With the loss of rational proof of God's existence, we now turn to Occam's Razor in an effort to rescue some sort of proof of God's existence. Occam's Razor, in a nutshell, states that, all other things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. While we rejected the conventional rational proofs of God's existence, we left open the possibility that he still exists. And then comes Occam's Razor -- if all other things are equal, then the simplest explanation is usually the best -- and the simplest explanation is that God caused the Big Bang which caused the Universe to begin.
Occam himself was a strong theist. But the problem is that he lived 600 years before the rise of Quantum Physics. Paul Davies sums up the battle to this point:
This simple, schoolchild query has exercised the intellects of generations of philosophers, scientists, and theologians. Many have avoided it as an impenetrable mystery. Others have tried to define it away. Most have got themselves into an awful tangle just thinking about it.
The problem, at rock bottom, is this: If nothing happens without a cause, then something must have caused the universe to appear. But then we are faced with the inevitable question of what caused that something. And so on in an infinite regress. Some people simply proclaim that God created the universe, but children always want to know who created God, and that line of questioning gets uncomfortably difficult.
One evasive tactic is to claim that the universe didn't have a beginning, that it has existed for all eternity. Unfortunately, there are many scientific reasons why this obvious idea is unsound. For starters, given an infinite amount of time, anything that can happen will already have happened, for if a physical process is likely to occur with a certain nonzero probability-however small-then given an infinite amount of time the process must occur, with probability one. By now, the universe should have reached some sort of final state in which all possible physical processes have run their course. Furthermore, you don't explain the existence of the universe by asserting that it has always existed. That is rather like saying that nobody wrote the Bible: it was. just copied from earlier versions. Quite apart from all this, there is very good evidence that the universe did come into existence in a big bang, about fifteen billion years ago. The effects of that primeval explosion are clearly detectable today-in the fact that the universe is still expanding, and is filled with an afterglow of radiant heat.
So we are faced with the problem of what happened beforehand to trigger the big bang. Journalists love to taunt scientists with this question when they complain about the money being spent on science. Actually, the answer (in my opinion) was spotted a long time ago, by one Augustine of Hippo, a Christian saint who lived in the fifth century. In those days before science, cosmology was a branch of theology, and the taunt came not from journalists, but from pagans: "What was God doing before he made the universe?" they asked. "Busy creating Hell for the likes of you!" was the standard reply.
But Augustine, of all people, unwittingly provided the answer to this dilemma -- the world was made simultaneously with time, not in time. Therefore, there was nothing before the foundation of this universe that we can comprehend -- anything outside of our space-time continuum cannot be either proven or disproven. And Quantum Physics teaches that instead of the order that we have been taught, things happen spontaneously for no reason. In other words, the Universe just is -- there is no need for a First Cause.
The Bible has it all backwards -- man made God in his image, not the other way around. Cicero goes into elaborate detail about how the Romans devised their myths for their purposes. And yet, the fact that Kant and Nietzsche shredded the proofs of God's existence and the proofs for fundamentalist Christianity does not mean that God somehow becomes less meaningful. God is outside the realm of human observation; therefore, human reason and observation can't establish the existence of God. But there are plenty of decisions that we must make that are beyond the scope of human reason -- like who to marry, or who to hire, or where to live and work, or problems of that nature. Therefore, we cannot turn around and say that religion is no longer valid.
But what it does mean is that the process of finding God becomes intensely personal -- meaning that there is no place in public policy for religious indoctrination, including the guises of anti-gay scaremongering, forced pregnancy, vouchers, or abstinence-based education. What does God mean to you? Texas Revolutionary notes from a scientific standpoint:
Everything will not turn out fine in the end. The sun will eventually swallow the earth, reducing it to a cinder. The universe itself will collapse into itself. In the meantime, live your life. Be happy. Love, and be loved. Help make the world a better place to live. Make your own purpose - don't wait for "God" to give you one.
