Talk about Francis Collins and his frozen waterfalls—we have an equally good example of misguided Trinitarian faith from the world of physics. I’m reading the new 644-page The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity (2012, eds. A. G. Padgett and J. B. Stump), which my library bought for me because it costs $200 retail (!!). It’s an edited collection of 54 pieces, and is a pretty good review of the science-vs.-Christianity debates, though most of the articles seem slanted toward faith.
The book features the usual suspects: Polkinghorne, Swinburne, Plantinga, Denis Alexander, Michael Ruse, John Haught, and even Stephen Meyer, defending their Jesus, but there’s also some good pieces by anti-accommodationists, including a terrific short essay by physicst Sean Carroll, “Does the universe need god?” which you can read free online here. And there are a few pieces by faitheist accommodationists, including one particularly infuriating essay by Julian Baggini, “How science lost its soul, and religion handed it back.” (The title tells it all).
The pro-Christian bent, despite the editors’ asseveration that “this is not a work defending or promoting Christian faith,” may stem from the facts that Padgett is a professor of systematic theology at Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Stump is a professor of philosophy at Bethel College, Indiana, and editor of the Christian Scholars Review.
To give you an idea of the quality of thought and scholarship involved when Christian academics try their hand at accommodationism, I’m presenting a passage from Rodney D. Holder’s essay, “Quantum theory and theology” (pp. 220-230) which is a masterpiece of post facto rationalization. It is the kind of stuff that these people are really good at: comporting the latest discoveries of science with Christian thought.
Holder is course director of the infamous Templeton-funded Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge. He was trained in astrophysics and was also a priest in the Diocese of Oxford. In this passage he explains why Christianity comports with quantum physics. It’s a long passage but I couldn’t leave anything out. It’s surprising to see an academic like Holder behaving like Deepak Chopra.
Consonance with Christian Doctrine
Although we could not predict the kind of world shown to us by quantum theory without doing the experiments, it does seem to be a world consistent with the kind of world the Christian God would create. And we can say more about this with regard to specifically Christian doctrine as opposed to mere theism: these strange features are consonant with the kind of world one would expect the God described by the Nicene and Chalcedonian formulations to create.
According to Christian doctrine, God is fundamentally relational. God is one, yet God is also Trinity; God is three persons enfolded in a relationship of perfect love. Moreover, each of the persons is fully God. The persons are distinct yet inseparable and interrelated. According to the doctrine of perichoresis formulated in the early Church, the three persons are bound together in a kind of mutual indwelling.
Quantum holism, as demonstrated by the EPR [Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen] thought experiment, is analogous to this. The electron and positron, though distinct and widely separated, yet form a unified quantum system (Polkinghorne 2004, 73ff.; 2010).
According to the Chalcedonian definition, our Lord Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man. He is one person, the Son of God, but with two natures, divine and human. This reminds us of the wave-particle duality of subatomic particles discussed above. An electron is one thing but possesses both particle and wave properties.
A further analogy might be drawn with the distinction made by the Fathers between the ‘immanent” Trinity and the “economic” Trinity. The idea of the immanent Trinity concerns what God is in himself, the inner relations between the persons. The economic Trinity concerns how he reveals himself for the sake of the “economy,” that is, how in the divine plan the persons of the Trinity relate to the world and its salvation. Thus, while the Son and Spirit are eternally one with the Father in being of the Godhead, they are manifested in the economy, and thus made known to us as distinct from the Father, in the Incarnation and in our sanctification. In a somewhat analogous way, the electron’s reality is veiled until a measurement is made.
Of course, none of this is to claim that quantum theory proves Christian doctrine correct. However, I believe it does two things. First, it shows that theology and science are alike in using analogical language, even paradoxical language. For example, the mystery of God is expressed in the phrase “one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” Wave-particle duality would be doing a similar job in quantum theory to express the veiled mystery of the electron.
Second, it links theology to science by saying that the world revealed by quantum theory is consonant with what would be expected on the basis of Christian dotrine, so that a relational God is likely to create a relational world. As Polkinghorne rightly says, this is indeed not to prove God is relation, or that theology can make predictions from its doctrines about the physical world, but it is to say that theology and science fit together very comfortably and are far from contradictory (p. 229).
