An attempt at reading comprehension

There is a person on Twitter who says things with which I do not agree. I know, right? It’s astounding that this should happen, but here we are. An internet first.

The person is called Trent Horn. Despite sounding like a renaissance musical instrument, it does seem to be an actual person.

Trent believes in God, which is fine with me, although I don’t happen to agree. Lots of people believe in God and I rarely write articles about it. My problem is that Trent likes to pick fights with atheists. I have a problem with people who pick fights, theist or otherwise. I could post various tweets wherein Trent challenges atheists to support their assertions (missing the point that atheists don’t make assertions, they reject those of other people). But I will instead focus on this:

I’m sorry, what? I felt so perplexed by this that I retweeted it with a bit of commentary:

I mean, OK the first sentence is a bit puerile. I was being provocative. But fundamentally my sentiment is this:

If you believe in God, that’s fine and it’s up to you. There are reasons to do so which have nothing to do with science. While I don’t agree with it, I respect it. Stand up and own it. There is no need to wrap it in the language of other disciplines. Doing so suggests a lack of confidence in the core belief’s ability to stand on its own merit.

It’s hard to get all that into a tweet.

Regrettably, it didn’t go down very well and led to my intelligence being questioned:

So, I am going to attempt a bit of reading comprehension to get to the core of what Mr Horn is trying to say here. For ease of reading, I have used plain texts for direct interpretation of Mr Horn’s tweet and italics for my commentary.

The universe is divided fundamentally into two categories — that which is material and that which is immaterial. The immaterial here would certainly seem to include things like energy and light. It is unclear whether forces such as gravity and magnetism would be included in the immaterial since they depend on the material for their exertion.

Current physical theories posit that the universe came into existence where previously there had been no universe, no ‘material’ objects. We have an intuitive understanding that a thing cannot come into existence without some external actor ‘causing’ it. It therefore stands to reason that an agent caused the existence of material objects.

If there was an agent capable of bringing material objects into existence, but at a time where there were no material objects, it stands to reason that the agent must itself be immaterial. Thus, there is no contradiction in suggesting an immaterial God in a material universe.

I understand that the above is not a quote, by the way. I have used the quote formatting to make clear where the analysis starts and ends. The same is true in respect of the statement of my theological position above.

How did I do Trent? Did I get what you were saying?

I understand it. I am able to comprehend things written in the English language. My point was that this is a very poorly constructed example of written English which co-opts the language of another discipline to bolster what is, essentially, a theological claim. I think it’s clumsily written, difficult (though evidently not impossible) to comprehend, and unnecessary.

And I think I would have more respect for you if you simply said “I believe in God because I do. It just feels right. I know science says other things, but I stand by my belief system.”

That has integrity, confidence and self-expression. Your mangling of the language and (intentional?) misunderstanding of physics lacks all those qualities.