From time to time I will post a short extract from one of my books listed in the Books menu above. Here is the first …
The Religion Business
Cashing in on God
Ben Bennetts
Published by Atheos Books, 2012
Prologue: A Conversation With A Christian
Some time ago, I came across a website, http://www.everystudent.com, that purported to answer questions of a religious nature and, being idle that day, I started an e-mail exchange with one of the advisors. The site advertised itself as ‘a safe place to explore questions about who God is and what it might be like to know him’. Here’s the transcript of the dialogue that took place over three days. I have changed the name and e-mail address of the advisor to preserve his anonymity.
To: <john.smith@domain.com>
Sent: Sat, 2 Jan 2010
Subject: Got a Question? – EveryStudent.com
If God exists, who created him, or her?
Ben
From: john.smith@domain.com
Sent: Saturday, January 02, 2010
Subject: Re: Got a Question? – EveryStudent.com
Ben,
Thanks for visiting everystudent.com
I don’t think there is an answer to your question except to say that God has always existed. If someone were to have created God then that someone, by definition, were to be God! What do you think?
Hope that helps.
John
To: <john.smith@domain.com>
Sent: Sat, 2 Jan 2010
Subject: Re: Got a Question? – EveryStudent.com
John:
For me, your answer demonstrates a fundamental weakness for ‘proving’ the existence of God. You cannot say that he has always existed. That’s axiomatic. Where’s the proof? My question also becomes recursive. Even if you could, somehow, explain the creation of God, my next question would be ‘Who created God’s creator?’, and so on.
Richard Dawkins hit it on the nose when he asked a similar question recently about unicorns – can you prove the existence of unicorns? The fact that nobody has ever seen a unicorn doesn’t prove, or disprove, that unicorns do not exist. It just means exactly what it says – nobody has ever seen a unicorn. So, to base a religious edifice around something whose existence cannot be proved is, to me, a pointless exercise unless there’s some other hidden agenda such as power or control over a populace, or greed, or some other human trait.
Here’s another question. http://www.godchecker.com has identified 2,850 different gods, including God/Allah/Yahweh/Jehovah/Jesus and so on. Is ‘The God’ all 2,850 gods wrapped up into one; or are there really a multitude of gods out there, all different, all teaching/preaching different things; or is The God a sort of Chief God? How does that work?
Just curious,
Ben
From: john.smith@domain.com
Sent: Saturday, January 02, 2010
Subject: Re: Got a Question? – EveryStudent.com
Ben,
To be honest, it sounds like you are trying to pick an intellectual fight with me. I could be wrong (and I hope I am), but if so I don’t think anything I say will convince you nor you me. We will just be sending each other links and that won’t get us anywhere.
If you are truly interested as you are searching for God I would be happy to answer your question as I do have some extremely rational reasons to your valid questions and objections beginning with the person of Christ and His claim to be God in human flesh.
Let me know how you want this conversation to progress.
God Bless,
John
To: <john.smith@domain.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 02, 2010
Subject: Re: Got a Question? – EveryStudent.com
John:
You said ‘… it sounds like you are trying to pick an intellectual fight with me.’ Well, not really, but I am looking for answers to basic questions and I thought that when I accidentally found your website that I could engage in a fruitful discussion. It sounds, to me, that this is not the intent of your website. Your assumption is that God exists and everything stems from this assumption. I cannot make this assumption because of answerless questions like the ones I’ve posed. And, I’ve many more questions which, so far, have never been answered to my satisfaction if the basic axiom of God’s existence is not assumed.
I suggest that we stop our discussion and I will look elsewhere for answers. Thanks for taking the time to respond to my e-mails.
Ben
From: john.smith@domain.com
Sent: Sunday, January 03, 2010
Subject: RE: Got a Question? – EveryStudent.com
Ben,
Email is always hard to tell, but it seems that I might have offended you. Please forgive me.
Here is where there is a whole section dedicated to the subject of God’s existence. The author of a majority of the articles on this website was Marilyn Adamson who was a former atheist, so hopefully you can appreciate her perspective.
