaching final solutions to this problem. Many believe it may be solved within the next ten years. But regardless of this, the fact remains that for decades creationists used an argument (which was wrong to begin with as will be shown) from probability that was demonstrated to be wrong. They then continued to use the same argument (changed just a hair) without batting an eyelash.

     The Source uses the same argument, and it is still just as wrong for all the same reasons. First of all, chemicals do not form molecules in a random fashion. This is why a chemist knows exactly what reactions will occur when two chemicals are mixed if she or he has observed the event before. Molecules are not formed randomly and chaotically. Certain chemical principles are observed to apply to reactions that take place. Furthermore, a mistake in the application of probability has taken place. We don't need the formation of one specific molecular structure that can utilize energy from its environment and can replicate itself. Any molecular structure that can perform these functions will suffice. I have enclosed a short discussion I wrote that has some similar information along these lines (as well as some on other areas) for you to look at. There is also a very informative article on some research in this area that was current three years ago. It is "The Origin Of Genetic Information" in the April 1981 issue of Scientific American. Douglas Futuyma in Science On Trial also discusses the weaknesses in this creationist argument. And another book which I notice I have not mentioned in any of my letters yet (I only got hold of it about a month-and-a-half ago) is the book Scientists Confront Creationism edited by Laurie Godfrey which also contains an article along this line.

     I have also enclosed a copy of some of the discussion Philip Kitcher has on the arguments of creationists concerning design (and some other information that I think may come up).

     I think this letter is long enough for this time around, so I will end my discussion here, and what follows is incidental.

     "God did it. Yes, it's true that we are unable to observe God in any way, but we can observe what he has done. What's that? I haven't explained how God did it? It doesn't need to be explained; his creation is all around us. What? Oh, you mean how did God do it? Well, we can't analyze how God did it, because God is not subject to natural laws. But that doesn't matter — God can do anything!"

     I've heard this line of argument or very similar arguments again and again and again and yet again! It is a blind faith, and by the very way it is constructed cannot be anything but. When someone uses this it just makes me feel so... I have no word for it. But it is a very frustrating feeling. How can I rationally discuss something with someone who has an impenetrable argument of faith?

     "Something completely beyond observation, huh? Then how do you know so much about it?"

     "Because God has revealed himself to us in the Bible."

     That's what it comes down to. A belief in the Bible. That's why I tend to stick with arguments dealing with the Bible because the Bible is something concrete that I can go to and say, "Look, this is what the Bible says. What it says is wrong. Take it or leave it. If you still choose to believe it came from some divine being who is revealing himself to us in this book, then go right ahead. I choose not to. I believe a communication from a divine being would be far less anthropomorphic and far less parochial as well as being completely accurate."

     And I think it's important that I clarify what I mean when I use the word fundamentalist. When I say fundamentalist I at referring to any person who says the Bible has no external or internal contradictions (contradictions with history and nature or contradictions with itself) and says the Bible was written by men inspired by God. And such a person says (I've read it many times) that any "real" problems are simply due to the centuries of translation that the Bible has undergone. I mean nothing more or less than this when I use the word fundamentalist. I say this simply as a point of clarification.

In the spirit of Job 34.4,
Todd S. Greene

March 2, 1984

Dear Todd:

     I appreciate your letter of February 25 and the time that you put into writing your letter. I hope that we can engage in dialogue that will be helpful to both of us, and of course, I would be less than honest if I did not admit to you that my ultimate purpose in communicating with you would be to convince you that there is a reason and there is a great importance to accepting the Bible as the guide for our lives; and there is a mountain of evidence available to support such belief. I do not believe in fundamentalism any more than you do and I believe it is important to realize that being a person who is identified as a fundamentalist is not a particularly positive attribute. It is more important, I think, to be a person who is attempting to understand both the spirit and the letter of the Bible's teaching, rather than to regurgitate a denominational, traditional framework which is what I believe fundamentalism is.

