By Vorjack
It appears the Templeton Foundation may have finally discovered the ultimate gap in which to stash God:
A leading quantum physicist who believes science alone cannot explain “ultimate reality” has been awarded the world’s largest monetary prize for his contribution to religious thought. (“Bernard d’Espagnat wins £1m Templeton Prize“)
The Limits of Knowledge
Pullquote: The concepts we use, such as space, time, causality, and so on, … are not applicable to ultimate reality.
I have to be careful here. I know just enough about quantum theory to embarrass myself, but not enough to dig myself out afterward.
Bernard d’Espagnat is a proponent of the “veiled reality” concept. The idea is that quantum physics describes the effects of the forces at work in the quantum level, but not the forces themselves. In other words, there is a reality beneath time, space, matter and energy, and our scientific tools cannot reach it. As he explained it to the Christian Science Monitor:
“It’s not that science will explain the ultimate reality of certain objects or events,” d’Espagnat said. “Rather, it is that the concepts we use, such as space, time, causality, and so on, … are not applicable to ultimate reality.”
Fair enough. If fact, I find it intuitively appealing. As an atheist, I believe that the universe was not created for us, and is therefor under no obligation to make itself comprehensible to us. I am neither surprised nor appalled to hear it suggested that there are things we simply can’t know.
Entanglements — Quantum and Otherwise
Pullquote: For generations theists have been finding God in the spaces outside human knowledge, but each time scientists have shown up to spoil the fun.
Where it gets dicey is when it gets religious. Those who have read Ken Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God may remember his final chapter, where he locates the actions of God at the quantum level. Since we cannot say what caused a particle to go this way instead of that way, perhaps we can say that God made it happen.
For generations theists have been finding God in the spaces outside human knowledge, but each time scientists have shown up to spoil the fun. Miller has found a gap where scientists can’t ruin the game, and d’Espagnat has taken this a step farther: he has given theists an entire playground to themselves. And if no one can say what goes on there, no one can say what doesn’t. As d’Espagnat says:
“I would accept calling it God or divine or Godhead but with the restriction that it cannot be conceptualised for the very reason that this ultimate reality is beyond any concept that we can construct.”
One Gap They Ignore
Pullquote: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
I’m tempted to start up an organization of my own. Call it the “Florien Fund” after our dear host. Once a year this fund will shell out a large cash prize to the physicist/theologian who enters an American megachurch and explains their conception of God to the congregates. They will be expected to explain how God is not really an all-powerful loving entity who watches over us, but just a way of speaking about the level of physical reality behind quantum mechanics. For the full prize, they should also explain what this idea does to the divinity of Jesus.
And then get out alive. No payments to next-of-kin. Since I don’t think we’ll ever have to pay out, this fund should be a cinch to run.
Shouldn’t the authors of these “quantum God” theories be more alarmed by the huge divide between the God of their philosophies and the God fervently believed in by the majority of humanity? Shouldn’t this gap make them leery of using the word “God” — the most loaded word in our lexicon?
But of course, that’s the point. The goal is not honest inquiry, because that would require an honest answer: “We don’t know.” The whole point of this quest for mystery is to say, “We don’t know, but it could be God…” The goal is to find some definition of God that they can use and still be feel they’re upholding scientific principles, then smuggle in as much of their theology as they can.
I have some sympathy. I’m aware there are some who value the texture of mystery in their lives, and who desire to explore those mysteries, despite knowing there can never be an end. The fact that I’m content to shrug off all matters of spirituality doesn’t mean that others don’t need them. I agree with Wittgenstein, they don’t have to.
But I would appreciate honest fideism more than this disingenuous deism. Believe because you believe, not because you’ve found a conveniently placed gap.
Vorjack is a librarian/archivist and a public historian, living with his wife in history-soaked Albany, New York.
As I recall, Immanuel Kant already said all this many years ago. Kant said that Human knowledge is just our way of making sense of the world as we experience it and we can never know ultimate reality. According to Kant, our human mind creates concepts such as space, time, matter and energy in order to make sense of the raw data that is received via the five senses. He made a distinction between the phenomenal world of sensory experience (appearances) and the noumenal world of pure reality (the thing in itself). He went on to say that we can never know the noumenal world and that the phenomenal world is not part of ultimate reality. There is nothing in this to support the existence of some omnipotent Being. Anyway, even if some omnipotent being did exist, we would know nothing of its nature or its intentions and we have no reason to assume that it would require us to worship it or that it would be in anyway benevolent to us.
1. There is X.
2. I do not understand X.
3. God did it.
4. Dress in fancy suit.
5. Collect Templeton Money.
I was winging my way here from my feed reader to rant about the fallacy. (science cannot model some detail of the natural world, therefore some bronze-age myths must be true).
But I sea that Flea has already done it in a more concise manner.
It’s just sad that a man as brilliant as d’Espagnat cannot see the fallacy he is caught up in.
Not only is there no evidence for his claim, but he is essentially begging the question logically. (And let’s not forget the whole “ultimate regression” problem even if he is right, which of course he is not. I suspect the poor SOB just needed the money.)
I guess the “God of the Gaps” lives on, sort of…
Such attempts at connecting the current state of science to “ultimate reality,” “God,” “Penultimate Reality” or Whatever strike me as premature at the least. Do scientists who want to do theology or metaphysics seriously think we now have all the dots we’re ever going to see in front of us so that it’s time to start connecting them?
