The argument against God

In light of the new documentary Lawrence Krauss - Richard Dawkins documentary film The Unbelievers, and since the drop in Oxford population for the holidays means it should be several weeks before I overhear people debating the existence of God, I have decided to present my case against the existence of God in blog form.

First I will point out I will only be arguing against the existence of a God worth worshipping (ie: supremely powerful and benevolent), rather than existence of some thing or phenomenon which one could define to be "God". It is impossible to prove the non-existence of something since it is always possible for it to exist somewhere you haven't looked yet. For instance, it was long thought that all swans are white since no-one had seen a swan of any other colour. This was proved wrong when black swans were found living in Australia. However, the existence of black and white swans doesn't mean we should believe in the existence of neon-green swans.

Since the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence I will focus of positive evidence against God. The positive evidence against a powerful, benevolent God is the existence of evil in the world. Now frequently this argument fails to be convincing because people focus on human-caused evil which can be explained as a consequence of giving people free-will. I will not discuss human-caused evil nor incidental-evil (evil caused as a by-product of some other phenomenon which may be useful/beneficial - eg. floods). Instead I will focus on one specific kind of evil: living organisms whose entire life-cycle is dedicated to causing death and suffering of other organisms (including humans).

The best example I can think of is anthrax. Bacillus anthracis (the cause of anthrax) is possibly the most evil creature in existence. Bacillus anthracis must infect another organism - typically grazers but occasionally humans or other carnivores - in order to live. Anthrax is spread by bacterial spores which are long lived (evidence suggests they can survive > 70 years in the ground and are present on every continent including Antarctica) which when inhaled or swallowed can cause disease. Without treatment inhaled anthrax completely destroys the respiratory system within weeks of exposure and kills over 90% of human victims, and prior to 1881 (vaccine developed) anthrax killed hundreds of thousands each year. The reason for this high kill rate is that anthrax cannot transmit from animal to animal, it must kill the animal and wait for it to decompose or be torn open by scavengers to release new spores into the environment so unlike many infectious organisms it is unable to live peacefully in any animal.

Another good example is African Sleeping Sickness or African trypanosomiasis. Caused by single-celled eukaryotic organism, the good news is this is harder to contract than anthrax. The parasite is transmitted only by bites from the tsetse fly, which restricts the disease to sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the only treatment being rather ineffective and highly toxic, only ~48,000 people died of it in 2008 and most recent numbers suggests there are now fewer than 10,000 new cases per year. Unlike Bacillus anthracis the trypanosome parasite doesn't cause disease in the tsetse fly but cannot transmit from one fly to another, they must enter a mammalian host (either human or cattle) to spread. Without treatment sleeping sickness is invariably fatal as the parasite population grows and consumes the nutrients being transported through the blood to the various organs of the body causing the organs to eventually shut-down. Essentially suffers slowly starve to death regardless of how much food they eat.

To round out our taxonomy of evil (anthrax is caused by a bacterium,  sleeping sickness by a eukaryote) we will now consider a viral disease: rabies. Similar to anthrax, rabies can infect a wide range of animals (any warm blooded animal but typically carnivorous mammals) and is incapable of living peacefully with any of them. As it is a virus once the infection is established there is no treatment available and it is ultimately fatal within 4 months of symptom onset (in 2004 the first and so far only recorded case of survival of rabies infection was reported in the USA). Fortunately since 1885 a vaccine has been available which if administered within a few days of exposure will prevent/cure rabies infection. In addition, regular vaccination of domestic animals (cats & dogs) as well as wild carnivores in endemic regions has greatly reduced the incidence of rabies. However, these programs are not universal and and estimated 55,000 humans die of rabies annually, primarily in Africa and Asia. The rabies virus infects neural tissue so prior to death the human sufferer goes crazy, infected animals become extremely aggressive increasing their propensity to bite and transmit the virus to its next host.

Infectious disease such as those discussed above are IMO the best evidence against the existence of a God worth worshipping since public health efforts are showing these diseases can be controlled with reasonable effort, so we must assume 'God' is either impotent or chooses to do nothing. Furthermore, the victims have done nothing to deserve their fate other than inhale in the wrong-place/wrong-time, or be bitten by the wrong fly or their own pet dog/cat. These diseases do nothing of benefit to anyone/thing except themselves and only cause suffering and death of many organisms including people. Thus there is no admirable/excusable reason to justify the existence of these pathogens which could be used to defend God.