n the previous chapter we uncovered a fatal flaw in the arguments of Richard Dawkins, a renowned author and I prominent atheist. His answer, we found only removes the question of an Absentee Landlord for this planet in the face of so much crime and suffering: “If there is God why does he allow the planet go to the dogs?”
(Although the “dog” expression came from food not fit for human consumption going to the dogs instead, if dogs ruled the planet it would probably make for a better overall paradigm for Earth’s inhabitants than the one where humankind rules.
Other species suffer greatly at our hands. In places where we have not yet ventured but there is life, there is a lot more order and balance than when mankind enters the environment.) But still, as we found, Dawkins arguments do not actually remove an axiomatic question: that “If things evolved fro m the simplest elements—say hydrogen—what placed it there?” In short, if he asks, “Who, then, designed the designer?” another can also ask, “What put the hydrogen there?”
Of course, the difference is that “God” as an answer already assumes an incredibly complex being…certainly even more complex than the creation attributed to the being. And that, Dawkins note, does not advance one’s argument even one bit if we want to know the Primal Cause.
His own answer to the complexity was that we must assume that a slow, learning process up the hill of complexity took place until a hugely complex, integrated entity at last emerges.
In other words, even a ridiculously improbable complexity can eventually be attained through a series of smaller, not-so-5
Chapter Two The Linear Time Irrationality
complex advancements…and certainly not involving a one-stroke integration through a ridiculously complex entity.
However, even this—as understandable as it is—only evades the same question that afflicts believers: “What brought all of this up?” Also, his approach makes certain assumptions about
“time” that, closely considered, turn out to be irrational.
Time, science says, is linear. Given this, we are supposed to be in continuous evolution—apparently corroborated by fossil evidence—which confirms that we began as simple life forms that became increasingly complex. Can this be true? Actually, we will soon find that there are gaping holes in that premise.
If time is linear, then when was the beginning…the Grand Beginning? And this question of a Grand Beginning entails the same fatal flaw applicable to Genesis 1 and 2.
In its opening sentence Genesis 1:1-2 utters one of the most famous lines in all literature:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
Science has its own form of a Grand Beginning, and we can breaks down the events thereof as hereunder:
a) An event accidentally happened in the unthinkably distant past that set off a chain of events culminating in the first organic molecules being formed, and these then exhibited a chemical-reaction-like selectiveness as to what other elements they will react with
b) From this selectiveness, a drive or instinct emerged that eventually exhibited a propensity to grow, reproduce and survive, from which primitive behaviors a crude form of sentience was born.
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c) A cell—a basic unit of life—thus formed, which began evolving, partly aided by sentience itself but mostly due to a series of genetic mutations—each fortuitous and each incrementally beneficial (that is, improving on the prior state)—such as to better enable the survivability of an organism in a particular environment.
d) “Natural Selection”—a dispassionate process—then favored such organisms as they pass on their mutated genes to create a better-adapted species that flourishes in that environment…over and above their less lucky siblings that, typically after, die off.
In this way, they say, a progressive continuum is generated in which the bodily development of a species adapts in better and better ways to the environment. Regarding humans, it is mainly our brain that physically develops and enlarges with time. So, from a first major advance (some say fire, others the wheel) this naturally stimulated other advances.
So, after an initial period of millions of years of very little development, scientific understanding is now increasing ever-exponentially. We will reach a point, they believe, where knowledge will literally explode and we will know basically everything there is to know. Under this paradigm, it is hardly likely that we could have been more sophisticated earlier. But as we posited earlier, there is something fundamentally wrong with this broad view. Here is the gist of it
If time is a line or a continuum, then it has to have a
“Beginning”. What, then, was before that Beginning? This will again raise the question…what could have been before even that…and so forth. This is often called an “infinite regression”
question, and few can hazard to answer it.
The question is difficult to answer because only by going backwards into infinity can one satisfactorily answer it.
But the problem is that if you go back into infinity, it is a 7
Chapter Two The Linear Time Irrationality
never-ending journey backwards. In that case, it means, theoretically, we will never reach the future point where we get to be born. In this scenario, we do not yet exist…and, in fact, will never exist. (Figure 1) Grand Beginning (but it has to wait forever) From infinity (but it never ends)
Effluxion of space-matter
Linear, evolutionary time
Figure 1
Linear time has no logical beginning
Can it ever be possible to reach back into a Grand Beginning?
No. Never. It may be safe, then, to firmly conclude that linear, evolutionary time is irrational.
In this very instance science, too, introduces a ridiculously improbable “solution” to their “solution” of evolution. Clearly, a different understanding of “time” must replace the concept that “everything began at some point in the very distant past”.
We will deal with a probable solution to the concept of time in Chapter Seven. Meantime a lot that yet remains for us to wrap our minds around.
But if we are not really evolving linearly, why do we seem to be advancing—at least technologically? Why does our fossil record suggest very simple beginnings, thus possibly hinting at a process of evolution up to where we are now?
In reality, it’s only what conventional science insists on. But all told, does our fossil record indeed reveal no prior level of sophistication comparable to—even exceeding—our present?
No, not really. But this is a topic beyond the intended scope of this book, most effectively dealt with in another of my books Return of the Ancient Astronaut: The Empirical Strikes Back.
And that is already a problem for convention…
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