by Matthew Cobb
Yesterday The Guardian published two brief letters from religious folk (they don’t appear to be on the website), replying in a religious way to previous articles and letters.
Father Alec Mitchell from Manchester wrote:
‘Dark matter is an invisible substance… whose existence can be inferred only by its gravitational pull’ (Cosmic map casts new light, 22 March). How more – or less – intellectually credible is that than the suggestion that God is an invisible spirit whose existence can easily be inferred by God’s pull on human souls?’
Just below, the Reverend Dr Moira Biggins from Derby wrote:
‘John Illingworth (Letters, 23 March) asks if all religions are ‘made up’. Now there’s one of the big questions of life and not even Google can answer it.
WEIT readers are invited to answer either or both of these minor examples of Sophisticated Theology™ in the comments below. Will it be like shooting fish in a barrel? Will you be shrill? Let’s see how Sophisticated Atheists™ can argue. You could also send your best answers (or all of them) to The Guardian – letters@guardian.co.uk
Well Fr. Mitchell, for starters the fact that the Planck experiment gave us quite a precise estimate for the quantity of dark matter in the universe I’d say it’s far more credible than the idea of a god “pull[ing] on human souls”. This hypothesised ‘god pull’ is not measurable in strength or direction, as evidenced by the spectrum of belief (& unbelief) in humans, with some people’s beliefs outright contradicting each other. The dark matter search is nowhere near so subjective, as evidenced by the good agreement of the most recent results with those of previous experiments.
Q/Are all religions made up?
A/Yes.
There we go, that’s that one answered and I didn’t even need to look anything up. My question is, why does this person think that that was a big question?
Q: Are all religions made up?
Let’s bounce this back to the questioner a bit – would he respond that Scientology is made up? Islam? Latter Day Saints? Islam? Buddhism? If he’s a practitioner of a religion, he must allow that there are some false religions (otherwise why did he pick only one?) and those false ones are thus “made up”.
So we are in agreement that at least 90% of all religions in the world are “made up”. Now we can get to the nub of the dispute – whether the questioner’s religion is also made up.
To answer that I would like to add a second questioner who follows a different religion. The two of them can argue until they can come to an agreement which of their religions is “made up” and which was not. Once they have a consensus they can get back to me and I’ll study their results to see if I can agree with it…
Get three religionists. That way a majority of any two will tell the tale. Don’t do it with all three in the same room or there may be some collusion.
Predicted result. Each one declares the other two to be less true or just false.
I don’t recall which one it was, but I did read of one sect that came up with the devious concept that all gods and all religions are true, in as much as they are all aspects of one overarching god and religion. Theirs.
Quite a few do that. Theosophy certainly, maybe Hinduism. Scientology claims to be compatible with all others – at least at first.
+1google
First, whilst dark matter is observed from its effect on observable elements of the universe, “God’s pull on human souls” involves a putative invisible force pulling on an invisible and undetectable object so there’s a big difference there.
If we are generous to the Rev. and define ‘soul’ as just the internal thoughts, inclinations and intentions of a person then it is clear that these are not all pulled in one direction by a consistent force but head off in all possible directions. Christians may claim that God works in mysterious ways but it is not intellectually credible to suggest that such widely differing (and often entirely opposite) results support the existence of the same holy force.
We can be even more generous and say the “pull of God” is a real human feeling, but has nothing to do with God. It’s a feeling of longing, of need for comfort and confirmation, the need to fill an emotional void, or the pull of mystery and curiosity to know, to understand, the human yearning to transcend our limits.
These are all natural feelings that any atheist can experience. They are probably a lingering echo of the early trauma from the first time an infant is away from its mother, or part of the residual insecurity of leaving the protection of all-providing parents to make one’s own way in the world as an adult.
I don’t think it is any accident that mother and father symbolism is common in deities, and that religious adherents are often called brothers and sisters. Some bonding emotions from the core of human psychology in earliest child development give rise to these feelings of “the pull of God”, of “religious need”. They are just neurochemistry.
