Searching for the big picture

Re “Gods and earthlings,” Opinion, April 18

Atheism has its fundamentalists like Richard Dawkins. Everyone has faith in something that is beyond science to prove. Science itself is based on the assumption that the universe is rational and logical and not absurd. Dawkins has a similar problem to those who cannot explain where a complex God came from. Where did the Big Bang come from, and what existed before? If the anthropic principle (the laws of nature seem to have been crafted for the emergence and sustenance of life) was inherent in the Big Bang, then where did that complexity come from? If it was all random, that is a faith assumption also.

Ken Savage

Palm Desert

Dawkins’ atheistic rants about creationism and God’s existence are tiresome. Fundamentalist creationists are equally wrong. It is not logically contradictory to hold both that God is the author of all that exists and that the Big Bang and evolution are the ways God created and continues to create everything that exists. Neither statement can be proved nor disproved by science. Even Jesus didn’t worry about proofs for God’s existence.

James McDermott

Pasadena

Dawkins argues that if vastly superior beings from some distant planet did indeed seed life on Earth, they could not be considered gods because someone must have created them. Thus, the only true God must be the one who created the universe itself.

This is, of course, the position that is reflected in Christian teaching. During my Catholic upbringing, I was taught that God “is,” meaning he always was and always will be. Defining God in that manner is another way of saying that no matter how sophisticated our theories become, ultimately we cannot explain how the universe got started from nothing and why the world exists. This notion embodies the ultimate mystery of life, which is beyond our power to penetrate from a purely logical and philosophical point of view, and which we must accept on that basis and learn to live with.

Paul Rosenberger

Manhattan Beach

Dawkins argues that “intelligent design” is not science. He is correct. But after that, he moves into less certain territory in which his reasoning inevitably moves to the problem of first causes. There he pretty much avoids the details. In the end, he, like everyone else, must confront one of two choices: Either the universe has always existed, or it was created by someone who has always existed. If the latter is improbable, as he claims, then why is not the former also? Without saying so explicitly, he clearly favors the former, which he is free to do. Nonetheless, it would be interesting to know why he favors one and not the other. Could it be that the latter might make moral claims on all of us, something that would threaten our desire to be morally autonomous?

William S. LaSor

Apple Valley, Calif.

How could natural selection create the first living cell? There is no advantage to non-living material becoming a living cell, so the process had to be pure chance, a result of random atoms forming thousands of extremely complex molecules within a few micrometers of each other at the same time. It is statistically a highly improbable probable event, and it bears all the earmarks of design.

As a former evolutionist, I have seen the results of following the data to the most logical conclusion in today’s scientific community. Evolutionists control the scientific community, and any questioning of the current paradigm is cause for ridicule, harassment and sometimes destruction of careers. They should be ashamed, for they have created a totalitarian science community in which everyone must parrot the party line and independent thought is not allowed.

Elaine Fleeman

Bakersfield