by VorJack
Over at Slate, Ron Rosenbaum gets in a good sneer in the agnostic/atheist debate with a piece entitled “The rise of the new agnostics“:
Atheists display a credulous and childlike faith, worship a certainty as yet unsupported by evidence—the certainty that they can or will be able to explain how and why the universe came into existence.
[...]
Atheists have no evidence—and certainly no proof!—that science will ever solve the question of why there is something rather than nothing. Just because other difficult-seeming problems have been solved does not mean all difficult problems will always be solved.
I’m always uncomfortable when I receive criticism that I feel misses the mark. I simply don’t recognize any of myself or my community in Rosenbaum’s remarks. I’ve seen a kind of messianic scientism before, but unless I’m missing something I do not see it reflected among the atheists I know.
Oh, it’s true that some of the statements made by Carl Sagan, as an example, could be interpreted as a type of “science as messiah” sermon. But when he talked of people joining hands and marching forward into a new age free of superstition, I interpreted that as a particular type of rhetoric; a pep talk or a type of soaring inspirational language rather than an accurate description of how he saw the future.
(hey, whattaya know, our own “literal-vs-metaphorical” debate!)
I myself am not convinced that we will ever know how the universe came to be. I suspect that there are scientific and philosophical hurdles that we might never clear. Our friend Daniel Frinke – at his newly renovated blog Camels with Hammers – has this response to the problem of how something came from nothing:
My best philosophical answer—not a dogmatic assertion with no reasoning, not a faith position I am committed to against all contrary arguments and evidence, not my 100% certainty, but merely my best philosophical answer is that we need to better understand the words creation and nothingness. Everything we see “created” is only a recombination of preexisting matter. We never see creation from nothing, but only creation from something.
And we have no experience whatsoever with “nothing”. We can only have experience with some things which are not other things. If I say there is nothing in the cupboard, it is not because I have encountered nothing, but it is because what was there was nothing edible or nothing but air and woodshavings and bacteria invisible to my naked eye, etc. I have no experience of nothing. I just have experience of things which are not expected things or things detectable by the senses.
So at least for Frinke and myself, Rosenbaum’s comment just don’t hit home. Simply because we see insufficient evidence to conclude that there is a deity – and thus we don’t believe in a God and are therefor atheists – it doesn’t follow that we worship at the altar of science.
Some of us are simply unconcerned about whether or not science will (or even can) ever explain the origin of the universe, though we think it would be cool if an explanation proved to be possible.
But even if such an answer is never forthcoming, a theist with no explanation for the origin of his god is in exactly the same position as an atheist with no explanation for the origin of the universe. This doesn’t undermine atheism any more than it undermines theism. The arguments pro and con must be made on different grounds than whether a particular position can explain the ultimate origin of everything.
In my opinion, Vorjack hit the nail when he said matter is just a recombination from other matter. So I believe that our Universe’s BigBang was just recycling old matter effectively. Maybe like another universe or perhaps similar to how a star is formed from a collapsing cloud of material, our universe formed from the ‘ashes’ of another one. Of course I’m no cosmologist/physicist, but if anything else, perhaps our Universe is just a brute fact- it just exists.
Regardless, discussions of whether our Universe can come from nothing don’t undermine Agnosticism/Atheism.
“Atheists display a credulous and childlike faith, worship a certainty as yet unsupported by evidence…Atheists have no evidence—and certainly no proof!—that science will ever solve the question of why there is something rather than nothing.”
That’s just retarded. So is he suggesting that religious people have more credibility in believing the Universe came from a Grand Wizard who decided “hey! I want to start a Universe!” and then made one? No explanation of where this God got such a sentience and spacetime powers, why it would do such a thing or what was it’s own precursor. If anything, his own criticism can be applied back to theists. Ask a religious person ‘what are God’s origins?’ and they will say “he was just there- he has no beginning and end”. Which applying his own reasoning [and mine] is incredulous as it violates all logic that something must have a beginning. Why is God the exception?
One if the cosmological theories says that if you put all the energy and mass together then they all cancel each other out so the energy of the universe is ZERO.
The symmetry got broken like something bumped on this universe and it appears to be shaken like these small winter scenes in glass containers that you shake to see the snow falling.
The interesting thing is that because the total energy of this universe is zero, it also means nothing got created or destroyed. And the energy to bump the universe into a big bang is very tiny to start the cascading effect. No god required.
