Absence of evidence and evidence of absence.

Uberchap recently said: Darwin was a Christian and as far as faith in God is concerned; absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence. But since you mentioned it I am interested in the evidence for absence that you allude to.

That’s a difficult request to answer, as you might imagine. How do I present a box full of an absence of evidence? Maybe it needs to be looked at from another direction.

In conversations over the years theists have presented me with many ideas which they consider proof of the existence of God. Some of them are:

The Origin of the Universe.
The Origin of Life on Earth.
The Origin or Evolution of Humans.
The existence of a Moral Sense.

Do I consider the above to be evidence for the existence of God? No, I don’t. Let me take each idea in turn.

Science has determined that the Universe sprang into existence in what has become known as the Big Bang about 15 Billion Years ago. Some theists see this as their strongest piece of evidence for Biblical creation. What we actually have (as far as I know) is a mystery rather than a proof. We know when the Big Bang happened and we know a lot about how it happened. What we don’t know is why it happened. I’m not even sure if such a question can ever be answered or that science is equipped to attempt to answer it. Maybe the question itself is meaningless. I don’t know. But is the Big Bang any kind of proof for God? No, it isn’t. It’s a gap in our knowledge.

Life on Earth began about 4 Billion Years ago. Theists argue that something (life) cannot come from nothing. Therefore, God must have intervened to produce life from lifelessness. Does this need to be true? No, it doesn’t. Certainly we don’t know for certain how life emerged on Earth, although there are several good theories that I’m aware of. Each as far as I am aware relies on the growing complexity of various compounds and chemicals on the early Earth. Even at that stage evolutionary processes where at work eventually producing complex self-replicating molecules which became the building blocks of what we now call life. How exactly did this happen? No one is certain. Does this mean that God did it? No, it doesn’t. It just means we don’t know – yet. Will theists change their stance when we successfully produce life in a lab from lifeless chemicals? Somehow I doubt it.

Most theists (again as far as I know) regard Humanity as a special case. We are not merely animals they say. Unlike the beasts of the field we have souls and other attributes (such as Free Will) given to us by God. Even if Evolution is true then the whole point of 4 Billion Years of evolutionary struggle is to produce us so that we can give thanks to our Creator. But are we really that special? No, we’re not. It is unarguable that we are indeed animals, no different in great degree from the other apes. We share well over 95% of our DNA with chimpanzees and we even share DNA with fish, insects and trees because we evolved here, on Earth, and can trace our genetic ancestry back for billions of years to the origin of life itself. The only ‘special’ aspect of being human is that we are conscious self aware beings aware that we are alive, unlike the apparent majority of life on this planet. Isn’t our self-awareness then given to us by God? No, it isn’t. Our self-awareness, just like everything else about us, evolved over time and gives us a huge advantage over creatures that are not self aware.

But what about our innate moral sense? Surely that couldn’t have evolved along with everything else? That must have come from God, right? No, it didn’t. For starters it’s highly questionable that we have an innate moral sense – in the sense that we are all born with some kind of Universal Morality Code. Anyone who knows about other cultures or has any knowledge of history will be aware that morality changes from culture to culture and over time. The moral code of 17th Century Spain would not be acceptable in 21st Century China. So how can the moral sense be innate? Surely such things are cultural and temporal human constructs? But, theists have argued, there are underlying agreements between all moralities and that these must surely have come from God, right? No, they don’t. For each underlying moral ‘agreement’ it probably wouldn’t be that difficult to find counter examples. But, theists have argued, that doesn’t prove anything. The societies/groups or individuals in these examples know they are doing wrong by breaking the Universal Morality Code but refuse to acknowledge it. The fact that the behaviour is considered moral and normal in their society or at that time is irrelevant. The Universal Morality Code must be applied regardless of circumstances and those who fail to recognise it as such are merely being contrary. This is almost a definition of a circular argument and as such is no evidence of Gods influence on morality, innate or otherwise.

So, there you have it. No evidence for Gods involvement in the Origin of the Universe, the Origin of Life, the Origin of Man or the Origin of Morality. No evidence, therefore for the existence of God. None. Zero. In my mind at least there is enough lack of evidence to strongly indicate evidence of absence. Maybe definitive proof is beyond us but what we have, or don’t have, will suffice for now.