I really don’t have to add much to this: it debunks itself. It is embarrassing, but predictable, that an accommodationist with brains would spend his time trying to comport two completely different things in a futile attempt to show that “theology and science” fit together very comfortably.” But that’s Sophisticated Theology™. It’s good at fitting square pegs into round holes.
And I defy anyone to mention a scientific phenomenon that, by appropriate word-twisting and logic-chopping, I couldn’t also comport with Christianity.
Theology is infinitely malleable.
There seems to be only one rule: Thou shalt only add to existing theology; thou shalt not take away (i.e. no admitting of mistakes).
Theology is also infinitely malletable.
Theology is also infinitely lamentable.
In the same vein I have also heard an astrologer explain (on a James Randi TV program many years ago in the UK) that astrology works because:
“The earth rotates around the sun, but since the sun is moving the earth traces out a helix in space. However the sun is rotating around the galaxy, which is also moving through space, so the sun’s path is also a helix. This means the path of the earth in space is in fact a double helix, and this double helix resonates with the double helix of DNA – which is why the behaviour of the stars can have an impact on people’s lives.”
holy crap that was awesome!
Actually, that would make the earth’s orbit in real space “resonate” more with the coiled coil of tungsten wire found in incandescent lightbulbs (rememeber them? – I guess they’ll soon be called “eco-unfriendly”).
Could this be why more lightbulbs burn out at night than in the daytime?
And since water spirals as it goes down the drain, that explains homeopathy too!
Wait, I thought monophysitism was supposed to be a theological error.
I guess the dyophysite “principle” can now be conflated with human chimerism in genetics. It all makes sense now.
Yes, I’m amused at how casually Holder says “According to Christian doctrine”, when every claim he makes about the Trinity was contested by various Christian sects at one point in history. And often those views weren’t just a matter of academic debate, but were instead suppressed violently (as in the “Kill them all — God will know his own” of the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars).
At best, his positions is “according to some Christian doctrine” (and that’s not even considering groups like the Mormons, who call themselves Christians while believing that their god and Jesus are completely separate entities).
Given Holder’s premise, Osiris, Horus, and Isis vindicate the Fourier synthesis.
We must share the good news with the Perimeter Institute.
Holder obviously knows, and is referring to, the fourth century debate within Christianity regarding Athanasianism and Arianism; that Athanasianism won, developing the theology he outlines above on the subject of the Chalcedonian definition of Jesus.
He also must surely know that the same century was one of the most bloody in history, during which even the leading Christian participants, such as St. Hilary of Poitiers, were appalled at the internecine blood-letting.
Is this academic really saying that the laws of Physics are analogous to orthodox Christian doctrine? Even though the latter is the accidental outcome of a brutal Soviet-style pogrom on its own internal opposition? Really? This is just not serious; and, I suspect, dishonest.
Hypostatic plea bargaining for apologetic leniency.
“It’s all Trimurti to me.” – Brahma
Surely you mean “internicene blood-letting”?
(Yes, I am not above reusing a pun.)
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Very good, Ant; ever ready with a battery of puns, ker-tish.
Wow… How the mind struggles to reconcile its own feelings with the world outside itself. Hard to see a clearer and more high-profile example of this.
Thanks for sharing!
Oops.. that comment from GECO Galapagos was meant from me. 🙂
I’m sure I’ve heard another version of this theory:
“Sergeant, why have you brought this man here!”
“For playing cards in church, sir.”
“And what have you to say for yourself, boy?”
“Much, sir,” replied the soldier.
“I hope so, for if not, I will punish you more severely than any man has ever been punished.”
“Sir, I have been on march for about six days, and I have neither Bible, nor prayer book; but I hope to satisfy you, sir, with the purity of my intentions.
“You see, sir, When I look at the ace, it reminds me that there is but one God. And the deuce, it reminds me that the Bible is divided into two parts, the Old and the New Testaments. And when I look at the trey, I think of the Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit.
“When I see the four, I think of the four evangelists who preached the Gospel: there were Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And when I see the five, it reminds me of the five virgins who trimmed their lamps. There were ten of them: five who trimmed their lamps, five were foolish and were shut out.
“And when I see the six, it reminds me that in six days God made this great Heaven and Earth. When I see the seven, it reminds me that on the seventh day, God rested from His great work. And when I see the eight, I think of the eight righteous persons that God saved when He destroyed this earth. There was Noah, his wife, and their sons and their wives.
