I’m off like a prawn in the sun today, and so don’t have a lot of time to discuss this PuffHo piece, “Science & God: will biology, astronomy, and physics rule out the existence of deity?” It takes off from physicist Sean Carroll’s excellent essay in the Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity—a piece that I’ve discussed before and is a breath of fresh air in a fetid collection of apologetics. Carroll’s essay can be obtained free here. Read it: it nicely and concisely highlights recent developments in cosmology and their relationship to religion.
In contrast to Carroll’s essay, the PuffHo piece is unenlightening, but I suppose useful for those who won’t read the Blackwell book. The two interesting aspects are that the report appears in the “Science” section, not the “Science & Religion” section, and there are more than 9500 comments! Since Sean’s essay is called “Does the universe need God?”, and his answer is a ringing “No!”, I’m pleased that it’s gotten so much exposure.
Oh, and there’s also a five-minute video at the top in which scientists, laypeople, and the lawyer Eric Rothschild (from the Dover case) debate evolution and intelligent design. There’s not much new here, and I don’t know why PuffHo is giving IDers and creationists air time on the Science page; but the video does show my friend Rick Grosberg (attacking ID, of course) at the University of California at Davis.
I hadn’t seen the Carroll piece before. The very short answer is “no” no need for a supernatural being to create life or manage our individual or collective morality.
I’ll be sharing this with my students. It’s too important not to discuss.
Does the Universe need God? No.
Does humankind need God? Well, evidently some people do (or think that they do).
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PS. 46% of Britons say they are non-religious!
I’ve just listened to William ‘Lame’ Craig’s podcast on Carroll’s piece (which is always a mistake, because this charlatan rarely fails to say something so stupid, ignorant, or dishonest as to infuriate and disgust even the occasional theist), where he takes issue with the fact that Carroll seems to think currently the question of whether the Universe (or the Multiverse) had a beginning or not is quite open, and goes on with his mantra (as Krauss nicely put it during their debate) that the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem shows that even the Multiverse must’ve had a beginning (thereby vindicating the Biblical story of creation!), and apparently Carroll is unaware of this groundbreaking discovery!
It’s also amusing (well, not so much amusing as irritating) how Craig never fails to chastise those scientists whom he perceives as drawing conclusions not on scientific but on philosophical grounds (as long as they oppose his feel-good faith, that is), where, of course, he sees himself as an authority, while those scientists are merely laymen. This doesn’t prevent this hypocrite, however, from jumping into discussions among cosmologists and astrophysicists, making authoritative declarations, and even lecturing widely renowned scientists like Krauss, Hawking and Carroll on modern cosmology and physics! Craig’s extremely “unctuous, smug and self-satisfied tone of voice” (to quote Dawkins giving voice to his disgust with this genocide apologist) makes listening to him even more painful. I really hope Carroll doesn’t give him any credibility by addressing his nonsense. I still think Krauss and S. Harris made a monumental mistake when they agreed to share a stage with this disgraced hack. At least Dawkins stood his ground.
“[Craig] goes on with his mantra … that the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem shows that even the Multiverse must’ve had a beginning … and apparently Carroll is unaware of this groundbreaking discovery!”
Sean dealt with that years ago.
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I think the weakest step in Craig’s argument isn’t whether the universe (or the multiverse or the Cosmos) had a beginning, but the part where he just injects the idea of disembodied “intelligent agency” in as some sort of bare, basic kind of cause which needs no explanation, exposition, analysis, or investigation.
Yeah, because we’re all still stuck in the scientific era where Mind — all minds — were assumed to be self-contained, magical, mystical, nonmaterial essences existing outside of space and time, acting in this world through the use of our Force of Will. That fits in with modern cosmology and physics. No jarring effect there at all, just smooth consistency. Right.
I don’t get the debate about a beginning or a non-beginning of the universe and how this tells anything about God, unless you believe that the scriptures were once a true reliable source…
But let’s say that the universe started at one point. Well, ok. So what was there before? No matter what was there before, even if it was nothing, that nothing was still there before. Now, it looks like that nothing had a little something in itself, waiting to come out.
