Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

66 J.J.C. Smart
I feel its attraction it is compatible neither with orthodox theism nor with the
sort of scientific realism that I am compelled to defend.
14 Historical Theism and Metaphysical Theism
By ‘Historical Theism’ I mean theism as integrated into the great monotheistic
religions. By ‘Metaphysical Theism’ I mean theism which is independent
of all considerations of time and place, such as a chosen people in Palestine or
of the birth and crucifixion of Jesus. Islam is rather different, and is very
austere in its concept of God, as is shown by its prohibition of pictorial
representations. Nevertheless it does have its sacred places and the revelation
of the Koran to a particular prophet, Mohammed. The difficulty for many
modern would-be believers is therefore that a lot of the religious imagery is
highly particular. One finds oneself in a mental world in which the earth is at
the centre of the universe and where even particular places and times are
supposed to be of immense importance.
Of course theologians can claim that theological conceptual schemes can
advance and be modified just as philosophical and scientific ones can. However,
the particularity of what are not necessarily the essential features but of
the general ambience of the scriptures of the great monotheistic religions may
be worrying to traditional theists. Obviously those who persecuted Galileo were
worried. Even the heliocentric universe was tiny compared with the universe
as it is known in modern cosmology. Perhaps the discovery of the galaxies
by Hubble would have been even more scary to those who fear the vast
cosmic spaces.
Suppose that there are a hundred thousand million stars in a galaxy and
that there are perhaps a comparable number of galaxies. That is a lot of stars
in the universe. Planetary systems much like our solar system are likely to
occur only around main sequence stars similar to our sun. Among main
sequence stars at least two-thirds are double (or triple) stars, and life is not so
likely to emerge in planets of these type of stars. The chance of intelligent life
emerging is even less. Evolution on earth could easily have taken a different
turn. It is likely that an impact by an asteroid 65 million years ago led to the
earth being covered by dust clouds and so to something like an envisaged
‘nuclear winter’. It is believed that this was the cause of the extinction of the
dinosaurs, and so indirectly led to the dominance of mammals. Our planet
Earth is the only one in the solar system which is suitable for the evolution of
intelligent life. So even if there are very many other planetary systems in our
galaxy, few might have been suitable for the evolution of intelligent life. Even
our solar system is due to a series of happy accidents. Stuart Ross Taylor, in
his book Solar System Evolution: A New Perspective 107 explains recent ideas