You say: “The fact that I’m content to shrug off all matters of spirituality…”
I don’t think so. I’d call love of truth “spiritual,” but then I take my spirituality hocus-pocus free, and also my faith.
God = powerful
God = beautiful
God = love
Unknowable = powerless
Unknowable = scary
Unknowable = confusing
Which word do you think most people would prefer to use? :)
The idea of hiding God in QM indeterminacy goes back at least to C.S.Lewis, though I no longer recall in which essay he advances it, or when it was written. At least 50 years, anyway.
I’m not sure how I feel about this piece of news. I’ve met a lot of christians in my life who interpret everything as evidence which validates their worldview. “Light coming from billions of light-years away?” Obviously god testing our faith. “No one has seen any credible evidence for god?” God doesn’t work on our time. “A loved one passes away in a tragic accident?” God works in mysterious ways. “Something you thought was god’s will suddenly falls apart?” It obviously wasn’t god’s will for your life. The list of contentions which validate a christian’s faith when they should be cause for rational self-examination goes on.
However, I’ve recently caught myself doing the same thing. “This gap of knowledge is unknowable and christians are exploiting it to protect their idea of infinite mystery in the universe. Obviously, this is evidence that the idea of god is one which, instead of being self-evident, needs protecting.” I honestly can’t tell if I’m being rational and logical, or doing the same thing as the christians, just from the other side of the fence.
“They will be expected to explain how God is not really an all-powerful loving entity who watches over us, but just a way of speaking about the level of physical reality behind quantum mechanics.”
Accepting your evaluation of the man’s belief, it does sound as if he would have more in common with Bultmann or Tillich than with Warren or Falwell.
I agree with you that I’m a little leery of taking an unknown process or unexplained phenomenon and slapping a “God did it” label on it. Theists have been burned in the past by such tactics, but it is funny that even those that aren’t theists start acknowledging how mystical the language they use to describe reality at the fringes of our knowledge becomes( I’m thinking of Hawking and Penrose specifically).
I’m not extremely knowledgeable of the Templeton org, but from their website it seems that they aren’t political and seem to support people from all beliefs and non-beliefs alike. They don’t even support ID which would seem to be a major bonus for most here.
“But I would appreciate honest fideism more than this disingenuous deism. Believe because you believe, not because you’ve found a conveniently placed gap.”
I know you’ve always been more than fair with theists here, but I doubt most atheists would follow you down this path. Granted most of the fideism posted on this blog isn’t like Barth or Kierkegaard, but some like John C are implicitly espousing fideism and are taken to task for being irrational. I think the atheists here would prefer John and others to be deists like Flew rather than proponent of “faith” alone.
Before giving up on M. d’Espagnat you should read what he had to say upon being given the award.
You can read it here:
<>
It is about as nice a put own of “religion” as one could hope for from a clear-headed scientist.
Ooops, the web page got edited out
Here it is again:
scienceblogs[dot]com[slash]pharyngula/2009/03/good_remark_on_receiving_a_tem.php
Let use see if that works…
Yay, Vorjack! I’m so glad you wrote about this because I asked about it on the creation museum post. Here is an article related to this topic on particles having “free will”
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/2641/subatomic-particles-have-free-will
That is alot of money for an old argument in new packaging. Is it a one time honour or there are few more millions up for graps?
That makes my brain hurt. But ya it seems that every time they think they find a gap, science disproves it. So hey why not go for the ultimate gap.
“Ultimate Reality” as well as all other theoretical sciences are well….theoretical and since God is well….theoretical then I say great let him live there amongst the other things waiting their turn to be either proven or disproven as science progresses.
God, time travel, teleportation, the multiverse……….one of these things is not like the other
I particularly love this line of reasoning, for two reasons:
a) scientists did tons of sometimes ingenious experiments to find out every single time that the results of quantum fluctuations are perfectly random. So unless a god is defined as ‘perfect white noise’, containing no information whatsoever, this one’s already busted.
b) Quantum Effects are actually the “most” random thing we’ve encountered so far, which is why we use it in random number generators
On the idea of an “ultimate reality” we cannot possibly perceive: Nice concept! It violates all requirements for a scientific hypothesis, i.e. it is not testable, not simple (a non-existing ultimate reality is always simpler), it lacks scope (live, the universe, and everything), fruitfulness (doesn’t explain anymore phenomena, otherwise it had to be penultimate), and last but not least it lacks conservatism (does not connect to other theories in the field).
If only I knew with which hypothesis I have seen a similar degree of epic fail…
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From ScienceNow:
Asked whether that entails a kind of mysticism, d’Espagnat responds that “science isn’t everything” and that we are already accustomed to the idea that “when we hear beautiful music, or see paintings, or read poetry, [we get] a faint glimpse of a reality that underlies empirical reality.” In the possibility of a veiled reality that is perceived in different and fragmentary ways through science, art, and spirituality, d’Espagnat also sees, perhaps, a way to reconcile the apparently conflicting visions of reality that science and religion provide.
a) Science may not provide an ultimate understanding of everything.
b) Therefore, art and religion may do so.
I can’t help but think that he skipped some steps in there somewhere. It is a false duality to assume that questions unanswered by science can be answered by religion.
I say, if your God is indistinguishable from random chance, that is not a God worth believing in or worshipping.
“The Dao than can be told is not the eternal Dao.”
–Lao Tzu, sometime in the 6th to 3rd century b.c.e.
So what exactly is new and prize-worthy in M. d’Espagnat’s thinking?