“And when I see the nine, I think of the lepers our Savior cleaned, because it was nine out of ten who didn’t even thank Him. When I see the ten, I think of the Ten Commandments that God handed down to Moses on a table of stone.
“When I see the king, it reminds me that there is but one King of Heaven – God Almighty. And when I see the queen… I think of Mary, the mother of Jesus. And when I see the jack of knaves, it is the devil.
“When I count the number of spots on a deck of cards, I find 365, the number of days in a year. There are 52 cards, the number of weeks in a year. There are four suits, the number of weeks in a month. There are 12 picture cards, the number of months in a year. There are 13 tricks, the number of weeks in a quarter.
“So you see, sir, my pack of cards serves me as a Bible, almanac and prayer book.”
“Well, soldier, when you look at this joker you should be advised that I will make you wish your mother was one of those wise virgins.”
You beat me to that.
But while we’re on about those virgins, there was a Presbyterian minister who finished his sermon with a rhetorical question:
“So I ask ye, brethren, where would ye rather be when the Bridegroom comes, in the light with the five wise virgins –
or OUT in the DARK with the five FOOLISH virgins?”
Yeah, I think that we are talking about apologetics here, not theology, which is, even for atheists like me, a respectable, multidisciplinary area of study.
But this is rollicking bonkers.
Please point to an example of this “respectable” theology.
I want to hear the first prayer ending with: “in the name of the quantum Father, the quantum Son and the quantum Ghost”.
Disambiguation at its finest!
Dawkins’ articulate response on this matter has remained with me since hearing it a few years ago. The question begins at 22:05.
Indeed! Richard has a way of putting words together in sentences so well composed that it sounds like he spent an hour before the talk figuring out exactly what to say in response to the question that was asked. And his answer always cuts right through the fog and confusion to the very heart of the question. On the off chance that there is a next life, I hope to return as a person so gifted with extemporaneous speaking skills.
How right he is about the Mystery of the Trinity not being interestingly mysterious.
Judaism was rigidly monotheistic with severe penalties – like, death – for worshipping any other gods (though the others weren’t so much non-existent as less powerful).
Christianity raised Jesus to godhead (possibly quite gradually) risking alienating the Hebrews by breaking monotheism, and also creating paradoxes about who kept the universe going before Jesus was born and while he was dead. Merging them solved some paradoxes, though it created new ones, so they decided to have it both ways.
The Holy Ghost seems a bit of an add-on, partly it seems just for the aesthetics of being threefold instead to twofold. (There’s probably some numerology in there too.)
Well that’s bollocks! QM can be expressed in the precise framework of mathematics & it is possible to use maths to make incredibly accurate PREDICTIONS about QM behaviour. Theology has no such framework ~ none.
The many interpretations of QM are necessarily couched in human language & it is only then that there’s a vague resemblance to theology. Of course QM still has theology on the back foot because it’s possible to set one interpretation of QM against another & devise experiments to decide which interpretation is most likely true [I hope I’m right there!] ~ this methodology isn’t apparent in theology at all.
Wiki: QM:- Problematic status of interpretations
Ah, thanks for saving me the time of saying all this!
I would say that experiments have been testing different quantum theories. (I dislike the common term “interpretations” here, because it is based on the idea that they will be untestable.)
Already quantum field theory was an advancement, so was Bell test experiments that shows how quantum theories need to be consistent with relativity. Both fields are active with experiments.
Heisenberg’s original uncertainty principle (of measurements) were shown to be wrong, but many others acceptable. This is also a very active field.
Decoherence physics have been able to reject classical Copenhagen with its “instant collapse”, yet another active field.
The instrumentalist “shut up and calculate” version (as it has been called) works, but it can’t predict any of this. Therefore it is IMHO rather uninteresting.
It is like seeing general relativity as the end all of gravity physics. Never mind about black holes gravity waves, or gravitons, just “shut up and calculate”.
Yes, it is very much an old Chris “Shut up” Mooney accommodationist, isn’t it? And it is about as effective.
Theology is made-up nonsense about made-up nonsense. Nothing would be lost if the entire corpus of theology would vanish from our planet.
He makes it sound like it actually says that somewhere in the churches founding documents.
Oops, missed a closing tag somewhere. Sorry!
