One more quotation from “The Gods” (1872) by The Great Agnostic. The guy was prescient, and here he argues that there is no “mind” separate from matter. And he comes close here to completely and explicitly denying dualistic free will. He also notes the “god-of-the-gaps” strategy of theologians.
I love the last two sentences:
Nature is but an endless series of efficient causes. She cannot create, but she eternally transforms. There was no beginning, and there can be no end. The best minds, even in the religious world, admit that in material nature there is no evidence of what they are pleased to call a god. They find their evidence in the phenomena of intelligence, and very innocently assert that intelligence is above, and in fact, opposed to nature. They insist that man, at least, is a special creation; that he has somewhere in his brain a divine spark, a little portion of the “Great First Cause.” They say that matter cannot produce thought; but that thought can produce matter. They tell us that man has intelligence, and therefore there must be an intelligence greater than his. Why not say God has intelligence, therefore there must be an intelligence greater than his? So far as we know, there is no intelligence apart from matter. We cannot conceive of thought, except as produced within a brain.
The science, by means of which they demonstrate the existence of an impossible intelligence, and an incomprehensible power is called, metaphysics or theology. The theologians admit that the phenomena of matter tend, at least, to disprove the existence of any power superior to nature, because in such phenomena we see nothing but an endless chain of efficient causes — nothing but the force of a mechanical necessity. They therefore appeal to what they denominate the phenomena of mind to establish this superior power.
The trouble is, that in the phenomena of mind we find the same endless chain of efficient causes; the same mechanical necessity. Every thought must have had an efficient cause. Every motive, every desire, every fear, hope and dream must have been necessarily produced. There is no room in the mind of man for providence or chance. The facts and forces governing thought are as absolute as those governing the motions of the planets. A poem is produced by the forces of nature, and is as necessarily and naturally produced as mountains and seas. You will seek in vain for a thought in man’s brain without its efficient cause. Every mental operation is the necessary result of certain facts and conditions. Mental phenomena are considered more complicated than those of matter, and consequently more mysterious. Being more mysterious, they are considered better evidence of the existence of a god. No one infers a god from the simple, from the known, from what is understood, but from the complex, from the unknown, and incomprehensible. Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.
This is lovely, I will use this.
It is a bit depressing that a hundred years later well are still fighting the same fallacious arguments, oh well, we are winning even if too slowly, and the God of the gaps gets more and more cramped.
“A poem is produced by the forces of nature”
Agreed, and it is poetical enough to satisfy those who say the source of poetry is unknowable. Any poet would be happy to be considered a conduit for the forces of nature.
sub
Ingersoll nails it right here. The natural/supernatural divide ultimately comes down to whether matter comes from mind, or mind comes from matter. Primitive intuition can’t accept the “astonishing hypothesis” that it’s really that last one: thoughts, emotions, awareness, consciousness, values, intelligence, goals, will, and ideas are all levels of interaction derived from matter in motion. They’re not irreducible; therefore, they’re not supernatural.
Theists believe that the mind is basically magic. God is actually made in our image rather than the other way around. It’s the ultimate consciousness, the higher power or force which, like our own souls, is supposed to come from no where and exist in some other dimension — the spiritual one. The ghost in the machine turns into the ghost in the universe, a mental “first cause.”
We’ve been saying the same thing for well over a hundred years, and the people promoting the spiritual still have the gall to pretend it’s just not “satisfactory.” Well it is … and it isn’t.
It’s fine and reasonable — they just don’t like it.
A bit off this topic (but not for the website), but this is one of my favourite Ingersoll quotes:
“Only a few years ago there was no person too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin; and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task” (Ingersoll, Orthodoxy, 1884).
Shameless plug here.
A few years ago I uploaded some Ingersoll speeches on Youtube, since at the time they were missing (since then, others have uploaded RGI material.
Here’s the first section of R.G. Ingersoll’s lecture on gods.
Gah, apologies. Should have used the shortened URL.
I read the new rule post, but I forgot the auto-embed ‘feature’.