This is not a description of a god, let alone the Christian God. It’s not what any Christian, ever, has thought they were worshipping, not even as a metaphor or through a glass darkly.
Simple question for any Christians faced with this: do you think your God hears and understands your prayers, and do you think the force being described here can hear and understand your prayers?
Well, d’Espagnat is correct in so far as the so-called laws of nature are ultimately our own interpretations of the behaviors we observe in nature. Things we take for granted, such as space and time, are really intellectual concepts rather than cosmological artifacts.
This is not exactly new. It’s the basis for much of metaphysics (yes, metaphysics is a legitimate area of science when we disregard the crackpots that want to redefine it to mean any old nonsense) and also philosophy.
But d’Espagnat seems to have taken it a step further. He claims that not only are there things we don’t know, but we can never know these things. They are unknowable by their inherent nature.
This is a rather radical view. Personally, I don’t think he can prove such a thing, nor do I think it can indeed be proven, but I’m not acquainted with his work.
Also, I find it telling how quick he is to hypothesize that this unknowable of which we cannot even begin to conceive must be God. If this is indeed God, it’s a deistic god which is essentially a force of nature. It has nothing to do with the Christian god. And by d’Espagnat’s own admission we can never know what this god is like, so why bother worshipping it?
This argument does not prove or disprove anything it simply points out that people like to argue what they believe in, and that nobody knows anything for sure.
Science will continue and the elusive divine will always be a step ahead. How can we think an imperfect science made from man’s imperfect hands could explain that which is by definition unfathomable?
It’s not about quarks it’s about the human soul. Without God our existence has little to no meaning. By saying you don’t believe in a God you are in a way saying you don’t believe in yourself. That you would rather believe in the science of another man’s math over your own imagination. That your existence is mere and that life inst truly alive.
And that is fine, but what is the point of arguing people to your side when there is nothing there? It’s a religion of skepticism and nothingness of denial and patronization.
If you called your self agnostic and then questioned these things you would be saying that you are open to other ideas. But sincerity be damned.
And god said: “Let us make humans in our image…”
… For some reason, it appears to me, as if the ultimate gap lies between that mysterious pusher of quarks and what gets revealed of him(!?) in the bible, or rather between the ears of those numbminds choosing to believe in in such rubbish for desperate reasons.
THAT”S IT! My mind hurts. I am going to lie down now……
You know, I do know a lot of realivity, spacetime and quantum mechanics and you could call the Universe god, but I prefer to call it the Universe.
The Universe created every atom in our body, and we are as old as the Universe itself since all of our atoms has been created in during the big bang. Ok 300.000 years after the bang.
Also if you know quantum mechanics then you also know what the wave function means. It means that we are spread across the universe but most of the time we are here. (Don’t ask me to explain it, it’s complicated and min boggeling but scientificly true)
So you could say that we are that we are the universe too, or at last part of it.
Also when we die, our body gets distroyed but are atoms are practically ethernal, so our atoms will come back in a plant, animal (eats that plant), Human (eats that animal)… or gets sent off to the Moon (as part of a Lunar mission as food)… Who nows maybe as pee exhausted from the ISS, and pushed to the ends of the universe by the solar wind? LOL
No why would I prefer the universe called Universe instead of god? Because first of all the big question which god? And secondly, all gods described in the bible or all other religions are pretty limited in their capebility compared what the Universe can do! A god like the bible would be something like an super-Alien from a distant planet but in no way can a god like the christian bible have created a universe like this. There is absolutely nothing in the bible that explains strings, up to 11 dimensions, quarks, … Nor does it talk about spacetime (note the spacetime as one word, so it is not space or time but one thing called spacetime)
Oh yes the Universe created us, but is also trying to kill us. LOL Thanks to the atmosphere we are not killed instantly by radiation. LOL
But all those believers a questions.
Imagine that god does not exist, how would you know that your god does not exist?
And assume that a god did exist, how would you know that your god is the true god? How would you know that your god is not an imposter? How would you know if your god is not in reality the devil? How would you know that your church has been lying to you for so many centuries and you have been worshipping the devil thinking that he is your real god?
“Since we cannot say what caused a particle to go this way instead of that way, perhaps we can say that God made it happen.”
Yeah. Kinda. Except….
While individual quantum events really are fundamentally unpredictable, when they are evaluated over time and in large numbers, we observe that they conform to mindless statistics. For an iconic example, the diffraction patterns in the experiment with two holes are a pure statistical pattern.
So even IF a god was the “cause” of quantum events, such a god is heavily constrained by the probability numbers we observe. Perhaps there could be a god hidden in there, but it would be so subtle as to be irrelevant.
It’s certainly not the all-powerful big beardy dude of popular imagination. And it certainly can’t answer prayers in any meaningful way. Omnipotence is out of the window, and even if you could shoehorn omnicongition in there, what could such a constrained entity meaningfully do to act upon that knowledge?
tl;dr – God is not in quantum events.
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Nicely said said trj, ‘’the so-called laws of nature are ultimately our own interpretations of the behaviors we observe in nature. Things we take for granted, such as space and time, are really intellectual concepts rather than cosmological artifacts.’’ It’s amazing how people find this so difficult to understand. Many scientists fail to see any philosophical problems in science and they make the gross mistake of assuming that any criticism of science is somehow a defense of religion. What is the ontological status of the laws of physics? I have never come across a decent answer to that question.
