Slashdot Mirror
The Mind of God
Einstein once said that the thing which most interested him wasn't whether God existed or not, but whether God had any choice in creating the world as it is. Einstein wasn't religious in the conventional sense, but he liked to use God as a metaphor for expressing the deeper questions about human existence, an instinct that runs deep in many scientific disciplines, especially physics.
As someone who was for years unnerved by the very term "physics" -- memories of high school, maybe -- one of the most pleasant surprises in recent years has been reading physicist/authors like Freeman Dyson and Evan Harris Walker and discovering the surprisingly strong link between physics and spirituality.
Physicists seem to have taken on some of the heaviest questions of human existence: "Why are we here? Why is the world the way it is? Where have all the Gods gone?"
In The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis For a Rational World, (just published in paperback by Simon and Schuster, US $12) Paul Davies, a professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Adelaide in Australia (and the author of God and the New Physics and The Cosmic Blueprint), continues this tradition brilliantly.
"The modern world is plagued by a greater diversity of beliefs than ever," writes Davies, "many of them eccentric or even dangerous, and rational argument is regarded by a lot of ordinary people as pointless sophistry. Only in science, and especially mathematics, have the ideals of the Greek philosophers been upheld (and in philosophy itself, of course). When it comes to addressing the really deep issues of existence, such as the origin and meaning of the universe, the place of human beings in the world, and the structure and organization of nature, there is a strong temptation to retreat into unreasoned belief."
Just what is rational thought, anyway? asks Davies, and true to his word, he jumps into a beautifully written, lively -- and yes, profoundly rational -- romp through some of the biggest mysteries in the universe: human reason and common sense, metaphysics, time and eternity, the creation, real and virtual worlds, theoretical physics, the necessity of God, and finally, "the mystery at the end of the universe."
Rather than a book of answers, this is a surprisingly readable, fast-paced inquiry into whether or not science and rationality can unlock the mysteries of the world, from the nature of consciousness to the notion that the world is really a kind of supercomputer, and all of us bits and data swirling around inside.
"I cannot believe," writes Davies near the end of the book, "that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama. Our involvement is too intimate. The physical species Homo may count for nothing, but the existence of mind in some organism on some planet in the universe is surely a fact of fundamental significance. Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here."
Perhaps because they are trained to deconstruct the matter that makes up the universe, physicists go deeper into questions like this than almost any other contemporary subculture of writers.
If Paul Davies were teaching physics, every kid might learn to love science and appreciate its potential for tackling, and perhaps one day even answering, these age-old questions about life. Davies' ruminations here on Metaphysics: Who Needs It? ought to be required reading for anyone who needs to be reminded of the importance of science in the contemporary world. Since most scientific language is arcane and inaccessible to much of humanity, the rest of us tend to forget just how seminal, even spiritual, subjects like physics can be.
If you care about issues like the existence of God, rationality, and the reason for our very being, you can hardly do better than The Mind of God. Davies doesn't have all of the answers, nor does he pretend to, but he sure has the right questions.
People, this sort of handwaving BS is no physics. If you want to read it do so, but don't pretend to yourself that you now know physics. Real physics is based on advanced sophisticated math. A book without the math is not a physics book.
Katz and similar people should be ashamed of themselves for the enthusiasm with which they claim this sort of pop-physics will give you deep insights. These sort of willingness to tell people that they can understand things without working hard is the reason foreigners have to come into America to do all the technical jobs Americans can't do. On the one hand people like Katz lament the fact that American technical education in high school sucks, yet on the other hand they promulgate precisely the mind-set that has led to this poor quality high-school technical education, namely this belief that certain intrinsicly mathematical subjects can be understood without mathematics in terms of pretty word pictures.
Maynard Handley
The reason why I find it hard to believe the negation, e.g. all this is arbitrary is because, that would essentially mean I have to understand that "Unfathomable entroy leads to unfathomable complexity". How the hell am I suppose to understand two unfathomable things let alone one? I understand probability on a small scale, but there is no way my mind can even come close to imagining the scale required to create all this. In my opinion (at least for me), either way I go its just blind belief.
i am even worse, i can only read The Mind of God for Dummies for dummies.
The problem is that as far as I can tell, the requirement for a 'Mind of God' is made on asthetic grounds alone. It displeases certain people that there is not 'a plan' revealed by science.
It's the Ego Of Mankind that assumes the structure of the universe must conform to some ideal of pleasing symmetry, balance, or whatever.
I ask for proof of God for a couple of reasons: 1. There is no immediate and compelling reason to assume the existence of such a being. 2. The only reasons given are contained in books written by human beings with far less of an understanding of the universe than we have today. 3. These reasons are not emprical, not verifiable, and not required. The Universe appears to function just fine in the absence of the God theorem. 4. No verifiable phenomenon requires an explanation beyond and above what the non-God based theorems can explain.
Given these, I tend to simply ignore the God theorem as irrelevant. God was 'created' as an 'imaginary' superfriend by a far more primative society than ours. As such, it deserves no more serious consideration than my child's imaginary friends. Just because we can't explain the origin of all creation, it does not mean we can start filling in the gaps with our imagination. That is NOT science and does not enhance the corpus of scientific knowledge by a single iota.
If you don't understand how to live, I can't help you. I have taken personal responsibility for my actions and understand that the day-to-day business of living is actually some serious shit. Science won't help you either. It deals with emprical realities. People tend not to. They want someone to be in charge of them. They want someone to say definitively whether something is right or wrong. That may be an unfortunate evolutionary side-effect of intelligence evolving in a social hierachy.
I tend to agree with John Lennon on this subject. Paraphrased: 'Christianity will vanish. It will fade away completely. I'm right and I will be proved right.' There's no reason to believe otherwise if you can get a perspective that's outside of Western Civ. Greek and Roman paganism vanished utterly. Whether it's replaced by true reason or a civilization in chaos will probably be determined in the next 100 years.
Science has made huge inroads. It has explained a large number of things that were previously in the realm of religion alone. As the realm religion owns diminishes, it's validity and utility will diminish. I percieve an enormous backlash to this building from the evangelisic community, especially in our schools and universities. If the evangelists win, there may be several generations of Americans who have as slipshod a grasp on science and reality as, say, Dan Quayle. A world of Dan Quayles scares the hell out of me.
On the other hand, if science and reason prevails, we may find ourselves in a hundred years at an evolutionary watershed.
And at the last, I know one thing for sure. If there is a being that resembles your concept of God, we'll find him/it by looking up at the universe, not down at our feet.
..... just won that award for writing on science and religion. Has anyone found a copy of his speech ?
See, I like agnosticism. I also think all the religions are pretty stupid, but I don't think someone like a Deist, who just believed, in general, that an intelligent entity created our universe, would be less rational than an atheist.
For me where it breaks down is when the religious types believe that God came to Earth and had a nice chat with humans and blah blah blah. It's nonsene, IMO, of course.
But, while I doubt there is/was a God, I don't think it's immpossible. And it seems to me that atheists are going on faith just as much as religious people by pretending to know that God doesn't exist.
I guess my point is that no one knows. If you want to think you do, fine, but don't think you're superior to everyone else. And that goes for atheists as well as Bible-thumping Christians.
I have a pretty good idea how he "wrote" this:
m plaint
http://www-csag.cs.uiuc.edu/individual/pakin/co
Wow, and ten paragraphs in the post, too. Could that be a coincidence? I doubt it.
Here's an example:
"When assessing Bytme's manuscripts, one need not resort to vicious name-calling or opprobrious epithets. One need only present the facts. But before I continue, allow me to explain that Bytme's cowardly attacks not only demean Bytme's victims, they dehumanize all of us and are contrary to the principles of a free society. Looking at it another way, he evinces a bulldog-like instinct for going after the jugular of his intended victims. Why doesn't Bytme try doing something constructive for once in his life? Still, there are no easy solutions for dealing with ribald scientists ("easy" being defined as a solution that will not create new (and reinforce existing) prejudices and misconceptions).
Above all, until we fight to the end for our ideas and ideals, he will continue to make a big deal out of nothing. It's not that I have anything against know-nothings in general. It's just that Bytme's hideous cronies seem to think they can escape the consequences of their actions. Someone needs to exemplify the principles of honor, duty, loyalty, and courage. Who's going to do it? Bytme? I think not.
To treat the disease, not the symptoms, we have to work diligently and effectively to anneal discourse with honesty, clear thinking, and a sense of moral good. Likewise, the poisonous wine of sesquipedalianism had been distilled long before he entered the scene. Bytme is merely the agent decanting the poisonous fluid from its bottle into the jug that is world humanity. I will not quibble with him as to whether or not his lackeys have been arrested in numerous murders, violent assaults, and bank robberies across the nation. Instead, I'll simply state that whenever I ponder over the meanings and implications of Bytme's intrusive methods of interpretation, I feel little peace, and leave it at that. Judging by the generally neo-impertinent nature of his henchmen, I can see that he and other manipulative fanatics continue to whine and pule about how their rights are so much more important than anyone else's. What I'm saying is this: Bytme's mottos are doubtlessly despised by everyone but cynical adolescents. The Bytme Foundation's latest report on insensitive clericalism is filled with fabrications, half-truths, innuendo, and guilt by association. Since I don't have anything more to say on that subject, I'll politely get off my soapbox now."
hahahah you are like a Homer looking for Lincon's Gold. You look everywhere and when you find it, you read it is a note that the gold is in the hearts of every American. Dejected you walk away angrily, cursing Lincon as a fraud.
The evidence you look for is all around you, especialy in physics. The line of extrapolation clearly points to God. But since you don't have the gold you are looking for you turn away cursing those that are enjoying the treasure.
The very existance of everything around us, and the magnificent inclenations in humans that are not found in any animal are great evidences. Well becuase you dismiss it doesn't mean I don't see it.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^~
I read most assertively those that boast that Einstein met his match with Quantum Physics. It brought down his relativity and showed the random froth that the universe is made up of.
However Einstein is still correct, Quantum Physics relies on statistics (randomness) as a patch or glue to express the universe where the laws are not known (or as Heisenburg pointed out cannot be known in classical scientific ways of measurement.)
Einstien spent many years trying to see those laws and fought that they have to be there. He wished for a series of mathmatics that could express the world without having to resort to statistics.
Now like ancient days before Columbus, science simply believes that there is nothing there beyond what it can see. Whether the world is flat or the Universe random both are based on ideas of what the unseeable relm must be like. And just as maps were easier to express the world as flat, so are these theories easier to represent statistcaly.
Time and science will yet prove Einstein right. God does not play dice with the universe.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~
Hmmm, I see your point. I have made some pre-emptive strikes that may have been unjustified.
For one, I did not accuse you in particular of using circular logic. I mearly stated that I have seen people discredit evidence I make and eventualy it comes down to that kind of argument. I agree you never made such an argument. But then I have never seen any evidence that even remotely suggests there is not a God.
I wish to also in the spirit of rationality express that I only offer evidence. That is what we are talking about isn't it? Not proof. Evidence, I have and have shared in part. I don't suggest it as proof, and I definatley don't suggest it as "look we can't explain it so it must be God." When I look at a good piece of Art I appreciate its creator. That is the same as how I see the universe through Science. I don't see it as drawing back the curtain to find there is no God, but I do see a real appreciation for the creator of it all. That appreciation comes from seeing the evidences of the genius at work.
I also appreciate your discussion of light. I have found light to be more than mere luminosity, but that is really immaterial. Blindness comes from not seeing what is there. In that way they are blind and freely admit it (for they cannot evangelize that there is no God, they will never have proof of that. Nor do I see them presenting any evidence.)
I'm sorry for lumping you in that catagory.
And what I assume you say in jest I can say is true. I wrote something a long time ago on slashdot about how the pursuit of God is an avenue to discover the Universe and its Laws. That is true. Some people inherantly wonder why the universe exists. What is the purpose? Well whether or not one believes in a purpose to the Universe, you can't argue that for there to be a purpose to the universe there has to be an intelligence for there to be a purpose.
Some figure that they should get in contact with that intelligence to gain a more direct access to the information as to the purpose of their existance. You can't blame them, the progress of thought is only logical. It fits in Occam's Razor very neatly.
But to reach out to that intelligence requires faith. Now faith is not imagination, and definately does not need to be conjered up in this case. It is taking an extrapolation of data at hand. I exist, and when I make something I have a purpose. Therefore for me to exist I must be created, and there must be a purpose. Where there is pupose there is intelligence. Since we both have intelligence there should be a way to communicate. If we can communicate then I should be able to learn about the Universe from this intelligence that created it.
This forming of a hypothesis does not require a floating cross. Sure there are leaps of faith in it, where you are extrapolating with Occam's Razor a hypothesis. But this hypothesis is provable, and personaly so.
Yet many do not even try, or if they do they expect the universe to bow to their will if they are going to make such an investment of faith. They seek a direct sign. This is not the nature of the Universe, you know that and I do. Laws are discovered by seeing them in action. If you recieve laws (information of them) from a divine source, and indeed you find that obedience to them does make your life (not your neighbors or your uncle in slovenia) better then you must have recieved true information. The formulae works, it must be true.
This is the same way we investigate scientific laws. But we find that we need to learn moral laws before we learn scientific ones or we can destroy ourselves. I say this to point out that if one of Adam and Eve's children asked about Nuclear Power but didn't know about self restraint and controlling temper then they could have made a mess of the whole earth very early in the game.
Self Restraint and Temper are moral laws we learn from Religion and can see evidence of it scientificaly. Nuclear laws are found out scientificaly, and even show evidence or a correspondance (abstractly) with moral laws.
There is a need for both is what I'm saying. The Grand Intelligence in the Universe who you mock does have lines of information open. Science is one of them, and religion is one of them but they both require personal discovery and faith.
I appreciate your more even handed responce and I appologize again for jumping the gun. I'm home from work now and have calmed down somewhat. I hope you accept my appologies and find this responce more in the same friendship you sent the last one.
Sure we have all trodden these paths before, and have come up with cute labels for each turn we anticipate the other to take. (much like martial arts.) But seriously when it comes down to it we are both just people and what we say will only survive as long as the slashdot server.
It won't mean much in the world perspective. But individualy, it means more and that is the battleground where we get to make the best descisions we can, and hope for the best. We are all looking for truth, and it is childish to mock what others know rather than live and let live.
I would appreciate if you did have any truth that I can live by that will aid me to be happier. I haven't seen any yet, but you don't seem unhappy so you must have some. (I'm not mocking I'm serious.) If you have better truth, don't keep it to yourself. You'll find it more effective in pursuading me than simply holding up judgement to what I know is true.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^~
That dog story is cool. That is an attempt to lie. Cool. We'll wait for Fido to create something still.
The marriage deal I assume you are accusing me of overly constraining the behavior. I don't think that is what I did, all it requires is forming contracts with a third party that isn't a being. Contracts are very basic.
my definition of Morality is not acting for a common good. Computer robots can do that. But can they -discover- that. In fact, many humans do not, but no one disputes that they can.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^~
And some think they are funny too.
^ ~
Seriously, if animals are a just a catagory of life that doesn't photosynthesize you are right. Go find a conversation where that is what they are talking about.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~
Thanks those were the exact quotes I was looking for to make my point.
And when did we ever make this into a war on religion?
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~
Very interesting. And yeah I don't know why they are attached to reality either.
I rember Feinman (My other favorite Scientist) imagioning he was a fly on a pool (this was from a PBS Nova episode.) He wondered if he was that fly, could he tell everything that was going on in the pool by the waves he rode on.
It seems this is a manifestation of Quantum Mechanics, where you could say that two different events could produce the same results, and then you can only statisticaly guess which of those two events occured. But then maybe you could gather the information fast enough to be able to distinguish between two said events. But then could you really account for the measurements effecting the pool enough to hide the information in noise?
I don't mean to bore you with a common example. But that is how I've understood it since, since I only took one class on it in college. How do they test for the existance of unknown variables again? That seems interesting.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^
Look, I realize believing in God puts me in a different universe than you, or in other words we have extrapolated different universes from the evidences around us. I don't expect to enforce my way of thinking on you, nor do I want to.
In reality we all live in the same universe and are welcome to explore it to find the truth. I even like to hear you tell me the truth you've found. (I'm waiting...)
In the mean time there is evidence around us, all around us. I point to that evidence as my support. All I see in the way of disproving the world around us is what amounts to "There is no God, therefore that is not evidence."
For instance, I see that ecosystems are built to destroy life when it challenges the survivability of the ecosystem. Look at lemmings, sardines, etc... They have built in deficiencies that keep them from overrunning their environment even though they could easily still be classed as fit as the only species in the environment. In deed close relatives do not suffer from such quircks. Such "curiosities" are just one of many evidences of a design greater than the "every species out for itself" theory of evolution.
Now the argument against it looks like "but there is no grand design or designer so you can't say there is. There are just laws at work that science is still discovering!" Or maybe you can quote some theory from a dusty college text book that is even more unsupported that promises to resolve such a fundamental flaw.
Nevertheless it is evidence. Your presumtions that I have no evidence is probably just hopeful that I'm bluffing. I repectfuly counter that you are the one with blinders on, and you can't see evidence you refuse to see. But that is your choice. Asking others to accept your blindness may be your choice, but not mine.
Believing that there is no God is not only blindness it is the belief of blindness. Essentialy it is unprovable (yet presumes itself scientific). Therefore you blindly believe there is no God and are forced to if that was the truth.
You can believe what you want to believe, and I can declare what I know is true. And in the end it doesn't matter becuase the slashdot readers and every other individual that wathces such discussion is welcome to find out the truth for themself. Who realy cares who is right, we only care about what is right.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^~
Gold was an analogy for the evidence of God.
~
I didn't quite follow where you went.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^
Ahh now I see more what you mean by local realism. Definately undetermined states are a really cool phenomenon, and something I think makes sence.
~ ^~~^~
But doesn't such an example simply show that things are determined by influences we may never have a way of knowing? After all, as you point out if they don't both know what to look for the very act of probing for the information interferes with the experiment redering it useless. And unfortunately we to often don't know what to look for.
Anyway, thanks for the info. This is what I like slashdot for, the information from the community.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~
...so until this guy can produce actual evidence that we are "meant" to be here ... I shall continue to believe otherwise.