Off the top of my head, evidence for dark matter includes:
1. Galaxy rotation curves. The relationship between orbital distance and orbital velocity of stars in a galaxy isn’t what you’d expect from a straightforward Newtonian model. Computer models with a large dark matter halo produce the observed results.
2. Stable galaxy clusters. Some large galaxy clusters don’t have enough visible matter to be gravitationally bound, and therefore must have a large component of matter we can’t see.
3. Gravitational lensing. We can’t see dark matter but we can see it’s effects. By observing the gravitational lensing effects it causes we can map the stuff.
4. The “flatness” of the Universe. The Universe is measured to be very nearly flat. There isn’t nearly enough visible matter to cause this, so there must be some invisible stuff.
5. The Great Attractor. Lots of galaxy clusters are being drawn towards a large region of space that appears to be empty. Conclusion: this region of space is full of dark matter.
That is no argument against his argument. He clearly agrees with you on this point…
“Dark matter is an invisible substance… whose existence can be inferred only by its gravitational pull”
Quite so! And this is the bit guaranteed to get my goat.
By talking about dark matter and gravitation he is implicitly invoking the scientific process and the best theories it’s come up with so far, all based on real evidence, to make his point, whether he realises it or not.
But you ask him to apply the same standards to his religion and you know what will happen!
Of course, we have precise and useful definitions for “pull”, “gravitation”, “invisible”, “human” etc. His definitions of “soul”, “pull”, “human” and expecially “God” will be pure waffle based on nothing whatsoever.
Grrrr.
One thing about Dark Matter: the theory will be discarded if there is evidence against it or if something else better explains what we see.
Important point
Does Father Mitchell think all the other parts of his religion can be inferred from their observable effects? Like, what observations substantiate transubstantiation?
Even if we granted these clowns (that’s me being strident) a god, none of the rest of their behavior or beliefs would be in the least bit rational, or comport in the least with the evidence. Why do they struggle so hard to stick in the one absurd doctrine when they know the rest won’t follow?
Don’t you just love the sound of that, “substantiate transubstantiation”?
“Dark matter is an invisible substance… whose existence can be inferred only by its gravitational pull’ (Cosmic map casts new light, 22 March). How more – or less – intellectually credible is that than the suggestion that God is an invisible spirit whose existence can easily be inferred by God’s pull on human souls”.
1. Although physicists have never seen dark matter nor they know exactly what it is, its effects are directly and unambiguously observed in nature (unlike the effects of God)
2. The “invisible substance” is only one explanation for the observed effect. Other explanations (e.g. modified gravity) are excluded because they have been tested and checked and they don’t work (what other explanations are there for pull on human souls, and what has been tested so far – and saying this without asking what is a “pull on human soul” after all).
3. Physicists are working hard in order to know more about dark matter and to understand it better, and they are happy about that. If they see evidence against it, they will reject it (have we ever seen religious believes tested and rejected by the church authorities?).
I cannot imagine a more powerful proof of the privileged and unjustified status our society has given to religion than these two presumably intelligent guys spewing such idiotic questions in all seriousness.
Um, one of them is a lady and ‘works full time as an IT consultant’ according to the Methodist Church in Derby website. She is certainly interested in fiction as doctrine – she has a review of ‘The Meaning of Star Trek by Thomas Richards’ on Amazon: Thought-provoking, but disappointingly narrow in its scope – nearly all about Next Generation – and the text seemed to repeat itself a great deal. Does anyone know of a book which analyses the Star Trek universe from a Christian theological perspective?
“God is an invisible spirit whose existence can easily be inferred by God’s pull on human souls”
Well, maybe it potentially could, if one could isolate a human soul and observe it.
As it is, he has an invisible (and undetectable) God pulling (invisibly and undetectably) on human souls. Which are, in case I forgot to mention it, invisible. And undetectable.
Well, he is at least consistent about it.
