A fairly common objection to theism is the idea that appeals to God to explain the universe actually explain nothing because (so it is claimed) God himself cannot be explained. This is the core of Richard Dawkins’ famous “Boeing 747 Gambit”, for instance.
Of course, several problems have been pointed out with this: that the concept of God is far better understood by theologians and philosophers than this, and that constantly demanding an explanation of the explanation is not a valid argument, among others.
But atheist Alex Rosenberg inadvertently gives us an even more fundamental reason why modern atheists are in no position to make such complaints. From his view as an atheist:
Why is there something rather than nothing? Physics, especially quantum physics, shows that the correct answer to this question is: No reason, no reason at all. (“The Atheist’s Guide to Reality”, p. 38)
For modern atheists, the universe (or multiverse) is simply a “brute fact”. That is, it is something that just exists, which has no apparent explanation. Surely, this is an appeal to magic in all but name. Proponents of it certainly should stop throwing rhetorical bricks.
Nor does trying to appeal to authority help. Rosenberg would have us believe that he wasn’t led into this corner by his atheism, but by science. Of course, this is contradicted by the actual facts.
Quantum mechanics has not remotely shown that anything (let alone everything) comes into existence for “no reason at all”. And this is only one more example of the New Atheists being more in love with science fiction and bad science documentaries than actual science.
I’ve often been frustrated with the New Atheists that, in the name of science, so many of them have been willing to jettison the fields of Sociology and Anthropology in order to cling to the (false) idea that religion causes great evil in people. But I now think it is time to add Quantum Physics to the list of sciences they reject.
That is to say that Rosenberg, like the other New Atheists, is completely willing to horribly distort the findings of Quantum Physics if it will serve their purposes. Every time a field of study opposes their platform, they have no scruples about doubling down and denying or distorting the facts.
One begins to wonder, then, what will be left of science once the New Atheists are done with it.
Fide Dubitandum 