GING 4

Yes, I'm still tormenting myself with this, in spite of a huge stack of Guitar Player magazines that a friend gave me. But I can only lust for so many hours a day.

I'm not sure I'm going to make it to the back cover. This book is boring and rehashes numerous arguments that have already been dispelled by some of the wiser apologists out there. While I still like Hitchens, he's best served in a brief essay or ten minute interview with Mr. Hewitt. I like a bit of lemon in my water. I don't want to eat the whole thing.

In the latest chapter, The Metaphysical Claims of Religion are False (boy, thats not at all a clumbsy premise, is it? No need to parse between the claims of various religions. It's about as sound as the anarchist's claim that all forms of government are opressive and wrong), Hitchens claims that scientific understanding that began with the enlightenment has forever obviated the need for a creator (Bonaparte: Mr. Laplace, why does your cosmology have no mention of God? Laplace: "Je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypothese."), and therefore, the faith of many of the brilliant philosophers and scientists who have gone before us was merely a biproduct of their times and we should no longer expect to see faith manifest itself in great men or women.

I'm going to gloss over the numerous ad hominem and straw men that litter this chapter and the book in general, and concentrate on one particular item in hsi discourse on William of Ockham. Hitchens writes:

"...Ockham stated that it cannot be strictly proved that God...exists at all. However,if one intends to identify a first cause of the existence of thw world, one may choose to call that "god" even if one does not know the precise nature of the first cause. And even the first cause has difficulties, since a cause will itself need another cause. "It is difficult or impossible," he wrote, "to prove against the philosophers that there cannot be an infinite regress in causes of the same kind, of which one can exist without the other." Thus the postulate of a designer or creator only raises the unanswerable question of who...created the creator. Religion...[has] consistently failed to overcome this objection."

Hitchens, like myself, believes that the big bang happened. Implicit within the big bang is the creation (or, if you prefer a non-theistic phrase, the "coming into existence) of matter, energy, space and time. Let me type that a different way. The big bang, according to the prevailing theory, was when all matter, energy, space and time started. There was nothing before the bang, because there was no "before." I assume that Hitchens agrees with this, since he seems agreeable enough in the above quote to the assumption that there can be no infinite regress of events (ie, no infinitely expanding and collapsing universes, contrary to the views of some wishful thinkers). Or at least Hitchens is agreeable to the notion that if this is not the first universe, that there was at least a first universe. (I'm assuming he doesn't restrict his rejection of infinite regress to God only.) And this is logical, for as Dallas Willard observed:

As in a line of dominoes, if there is an infinite number of dominoes that must fall before domino x is struck, it will never be struck. The line of fallings will never get to it."

Rewrite the sentence above to read "as in a line of universes, if there are an infinite number of universes that must transpire before universe x is created," or more to the point, "as in a timeline, if there are an infinite number of moments before moment x is reached..." and you're getting the idea. The present could not happen if the past were infinite.

As to Hitchen's "who created the creator" argument, I'm left a little speechless. This question strikes me as akin to the sort of philosophical discourse we'd have during recess in middle school: "Could God make a rock so big that even He couldn't lift it?" To rehash a previous point: matter, energy, space and time came into existence at the big bang. These things didn't exist "before" the big bang, and created "things" cannot create themselves. (Greg Koukl once remarked that a cake doesn't bake itself. If you see a cake sitting on a table, someone or something other than the cake must have made the cake.) Something caused matter, energy, space and time. More specifically, something OUTSIDE OF matter, energy, space and time (a thing can't create itself). Now as to what that "outside of" thing is, we can't say with absolute certainty. Maybe a different kind of created thing, in a different realm with different sorts of physics than those that operate here. Maybe a big cosmic chocolate eclair. Or maybe the God of the Bible. We will never be able to say with scientific certainty, unless we someday discover the ability to observe outside of the universe. Which makes any attempt by any scientist to say what might lie beyond the universe as metaphysical a hypothesis as the beliefs of the most whacked out cult you can find. But if there is a Creator, if there is a God, does it not seem plausible that said God, who existed outside our laws of physics at the moment of creation--who in fact created those laws--would Himself rule over them and not be subject to them? If God is not subject to or confined by finite, linear time, why does He need a creator or a cause? Rather than religion "consistently fail[ing] to overcome" Hitchen's objection of who created the creator, Hitchens is incapable of grasping that a God outside of creation and its restrictions need not be bound by them.