So we need to define more what me mean by universe. The material universe surely started at some point but the frame that made it possible, which is probably eternal, that frame can’t have a start, or an end.
I think the point is that an “eternal frame” has to be an Agent, because how else can the very first change happen if there isn’t already someone there to decide to make it happen by choosing and wishing?
Dress it up with a bunch of scientific and philosophical terms and it doesn’t sound quite so babyish. To the theist.
It is an agent no matter what you believe this agent is. That the universe may have in itself an uncreated conscious agent or self-aware impersonal conscience may be something JUST natural, that would have no choice to pop out from any discontinuity or contrast that come with anything that exists.
That you would make yourself a highly self-aware conductor for that property of the universe and that would make you special in the sense that highly conscious organic machines are not common in the universe, but that would be just natural. And so would be meaning and morals, etc…
second paragraph should be like this:
So you would be yourself a highly self-aware conductor for that property of the universe, and that would make you special in the sense that highly conscious organic machines are not common in the universe, but that would be just natural. And so would be meaning and morals, etc…
first paragraph should be like this:
That the universe may have in itself an uncreated conscious agent or self-aware impersonal conscience may be something I’m just pulling out of my arse, that would have no choice to poop out from any discontinuity or contrast that come with anything that exists.
You continue to pretend to know things that you don’t know just as much as any religionist does.
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All the mystic traditions talk the same way about that uncreated conscious agent.
The oriental traditions are more explicit about it because they encourage more that the other traditions the experience of that impersonal uncreated conscious property from which we are borrowing our self. That is what mysticism is all about, to check for yourself beyond the limits of our our average limits.
The way the kabbalah (it was Yom Kippor after all…)talks about the coincidence of opposites is very similar to that Ying and Yang thing:
“The nature of sefirah (the value archetypes through with the uncreated is manifest in a finite world) is the synthesis of every thing and its opposite. For if they did not possess the power of synthesis, there would be no energy in anything. For that which is light is not dark and that which is darkness is not-light.
Further, the coincidence of opposites is also a property of the human psyche; “we should liken their (the Sefirot) nature to the will of the soul, for it is the synthesis of all the desires and thoughts stemming from it. Even though they may be multifarious, their source is one, either in thesis or antithesis.”
http://www.newkabbalah.com/CoincJewMyst.htm
Well, you’re clearly not the only one making shit up.
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I know. And they all get it wrong because mysticism is, as you say, all about “checking for yourself.” There’s nobody to check up on you, and tell you when you’re wrong.
Bebop, you want to pop in an agent because you can’t conceive of yourself being constructed from naturally occurring elements and natural processes. That is ridiculous since it simply pushes the process back one level, the problem you can’t conceive of still hadn’t been addressed by you. You insert your agent without the slightest evidence and appeal to the writing of others with your same inability you have and still don’t provide any answer to anything.
If you or those other writers have anything of value, the value would stand in reality without a wrapping of disgusting bullshit.
I used to be perfectly at ease with the idea that I was just a conscious natural accident. I still think it is the case, except that I also believe that self-awareness is a basic property of the universe, not an organic epiphenomenon.
Now, if that was truly the case, you have to understand that the scientific method is useless for verifying this because only you could check by yourself the uncreated nature of your own subjectivity. Science deals with objectivity not subjectivity.
“Science deals with objectivity not subjectivity.”
It’s been pointed out to you on this blobsite previously, this is not true.
Science deals objectively* not subjectively with any and all phenomena in the real world – including the subjective. I cited NDEs and OBEs; Ben cited many more.
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* Or, pedantically, inter-subjectively.
Yeah right because science can exist on its own. It just a coincidence if science chose subjective animals like humans to reveal itself.
If science would have known in advance the trouble humans would cause to science, it would have chosen another species, like beavers, to reveal itself. That way, it would be still 100% objectively pure. Just like it was before Adam and Eve began to be aware of good and evil…
Sorry but science can’t exist without subjectivity. I didn’t invent that. It is a fact. Like subjectivity is.