Very eloquent words, but one fact remains: there is intelligence here and it’s in the design of an atom – material things that must have been created. So please tell me, if not, where did the design originate? Why should WE even be here to discover their design. That’s easy, because we were meant to; we were meant to discover the inner workings of the atom, because every single atom in the universe contains its own micro-universe, and these micro-universes have hidden within them the hallmark of The Creator.
For him that has eyes let him see!
You’re repeating (one version of) an ancient argument for the existence of God (the Cosmological Argument or Argument from First Cause) that has never been generally accepted. This article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes some of the problems with it.
This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
Robert Hampson wrote: “but one fact remains: there is intelligence here and it’s in the design of an atom – material things that must have been created.”
Honest question for you: Do you know the difference between making an assertion and presenting an argument? I ask because your posts are filled with assertions with no reasons given for people to accept your claims. You can’t come on to a site filled with people who don’t think a God designed anything, and simply state as a “fact” that atoms “must have been created.”
“Why should WE even be here to discover their design.”
“Why” begs the question, in that implies a purpose – something you can’t just assume, but have to argue for. As to “how” we would have arisen to be here to discover atoms: look up the theory of evolution for how beings like us could have and did arise through non-sentient forces. And our current level of understanding the world, including atoms, has been far from easy. It’s been extremely difficult, hard-won battles against our normal proclivities for biased inference, our tendency to trust our easily tapped intuitions, and an ever present tendency to appeal to supernatural magic like Gods to “explain” things.
Of course, since a God can do anything via mechanisms you don’t ever have to uncover or explain, when you have a vexing problem you get your “explanation” virtually free of effort. The ultimate easy way out.
Except human history, and the astounding advances of science, have shown that the supernatural has never actually explained anything, nor given anyone an iota of knowledge in terms of gaining predictive power concerning the universe.
Why should WE even be here to discover their design. That’s easy,
Bingo! And there you go. Yes, it WAS easy wasn’t it? See how easy supernatural/God explanations are on you? Ask about an explanation for human nature and instead of doing all that nasty, toiling, hypthesis testing science stuff, you can say “‘Cause a Magical Being wanted it that way” and be done with it.
Again, please look at the track record of such “explanations” and then don’t kid yourself that anyone here ought to give the slightest bit of respect to your “explanation.” If you ever show your magical reasons can successfully predict something about nature that science can not, get back to us. Until then, I suggest you read, and absorb, some more Ingersoll who writes eloquently about the impotence of supernatural claims like yours.
Vaal
+1
God done that there… Who’s hungry for some bbq?
+2
Peter Boyle in “The Dream Team” as former ad-man/current psychiatric patient Jack McDermott, discussing modern sculpture:
“Do you know why it’s a brilliant manipulation of negative space, Ed? Because Jesus wants it that way.”
Creationists shouldn’t comment on science, it is hilarious and makes deconverts from religion, see Dawkins’s Converts’s Corner.
2012 it was verified by testing that the design of the atom originated in the Higgs field (whether standard Higgs or not, that is for future work in LHC to test).
Most of the mass in the atom nucleus derives from QCD, but the stability of the proton vs the instability of the neutron follows from the small mass difference that the Higgs field is responsible for.
If you ask what ushered in the Standard Model of particle fields which includes the Higgs field and is fully responsible for the laws underlying everyday physics, it is the inflationary standard cosmology.
That was itself verified 2012, as the last (“9 year”) WMAP data release by better statistical methods could take inflation by itself from under 3 sigma to 5 sigma.
To the best of our knowledge the Standard Model is peculiar to our universe. We could well live in a weakless universe, say. And having different universes ushers in anthropic theory, which Adams describe in steve oberski’s comment. It is fully backward to ask why the universe is as it is, when it is us that is “originated” in it.
The father of superstring theory, Susskind, and his ilks have described the simplest possible inflation cosmology that fits all this. Our type of universes are rare instances as inhabitable high vacuum energy universes transits to the inhabitable dominant lowest vacuum. Some universes will randomly happen to freeze out first the supersymmetry sector for cosmology (dark matter) and then the Standard Model sector for everyday life lowest energy physics because it is simple (likely).