^ ~~^~
Truth is one thing, belief is another. Randomness is not even part of the other two.
Maybe you would agree that we can create our own purpose, our own reason for being. I believe that is true.
Maybe you believe that the more your purpose coincides with the laws of the universe, the less likely your purpose meets with destruction. That is physicaly proven, and is indeed the method of physical proof and the scientific method, where a hypothesis is the purpose of the experiment. I believe it to be true also.
But that only makes the pursuit of the question of "is there a God" more important, if you are seeking to bring harmony with your purpose and the laws of the Universe.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~
In short, the explanation of Einsteins belief in God is not accurate. He did believe in a God manifested as the higher laws of the universe. Not as a metaphor of such. While he clearly mentions he does not believe in a personal God, he did in quotes clearly indicate he believed in God.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^~
oh shucks. You did ask.
Here's a few questions to ask...
Do Animals Create? One person once said that everything that makes humans different from animals can be summed up in a human's ability to tell a lie. To lie you have to be able to create a universe based on evidence and know that it isn't true. You have to be able to communicate the untruth. You have to have the selfish interests to want to relay the untruth. Lying isn't a magnificent inclenation but the investigation and exploration of evidence, the creation of new universes (even if they are only personal universes), and the communication of it is something that animals have not demonstrated.
Do Animals Marry? Marraige is not just a choosing a life long mate, or contracting between the two people. Marriage (even old secular marraiges) involved the contracting with a third party to provide the neccisary environment to raise kids to survive and be harmonious with that third party.
Do Aminals have Morality? Morality is not an imposing of harsh laws by the inergalactic boss. Morality is the realization of a connection we all share where my happiness is somehow related to your happiness. A realization that we all have a connection that is impericaly felt but not measurable (very sensitive to the Heisenburg principle this is). Morality is a force, it drives and influences even nature and matter. (After all, when your girlfriend is mad doesn't that influence your body to go to the store and pick up flowers? Thats matter manipulation through Morality.) In fact morality is expressed by harmonizing our personal universes with the laws of the universe around us.
Sorry I can't write more or explain it better, the boss is coming
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^~
Belief and believe. Hmm... almost too sticky of difference here. What I think that can explain his paradox is that he has reasons for what he believes and others may have beliefs that have not been reasoned out, just adopted.
The difference may seem slim, but it is there. I know for myself that I have beliefs that have been reasoned out... and others that I hold on to that I haven't really thought through. I think that he is attacking the later and suporting the former.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
I know I'm late to this thread an no one will read this but...that's the story of my life; I think too slowly. Anyway I have a few observations about the topic.
There is a neat paradox: "that which is everywhere is nowhere" and "that which is everything is nothing". So atheism is the more rational position. At least they try to look at things in a cold clear light instead of imagining miracles, incarnations, apparitions, and such nonesense.
To attempt to prove the existence of God scientifically is obviously futile and not desirable. If someone could prove the existence of God the way we prove the existence of the polio virus or vitamin C then life would surely be pointless. Everyone would go over to God's side and the whole human drama would colapse. The point of life, the thrill of life, the leavening in the loaf of life is the leap of faith. Take the leap of faith out of life and you really have a pointless existence.
But for those who are looking for God I will give you a clue. Look for that which is everywhere and nowhere...that which is everything and nothing. That is of course conciousness. God is conciousness.
The limitless arrogance of modern man has sunk us so low that we demand that God show himself to us in microscopes, telescopes and mathmatical formulae. Even the mystics of old told us that you cannot see God. Even if you take the leap of faith and realize that God is conciousness and devote your entire life to purifying your conciousness through prayer, meditation and self-denial you cannot see God. The meaning is that the ego, the self must die before you can see God and of course when that happens you are not you anymore. You are someone else. Someone else reaps the rewards of your lifetime of sacrifice.
Have a peaceful day oh lovers of paradoxes and sweet subtle understanding.
However, there's a problem with this. It pains me to say it, but only a small fraction of the population seem to be able to think rationally on a consistent basis. (If this were not the case, then professional wrestling would be a dead sport.) Even of those who can think rationally, a large percentage don't.
And you know what? They're right. You see, to the true scientist, everything expresses itself in terms of probability. As a scientist, I can conceive of some non-zero chance that, when I drop a ruler, it will float up to the ceiling. And I might be concerned with that possibility, because my purpose is to understand how it works. Understanding is a goal of its own, and needs no application to be worthwhile.
However, in day to day life, we must make assumptions on inadequate data on a continual basis. If we applied scientific scepticism on a continual basis, we would never get out of bed. Visualize having to enquire, on seeing a red light, as to whether that light was really red? So, the good and useful scientific scepticism that gives us great technology when applied to "simple problems" gives way to harmful, radical scepticism when applied to mundane problems.
The thing is that the class of problems I label "mundane" are often much more complex than those currently dealt with by science. So, we solve them on an intuitive, emotional level, and on the whole do pretty well with it.
Which leads me to my beliefs. As any Slashdot comment reader who doesn't just skip over-written, wordy comments probably knows by now, I am a Christian. Further, I fall into the more conservative range of Christian belief. I am a traditionalist and an evanglical.
Constantly on /., people ask me to "prove there's a God" (or prove that Yahweh is God, or Jesus, or whatever). I cannot offer any proof that they will accept. Why? All my proofs rest on my own experience. Many readers apply radical, pseudo-scientific scepticism to religion, and so it is assumed that the least explanation for my belief is that I am either a liar or deluded. When my experiences of God are discounted, I have no evidence to argue from that can stand under the light of radical scepticism.
That's okay: I still believe. Why? Because I find belief in God to be functional. It's Pascal's wager: whether there is a God or not, I am able to see great and consistent results from believing in him and choosing to follow him that I did not see when I was caught up in other faiths. (I progressed from atheist to agnostic to Hinduism to Taoism to Christianity between the age of about 12 and 23 or so -- as I learned more, my beliefs changed, and so did my life).
Don't get me wrong: I believe based on reasonable evidence (5 ancient witnesses for starters) that Jehovah is God and that Jesus is his son who rose from the dead in the literal sense. What I'm rejecting is the assumption that I (or anyone) should have to subject this to some involved process of proof based in the Greek philosphical tradition.
And that is where this book would appear to miss: I have not yet see the Greek philosophical tradition offer any help for how to live. And that's the problem I want religion to solve.
Footnote: Contrary to my usual tradition, I'm not going to respond to replies to this post. Apologetics make me tired, and I've already fought two big flame wars in the last week. I just don't have the energy or the time to write another 20,000 words this week.
-- Slashdot sucks.
Sorry...
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Just because certain event is very unlikely, it does not mean that it will never occur.
For example, flip a coin 50 times and write down the sequence of heads and tails. Now the probability of this particular event occuring is 1/2^50 (which is pretty small). Was it a miracle?
Do the same with 1000 flips. Is an event whose probability of occuring 1/2^1000 a miracle?
No yet. Try 10,000. See...
...richie - It is a good day to code.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
After all how would you react if a philosopher started writing books on physics?
Being an expert in one field does not make you an expert in another.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
The question of probabilities had to do with deducing the existence of God from the fact that people and the universe exists.
What I was trying to say, that the event of humans coming into existance is a low probability event, which nevertheless occured. The fact that probability of something is very low, does not preclude the event from occuring, without the intervention of any supernatural being.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
well if *I* were god, I sure wouldn't be fond of people who only believed in me because of pascal's wager.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Hey, may I have the script/config file which has generated your comment? It really looks like some autogenerated postmodern text.
Actually Davies wrote a book in the 80's about Quantum Mechanics called "Other Worlds". I certainly don't claim to have understood all of it but it seems like a pretty good introduction to the topic for the lay person.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Read 'The Divine Proportion' by H. E. Huntley. I may write a review someday.
pronoblem
Bwaahahaha
To be specific, it is not a joke (a little humor in it) or a troll... It is actually a PROTEST. It is an intentional long-winded, meandering and Katzesque diatribe. I do not like his style or contribution to the forum. Rather than 'Katz Sux doodz', I prefer a little sarcasm.
Peace
pronoblem
Of course, "experiments" require an intelligent being behind them. "Going mad" also has connections to sentience.
Our ability to observe is finally getting to the point where we can answer some of those "philosophical" questions.
And how do you observe that which is unobservable? Or are you just too narrow to approach anything non-material? Science has scope and there are important questions that lie outside that scope.
A quick question, though: if physicists are so adamant about an orderly universe governed by rules, why assume that it came about by chaos and chance?
This is really the core of your argument, and it's silly: you dismiss everything not observable because of your assumption that those things cannot have an effect on you. How do you support this claim? Looking at the question of a deity, let's suppose that there is an all powerful being who directly manipulates the universe, yet is not a part of that universe. This being, though not a physical entity and therefore not observable, would be in control.
Nevertheless, it is fantasy, it is not to be taken seriously, and it is outside the realm of science.
Outside of the realm of science? Definitely. Fantasy? Who are you kidding? Do you actually believe that anything outside of the realm of science is fantasy?
Science is a limited tool for the inductive study of the physical universe. Science is neither absolute truth nor the only means for discovering truth--it's merely a tool. Science, when treated as the only method of discovering truth, becomes a deity.
In that case, why teach them as scientific fact? The origin of the universe, the origin of mankind, the origin of thought--all these things are far beyond the scope of science; and yet, they are taught as Scientific Truth and anyone who questions the validity of these theories is called a kook and laughed at.
The point I am trying to make is that a sentient supernatural entity is not a valid default whever we do not understand something, any more than "its just chance" is.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. However, the concept that a deity exists and is in control of the universe is not necessarily put forward as a default.
Without any evidence, both are merely saying that we have no explanation.
Not really. Granted, they aren't science, nor can they be, but both ideas are put forward as serious proposals. There is value and, yes, truth outside of science.
Some of this stuff is deep. Good reading -- everyone should read at least one of his essays.
--
You're still using Windows?
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
-Possum Lodge Motto
I know of animals that create, marry, have morals, and even do calculus. They're called humans.
This sort of book rubs me the wrong way. I know a lot about religion, and I also know a lot about science. I'm learning more just as fast as I can read books on either subject. I'll probably buy this book, because it sounds interesting.
Anyway, back to my point: this sort of book rubs me the wrong way. I don't think there's any easy way to reconcile religion and science. There's just too many things which we are pretty certain of through the scientific method which don't jive with any religion's view of the world. For example, many people will try to reconcile the creation account in Genesis with evolution, noting that generally simpler things are claimed to have been "created" before more complex things, with man being created last. Well, first you have to pick which creation account you want to believe (there are two different ones in Genesis). Then you have to ignore such things as multiple creations of light, and the out of order creation of plants on the land. The fact of the fossil record says one thing, and the Bible says another thing.
The note about the huge mystery of God underlying everything is really troubling to me as well. If you break down this universe into smaller and smaller pieces, does one find god underlying everything? Nope! What you do find is just a bunch of teensy stupid particles, behaving randomly. The description of jehovah is a little bit different than that. One of those things is fact; the other is something that is read out of a book without any factual support.
The term for this is the "god of the gaps". Science can describe a lot of things. There is a tendancy to attribute everything that is unexplained as the work or existence of god. The trouble is that over time, science expands knowlege, so the god that is stuck in betwen (in the gap) gets smaller and smaller.
The 21st century is going to be a very bad time for religion indeed.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Actually most physicists have, even the staunchest atheists.The above quote is quite inaccurate.
Many prominent physicists share this overwhelming train of thought.For example:
"Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God--the design argument of Paley--updated and refurbished. The fine-tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one.... Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument."
Edward Harrison, Masks of the Universe (New York: Collier Books, Macmillan, 1985), pages 252, 263.
"a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology..."
Sir Fred Hoyle, "The Universe," page 16.
"As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency--or, rather, Agency--must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?"
George Greenstein, The Symbiotic Universe (New York: William Morrow, 1988), page 27.
"The medieval theologian who gazed at the night sky through the eyes of Aristotle and saw angels moving the spheres in harmony has become the modern cosmologist who gazes at the same sky through the eyes of Einstein and sees the hand of God not in angels but in the constants of nature.... When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it."
Tony Rothman, "A 'What You See Is What You Beget' Theory," Discover (May 1987), page 99.
"Nature does exhibit remarkable coincidences and these do warrant some explanation."
Bernard J. Carr and Martin J. Rees, "The Anthropic Principle and the Structure of the Physical World," Nature 278 (1979), pages 605-612;
"One would have to conclude either that the features of the universe invoked in support of the Anthropic Principle are only coincidences or that the universe was indeed tailor-made for life. I will leave it to the theologians to ascertain the identity of the tailor!"
Freeman Dyson, Infinitein All Directions (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), page 298.
"The problem here is to try to formulate some statement of the ultimate purpose of the universe. In other words, the problem is to read the mind of God."
Henry Margenau and Roy Abraham Varghese, ed., Cosmos, Bios, and Theos (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1992), page 52.
"The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine."
Stuart Gannes, Fortune, 13 October 1986, page 57.
"Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say "supernatural") plan."
Fang Li Zhi and Li Shu Xian, Creation of the Universe, trans. T. Kiang (Singapore: World Scientific, 1989), page 173.
"We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it. So there is a chance that the best of all possible mathematics will be created out of physicists' attempts to describe nature"
Roger Penrose, in the movie A Brief History of Time (Burbank, CA: Paramount Pictures Incorporated, 1992).
"A question that has always been considered a topic of metaphysics or theology the creation of the universe has now become an area of active research in physics."
George F.R.Ellis,ibid
"I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance."
Edward Harrison, Masks of the Universe (New York: Collier Books, Macmillan, 1985), pages 252, 263.
"Amazing fine-tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word "miraculous" without taking a stand as to the ontological status of that word."
John Noble Wilford, "Sizing Up the Cosmos: An Astronomer's Quest," New York Times, 12 March 1991, page B9.
"Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God--the design argument of Paley--updated and refurbished. The fine-tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one.... Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument"
Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), page 116.
"I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing."
Joseph Silk, Cosmic Enigma (1993), pages 8-9.
"If we need an atheist for a debate, I go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn't much use."
Tim Stafford, "Cease-fire in the Laboratory," Christianity Today, 3 April 1987, page 18.
So as you can see, the statement "Well, most physicists haven't, actually;", is quite ridiculous.
In this opinion of this physicist.
Intelligent Design Theory is not Creationism
I realize that arguing from authority has little convincing power.However, that was not the point of my post. I was responding to the person who stated that physicists do not share Paul Davies' view that physics and theology overlap.This was a gross misrepresentation of current scientific views.
However, the overlap is there BECAUSE of the evidence.And the evidence is overwhelming.
Intelligent Design Theory is not Creationism
I think Davies' basic premise is astounding.Most of which is resounded in most of his books:
... The universe must have a purpose. ... If new organizational levels just pop into existence for no reason, why do we see such an orderly progression in the universe from featureless origin to rich diversity? ... [There is] powerful evidence that there is "something going on" behind it all."
"They [the laws of physics] seem themselves to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design.
The need for special populations of supernovae and white dwarfs at just the right time and place in our galaxy adds, in the words of British physicist Paul Davies, to the already overwhelming evidence for the design of the cosmos. In one interview Davies stated:
"People take it for granted that the physical world is both ordered and intelligible. The underlying order in nature-the laws of physics-are simply accepted as given, as brute facts. Nobody asks where they came from; at least they do not do so in polite company. However, even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview."
One may wonder if science would have arisen had the dominant metaphysical views of the time been naturalistic and materialistic.
Intelligent Design Theory is not Creationism
Mine Leben!
Wumpscut rocks
Intelligent Design Theory is not Creationism
I don't think you quite get it or maybe the fact that it is represented by mathematics doesn't drive it home to you. William Dembski , a mathematician from Cambridge and an intelligent design theory proponent wrote an excellent monograph on what is called "specified complexity". _The Design Inference : Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities_ William A. Dembski It's a science, inferring design by eliminating chance and regularity.We do this all the time in every day life and especially in Computer Science fields such as cryptography,for example, discerning a string of digits and inferring whether or not that came from an intelligent agent, or random computer processes. SETI also offers an excellent example.To increase their chances of finding an extra-terrestrial intelligence, SETI researchers have to monitor millions of radio signals from outer space. Many natural objects in space produce radio waves. Looking for signs of design among all these naturally produced radio signals is like looking for a needle in a haystack. To sift through the haystack, SETI researchers run the signals they monitor through computers programmed with pattern-matchers. So long as a signal doesn't match one of the pre-set patterns, it will pass through the pattern-matching sieve. If, on the other hand, it does match one of those patterns, then, depending on the pattern matched, the SETI researchers may have cause for celebration. The SETI researchers in Contact did find a signal worthy of celebration, namely the sequence of prime numbers from 2 to 101, represented as a series of beats and pauses (2 = beat-beat-pause; 3 = beat-beat-beat-pause; 5 = beat-beat-beat-beat-beat-pause; etc.). The SETI researchers in Contact took this signal as decisive confirmation of an extra-terrestrial intelligence. What is it about this signal that warrants us inferring design? Whenever we infer design, we must establish two things-complexity and specification. Complexity ensures that the object in question is not so simple that it can readily be explained by natural causes. Specification ensures that this object exhibits the type of pattern that is the signature of intelligence. Another simpler example would be if you were tied to a stake and about 15 expert sharpshooters were shoot you all at once, and you find out after the smoke clears that you are still alive.What are you to conclude? Basically, that bullets were blanks or that they all missed on purpose.To say that they all missed by accident is ludicrous. I think that the evidence brought forth by researches such as Paul Davies and George Greenstein,both non-religious, is just that kind of evidence.
Intelligent Design Theory is not Creationism
Okay, it was funny, but, geez.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Plagued by diversity??!
I'll take the "plague" of diversity over the "virtue" of conformity any day.
If this is the case, then this is just a shameless advertising plug to tell people that ThinkGeek is now selling this book. New book ? Rright.
The things money makes you do..
There is an absolute, multilayed interconnectedness between matter which causes many confusing effects, and is quite chaotic/complex in nature. The fact is, it may be simple and straightforeward in design, but we may never know because all we can and ever will be able to see are the 'effects', or the fractal image as referred to in the original example.
