About the Fellowship
Would the world change if someone came up with an utterly convincing proof for the existence of God? In 'A Corner of the Veil', a novel by Laurence Cossé, this happens. A conclusive demonstration is formulated by a holy man who hands it to his religious superiors. They read it, are convinced, but panic, fearing anarchy if it should fall into the hands of the faithful. When the government gets wind of the proof, ministers too want to conceal it, fearing that capitalism's ethos would be undermined in an outbreak of compassion.
In his new book, Keith Ward, the former Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford, seeks to refute the arguments against the existence of God propounded in 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins. 'Why There Almost Certainly Is No God' is the title of Dawkins' fourth chapter. Consider one element of Ward's counter-case.
Dawkins claims that the existence of God is even less likely than the apparently improbable emergence of conscious beings, on the grounds that if God designed such complex entities he would have to be even more complex, making him even more improbable. But rebuts Ward, God is simple, and anyway simple entities routinely give rise to more complex phenomena, a good case in point being the laws of nature themselves. Moreover, to talk of God being more or less probable is simply, or perhaps deliberately, to misunderstand the concept of God: whether or not God actually exists, the idea of God is of a necessary not contingent being.
Ward pursues his quarry along many other twists and turns; part of the pleasure of reading him is staying with him through the metaphysical maze. Whether or not Dawkins will bother to keep up seems unlikely, Ward believes. For one thing, he has heard the rebuttals before, not least in Oxford debates against Ward himself. And yet, '[Dawkins] goes on saying that theologians have never answered his arguments.' This refusal to engage perhaps explains why 'The God Delusion' comes across as so rhetorically powerful.
So much for that. But how close does Ward come to achieving the higher goal of demonstrating the existence of God? The attempt comes in three parts. First, Ward proposes that whilst not a scientific explanation, God is the best final explanation for the universe as we know it. Second, Ward reinvents the argument from design, reformulating it so that it follows from contemporary science, particularly cosmology. Third, Ward examines personal experience and how that can point to divinity.
Again, consider one element. The apparent fine-tuning of the universe, which makes it suitable for life, is something that nearly all physicists today feel needs explaining. The theory of the multiverse is one that atheists might favour. In one formulation, it says that every possible universe exists somewhere and so you would only expect that we would live in one that is capable of sustaining life. Ward shows why this is unsatisfactory. Roughly put, if you propose that every possible universe exists somewhere, then in terms of its explanatory power this is not science at all. He then critiques the other versions of the theory, and continues with what he claims to be a far neater solution, namely that every possible universe exists but only as an idea in the mind of God. God then allows actually to exist only those universes, or perhaps that universe, which are, or is, morally most valuable.
Moral value is closely linked to the existence of conscious beings capable of doing good, an undeniable feature of life on earth. Noting that leads to arguably the greatest challenge to scientism, namely how to account for what Ward, following the philosopher of religion Richard Swinburne, calls 'personal explanation'. The claim here is that a personal explanation is required to account for many things that happen in the world, such as you reading this review, because they involve notions of belief, intention, desire and enjoyment. That means they are not amenable to scientific explanation, which must be more or less strictly based upon laws of inanimate cause and effect. The category of explanation called 'personal' is, according to Ward, but a first step towards belief an eternal mind, called God.
Reductionists can counter that in the future the personal will be explained scientifically. And even if that today seems unlikely, they can insist that it remains a theoretical possibility. Alternatively, as Hume put it, they might object to explaining 'a particular effect by a particular cause which [is] no more to be accounted for than the effect itself.' Ward's response to that charge would be that if you are an idealist, as he is and as most philosophers in history have been too, then personal explanations can be intellectually satisfying.
What about the existence of evil, a common reason for doubting the existence of God? Ward is not too troubled by it, arguing that some suffering is necessary in a life-producing universe. Perhaps theodicy is a side issue in this book because Dawkins does not make much of evil in his, pointing out that it only weighs against the existence of a good God.
So, Dawkins is thoroughly doubted, again. Ward's critique is as witty, compelling and unsettling as Hume's 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion', if penned from the other side. And what about his higher goal, to show there almost certainly is a god? Unlike Cossé's novel, religious and secular leaders need not lose any sleep. As Ward himself concludes, the most anyone can hope for when it comes to the question of God - believer or atheist - is a rational defence of what can only be discovered subjectively, in an actually lived life.
(end of article)
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