That sounds pretty damn interesting. Do you have a link to a site or any good books to read about that? Preferably in language that would befuddle a non-physics student, more for the common man if you know what I mean.
“The symmetry got broken like something bumped on this universe”
It’s always something. And if its something other than the universe it bumps, what is it? A turtle? Turtles all the way down.
Considering there are currently no accepted models of negative energy, this sounds pretty unlikely. What is more likely is that there was a balance of matter and antimatter (both of which contain positive mass) which came from matter-antimatter pair creation, but this symmetry was somehow upset. It is not yet clear exactly how it was upset, but if I remember correctly (which I might not, I really don’t remember this very well) most physicists believe it was related to the Higgs mechanism.
The question of the origin of this energy is still very much an open question.
As you hint yourself, matter and antimatter have opposite charges but positive mass and thus positive energy, so their dual existence can’t be used to explain the origin of the universe.
You’re also correct that there’s no such thing as negative energy per se. However, as far as I understand, the argument for a zero net energy universe regards gravity as potential energy. The positive energy of matter (and radiation) is exactly balanced by its relation to all other matter/radiation in the universe, ie. the gravitational force.
Thus it is possible – mathematically, if nothing else – to create a universe that has zero net energy, allowing it to come into existence without violating the law of conservation of energy. Whether the math represents reality is another matter, of course.
But there is no absolute potential energy, just potential energy difference. It is just a measure of the energy of a system relative to some maximum or minimum state. For example, gravitational potential energy might be zero at infinity, which is a definition intentionally designed to make all systems have negative potential.
Needless to say, this sounds like cheating.
I tend to agree, actually. Although there’s some actual math behind it (Einsteinian field equations, Schwarzschild metric, etc), the balance of a zero net energy universe appears suspiciously like it’s simply defined to be in balance in order to make the math work.
Even if science could manage to explain how this universe got formed, it will be in such a human-unintuitive form that it can only be represented in maths with no comparison of what we see in reality.
People cannot grasp more than 3 dimensions. We do get used to the 4th dimension time because of Dr Who the time-lord and other SF movies but it is still limited.
“Miss the mark” is way too generous. That artlice is retarded.
PZ Myers on that article:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/06/new_agnostics_or_same_old_inef.php
“Why is there something rather than nothing?”
This is one of the most stupid questions that i hear on a regular basis.
WWJD?
Then you must have the answer.
I think the general answer is why shouldn’t there be! The reason I dislike the question is it’s normally used as a the Universe must having a meaning and be extention life must also have a meaning.
I agree that the answers to the question can be stupid. But I don’t think the question itself is. It’s more of a paradox wrapped in an enigma with a conundrum on top.
Why is there something “rather” than nothing is in my view a silly question. First of all it hints that the questioneer thinks that “nothingness” is more probable or normal than “something”. I don’t see any reason for that. We could just as well ask “Why should there be nothing rather than something”.
Secondly the “why” is most often not used in a cause/effect context but rather a “purpose” context.
Thirdly the person asking this question (normally a theist) doesn’t actually provide a real answer although he thinks that this question kills any atheistic argument.
In the end a theist will tell you that something is because God made it. Thats the same theist that tells you that you can’t have something out of nothing.
Problem of course is that God is something too and we might ask “Why is there God (something) rather than nothing?” and end with the same nonsense where we started. Somehow i doubt that the theist will acknowledge that.
Final problem: What is “nothing” supposed to be? Actually we are not even able to imagine “nothingness” let alone define it in a consistent way. Even 6 graders already can argue why “nothingness” can’t exist. The only thing that we could grasp would be the absence of some things, but not the absence of anything.
What does it even mean for there to “be nothing?” Is it even possible to define being if nothing is?
I think a lot of these questions are difficult because of their semantics even more so than the underlying issues. People in general seem unable to comprehend the real question.
One of the more interesting answers to this question.
I don’t think he gets that only because we, atheists, don’t know, doesn’t automatically mean he – and theists in general – do know – or are right at all.
Some religious people just can’t imagine what it would be like not to “believe” in something. They imagine that if a person doesn’t believe in god, then they must believe in science or something else as a replacement. I think the debate over causality and origins sort of misses the point with these people – the debate should be over the nature of belief or non-belief.
