By “Jeffy Joe” on a post on The Great Spirituality Debate over at Butterflies and Wheels:
The spirituality of science: “Look at that King Bird-of-paradise. Breathtaking!”
The spirituality of religion: “Look at that King Bird-of-paradise. Breathtaking! I know the One who painted it. I know how He thinks. He doesn’t think we should let gays get married”
That sums a big part of the debate beautifully!
Benny the vicar of Rome just gave us another gem: “the creation of the universe is not an accident like some think”.
You mean, a huge, mainstream denomination like the roman catholics could come out and publicly contradict as outstanding a scientist as Stephen Hawking? No way. I’m sure this is just a misunderstanding.
No doubt the RCC will announce a retraction by this evening. “Sorry about the whole Jesus thing. We’re closing up the vatican.”
Moreover, they “contradict” the usual strawman for “atheism”, not what Hawking actually says.
Hawking, “Origin of the Universe” (1988):
Hawking, “The Grand Design” (2010):
[My bold.]
As per usual physics says outcomes of processes doesn’t happen by “accident” but by the process. Spontaneous creation follows from the laws of gravity (as applied to FLW universes such as ours) as sunshine follows rain.
It is the religious that can not help but think that “an accident” is a viable alternative. We know better.
The problem I have with the “universes coming out of nothing” reply is that, the “before” state can’t actually be a literal nothing. It may not be like anything we are used to, but if a universe can be created by it, then “it” has to be a “something.”
Even if all that exists before the universe are the laws of physics, how do we explain those? What is a natural law, metaphysically speaking? Do laws have causes as well?
When people ask me “why is their something rather than nothing,” my response is to point out that it’s a loaded qusetion. They’re presuming to know – and this is implicit in the question – that the “default” state of reality should be “nothing,” and that “something” needs an explanation. I prefer to argue that they cannot know so much about the nature of reality itself to be able to say “nothing” is a more natural state than “something,” and therefore me being unable to answer the question does not count as evidence for their side.
Yep, these are precisely the reasons I find Hawkings’ answer too superficial. Saying that the laws of gravity produced our universe says nothing about from whence those laws themselves came. In this sense (and in this sense alone), the religious are right — physics (and science in general) can’t explain the ultimate origin of everything. Of course, saying “goddidit” is no explanation, either.
If you’re familiar with Turing’s Halting Problem, you should have some idea why it’s logically impossible for any entity, no matter how allegedly omniscient, to ever know the ultimate nature of reality.
Cheers,
b&
The halting problem does not prevent us from knowing the “ultimate nature of reality”, if such a thing exists, like a GUT. Godels incompleteness theorem might, as hawking himself has suggested.
If what you said were true, science itself would be compromised beyond hope. Just because the halting problem is algorithmically undecidable doesn’t mean that we can’t, given knowledge about a process like a time series, deduce the algorithm producing that time series.
It’s not specifically the Halting Problem, but the general principles it reveals.
If you’re familiar with the most common proof — as I’m sure you are — it involves creating, in modern terms, a simulation. It then demonstrates that a simulation can always be created such that any test to detect if the test is run in a simulation can be foiled.
Logically, the exact same applies to reality. We may well simply be part of the Red King’s dream, and the Red King may well be a program running in the Matrix, and the Matrix may well be an accidental confluence of atoms caused by the vortices of the flapping of Lao Tzu’s butterfly…whom Maeve Herself created last Tuesday.
While it’s theoretically possible that some test could reveal one of those truths should it be the case, it’s also provable that no test can be guaranteed to reveal any such truth. Just do some trivial tweaking of Turing’s proof and you’re there.
That writ, empiricism has demonstrated itself to be most useful and reliable. Science might not be able to probe past a dozen billion years ago, but “a dozen billion years ought to be enough for anybody.” Even if the universe we’re in is running in a computer simulation, we can sleep well at night knowing that the computer running the simulation is of what we would consider astronomical proportions.
Cheers,
b&
This actually points towards the reason I rarely refer to the god eponymously named, “God.”
Because there’re so damned many of them, and they all have the same name.
Morons worship a god named, “God,” who needs a fainting couch whenever two guys kiss each other. The UCC worships a god named, “God,” who’ll have stern words with you if you don’t actively support marriage for all couples.
The Catholic god named, “God,” will roast you eternally if you participate in an abortion…but there’s no place for you in the world to come if you fail to perform an abortion to save the life of the woman if the Jewish god named, “God,” has anything to say about it.
Clearly, these are all very different gods. The fact that they all have the same name causes nothing but confusion.
Fortunately, “God” is usually just a nickname; the gods in question usually have a proper name, like “Jesus,” “YHWH,” “Muhammad,” etc. You can generally use the proper name to avoid confusion, though you still need to occasionally be specific.
Cheers,
b&
Don’t the Catholics and the UCC and Fred Phelps and Lutherans, and Baptists and so on all claim to worship the same guy, or at least use the same source for their religion? For that matter, parts of that source are also used by Muslims, Mormons and Jews (and possibly others)?
Also, Muhammad was believed to be a human prophet by Muslims. As far as I know, no one claims he was divine, merely that he talked to the divine.