So, in light the fact that the sun will eventually swallow the earth, how will everything turn out "OK," since God is a symbol that everything will turn out "OK?" One possible answer to that is that God is presented as a creator -- therefore, if we are to find God, it is to be found -- if we are to believe Tillich -- in thought processes that preserve and create life, as opposed to fatalistically waiting for the inevitable to happen in a few million odd years. Sharon Wright:
Many sophisticated theologians have an abstract, conceptual notion of 'God', not a humanized (anthropological) one. Psalms: "The strength of the hills is His, also." Appreciating the majesty of a landscape, of a leaf -- they embody a meaningful notion of God, too. The grandfather in the sky with a white beard works for some people, including some artists (Michaelangelo?). But there are many other, non-personified uses. Paul Tillich, for example, defined 'God' as a thought process -- having an 'Ultimate Concern'. Other people, of course, choose to define 'God' as a superstition held by primitive peoples, they do not value sacred vocabulary or framing.
And not only can man create God in his own image, rather than the other way around, man can create entire universes as well if David Kellogg Lewis is to be believed. If Lewis is to be believed, there are an infinite number of parallel universes of which our universe is merely one. So, in other words, if you come across a debate between a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian, an atheist, and a Buddhist, then you can step in and say, "hold on, folks -- you're all right." In other words, there are worlds in which the Islamic God is true, there are worlds in which there is no God, there are worlds in which the Hebrew God is real, there are worlds in which the Christian God is real, and so on.
But then this leads to some troubling scenarios -- couldn't the Republicans then say that Saddam was a clear and present danger to this country, that he had the capability to strike us within 45 minutes, that he had amassed chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons since the first Gulf War, and was thus a threat? But these difficulties can be worked around if we recall the Categorical Imperative. If we are to accept that there are infinite parallel universes, then the proper answer to these Bush apologists would not so much be, "you're full of shit," but, "so what?"
Recall that the Categorical Imperative states that morals can be established if, and only if, they can apply to everyone. And the two that I can come up with that can be universally applied are love and justice. So, answering such claims would involve discussing what the loving and just thing to do is. First of all, love involves the betterment of all of humanity, or, failing that, the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Therefore, sound public policy would have been to exhaust all options before attacking Saddam -- if that means that we spend 10-40 years of diplomatic maneuvering, great; that is how we won the Cold War.
Secondly of all, the just thing to do would have been to recruit a disinterested party; the original basis for justice was people getting together and finding someone completely honest willing to judge their disputes. That is the basis of the modern court system -- appointing people who are fair and impartial. The Arab League actively attempted to prevent war between the US and Iraq; Russia and China were the two most disinterested parties of the Security Council. The just thing to do would have been to let these parties take the lead in bringing about a resolution to this dispute. Even if the right-wingers were right about Saddam, we were faced with annihilation every day when the Soviet Union was still around.
Another problem is, what if someone falsely accuses me of something horrible that is a lie, such as child molestation? If we are to work within this kind of a framework, then it is all the more important that we have a strong legal system that is able to adjudicate between the accused and the accuser when something of that nature happens. In other words, our Prime Directive, so to speak, is to preserve and protect the Constitution so that such cases can be fairly decided. In other words, when someone thinks that I am guilty of some horrible crime and creates their own universe in which I am guilty, and I am just as adamant that I am innocent of such a crime, it is all the more important that we are able to appoint a disinterested party who can construct their own reality. It may not please either side, but at some point, both of us have to move on.
And another way that we can address this problem is if we recognize that some things are none of our business. For instance, recall that I stated that God cannot be rationally proven or disproven; therefore, s/he is intensely personal. In other words, it is none of our business what a person believes about God unless they choose to share it. The same goes with other aspects of our personal lives -- for instance, let's suppose that Edwards did have the affair with the woman in the hotel. But even supposing it were true, that is still none of our business what a man does with his personal, private life. That is between him and his partner. If we are to argue that Edwards is fair game, then we have to universalize it and say that every time a person cheats on their partner, that is our business to investigate. But then what are our grounds for opposing the Patriot Act, no fly lists, the searching of peoples' personal computers without a warrant, or FISA?