I’m not quite sure what your point is here — you seem to be arguing against things I didn’t say.
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Since we have discovered that consciousness is a property that depends on brains — and brains develop step by step in a natural history — positing an “uncreated conscious agent or self-aware impersonal conscience” at the beginning of the universe is like sticking in an eternal brass orchestra (one from nowhere, and containing no physical instruments.)
“Since we have discovered that consciousness is a property that depends on brains”.
There is a strong consensus about this but it can’t be proven with absolute certitude.
I did actually respond to Craig, at least the major underlying mistakes:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/09/25/let-the-universe-be-the-universe/
While you certainly thoroughly cleaned Craig’s clock on the cosmology, I think you’re needlessly ceding ground in even recognizing the question as coherent.
Suggesting that “God created the Universe” is a meaningful string of words is as bad as pondering the possibility that “Santa is the Elf who lives north of the North Pole.”
If you substitute Sagan’s “Cosmos” for “Universe,” it readily becomes apparent that it’s nonsensical to think of anything “outside” of the Cosmos that could somehow create the Cosmos. The absurdity becomes especially obvious if you brush up on your set theory.
Thus, the most that God could even hypothetically be responsible for is kicking off the Big Bang or some other impressive event. But, of course, that doesn’t explain God’s origins — and, if we are to accept arguments that demand God as the Big Banger, then even more emphatic arguments must apply to demonstrate a Super-God that created God.
Any objections to Ultra-Super-Duper-Gods that create Super-Gods that create Gods that create Big Bangs can only amount to special pleading, and are generally attributable to an ancient aesthetic dislike for infinite regress.
So, even if Craig were to miraculously pull evidence of divine influence in the Big Bang from somewhere south of his navel, all he’s done is demonstrate that we’re fish in a fishbowl. He’s still left needing to explain the rest of the pet store — let alone the oceans.
Cheers,
b&
So what about something, anything, even nothing, that would be uncreated?
You don’t believe that such a no-thing may exist, divine or not?
The word, “create,” is incoherent in any context such as this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s664NsLeFM
Cheers,
b&
We need some no-thing to be uncreated to “start” with if we want to avoid the infinite regression, no matter our belief.
Why on Earth would we want to avoid infinite regression?
b&
Not sure I’m following yo, I thought you think infinite regression doesn’t stand the road…
I have never expressed objection to infinite regression. I have, however, observed that it’s those sorts of objections that cause people to posit a “First Cause” — and that the objection and the resultant conclusion are equally baseless and primitive.
b&
Not if that “first cause” is in reality uncreated. It has too anyway.
Something tells me that you’re not advocating the current Hawking / Krauss / Weinberg hypothesis of the Big Bang being a quantum fluctuation of the vacuum.
b&
From what I can understand about it, it looks fine. But that would “only” mark the beginning of time, matter and space.
The nothing that was there before is still something otherwise no quantum fluctuation could happen. We call it vacuum in contrast to what we have now but that vacuum was still something, uncreated, beyond time and space.
And I believe it is still “there”, like the white screen that allows the movie to be played, except it has no beginning and no end.
“there’s good reason to think science will ultimately arrive at a complete understanding of the universe that leaves no grounds for God whatsoever.” That is one level of knowlege. Then there is the level of knowlege that precludes the religious from bastardizing science and the bible to make a case for god. I’m hoping we arrive at both levels soon.
I don’t want to come off as a strong God-apologist here, but if the non-existence of God is strictly speaking a “null hypothesis” (as some atheists claim) than isn’t it the case that it can never be disproven?
First, the real reason that gods can’t be disproven is that the very concept is incoherent. How would you go about proving that there aren’t any married bachelors or that Santa doesn’t live north of the North Pole?
Second, in the limited senses where god hypotheses aren’t completely totally incoherent, we can test for evidence. Those sorts of tests are vital to science, and some very famous ones have disproven some very popular theories. Michelson-Morley is the most famous for its proof of the nonexistence of the luminiferous aether.