:-)
True, but for the same reasons I outlined above. What I'm trying to state is that we would like to know that fundamental underlying design. We can't see it because there are simply too many variables. Not because of the fundamental interconnectedness of all particles, but because every measurement stirs up the mix, as it were.
With that said, we agree.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Absence of proof, and proof of absence are two completely different things...Prove that the aliens don't exist. I've got a box of cookies for the first person to do so.
:)
Are you serious?
Of course you can't prove that something doesn't exist. Prove that pink flying elephants that read minds don't exist. Go on, try.
To prove something doesn't exist, there are two ways.
Method 1: Show that everything else that does exist is not that thing. Method 2: Assume it exists, then follow a chain of reason that leads to an impossible conclusion (a contradiction).
However, it's trivally easy to prove something does exist. Point at it. Say, "Look! There it is! Flying pink mind-reading elephants do exist after all!"
Since it's (usually) a lot simple to prove something positive, the burden of proof falls there.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
We now know that the subatomic particles arent really solid at all, but interact according to complex wave functions that predict their behavior on average. That last but is important, because it shows that our understanding of sub atomic particles and matter in general is based on a large number of assumptions wich may not be valid.
True, but the whole problem is one of perception. If you knew all possible starting conditions, you could predict the outcome. Quantum Mechanics is based on the simple, proveable, fact that it is impossible to know all possible starting conditions. You can either know the position of a particle, or you can know it's speed. You can never know both, because measuring one affects the other, and you cannot predict the affects of the measurement for precisely the same reasons.
If you COULD get both, or measure one without affecting the particle in any way, Quantum Mechanics wouldn't be a game of probabilities. It would be a game of certainties, just like the macroscopic universe we all know and love.
Schrodinger's cat cannot be both alive and dead at the same time. It is one, or the other. But the fact that you don't know which makes it a question of probability. You treat it as if it were both alive and dead in order to get on with things and do the math.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Penrose's arguments have been shot to hell from the get-go, for a variety of reasons; this is one of them. He is a mathematician and physicist, but he seems to have little understanding either of epistemic or of philosophy-of-mind-related questions involved. There really is no need to invoke quantum mechanics to explain how we are able to prove theorems deemed undecidable by Gödel's theorems.
--
--
Victor Danilchenko
--
--
Victor Danilchenko
--
--
Victor Danilchenko
Oh boy, they are really coming out of the woodwork now...
Gödel's incompleteness theorems (yes, there is more than one) say nothing about decidability of truth about the world around us; they apply to a very specific group of theoremic spaces, and believe me, physical reality is not one of those. It's really bad karma (ahem...) to abuse perfectly good mathematics in such an egregious manner. Really.
--
--
Victor Danilchenko
A piece of photographic film is an observer, in the sense required by quantum mechanics. It is not conscious.
--
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
My favorite counterexample to Pascal's Wager is Crom, who went to a lot of trouble to make the universe appear to be without a creator, and gets quite deeply offended if people start going around believing in Him. :-)
--
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
In fact, now that I think of it, this is more or less the issue that Schroedinger's Cat is meant to address. However, even if we outside the box see the cat in a mixed state, the cat itself surely knows whether or not it's dead. Um... maybe we should hook the Geiger counter up to a food bowl that opens if the atom decays. Then the cat knows whether or not it's fed.
The point I'm trying to make, I guess, is that a system doesn't have to be conscious to make a quantum observation. It just has to render the results of the quantum "decision" in a form that is too big to be overridden by Heisenberg uncertainty, be that by an exposed silver atom, a cat food bowl, or a change in mental state of a human observer. This post probably says it better than I do.
--
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
That's Life with a capital L.
The fundamentalists are outraged that something as sacred and important as Life could be an accident. They want it to be a result of a command, a plan, a blueprint, a simple, orderly, well-engineered, easily understood project designed by a deity who would figure out all tolerances and fudge them by a safety factor of five or ten.
Well, fuck them. Accidents happen. We're one of them. But our loving each other's not an accident. Nor our enjoyment of the days we have together. Nor our anxieties for each other and our fear of sharp edges when our children learn to walk.
But, like Scout, sometimes we have to brave and hurl ourselves headfirst into space, knowing that someone we love will be there to catch us if they can.
Dan Simmons - Entropy's bed at midnight
What more can I say?
--
Full Time Idiot and Miserable Sod
Full Time Idiot and Miserable Sod
Nothing is real but the pain
Yes, there is a possiblity that we as a race are meaningful on the cosmic scale, but it is doubtful.
Looking at the evolution of man, one can use the sophistication of his weapons as a 'benchmark' of progress. From a stone tied to a stick, all the way up to nuclear bombs. Hence, here is my crazy theory:
I think man's destiny is to evolve physically and then intellectually to a point where he can make a weapon powerful enough to destroy the entire universe.
Perhaps we are even a genetic program created by some higher intelligence in order to achieve this very aim. Won't he get a surprise when we break our programming and jump up into his universe and kick his sorry ass! HAHAHAHAHAAAA!
Umm, I think I'll go and lie down for a while...
;)
I can't speak for the Quran, but you've totally missed the point of the Bible. Sure it contains in it information about how we should live our lives and conduct ourselves. It's a big collection of stories, history, and letters. However, the overall theme of the book from beginning to end is about how a consious and personal God has gone out of his way to rebuild a relationship with humankind that was badly broken shortly after we were created, or grew from a mutated algea depending on your beliefs. It makes it much more interesting to read if you understant why all that stuff is going on, and what the big picture is.
so you're equating throwing a ball in the air with human existence....riiiiight.
--
+&x
How do you know they don't make that recognition?
My silverware told me.
--
+&x
that example would hold..if it was the cards that realized how remarkable their own pattern was.
--
+&x
Things that are unobservable, by definition, can also have no affect on me.
This is really the core of your argument, and it's silly: you dismiss everything not observable because of your assumption that those things cannot have an effect on you. How do you support this claim?
It is a logical necessity. If something can affect me, then it is by its effect on me that I observe it. If something is unobservable, then it has never been seen, felt, or detected in any way, so any speculation on "its" existence is unwarranted, and an act of sheer imagination.
let's suppose that there is an all powerful being who directly manipulates the universe, yet is not a part of that universe. This being, though not a physical entity and therefore not observable, would be in control.
If there were such a being, then that creates two possibilities: either (1) he/she sits back and leaves the universe alone, in which case there would be no observable events to indicate his/her existance, or (2) he/she periodically bends the rules or communicates with us, in which case I would have observable phenomenon from which to begin a scientific investigation.
Science is a limited tool for the inductive study of the physical universe. Science is neither absolute truth nor the only means for discovering truth--it's merely a tool. Science, when treated as the only method of discovering truth, becomes a deity.
Observation and reason (i.e. science) are, in fact, the only means of discovering truth. Anything else is magic, and if magic exists, then we might as well give up, because then anything goes, and nothing is certain, not even the continued existence of the floor beneath me.
By "that which is unobservable", I assume you do not mean things like atoms, which we can't observe directly, but we can observe the effect they have under various conditions. I assume you mean things that are by definition unobservable, such as the creator of the universe.
Things that are unobservable, by definition, can also have no affect on me. It is thus pointless to spend any time thinking seriously about them. I disagree that the questions are important. They may seem basic, and they may seem big, but they're not important, because it doesn't matter what answer you propose, it can't change anything (by definition), and there is no way to know if it is correct.
Now you could try to argue that it is only by thinking about the unobservable that we discovered atoms, but as I pointed out before, the existance of atoms has observable consequences. We didn't discover atoms by random speculation, rather we first observed some phenomenon in the real world (e.g. that we can cut things into smaller parts), then we asked ourselves how it might work.
Note that I am not against fantasy. For example, I really enjoy the television show Buffy The Vampire Slayer. I don't, however, spend any time thinking that it might be real. Fantasy can also be great mental exercise, such as science fiction that speculates what might happen if people could read minds, or travel through time.
Indulging in fantasy, and speculating about the unknowable, may be entertaining, relaxing, or great mental exercise. As such, it may be good for my health, and for keeping my mind sharp, such that I may come up with the next great discovery. Nevertheless, it is fantasy, it is not to be taken seriously, and it is outside the realm of science.
By mysticism, I mean anyone or anything that purports to have knowledge beyond what is observable, testable, provable, and thus knowable. Obviously, this includes religion.
Now I don't want to be totally down on religion. Religion was man's early attempt to understand the universe, until we discovered science. In a way, religion helped to create science. Religions also act as a curator and teacher of moral values, and, though I think it preferable to define those values through reason, I do acknowledge that most people still learn their positive values through religion. I would suggest, however, that the values taught by religion have been collected from a few thousand years of (mostly) rational thinkers, which is why today most religions teach tolerance, instead of starting crusades and shouting "death to the infidels".
I agree with you that imagination is a necessary tool for a scientist. Obviously, if a scientist is to make a new discovery, he or she must think of something that no one else has thought of before. But there is a big difference between speculating about how something might work in the real world, and speculating about things that are, by definition, outside of the real world.
I didn't mean to imply that one must be an automaton in order to be a scientist. Of course a scientist is human, and he or she is going to engage in fantasy, fun, and sometimes downright foolishness.
:)
My point is that when a scientist starts speculating about things that are mystical (i.e. unobservable, intestable, and unknowable), then he has left the realm of science. Now such dabbling may be good as a mental exercise, or it may satisfy some psychological or social need in that person, but it's not science. And, if a person spends too much time in such flights of imagination; if he tends to take them seriously; if he gives mystical speculation precedence over what can be discovered through scientific investigation, then he cannot be called a scientist.
As to love, that's a complicated issue because it has both an animal side, derived from our evolution, and a rational side, which I would call the human side. Now the animal side is affected by pherimones, hormones, and other body chemistry, and visual and behavioural stimulation that speaks directly to the lower parts of our brain, and comes out as purely emotional responses. However, as humans, we can override, and train our animal side to respond to our rational considerations, such as whether the other person is honest and respectful. A man can say to himself, sure I find myself inexplicably attracted to her, but she's a convicted axe murderer, and it probably wouldn't work out.
You know, I'm not saying that we must be robots, and that the world is a cold mathematical place. It is mathematical, but it's not cold. The world is a wondrous place! Discovering how the world works is a joyous activity, and scientists should be passionate about their work. We humans are remarkable, and, assuming we can avoid destroying ourselves, we have an incredible future.
What I'm saying is that in the light of all that beauty and understanding, why would we want to try to go back to viewing the world the way our primitive ancestors did, as a mystical, incomprehensible, and frighteneing place?
How far would science have gone without materialism, or logic, or falsifiability itself? Or Occam's razor? (Though, IMO, neither materialism or Occam's razor are all that desirable.)
And religion is not part of philosophy, it's part of religion. The Philosophy of Religion is another matter.
More like looking everywhere for gold and then having someone tell you "Hey, you know.. there's not only no gold to be found, but the idea that there Is gold is stupid and, were this a few hundred years ago i think we'd kill you for even suggesting it. Oh, and while you're at it.. the meaning of life is to be enslaved to someone you won't meet while you're alive, most things that active the pleasure centers of your brain are horribly wrong, and when you die there's a fairly good chance you'll be tortured forever because you went looking for that gold that doesn't exist."
Personally, i'd dismiss the guy for a few cans short of a 6-pack and go back to looking for gold.
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
Then your analogy wasn't very fitting.. he was talking about finding underlying meaning to the universe. I assumed that's what gold represented, whereby my analogy was the religious reaction to the search for underlying meaning in anything but religious doctrine. Mainly: ostracism, fear, and threats. People have been burned or otherwise painfully killed for expressing the belief that there might be an underlying foundation to the universe other than god. As for the rest, general religious belief: if it's fun it's probably evil, and if you do it you're going to go to hell (or appropriate naughty afterlife for your religion).
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
I would just like to say before I start my post that I am not trying to flame you. You are basically correct in almost everything you are saying and are looking at the issue almost correctly.
You are correct, blind belief in science is just as bad as a blind belief in religion. The problem is that if most scientists had a blind belief in science then we would still think that wind, fire, water, and earth are the only four elements found in nature.
The good thing about science is that the only truth it claims is that almost all of our theories will someday be corrected, if not completely found inaccurate. But every wrong theory or incomplete idea lays the framework for more thoughts.
Religion used to do the same thing that science does now to a certain extent. Myths were constantly changing as the beliefs and ethics of the different societies changed. They also were effected by the governmental situation. They werent true, but they provided for the spiritual needs of the common man, which is all a religion can really be expected to do.
As long as science doesnt cling to one set of documents as definetly true (such as the Bible) then it will never fall down the same path that religion did.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Yes, you can have colorless, green ideas. Color is simply the result of a reflection of light off an object. Therefore, and object can either be green or colorless depending on whether or not there is any light present. Also, ideas could actually just be chemical reactions and combinations that could be tracked and charted with a computer using green pixels.
Yes, I know that we cannot currently chart ideas, but maybe someday we could. Prove that we never will be able to.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
>>We ARE here, that's enough for me. (yes, it's a circular argument, but that seems to be the only way to play when trying to explain your own existence)
Uh, so what if I throw a baseball straight up and the wind catches it so that it falls on my car, breaking the windshield. By your logic I must have meant for it to happen, since it did in fact occur.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
>>"Our existence is pointless" is not the default position in the absence of evidence for or against whether or not we have a purpose here in the universe!
"Our existence is pointless" is not neccessarily true, but "Our existence is basically pointless" is probably true. Pretend that there are 3 billion people working on some project that needs to be done within 10 hours, and they can collectively finish it in 3 seconds. If one man is killed, it will almost definetly not cause the project to fail. But if this man is the only one doing any work, then it will fail. Yes, there is a possiblity that we as a race are meaningful on the cosmic scale, but it is doubtful.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
You are correct, I cannot prove that aliens don't exist. It is impossible. I also cannot prove that I do not have the ability to fly by using telekinesis.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to completely disprove something. You are free to believe something that isnt proven or provable, that is called an untested hypothesis. But you cannot, under any circumstances, try to take as fact that something exists until you prove it does.
Ill tell you what, try to prove that anything, anything at all, doesnt exist.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
You are right, we cannot prove that our lives are basically meaningless. In fact we know that our lives all have at least some meaning. Transference is a term that means the effect that one system has on another system (or one person has on another person). So everyone who has ever existed has made some impact on the universe.
The problem is that the universe is a gigantic place. If you were to drop one paper clip onto a pile of 1000 billion other paper clips, you have changed the mass, but not by much. That is why it is very logical that our lives are almost meaningless on a cosmic scale.
While it is true that that one paper clip would be the last straw in causing the floor to collapse under the paper clips, it is unlikely. It is equally unlikely that our lives actually matter when you think in terms of the entire universe.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
To clarify, this is not a new book. New in paperback, perhaps, but it's ©1992.
i have read this book, and it is quite interesting.
he re-hashes a lot of what stephen hawking posits about
the tapered-off indefinite origins of space-time.
worth a read, but not as good at addressing the issues
as another book "The Philosophy of Freedom", which
applies the scientific method to practice of thinking
itself: http://www.elib.com/Steiner/Books/GA004/TPOF/
a link to what einstein actually wrote about religion
is here: http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/E
regards,
johnrpenner@-nospam-earthlink.net
| The hayday of the epistemological enquiries on the meaning of physical
/ Einstein1.html
| reality and the mind of God and all that, came with quantum mechanics (a
| subject which, need I remind, Einstein never believed in...
albert einstein expresses his views on religion thusly:
> Those whose acquaintance with scientific research is derived chiefly from
> its practical results easily develop a completely false notion of the
> mentality of the men who, surrounded by a skeptical world, have shown the
> way to kindred spirits scattered wide through the world and the centuries.
> Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid
> realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to
> remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic
> religious feeling that gives a man such strength.
(Albert Einstein, *Ideas and Opinions*, Crown Publishers, New York, 1954).
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles
| Sorry to disappoint you but, no, there isn't any hidden spirituality
| in physics. Spirituality is an attribute of the human mind...
you are correct -- physics is only about physics; however, the theory that
humans are merely products of cause-and-effect relationships which can be
explained solely by physics and that consciousness arises as a by-product
of interactions within matter is simply unscientific.
The assertion that its "all just atoms and molecules" is a theory that is
more questionable than the fact of your conscious existence itself. You are
faced with the unavoidable fact that we are self-conscious beings, because
you cannot deny the fact of your own conscious existence. However, we CAN
question whether human consciousness is a by-product of interactions within
matter or not.
you can of coures BELIEVE that all thinking and conscious processes do arise
from the interaction of molecules, and that consciousness is a sort of
"software' that runs on the hardware of the human brain, but then one is
confronted with this:
"Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world.
For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation of
thoughts about the phenomena of the world. Materialism thus begins
with the thought of matter or material processes. But, in doing so, it
is already confronted by two different sets of facts: the material
world, and the thoughts about it. The materialist seeks to make these
latter intelligible by regarding them as purely material processes. He
believes that thinking takes place in the brain, much in the same way
that digestion takes place in the animal organs. Just as he attributes
mechanical and organic effects to matter, so he credits matter in
certain circumstances with the capacity to think. He overlooks that,
in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from one place to
another. He ascribes the power of thinking to matter instead of to
himself. And thus he is back again at his starting point. How does
matter come to think about its own nature? Why is it not simply
satisfied with itself and content just to exist? The materialist has
turned his attention away from the definite subject, his own I, and
has arrived at an image of something quite vague and indefinite. Here
the old riddle meets him again. The materialistic conception cannot
solve the problem; it can only shift it from one place to another."
(Rudolf Steiner, TPoF, chpt2).
physics doesn't deal with causes and the meaning of existence,
but we as humans do, and we are a part of the world.
regards,
john penner.
Ian Stewart's "The Collapse of Chaos", which covered some of the same ground (the complex systems bit), was far superior. The difference I'd say was that Stewart was trying to explain, whereas Gell-Mann was trying to impress.
If I understand correctly, your affirmation is that we are not meant to be here.
As you said The burden of proof lies upon the one who makes the affirmative claim, so where is your proof that we are not meant to be here?
Of course I know that nobody has ever positively proved that we are or not meant to be, and that such a proof would be very difficult, if not impossible to find.
Therefore your belief that we are not meant to be here is as groundless as the opposite one.
Rationality is a double-sided sword, you know
OK. I think this is a classic AI example, or maybe a classic example of somethnig else:
Colorless, green ideas.
