by Ron Rosenbaum, writing as an agnostic, has some strong words for atheists:
Faced with the fundamental question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” atheists have faith that science will tell us eventually. Most seem never to consider that it may well be a philosophic, logical impossibility for something to create itself from nothing. But the question presents a fundamental mystery that has bedeviled (so to speak) philosophers and theologians from Aristotle to Aquinas. Recently scientists have tried to answer it with theories of “multiverses” and “vacuums filled with quantum potentialities,” none of which strikes me as persuasive.
Because atheists, in Rosenbaum’s estimation, insist that science will eventually explain how something can come from nothing, “atheists really exist on the same superstitious plane as Thomas Aquinas.” Ilya Somin thinks that Rosenbaum is demanding too much from atheists:
[H]ow can atheists rule out the possibility that God created the universe if they don’t have an airtight alternative explanation? The answer is that it’s often possible to rule out one potential explanation for X even if we don’t know for certain what actually caused it. For example, I don’t know why I had a headache a couple days ago. But that doesn’t mean I can’t rule out the theory that it was caused by a witch’s curse. There is strong evidence against the existence of witches with magical powers that isn’t tied to any particular explanation for the origins of my headache. Similarly, if we have strong arguments against the existence of God that are not tied to any specific cosmological theory, we have good reason to be atheists even if we can’t explain why the universe exists.
So who’s right? Are atheists obliged to explain the universe’s existence or else retreat to agnosticism?
I hate to be the grammar police, but “Why” as a question assumes the existence of causal meaning. I’m no atheist, but isn’t a core tenet of atheism meaninglessness? Or at least the cultivation of deliberate existential fantasy? (Though they might not prefer that prejudicial framing their position.)
It seems to me that asking “Why” of an atheist is to expect blood from a stone. Which seems both unwise, but also unfair (if one is to know the stone for what it is).
The short answer, I think, is “no.” I’m not sure that all atheists would agree that science necessarily will be able to explain why there is something rather than nothing, nor do I think the theoretical possibility of such an explanation is necessary to an atheistic worldview. All an atheist ultimately has to assert is that it is reasonable to conclude that, however the universe came into existence, the mechanisms were “natural.” Given all that science has been able to explain and the obvious power and weirdness of nature (particularly at the quantum level), this view seems at least not unreasonable. Absolute proof or absolute knowledge, or even the possibility of such, is not required.
Now, I’m talking here about an atheist whose epistemology is essentially pragmatist, which I think is the case with most “serious” atheists. You might suggest that pragmatist epistemology is really a form of agnosticism. I’m not sure that’s technically correct. “Agnosticism” as an “ism” properly refers to the belief that the very well may be a god, but that God or the gods fundamentally is / are unknowable. Atheism goes beyond this and says the most reasonable view is that there is, in fact, no God or gods.
Christianity, of course, is not against every kind of agnosticism. We too assert that the Triune God is fundamentally unknowable in the sense that He is utterly unlike us. Yet we assert on the basis of revelation that God makes Himself known to us. And so, there is, I think, perhaps a fundamental epistemic divide between pragmatist-atheists and Christians that simply can’t be bridged by “rational” arguments. The category of “revelation” from God or of an “encounter” with the living Word of God is ruled out a priori in the pragmatist’s epistemology. (The neo-Thomists among us probably will disagree with me here, but I’ve been reading lots of Barth during my summer in Switzerland, so you’ll have to indulge me….)