Monday, June 19, 2017

The Vastness Of The Cosmos

New atheists have proposed some viciously dumb arguments before--but I have chosen one in particular to target here.  I have previously encountered the claim that the universe is so vast that its size either certainly or possible indicates that God does not exist.  After reflecting on the stupidity of this argument which I remember hearing earlier in my life, I had to post on why the magnitude of the universe is totally irrelevant to the issue of theism.  Now, time for the definition of a key word.  When I refer to the "cosmos" I refer to the totality of the material world, which might encompass a possible multiverse, a plurality of universes of which our universe is but a single unit of.

First of all, the argument rests on a total non sequitur.  It does not follow at all from the proposition "the cosmos is large" [1] that God does not exist.  Really, one only needs a quite basic grasp of reason to realize this.  The size of our universe, or of any possible multiverse, has utterly nothing to do with whether or not God exists; the size of the cosmos, whatever it actually amounts to, has no relevance or connection whatsoever to the issue of theism's veracity.  Anyone who uses this as an argument against theism has nothing but a major non sequitur and a blatant red herring to ground his or her case.  Again, the conclusion that God does not exist does not follow from the premise "the universe/cosmos is vast" and that very premise has no relevance to the conclusion anyway.

The universe may inspire in some people a sense of awe
or a sense of insignificance--yet the enormity of our
universe, or, indeed, the hypothetical multiverse, does
not falsify the claim that a deity of some sort exists.

Secondly, one can prove logically that an uncaused cause exists by pure necessity [2].  No, proving an uncaused cause exists is not the same as proving that a being with a moral nature who wants a personal relationship with humans exists--as I have explained before.  When I use the word God in this paragraph I refer to an uncaused cause, not the specific deity of any organized religion.  But I have addressed this point before in other places where I have written about the concept of the uncaused cause, so I will not elaborate on such a point here any longer.

Now, someone could say that, although the size of the cosmos has nothing to do with whether or not God exists, the scope of the cosmos and our minuscule size by comparison shows that the human race does not ultimately possess any cosmic or existential significance.  True, the latter can be correct despite the falsity of the claim about God's nonexistence based on the same observation about the universe/cosmos' size.  But even that does not logically follow at all.  The furthest someone could get with that argument is that it is possible that the scale of the universe and our comparatively puny size reflects some meaningless status of humanity, and that it is possible that we are indeed still of great inherent value.  After all, whether or not humans have intrinsic dignity, purpose, and moral obligations has nothing to do with the relative immensity or smallness of the cosmos!

The argument for atheism (or, indeed, for agnosticism regarding God's existence) based on the perceived size of the cosmos represents perhaps one of the most asinine arguments against ordinary theism that I have ever seen.  It is logically invalid, since the conclusion does not follow from the premise.  It relies on a red herring.  It is, quite simply, an argument that only an untrained or unsound mind would ever judge to be correct.  Only a fallacious person would ever treat it as anything but the erroneous argument it stands as.


[1].  Nothing is objectively "large" or "small" in and of itself, only objectively larger or smaller in comparison to something else.  Compared to a human, the cosmos is enormous, but without reference to some specific object or thing words referring to size have a purely arbitrary meaning.

[2].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-uncaused-cause.html

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