Of course they say that. But such statements are clearly not merely unsupportable, but flatly contradicted. The only explanation consistent with the fact is that they’ve each got their own pantheons that just happen to have similarities.
It’s hardly a new or radical concept. The Greeks and Romans had very similar pantheons as well. While some might argue that Zeus and Jupiter were “really” the same from a religious perspective, from any other perspective it’s clear they’re two entirely separate gods who just happen to have a lot in common.
Again, that’s what they say. But humans don’t fly off into the sunset on the backs of winged horses, and humans aren’t the object of worship. Gods do and are. The Muslim claim that Muhammad isn’t a god is no more credible claim than the Catholic one that Mary isn’t a goddess, or a hypothetical claim from an ancient Greek that Orpheus or Perseus weren’t gods.
And, yeah. I know Muslims claim they don’t worship Muhammad. More bullshit; any definition of the term you can come up with either results in Muhammad being worshipped by Muslims or Jesus not being worshipped by Christians.
Cheers,
b&
Saying (in so many words) that Mohammad was divine is considered heresy and can get you into a lot of trouble in many Islamic nations.
His de facto status is a different question, though.
Fortunately, I’m not in nor planning on going anywhere near any of those Islamic nations.
Which means I’m free to state the plain truth: Muhammad is, unquestionably, a god — one of many in the Muslim pantheon.
It also seems pretty obvious that he’s purely fictional, but that’s another matter.
Christians also have quite a pantheon. There’s the Big Three, of course, regardless of the particular sect’s take on trinitarianism. But there’s also the angels, Satan, demons, all the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Bible, ancestor spirits, and more. Yes, your dearly departed aunt Tillie who watches over you and keeps you safe and guides you — she’s a goddess, unquestionably. Well, not yours specifically, Insightful Ape, but you get the idea.
The exact equivalents in any other religion would be unhesitatingly labeled gods, major and minor. Refraining from labeling them as such just because the religions in question are still popular is downright silly.
Cheers,
b&
Is there any doubt that Mohammed (pbuh – why not? – and pbu everyone else who ever lived, except the bad ones of course – How bad? – well Hitler of course, and Pol Pot and Stalin – Richard Nixon? – well he was pretty bad, but he loved dogs, so pbuh too) was historical?
Well, see, the only way we know about Muhammad is through the Qur’an. And the Qur’an is what was eventually written down, generations afterwards, of an oral tradition. And it features flying horses and invisible friends. And portrays Muhammad as a classic archetypal hero figure.
It walks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, it swims like a duck, it flies like a duck, it tastes like a duck, and it shits like a duck. The smart money says it’s a duck.
Cheers,
b&
P.S. If you think Nixon was bad, Obama’s policies are, every single one, to the right of Nixon and he wields far more unchecked power than Nixon ever dreamed of. If Nixon had warrantless wiretaps, extraordinary renditions, TSA thugs with secret watchlists at every airport, the Guantanamo gulag, and everything else, you can bet he never would have resorted to anything so clumsy as the Watergate breakin. b&
Sorry Ben, you were not raised Muslim. There are references in the Koran to things that happened only about 10 years after mohammad’s death (such as the building of the Al Aqsa mosque). By comparison, the earliest gospel (Mark) was not written after the presumed death of Jesus. Also, the gospels were not written under a political establishment. The Koran was written at the time the caliphs (Arabic for “successors”) were in power. And they had to have succeded someone.
So? The Gospels make mention of the Temple, of Herod Agrippa, of all sorts of historical figures and what-not.
And King’s Cross railway station, as mentioned in Harry Potter, really exists, too. Sure, nobody’s yet managed to locate platform 9 3/4, but platforms 9 and 10 are there, all right.
The apologies used by Muslims to “prove” the reliability of the Qur’an and the excuses they make for its shortcomings as well as the lack of extra-Qur’anic evidence are indistinguishable from the ones made by Christians about the Gospels and Jesus. I find them both equally –that is, perfectly — unconvincing.
Cheers,
b&
Ben, the caliph’s did exist. The wars waged by Muslims against roman and persian empires were documented in different sources. And again, someone had to have started that government.
Besides, at the time Jesus allegedly lived, judea was a roman province. The era has been rather well documented historically. That is why absence of any reference to a person whose life supposedly consisted of one miracle after another is so odd. Arabia, at the time was a backwater place where domentation was nowhere nearly as good.
And again, when you are writing something about a warlorad ten years after his death, in the land where he lived, in the language he spoke, things are hard to fake. When you are writing about an itinerant preacher 40 years after his death, in a different land, in a different language, it is much easier.
That there isn’t significant contemporary documentation of any kind argues against historicity, not for it. At most, one could urge a position of agnosticism.
See, the problem is that all we know about Muhammad is that he liked to ride flying horses.
Sure, the Qur’an claims that he died ten years before anybody bothered to write any of it down. That claim and $3.50 will buy you a cup of hyper-caffeinated burnt coffee at Starbuck’s.
When it comes right down to it, the evidence in favor of the historicity of Muhammad is indistinguishable from the evidence in favor of the historicity of Romulus and Remus. Somebody had to found Rome, right?