Agreed. If I had a nickel (or a five pence piece) for every time I was told what I worship, which was always news to me by the way, I think I would have enough for a subway sandwich by now. So many times I’ve been told by people that I just MUST ‘believe in’ science the way they believe in god, that my Jesus is Darwin, that my Pope is Dawkins, and my description of what atheism actually is continually falls on deaf ears because they are so wrapped up in the belief engine they cannot imagine an alternative state. Coming from a theistic background I have sympathy for the difficulty some have in changing mental gears and wrapping their head around such an alien concept, but it does get irritating at times to be frequently told what I believe by people who are not me.
Uh, last line–that’s altAr, not alter.
Got it.
Er… Where is this altar? Should I bring a sacrifice?
And it’s “Fincke”, not “Frinke” :)
And, thanks for the link and the announcement about our redesign and thanks to Daniel and whoever else may have contributed to designing this site which we learned a lot from in rethinking our visual approach.
‘that we need to better understand the words creation and nothingness.’
This is an excellent point. In one of my Heinlein books he makes the point that all paradoxes are in language. So the it is similar to the formulas of quantum to the language of talking that you get these weird effects that are not real.
Also so science is wrong or cant explain it? That does not make g0d did it the right answer.
And so what if there is a g0d behind the curtain..that doesn’t make yehway-jepus-etc the right answer either.
As been said many time science does not need to prove g0d wrong, they have to prove g0d is right.
Atheists display a credulous and childlike faith, worship a certainty as yet unsupported by evidence—the certainty that they can or will be able to explain how and why the universe came into existence.
[...]
Atheists have no evidence—and certainly no proof!—that science will ever solve the question of why there is something rather than nothing. Just because other difficult-seeming problems have been solved does not mean all difficult problems will always be solved.
This is nothing but an argument from ignorance. I agree with VorJack that science may not answer some questions. So what? Does that mean that the answers offered by religion are at all likely to be correct? Rosenbaum appears to have no awareness of the null hypothesis, or of who bears the burden of proof, or of Occam’s razor. In short, he is philosophically naive to the point where he is not making a valuable contribution to the discussion.
Is it possible that our conception of what “nothing” is, is what holds us in this ridiculous conversation? Maybe there is “nothing” to discuss? I understand that there are particles that change in their material essence on a rather consistent basis, and that the energy created in this change creates larger physical implications.
What always startles me is why, if “God” is so vast and encompassing, we cannot attribute all creation to this undefined entity, and cease our imagining about this entity? In other words, leave behind our mystical fascination with this undefined thing, and concentrate on issues that we can develop a true knowledge of.
Quite simply, if we remove God as a justification for thoughts, behaviors and conflicts, then it might be something we could successfully examine as a value in more a factual and less metaphysical way…
In the current issue of EMBO reports they have an article dealing with conspiracy theories and the way they propagate . One of the points in it is the way the inability of science to answer every question, no matter how stupid, presented by a conspiracy nut right there on the spot is presented as deviance for the validity of whatever moronic argument is pushed by said nutjob.
I have long held that existence itself cannot be explained apart from the fact that it exists. The concept of nonexistence would be meaningless without the fact of existence. Existence, then, has no alternative; it simply exists.
Moreover, any explanation of anything must refer to something that existed PRIOR to that which is being explained. Any attempt to explain the whole of existence will fail since nothing existed prior to existence itself. Thus, the fact of existence is the starting point of all knowledge. To know something, you must first know that it exists.
That is why the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is meaningless.
Ergo: “I don’t know.”
No, sorry. Ergo, existence cannot be explained.
Half a dozen of one. Six of the other.
Until somebody creates a time machine, goes back to see who or what created the universe, we can only speculate. If god had created the universe and man, one might wonder how god thought that with only two persons he could hope to create a sustainable population with such a slim gene pool. If those who believe in creationism will admit that they are inherently stupid, then I might believe god created man. Considering mankind’s advancements, both artistically and technologically, I have no choice but to believe that creationism is nothing but pure crap!
Intelligent design?…….really bad designer! Only a closed mind could actually believe the world and universe was “designed” only 6,600 years ago by some “intelligent”……..what? What was the reason behind the “designer’s” idea to plant fossils and dinosaur bones? To test our faith? Faith in what? If some “designer” had created this world, I’d say he did it on the cheap and easy, and was probably not getting any major contracts! I’d demand a refund!!