Ideas cannot have color. Something cannot be both colorless and green. Thus, there are no colorless green ideas.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
This book and others like it seem to be about this question: What do you do when you get to the end of science?
The move toward religion and philosophy by intense scientists is, in my view, a recognition of the limitations of present-day science. The limitations can be summed up thusly: Science as a methodology cannot answer a single question of "Why?"
Now, scientists can answer cleverly disguised versions of "How?" questions; ask "why is the sky blue?" and you'll get a thorough discussion of how light works and how atmosphere and color and nerve endings play together. You can get descriptive elements of empirical data collections all day long, but you can't get to the notion of purpose or meaning because science isn't built for normative pursuits. It sounds like these writers have explored the non-normative ramifications of science and found that while science points in wonderful directions, it can never get one to the destinations.
I might like to read this book; it would be even nicer to read it in a forum less crowded than Slashdot. Then we could explore statements like the following:
* Science as a methodology is chock full of assumptions that are difficult to justify with supporting reasons (like the tests of simplicity, fruitfulness, and predictive richness.)
* In an argument, the burden of proof is "home field advantage"; furthermore, it rests on the one making an assertion whether that assertion is affirmative or negative.
* Weak agnosticism/atheism is essentially biography: telling the contents of one's own mind. Strong agnosticism requires deep philosophy about the limitations of knowledge. Strong atheism is incredibly hard to support as it has to seriously support the claim of non-existence of God.
* Rational and reasonable are useful but not necessarily identical. Complaints about someone's "I believe" credo as being de facto "irrational" are somewhat juvenile. All arguments have to start somewhere.
* I'll take an atheist seriously when he can convince me why garlic is flavorful to humans in the absence of a self-willed conscious Creator/Designer in three maybes or less. The problem of beauty (of which the above is a subset) is as significant for an atheist as the problem of pain is for a theist.
Those would be interesting topics for debate, as well as the history of philosophy, science, and religion (especially since it seems so many have neglected to study any of it in detail.) Will such a discussion take place? Who knows, on Slashdot?
Because the answer of "GOD" is acually a non-answer.
Interesting. So the notion of a self-conscious, self-willing causative agent is useless as an answer to a question of "what caused x"? Won't you then have to discard the notion of a human agent as a "non-answer" to the question, "what caused this essay to exist?"
If I just go ahead and ask, "What caused the creation of God"? You would say, "God Just Is.(tm) He is infinite."
Yes, I would. I would then lay out the case showing why he exists out of logical necessity as well as make the case for His existence from His interaction with humanity. There--I just did two things that your universe can't do; the universe is logically contingent and has no self-consciousness to interact itself into human affairs. (Or if you say it does, then you're working with a FAR different notion of universe than any scientist I know.) NOW we can talk details; now we can get somewhere. The discussion has just begun, not been slammed shut.
Then I'd say, "Well that went nowhere. I could have said the 'Universe Just Is. It is Infinite'".
We could go on into an infinite regression of entities, or we can apply Occam's Razor. What is the rational choice?
Well, it seems the rational choice would be to explore the option most likely to lead to truth. We might want to figure out if Occam's Razor actually DOES lead to truth; you beg the question if you use it to determine what's "true" or not. It's like fishing with a net with two-inch holes and then claiming there are no fish less than two inches in the water! The rational choice is actually take the question seriously and do a little better than an absolutely unnecessary attempt to make it a question of multiple entities.
Okay, a number of things here. First, it is significant that this comes near the end of the book. In other words, this is a conclusion that has been reached by examination of the questions at hand. Thus, the implication that this cannot be rational because of its barest interpretation is lazy and misplaced.
Second, the burden of proof does NOT lie upon the party making the affirmative claim. It lies upon the party making the claim, regardless of its being affirmative or negative. In this case, Davies is making an ontological claim that he must support. If he fails, then that is all that has happened!! It does not show that his case is unsalvagable, nor does it automatically lend support to whatever position you believe. Failure to prove a case means just that; trying to extend the implications beyond that is tricky and requires additional work.
In other words, folks, THERE IS NO DEFAULT POSITION! Kaufmann may "believe otherwise", and he may tell us what that position is as a matter of sharing information about his current mental states. Once he makes statements about the way the world is as opposed to what's in his head, HE has to prove his case. Whether or not Davies can prove his case makes no difference as to whether Kaufmann is justified or unjustified in his position. That becomes important only when Davies' position is analyzed and its premises, true or false, can be used in a separate argument attacking or defending Kaufmann's position, whatever it may be.
As for "actual evidence", I suspect that demand is spurious. I rather suspect Kaufmann would submit any such evidence to a Procrustean bed. I'll go ahead and read his responses and see if my hunch plays out.
Actually, I'll point you to one a friend of mine put together for a philosophy class he taught. I disagree with him slightly in the statement "the burden of proof lies with the one making the affirmative statement", but that's mostly a matter of phrasing; I agree with that almost entirely except when it's misused to defend non-existence as a default position. That's why I prefer "ontological truth claim" to "affirmative statement"; that covers more territory.
Take a look at this latest of several incarnations of the proof. The amusing aspect to it, actually, is that you think the number of people who have tackled this question actually disqualifies it as a legitimate endeavor. See if you can actually attack Mike's argument on its merits instead of resorting solely to sarcasm.
http://209.150.150.76/public_html/godarg.pdf
Kaufmann:
/. much more, so if you'd like to continue, hit me at dewyn17@yahoo.com
Regarding the non sequitur, that was largely in response to others jumping in on this discussion who want to claim that holding a negative view needs no defense. It points out that failing to prove the pro case does NOT prove the con case. That's a notion that I saw creeping in, and I used your post as a jumping-off point.
As for the content of your position, I tried to illustrate the challenge you'd have to face without making too many assumptions about the actual content of your position. It sounds like you're in better shape than most; you think that your position, whatever its precise composition, is rooted in solid ground. Fine and dandy; you'll need that when you try to make a persuasive argument why your position actually captures the truth of the world.
You're right; I don't think there necessarily is A default position, argumentatively speaking. That's separate, however, from whether or not someone has a personal "default position" which is simply beliefs one holds supported by various background beliefs. I simply want to emphasize that each position making truth claims about the world has some 'splaining to do.
About Occam's Razor--be very, very careful in a discussion like this. Realize that Occam's Razor makes an assumption about the world--roughly stated, the simplest explanation is most likely to be true--that could very well be begging the question. For Occam's Razor to work properly in a discussion like this, it has to be true about the world that the simplest explanation actually IS most likely to be true. But that's part of the question: what is the world fundamentally like? Occam's Razor in this sort of discussion is dangerously close to assuming what it seeks to prove; be vewy, vewy careful using such sharp objects. Finally, don't forget that a Franciscan monk is responsible for the principle ("plurality should not be posited without necessity"); thus, it's a little disingenuous to use the principle to slice out the entire spiritual world. Poor William would not approve, I daresay.
As for the evidence claim, you caught me there; that was more in the nature of a sting to get your attention. It's often required on Slashdot, I've noticed. I am curious, though: would you accept historical evidence and testimony from the Bible as acceptable? How about testimony from Christians who claim to have had prayers answered that strain probability? In other words, is your request for evidence entirely empirical, the sort you can submit to standard scientific analysis? (If so, good luck with evolution; you can't replicate the so-called evolutionary history of the earth in a lab. You're limited to some proof-of-concept exercises with bacteria that are dangerous to extrapolate to the whole of history.) I can't check
Finally, I'm glad you appreciated the counterpoint. I thought the point needed some fleshing out. Coming from a philosophy background, "rational" and "reasonable" are technical terms and seemed to be misused in your original post. Your clarification acknowledged that you actually are serious about this question, which is a step up from other parties who are content to rest on currently fashionable pseudo-intellectual agnostic laurels.
Take care.
Sigh. The quick squirt of napalm is ill-placed. All you've shown is that you're a science bigot who hasn't yet come to terms with the fact that your science is limited. Good luck in dealing with events that exist outside your assumptions. I think you'll really need it; contempt is no substitute for thought.
I'll get going on your argument in just a second, but first I've got to comment on your tailing slap.
In summary, your friend's argument is total crap for countless reasons, just like all the other "proofs" of God that people with a superficial grasp of logic produce.
My friend is all-but-dissertation for his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Virginia. They don't LET people with "a superficial grasp of logic" get that close to a philosophy doctorate. As for his assumptions, they're well-grounded in reams and reams of literature surrounding this question. Discarding his assumptions because they don't mesh with 20th-century physics (which may or may not be correct) is NOT a stunning display of argumentative acumen.
First, I want to point out that Mike's term "traversal" means logical traversal of all events, so appealing to how long it took the universe to get here or how long it would take to traverse all events is really off-target. The notion of finite time doesn't even enter into the argument; you put it there, and your objection to the argument therefore cannot succeed on those grounds.
I can't say this strongly enough: the traversal of a past series of events is NOT dependent on the amount of time available!!! Furthermore, he's not uncritically assuming there has to be a beginning event. That assumption is taken as true in the first leg in which the series of events is finite; the assumption is taken as false in the second leg in which the series of events cannot be logically traversed going backward, leading him to conclude they could not have been traversed going forward. Show me clearly how an infinite series of events works without relying solely on the assumptions of physics/mathematics (because infinity IS an assumption in physics/mathematics as it cannot be observed, by definition), and we can talk. If you can't do it without being at least a little fuzzy, don't slam my friend for working with the assumptions he does. If you can't explain infinity any better than you did, don't yell at him for a misunderstanding of what it really is.
As for necessary and contingent, of course they fall outside the scope of modern physics. That's why physics and other branches of science cannot answer some of the questions people try to make them answer.
As for your "kicker", your error is misreading "consistent with" as "identical to." The latter implies that all thinking entities immediately jump to "God" when thinking of infinite, uncaused, prior to existence of universe, etc.... The former merely asks that we examine our notions of God and find them consistent with those requirements. This approach has plenty of historical evidence behind it (what others conceived of God) and isn't crippled by naysayers. The focus is on what we think God is, not what we think the universe is; you've got it backwards.
Your "Claim not proven" section looks neat, but you really don't provide coherent objections to the claims, merely state that the assumptions are incorrect without giving (in my clear) a clearer or more obviously correct definition.
As for his further claims, your entire objection rests on your assertion that "'Essence' and 'essential attributes' are so vague that they can't be meaningfully worked with." Well, I'm sorry that your grasp of those concepts is so weak, but there's a great deal of literature focused entirely on these concepts and clarifying them for those who don't yet comprehend them.
The approach is much the same for your objections to the rest of his assertions: if you don't understand them, they can't be true. From your final responses, I'm led to conclude that you really didn't follow most of his argument. The argument for intelligence is not a "HUGE fallacy"; it says that complex mathematical constructs found in nature are evidence of intelligence (because they aren't accidental, they're intentional.) What part of that don't you understand? I thought it's fairly straightforward. You totally misunderstand the irresistible/immovable dichotomy because you ignored the factor of God's will which resolves the potential contradiction of both existing in the same being. The charge against the existence of the objective moral standard is very weak; in light of the subject matter, it's a very reasonable assumption. Even if that assumption is false and the moral standard is subjective, then God has the prerogative of Creator to establish the supremacy of His moral standard. Finally, the composite element talks about the possibility that God would have a "warring spirit", as it were; if God had such a thing as part of His substance, He would not be infinite (which the argument claims to have already established), or he could become more perfect, also antithetical to infinity. (That doesn't hinge, by the way, on whether you claim to understand what Mike means by infinity or not.)
In summation, your objections to the argument are based on your personal understanding/misunderstanding of base definitions without offering clearer definitions in return. Plugging in your assumptions for someone else's does not an argument make. Take a little more time and learn a little more and come back to this argument after you've learned to tighten up your logic. To your credit, you did read the entire piece and make detailed objections. You just got most of them wrong.
Quick note: I am a devout atheist. Re-read the subject line and giggle, I did. (Hell, I find this line amusing too!)
... hmm, something like CHEMISTRY! Or how about something else just as insignificant ... THERMODYNAMICS! There are many different ways to describe/explain many different phenomenah and physics is about exploring each and every scientifically valid way imagined. This is all part and parcel of the SCIENTIFIC PROCESS.
Another note: I have a B.S. in physics, but code for a living.
Do you believe in the "power" of crystals too? Did yours come from Atlantis, blessed by some mystic that converses with spirits there? Do you sympathize with the X-files character Fox Mulder, because your sister, too, was abducted by aliens? Or did the little buggers go so far as to prod/examine YOUR genitalia? Alright, sorry to be so nasty but this paragraph:
The point is, physics is nothing but a mathematical abstraction for generalized behavior. And that this fact alone bases many of the assumptions of science on shaky ground. It is becoming more and more evident that there are additional levels of interaction at work in all aspects of matter, from the subatomic to the biochemical. The fields of complexity, chaos, self organization all relate to this abstract 'other' quality in this universe of ours, and have a striking symmetry with the Tao and eastern philosophy.
utterly REEKS of "new age" mystical drivel, as does much of your post. Yes, you DO make a very good point with the Mandelbrot example: forest for the trees, got it! (Had it, actually, but thanks for the well-presented reminder.) But you then go on to point out perceived fundemental flaws in physics, such as this "nothing but a mathematical abstraction" bullshit argument you drag out to neatly present some fluffy mystical thinking. Sure, many things in physics are mathematical abstractions but they are more precise than they were in the recent past and they will be more precise (if not completely revised) before you die. Guess what? This means that science, with physics at the vanguard is ALWAYS revising/refurbishing/theorizing ideas, explanations, and mathematics that attempt to explain to varying degrees of completeness the multitudinal plethora of natural phenomenah that nature puts in our path (Thumbing her nose at us all the way too, that bitch). There is much that is explained rather well, within the limits of the HUP (*smack* the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle -- yes I KNOW i can't spell worth a damn). An example you say? Well, lets takes something small, piddling
For some enlightenment I suggest to everyone here read, and re-read The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan.
Okay, now I'm gonna post this near-rant and then cry as moderator after moderator fails to understand what I'm trying to say and ends up moderating me down *sigh*
--
You can be an atheist and still not want to succumb to some weird cross-over sheep disease -- AC
So, you struck a nerve. Like I said, sorry to get so nasty ... it seems I did misunderstand in part.
:P).
However, I think the scientific process/method is more than a simple reductionist method. We (scientists) don't follow anything by rote where it doesn't apply and we do strive to expand methodologies and ways of learning about our universe--always. This means not rejecting new ways of thinking simply because these new ways are new. What it does mean is taking every new thing with a grain of salt (read healthy skepticism) until either it proves itself on it's own merits or falls by the wayside with other chaff (I'll not get into what I consider chaff, my previous post came too damn near it
To address your concept of "traditional reductionist science" I think you may be neglecting the fact that the "traditional" scientific method WILL without a doubt become more complete as the years drudge on by because it is what it is--it will consume and make it's own of any concept/way-of-thinking that proves itself useful to the further understanding of the fascinating realm know as Our Universe. I don't, therefore, see it as limiting but rather as limitless as it will grown to encompass all that we can explain and all that we wish to explain--which I see the Scientific Method doing on a daily basis. (Well, when I can manage to sift out ALL the mindless crap thrown at me in any given day.)
--
You can be an atheist and still not want to succumb to some weird cross-over sheep disease -- AC
your loss.
So I take it that you don't believe in God. Why?
Do you just find it too unlikely that a God exists? Do you assume that since you can't see God, God must be something that someone made up?
If this is the case, then you have no case. You are defending a 'scientific' belief on the basis of a very unlikely event. But you are at the same time condemning religion because of how unlikely the existence of a God is.
btw, you are missing the point of a miracle. It isn't the event that makes it a miracle... it's the timing.
My take on this whole subject is that the concept of "God" is backward. Trying to prove the existence or non-existence of God supposes that the definition of God is axomatic. Every religion I have seen defines God somewhat differently (is God infinite? an individual? engendered? offspringless?) the topic because more of a contest to see who can provide the most "authoritative" ancient documents to support their claim.
From what I have seen, many scientists view God in a way similar to Einstein - not so much as a person as the laws of the universe. There is some evidence that many ancient esoteric sects held this point of view.
But such a view seems somewhat ridiculous to me. How can the non-computable origins of the universe be worthy of anything a god could be? Worship, admiration, or whatever traits psychologists would says the human psyche desires in a god. Ancient gods were largely portrayed as people, or individual beings at the least, not omnipotent or omnipresent but having skills that exceeded any human. As such, the contemporary attempt at merging science with God probably won't be any more real than trying to explain psychology using math.
I'm not a journalist, but I play one on slashdot
Finally! Something I can really comment on.
I am a physicist/ priest and I've found myself being asked to speak on this subject more and more lately. Davies is right on the money when he speaks of compelling witness that creation makes to our spiritual senses. I don't think that the beauty and symmetry of creation can prove the existence of a creator, but it certainly points towards such a thing.
(Thank heavens for Godel's Thm- that there are things which are true which can not be proven true via logic.)
John Polkinghorne, also a priest/physicist has written extensively in the field- though unlike Davies, he doesn't try to prove the existence of God- at least not overtly, but instead writes of how he personally reconciles the two apparently conflicting world views in his own mind.
The two books you might particularly want to check out by Polkinghorne are The Faith of a Physicist and Beyond Science: The Wider Human Context Both are wonderful reads and, if you keep an open mind, might take you someplace you didn't expect to go.
Who says the Pythagoreans were totally wrong!
In illa quae ultra sunt
Consious does have a relationship with QM.
No it dose not! You did not read my post. QM talks about the results of experements. The experementer can be a person OR the film (your example). *You* *choose* what you want to treat classically and what you want to treat quantum mechanically when you predict the outcome of the experement. You can very well choose to treat the lab assistant watching the film quantum mechanically. The consious being that is the lab assistant will be in a supper-position period. Actually, you can declare a reader of the paper you are going to publish about the experiment to be the observer, so that YOU will be in a supper-position of yes/no while you write the paper! This choice is exactly what makes people dislike quantum mechanics, but they are wrong. This wierdness is not really a feature of quamtum mechanics at all. It is a feature of the expermenetal method. Neutonian mechanics has this feature too, but no one noticed since they were never told that they were not allowed to look at part of the experement, i.e. without supper-positions you did not get diffrent results based on diffrent observers. Hell, Quantum mechanics still would not give us very diffrent results when we treat the lab assistant quantum mechanically.