Here is that section in case you are interested:
http://www.everystudent.com/menus/existence.html
John
To: <john.smith@domain.com>
Sent: Monday, January 04, 2010
Subject: Re: Got a Question? – EveryStudent.com
John
You did not offend me. My skin is far too thick for that to occur! I just thought that you did not want to get into a discussion, intellectual or otherwise, about the existence of God. Hence my closure. There’s nothing to forgive. However, since you’ve re-opened the discussion, I do have some further thoughts.
I had already read Marilyn Adamson’s essay before I contacted you. I had some major problems with her position on the existence of God – see later – and I moved from her essay to the Contact page and sent you my opening e-mail.
To illustrate my problems, I have cut and pasted sections of the Adamson essay into the attached document and then inserted my comments, in italics, under the sections. Take a look.
I am also quite happy for you to forward my comments to Marilyn Adamson. I don’t have her e-mail address. You may have it.
One final question. You say that Marilyn Adamson was a former atheist. Can you tell me her profession and about her background? In particular, has she ever had any scientific or engineering training? I’m just curious, again.
Regards,
Ben
The attachment, containing extracts from Adamson’s essay and my interspersed comments in italics.
Extracts from Is there a God?
By Marilyn Adamson
Does God exist? Here are six straight-forward reasons to believe that God is really there.
Just once wouldn’t you love for someone to simply show you the evidence for God’s existence? No arm-twisting. No statements of, “You just have to believe.” Well, here is an attempt to candidly offer some of the reasons which suggest that God exists.
But first consider this. If a person opposes even the possibility of there being a God, then any evidence can be rationalised or explained away. It’s like if someone refuses to believe that people have walked on the moon, then no amount of information is going to change their thinking. Photographs of astronauts walking on the moon, interviews with the astronauts, moon rocks…all the evidence would be worthless, because the person has already concluded that people can’t go to the moon.
<Ben> I don’t agree. If the evidence of moon walking is irrefutable, then any sane and intelligent person will change his or her mind. We are built to question but we are built to accept that we might have been wrong.
1. Does God exist? The complexity of our planet points to a deliberate Designer who not only created our universe, but sustains it today.
Many examples showing God’s design could be given, possibly with no end. But here are a few:
The Earth…its size is perfect. The Earth’s size and corresponding gravity holds a thin layer of mostly nitrogen and oxygen gases, only extending about 50 miles above the Earth’s surface. If Earth were smaller, an atmosphere would be impossible, like the planet Mercury. If Earth were larger, its atmosphere would contain free hydrogen, like Jupiter. Earth is the only known planet equipped with an atmosphere of the right mixture of gases to sustain plant, animal and human life … as we know it.
<Ben> This is post rationalisation. This is like saying that the human hand is exactly right to grasp an orange therefore the hand has been designed correctly. If the orange turns out to be a pocket of air or a large bubble of water, then the hand has been designed incorrectly.
The Earth is located the right distance from the sun. Consider the temperature swings we encounter, roughly -30 degrees to +120 degrees. If the Earth were any further away from the sun, we would all freeze.
<Ben> Not if we had all developed in such a way so as not to freeze. Human beings cannot live at the extremes of our planet, such as the Arctic and Antarctic – well, not without considerable help from artificial aids such as clothing, generated warmth, brought-in food and drink and so on. Darwin claimed that …
End of extract. To download the whole book go to http://www.smashwords.com and search for ‘Ben Bennetts’ or similarly in http://www.amazon.co.uk ⇒ Kindle Store.
Ben's Blogs, Books & Pix 
I have attempted to answer the question ‘Who created God?’ here: https://sekharpal.wordpress.com/2015/10/23/who-created-god/
I do not know whether my answer will satisfy you. However you may have a look if you wish.
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First, thank you for posting a comment on my blog about the existence of God. You are the first to react to its contents.
Second, I took your advice and read your article “Who Created God?” I offer the following responses but note that I am not a theoretical physicist nor am I an expert in quantum mechanics.