The design assertion doesn’t always pair with the YEC assertion. Sometimes I’ve heard the design assertion, or some variation of it, agreeing with some misinterpreted evolutionary theory, in that god created evolution so that things would turn out exactly perfectly, the way they are now. As if we’re not evolving now (by we, I mean all living creatures), we’re done, we’re just steady; and that beings while evolving had a destination in mind, that is here and now. I think they are trying very hard not to be idiots and trying to reconcile the reality they see, or a scientific historical record that’s hard to disagree with unless you’re really stubborn, with their beliefs, but they are still dumb. Evolution doesn’t have any intent. Evolution isn’t complete until all life ends somehow.
Another thing that turns my stomach is the focus on all of creation as a beautiful design. It’s easy to appreciate quite a bit of what nature has to offer, but I’ve never heard an explanation for something as mundane as the mosquito. I hate them. Butterflies are cute and amazing, and bees are easy to admire, every tree, every flower, every mountaintop of snow — what evidence for a conscious designer! Yes, I agree, those things are awesome, but…
… If there were a designer, and humans are the most important that everything was made for our pleasure and enjoyment, why do I never hear what intent our creator had for pests, such as our mosquito or flea? I’m not looking for a creative but wrong answer, or an attempt at a valid excuse — I’ve brought it up several times in context, and no one who believes in intelligent design has ever responded. Outside the blight, eyesores, and stupidity obviously made by humans, this world so obvious to some created by a designer has a lot of flaws that nobody seems to be willing to explain to me. Maybe the big disasters (to punish the ungodly or whatever), but minor annoyances with no purpose, why? Little details. Such an intentional designer.
God created mosquitos and man created God. All are aggravations! One way or another, we seem to get stung! Of course, none of it makes any sense, so put on your MP3 player and lay down in the grass and look at the pretty butterflies! Trying to figure out the smallest things round about us and who or what created them should be left to theologians and scientists. Mind you, there is a very good chance you probably won’t get an answer any too soon as they’ll be too busy kicking each other in the ass.
I guess I could just walk away and think nothing. We are discussing something though, why we come to the website we’re at, and you brought it up. People who assert intelligent design seem to conveniently ignore aspects of the whole design that serve no purpose. If the mosquito could think, he/she? could create a god, and that god would have put humans on this earth for feeding mosquitoes, and then mosquitoes would ask, why did our glorious god make those delicious humans make poisonous chemicals with DEET and citronella candles, and ultraviolet bugzapping machines to kill us? What kind of god would have designed such a monster as humankind? At least we serve a purpose to them. Intelligent Design is an arrogant idea, first off. Second off, it, so far as I can tell, ignores the stuff we all don’t want and don’t need and don’t like. I have heard reasons for disasters and starvation and deformed children, they don’t make sense at all to me, but they are an attempt to approach the problem with an excuse of some kind. It’s the little details, all the natural, non-man-messed-up little things that do not serve a purpose and are (if so designed), obviously designed by someone who doesn’t know what we all agree to be the meaning of the word “purpose” or “intent,” it makes the whole design “intent” difficult for me to even begin to understand why they believe it.
People believe in “design” because it stands for “god”. Do you really think Klingons from Uranus came here to plant life? Or maybe the Tralfamadorians were so bored they came here to plant flowers and let butterflies do their work? “Intelligent” design is just a way to say God created this world but we’re not going to call it that so that we can fit in with the scientific community. Really people, who the damn cares who/what created this world. Just get on with living and quit beating each other up! We are on this Earth now and if we can’t get along…..”build a time machine, go back in time and take pictures or shut the f*ck up!
Oh, Rosenbaum, you just made this shit up.
We assume stable state physics. Why would the physics that took place at the beginning have had to follow the same rules we recognize now? Maybe we are missing obvious information because we have ruled it out as being “physically impossible”? Aberration does not a “God” make…
Do the physics actually follow our rules? Are the rules as infallible as the “word of god”? Nothing is this world can ever be taken as infallible, whether it be god or science, as man IS entirely fallible at making rules.
You miss the point. We don’t make the rules of physics, we observe them. We are/will always be unable to observe “God”, and it seems that no matter what gods we make, they rarely follow consistent rules across cultures, Physics seems to be the same for everyone, here on earth.