😉
As for the other one –
Google ‘are all religions made up’
About 32,900,000 results (0.37 seconds)
(Drat hit the wrong key and went off half-cocked. I was about to say – )
Obviously Google can answer it. Problem is deciding which of the 33×10^6 answers is the right one. I think the Rev is probably right on that one – that many answers is really no answer at all. I’m just not sure why one would expect to find the answer via Google anyway.
Incidentally, re the piscine massacre, it was Mythbusters (who else?) who took it to its logical extreme –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd-MpXCMcIs
Not really: Each one of those answers has as much evidence supporting it as the modest Doctor’s assertions do. So pick any one: Whichever of them you are inspired to choose. Or whichever is revealed to you to be true. Has to correct, right? It’s just following their methods on this …
Lol. Choose randomly and the truth will be revealed to you. Have faith in Google to guide you. 🙂
Don’t you think we should actually answer Fr. Mitchel’s exact question?
He asked “How more – or less – intellectually credible is that…”
Answer: Infinitely less.
Fr. M. seems to be afraid to actually stand by his convictions but distances himself from them with the question about “credibility”. It is the same approach as the debater’s device of saying “it can be argued that…”
This allows the debater (or Fr. M.) later to say “Well, I really don’t hold to such an absurd notion; I was just …”
Given the terrible problems of gun crime and overfishing it is surely highly irresponsible to encourage people to shoot fish in a barrel.
A very important and until now ignored point. This is the real issue here; fish based gun crime…
Fish in barrels are generally already dead and salted. An apt analogy, as it turns out.
Better to shoot dead fish than people, no?
‘Dark matter is an invisible substance… whose existence can be inferred only by its gravitational pull’ (Cosmic map casts new light, 22 March). How more – or less – intellectually credible is that than the suggestion that God is an invisible spirit whose existence can easily be inferred by God’s pull on human souls?’
Lets just say that it is equally credible. Then clearly, monotheism is false as that same pull on human “souls” can be attributed to Lugh the Shining one (I know that the thought of stealing his gold from the end of the rainbow makes me a better person. Very easy to do given that Lugh doesn’t seem to frown upon theft), Allah (Really, how else do you explain people who would do so much to work against rape, by doing things like comitting rape, such as Sheikh Imram Bin Abdullah of the Maldives), the Hindu pantheon (and how else do you explain Sathya sai baba’s miracles? Not only do you have influence on souls, but on ashes), because, at best, ‘God’ is only used by those who wish to ignore the other deities.
Fine, I’ll be more serious. The claim that a deity’s existence can easily be inferred by its pull on human souls has two critical problems being ignored
1.) The same type of influence comes from a number of things.
2.) No basis to conclude that a soul exists.
For the first problem, it doesn’t take all that much to see. Political movements and various ideas have influenced people, and that is regardless of if a soul exists, or how one wishes to define it. While one might be inclined to say that each of those having influence is only possible because they are real, and as a result, “god” is equally real, then there is good reason to think about it a bit more deeply. When it comes to if deity/deities exist or not, there is no basis on which to believe any, and that the influence claimed in favor the the existence of a deity works equally well if we simply say that it is the effect that people have on each other, in exactly the same way people influence each other with politics, philosophy, or science, without the assumption that a deity exists.
And this would explain something that is simply being ignored. The pull being talked about can go in any direction, resulting in mutually exclusive beliefs when you’re looking at groups of people, and sometimes even individuals. Focusing on theism, if the pull was really from one source as it would be with a deity, why would we see differing beliefs about its nature, or about how many there are, or what it wants us to do? The pull or influence attributed to a deity simply doesn’t explain it.
For the second problem, it is a matter of equating the “soul” to dark matter. We have reason to think that one exists, as we can measure the gravitational pull, and from that, infer the source. However, that simply isn’t the case when talking about the “soul” as we don’t have any means of detecting a soul, we don’t have any means of measuring any pull on it, and we don’t have any reason to think that such a thing exists. Aside from the claims made by the religious, what do we have to say that a soul exists?