So habitable universes are pond scum in the multiverse, which has dark matter structures as pond scum among the vaccum fields, which has visible matter as pond scum among dark matter structures, which has planetary systems as pond scum among the gas clouds, which has habitable planets as pond scum among the planetary systems, which has the biosphere as pond scum among the geosphere, which has populations as pond scum among the biosphere, which has individuals as pond scum among populations.
You and I are Darwin’s pond scum of pond scum … of pond scum, to the 8th degree. And atoms happens to be the way we can exist to ask “why is it so?”
All this is well observed or well understood to be likely, by scientists using their eyes.
Oh, and this:
Meanwhile in the real world, in 2004 it was discovered by way of the inflationary standard cosmology that coalesced out of WMAP’s observations that it is written all over the sky that “this universe is fully Natural©”. We can see in 5 different ways that such a universe is zero energy, and no magic can affect the processes that spontaneously results in such a system. (Because then it wouldn’t be zero action anymore.)
So we already know that there is no creator magic of any kind. What is seen can not be unseen.
Written all over in the cosmic microwave background, that is. It is a very nice image, already before you understand what it says re nature and its total absence of magic.
+1 to all that!
What did your god use to create the atom if this god is immaterial?
“material things that must have been created”
From whence, pray, did that “must” come? Looks like begging the question to me.
“Many races believe that it was created by some sort of god, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle Six firmly believe that the entire Universe was, in fact, sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure.” – Douglas Adams, HHG part 5
Precisely why should I believe your “God” surmise, rather than the Great Green Arkleseizure hypothesis?
“Our ignorance is god” – Let the ruminations begin! Time for a new t-shirt
Thanks for the tip. I’ll get down on it.
This reminds me of the Charvaka school of ancient Indian philosophy. Unfortunately, most original works of the Charvakas are lost, and they only survive through (mostly negative) references in apologetic and theological works. One of these latter is the 14th century text Sarva-Darshana-Samgraha (lit. “The Collection of All Philosophies”, linked above) written by a Vaishnava theologian, who nevertheless, to his credit, devoted his first chapter to a honest description of the Charvaka school, with which he clearly disagreed.
On an unrelated note, the Charvakas also seem to have found support from an unlikely quarter, the so called Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, considered a very important scared texts in most branches of Hinduism, and which they are said to be fond of approvingly quoting from. One of the verses in the text says:
I found myself reading a literal translation of the Sarva Darshana Samgraha for the first time, and I found a few pieces that I thought might be worth sharing (hopefully without derailing the conversations). First off, I mist give credit to the author, a theologian and an apologist, for having a sense of humor. He starts his book by an invocation to his favorite gods, and follows this up immediately in his first chapter on the Charvaka with
Secondly (and finally), the Charvakas themselves seem to have a good sense of humor. The author quotes Brihaspati, according to him the propounder of the Charvaka school:
*ghee: clarified butter, the availability of which is, to this day, considered a sign of prosperity in India. This “saying”, in its original Sanskrit form, “यावज्जीवेत सुखं जीवेद ऋणं कृत्वा घृतं पिवेत” (yavajjivet sukham jived, ṛnam kṛtva ghṛt peevet) is still quite popular in some parts of India.
I have posted two long comments already so I will just stop. Hopefully someone finds this stuff interesting, else I apologize for sidetracking the discussion.
Irrespective of the belief in God or gods, there are quite a few specious arguments in the quote.
Re: “The trouble is, that in the phenomena of mind we find the same endless chain of efficient causes; the same mechanical necessity. Every thought must have had an efficient cause. Every motive, every desire, every fear, hope and dream must have been necessarily produced.”
This is, as is the contrary argument, an argument from ignorance. We simply do not know (and now especially, with quantum effects of the “observer” phenomenon), whether or how free will exists. We used to think energy and matter distinct, until discoveries showed that false. Good scientists do not make arguments from ignorance, as do religionists. I’d rather hear “we don’t know”.
The final paragraph is also false, in my view. What we know is far broader than what can be shown empirically. In fact, empiricism itself cannot be shown (it cannot be falsified), rather it has to be *assumed* (there is no experiment that can control for the “variable” of empiricism and come to a conclusion about its presence and absence of empiricism being the defining factor of truth — hence it cannot be validated).