But… but surely life can only have meaning if the truth is exactly what my father happened to believe and taught me!
Well put, Vorjack.
Vorjack: the word “spiritual” covers a host of sins, so to speak.
It includes the writing of Shirley McLane and Madonna as well as Buddhism.
It implies distinctions that I think are false: the “secular” vs. the “sacred,” the immaterial, or at least the vaporous/ethereal/ or otherwise foggy vs. the material.
A thread isn’t enough room to state with precision how I use the word spiritual – it’s kind of a hard word to avoid in talking about a certain category of experience. To give a rough idea, I’d apply it to anyone with a strong passion for the world beyond the self – which very much includes the desire to see truth win out over lies.
I would not apply the word to those who only imagine that they have a strong passion for the world beyond themselves –for example, believers who get their egos and their God mixed up and try to impose their views on others.
Faith and belief in supernatural forces or deities are not the same thing despite how very linked they’ve become over the centuries I think due primarily to the equivalence drawn between them by major religious institutions. (Btw, “supernatural” vs. “natural” is another distinction I’d reject.)
Faith as I’ve described it isn’t irrational. I doubt very much that you’d ever want to read the book – “faith” in the title is a real turn off to unbelievers – but I wrote it with two primary groups of people in mind, and atheists is one of the two. I just couldn’t avoid the word “faith” since that, along with love, is mainly what the book’s about.
Needless to say the title of your blog got my attention.
I embrace science fully. I reject the God of the gaps. I think evolution is the best theory that explains the origins of humanity.
I am also a Christian, and pretty Orthodox as well.
However, I don’t seek to find God in the physical universe, and I’m not afraid to admit that my belief in God is just that — belief.
For me, Christianity has ofered the most convincing explanation of human life and its inherent value, and therefore the reason to live a “good” and “just” life.
Other people might find something else, and frankly, I don’t worry about it.
Because if the God I believe in really does exist — a merciful, loving, compassionate God — I doubt that God is overly concerned about doctrinal differences.
I’m happy to share my faith with others, and I welcome informed dialogue about it. And I doubt I will ever leave my own faith behind. Yet, I refuse the notion that I have the exclusive track of truth or faith because I am willing to admit that my own faith is just that.
In my opinion, faith should never produce arrogance; rather, it should produce the opposite. If faith is to be authentic, then it should be admitted to be such and should therefore produce humility. Because ultimately, I could be wrong, and I shouldn’t be afraid of that.
Get over this never ending question of “is there or isn’t there”. The debate has been going on for long enough… there cannot be a “right” answer because it takes its roots from completely different set of minds, thus the conclusion is parsecs apart.
Good one!
Also, I think this formula almost also works for movement conservatism. More like
1. Conservative overlords want X
2. Write op-eds about it
3. did you lie?
4. Attack opponents who called you out
5. Did you botch a war?
6. Quit, get spot on board at American Enterprise Institute.
Bravo Flea! Bravo!
“I’d call love of truth “spiritual,”‘
I don’t actually love truth, I just say that to get it in bed.
Mmmm, yes… but he collected the money anyway, didn’t he?
Ummmmm…. ID? ;)
How are we supposed to test the hypothesis that every hypothesis should be testable? All meta-theories face the same problem. They do meet the very requirements they stipulate for a theory to be acceptable.
I caught that shortly after the essay got published. It’s annoying that the quote wasn’t in the half dozen other articles I read.
Anyway, it looks like d’Espagnat is being more careful to delineate his own beliefs from more common theistic beliefs than I gave him credit for.
God and other supernatural phenomena were rejected from the natural sciences for good reasons. They provide no useful solutions, and they’re not testable.
d’Espagnat, Miller, et al, can try to fit god into their conclusions, but what they propose is not scientific, but merely personal conjecture on their part.
Sorry, but being agnostic only makes sense to a point. God is beyond that point. This is a subjective opinion which atheists share, but not an unfounded one.
What you fail to realize is that many people here have indeed tried being open to the idea of God, and some have also accepted it for several years before discarding it.
But because they didn’t arrive at the same conclusion as you you claim they’re insincere and not open to other ideas.
That’s kind of pathetic, really.
Ben, I disagree.
Let’s examine the details of your statements — let’s dig a little deeper and unpack what you were trying to say.
“It’s not about quarks it’s about the human soul. Without God our existence has little to no meaning. By saying you don’t believe in a God you are in a way saying you don’t believe in yourself.”
Human soul? Please let me know what the human soul is.
What do I think the “soul” is? I think it’s everything that makes us who we are. And what makes us who we are? Our genetics, our environment, our bodies, our culture, our paradigm, our meanings all contribute to our personalities. And when those things disappear, where do you expect our souls to be then?
Sure, Beethoven’s symphonies are only notes on a page whose meanings were defined by fallible humans as an inherently meaningless representation of a feature of the natural world. And is it your place to say that his symphonies are not meaningful?
Shakespeare’s plays are composed of mere words arranged in forms refined by fallible humans which have no intrinsic, objective meaning – they are only approximations, poorly qualified representations. And is it your place to say that Shakespeare’s plays are not meaningful?
Is your “god” a sense of objective meaning? Is your “god” a sense of control and authority?
Humans do not need any objective meaning. That is an illusion – and an unnecessary one at that.
I believe in humanity and in the meanings which humans create for themselves. If religion is accepted as part of that self-created meaning, I will not quarrel with that practice. But I’d like people to recognize it in that role, as a form of human-created subjective meaning.