I probably go a bit further in that I don’t accept that science actually explains anything. As far as I see it science is about producing models that make interesting, and accurate, predictions. Just because your model makes accurate predictions doesn’t actually mean that it reflects the world as it really is. Lets just say I fully agree with Ian Hacking’s suggestion that there are other models of physics which are completely different from ours but still model reality just as closely as the ones that we have developed.
It is in the nature of science to prove theories wrong, and replace them with more useful ones, and I for one see no reason to assume that the theories we have today are any more accurate then the ones we had yesterday. Yesterdays theories where have proven to not be quite right. And I have every confidence that tomorrow, today’s theories will also be falsified and replaced with something that no one has thought of yet. I do not believe that there will ever come a point when science will end and we will be able to sit back and say now we know how it all works.
How can you tell the difference if you make accurate predictions? Surely that means it does reflect reality. As a long time mechanical engineer I can tell you that many of the theories we use are just fine and haven’t changed in hundreds of years.
They DO reflect the world as it ACTUALLY is. I have designed stuff for decades and never found any deviation.
The theories have not changed in hundreds of years? or the Maths hasn’t changed. The fact that one holds does not necessarily entail the other. And as with all models eventually we find places where they do not make accurate predictions and then we start looking for a new model.
Me might still use the old model, because its accurate in some particular domain however. To me this is the prime example of pragmatism winning out over the pursuit of truth. We know that Newtons equations of motion leave stuff out. however here on earth the stuff they leave out is just not important for all practical purposes. We know that mass is of an object varies based on its velocity, however we assume that it does as the margin of error is undetectable.
If you have never found any deviation it would be because what an engeneer does tends to be well within the boundaries of Newtonian physics. I’m guessing you are not working on nanobots, at temperatures near absolute zero, nor constructing things that have to travel at near the speed of light.
As I recall the textbooks on Statics and Dynamics make bucket loads of simplifying assumptions, and frequently acknowledge them. Yes Gravity is evenly distributed across the object but for pragmatic reasons we assume it is a single force applied at the center of mass …
Also you are assuming a much harder link between science and technology then has historically being the case. One of Hacking’s examples is of an ancient European people (I forget their name) who used to quench swords by sticking them into prisoners of war, in order to make a better blade). It turns out that the procedure works, their explanation was something about absorbing the spirit of the now dieing enemy. Ours has something to do with chemical reactions between the victims blood and the hot iron).
Until quite recently technology has been achieved by tinkering not by scientific inquiry. Steam Engines where not understood until many years after they had come into commercial use. The first heavier then air flight, was achieved at a time when the finest scientific minds in the world held it to be impossible, and learned journals where filled with proofs thereof.
Heliocentrism or Geocentrism?
From Earth, that is, not sending a probe into space to observe what is happening, both models give accurate pictures of where the planets will be in our night sky. Geocentrism simply requires modern mathematical methods to make work, and thus falls by the philosophical razor of Occam. Both cannot be correct, but both give us accurate predictions; which one is correct with reality, which one truly reflects the world we live in?
Granted, we can send a probe up into space, and have it watch the Earth orbit around the sun; swiftly debunking the geocentric model. This example is fairly moot, but when we get into more abstract concepts and ideas, some of the models stop being actual pictures. The math works out great, but we may not know if our interpretation of the mathematics’ physical application is truly what the universe is doing. The prime example would be the field of quantum mechanics, in which the happenings are so far out of our intuition, that many physicists refuse to ponder what is actually happening. So no, just because the model gives us accurate results, does not mean that they accurately describe the universe; they are merely accurate enough to give us the so desired information.
I don’t have to prove there is no god. I simply wait for someone to prove there is one. So far, though many have tried, none have succeded. A god is simply the theists way of solving the what-came-first dilemma. It takes little thought to believe a spiritual being has always existed. But when you realize it is more reasonable that matter and energy has always been, seeing the world through a non-theists eyes makes much more sense. It even answers all the bad happenings up to and including a baby dying of a disease it did nothing to deserve..
I’ve been trying to work my way through “What’s so Great About Christianity,” and I have to say I’ve felt much the same way. I’m not sure what atheists he’s actually criticizing or exactly what case he’s trying to make.
I think it’s clear that he is using the tried and true, “Look! Atheists are just as bad as we are!” line of reasoning.
See also: evolution is a faith; darwin is your prophet; etc.
I haven’t read that book, but from what I have heard about it, I wish he had consulted some actual atheists before writing so much about us.
Perhaps you would be better qualified :).