So it would seem far less intellectually credible to say that your deity being an invisible spirit that pulls on human souls than to say that dark matter having a gravitational pull, as those who attempt to do so ignore details such as the various instances in which people have been influenced, how they’ve been influenced in regards to that deity, and the need for a basis to conclude that a soul exists.
Yes, and a briefer version of part of your answer is:
When (puller, pullee)=(god, soul), there is not the slightest bit of evidence that either separately exists. It follows from simple logic that there could be no evidence of the so-called pulling.
When (puller, pullee)=(dark matter, other object), there is all sorts of other evidence, such as “seeing it” that the other object exists. Furthermore, the evidence of the pulling has at least 4 or 5 quite different forms, all of which are consistent with each other.
There is even a tiny chance that the good father might understand this, when expressed in this ‘kindergarten’ form.
We humans only use a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum in order to see. Our huge and highly evolved brains enable us to demonstrate the existence of that part of the spectrum which we cannot register, or is ‘invisible’ to us. Does that then mean we should view the unseen part as being within the realm of the metaphysical? Of course not. As I write this response, and people read it, chemical cascades within our body’s organs are occurring, keeping us alive, but without us being aware of them. Should such un-felt, unseen reactions be viewed as being metaphysical? Of course not. Speculations and hypotheses regarding dark matter/dark energy remain speculations and hypotheses until such time as evidence emerges for or against. By contrast, a belief in a supernatural entity is (miraculously) upgraded to fact by the sleight of hand of producing a book in which it is claimed God’s word resides, and frequently in the first person, too! So much for religious intellectual credibility, then.
“‘John Illingworth (Letters, 23 March) asks if all religions are ‘made up’. Now there’s one of the big questions of life and not even Google can answer it.”
Yes, Google CAN answer it, as follows:
Google “how many religions are there” and the answers will indicate consistently that there are more than two. But it would take only two religions who disagree with each other to establish that at least one of them must be made up. The dilemma in verse:
So dream we out our gods
in deafness to the screaming truth
that every new one
makes mooter them all.
Your verse?
/@
Well, actually, there still could logically be ONE religion that’s correct. Insofar as they conflict, there can’t be more than one. (Or of course there could be zero).
Just don’t ask me which is the right one, though…
Father Alec Mitchell from Manchester,
To run with your analogy that’s why there is a Hindu theory of dark matter, a Muslim theory of dark matter, an xtian theory of dark matter etc.
And that’s why scientists consult a big book passed down through the millenia and only those ideas that appear in the book are allowed and any scientists who disagree are stoned to death or burnt at the stake.
As to the question “are all religions made up?”
I’d like to stand in front of the lady with a clipboard.
Q:Is Islam, ancient, believed by millions and with its own sacred texts, the true religion?
A:no.
Q:So it is made up?
A:yes
Q:Is Hinduismancient, believed by millions and with its own sacred texts, the true religion?
A:no.
Q:So it’s made up?
A:Yes
(repeat about 1000 times with other religions)
Q:So is Christianity, ancient, believed by millions and with its own sacred texts, the true religion?
A:Yes
Q:So it isn’t made up?
A:No
Q:Can you just talk me through your logic there?
A: I feel it in my heart.
No kidding — that’s the answer you’re most likely to get with that line of questioning.
“A: I feel it in my heart.”
I would have to reply “do you mean that you think it in your brain? Because your heart is a muscle. If you do mean that you think it in your brain, would you mind explaining why?”
A: One of them has to be right and by this process of elimination we just did, it’s mine.
What do you mean? Of course that’s logical. You need to learn to respect my deeply held beliefs.
Father Alec Mitchell:
Dark matter we infer because, despite the fact we cannot detect it directly, its effect on those things we do detect (normal matter and energy) can be seen, measured, and replicated. In this sense, dark matter is simply more science – part of the description of reality as we found it. This is intellectually credible.
For a pull on a soul, used as evidence for deity, to be as intellectually credible, both the soul and its pull effect must be as detectable and predictable. Yet centuries of investigation have revealed no evidence for souls affecting reality.