It should be obvious that those who say that they are peddling objective religion are peddling a false product. We know that religion is subjective. Look at the evolution of religious traditions and practices. Witness the moderation and development of doctrines in church and faith histories.
If you think religion is meaningful, then I believe that you agree with me that subjective, human-centric, human-created forms of meaning can be a valid expression of our lives and our humanity.
“That you would rather believe in the science of another man’s math over your own imagination. That your existence is mere and that life inst truly alive.”
Ahh, but that is not what any of us are actually saying.
I would rather believe in my own imagination than in the tired dogmas of the mythological past. Why not harness the imagination in the pursuit of science?
Why do people bash science?
I know that many people have an undying fetish for mysticism. I won’t disavow you of it. However, people should not let that contribute to a weariness of science.
I fully realize that the scientific method has its limitations. However, I wish people would acknowledge that utility which it does possess and the role that it can play.
Too many people harp on science too often without appreciating how we got here as a civillization on its coattails. It’s not the monster under your bed; science is not the boogeyman.
“And that is fine, but what is the point of arguing people to your side when there is nothing there? It’s a religion of skepticism and nothingness of denial and patronization.
If you called your self agnostic and then questioned these things you would be saying that you are open to other ideas. But sincerity be damned.”
Nothing there? That is totally not true.
What am I doing? I am letting people know what is right in front of their noses.
We all have this meaning in our existence which we create — this red herring of objective meaning is not necessary.
What are each of us deny? You have called me a denier.
Yet you deny the meaningfulness of human existence without a god. That is denial which I cannot abide.
I am accepting the role of skepticism in evaluating religious claims, not dogmatically rejecting these claims as you would have misguidedly assumed.
What does John C say…there is more?
There is more than objective meaning.
By saying you don’t believe in a God you are in a way saying you don’t believe in yourself. That you would rather believe in the science of another man’s math over your own imagination.
Thank you for that admission that God is a product of the human imagination.
Next.
“Without God our existence has little to no meaning. By saying you don’t believe in a God you are in a way saying you don’t believe in yourself. ”
What?
Please support this assertion.
And that is fine, but what is the point of arguing people to your side when there is nothing there?
First of all, I would hope to convince some that my view is worthy of tolerance, if not respect, and the persistent threat of forced imposition of irrational religious belief on others is wrong.
Second of all, if I could convince some people that religion is a waste of time, they could put that time to use for other things, including the betterment of mankind, and we could all live in a nicer world. I.e. religion has an “opportunity cost.”
My point is that atheism is nihilism
Amazing comment, mate :)
Is atheism nihilism?
Did I argue that life is without purpose, meaning or value?
No, I argued that it is without *objective* purpose, meaning, or value.
That’s not what I said.
Did you read what I said?
We have substantative meanings, however they do not have to be objective as a prerequisite to be substantative and important to us.
Please go back and address my criticisms and reconsider what I was actually saying.
“My point is that atheism is nihilism”
That is an entirely unsupportable assertion, and is, frankly, stupid to boot.
All it says is that you’ve not given it any actual thought before deciding on your position. Even a five second comparison of the term nihilism and the atheist position would show that they have nothing in common.
“My point is that atheism is nihilism”
What does nihilism mean?
I have a wonderfull life.
I am in charge of my own life and destiny no one else to blame on.
I am helping many people all around the world and try to make their life better, yes I am altruistic in nature. I even help religous people.
I do not live in constant fear or have any guilt about a imaginary sin created by some people 6000 years ago. My past does not affect my living.
This life is really great, did I mention that?
My life does have a big purpose, that is to make people happy and also feel the wonders of this life.
I just don’t waste my time with imaginary figures, and instead of praying I actually take some action and do something since I am in charge of my own happyness and life.
Yes, I did grew up beeing a Catholic and went ot Catholic school for many years, so I do know the bible and what religion is. But I also noticed the corruption, the lies the deceit, the manupulation of all those that clamed to be religious.
Man, I know what you are trying to do, and you get 1 kudo for that (millions of kudos for things you posted in other threads, though)…
But, honestly, I would love to see only onereligidiot explain to me why god can be found in white noise…
On the other hand, those guys are probably a dime a dozen. *sigh*
(Sometimes it is really hard not to go out for a killing spree)
OMFSM, how pathetic am I?! I even did not get the point of your reply!!!
SOOORRRYYY!!! (honestly!)
“Please go back and address my criticisms and reconsider what I was actually saying.”
Not going to happen.
Ben appears to be so caught up in the Christian mindset that he can’t conceptualize viewpoints that differ from his own.
You can tell because he has redefined concepts such as life, truth, and meaning, so that they are all about God and faith. If you don’t believe in God, it also means you have no meaning in life, you reject truth, and you don’t even have a real life. So it’s not surprising that atheism equals nihilism in his warped dictionary.
You have a severe case of blind faith, Ben.
I think the reason most people are believers is because they hope that there is survival after death.
You could say this is the human soul. That there is more to life than materialistic notions.
I don’t think the atheist who doesn’t believe in the soul believes in personality survival after death. In place of an “eternity” there is oblivion. This is what I mean by nihilism, in that ultimately nothing has any meaning or value. How could it if there were nobody around to give meaning to it? If the Earth were to blow up and everything destroyed than it was all for naught? There would be no cause for the effect.
