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Entry: Hitchens' Hubris Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/hitchens_hubris#2730 Post contents: //"Hitchens also fails to even mention, much less come to grips with, evidence pointing to the existence of God."// Perhaps because there isn't any? //"Hitchens denigrates the analogy of unguided evolution to a whirlwind creating a jumbo jet out of the parts found in a junkyard as a “creationist sneer,” neglecting to tell his readers that the analogy was made famous by Fred Hoyle, an astrophysicist, who calculated that the odds of certain key life-producing enzymes arising by chance alone were 10 to the negative 40000th power."// I shuffle a packet of a million cards and deal them out one at a time. One it is completed, I record the sequence. Hey, the probability of that sequence occurring by chance alone were 10 to the negative (some very large number) power. It must have been God! /end sarcasm. This isn't evidence for anything. //"Hitchens does not discuss the fact, noted by Robin Collins, that “Almost everything about the basic structure of the universe … is balanced on a razor’s edge for life to occur.” As Collins notes, if the initial explosion of the big bang had differed in strength by as little as one part in 10 to the 60th power, the universe would have either quickly collapsed back on itself, or expanded too rapidly for stars to form. If gravity had been stronger or weaker by one part in 10 to the 40th power, stars like the sun could not exist. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy concludes, “Other things being equal, deliberate, intentional design would constitute a plausible explanation for a universe like ours existing against the odds and out of all the myriad life precluding or life-hampering universes.” So striking is the suggestion of design that physicists wishing to avoid it have postulated that the known universe is but one of a multitude of universes, which raises problems of its own. As physicist Edward Harrison writes: “Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes, or design that requires only one.” There is no question which choice William of Ockham, frequently invoked by Hitchens, would take."// Why would Ockham's razor imply design of one universe over an accidental multiverse? That makes no sense at all, bearing in mind the complexity necessary for a creator capable of designing the universe in which we now exist. What a crazy, illogical argument. As Dawkins once said, in his eulogy for Douglas Adams: ". . . imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for." //"Is there a persuasive core buried beneath the errors and falsehoods? Even Hitchens admits there is not. The book eschews philosophical argument in favor of anecdote, with the reader offered a parade of horrible religious extremists to contemplate. But such argument does not prove that religion is false or that God does not exist....The fact that some horrible things have been done in the name of religion, and that some repulsive men have professed religious belief, does not disprove the existence of God, or show that religion is a malign force."// Says you. That's a pretty poor argument. Tell you what, come up with what good religion has done in the world that outweighs all the deaths and suffering it is causing or has caused in the following places today: Palestine, the Balkans, Kashmir, Sudan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Northern Ireland, Ivory Coast, Sri Lanks, Phillippines, Iran and Iraq, the past situation in Afghanistan, oh, and the years of anti semitic 'deicide' propaganda spread by the church over the centuries that without which the holocaust never would have taken place, not to mention the bigotry and close-minded deludedness regarding homosexuality, abortion and stem cell research in the United States, and THEN you can say that religion isn't a destructive force. Sent at: 2008 07 06