Geez, it is truely amazing how many people can read all these pulp physics books and not understand the most basic principals of the scientific method. They would rather believe a lot of bullshit about how special they are and how consiousness is a fundamental part of the universe instead of just looking at the rules to running an experement.
Note: if your are really video taping the experemnt you better treat the video camera classically since you can not construct a good quantum mechanical model.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Because the answer of "GOD" is acually a non-answer.
If I just go ahead and ask, "What caused the creation of God"? You would say, "God Just Is.(tm) He is infinite."
Then I'd say, "Well that went nowhere. I could have said the 'Universe Just Is. It is Infinite'".
We could go on into an infinite regression of entities, or we can apply Occam's Razor. What is the rational choice?
Actually, God is not falsifiable because we have no terms upon which God can be proven non-existent. Since we can assign whatever attribute we want to God (like omnipotence and omniscience). We can use ad-hoc arguments such as "God works in mysterious ways", or "God does it for the greater good" to explain away any any contrary evidence.
Scientific theories can be, are encourages to be and are regularly - disproven. How about philosophical theories?
Let B = Existence of Purple People Eaters
Let C = Existence of Elvis swiveling his hips on the Darkside of the Moon
Let D = Existence of SNAFOO, the all-powerful, all-knowing, who resides in a magic chocolate dimension where everything is made of chocolate.
Are you getting the point yet, or do I need to conjure some more imaginary beings for you to waffle over?
--
PanDuh!
Power to the People!
Of course not. Like you, God had to personally assemble the blocks of his "Universe Lego Mindstorm" set too. Thats the whole point of Legos.
Of course this brings up the question of God's creator and his "God Lego Mindstorm" set, and God's creator's creator and his "God's Creator Lego Mindstorm" set...
Ouch! That Occam's Razor is sharp!
Thanks for the link to the Tom Waits site...wanted to email you but you don't appear to want /. folk to be able to do that...
"The ocean doesn't want me today."
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
so until this guy can produce actual evidence that we are "meant" to be here (aside from his nigh-religious clinging to this somehow mysterious and supernatural "meaning of existence"), I shall continue to believe otherwise.
Agreed. You aren't meant to be here, Kaufmann. Please report to the nearest termination center immediately. Thank you. Have a nice day.
If you pick the Copenhagen interpretation, there is that "observer" figure and the consciousness of that observer seems to mean something.
consciousness is not a necessary quality of the observer. if you shoot an electron at a wall through a strong magnetic field (properly directed) the electron will choose a direction and its spin will certainly have been 'observed' regardless of whether some conscious entity watched it.
in other words, something dosen't have to be conscious to play the role of the observer in QM.
do you agree?
sh_
Interested in learning Chinese or Japanese? check out Chinese/Japanese-English Dictiona
Yes, I was a little too glib...I meant evidence, not proof.
The cake is a pie
Yeah, occam's razor is sharp.
It's a lot simpler to accept God then to contemplate the infinte machine that would be those mindstorms. =[
--J
"If it is broken, fix it. If it is fixed, improve upon it. This becomes one helluva cycle."
A lot of people feel a need to poo-pah God. I think that we personally owe our exiastance to God, but I also think that God lets us poo-pah on God because we have free will. If we didn't, we could all have a dictorial God and that would be that. :P
I dunno if it's covered in the book, but the latest Discovery mag (no link, I get the dead-tree version) wants to say that subatomic physics are self organizing. This is great, except when I open a box of LEGOs, a car doesn't fall out.
--Joshua
"If it is broken, fix it. If it is fixed, improve upon it. This becomes one helluva cycle."
Well, most physicists haven't, actually;
and those who do, cease to be physicists and become philosophers
In this opinion of this physicist.
Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
Davies argument is one that many Christians, myself included, use to support their belief. That is, God must exist, because he has felt God touch his life. Davies has felt the presence of God through his exploration of physics.
This is an argument that has been around for a long time. Many people say they see evidence of God in the beauty of nature around them, or in the miracle of the birth of a child, or in the peace that prayer brings them. Is this so different than seeing the hand of God in the structure of the universe? Is this any more "reasoned"?
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
>> Spirituality is an attribute of the human mind, not one of the world around us.
;)
True enough (though a hard-core materialist might wonder about the distinction between "the world" and "the mind"), but physics is every bit as much an attribute of the human mind and thus a human social construction as any flavour of "spirituality" you'd care to mention.
Check out Paul Feyerabend's "Against Method" for some interesting arguments _for_ the applicability of heremeneutics to science. Even if you don't agree with his ideas, you'll have to agree that his team (the "Epistemological Anarchists") has the coolest name!
(Now I know that a lot of people use such arguments about the basis of science to do things like attempt to equate astronomy and astrology. I think they're wrong, but I also think that the best way to argue against such mistakes is on the basis of the results of the two modes of knowledge, not on what can easily be written off as "anti-minority oppression" or some such silliness).
This is the EXACT quote that I'd cut from the article, and yours would have been pretty much the reply that I would have posted!
maybe I'll add something to it.
I was a physics major, and a lot of the reason why I chose it, was to answer these very questions. Sadly, by saying what he did, the author implies that there's some sort of driving force behind the universe - in other words we are destined to be here.
Unless the author stopped at Classical Mechanics, he'd have realized that the idea of destiny is thrown out the window with Quantum Mechanics...
but then again, I stopped at the BS level...physics is a bitch.
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea.
(adapted from Gandhi)
My 2 cents:
cent #1:
Occam's Razor works for math, but is very dodgy when applied to touchy-feely subjects like god's a existance.
cent #2:
I don't believe in a god or spiritual world for the insightful reasons you gave in the first paragraph.
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
Well, that's opinion, right? Personally, I can't convince myself that humanity is a cosmic accident, not because I don't think there's enough evidence supporting it, but because what I believe is simply different.
Go ahead, try to be unbiased and impartial, on any subject at all. I can guarantee that it can't be done. So Davies is just showing what he thinks, and even if he seems to bend the evidence to support himself, this is how people communicate.
free speach
Did you mean: free speech
Warning: What follows is going to offend many people. Also, I have not read this book, only the
review, so you may be justified in marking this as Offtopic.
Now to the meat of this post.
Despite all the science I have heard or learned from my elementary to college education, I have never found any plausible -scientific- arguement for the "creation of the universe". One of the best tests, IMHO, is to ask, "What caused x?", where x is any cause of the creation of the universe.
But perhaps the more important question is, why are you so against a God that you discard the possibility of one? Does not a good scientist write down all hypotheses before evaluating them?
And for all the words in a book, or the discoveries that we make, how does this change your life? What have you really gained? If you continue to live your life as before, what was the use?
A confession which I am proud to make: I am a born-again Christian. I did not become one from high flung arguments or even from reading a Bible.I follow Christ because he has made a personal appearence in my life. I have tested his claims, and found them valid. I have called on his name, and heard a response.
I have discovered that God is for me, not against me.
Do you eagerly wait for the newest scientific discovery? So do I, but of even more joy and value to me is every new discovery I make about Jesus.
Think about it.
What came before the Big Bang? Hum, it must have outside of time...
It does looked at from the application side of 'rational thought', ie considerations of burden of proof etc. However, it "can be no trivial detail" for a supporter of rational thought, because reason is itself predicated upon this detail.
One could not imagine, rationally or otherwise, what the cosmos would be like, had this unlikely event (that is to say the origin of the only known consciousness on a planet at the edge of some non-descript galaxy) not taken place, if it had not taken place.
What is the basis for your belief (assuming you have one) in the epistemological efficacy of reason anyway. Why should the universe be such, and why should our minds be such, that rational thought can tells us anything useful about the world at all?
To tell the truth I accept the validity of my reasoning (and thus engage in reasoned argument such as this) very much on this basis. I suspect, however, there is something circular (which normative reason of course forbids) in attempting to ground reason in this fashion.
Such an approach, however is not the only way to ground reason. Those who are fortunate enough to be able to convince themselves in the existence of a divine creator (this I have not been able to achieve) can argue that God imparted reason to us precisely to understand His/Her/Its creation, thus guaranteeing its epistemological efficacy.
A more approach sophisticated perhaps, would be to stress the unknowability of the word, execept through our perceptions and application of reason. In a sense the universe is reason. Or at least reason is the universe's self-consciousness, the only way the universe is known. Thus a "supporter of rational thought" might find the fact that such consciousness (and with it reason) arose, to be anything but "trivial."
Check out _The Tao of Physics_ by Frijtof Capra.
And who would have done these 'infinite' number of experiments as well?
Reasons to believe is a good site about the Christian creation model. There is much proof of the Genesis story. (Reasons to believe is an organization founded by Hugh Ross, a brilliant astro-physicist)
It's nice to see a connection between science and God for once.
The photographic film is not the observer - you are the observer when you see the film.
Find a good book on QM if you really want to understand this
There's a rather amusing quantum mechanics argument which goes something like this:
As an unobserved universe is just a large probability wave function and we only observe one universe, it is inevitable that the universe we observe has sentient life in it.
To put it another way, no matter how remote the possibility of sentient life coming about, it will exist because they (or us) will be there to observe that universe.
Just thought I'd throw that into the "Impossible to Disprove" box.
We know that the universe is orderly and has rules, there's no need to assume anything.
All theories about the origin of physical laws are just that - theories. AFAIK superstring theory is the only area attempting to do this, but i know basically nothing about it.
The point I am trying to make is that a sentient supernatural entity is not a valid default whever we do not understand something, any more than "its just chance" is. Without any evidence, both are merely saying that we have no explanation.
Funny, I read all these quotes as "There's stuff we don't understand, therefore there must be a god". Once you get to this stage it ceases to be science.
The very existance of everything around us, and the magnificent inclenations in humans that are not found in any animal are great evidences. Well becuase you dismiss it doesn't mean I don't see it.
What exactly do you mean by magnificent inclenations that are to be found in humans, but not in animals?
If there is hope, it lies in the trolls.
Therefore your belief that we are not meant to be here is as groundless as the opposite one.
/does/ in fact increase linear than that it's speed increases and decreases, but that your measurements were a coincidence?
.....ok, bad example, evil example; I forgot about poor Heisenberg there for a moment. Still, what I'm trying to say: go for the simpeler interpretation until your findings suggest otherwise.
No, consider:
You're doing some nice, not so very precise physicsexperiment. Let's say you're measuring the speed of an object that you're dropping from a platform at 10m above the ground. It's quite likely you'll find that the speed of this object increases linear. Then isn't there far more ground to believe that the speed
If there is hope, it lies in the trolls.
But surely you don't believe both in the existence of a God and that there is any thruth in science? If science can't explain everything, then can it anything at all?
If there is hope, it lies in the trolls.
The Dice are called "Free Will", God allows us to make up or own minds. This is akin to tossing a pair of dice. We make our own future by the choices we decide on.
But what of the Super String theory? How does that relate to QM and Einstien's theories?
...and I don't know of a reproducible experiment which would cause someone to fall in love with me.
You simply cannot test and control all aspects of human life, no matter how sceptical you think are.
. . . for people on both sides.
We'll probably never prove the issue either way; in fact, you can probably prove that it is impossible to do so. Sure, it might be possible to prove that many explanations could have happened. (Many possible scenarios, each with different probabilities of actually occuring; is that so foriegn an idea?) But exactly one of them actually happened, proven by the fact that our current situation exists.
I am a christian, and I do not fear the theory of evolution having validity (i.e., a possibility that it is true)
Why do scientists believe that proving the validity of the theory of evolution, proves that that is the scenario that caused our current situation? Such foolishness would not be excepted at any other time on any other topic.
Why do christians fear the theory of evolution? God does not want you to prove to yourself that he exists. He wants you to have faith.
Of course there's the possibility that the one paper clip dropped onto the pile is infected with something that will eventually spread throughout. I hope the paper clip of humanity can "infect" the universal "pile" :-)
But this is a different topic. I suspect "meaning" in the author's sense of the word is related to some pre-existing meaning, not simply the effect we have on the universal scale.
Yeah, I have the Touchstone edition sitting right here: (c)1993. I first read it in 1994, and this book has been the topic of numerous atheism vs. theism discussion forums for years. So what's next from Katz? A review of Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control" ?? ;-))
Everything comes from philosophy. If u think about it, everyhting in science was at one time just a concept that someone had to prove or had proven for them later. Philosophy is power, w/o it we would have no metaphysical boundries (justice, Time, ect...).
Hmmm... is this a troll or an attempt at humour?
Personally, I think it's funny.
cheers,
> Can you logically prove that believing in murder is wrong?
Although Mr. AC may not see it as such, this is actually a tough question that warrants a little analysis. For simplicity, let's consider the kind of murder that nearly everyone considers to be wrong: let's say a man was murdered by robbers who then went on to steal his money (money being the motive.) The robbers say "murder is good. By the simple act of murder, we gain money to spend on ourselves." However, suppose we have a government which exists for the purpose of stopping the descent into a pre-human state which would result if everyone were to think in the manner of the robbers. Suppose also that each citizen of this government enters into a contract with the government in which he or she gives up some rights (the right to steal) in return for a basic measure of safety. People will agree to this because such an arrangement benefits everyone. It is simply common sense. The idea that morals should serve the people is not selfish, it is practical.
Note: for a more complete version of the social-contract argument, read Hobbes. My writing is mainly a rehash of his main ideas. Notice that Hobbes does not bring god into his system of morality at all, yet it is still morality. What a concept!
P.S. If you're not up to reading Hobbes, read Calvin and Hobbes. It's almost as deep, and many times funnier!
-- Religion is a major weapon in the war against reality.
>Most athiests (weak atheists, empirical agnostics) will happily change their opinion if evidence for the existence of God is presented.
I hope I'm not nitpicking here, but I consider myself a strong atheist, and I would believe in god if there were evidence to support this belief. At the present time, however, I see no evidence soon to be arriving and, from the statements of many theists I have talked to, it never will, because "God wants us to believe on faith." To this I respond, half jolkingly, by asking how god can want something if he doesn't exist yet. I call "faith" gulliblity, and people who buy into it fools and cowards.
BTW, I utilize the point in your third paragraph very often when I am confronted with a "rational" theist (if there is such a thing), and I have come to understand that these people have invoked god (invented him, really) to give them purpose and hope, because they are too weak or lazy to search for these the hard way, or too optimistic to consider the possibility they don't exist.
-- Religion is a major weapon in the war against reality.
Whenever I hear talk about Pascal's wager, remember that Far Side comic where Colonel Sanders meets his maker, who turns out to be a giant chicken. At least I think that's the far side, and not just a figment of my sick, messed-up imagination.
-- Religion is a major weapon in the war against reality.
If you don't like to accept the fact that you, too, are a machine, and you decide to invent a God to comfort you in this cold, hard, lonely mechanical world, so be it--I can't stop you. Many people take this approach. Althouch I find theistic thinking aesthetically repulsive, I concede that in many practical respects, it is neither inferior nor superior to atheism as far as our insignificant, petty, day-to-day lives are concerned; I should not be arrogant and say that religion is for the weak--indeed perhaps I do not see the great advantages in having a soul--but I will say that religion often goes hand in hand with dogmatism, and dogmatism is the enemy of the individual, (of the soul, if you will,) and should be avoided at all costs.
-- Religion is a major weapon in the war against reality.
I have to start by saying that I haven't read this book, but the quotes Jon Katz has picked to illustrate its theme make me think that it must be at least a good part "scientific" drivel - and I don't mean that its science isn't solid - that I don't know. But any scientist who truly believes that scientific rational thought is the only way to understand the "true nature" of life, the universe, and everything, is either not a very good scientist or is deluding himself.
Only in science, and especially mathematics, have the ideals of the Greek philosophers been upheld (and in philosophy itself, of course). When it comes to addressing the really deep issues of existence, such as the origin and meaning of the universe, the place of human beings in the world, and the structure and organization of nature, there is a strong temptation to retreat into unreasoned belief."
I would venture, as a scientist myself, to say that science and so-called rational thought is in itself formed often out of "unreasoned beliefs". We form hypotheses that seem plausible and then try to prove them wrong through reproducible experimentation, but it is hardly ever that we absolutely prove something undoubtedly RIGHT. (Take evolution, for example, which I totally believe in, but it has not been PROVEN TRUE, per se, there is just a great amount of evidence in its favor.) Evidence in favor of a hypothesis is sometimes only in favor of said hypothesis IF you CHOOSE to see it that way - others may not. Are they thinking more or less rationally than you? Who knows - it depends on the situation.
Science is performed by emotional humans, each with separate beliefs they bring with them from their emotional state, motives, upbringing, and culture. WE ARE NOT, AS A RULE, ALWAYS OR EVEN USUALLY rational. Scientists fall into a trap if they don't recognize this about themselves. Not I am definately not a born again Christian (or even a Christian at all for that matter, execpt I believe a really cool guy named Christ once existed) but how can I say with absolute certainty that my thoughts and beliefs are better and more right than anothers beliefs which happen to be born out of religion and still stay COMPLETELY UNBIASED AND RATIONAL? The answer is, I can't. Thats why this quote bugs me so much:
"The modern world is plagued by a greater diversity of beliefs than ever,"
I for one don't believe that the world is plagued by diversity of beliefs - thats probably a pretty cool thing at its core, even if I hate the beliefs of some. It sounds like the author is a bit of a scientific missionary, if you will, believing people must hear the message of rationalism to "make it into heaven" as the christians believed each person, whether they were born in the heart of Africa or whatever, had to hear the word of God or they would be doomed without a chance. Just because I'm a scientist doesn't mean that I am a more rational being than you or even my cat.
-"I eat a scoobysnack, I take a disco nap" - bboys
It's all about odds. Pascal's Wager boils down to saying that it's merely not a safe bet. I have a friend who is constantly irritated by people basing their belief in God on the idea that it is unlikely that the world came into existance on its own. He points out that someone in a world that was created by chance couldn't know if, unlikely as it may be, he *was* created in astronomical chance, as he sees identical odds as if he had not been. That argues itself, though. While it may be true, and even if there is no evidence otherwise, I wouldn't bet horses on those odds. J. T. MacLeod, faith nut
We are truly meant to be here." I used to hear this crap in sunday school. Why can't people fathom their own insignifigance?