I suppose I could argue conservation of energy if you were to agree that your “I AM” identity consciousness is a form of energy. But keeping with atheistic ideas there would probably be contentions that the mind is only a electro-chemical reaction of the brain and nothing more.
So either we exist for a purpose, which would be to grow and learn, or we don’t. Everything you thought and gained through your life experience is lost to oblivion. That is evolution climbing up only to fall off the cliff, it goes against everything life is about.
Ben:
Whoa, whoa, whoa — how in the world does the cessation of personality after death equal nihilism?
How does “nothing after death” equal “nothing has any value”?
Ben, do you believe in the Christian afterlife?
According to your logic, how could it have any value if that’s all there is! If there’s nothing after it, isn’t it valueless?
“So either we exist for a purpose, which would be to grow and learn, or we don’t. Everything you thought and gained through your life experience is lost to oblivion.”
Ben, I think your arguments were infected with a very bad dose of “false dichotomy fallacy”.
Either we exist for the purpose dictated by my religious beliefs, or there is no purpose!
That doesn’t smell right to me.
If it weren’t for oblivion, how could anything have any value?
Have you ever read any of those science fiction stories about societies which have gained immortality, and the only thing people want to do is to kill themselves?
Change is a constant quality of our existence. Remove change from the equation, and I struggle to see how our lives are worth living.
Death is part of the scheme of life — any other view is really genuinely “against everything life is about”.
Death and life go together. Death helps make life valuable. I wish you could appreciate this.
By the way, this is not nihilism. It’s just a different view of the interrelatedness between life and death. It is an acknowledgment that death adds to the purpose and meaning of our existence.
Rather than obliterating our meaning, it isolates it for us and places it in a context which can add substance to our lives.
It is the meaning we create in the here and now that is important, not what may be after we are no longer here. It is futile to think about what may happen in hundreds or thousands or millions or billions or trillions of years. What matters is what we do while we are alive.
And that *is* meaningful.
@Ben:
It’s certainly a contributing factor. However, people’s hope says nothing about what is reality.
That doesn’t really make any sense to me.
I live my life trying to enjoy it and also to make it enjoyable for others. Just because I’ll cease to exist doesn’t mean that my life didn’t have meaning (to me, and also to others) during the time I existed.
Again, this is your definition of life, which seems to be a general process that follows some divine masterplan. Thus the very concept of life has a purpose in itself, according to you. I see the relation between life and purpose in a completely different way.
Yeah, we could all be snuffed out tomorrow in a giant natural disaster, and the universe wouldn’t care one way or the other. That doesn’t mean we didn’t have a meaning and a purpose to our lives. But it was never a purpose which was dictated to us.
The meaning of life is personal and as such ends with the person. This doesn’t mean the person’s life is meaningless while he’s alive. And that’s really all that matters.
Actually, Tele and trj, I struggle with this.
You know I defend scientific materialism and empiricism vehemently. But I too wonder about meaning in life. For me, it’s about the big rip. It looks like the physical universe is headed toward almost total destruction, and I can’t help but wonder if anything I’m doing has any meaning.
For me, I have meaning in the here and now through my actions: relationships with other people, things I create, or exploring this awesome world.
But when all this is gone… when everything is gone… will any of this have mattered?
Is it possible to be not nihilistic in the here and now and nihilistic in things ultimate?
:)
@LRA:
I can understand your point (and Ben’s). But we’re seeing things from a different perspective. You want there to be some meaning that transcends the person’s life. I don’t think such a thing exists.
You’re thinking of life as an entity which has inherent meaning by itself. You think a meaning of life exists qua the existence of life in general. But this definition of life is simply an intellectual construct, a romantic idea which doesn’t bear inspection.
It’s not life as a general concept that has meaning, but life at an individual level. Life as a general concept doesn’t exist anywhere but in our own minds. It’s an arbitrary classification on our part, not an actual property of the universe.
When all life is eventually extinguished, no larger meaning will be lost, because such a thing never existed in the first place.
The meaning we ascribe to our lives is completely subjective. It is important to ourselves, but our idea of meaning dies with us. This is not the same as living a life without meaning. You could argue that after the person’s death the meaning is lost. It is, but it matters only to the person who is now dead.
I hope you can follow me. It does take some effort to look at such things in a different perspective.
LRA,
I was just thinking about this a few days ago, how to keep the meaning of the present without becoming despondent about the far, far future: http://unreasonablefaith.com/2009/03/24/do-atheists-get-their-morals-from-the-bible/#comment-26365
I am made of the dust of the stars, and oceans run in my veins.
:)
Weeell, the atoms which were created at that time were hydrogen, helium, and lithium. The atoms which make up our bodies are for the most part created over the following course of billions of years, through fusion and nuclear decay.
But you could argue that the individual protons, neutrons, and electrons are from the beginning of the universe. These were created within the first few minutes of the Big Bang.
No, in practice the wave function doesn’t apply to macroscopic objects consisting of more than a few atoms. It’s a quantum descriptor, not a classical one. When a system is sufficiently large it can’t help but interact with its environment (decoherence) which makes it adopt a specific state so that it is no longer spread out.
you could call the Universe god, but I prefer to call it the Universe
…or the GBWII (pronounced ‘Jibberwee’) – the Great Big Whatever It Is.
I love explaining to someone how the calcium in their bones and iron in their hemoglobin had to be forged in the heart of an early star, then scattered across the galaxy in a supernova.
The naturalistic universe is so much more amazing than any version of ‘goddidit’ could be.