     I am glad to know that you are reading different things, but I do hope that you will read some books by credible people who believe in God — not by some of the incredible ones which appears to me to be some of what you have been saturated with. I think you will find, for example that a huge percentage of those Christians who accept evolution do accept the idea that the Bible is, in fact, God's inspired Word, but the difference is that they realize that the Bible communicates to man in many different ways.

     I don't believe that you can logically assume that the Bible is full of mistakes and then accept it as a guide for one's life, and I think this is a part of what you are saying.

     Obviously, it is always easier to look backward and make interpretations correct with contemporary science. This has been true of science, as well as religion. If one were to look back at the ether theory which predominated in the 19th century, one could easily say, "Well, surely those idiots should have been able to recognize that longitudinal waves could not pass through the space between the Earth and the sun, and therefore, the space had to be a vacuum, rather than inventing an ether." Nonetheless, they did not for a variety of reasons — all of them good, logical, intelligent reasons.

     The lesson of the past has been that religious people have tended to follow what people tell them, rather than to do their own thinking. I think that you will find that there were people who read the Biblical account and who said that the Earth was round, but they did not happen to be in positions of leadership and consequently were excluded from any intelligent discussion of the theologians of the day.

     I think you will also find that the people who teach that the Earth is flat are not fundamentalist, but in fact, are people who are members of the philosophical group and have nonreligious leanings whatsoever.

     I still maintain that if one looks in a consistent literal way at the Bible, one does not have any trouble in seeing the credibility of it and we have studied this in detail and have written some materials on it which I hope you have taken some time, or will be willing to take some time to study.

     Your second paragraph on the second page which contained an attempt to try and prove that God is a cruel and vindictive God, I find to be very biased in its approach, I think that most of the things that you are stating are incorrect and are based upon the assumption that your particular understanding of it is, in fact, what happened. Let me go through a couple of these and point out that I am dealing with.

     I know of no case, for example, where God commanded human sacrifices. I also find no evidence in the Bible that it was God that caused the death of the son of David and Bathsheba. The indication was that the child was sick, but the source of that sickness is not identified. The destruction of men, women and children, in the various towns of Canaan which were invaded by the Israelites, were in no way comparable to the situation today because these people were far from innocent people. It is a matter of historical record that prostitution was carried on as a worship activity in these towns and that venereal disease was rampant throughout the entire area.

     I also think it is important to realize that you have to separate between those things that are the natural consequences of what man does and those things that are brought about by God, It is not logical to expect God to run around with a big butterfly net protecting man from all of the stupid things that man does, Most of the things that you referred to are in this category.

     It is also important to realize that the society that you are reading about was an extremely primitive society in which the values and the standards of the people and the conditions in which they existed were far different than those today. You are also assuming that death is the ultimate tragedy and negative the fact that eternal life is a far more important thing than the life upon this Earth. All of these things need to be considered when you make the kind of sweeping condemnation that you made in your second paragraph. I don't believe that you have looked at that with an eye to some of the points I am trying to make.

     Your discussion of Ai is, once again, a case of a preconceived idea. If you had read secular historians during the time of the 19th century, you would have found sweeping condemnations of the Bible on the basis that a national known as the Hittites did not exist. You don't hear that today because modern archaeological finds have totally vindicated the Bible in every statement it has made about the Hittites.

     If you will read Thompson's book on Archaeology you will see that there are several possibilities where Ai may have been and there is some indication that at least one of those excavations being carried on right now may vindicate the Bible in these areas. There have been literally hundreds of cases of this type.

     It is typical of atheists to go through the Bible and try to find one particular point out of the thousands of statements given and if they cannot validate it with contemporary history, declare the Bible totally erroneous on the basis of the one case. The lesson of history has been that ultimately these things are shown to be true. Not one single source that I am giving on this archaeological material is a religious source. These are scholars who have nothing to prove, as you indicated in your letter, by the things that they have found. Most of the things that have been carried out have been carried on by the London Museum.