So you have no purpose, no underlying reason to exist? How depressing for you.
Why do you read slashdot or get up in the morning or do what ever it is that you do? Why bother existing anyway? How hopeless life must be to lead for you.
So without purpose what is it that you hope for, or find meaning in?
i think an interesting way to look at the evolution of intelligence in the universe is from a darwinian "survival of the fittest" perspective. that is, does the existence of intelligent life forms within the universe lead to a "fitter" *universe* or not? it's quite possible that the universe as a whole will survive best when it's filled with intelligence, especially if that intelligence eventually tries to figure out answers to questions like "how do we stop the universe from gradually dispersing thru entropy?" and "how to we create new universes from the current one?"
It is indeed a very interesting subject. Well, let's see if I can remember this... what you do is, you take a couple of photons (or neutrons, or particles of your choice, but photons are easy to work with), and you cause them to interact in such a way that they are "entangled". This means that they are jointly described by a common two-body wavefunction. In other words, their states of being are fundamentally linked. The simple way to do this with photons involves polarizing a laser beam (I think. I'm not an experimentalist, so I'm sure it's much more complicated than that, and please correct me if I'm wrong). Anyway, you set up two particles in an entangled state. You then separate the particles, being very careful not to disturb their entanglement (this is apparently tricky). Now, suppose that you observe one of the particles. In the case of photons, this means measuring the polarization. Now, when you measure the polarization, you collapse the wavefunction, and since both particles are described by the same wavefunction, you collapse the wavefunction for the other particle as well. This means that by measuring the polarization of one photon, you've effectively measured the polarization of the photon across the room as well.
Now here's the kicker: in the Copenhagen interpretation of QM, the second particle doesn't have a polarization until the wavefunction collapses. This means that by performing a measurement at one end of the laboratory, you've (apparently instantaneously) created the polarization of the other photon at the other end of the lab. Thus the disagreement between QM and local realism.
What J.S. Bell did was to put all this on mathematical footing. He started with the assumption of local realism, that is to say, that the second photon does have a real polarization before measurement, and that no influence can be connecting the two particles (no faster-than-light information transfer). He uses these assumptions to derive a set of inequalities, called Bell's Inequalities, which the statistics of the measurements (at both ends) in such an experiment should obey if local realism is true. A number of people (including Ray Chao at Berkeley) have performed such experiments, and they find that Bell's Inequalities are violated in exactly the way predicted by QM. Thus the experimental evidence seems to indicate that local realism is false, and supports QM. No experiment is ever final, of course, but the evidence is pretty strong.
Sadly enough, it's also been shown that it's impossible to use this effect to transfer information, since you have to have the data from both ends of the experiment to see the effect (aw shucks).
It is still possible that there is a nonlocal realistic theory underlying QM, but locality, or Einstein causality as it's sometimes called, is pretty well established, whereas realism is difficult if not impossible to establish. I don't see why people are so attached to reality anyway.
A couple of points in response to this:
Quantum Mechanics seriously blurs the distinction between "the human mind" and "the world around us." The observer and the observed are not separate systems, but are inescapably linked, part of the same whole system. Furthermore, one gets the sense, in studying Quantum Mechanics (which is what I do for a living, btw, I'm a physics grad student), that the whole system is in some sense self-aware. Einstein isn't the only physicist who uses God as a metaphor in physics. I've heard professors say things like "Bell's Theroem means that God himself doesn't know where a particle is before the collapse of the wave function." Anyway, there is at the very least a place for spirituality in Quantum Mechanics.
Since we are part of "the world around us," and spirituality, or rather, I would say, simply spirit, is a part of us, it is therefore a part of the world. Spirit is a property we posess, as can be seen with a little introspection, though it's tricky and depends on your point of view. If you're ever lucky enough to meet God, you'll see that spirit is clearly a property he posesses as well (in much greater abundance). Therefore, why shouldn't physics have something to say about this aspect of the Universe? I think separating ourselves from our science is a major mistake. Objectivity is the epistemological stance of which objectification is the social practice. Or, to put it another way, spirituality, religion, mysticism, God, miracles, and so on, are all clearly part of human experience. I think that science should have more to say about this than to simply dismiss it as blind superstition, and its results as mere coincidence.
Furthermore, many of the founders of Quantum Mechanics disagreed with you. Bohr, for instance, took the Taoist yin-yang as his coat of arms when he was knighted. He wasn't kidding around. He saw a deep connection between Taoism and QM, and make no mistake, Taoism is profoundly spiritual.
I personally believe that God is the Universal Observer. When we say that the wave function has collapsed because an observation took place, it was God who did the observing. However, regardless of your personal beliefs about the nature of God, I think that physics provides an excellent context in which to ask questions about the nature of reality. It doesn't necessarily provide the answers, mind you, but it does provide us with a good vocabulary for asking the questions.
No offense intended, and God bless...
--Eliduc
I'm not sure that I agree that the film is an observer. If the film wasn't there and the photons just hit the wall instead, would not the wave function still collapse? Does this mean that walls are observers too? Why not simply consider the universe itself as an observer, and thus in some sense aware if not exactly conscious?
There's still Von Neumann's collapse of the infinite regress. I don't get the impression that measurement theory is a fully settled issue (Ray Chao, at Berkeley, for instance, is still working on it, and there's this guy at Harvard whose name I can't remember at the moment who has some really wacked out theories on the subject, involving cloud chambers and how we're like them). I think there's still significant question about the nature of observation and so forth, such that I don't think we can definitively say whether the film is an observer or not.
With the exception of people like Judith Klinman's work on nuclear tunneling, I haven't seen much real QM applied to biology...mind providing us a reference as to why one need invoke subatomic particles to explain dissapative structures in biological cells (or in hot liquids for that matter)..10 bucks says you don't have one.
Wake up, man. Fossils don't prove anything. They prove exactly what I said that the earth is: hundreds of millions (correction: billions) of years old. No scientific journal has ever presented any sort of evidence for evolution.
First of all, I don't read those anti-evolution pamphlets and such that many people who believe in God pass around. They're utterly ridiculous and in my opinion lower the credibility of the Christian community.
Second of all, I'm not a fundamentalist, and don't think they have any solid ground to stand on either. So you can forget about that.
How do you know that later editors didn't re-write the story?
Ever hear of the Dead Sea Scrolls? Of course, they are being translated by scientists who are predominantly Christian... guess that means that it's still one big conspiracy, eh?
The only connection between the two is the one that people like you demand on, simply because you insist that Genesis is literal truth.
Maybe I'm having memory lapse... I don't recall ever making a connection. I thought I was the one arguing against evolution!
"The former hypothesis can be supported entirely by conventional science."
Technically, incorrect. There is no evidence or proof of evolution (I don't mean species adaptation, I mean the hypothesis that humans evolved from lower primates which evolved from fish). It may be the easiest to believe based on logic alone, but no evidence has ever been procured to support it. Therefore, it is not the "truth by default."
There is, however, proof of ancient scripture fortelling many events, including the exact geneology of Christ, among other things. However, I do not offer this as evidence as the proof of the truthfulness of the Bible (more on this later).
The principle argument evolution has on its side is that the earth (through carbon dating) has been tested to be hundreds of millions of years old, and that since this seemingly contradicts the Bible's timetable, then God must not exist. I believe this jump in logic to be one of the biggest holes in the arguments against God (obviously, God was not necessarily using the Earth's timetable before he even built it).
Clearly everyone must try to discover the truth themselves. I believe, however (speaking from my Christian bias) that books such as these, written by men, do not contain exact truth. I also believe that no amount of hard evidence can ever convince people to believe in God either. The best proof comes from God himself, which is told about in James 1:5.
Sorry I'm not trying to sound preachy -- just all this duscussion about truth, you know... I couldn't help it!
Ryan Kirk
Topflight Productions
Ryan Kirk
Topflight Productions
You mean all those autopsy videos and stuff are a scam?!!
it is odd that at a quantum level, particles seem to know whether or not we are watching them, and behave differently if we are. Sounds like a code optimization if I've ever heard one. If (no one is looking) don't decide on a state, use all states else do the calculation and decide on a state Now, the fact that there may be optimizations in the source code of the Universe that take into account conscious beings seems to point to the fact that during the design phase of the Universe, someone planned for consciousness. Maybe they left it out in 1.0, or maybe its just the result of feature creep. :)
I suspect that attempting to find proof for the existence of God misses the point somewhere; there are serious problems with falsifiability. I propose to use the Adams Babel Fish defence :)
God exists, with an almost certainty. Whay anyone would pollute the issue with our primitive physics is beyond me.
Physics may be the road we travel to meet God, but I don't think it is a useful oracle into the existence of God.
Carl Sagan and others have pointed out and attempted to explain the likelyhood of other life-bearing planets. Granted, these people are physicists, but they did not believe what they could not prove. Simply put, CS did not believe in the traditional God.
However, given the massive universe and the theories about space-time possibly being mutable, it is likely that are are civilizations extant that are (technologically) far, far ahead of our own.
These civilizations may be infinitely far ahead of us; in orders of magnitude larger than the gap between human and amoeba.
Hatred (in its many forms). Economic barbarism. Pollution for profit. Sexism. Murder. Greed. Jelousy. Stereotypes. I would say we are the cavemen of the future, but there is evidence that cavemen were more civilized than us.
Rather than stealing our planet or cooking us on grills for an evening snack, these advanced civilizations probably have little or no interest in us, and are simply following their own pursuits.
Watch that movie "Contact". They may not even send us the plans; we probably have to devise the thing ourselves.
Physics may be the road to Godhood, but in its current state, is far too primitive to say much if (anything) about God.
The steps humanity needs to overcome before meeting God:
1) Fusion. The elimination of fossil fuels and pollution, and the provision of unlimited energy to build homes, transport food and products, make and distrbute clean water, etc.
2) "One World". Somehow, the various power factions need to be moderated to the point where they no longer want to rule the world, or control the populations. The time and intellect spent on war machines can be used for other pursuits.
3) Given 1) and 2), we can move back to the future; it is likely that in the new utopia, many will desire to simply relax in Universities and libraries "pondering" physics and math with the aid of humn/computer interfaces and massively parallel high speed computers. In turn, this will lead to a revolution in math and physics.
4) The advanced physics will allow humanity to circumvent space-time. We join God, finally.
The End. (Begining?)
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Personally, I think it's humor -- if for no other reason than it's too long to be a mere troll. Trolls get bored too quickly . . .
I have no
If the very fact of our existence automatically implies the existence of something called God, then it is absurd to be an atheist IF you also allow that "God" can be a synonym for "random process occurring over billions of years".
For example, I hold that humanity is the result of unthinking processes that tend toward randomness. I am also an atheist, under the terms that I use to define God (eg: I require that "god" have a purposeful intellect). If we say that "god" does not require a purposeful intellect, then a random process could be god, and I am automatically not an atheist under those definitions.
Everything hinges on definitions.
And I'm not even going to get into the whole question of an "immanent purpose" in the universe.
So I guess all I'm trying to say is that's it's not absurd to be an atheist, even under the definitions you appear to be using . . .
But hey, I could be wrong.
I have no
How do you know they don't make that recognition? Maybe the consciousness of playing cards transcends the realm of humanly-knowable facts . . .
I have no
WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!
I do not accept this at all. I have NEVER accepted "as an act of faith" that the universe is not absurd, and I used to be a research scientist (note: yes, I held these beliefs at that time as well).
I really, really really hate it when people like Davies go around spouting off about what I "must accept" or "must believe" as a scientist.
The very fact that he is able to make statements like this proves, to me, that Davies isn't a very good scientist . . .
I have no
Ok, for those who scoffed at my reply about Physicists and Religion. Example #2, found on slashdot. Food for thought. JonKatz seemed to thinks so :-)
Eh...
In our world, 3 (OK ok 4) dimensional scientists try to explain 4 dimensional phenomena with models of varying validity. The very concept of science (exempt mathematics) is based on 4- dimensional approximations (we're talking "physical" dimensions here, not mathematical) of which the fourth is only observable in one direction ("arrow of time"-concept). The concept of multiple dimensions is prevalent in maths (and some physics models) but is by definition incomprehensible to us.
Who can claim that the next step in evolution is not to expand our very conciousness? It seems reasonable to me that in future generations (maybe on other planets) the human race may become "5-dimensional" or something like that. Of course, it's meaningless to us right now and that's why questions and arguments like this is utterly pointless.
A good number of religions support these thoughts (even christianity, but the message has IMHO been lost and misunderstood) so these are entirely my own thoughts.
Anyway, there's a lack of nomenclature and serious research on these areas, so I guess people like me are going to be the laughing stock for many generations. =)
return -ENOSIG;
Y'all missed something!
At the core of every 'reasoned' belief, at the core of every mathematical proof is a set of preliminary and unescapable axioms. you can't make any kind of reasoned proof without starting without some kind of faith assumption. I suppose the faith assumptions that davies is using (but not admitting) would be the faith in reason as the ultimate path to truth, of the sovereign existentence of mankind, the intrinsic desire of mankind to learn and improve... you've all got some kind of faith assumptions, you might as well admit it! There is no such thing as religious neutrality, everyone believes in something.
bvooste
"Wise men learn more from fools than fools from wise men." Cato
"The truth has a million faces, but there is only one truth."
Hermann Hesse
You are quite right when you say that there is no hidden spirituality in physics. However, you also make it sound like 'the human mind' and 'the outside world' are mutually exclusive, when in fact they are anything but.
I personally believe that the marriage of theosophy and science is a great thing. There are many who would argue, perhaps yourself included, being atheist, that concepts such as 'God' and 'higher purpose' are absurd. Would you have us believe that we are, indeed, a product of randomness? That the fact that the species Homo Sapiens is capable of rationality and imagination was an incidental effect of some long-forgotten process of the universe around us?
I think the problem in such matters as this lies in a communication breakdown. People saying things and not really going into what they mean. For instance, why do you call yourself atheist? Atheism, in its most fundamental form, is truly absurd. I'm certainly not presuming to tell you your own beliefs, and I don't want you to infer that, but seriously, is it rational to believe that there is no such thing as god? There was just another communication breakdown. God. This is where all the misunderstanding comes from. The definition of 'God' is not so clear-cut as some think. What do you mean when you say you don't believe in God? If you are on the most basic level, then God is nothing more than that which created us. And since, indeed, we DO exist, then so does god. God doesn't have to be in the likeness of a person, God doesn't need to love us, and God doesn't need to be self-aware at all. Whether you believe in religion or not is not the same as whether you believe in god or not. Again, forgive me, but your argument seems to root in that by atheist you meant that you don't believe in god. It is absurd not to believe in god.
Whether you want to admit it or not, we were created. We are here now as proof. Which means that God, in some form, does or perhaps did exist. Now I am not talking about a burning bush, or a voice from the sky, or a kind and all-knowing grandfather figure, or a multi-appendaged yogi, or a middle aged man who was exposed to such violent torture so long ago. That is religion. This has nothing to do with religion. Religion is bunk. This particular book has nothing to do with religion. It seeks to arouse awareness in the origins of our existence, and not from a purely scientific standpoint. Spirituality is not the same as religion. I think that the vast majority of the human race finally realizes that the answers to the questions that we have traditionally used religion for are not there. The major religions in the world really do nothing to seriously explain our origins or our purpose. The few sadistic ones aside, religious belief does more to tell you how to live than anything else. If you have ever read the Bible or the Quran, the respective authors placed much more care in writing the parables that act as a moral guide than in writing about creation, or apocalypse. I mean, come on, the book of revalations started as a letter to Christian churches under siege in the middle east to give them a little courage. Now people read it as if it is the word of divinity. It makes me laugh. But i digress.
IMHO, the only reason conventional religion still exists is that it is so far rooted in tradition, and humans have a tendency to revel in status quo. That, and the fact that some people just need a security blanket or an invisible friend. Even still, religions texts are unsurpassed when it comes to interesting fables. They rival modern authors in complexity in some cases.
I don't have the answers, but I believe that The Mind of God touches on some things that everyone should come to realize, that as we continue to advance as a race, spirituality and science will become one in the same. This book shows that it can be done. It may be hard to fathom, but there will come a day when we become so advanced, that we will surpass our current notion of 'God', and perhaps go out, and start life a-spinning on some distant planet. There is no power greater than the power of creation. For too long, people have been looking for answers in that mysterious nether that has come to be known as ignorance, I think it's time we started truly looking.
Sorry to have shot down your half-formed flame of something you don't understand. Doug Adams is a good author, too bad you are trying to use his work for such a dark purpose.
---
"I think not," said Descartes, and promptly disappeared.
There is no connection between god and physics. It is pure silliness to expect god to pop out of an equation. Come on, guys. religion is metaphysics. You can't prove it, and all you can rely upon is your faith.
Do you really mean 'proof', or would 'evidence' be more accurate? Proof is sometimes difficult to come by. That's why I used the word 'probably' when making the statement regarding the existence of living ceolacanths. I am not aware of any observable, living ceolacanths, only the evidence of recently deceased examples and that from third party observations.
""You can't believe [the world is round] because there's no proof of [a flat earth]!"
I think you meant "of a round earth". But anyway, in this case, it is indeed not logical to believe in a round earth until such time as evidence that the earth is round is found. (I would note that such evidence was known to the ancient greeks, BTW)."
No, I meant it the way it appears. It just doesn't work as well as an opposite and should have been worded differently. The attempt was to show that the example given didn't work. Should have stopped with the coelacanth.
I'm sure you must have meant that, "...such evidence was known to the ancient geeks, BTW)."
I knew that! -- Ed Grimley
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
'You can't believe [unicorns don't exist] because there's no proof of [unicorns existing]!'
The rest is left to the reader."
Not so many years ago this might have read,
"You can't believe [coelacanths are still living] because there's no proof of [living coelacanths]!"
But then one is caught off the coast of Madagascar, later one turns up in nets off the coast of Japan and recently a fresh one was spotted in a South American fish market. Travel back in time a bit more and we might have read,
"You can't believe [the world is round] because there's no proof of [a flat earth]!"