Dr Moira Biggins:
As all religion is ultimately “something somebody said”, and since what they said conflicts with reality, if we take the default position people take when someone says something like that, then: “Yes, all religions are made up.”
However, we would be happy to investigate any new (or non-disproved old) evidence you have to indicate any religion is not “made up”.
“God is an invisible spirit whose existence can easily be inferred by God’s pull on human souls”’
Yes, and we know pixie dust is real because it has an undeniable influence on the behavior of unicorns.
Where I come from we used virgins!
Pixies live up my nose. Every once in a while, they tickle it and make me sneeze.
Because they like flying around — it’s like an amusement park ride.
No pixies, no sneezes.
Show me a soul…
Look between the butt cheeks for the R-soul.
How long have you been waiting to pull that one out for us?
Groans to both!
lol.
Come on. Are those really serious questions? God’s pull on human souls??
>>
Dark matter is an invisible substance…
[snip]
God is an invisible spirit whose existence can easily be inferred by God’s pull on human souls?
>>
I think he’s nailed it.
Dark matter is invisible. Souls are invisible. Therefore souls and dark matter are clearly the same thing. (You can’t prove that they’re not!) It’s the souls in all the people on all the planets in all the galaxies that cause them to move toward each other. And because this is just what a loving God would want, god = love.
There’s no end of stuff you can derive when you’re allowed to just make stuff up! Which is what scientists do all day anyway, so science proves religion again!
These people are so easily confused by words yet that’s all their religions consist of…
Wait a minute! I thought dark matter was all that stuff locked away in the Vatican.
Spacetime and its curvature is an invisible substance… whose existence can be inferred only by its gravitational pull. Yet everyone observes spacetime (say, as time and space, or GPS positioning despite relativistic effects) and gravity on a daily basis.
But it is also clear that Mitchell hasn’t actually read the Planck papers.
First of all, dark matter and other massenergy components of the universe is not inferred but observed and tested many times over through cosmological microwave background (CMB) thermal and lensing properties in combination with standard cosmology constraints.
Second, dark matter is observed in the CMB by other means than only gravitational lensing. Here is a description by physicist Matthew Francis:
“The next step is to take the sizes and magnitudes of fluctuations over the sky, which is the series of images below. The left side of each image represents the largest scales on the sky, and as you move right you’re looking at smaller and smaller temperature fluctuations. The technical name for this is the power spectrum, since it’s a measurement of the rate of energy carried by the CMB photons as they arrive at WMAP. The three biggest peaks are key: they will tell us exactly what the contents of the Universe are! … ”
[I’ll omit the technical discussion, but it turns out that the three first sound peaks are sensitive to various matter contents. The 1st correlates to how much energy drove the universe expansion. The 2nd correlates to how much EM coupling (ordinary) matter was in the way for the CMB photons before electrons coupled to nuclei. The 3d peak correlates to nonlinear effects, so includes dark matter density.]
“So now we have it: by taking the three peaks together, we have the total amount of matter, the total amount of ordinary matter, and all the stuff together. Combining this data in different ways gives us the amount of dark matter (peaks 2 and 3) and dark energy (peaks 1 and 3).”
[ http://galileospendulum.org/2013/02/28/c-is-for-cosmic-microwave-background-alphabet-of-cosmology/ ]
“God’s pull on human souls”. Claim in need of reference.
Since this is so, we can observe that these aspects of superstition is non-testable and so not at all credible as far as even existence goes. While DM is not only credible, but with the Planck lensing observations a 10 sigma observational fact!
I forgot:
“Pew, pew, pew:”. =D
Torbjorn:
That is a good reference for me, one that I had been unaware of. Thanks.