Just because historicity might explain some established facts doesn’t meant it’s the best or only explanation. To establish historicity, you need positive evidence in its favor. For Julius Caesar, we have his autobiographical accounts of the Gallic wars, archaeological evidence confirming the troop movements he described, letters he wrote to others and that those others replied to, busts, coins, monuments and the like all dated to the proper period, and on and on and on and on and on.
For Muhammad? We have copies-of-copies of an oral tradition about a man who liked to fly horses.
“One of these things is not like the others.”
Cheers,
b&
And rode a winged horse to go to a private audience with the “divine”.
The “divine’s” obsession with hairless apes on a blue dot at the margins of one out of the billions and billions of galaxies he created is-unusual, to say the least.
The great religions of the world, divided in mythology, united in bigotry.
Don’t give ‘it’ a capital ‘G’ – & don’t be afraid to add -ess!
Better, don’t use the specific singular when the generic plural is called for.
Rather than, “god doesn’t exist,” write, “no gods exist.”
I’m not aware of anybody other than perhaps T.S. Eliot who has a god named, “god.” Many have gods named, “God.” Many have gods with other names, too; why ignore them?
Cheers,
b&
Besides, no one knows if it is a singular or plural species.
And (western) theology presupposes the singular, before they go on and ‘show’ that it ‘must’ be so. This is a sloppy non-thinking practice that could be counteracted in order to get them to start question their practices, perhaps.
So “gods” is my default reference.
You know, it occurs to me. Even the “sophisticated” theological apologies that pretend to prove that There Can Only Be One™ don’t even hint at the possibility of a head honcho über-god with an entire pantheon of lesser gods below him. You know? Like pretty much every major religion, past and present?
The Greeks had Zeus, the rest of the Olympians, the demigods, and so on. The Christians have their triumvirate, the Heavenly Host, the Biblical patriarchs, and so on. The Germans had Wotan, the assembly at Valhalla, Die Walkure, and so on. And all of them have mirror evil / underworld anti-pantheons.
You’d think the theologians would start with something easy, like proving the existence of some obscure minor deity, like the Saint of Broken Toothpick Umbrellas In Discarded Cocktails or something. But, no. They go straight for the jackpot, without any warmup rounds.
Cheers,
b&
I always write “God/dess/es”. The idea of deities having gender without sex is perplexing. The Christian Scientists at least take the Christian god’s unisexuality seriously – and not coincidentally they were founded by a woman.
I’m not aware of anybody other than perhaps T.S. Eliot who has a god named, “god.”
I’ll bet e.e. cummings did.
Damn. You’d think I could keep my dead poets straight….
b&
Well that would have made your joke a lot funnier. Instead, I made a mental note to look up “TS Eliot” and “god” as yet another thing that you are well-versed with, and I am not. Where do you find the time?
Where do I find the time?
I’d tell you, but then my boss would have to fire me….
Cheers,
b&
Conflating god with its prophet is (almost—well okay not really) as silly as confusing spiritual with scientific. Both are plain wrong.
Only within the mythic universe of the religion. Statements that Muhammad isn’t a god but Allah is a god are as silly as claims that Batman isn’t a superhero but Hulk is.
Cheers,
b&
The central point to the criticism behind this post is that meaning matters. The reaction of actual Muslims to the idea that Mo is a god to be worshiped is not to cry heresy, but to laugh at its ignorance and silliness. Mo ≠ Allah = god.
Yes, and I’m laughing at the ignorance and stupidity of Muslims who’re universally scared shitless at the thought of what’ll happen to them if they worship the god Muhammad…and who then proceed to devote their lives to doing exactly that.
Cheers,
b&
I love this.
It’s not just a joke, but a commentary on how what you would expect from the god of creation doesn’t mesh with what a lot of people believe about him. Going from the idea that god created the world and made everything in nature the way it is, to the idea that there’s something wrong with the way homosexuals are, evokes a what the fuck moment for me. The sense just isn’t there. This is a fantastic juxtaposition.
Next time I gape in awe at a hummingbird, I’ll know what to think!
‘Cause you would never have an opinion of your own? 😉
Hmm. What if the bird displays “homosexual” behavior then? Is that one (pair) painted by someone Other!?
B. Kliban, the cartoonist probably most famous for his book “cat”, has a cartoon depicting Adam in the Garden of Eden and God, as the big voice from above, says:
“I made you in my image, and I want you to remember that parts of us are dirty. Got it?” That may help clear up the issue.
Wonderful! I thought I knew Kliban, but don’t remember that.
I’ve been reading atheist blogs for years, and that was the first time I ever left a comment. And I ended up on WEIT’s front page! Excuse me while I dance a little jig.
Well, my friend, you’re off to a very good start. But now you have to keep it up!
Make sure you don’t become the Harper Lee of blog commenting!
I’d have used John Kennedy Toole, but that’s far a more depressing comparison…
What Wowbagger said :-))
I’m still giggling–keep commenting, please!
I giggled – and please jig-away. I did that when I had a photo on WEIT 🙂