Yes, the moment it interacts it adopts a specific state but all the other time it does not interact it is in this wave function again and that is probably 99% of the time. (just guessing)
So if you think about it, how cool is is to know that you are part of the universe in relaxed state. LOL
I agree, the complete atoms are forged in the stars and supernova, so that is also very cool, but the basic building blocks, electrons, protons,… were created in in big bang.
I believe that the energy froze to matter after 300.000 years, not minutes. But I need to check on this.
god = imaginary
unknowable = incentive to further research
Sometimes I wonder if the folks making these “God of the gaps” style arguments really understand what they’re doing.
First, it makes the “god” they’re postulating in these gaps always seems fairly weak by comparison to the all-powerful, all-knowing deity of Judeo/Christian/Muslim faith. If such a “god” were proven to exist it certainly wouldn’t be a proof the Christian God.
But more than that – if some kind of entity were proven to exist in these gaps, that entity would by definition not be a supernatural phenomenon. It would be a natural one, that could be examined and explained and cataloged. It would be less a “god” than it would be something like “Q” from the Star Trek series – some kind of powerful alien entity that might be beyond our comprehension right now, but give us some time and we’ll figure it out.
I don’t think they understand either of these things. I think they’re too worried about the fact that other people think that they have silly beliefs and are doing everything they can to force people to not think that their beliefs are silly. And they’re not worried enough about what the search for a “god” like that means for their own theology. They should, perhaps, step away from the scientific arguments and study up on some theology for a while. Who knows, they might learn something about their own religion – perhaps even enough to realize why other folks think they have silly beliefs.
Well, the randomness may only appear to be random. God can act while we’re not looking. In fact, many believers say something like this – God is too incomprehensible for our puny intellects, he acts in mysterious ways, he acts according to a plan we can’t understand, etc. (At the same time they’ll claim that they’ve experienced God directly and/or seen evidence of him.)
God may in theory exist but choose to hide himself whenever we look for him in experiments. He’s kind of shy that way. Like the ghosts that for some reason never show themselves when there’s a camera crew around.
ha! No worries!
ID = epic fail because…
“it is not testable, not simple (a non-existing ultimate reality is always simpler), it lacks scope (live, the universe, and everything), fruitfulness (doesn’t explain anymore phenomena, otherwise it had to be penultimate), and last but not least it lacks conservatism (does not connect to other theories in the field).”
;)
Get a haircut, hippie!
Ha, sorry. Couldn’t resist.
So ‘god’ hides every time someone tries to look for it? Consistently?
Wow, another constraint I hadn’t even thought of. So much for omnipotence. This ‘god’ thing sounds particularly weak to me.
Btw, ghosts never show themselves to camera crews because they don’t exist. I know you’re trolling, but y’know, gotta bite.
There’s no conventional hypothesis that states such a thing. However, from our experience we know that the most useful hypotheses are the ones that can be subjected to tests. It’s a matter of practicality.
So I guess what I’m saying by extension is that metaphysics is less useful than “real” physics in that it isn’t testable. I’m guessing we agree on that. This doesn’t mean it’s useless, though. Far from it. It’s useful in directing new areas of research.
Er, no, no trolling on my part. I’m not trying to defend a mysterious god. I was pointing out that it’s a possibility, though a ridiculous one.
/mops brow in relief
I didn’t want to get into a debate this evening. I just want to play a game. Glad you’re not on for argument(!)
Huh? Say again? Philosophy of science is meta-theory. None of it is testable. You said elsewhere that the laws of physics are intellectual constructs.
”Things we take for granted, such as space and time, are really intellectual concepts rather than cosmological artifacts.” If that is the case, then they don’t exist outside of our ‘heads’, so they can’t form any part of ‘external reality’. The very constructs that make any hypothesis meaningful do not actually exist in the external world. You yourself said it. So I don’t really get what you are saying here.
I was responding to your statement that there’s a hypothesis which states that every hypothesis should be testable (that’s how I understood what you said, anyway).
To which I say, that is not the case. A hypothesis in itself is not under any logical constraints to be testable. It’s just that it’s not very useful if it’s not testable.
This was a comment to the methodology of science, not to any physical reality. I wasn’t equating a hypothesis to the actual world.
Well, seeking parsimony can at least provide you with a guidepost external to your own preferences. And it has a pretty good track record.
If we want to understand the nature of scientific knowledge and its relationship to the world, then we need to do metaphysics. If scientific theories are loaded with concepts that are purely intellectual constructs, then doesn’t that cause problems for science and all human knowledge? Heh, maybe that’s why Kant gave up and said we’ll never know what reality is :D
How do you know there is anything out there at all? Perhaps everything is just inside your mind. That is the theory called solipsism.
But let’s take a clear look at this :
Axiom 1. Either there is something ‘out there’ that give rise to our perceptions or there is not. Let’s call this the black box. Axiom 2. It follows that either the black box is knowable or it is not. Nothing here to disagree with I hope. It just basic logic of ‘Either Or’.
From here we have 3 possible options.
option a). There is No black box. As you say it’s possible that when we don’t think about things then they don’t exist (e.g. Paris) and you say ‘I guess assuming that there is no objective reality is not such a long shot’. If that is the case then everything is purely inside your mind. That position is called Solipsism. Think about it. If Paris ceases to exist when you don’t perceive it, then that applies to everything else, including other people. Your perceptions are ‘inside’ your mind, hence the entire universe is just a bunch of perceptions that come and go inside your mind. No external reality, means no external universe. That means that the universe is really just a bunch of perceptions that come and go inside your mind. Your mind is the only thing that exists.