The obvious explanation for the perichoresis formulation of the Trinity is that it provided a means for avoiding the charge of polytheism. In fact, according to Hector Avalos, in the End of Biblical Studies, the only reference in the Bible to the three-in-one concept (1 John 5:7-8), is almost universally rejected by scholars as a subsequent modification. Consequently, most translations of the Bible other than the King James Version do not have the modified version, which appears to have originated in the Latin Vulgate of the fourth century. In other words, perichoresis is a fancy word for making stuff up, a tradition faithfully followed by Revd. Dr. Holder.
Goodness. The only thing he’s got right is that both Trinitarian theology and quantum physics use paradoxical language and posit a relational universe. That’s it!!
I could prove that quantum physics is in harmony with James Joyce’s “Ulysses” the same way.
In fact the notion of a “relational” universe is far more deeply ingrained in Eastern religions then Western, and all the quantum woo of Deepity (sic) Chopra and F. Capra is based on that same weak similarity!! So why the Trinity?
A minor quarrel with JAC/WEIT. He writes “I defy anyone to mention a scientific phenomenon that, by appropriate word-twisting and logic-chopping, I couldn’t also comport with Christianity.” What about an 900-foot statue of Vishnu in orbit around Saturn? 🙂
If mental gymnastics were an olympic sport Mr. Holder would have gotten a medal.
Shame about Baggini. In fact, shame on Baggini. “The Ego Trick” is worth reading.
What a horror of a title:
“How science lost its soul, and religion handed it back.”
Accommodationism rots the brain.
No doubt Baggini would find Holder’s baldadash as risible as the rest of us. But that is no excuse. He should not have (metaphorically) sat down with those guys.
Jerry: How do you manage to subject yourself to this much Sophisticated Theology^TM? I’ve been trying to follow your example by trying to read Haught’s “God After Darwin.” It is even more insufferable than I expected from your posts. It’s not even that long, but I’m plodding through it incredibly slowly.
My biggest surprise in all this is that I haven’t yet heard any comparisons between the Trinity and the so-called threefold way. Or that quarks combine in threes in baryonic matter. Perhaps this stuff is too obvious for them? Perhaps I shouldn’t be giving cretins any bright ideas for their next Templeton-funded “studies”? I’ll shut up now.
God is up in Heaven, Jesus came down to Earth, and the Holy Spirit… um… is just plain strange.
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By coincidence, today I came across this quote from Meera Nanda, who skillfully dissects similar claims for harmony between science and religion coming from a different region:
Hey! Looks like quantum theory ALSO supports Hinduism! How amazing.
According to Nanda, those who defend so-called Vedic science “seek to establish likeness, connections and convergences between radically opposed ideas (guna theory and atomic particles, for example). This stream does not relativise science: it simply grabs whatever theory of physics or biology may be popular with Western scientists at any given time, and claims that Hindu ideas are ‘like that,’ or ‘mean the same’ and ‘therefore” are perfectly modern and rational’ … the Hindu style of thinking by analogies and correspondences “directly revealed to the mind’s eye” is as scientific within the “holistic” worldview of Vedic Hinduism, as the analytical and experimental methodology of modern science is to the “reductionist” worldview of Semitic religions.”
I think the “Hindu style of thinking by analogies and correspondences” is simply par for the course when it comes to religions. As the Holder article demonstrates.
We don’t understand religion.
We don’t understand quantum mechanics.
Therefore, religion is just like quantum mechanics!
Wash, rinse and repeat ad nauseaum.
ST is not good at fitting square pegs into round holes.
It tries. It tries very, very hard, but it never succeeds.
More like Fritjof Capra than Deepak Chopra.
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After finding two stones with petrification that have elictric and navigational properties to prevalant to ignore its hard to say when we claim to have reached status quo. 200,000 years old with technology,its time to evolve again!
It is indeed quantum woo, and Holder shows the usual deficit in the quantum physics he purports to describe.
“Quantum holism” is Holder’s fabulation, quantum mechanics (QM) is strictly reductionist. He is throwing in a gedanken experiment that is known to be wrong, apparently inspired by Polkinghorne, and which gets it solutions in Bell test experiment that shows that QM obeys both relativity and acts as a full description of a system. If anything, QM is atheist, because it leaves no gap for gods. Holder is wrong on the physics here.