Maybe with more effort I’d understand it better (and obviously I’m not defending the silly priest), but I am still a bit puzzled. Presumably anything being observed, sometimes less directly than other times, so far always depends on what is observed interacting in some way by strong, weak, EM or gravitational interaction. And I thought the conjecture, strongly supported, was that dark matter consisted of some kind of (non-Standard Model) particles which only interact via the last of these four (or perhaps very slightly also using the weak interaction, but that’s not been observed). And so I would have assumed that the way these estimates of dark energy vs dark matter vs ordinary matter on that website would at least ultimately depend on gravitational interaction, but, as I said, I don’t understand the details at all.
So I’d be happy for you (or anyone) to set me straight on that.
To maybe put it another way, is it not conceivable, however unlikely, that a group of aliens was completely clueless about gravity as an interaction, yet had discovered the existence of electrons and nuclei, and knew a lot about electromagnetism. If so, presumably it would be then logically at least possible for them to discover the Standard Model and all its particles, still remaining ignorant of gravitation. But then, from what we know up to now about it, would it not be logically impossible for them to discover the existence of dark matter, or even to conjecture it, without discovering a good deal about gravitation? I realize this is very unrealistic, but am just talking about logical possibilities within what we now understand. If such a scenario were logically possible, I find it hard to see how the detection of those abundances does not depend fundamentally on dark matter particles interacting gravitationally. And that’s quite apart from the clear dependence of that CMB stuff having a lot of dependence on cosmological models and thereby on gravitation.
This may be nonsensical, but it’s slightly related, so:
If there were a kind of particle yet to be discovered, and a new kind of interaction besides those four, one which allowed it to interact with what we already know about, but somehow it never had any mass/energy or any strong, weak or EM interactions, would that analysis the website relates have still somehow picked up the existence of it? Perhaps what I just said is a contradiction in terms to someone understanding quantum field theory better than I do.
Actually, see
http://background.uchicago.edu/~whu/intermediate/driving.html
which explains that “power spectrum” measurement more, and seems in particular to say it is gravitational interaction of dark matter making this method work. I likely misread Torbjorn’s in thinking he implied it wasn’t. In any case, despite the priest’s ridiculous simile in general, I don’t think just the good father’s vague
“Dark matter(‘s) …. existence can be inferred only by its gravitational pull”
is actually contradicted by this empirical evidence.
‘How more – or less – intellectually credible is that than the suggestion that Krishna is an invisible spirit whose existence can easily be inferred by Krishna’s pull on human souls?’
How, indeed?
1. The correct answer is “infinitely less credible”. Your question plays so fast and loose with the meanings of words and false equivalencies that it almost reads like a parody of religious thought. Invisible ( e.g. dark matter) is not the same as undetectable (e.g. God). Invisible means “does not absorb or reflect visible light”. Saying that a belief in the existence of invisible things (our atmosphere, glass, x-rays, magnetic forces, etc.) somehow is equivalent to a belief in God is ridiculous to the point that it would offend me were I religious. Let’s try a logically equivalent statement:
“Carbon monoxide is an invisible substance whose existence can only be inferred by the quantitative predictions of physics and chemistry, and by the fact that it kills most things that try to breath it. How more – or less – intellectually credible is that than the suggestion that dragons are invisible creatures whose existence can easily be inferred by their ravenous blood-lust for fairy princesses and goblins?”
I eagerly await your response.
2.
It *is* a big question in life –almost everyone I know has struggled with it– and Google cannot answer it. It takes a human mind with the ability for rational thought for that. You need to have clear criteria for what is a valid argument and a keen ability to sift through faulty logic and misleading language, which dominates the topic. Google can certainly can help you find the evidence that will lead you to this correct answer: Yes, they are pretty much ‘made up’, though some may reference actual events. All religions consist of three things: claims that are verifiably true (AKA history), claims that have been proven not to be true (made-up/lies), and things that are as of yet unverified or unverifiable.
The existence of leprechauns can easily be inferred by alcohol’s pull on human drunkenness.
Metaphorical language – the thin refuge of the religious intellectual.
1 I don’t understand therefore god.
2 I don’t understand therefore MY god
God of the gaps just gets more powerful the smaller we make him.
That’s because it’s an inverse power law that describes this effect. In a sciencey manner of speaking.