And, you know what? We’ve performed every conceivable test for every conceivable god, though often as a by-product of investigating something else. The end result is that gods are as missing from the universe as are rabbits from the Cambrian Period. For example, there aren’t any hints of meddling in evolution, even in cases where such meddling would have had to been present (such as in the development of H. sapiens sapiens), and prayers have been solidly proven perfectly ineffective.
Cheers,
b&
The other matter here is that “proof” is for closed systems, such as mathematics and law. Those systems DEFINE what is a proof, and if arguments meet the criteria of “proof. You cannot help your case in a court of law simply by being the loudest: volume is not a recognized factor.
What we can judge is certainty. I know, for instance, the (practical value) acceleration of gravity, on Earth, almost anywhere on the globe. I don’t have to “prove” it by visiting every single spot, to look for anomalies. I have a high degree of certainty, though, that it is (for practical purposes) the same everywhere. “Proof” is not necessary. And, there is an equally high certainty that there is no Supreme Deity, or any supernatural realm.
Of course, to be truly thorough, for perfectly practical purposes, in the spirit realm, proof is necessarily to be found in a bottle.
<hic />
Cheers!
b&
That much interest must indicate that we are transiting to the New New Atheism.
I like Carroll’s essay on the religious implications, it is likely the most thorough I’ve seen – a keeper. But while I’m not a theoretical physicist I come away with another view on details cosmology from recent reading:
– Carroll describes the usual working hypothesis of the need of a quantum gravity.
But it is apparent from his own description of “beginning” vs “eternal” cosmologies that it is the first class that needs it to describe “actually happens at such a boundary point”. Eternal inflation as described by Susskind are fruitful working hypotheses without. [“Fractal-Flows and Time’s Arrow”, Susskind, arxiv 2012.]
It may be that general cosmology has no need for it, while further understanding of gravity may have.
– Carroll claims that cosmologists “don’t have a compelling model for why the vacuum energy is so much smaller than it should be.” But surely a predictive and hence testable theory would be compelling, everything else alike?
Anthropic theory on the landscape is thus.
– Carroll claims on finetuning, correctly I would think, that most scientists would prefer a theory that directly predicts observed parameters over a landscape ensemble theory.
But if I understand it correctly, the current theory of standard cosmology inflation is stronger, than eternal inflation:
“Slow-roll inflation solves the horizon and flatness problems. Its generic predictions agree well with the observed CMB power spectrum. But slow-roll inflation requires a suffciently flat scalar field potential. Eternal inflation requires only a local minimum and so is less fine-tuned. How could we consider slow-roll inflation, but exclude eternal inflation?” [“Eternal inflation predicts that time will end”, Bousso et al, arxiv 2010.]
The directly predicted theory is hence more finetuned and, if preferred, implying eternal inflation anyway.
On the other hand I was happy to see that Carroll has nowadays consistently turned around on a requirement for initial low entropy for eternal inflation.
I believe I noted several years ago when I started to catch up on inflation, layman fashion, that some inflation theories claimed outright they did not, and hence I was puzzled by the reverse claim. Susskind has now embedded that eternal inflation claim in a larger dynamics (see the first ref):
“Probabilities are then governed by the universal asymptotic behavior and not the initial color – or entropy – of the root. If this is right, there is no advantage to a low entropy starting point [2]. Whatever the initial state, as long as it leads to eternal inflation the existence of a time-arrow is guaranteed by the fractal-flow attractor.”
Some gaps between my layman impression and Carroll’s professional understanding then. But no gaps for gods, obviously.
Having a Master’s in developmental psychology from U of Chicago from many years ago, we have a warm fuzzy spot in our heart for U of C and the “life of the mind.”
Sadly, it seems the current U of C is much more focused on the the life of money and getting a lot more of it. This is understandable given financial pressures but it seems, increasingly, this requires abandoning critical thinking. Whether it’s the truly massive business school gifts or Templeton money there seems a trend away from evidence and towards cash.
The latest data point is the “Wisdom Research” whatever the heck “wisdom” is!
Having recently requested and been accepted for a membership in the Wisdom Network we look forward to hearing from and becoming a “wise guy.”