My understanding of the cosmological Big Bang theory and the idea that the total energy in the observable universe is exactly zero is that it is still a theory, not a proven fact. The observable universe is constantly changing as light from previously unobserved stars, planets or galaxies finally reach the earth where it can be observed. Consequently, the idea that every particle (atom, electron, proton) has a corresponding anti-particle (equated to the pull of gravity) is conjecture only given that the total number of particles is continuously increasing. And the validity of the 10**80 hydrogen atoms is based on a simulation that used average values for many of the variables, for example, the weight of a star (10**35 grams) [1]
You argue that once we arrive at the zero-energy conjecture, that’s it—no further questions arise. Really? What about is the conjecture true for the currently observable universe? Is the conjecture true for the unobservable universe? What is the significance of the result if indeed it is true? I can see lots more questions. But my main question is so what? How does a zero-energy universe relate to the existence of God? Where is the connection? If there is no connection, why did you even introduce the concept? (These are four more questions.)
Moving on, you state at the beginning of paragraph 3 “God is a Being”, defined to be something that has existence and essence. To prove this statement, you say that you will need to show that for both parameters, existence and essence, God is zero. You lost me here. What is meant by God is zero? Zero what? Zero is a number, just like any other number. What is the difference between saying God is zero and God is forty-two (Douglas Adams’ number)? Even assuming we could understand the God is zero statement, how does proving God is zero prove that God exists?
From here on, your article degenerates into a meaningless jumble of statements about spaceless, timeless, changeless, immortality and all-pervading concepts, calling on Einstein’s theory of relativity and basic quantum mechanics [2, 3] to “prove” that each of these entities are zero. I’m an engineer educated up to PhD level in scientific and engineering topics and I could make no sense of anything once I reached the third paragraph. Towards the end of your article, you introduce the notion of The Whole. You define this notion to be “that which contains within itself everything that there is” but you add the rider that The Whole “is just a definition and nothing else. No claim is being made that The Whole actually exists or that it has the slightest possibility to exist.” You then go on to show that The Whole is “spaceless, timeless, changeless, immortal (can’t die because of the changeless property), all-pervading (present everywhere), one (a single entity), unborn (not created, again because of the changeless property), uncreated (same reason), without a beginning, without an end, and non-composite (can’t be broken down)”. And then, the climax statement in the last paragraph—“Here it should be mentioned that actually God is The Whole…”
Wow! I am blown away by this result, especially as you’ve already said that The Whole is just a definition with no claim that it exists. So, did you “prove” or “disprove” the existence of God? Your bio says that you have “had mystical experiences several times in my life. So through my personal experience I know that there is a God.” So I assume you think that you have “proved” that God exists. If so, you have not proved it to me.
Generally, I found your article badly presented, illogical, not able to stand up to rigid inspection and typical of the general approach taken by many to proving the existence of God which I sum up as “First, let me tell you that God exists and now let me prove that he exists because I just told you he exists. Plus I’ll throw in a few big names (Hawking, Einstein) to add scientific credibility.”
Back to the drawing board?
[1] http://www.universetoday.com/36302/atoms-in-the-universe/
[2] http://www.quantumintro.com/
[3] http://www.space.com/17661-theory-general-relativity.html
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In your comment you have raised many questions. It is not possible to answer all those questions at a time. So I will try to answer your questions one by one.
First of all let us take the case of energy. There are lots of scientists who claim that the total energy of the universe is zero. But this is still a controversial issue, because it is claimed by some other scientists that in GTR energy is not conserved and that therefore we cannot say with certainty that the total energy of an ever-expanding universe is zero. I have also thought a lot about this and come to the following conclusion:
“It can be shown in some indirect way that the net energy of the universe is zero. For this, we will have to first determine as to whether the universe has a beginning in the past, or whether it has always existed. I think that there is a consensus among scientists that the steady-state theory of Fred Hoyle is not correct at all, which means that our universe is not past-eternal, but that it has a beginning in the past, perhaps from a big bang 13.8 billion years ago. Now there are only two options that can be taken into consideration while discussing the beginning of the universe. We can ask: 1) did it originate from something? Or, 2) did it originate from nothing? If it had originated from nothing, then obviously the net total energy of the universe would be zero, because in this case the universe started with zero energy. If the universe had originated from something, then also with the help of the two theories of relativity it can be shown that the total energy of that something would be zero. We say that the universe had originated from something. That means before the origin of the universe there was nothing else other than that something – no space, no time, no matter and no energy. Space, time, matter and energy came into being only after the origin of the universe from that something. Now Einstein’s general theory of relativity has shown that space, time and matter are so interlinked that there cannot be any space and time without matter. Similarly there cannot be any matter without space and time. Again from Einstein’s special theory of relativity we come to know that matter and energy are equivalent. So instead of saying that there cannot be any matter without space and time, we can also say that there cannot be any energy without space and time. Now we have already shown that the initial something was without space and time. But we have also shown that there cannot be any energy without space and time. So the initial something cannot have any energy.
