Top ten amongst the damned

According to Google Canada I among the top ten [noisiest] atheists in this country. Search for ‘atheist + Canadian’ and I’m # 10. Try ‘atheist + Canadian + politician’ and I come in #7. I’m pretty happy about that. But there’s a thing: looking back at my postings on atheism, I don’t think I’ve ever clearly explained why I am an atheist or what I meant by ‘atheism’.

So here goes. First things first: definitions.

‘God’ when I say God with a capital ‘G’, I’m referring to God as described by the Christians, Muslims and Jews. That is to say an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent super being that lives beyond this universe and was the creator of it. For Omnipotent, see Mk 5:10; for Omniscient see Acts 2:23; for Omnipresent, see Gen 17:1 ; for other properties see Deut 33:27.

By ‘creation’ I mean the intentional creation of the universe, the laws of physics, the earth, humanity and humanity’s mind.

So, God, ‘why not? ‘ First omnipotence.

There’s the stone paradox - can God create a stone which is so heavy that even he cannot lift it? If ‘yes’ then he is not omnipotent, if ‘no’ then he is not omnipotent.

The traditional faith based answer for this is either a) don’t be silly ; b) hey, shuuut up ; c) yes, God is so powerful that he can contradict himself.

I’ve never heard a convincing way around this paradox and I think it effectively says that there is no omnipotence.

Next omniscience and omnipresence. I think these more or less mean the same thing as knowing everything involves seeing everything.

So what then of ’superposition’? A single light photon, if unobserved can simultaneously hold more than one property for the same measurable trait - hence ’superposition’. However, when the light photon is ‘observed’ those other possibilities collapse and the light photon ‘chooses’ to have a single property for the measured trait.

But if God were everywhere and had seen or known everything then he would have observed the light photon before us and thus collapsed its wave function and made superposition undetectable.

But it’s still detectable [PDF], meaning that nothing has ever observed this light photon - not us, not God. So it’s been proved that at least in some places, God is not looking. Therefore God is not omniscient and it is not omnipresent.

What about being beyond the universe and the creator of it. Even if God is not a perfect super creature, it is still conceivable that there could be a finite creature that lived beyond this universe and that created it. I think it’s even conceivable that this creature is both ‘eternal’ and ‘unchanging’ as is described in the Bible. After all, time is property of this universe and does not need to exist in other universes.

But again, how did we define ‘creation’? In the Christian (et al.) sense, creation means that he intentionally created man and his mind.

To do this, such a creature would have to tamper with the elementary particle that expanded in the big bang and set it off in such a way as to end up with the desired properties. But in order to get the desired properties, the super creature would need to have perfect knowledge of every particle in the universe including the aforementioned light photon.

Why would he need to have perfect knowledge?

There is a thing called ‘Brownian Motion’. This describes the movement of small particles. When you look at them up close, these small particles - for example ‘pollen’ - seem to move like they’re alive. They’re jittery and move almost at random.

The reason for this is because they are being pushed by molecules in the water and air. Not by the ‘air’ per se, but a single molecule of oxygen or nitrogen. So while the air can be very still to the observer, when you look close, it (like all things) is in constant motion. This tiny motion causes things like pollen to jump around.

Now these nitrogen and oxygen molecules are being pushed around seemingly at random themselves by other smaller things, so on and so on until you get to the smallest things. The smallest things, these quantum particles do move seemingly at random. These smallest things possess the superposition described above. The collapse of their wave function cannot be predicted, though you can assign probability to it. this collapse and the subsequent movement in turn moves another particle and another and so on up the food chain until you start pushing around things like pollen and dust and so you have Brownian motion.

Imagine the effect of this uncertain, unpredictable motion on a machine as big as the universe over 13 billion years. You can input the same data, or set it up as you would like again and again, but each time, because of the interactions of these trillions upon trillions of unpredictable little particles, the results will be different.

So without being omniscient - which has been proved false - how can a creature have created the earth, man, and the mind? It cannot have done this.

By its own definition, the Christian, Muslim and Jewish God cannot exist, did not create the universe, and cannot know about, care about, or effect what you do. He does not win football games and He is not on our side.

Does saying this require perfect knowledge? No. I think it requires only the ability to make a logical inference from observed phenomenon. We observe that superposition exists, therefore we can infer that this God of the Bible as described in the Bible, cannot exist. We don’t need to be perfect, we just need to accept what logic tells us.

So when it comes to Yahweh / Allah / God, I am an atheist - I can see that His traits cannot exist and so he cannot exist.

If you have a way to demolish or improve on this argument, please let me know in the comments.