This does have a reverse ageist tenor — you have to be old to have wisdom. The Wikipedia definition of wisdom is — “Wisdom is a deep understanding and realization of people, things, events or situations, resulting in the ability to apply perceptions, judgements and actions in keeping with this understanding. It often requires control of one’s emotional reactions (the “passions”) so that universal principles, reason and knowledge prevail to determine one’s actions. Wisdom is also the comprehension of what is true coupled with optimum judgment as to action. Synonyms include: sagacity, discernment, or insight.”
Don’t think this is what Templeton has in mind – lol.
Here is the introduction:
“Welcome to the Wisdom Research Network
Wisdom was once regarded as a subject worthy of rigorous scholarly inquiry in order to understand its nature and benefits; however until recently wisdom has been relatively overlooked as a topic for serious scholarly and scientific investigation. It is difficult to imagine a subject more central to the highest aspirations of being human. The study of wisdom holds great promise for shedding light on and opening up new insights for human flourishing.
Supported with funding from the John Templeton Foundation, six research projects led by University of Chicago faculty, in collaboration with scientists at other institutions, will investigate big questions in the field that have the greatest potential of influencing research, education, policy and professions: What is the relationship between expertise and wisdom? How does experience increase wisdom? What is the relationship between cognitive, social and emotional processes in mediating wisdom?
As part of the Wisdom Research project, the Wisdom Research Network website features the latest news and publications on wisdom science, and encourages interdisciplinary discussions about how wisdom can play a role in the professions and in public life.”
The universe does not need God? That is like saying it does not need to exist. True, but pointless. Like evolutionary theory (except for the “true” part).
I think you’re on the wrong website, and urge you to find one of the many Christian sites that will make you feel better.
Well, here is one of the BBC’s topic show commentator’s most recent show. Sweet jesus!
“Hello
The Ontological Argument is quite a way down the list of subjects with which I would have thought I would get absorbed. But I did.
The notion of a medieval Benedictine monk from Italy, via France, becoming Archbishop of Canterbury and sitting down to compose through logic alone a proof for the existence of God, and both proving it to the satisfaction of some people and not proving it to the satisfaction of others, was extremely seductive.
This, I thought, was what medieval monks should be doing. The idea of beginning with an assertion to which, as it were, “the fool in the psalms” – Anselm’s starting point – could simply have said “well, I don’t take that proposition as anything other than an assertion” (not the prose of Tyndale, but nevertheless I hope you get the gist) is something marvellous.
The thing about other worlds of knowledge is that the more you examine them and the more you get to know them, the more respect you have for them.
It doesn’t matter very much whether they seem to be way off-key when compared with “modern” knowledge or information. We have different techniques, discoveries have been made, arguments have been worked through, there are different proofs and so on.
But the whole pleasure and virtue of history is to get to know it in the time that it was. And that time for Anselm was the Middle Ages and his attempt to provide in pure logic alone – and in just a few words – the answer to the universe is breathtaking. Perhaps even more breathtaking than Professor Higgs’ revelation (he described it as this when the idea came to him on the Cairngorms) that his particle, the Higgs Boson, would be his answer to the beginning of the universe.
I would guess that you enjoyed as much as I did the way in which the three philosophers circled around and circled again the subject at hand. They were so complementary as well as being so complimentary. There’s a great resolute, calm, courteous steadiness about Professor Haldane; Professor Millican has a crystalline quality of his own and Clare Carlisle proved to be, I hope you will excuse the word, brilliant at enunciating both the proposition and her reservations about it.
I was going to bang on about the odd week that sometimes happens, seeing an arena performance at the O2 of Jesus Christ Superstar; being invited to a concert at the Albert Hall; going to the book launch of a friend who’s written something on the Russian archives; managing to get a couple of brisk walks on Hampstead Heath which is under-discussed in these notes but cannot be over-praised; all the privileges of a lucky metropolitan life.
And now we turn our guns on Gerald of Wales who also wrote about Ireland.
Best wishes
Melvyn Bragg
Newton is weeping! I’m getting drunk.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mwx64