This is not intended to be an apologetic for the existence of unicorns (although if new types of fossils are being found on occasion that possibility can not emphatically be ruled out). The purpose is to point out that the insertion of a variable which is commonly held to be true does not necessarily make your counterpoint a true statement.
In fact, the statement that something is not possible [cold fusion, anti-gravity] or does not exist [unicorns, God] requires absolute knowledge which would make one at least a unicorn or, more probably, God. We can state with confidence that living coelacanths probably do exist without absolute knowledge because the proof lies within the scope of our finite set of known things.
carlos
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Proof read twice and still missed it!
"Sorry, boss. I've cut this board three times and it's still too short!"
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Oh sure, that might be the most rational position, but what fun is it? Can you *prove* everything? Can you prove that all of the other users of Slashdot are real people, and not just some AI gone horribly wrong? Are you reserving judgement on that?
Besides, think about all the perks religious people get -- free holidays, invisible friends, an inflated sense of moral worth... are you going to give all that up just to be rational? Just make up your own religion -- there's no proof that the Invisible Pink Unicorn doesn't exist, and it doesn't it just feel like the universe is incomplete without her? Who knows, maybe you'll get luckly like L. Ron, and it'll take.
--matt (a strong atheist, sometimes a taoist, a Bokononist, or a follower of the IPU)
--
share and enjoy
I must concur with some other /.ers and wonder what is coming over JonKatz ... it seems odd to me that he would consider such a statement as the above rational.
To begin with, when a scientist flatly states "I cannot believe" he is stating that, in fact, he is unable to do his job. If he cannot even entertain the possibility that, in fact, random chance and circumstance led to the creation of a species of intelligent (and likely unremarkable) beings, then how can he consider some of the even greater mysteries he may be forced to deal with? Science is not about denying what can or cannot happen; it is about the suspension of disbelief. God has no place in the laboratory, unless the purpose is to prove or disprove his existence. If scientists cannot remain secular, any theory can be put forth that would be sustainable by a simple "because it just is" or "because god made it that way" or "we weren't meant to know that (yet)."
Now, I must inquire, how is our involvement with the universe "intimate"? The "fundamental significance" of our existence is that, in a universe with nearly limitless possibilities, we just happened to come along. What evidence does Davies provide that we are, in fact, "meant to be here" other than the fact that we exist? As poet Stephen Crane once wrote:
A man said to the universe:
'Sir, I exist!'
'However,' replied the universe,
'The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.'
To claim that existence is evidence for meaning is absurd. If homo sapiens has conciousness as a by-product of countless mindless accidents in a chaotic universe, then Davies will never know it, because he has already closed himself off to the possibility that it may, in fact, be true.
If you want to read a book about science theory written by an honestly skeptical, secular scientist, go read something by the late Carl Sagan (I suggest Dragons of Eden, The Demon Haunted World, or Billions and Billions), or if you're looking for secular astrophysics try Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe. But leave this book where it belongs, on the store shelves.
--Forager
----------------------------
student of animation and the fine arts
You say that mixing up philosophy and physics doesn't make sense, and I must disagree. While they are indeed very different by definition, there are still connections between the two. People are compelled by both, and both are fueled by the human mind's necessity to question. While many people with strong religious beliefs never question them, the original beliefs came from man's desire to know, from questions. Science as we know it and the methods of exploring and the desire to explore all came from questions, many of them being the same questions... "Why are we here?" "How did we get here?" etcetra...
Absolutely. The Elegant Universe is one of the most insightful, clear, uncompromising, yet down-to-earth books I've ever seen written about modern physics theory. It covers topics such as Special and General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and Superstring Theory in the most simple, powerful, elegant, and memorable terms I've ever read. And believe me, I've read a lot of this stuff (my undergraduate degree is in Physics and Mathematics, both of which are pet interests I've pursued since then).
Also, unlike the Mind of God, this book (a) IS new - published in 1999 - and (b) does not subject itself to fanciful pseudoscience and speculation.
Don't get me wrong, I'm the first person to open my trap about the interrelations between relativity and quantum mechanics and spirituality, but at that point (as several slashdotters have pointed out) it ceases to become science. File it under philosophy. Read this book (The Elegant Universe, by Brian Greene). I guarantee you won't regret it. And I also guarantee that you won't be overwhelmed by technical terms and mumbo jumbo; Greene's pedagogical style is as brilliant as his writing.
You can believe in a divine plan without thinking that we are the final goal of creation. What if the creator uses evolution to get what he wants? We may just be one step in the chain, but that doesn't mean that the universe is an acciedent.
C++ programmers do it with class.
Perl hackers do it quick and dirty.
I've gotta learn perl.
However, someone said the symmetry of universe may point to a fact such as God's existence. That's not true, the point is that we are so much biased to believe we are, ourselves, God's entities, we think because we like symmetry and find it wonderful it may prove the existence of something like a master chief with a so superior mind it is almost identical as ours.
If there is nobody in the forest, is the falling tree making noise?
If nobody is in the universe, would it be so much wonderful?
BTW, if God exists he just doesn't care at us, so, I don't care at him, since I was made at its image.
I got it back when it first came out. I havn't really read it since, but I found it to be something less than convincing in its spiritual arguments. That's not at all to say that it's a worthless book; Davies is a better than decent expositor of physics. Still, Brian Greene's Elegant Universe is head and shoulders above the Mind of God both as an exposition and as a snapshot of the modern frontiers of physics.
-N
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
I'm not sure that the burden of proof automatically falls on the party making "the affirmative claim" in such matters (sure, in the absence of decisive evidence one way or another, y'all can believe what you like), but it does seem to me that Davies incurs that burden by implying that there exist compelling reasons for believing as he does. Doesn't his own rhetoric oblige him to state what those reasons are?
There is a difference between saying "I do not believe that the fact [?] that the universe has generated self-awareness through conscious beings is a trivial detail" and asserting that "[t]his can be no trivial detail" (my emphasis). In the latter instance, one needs to say just why it can't.
Davies seems to assume that anyone who accepts that what has happened is that "the universe has generated self-awareness" (is my limited human awareness really awareness of the universe? All of it?) will be so impressed by this fact that they will find it impossible to regard it as "a minor byproduct of mindless...forces".
Fine: if you look at it that way, no doubt what you see looks very impressive. But its persuasive force is not rational, any more than it is rational to be persuaded of the existence of god by one's own sense of humble awe in the face of the grandeur of creation. "Gosh wow" sentiments are a fine part of being human, ect., but they aren't much use as a support for theories.
I am unable to see in Davies' language - "I cannot believe...too intimate...surely a fact of fundamental significance...no trivial detail...we are truly meant to be here" - anything more substantial than a stirringly expressed "gosh wow" sentiment, and it is dishonest of him to write as if that the force of that sentiment dislodged the need for rational argumentation.
"Knowledge is the continuation of ignorance by other means"
When Stephen Hawking published his "Brief History of Time", he was fond of recounting how his publishers warned him against using mathematical formulae in the book - that each formula would result in the corresponding loss of x-thousand sales. As a result, the only formula published in the final book, IIRC, was E=mc^2.
...so we can assume he lost sales proportional to the speed of light squared times the mass of his readers? [grin]
-----
A rich couple found their ideal pet in a dog that makes e-mail programs.
I think it is humankind's hubris, though, that we are some special thing and that the universe revolves around is. The universe doesn't give a damn about us, and our own stupidity could very well get us all exterminated.
I am in agreement.
Because we see the universe from our and only our perspective (with limited senses, reasoning ability, problems [and joys] of flesh, and attendant limits) it is only natural for the lazy to assume that the universe was made for us. Davies makes this very mistake.
If we were planaria we might just as well reason the universe was made for planaria. Look! It's two dimensional, just like us! It's wet for sliding, provides us with just the food we need, feels great on our cilia, and entertains us with light!
This is not to criticize Davies' other contributions to the literature of science.
-----
A rich couple found their ideal pet in a dog that makes e-mail programs.
What I mean is like this: take several decks of cards, shuffle and deal them all out. Wow! The odds against THAT particular deal happening are tremendous! It's a bloody miracle that, out of all the possible deals, THAT one occurred!
Furthermore, if it is true that only one "deal" would result in us humans, then none of the others are open to observation. The one "deal" we are in would appear miraculous no matter which one it was.
Good example.
-----
A rich couple found their ideal pet in a dog that makes e-mail programs.
All empirical evidence still keeps certain assumptions that are simply taken for granted.
If you look around at the world objectively, you'll see as many arguments for creation as for random happenstance.
In other circumstances, I may speak more specifically, but in this case I argue for any religion. God is very real and personal and up close for many people. He is not far away.
- Tom
- Tom
"O, to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be."
There are two things I dislike about this. One is the argument from authority. Yes these people are experts, but we only believe what they say because we can test it for ourselves.
I consider Einstein to have made three major errors in his career. The first was his introduction of the cosmological constant into Relativity. He was assuming a static universe and like Newton before him discovered to his dismay that gravity in any finite universe would cause said universe to collapse upon itself. So he invented the cosmological constant to prop it up. Later, Hubble and Humison discovered that the universe was expanding and removed all need for such a figure in his equations. This is a case of modifying an argument to fit the desired conclusion. His second blunder was his statement that "God does not play at dice." in regards to quantum mechanics. As every person who uses a transistor ought to know, he lost that argument. His last was writing that letter to the president about atom bombs -- which has nothing to do with this.
What's important about the above is that in the first two cases, Einstein assumed something he could neither observe nor prove to fill a gap in his theory or prop up his argument and it turned out to be false. Great authorities can and will make errors.
The other thing I don't like is your attempt to prove such a thing must be true by the _number_ of quotations you bring out of a hat. I don't know that there's a logical term for it, maybe 'argument from majority.'
Simply put, the majority of humanity once believed the earth to be flat and at the center of the universe. The preponderance of their beliefs did not make it true. Objects did not suddenly assume a sun-centered orbit upon Copernicus' pronouncement of his theory, or upon Kepler's mathematical proof, or Galileo's evidence. They always had been that way. Just because a lot of people think something must be true, does not make it so.
Just because a lot of physicists who otherwise make valuable contributions to physics state that they believe in God doesn't add any validity to that belief. Such a claim must be tested as thoroughly (in my view) as any other claim. And the trouble is, there are no tests for it. It is therefore, again in my view, not worth exploring as an alternative to reality. Thus I am an atheist. I don't doubt god, I don't disbelieve. I just don't believe. I don't want to give up the time or space in my mind to the clutter of alot of other people's fantasies.
No one knows, but you, what's good for you. No one knows, better than you, what you ought to believe. I apply that on a daily basis and it works very well.
I don't have to prove that aliens don't exist. It is YOU who are making the claim that they do. I am assuming, in absence of any proof, that believing in them complicates things more than not beliving in them. The principle of economy is called Occam's Razor.
And I know can go get my own picture of a coelocanth. It's not so fantastic a claim as aliens who only show up in the middle of hayfields at night. . .
I don't know where you get bias. It's easy to claim that trees exist. You can walk right outside and see one. It's much more fantastic to claim that you speak to an enormous invisible being that I cannot see or hear. As a skeptic my level of required proof in such a case is raised to something well beyond "well _I_ can hear him!" It's an extraordinary claim. It requires more than just inferential evidence or your good word.
I _can_ at least get behind the idea of coelacanths because there are fossils that prove they _once_did_ exist. I _cannot_ get behind the idea of a formless superbeing becuase there has _never_ been any empirical evidence that he existed. It's simpler to omit the guy from the equation.
You're trying to jam a scientific argument into a deductive syllogism. Doesn't work, I'm afraid. Science is an inductive process, logically. When you're trying to prove the validity of a theorem you have to apply some economy to your argument, in the form of cutting out unnecessary logical quantities. This is known as Occam's Razor and it does the God theory in quite easily.
Absence of proof, and proof of absence are two completely different things.
I may not be able to prove that unicorns exist, but neither can you prove that they don't. Can you prove that small grey aliens don't exist? They have been witnessed and reported upon. So have coelocanths. I am sure that you believe in at least one of these, and not the other, in spite of the fact that you have as much proof of the existence of one as the other. Have you ever seen an alien? No? How about the coelocanth? Haven't seen that one, either, huh? Well, sure, you have seen pictures of the coelocanth, but you've also, I'm sure, seen some of the pictures offered of the aliens, too.
As far as the exercise that was left to the reader, I present this counter-challenge: Prove that the aliens don't exist. I've got a box of cookies for the first person to do so.
This signature carefully hand-crafted from recycled electrons.
You can consider your purpose (or your underlying reason to exist, for that matter) to be your own or your meantor's. For me, the latter choice is more depressing.
Arthur Koestler identified a distinguishing characteristic of humans: they are the only species capabile of eradicating itself.
I think you meant "butterfly collecting".
If it isn't true, don't say it. If it isn't helpful, don't say it. If it's true and helpful, wait for the right time.
No, thank YOU! :) Katz is a lamer.
Matrix is a movie? Really?
Always run = ON
But didnt MATRIX tell us not to believe in fate :-) ?
Always run = ON
So you have no purpose, no underlying reason to exist? How depressing for you. Why do you read slashdot or get up in the morning or do what ever it is that you do? Why bother existing anyway? How hopeless life must be to lead for you.
I can't even begin to understand why it is necessary to believe in the existence of some omnipotent but unprovable deity or other to be able to find meaning in life. Isn't it rather sad not to be able to find your own reason to exist? "How hopeless life must be to lead for you", you say. Whatever for? Of course I have a purposes for my life and lots of reasons to exist. I just happen to be perfectly capable of finding those on my own. You pity the ones who don't need someone else to give them purpose and meaning. How strange. If any are to be pitied in this context, it's those who can't make sense of their life on their own. They fall prey to the religion-mongers too easily..
-Engan"This is the purpose of your life because our infallible prophet says so". Puh-leeze. Give me original thought any day. Can anything truly be the meaning of your life if you didn't find it yourself?
As a somewhat philosophical physicist (sort of), I read a number of these books. I'm sure this one is a reprint, as I read it a few years ago. Nonetheless, it was a decent read. It also betrayed a great deal of the author's predisposition to a specific conclusion, something that, for example, Dyson was less guilty of. Nonetheless, I have to promote my favorite physicist-turned-thinker at this point:
Murray Gell-Mann, the last great nobel prize in Quantum/Particle physics discovery... he found the quark... and author of one of the most enjoyable reads I'm found to date. The book is entitled "The Quark and the Jaguar", and it relates his experiences researching emergent behaviors at his Santa Fe institute... here is a man who does more than pursue justification for his religion in his science.
Gell-Mann's work is actually a must-read for many CS theorists as well, with its insight into the mathematical basis for awareness level complexities. If anything holds the key to AIs, this may be it. The book has been out for six years, and has been on my shelf for five of them. I've tried to loan it out... but the people who are most equipt to understand it seem never to have the time. It isn't technically impossible, but it doesn't condescend either. A most worthwhile read.
--
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement
Through Katz' endorsement of ThinkGeek, I just found out
that he charges $20 for his book "Geeks".
Jon, you're one greedy bastard!
N.B. Why is previewing so SLOW?
There is not only no hidden spirituality in physics, I can't help wonder why anyone who's interested in physics looks for God there.
I remember sitting in third grade in a Catholic school hearing the nuns saying "Just look at that sunset...Isn't that proof of the existence of God?" and thinking "Well not really, no. And anyway, if you really like the sunset, why do you need to get metaphysical about it? It's beside the point."
My attitude hasn't changed. Take the number 142857. Multiply it by 2,3,4,5,6 or 7. Cool huh? And the number 37037. Multiply it by your favorite 1 digit number, and the result by 3. Nice party trick. See the connection? My new telephone number starts with 91, so I spaced out on that for a half an hour today, and it's a really simple number game.
Today I also explained to my four year old son how to tell the difference between a bee and a fly. (Bees have four wings, and they sting if you catch them, as my sister points out) I also thought about Java Collections (far from God, believe me) for some time. In a few decades I'll be senile or dead. At this rate I'll never get around to thinking about God. I'm too interested in the world.
No doubt I'll burn in hell for this
I bragged about my Karma at a job interview but I didn't get the job.
How could I have forgotten C.S. Lewis?I spent a month studying him in A.H. English I!You are correct...Out of the Silent Planet makes a very good point about humans and extraterrestrials.It's been about 9 months since I read them last...they weren't formost in my mind when I wrote this.
Also,what about those who are not Christians?The followers of Jesus Christ account for only about 1 billion people (or so...can't rememmber the exact number)...what about a Muslim?A Hindu?What do they think?This is an Open Source(tm...I think)forum!I want everyone's oppinion!
And what would you be if the aliens asked YOU?Think long and hard...don't worry,no one will condem you to hell or something based on your answer.I don't have anywhere near that much power.
And the Comrade asks you:Why do YOU think it's called Windows CE???
Figure it out.
------------------------
Thus Spake ComradePenguin
Of course,if you believe in some kind of God(god/goddess),then you are faced with a big question...What happens if life is discovered elsewhere in the universe?Are they part of God's Creation?Do they share in Love?Are they just as special to God as we are?
I,personaly,believe all life is of the same value.However,with so many opinions on the topic,not everyone may agree with me.Just read Carl Sagan's Contact...in the novel,some people feared the extraterrestrials even though they had never met them!
Just remove "spam_" and "spam." to email me.
And the Comrade asks you:Why do YOU think it's called Windows CE???
Figure it out.
------------------------
Thus Spake ComradePenguin
Well, if you insist on dissecting my words literally... :-)
---------------
---------------
JavaScript tutorials scripts
I can't agree more. The river flows both ways, and those who completely entrust in science to explain everything is perhaps just as naive as their hardcore religious counterparts. It might surprise you, but I consider myself spiritual, and actually do believe in the existence of some higher being. My point in the original post was simply to point out to the later group the possibility of humans deriving from something other than the act of God.
---------------
---------------
JavaScript tutorials scripts
I think you missed the point of the unicorns post. If we could both agree that the unicorn definitively does not exist, then look at the statement:
"You can believe in unicorns because there's no proof that unicorns don't exist"
It doesn't say anything really useful. If we know that unicorns don't exist, then it is obvious that the above argument is at best a very weak justification for a belief in unicorns.
This is very different from your question about whether aliens (or coelocanths) exist. This is an empirical question.