“So, if the universe has a beginning, then it is immaterial as to whether it has originated from something or from nothing, because in both the cases it will start with zero energy. Therefore if the universe is not past-eternal, then its net energy will always be zero.
“There is one more reason as to why universe as a whole cannot have any energy. Cosmologists say that the universe is expanding. But when it is asked what it is expanding into, the answer we usually get is that it is not expanding into anything, because the universe is not embedded into any higher space-time. Thus the universe as a whole is neither in space, nor in time. Universe being neither in space nor in time cannot have any energy at all, because GTR has already shown that there cannot be any energy without space and time.”
So I think it is reasonable to believe that the total energy of the universe is zero.
There is also one famous quote of Einstein about GTR: “When forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one sentence: Time and space and gravitation have no separate existence from matter.”
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I’m not sure where you are heading with all this, Sekharpal. As I said, I am not a theoretical physicist and would not like to argue one way or the other for the zero-energy universe but more to the point, what has any of this got to do with the existence, or otherwise, of God?
Incidentally, you used the initialism GTR without defining its meaning. GTR could stand for Gran Turismo Racer, Generalised Time Reversal, Grand Trunk Railway, Govia Thameslink Railway, Global Technical Regulation, Green Tree Reservoir, Getting Ready/Got That Right/Gotta Run (all textspeak abbreviations), Guided Tissue Regeneration or General Theory of Relativity. I’ll assume you meant the last of these meanings.
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I have already written that even if it is found that the total energy of the universe is not zero, still then it can be shown that there is a God. So whether the universe has zero total energy or not is not at all a major concern for me. My major concern is how to prove the existence of God. However zero-total-energy universe helps us a lot to answer the question ‘Who created God’.
Now, can you name a single thing in the universe that has the property of hardness, but that is not hard itself? If you cannot name any such thing, then you are admitting that the property of hardness is an inalienable property of a hard thing. Similarly, can you name a single thing that has the property of softness, but that is not soft itself? Here also if you cannot give any such name, then you are admitting again that the property of softness is an inalienable property of a soft thing. So hardness and softness are the two properties that cannot be thought of separately from a hard or a soft thing respectively.
Now let us suppose that there is really such a thing in the universe that has the property of hardness but that is not hard itself. Let us call it H. So what will we have to conclude from this? We will have to conclude that H must have received its property of hardness from something external to it. If this something external to H has also received its property of hardness from some other thing external to it, then in this way there will be an infinite regress. So to stop this infinite regress we will have to posit the existence of at least one hard thing in this universe from which H can receive its property of hardness. That means the existence of H in the universe proves that there is at least one hard thing in this universe.
I think I have been able to make my point clear up to this.
Now let us suppose that there is an entity in this universe that has the property of timelessness despite the fact that it is not timeless. Let us call it T. Now what will we have to conclude from this? If my argument above is correct, then from this we can conclude that there is at least one timeless entity in this universe from which T has received its property of timelessness. If special theory of relativity is not a pseudo-science, then light is such an entity T, because it has the property of timelessness, but it is not timeless.
So the existence of light in this universe proves that there in one timeless entity in the universe.
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Oh Sekharpal, Sekharpal. You are playing with words here. By definition, hardness is a property that comes from something being hard. (Hardness is a noun derived from the root adjective hard.) If that something is not hard, it cannot have the property of hardness. Thus, there is no point in supposing that something has the property of hardness but is not hard itself. It’s like saying that water has the property of being a liquid (when not frozen or evaporated) whereas the air we breathe has the property of being a gas (a mix of oxyen and nitrogen) but let us suppose that there is a substance that simultaneously has the property of both liquid and gas. A Schrodinger’s cat conundrum.