The bit about “electron and positron” seems to allude to entanglement, but it is meaningless. “The Earth and Moon, though distinct and widely separated, yet form a unified gravitational system”. “The nucleus and electrons, though distinct and widely separated in Rydberg states, yet form a unified quantum system”, et cetera. Entanglement predicts correlation, but so does a pack of cards: if you pick out an ace there will be only 3 more in the pack. Holder creates a strawman out of ignorance.
Lastly, “wave-particle duality” was laid to rest when quantum field theory fully combined special relativity with QM, and it became evident that the underlying physics is that of quantum fields. They are neither waves nor particles, but something that can show properties of both:
“Although there is still debate as to whether one should accept the field as “real”, the debate over using the term wave or particle is rendered meaningless.”
That’s a very slanted account. Bell’s theorem – and its experimental violation (Aspect etc) – offers a choice of two explanations: either we must accept non-locality (which you assert is no more special than local interactions) or we must accept that there is no reality independent of observation. The latter view is certainly latched onto by theologians, but is also current among working physicists.
Wave-particle duality is also useful ammunition for theologians. Human observers cannot see the underlying, mysterious unity.
To say there are neither waves nor particles is to deny observable reality altogether.
Theologians may be wrong, but it is no good debating to pretend they necessarily get the physics wrong.
“To say there are neither waves nor particles is to deny observable reality altogether.”
Viewed along its axis a cylinder looks like a circle (disc). Viewed perpendicular to this, it looks like a rectangle. Is it true that to say that cylinders are neither circles nor rectangles is to deny observable reality altogether?
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Main point – you have ignored the Bell’s theorem issue.
Secondary point – to deny that the circle and the rectangle exist would indeed be to deny observable reality. (Cf “There are neither waves nor particles…”)
[Subsidiary point – the whole of observable physical reality is waves and particles, somewhat more crucial than your limited analogy.]
You’re absolutely right: I did ignore Bell. That wasn’t unintentional.
And I apologise; I misread/mis-parsed your sentence I quoted.
There certainly are particles and waves in observable physical reality, but only at the macroscopic level; at the quantum level there are fields which sometimes look as if they are waves and sometimes look as if they are particles but are in fact neither waves nor particles (Torbjörn’s point).
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I don’t understand your last paragraph. A photon or electron is not macroscopic. An individual photon or electron is observable. The wave function associated with the particle is never observed; and whatever TLOM may think, it is perfectly respectable in physics to believe that the function is just an essential computational convenience. We observe particles, “lumps” as Feynman once put it, “but the probability of arrival of these lumps is determined as the intensity of waves would be… the electron… behaves in two different ways at the same time… THAT IS ALL THERE IS TO SAY.” [Emphasis added.]
One can speculate about the function but can never observe it; that’s the Measurement Problem.
Similarly, you say you ignore Bell intentionally – but the issue was that non-locality is not the only alternative: it is equally logical to reject the other premise, and reject the idea of a reality other than what is observed. As you see, that is whte Feynman stood (and Heisenberg) even before Bell/Aspect. “Quantum woo” it ain’t.
Can I ask why you are adamant that only fields really exist? “Many of the creators of QFT can be found in one of the two camps regarding the question whether particles or fields should be given priority in understanding QFT. While Dirac, the later Heisenberg, Feynman, and Wheeler opted in favor of particles, Pauli, the early Heisenberg, Tomonaga and Schwinger put fields first (see Landsman 1996).” (Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy.) It seems perverse that the observed entities (particles with some wavelike properties) are to be rejected and the unobserved fields to replace “observable reality” – paradoxical, since we only devise the field description from observable reality.
P.S. Pauli, of course, was into some kind of “woo” – he collaborated on synchronicity witn Jung…
Appalling. Blackwell’s philosophy companions and collections and such are usually pretty good. Unbelievable that they’d be willing to publish such dreck.
I feel sad that your library wasted $200 on this and you had to plough your way through it.
But thank you.
Re Holder’s likening of God’s nature with quantum entanglement and wave-particle duality. He’s missed out the other essential phenomenon of QM – uncertainty. God the dice player. Einstein famously didn’t like that sort of God. I suppose if Einstein – a pantheist at most, perhaps – can make divine comparisons, we can allow Holder his wishful thoughts.
So that’s God the wave-particle-like dice playing father, son and holy ghost.
Getting into the spirit of things; I put forward God the universal wave function, creator of all heavens and earths.