Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

70 J.J.C. Smart
The evidence that Davies has is that the laws or proto-laws and the initial
conditions in the universe (or collection of universes as in Carter’s hypothesis)
imply that conscious life is pretty sure to emerge somewhere, perhaps many
times over. If no more than this is meant there is no argument for theism.
(‘Pretty sure’ above is a bit strong if Ross Taylor is right that we are probably
alone in the universe. It would be a matter of luck.)
I concede that theism is an emotionally attractive doctrine. Perhaps it even
is true. But if it is true then the problems that I have put forward in the case
of traditional theism make it likely that such a theism would have to be
understood in such a way that it would differ little from what we at present
regard as atheism.
Notes
1 J.J.C. Smart, ‘Why Philosophers Disagree’, in Jocylyne Couture and Kai Nielsen
(eds), Reconstructing Philosophy: New Essays in Metaphilosophy (Calgary, Alberta:
University of Calgary Press, 1993), pp. 67–82.
2 T.S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd edn (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1970).
3 See pp. 54–9.
4 See for example, Richard C. Jeffrey, The Logic of Decision, 2nd edn (Chicago
and London: University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 185–7.
5 J.L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982).
6 Paul Davies, The Mind of God (London: Simon and Schuster, 1992).
7 John Leslie, Universes (London: Routledge, 1989).
8 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953),
sections 66–7.
9 Paul Davies and John Gribbin, The Matter Myth (Harmondsworth: Penguin
Books, 1991).
10 For speculations contrary to my own on this point, see Roger Penrose, The
Emperor’s New Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) and Shadows of
the Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
11 For details, see J.O. Burchfield, Lord Kelvin and the Age of the Earth (London:
Macmillan, 1975).
12 See Silvanus P. Thompson, The Life of William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs
(London: Macmillan, 2 vols, 1910), p. 1094.
13 For the speculations and objections, see John Horgan, ‘In the Beginning . . .’,
Scientific American, 264 (February 1991), 100–9.
14 See for example, the first three essays in Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda’s Thumb
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1980).
15 Gerald Feinberg, ‘Physics and the Thales Problem’, Journal of Philosophy, 63
(1966), 5–17.