If you want to avoid solipsism, then you have to allow that there is something out there that gives rise to our perceptions.
option b). There is a black box out there and we can know its contents. We know exactly what reality is and science just extends and enhances our knowledge of reality.
option c). There is a black box out there, but we cannot know its contents. That is Kant’s position. We can Not know the nature of the underlying ‘reality’ that gives rise to our perceptions. In his terminology, the noumenal that gives rise to the phenomenal cannot be known.
Your last note concerning speculation and scientific knowledge is pure philosophy. Just find a good book on the philosophy of science.
I disagree. There are much more limitations to our ability of understanding than there are to scientific knowledge, and hence to reality.
For example, there are not that many people who really understand 4-dimensional space time, yet we apparently live in it, and we can construct hyotheses that turn out reliable results.
There are probably far less people in the world (I guess the actuall number is somewhere close to zero) who understand QCD, QED etc. Yet there are tens of thousands of physicists crunching numbers every day and mathematically explaining effects that are counter-intuitive.
Point is, we don’t have to understand something to make it work for us (think of your computer, do you really understand how it works?!). In fact, I think that we have reached a point where we know much more than we understand. And that doesn’t worry me the slightest bit :D
Our neurological and physiological limitations are results of adapting to a specific environment. If you were a bat, you might be able to hear colors. But we can “only” see them. That’ll have to do.
Devysciple, NO LINK to reply below so I put it here.
There is no disagreement. You are discussing the nature of scientific knowledge and our ability to understand it. So you are agreeing with me that metaphysics (actually let’s just call it philosophy, i.e. the type of enquiry that examines our capacity for reason and understanding and examines the nature, utility and validity of the kinds of knowledge available) is essential if we want to discuss such things. Well, this is a philosophical discussion.
Also, in computing, ppl use the expression ‘black box’. A black box is a system or object viewed in terms of its input and output without any knowledge required of its internal workings. Kant is saying, in a way, that objective reality is a black box.
ok, the link worked.
I guess this quote sums up your position. If that is so, then I have to say: I still disagree with you. Because you suggest an underlying ‘objective reality’, whereas I say that the question of reality is in some sense the same as the question for god. We cannot know the answer, knowing it wouldn’t probably change anything, and most importantly, everything works just fine without it.
I see ‘objective reality’ as another construct the human mind has created to cope with the phenomena it encounters every day for the past few million years. It is a result of the increasing ability to rationalize, to perceive, and to prescind.
For example, I assume that you assume that some “thing”, which represents itself towards us as the city of Paris, exists in objective reality the very moment you are reading these lines. If neither you nor me are there, how can we be sure about that? With all that mankind has learned about quantum physics, and the at least cogitable idea of multiple universes, I guess assuming that there is no objective reality is not such a long shot.
On a last note, I don’t consider this issue a matter of metaphysics and/or philosophy. It’s a matter of
a) scientific knowledge (can we finally figure out the nature of reality, and if so, how), and
b) speculation, which is what I am doing right now, by assuming that there is no ‘objective reality’.
I hope this clears things up a bit.
I agree, if those religious people would put their bible to their side and go out and learn some science and look at the stars with their own eyes, then they would feel how limiting this bible-world really is and how big and wonderfull and interesting the real world is.
What are those ‘philosophical problems’?
And how would that be any importance to science?
Science is all about formula’s and numbers, philosophycal interpretation is not part of science.
Sometimes it is really cool to look at those formula’s and ask yourself what do these numbers mean? How could we convert those formula’s and numbers to something that we can actually visualize and tough. It is nice as a hobby, but not part of science.
Did you know that the atom model you get taught in school is actually an oversimplified model and not really how an atom is?
Did you know that the so called electron orbits you have learned in school do not exist in science? There is no electron that orbits the atom like a solar system, it is just a location with high probability where you can find an electron, and the electron pops in and put of existance.
Basically this atomic model learned in school is just a simplified physolophycal interpretation, but the formulas are correct as far as evidence shows it to be. They just need some more finetuning.
Yeah, but I’m one of those scary hippies who isn’t a pacifist.
The actual elementary particles existed almost from the beginning. In fact, the atomic nucleuses were fused together within 20 minutes of the Big Bang. But it took another 240- to 310,000 years for the nucleuses to be able to hold on to their electrons.
See Big Bang timeline
As for the wave function thing, once a quantum system has decohered into a specific state it won’t go back to being in an unspecific state. Decoherence means an increase in entropy, so it would be like saying that the molecules in a gas could go back to their original configuration once they’ve mixed. In theory its’ possible, but in practice it won’t happen (for a complex system).
You do realize that if you put your god on the quantum level, then this fod would be smaller than a gnome!
What are those ‘philosophical problems’?
The philosophical problems in science are many. Just get a reading list on the ‘Philosophy on Science’ from any good university.
And how would that be any importance to science?
Philosophical interpretations are important if we want to understand science’s contribution to our knowledge of the universe.
You are engaging in philosophical discussion right now.
sorry, just wanted to clarify first bit:
Axiom 1) Either external reality exists or it does not. Let’s call external reality ‘the black box’.
Axiom 2i) If the black box exists, then it is knowable or it is not knowable.
Axiom 2ii) If the black box does not exist, then it is not knowable.
From here we have 3 possible options as above.