The entire realm of subjective experience cannot be “proven” and thus personal experiences cannot be “true” scientifically although they are most assuredly true for every individual (and thus the “aha” moment, or “voices from heaven” etc are not in the realm of falsifiability nor science). In addition, I am not so sure that shared human experiences are “true” (science uses shared human experiences as independent confirmation of claims) as mass foolishness has occurred in the past and it has been brave *individuals* that have led the way to truth.
It seems to me, that truth has more to do with acceptance, testing, and appreciation of reality, as well as understanding human limits — and additionally, I think morality has a crucial component … i.e. non-violent, voluntary interaction between people is the source of wealth and knowledge, while violent interactions are the destruction of both.
“This is, as is the contrary argument, an argument from ignorance.”
That’s not true: it’s an argument from evolution – if evolution be true. Darwin told Wallace that he was murdering their child by saying that alone in nature, the human brain and mind could not have evolved.
It is scientifically untenable to accept the evolution of the human brain, but not of the human mind along with it. It is scientifically untenable to believe that homo sapiens alone in nature has a mindful brain; or that the human mind alone has a non-material nature.
Darwin understood that his theory counted for nothing if the human brain/mind was exempt. The theory is either a scientific theory or it isn’t. If it is, then it accounts for all biological phenomena from the original universal common ancestor down to the present in an unbroken chain of cause and effect.
“Every motive, every desire, every fear, hope and dream must have been necessarily produced.”
A wildly grandiose claim comparable to, at our present state of knowledge, the same type of claims of the religious.
Not if evolution is true, and evolution is true.
Jim Bradley #9 wrote:
The process of science works over time. “Mass foolishness” has only been discovered because your “brave individuals” were able to make their case to other individuals through evidence and arguments which could be shared.
Your argument here sounds suspiciously like claiming that science is an inferior method because, in the past, “science has been wrong!” We only managed to change what was a current consensus through applying the scientific method. Progress, not Truth.
Have mystics ever been shown to be wrong about their mystical Truths?
“This is, as is the contrary argument, an argument from ignorance. We simply do not know (and now especially, with quantum effects of the “observer” phenomenon), whether or how free will exists. We used to think energy and matter distinct, until discoveries showed that false. Good scientists do not make arguments from ignorance, as do religionists. I’d rather hear “we don’t know”.”
I don’t think that arguing that “minds” have to be mechanical is an argument from ignorance at all, given what we know today: it is just the most parsimonious guess give the data. There is virtually no data supporting the claim that the mind has an existence independent of the brain when the activities of the latter have been impaired through, say, drugs or accident.
As for the observer effect, I am not sure what context you mean it in. If what you mean is the so called “Consciousness causes collapse interpretation” then I should point out that it is a problematic and mostly discredited interpretation of quantum mechanics with little or no support from physicists. If you mean the idea that trying to observe a system changes it, then that is a very material notion: we usually know in detail the mechanism which causes this change, and this is not so far removed from everyday physics either. The only way to “observe” a system is to “interact” with it, while hoping that the interaction does not change the system significantly. A speedometer puts a drag on the engine too, and hence slows it down: our hope is that this drag is negligible. An ammeter introduces extra resistance in a circuit and hence changes the current flowing in it when compared to the case where the ammeter was not in the circuit: again our hope is that the change caused by the ammeter is small enough as to be negligible. I am, however, yet to hear an argument from voltmeters in support of mind-body duality.
What people who like to invoke quantum woo don’t understand is that the observer effect also happens with mechanical detectors which have no minds of their own
Which goes to make the point that the observer effect is generally applicable, and therefore we cannot make a statement about “ultimate” reality – such as predestination – without a way of measuring that reality independent of our measurement; a contradiction that indicates, for our current state of knowledge, that we have reached the limit and can go no further.
And since it is a guess (and remains untestable at present), it would be useful to qualify the statements rather than produce them as assuredly true, as did the author. This kind of dogmatic uncertainty is not in the spirit of science but rather the domain of the religious.
It’s not “dogmatic certainty” if the speaker could tell you what would change their mind. Ingersoll could.