Does the Existence of the Ice Age Make God Less Likely?

Antarctica may be spectacular, but it most certainly is not a pleasant place to be.

Sure, there are tours and cruises to Antarctica, but only a very few brave souls would be willing to spend a week on the frozen continent with only a backpack, a few supplies and some warm clothing – and no one would try it during the winter months. After all, Antarctica is 5.4 million square miles of virtually uninhabited ice that is, at minimum, inhospitable to humans. How bad is it? According to Universeonline.com,

Antarctica is considered a desert, with annual precipitation of only 200 mm along the coast and far less inland. The temperature in Antarctica has reached −89 °C . There are no permanent human residents, but anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 people reside throughout the year at the research stations scattered across the continent. Only cold-adapted organisms survive there, including many types of algae, animals (for example mites, nematodes, penguins, seals and tardigrades), bacteria, fungi, plants, and protista. Vegetation where it occurs is tundra.

Does the fact that Antarctica exists argue against the existence of God?

Before you respond that I am asking a question no one asks, bear with me for a moment. Antarctica is a frozen land which is, for all practical purposes, uninhabitable by humans. And while its terrible conditions are presently confined to a couple of places on the planet, during the Ice Ages, a good portion of the planet had conditions that were very similar to Antarctica. During that time:

…sheets of ice covered all of Antarctica, large parts of Europe, North America, and South America, and small areas in Asia. In North America they stretched over Greenland and Canada and parts of the northern United States. * * * Overall, the climate was much colder and drier than it is today. Since most of the water on Earth's surface was ice, there was little precipitation and rainfall was about half of what it is today. During peak periods with most of the water frozen, global average temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees C (9 to 18 degrees F) below today’s temperature norms. ~ Pleistocene Epoch: Facts About the Last Ice Age

Obviously, living during any one of the Ice Ages was much more difficult than living in our present, warmer climate. But did the fact that during the Ice Age a large portion of the planet became inhospitable to mankind make it less likely that God existed?

This is essentially the argument that is made by Nicholas Everitt, in a book entitled The Non-Existence of God selling for the overpriced amount of $29.38 on Amazon. (I guess some people will want to waste money, and if you are that kind of person you can buy the hardcover edition for only $233.38. Everitt will undoubtedly appreciate you.) In one portion of the book, Everitt makes the argument that God’s existence is less likely because much of the universe is not friendly to life. As described in an online paper entitled “Fine-Tuning, Cosmic Hostility, and the Argument from Scale” by our old friend and CADRE member, Don McIntosh (who I would personally love to have return to blogging with us since he wrote some fantastic pieces), Everitt argues:

In an accessible and mostly well-received contribution to the philosophy of religion, The Non- Existence of God, Nicholas Everitt has argued that the enormous scale of the universe, both temporal and spatial, is evidence that the God of classical theism does not exist. According to Everitt, on the premise that human beings are the “jewel of creation,” created by a God who loves them and wants to be known by them, the universe would have been created on a less confounding and frightening, more comprehensible and hospitable human scale.

Everitt's argument is set out in syllogistic form as follows:

(1) If the God of classical theism existed, with the purposes traditionally ascribed to him, then he would create a universe on a human scale, i.e. one that is not unimaginably large, unimaginably old, and in which human beings form an unimaginably tiny part of it, temporally and spatially.
(2) The world does not display a human scale.
So: (3) There is evidence against the hypothesis that the God of classical theism exists with the purposes traditionally ascribed to him.

Personally, I find this argument to be poor, at minimum. To be fair to Everitt, as Don points out, Everitt recognizes that this isn’t a particularly compelling argument. Everitt apparently confesses, "We need to notice the limited nature of this conclusion. We have already emphasised that it is not a proof of the falsity of theism. We can also add that as presented, it does not even claim that theism is probably false. For it could quite well be the case that there was evidence against theism, but not of such a weight as to make the falsity of theism more probable than not."

That, at least, is true. But the argument as presented fails because it is based on the idea that what Everitt believes would be the best way to do something is the way that God ought to have done it, and if God chose to do it a different way then that means that God is less likely to exist. Essentially, Everitt’s argument is that if he were God, he would have created the universe differently.

Well, if I were God, I would not have created a planet that would have gone into an Ice Age killing off thousands if not millions of species because that is not hospitable to human life. Alternatively, I could even argue that if I were God, I would not have created Antarctica for the same reason.

Is that really where we are going with arguments against God’s existence: God probably doesn’t exist because He did something different than I would have done it?

But there are, of course, reasons for the miles of thick frozen ice in Antarctica. Not that I regularly recommend Mother Jones magazine, but it actually contains a good article entitled “7 reasons why Arctic sea ice matters,” explaining why the ice on the poles is important to keeping the planet cool among other things. Now, I may not like the frozen expanses of Antarctica, but God had a reason for creating a planet with frozen poles and we have enough scientific knowledge to figure out these reasons. But if I follow Everitt’s lead, I am just going to focus on whether Antarctica is hospitable to human life and when I conclude it isn’t, I should be arguing that the existence of Antarctica makes God’s existence less likely.

What nonsense.

As the old saying goes (I believe it was stated by Mark Twain), God created man in His image, and ever since man has been trying to return the favor. Sorry, but just because Everitt (and others like him) don’t understand that God’s ways are not man’s ways, and just because Everitt thinks in single-minded strategies that don’t (and cannot) take into account all of God’s potential motivations, does not mean that God doesn’t exist nor does it make it less likely that God exists.

Our good friend Don McIntosh took a different angle in his fine paper (which can be accessed here) by examining more directly the argument that God created a universe admittedly largely inhospitable to life. He does so by setting out an interesting hypothetical:

Suppose for a moment that bioengineers were able to build a novel form of life. Let’s call this new creature a kreldjz. Suppose further that a kreldjz can only live under extreme conditions, such as temperatures above 500 degrees Celsius, that can only be found in a specially constructed laboratory. Such a laboratory would have to be carefully, deliberately fine-tuned for kreldjz life; but at the same time most of the actual laboratory space, whether taken up by researchers’ and technicians’ work areas or the sensitive but bulky equipment needed to create such extreme conditions, would be strictly inhospitable (too cold, for instance) to permit a kreldjz to live. Only in the very confined, restricted space where the required extreme conditions are actualized could our kreldjz hope to survive.

If you cannot see where he is going with this argument, I invite you to download his paper (it’s free) and read it yourself. Come to think of it, buy his book (linked on the left side-bar of the blog). I think his argument also responds quite well to Everitt’s argument.

As for me as a Christian, I am not the least bit disturbed by the immense size of the universe or its overall inhospitality towards human life. That's the point of the video "The Privileged Planet" which makes a strong case for God on the exact same basis. So, when I go on my ocean cruise and see the beauty and wonder of Antarctica, I won't be thinking how it makes God less likely. I will be marveling at the wonderous works that God has made.