As I’ve said before, it is a common tactic for those who seek to produce an argument for the existence of God to suppose that something else equally unlikely or so-far unproven exists and then draw the parallel. In your case, you say that if something exists that has the property of hardness but is not itself hard, then it is also likely that something exists that has the property of timelessness but is not itself timeless. Then, ipso facto, God exists.
I don’t think you and I will ever come to a common agreement. I’m an (ex) engineer. I have been trained to look at things logically and critically. I am open to new ideas—my mind is not closed—but I can find nothing in your arguments that causes me to re-examine my current analysis, opinions and conclusions regarding the existence of God. You appear to be a mystic—a person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to attain unity with the Deity or the absolute, and so reach truths beyond human understanding (Concise Oxford Dictionary)—and, by definition, I do not believe that one can simultaneously be both an analytical engineer and a mystic. Such a combination would be illogical, another Schrodinger’s cat conundrum.
I suggest we draw our discussion to a close. I wish you enjoyment of your chosen path of mysticism. I, in turn, will continue to marvel at the strange arguments of those who seek to prove the existence of a mythical being called God and wonder why they do so.
Ben
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What shall I have to think from your comment here? That you do not understand plain English? But how can I think that you do not understand plain English? Because you are either an Englishman or an American; so English is your mother tongue. Then how can you overlook that I have written this:
“Now, can you name a single thing in the universe that has the property of hardness, but that is not hard itself? If you cannot name any such thing, then you are admitting that the property of hardness is an inalienable property of a hard thing. Similarly, can you name a single thing that has the property of softness, but that is not soft itself? Here also if you cannot give any such name, then you are admitting again that the property of softness is an inalienable property of a soft thing. So hardness and softness are the two properties that cannot be thought of separately from a hard or a soft thing respectively.”
Here I have very clearly and unequivocally mentioned that there cannot be a thing in nature that has the property of hardness but that is not hard itself. It is true that I have also written this:
“Now let us suppose that there is really such a thing in the universe that has the property of hardness but that is not hard itself.”
Does that mean that I am claiming here that there is really such a thing in nature? If you think that yes, I am claiming just this, then why have I earlier written that “…hardness and softness are the two properties that cannot be thought of separately from a hard or a soft thing respectively.”? Why am I contradicting myself here? Am I such a fool? Do you not understand this simple thing that for the sake of argument people sometimes make some conjectures? (Scientists are also always making conjectures.) So here also I am making just one conjecture. If such a thing were there in nature, then what would have been our conclusion? Our conclusion would be that in the universe there is at least one hard thing from which the thing in question has received its property of hardness.
In your earlier reply also you have preferred to make some cheap jokes about the abbreviation GTR whereas it would have been more appropriate if you could have pointed out where I have faltered in my argument. I would have really appreciated that.
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You are making a deduction from a conjecture that is either simply not true or yet to be proved. That is the fundamental flaw in your argument.
Also, my comment about your non-defined GTR initialism was not a cheap joke. It was a serious point. You do not impress your audience with the use of unexplained and unfamiliar initialisms, acronyms and abbreviations. All this does is sow the seeds of ambiguity and confusion. Clearly, you are not a teacher else you would know this.
And, by the way, I am an Englishman who has around twenty reference books on English grammar and writing techniques on my desk. I’m also an author. Check my bio.
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There is one more reason as to why universe as a whole cannot have any energy. Scientists are repeatedly saying that before the big bang there was no space and no time. Space and time came into existence along with the big bang only. That means big bang did not occur within any preexisting space-time. Neither is the universe expanding into any such preexisting space-time. If we now suppose that the universe as a whole has some non-zero energy value, then the universe will create its own gravitational field, because we now know that matter and energy are equivalent. As this field will spread outside the universe, so for its own existence it will require space outside the universe. But scientists are repeatedly saying that there is no such space outside the universe. So in this situation how can the universe have any non-zero energy value?
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I refer you to Betrand Russell’s celestial teapot:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
Please do not post any further comments to this blog.
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