     You indicated a very close-minded position in your discussion about Jesus and the tomb. It is not desperate and absurd to suggest that Jesus died on Thursday. I have encouraged Wayne Leeper to get his scholarly material together and will hope to have that to you sometime, but it will not be in the immediate future. The basic point is that there are many different kinds of Sabbaths, and the kinds of Sabbaths that were used,did not depend upon the weekday in which they were established. There was, of course, the regular Sabbath, but the word "Sabbath" does not indicate the day of the week in the Jewish religion, but rather the particular kind of religious activity that was carried on. To say that it is absurd to suggest that a Sabbath event occurred on Thursday is to simply be ignorant of the Jewish method of establishing religious days.

     My main complaint about your statement is not so-much the fact that you might disagree with it, but the fact that you indicate that before even examining the evidence you are unwilling to accept a certain concept, again based upon a preconceived idea. There-are, of course, a number of different ways of explaining the situation with Jesus and the days and nights in the tomb. I personally have not had enough time to totally study the concepts of the various types of Sabbaths, but I am currently attempting to glean material along that line and would encourage you to do the same.

     I will attempt to get Mr. Leeper to send this material to you as soon as possible.

     You also indicate prejudice in the next paragraph by referring to any explanation that is given as "obscure explanation." I believe that every claimed contradiction that has been made about the Bible has been satisfactorily answered. Some of these explanations would admittedly depend upon the bias of the person examining the statement, but 90% of them would not, Once again, you have to realize that there are thousands and thousands and thousands of possible places that one might wish to challenge the Bible but when you really sort it out to the ones that are difficult to deal with you end up with just a handful. Any document of the antiquity of the Bible is likely to have some cases of this type, if for no other process than the process of translation difficulties.

     My experience has been with most skeptics is that they take a passage and if there is any possible way to interpret that passage as being contradictory to what is known today, they will accept that no matter how much they have to distort and misrepresent the passage. The number of actual mistakes involved are relatively small.

     I think that Nelkin's book and Kitcher's book fall into all of the traps that I referred to in my last letter and their ignorance of the Biblical position on most of the items they are discussing is really profound.

     I also believe that you need to realize that what was being quoted in the book that you apparently have in your possession that you bought in Cadillac is material taken directly from the Time-Life material. I am sorry that you did not see fit to look at the book that I sent you because it is an up-dated version of the older book. The 1983 edition has many of the problems that were in the old book corrected, and this is what I had hoped that you would take a look at.

     I would also like to point out to you that my Master's Degree is in paleontology with a minor in anthropology, and consequently my background is not as feeble in that area as you seem to think. (Earth Science is my 2nd masters degree.)

     I don't believe it is correct to assume that the concept of evolution and the theory of evolution are exactly the same thing. This is just simply bad science, and almost anybody that is trained in the fundamentals of science and scientific method would recognize the fallacies in that type of approach. I encourage you to look at that a little more precisely when you deal with all of these areas.

     I really think that this letter and my response are far too broad for intelligent communication. We are shot-gunning too many areas all at one time and obviously it would take an enormous amount of both of our time to respond to each other's letters if we continue this type of procedure. Let me try to simplify this thing and let's go all the way back to the start.

     The first fundamental question we want to deal with is whether or not God exists. I believe we can prove God exists. We can prove it in the sense of offering such a mountain of evidence that no thinking person could logically and reasonably deny the evidence available.

     If you haven't mailed the copy of The Source back that I sent you, if you will look at the beginning of it you will see a logical presentation of evidence to prove the existence of God. I would encourage you to respond to that particular point, and let's proceed with some semblance of order in these discussions. The main thing would be to establish the existence of God, and then establish which God, then discuss the credibility of the Bible, and then get down to the questions of evolution. Trying to cover one thing in one sweep is very, very frustrating and very time-consuming, and ends up with a lot of things being covered partially and nothing thoroughly,

     I hope that perhaps you will give some consideration to following that type of procedure. Thanks again for writing and I do want you to know that I am praying for you and hope that you will see your way out of the present position you are holding because I know where that position is going to take you.

     I am enclosing a copy of a book of my own background to let you know why I make that kind of statement. It will also fill you in on a little of my background, as you did in your letter.

     Thanks again for writing.

Sincerely in Christian Concern,
John N. Clayton

Enclosure
1 Book — Why I Left Atheism