A useful way of attempting an answer to this question is to start with the assumption that they don't exist, then examine the evidence that they do. From this one can draw strong or weak conclusions about the existence of aliens.
The question about unicorns is really a way of illustrating a weakness of a certain type of "argument" and isn't really about methods of establishing the existence of unicorns from the evidence.
The reason this relates to the God question, is that the weak "unicorns" argument is often used by theists to argue that one should believe in God (often combined with Pascal's argument, of course). I suspect the original posters' intention was to point out the weakness of that position.
Sailing over the event horizon
The theme of the book is "where does the mind come from?", and the authors present the beginnings of a contextual answer based on how the mind interacts with its environment. Their point is that the traditional, reductionist approach fails to explain the source of mind because it presumes that a certain bit of the matter must contain each function of the mind. Their approach is that this is not so, that the mind is a process executed by the brain and its interactions. To try to decompose the system further than this is like (using their analogy) trying to figure out how a car works by removing pieces until it doesn't... if you take off the wheels, it stops moving, so the wheels must make it move, right?
What the authors feel to be a much richer approach to this problem is to explain the mind by looking at the context of why the mind exists, and how it interacts with its environment in a self-reinforcing cycle to create itself. This may sound mystical, but it is not once you realize that by "environment" they are including the culture and knowledge assets of society. In fact, they whimsically refer to culture as a make-a-human kit" that exists in order to propagate itself. Or to be more exact, it exists *because* it propagates itself; they never make the mistake of attributing intentionality to nature.
If you have the time, and are interested in the subject, I would advise you to read the book youself. "Figments of Reality" develops the argument in a very clear and thorough manner that I presented merely the conclusion of above.
Point well taken. I am not discounting philosophy per se, but I am not very happy if things get mixed up. (natural) sciences and philosophy are "two different beasts" - IMHO they are asking different questions. When this distinction gets fuzzy, people from both sides of the fence (usually) start producing less than stellar "results".
Huh? Not following my argument? Say I offer you {a small fraction of Bill Gates' personal wealth, a gaggle of incredibly attractive members of the appropriate sex to do whatever comes naturally, Alan Cox as your personal bug-hunter and nifty-feature-that-I-don't-have-time-to-implement coder} for you to be an atheist. You decide to take the option of guaranteed instant gratification rather than the long-term gamble on the joy of eternal life with God, if God exists. I've just altered your personal payoff matrix in favour of atheism. Has this one iota of influence on the existence of God? Not one bit!
Therefore, Pascal's wager, IMHO, is a philosophical red herring, and I don't know why it is treated with such significance.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Whenever someone tries to claim that the odds of things turning out the way they are is something like 87,285,253,045,105,111,529,549.5 (or more!) to 1, ergo it MUST HAVE BEEN BY DESIGN, planned, the odds are just to great to have just accidentally happened, I think, B.S. While it's true that THIS particular instantiation is highly improbable, what they don't consider is that maybe gazillions of OTHER possible outcomes are equally viable God-comtemplating conscious life supporting alternatives. That is to say, out of the above number, it could very well be that 293,582,359,248,285,288 of them are just as likely to appear as a 'miraculous' against-all-odds outcome that could never have 'just happened' by itself w/o an outside controlling destiny, and therefore life may be quite common.
Whew.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
What I mean is like this: take several decks of cards, shuffle and deal them all out. Wow! The odds against THAT particular deal happening are tremendous! It's a bloody miracle that, out of all the possible deals, THAT one occurred!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
from an insult generator script.
Person you want to bash: Jon
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
If you COULD get both, or measure one without affecting the particle in any way, Quantum Mechanics wouldn't be a game of probabilities. It would be a game of certainties, just like the macroscopic universe we all know and love
You would have to know both values not just for the particles in which you are concerned, but for every particle in the universe because every particle affects the behavior of every other to some degree or another. It is this fact which goes back to the point I was trying to make about assumptions in the reductionist approach.
There is an absolute, multilayed interconnectedness between matter which causes many confusing effects, and is quite chaotic/complex in nature. The fact is, it may be simple and straightforeward in design, but we may never know because all we can and ever will be able to see are the 'effects', or the fractal image as referred to in the original example.
A better title:
What many people attribute to Intelligent Design in the order of the universe is actually a simple process that will not be discernable by the reductionist approach to scientific discovery.
Sorry for any confusion on the previous title. I dont beleive in god, but I do beleive there is a lot more going on in this universe of ours than is given credit in biology/physics/ etc...
We are tainted by our traditional reductionist approach to science. This leads us to ignore the more complex, (currently) unexplainable phenomenon as irrelevant exceptions, rather than very important clues to the things we are overlooking or brushing aside.
..and I don't know of a reproducible experiment which would cause someone to fall in love with me.
Its called money. bIIIIIIg fucking heaping piles of that green shit.. enough to wipe your ass with $100's and never let it cross your mind...
There is a lot of talk about these types of issues in science and for good reason. It is becoming more and more obvious that quantum physics and biochemistry contain puzzling inconsistancies and mounting evidence of external influences in the interactions of subatomic particles, and the complex processes of life itself.
A few examples: dissapative structures like those seen in very hot liquids, to biological cells.
The effect of the observer in 'collapsing' the wave function describing the probabilities for various characteristics of quantum particles.
Things like these are baffling and puzzling because they are very hard to explain. The reason for this is the fact that they are complex.
A nice mental illustration of this would be the following:
- Given a large wall sized image of the Mandelbrot set mapped into fractal form, you are asked to determine what created this image.
If you have no previous knowledge of fractals, it would appear to be an increbily complex algorithm which generated this image, and the complexity of the images within evidence of this.
However, it is actually a very simple iterative algorithm that produced the image. The algorithm is complex because each iteration depends on a previous iteration. Thus, a small change in initial conditions yeilds wild variety from similar initial conditions. This is chaos theory, and im sure you've heard all about it.
So where does this come into play in physics?
Physics is mathematical relationships based on verifiable experimental results. We call atoms and subatomic particles particles because they behave as such (for the most part) but they are actually something else. We now know that the subatomic particles arent really solid at all, but interact according to complex wave functions that predict their behavior on average. That last but is important, because it shows that our understanding of sub atomic particles and matter in general is based on a large number of assumptions wich may not be valid.
For example, consider that each particle is in fact a solitron, or a collection of smaller peices (super strings? M-theory?) that are acting as a whole particle, yet very distinct in and of themselves.
These solitrons would function identical to the subatomic particles they represent, however be comprised of intirely different units.
The point is, physics is nothing but a mathematical abstraction for generalized behavior. And that this fact alone bases many of the assumptions of science on shaky ground. It is becoming more and more evident that there are additional levels of interaction at work in all aspects of matter, from the subatomic to the biochemical. The fields of complexity, chaos, self organization all relate to this abstract 'other' quality in this universe of ours, and have a striking symmetry with the Tao and eastern philosophy.
The modern style causual approach to science with every element of our world conforming to a chain of effect is coming to its limits. It is certainly usefull, but it is absolutely limited and incapable of viewing the entirety of the processes at play within our universe.
In the end I think we will find that god is not a single entity outside our universe, but a common fundamental effect on every part of this universe.
Inspired by this book back in 1993 when it first came out, I decided to conduct an experiment to test the spontaneous creation of life. I had just finished up a mayo and bacon sandwhich, so after scraping the last of the mayo out of the bottom of the mayo jar, I set it next to the window. I reasoned that if life created itself spontaneously, then statistically, somewhere in the universe, life would have to be spontaneously created in a mayo jar sitting next to a window. I figured what are the odds that somebody else has a mayo jar sitting next to a window? So the odds must be pretty good that my mayo jar is the one for life to be created in. Sure enough! Two weeks later the mayo jar was crawling with life. I named the jar planet Mayo, in honor of its original contents, and watched in awe as the alien-looking blue plantlife grew to fruition. Eventually it started to stink though, so I just threw it out. Then I started wondering what God would do if his jar started to stink...
When Stephen Hawking published his "Brief History of Time", he was fond of recounting how his publishers warned him against using mathematical formulae in the book - that each formula would result in the corresponding loss of x-thousand sales. As a result, the only formula published in the final book, IIRC, was E=mc^2.
Davies' expression of faith in the meaningfulness of humanity's existence is similarly oriented towards mass appeal. Regardless of whether Davies believes this or not, he probably would have been forced to say something along these lines, or risk reviews describing his book as "painting a bleak picture of man's ultimate insignificance", which would turn off the masses of people who are looking for people with fuzzy beards to tell them what their life means.
Nobody ever lost money telling people what they want to hear...
> he has reasons for what he believes and others may have beliefs that have not been reasoned out, just adopted.
The problem with this is that when you are talking about something that is subjective, everybodies beliefs tend to be equally valid.
How can you insist that your beliefs about pink fluffy elephants are any more valid than mine when we have not (yet) found any pink fluffy elephants to quantifiably measure.
You can argue over points of logic, but arguments about things which cannot (yet) be proven are subjective arguments based in a persons other beliefs.
That was getting circular, but because we do not share an identical path in space time our perceptions and the beliefs founded upon those perceptions are going to be skewed, but neither of us is going to be _wrong_.
-- reality is just a product of my imagination.
-- I need more coffee. It's Monday. There is no such thing as enough coffee on a Monday.
LOL! You are one of those people who see evidence for God in anything, aren't you? How can I argue with circular logic like that? You've just declared your own beliefs to be true, pal, and there's nothing I can (or will) do about it. Have fun believing in whatever it is that you believe... but don't expect other people to blindly agree. (Look ma, split infinitives!)
(By the way, when you claim that "The evidence you look for is all around you, especialy in physics. The line of extrapolation clearly points to God", I hope that you either (a) meant that purely as personal opinion or (b) have very good, previously unknown, completely conclusive, scientifically sound evidence... because otherwise you're just another theist with an extraordinary claim, and we've already got enough of those.)
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
My loss? Care to explain what it is exactly that I'm "losing"? (Honest question, not meant as a flame.)
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Kaufmann obligingly follows on to the Termination Center, and, after presenting his Troubleshooter ID, steps into a booth where a disintegration apparatus zaps him, leaving only ashes on the floor. Almost instantly afterwards, said apparatus zaps a new Kaufmann-clone into existence; he dons his Troubleshooter-suit and Troubleshooter-gun, and goes back to the streets, ever intent on... uh, shooting trouble... or whatever it is that Troubleshooters do.
:])
(Sorry for the pointless Paranoia reference... just hope I won't get moderated down...
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
The discussion of reason itself requires the use of reason (unless you've discovered another, incredible new way to think). Either reason is not valid and nothing you think is of any value (including any arguments about why reason must have value), or reason is valid - which we can only affirm by use of reason, and by doing so we're already presupposing that reason is valid. So either way, it must be axiomatic. In the end, we're just left to choose in the grounds of usefulness. And I happen to think that rational thought is damned useful.
Blairgh.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
I'm forwarding this to your email; thankfully it seems we've only two points left to clear out (as opposed to On Lawn's enormous rant, which will take me yet another day to respond...).
Just last night (after I got tired of discussing philosophy with On Lawn on Slashdot... and went to discuss philosophy with the #atheism crowd on IRC) I made that exact same argument about Occam's Razor, although it hadn't occurred to me that it would apply in this case. It does seem now that using Occam's Razor would be a circular argument. So maybe there isn't any default position. Okay.
Regarding the request for evidence: I do tend to follow along the general lines for skeptics (you can look at the sci.skeptic FAQ). So, I consider historical evidence often acceptable, depending on the source and reliability (although I'm not really in much of a position to judge myself, not being a professional); OTOH, testimony from the Bible, a book which claims that pi = 3, is much less so. (And yes, I do know about all the historical stuff in the Bible that was found to be true, but I think that only proves that it's not entirely fictional; having been raised in the Jewish culture, I personally consider the Bible to be a fascinating account of the religious and cultural traditions of our ancestors throughout the ages... and that's all.)
Eyewitness testimony isn't much relied upon even by courts of law (human fallibility); much less so "testimony" about answered prayers; taking into account the witnesses' predisposition for believing in these explanations for their claims, as well as the emotional need for beliefs to support their mental state... well, I think you get my point.
(Re. evidence for evolution, well, of course you can't replicate the evolutionary history of the Earth in a lab, but I think we know enough about the fossil record to make a solid claim that either they are records of evolution in process, or the Almighty is a really clever guy who's trying to mess with our little heads.)
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
I'm glad that you seem to have recovered your "groove" and your willingness to debate in a rational fashion. However, this post of yours has brought open a few new points which I can't help but discuss... once and for all, so that we can all move on to the next 600-comment Slashdot story :)
:)
First, "But to reach out to that intelligence requires faith": I don't see how that's true a priori; I can well envision an universe whose Creator is right at hand, ready to speak to its creation at any time (through means that are natural to them - i.e., that exist within the realm of what the creation considers "natural", and which don't require "tapping into another dimension" or any such things). In short, I can't see why a God couldn't have made his presence natural in his own universe.
Right afterwards, you bizarrely define faith as "taking an extrapolation of data at hand". Where I come from, faith is belief held without supporting evidence, and has nothing to do with the perfectly rational process of extrapolating. I have observed many theists try to claim, unsuccessfully, that their faith in God is of the same kind as a child's "faith" in her mother, or our "faith" that the sky won't fall on our heads. It's just not so.
Further on, "If you recieve laws (information of them) from a divine source, and indeed you find that obedience to them does make your life (not your neighbors or your uncle in slovenia) better then you must have recieved true information. The formulae works, it must be true." This not true at all. First, you only have evidence - and the flimsiest, at that - that said "laws" are "true" (inasmuch as a law can be considered "true" - i.e., in the sense that it's generally appliable and useful). If your mother-in-law is driving you crazy, and I come to you and tell you "you should kill your mother-in-law", and furthermore I give you the means and opportunity as to kill the old hag without leaving any trace, you might very well be happier (depending on what kind of ethic code you follow, you might not even feel bad about it at all). But does that mean that the "law" of "thou shalt kill your mother-in-law" is true? Does that mean that everyone should always kill their mothers-in-law whenever they have the opportunity? And second, even if those "laws" handed to you are "true", that doesn't necessarily tell you anything about their origin, does it? What one calls divine inspiration, another one might as well call a hallucination. (Likewise with many UFO claims.)
Your assertion about the "necessity" to "learn moral laws before we learn scientific ones" also seems very unfounded. In its entirety it sounds extremely obscurantist and reeks of the moralist, pseudo-humanist discourse about "people before technology" of which I believe we're all sick and tired. First of all, it confuses knowledge and science with its application - technology; it also confuses reason and good judgement with morality. It is, in its essence, a bet in the essential evil of mankind, and an assertion that we're not good enough to be allowed this forbidden knowledge. Shades of Genesis... (as in the Old Testament, not as in Peter Gabriel!)
As an atheist and a scientificist, I found this really strange: "Self Restraint and Temper are moral laws we learn from Religion and can see evidence of it scientificaly. Nuclear laws are found out scientificaly, and even show evidence or a correspondance (abstractly) with moral laws." Are you claiming that religion is th only possible source of morals? That I, as an atheist, cannot be self-restrained or well-tempered? That self-restraint and temper are absolute "laws", as opposed to being merely useful guidelines for behaviour in civilised society? Furthermore, what do you consider to be scientific evidence for the "laws" of self-restraint and temper? Are you counting sociology and psychology as sciences, or are you asserting something more profound? Finally, just what is this correspondence between nuclear and moral "laws"?
"There is a need for both is what I'm saying. The Grand Intelligence in the Universe who you mock does have lines of information open. Science is one of them, and religion is one of them but they both require personal discovery and faith." I'm sorry, but I can't consider that anything other than a personal, subjective opinion - and a poor one at that - at least until you explain in minute detail how it is that science requires "personal discovery and faith". (When you do, keep in mind my previous point about the meaning of the word "faith".)
Finally, as for your "request for truths" - frankly, I can't claim to have any deep insights regarding the nature of mankind and the universe; all I have is my opinion, and it was once said that opinions are like asses. In this spirit, I can only translate a Brazilian saying: "if advice was any good, it would be sold, not given."
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
OTOH how much can you really learn through rational and reasoned discourse on the subject of pink fluffy elephants?
;)
LOL! So you did read my reply to that post!
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
It's very strange to see you try to be conciliatory and reasonable, and then turn around and, violently, just throw around the exact same unreasonable arguments that I've been hearing for years now, for example on DALNet #atheism. Quite frankly, because I claim no supernaturally obtained knowledge of any sort, I do not know whether there actually is a God or not; but I definitely know that there must be better arguments for his existence than those that you've given; in general, your entire line of reasoning is extremely poor and ignores a lot of previous debate. So I'll just respond to a few, more indicative paragraphs in your message. Here we go:
(P. 3) All I see in the way of disproving the world around us is what amounts to "There is no God, therefore that is not evidence." In other words, you are accusing me of using circular logic. How fresh!
(P. 4) The evidence you present is not very earth-shattering, nor does it by itself indicate design, seeing as though there are better ways to fit our model around them then by introducing a deity into it. It's the kind of evidence that would only be accepted as such by someone already inclined to believe in a God and who would see this as confirmation of their beliefs. Quite frankly, considering that you are making the ultimate extraordinary claim - that there is an omni-everything deity of some sort or the other - I would expect, likewise, that you would present extraordinary evidence. (A 10 mile high cross hovering over Ithaca would suffice.)
(Of course, I should also point out that, even if your "evidence" represented serious contradictions in the modern theory of evolution by natural selection as it stands, that still wouldn't be enough to make creationism - design of any kind, much less of your preferred brand - automatically true. Evidently, Neo-Darwinism and creationism aren't the only two possibilities.)
(P. 7) Your comparison of atheists with the blind also doesn't follow. The blind have plenty of rational reasons for acknowledging the existence of light and the sense of sight (I believe it's not necessary to enumerate it), even though they aren't able to directly experience it with their own sensory apparatus. The same isn't true of atheists regarding God or the "sense of God" that many theists claim to perceive. In the end, of course, it boils down to Occam's Razor.
Also, I must reiterate that I am making no assertions in this discussion, regarding the issue of whether God exists. There's an enormous difference between not actively believing in the existence of a God (so-called weak atheism, which is the case for me, just as I don't believe in pink fluffy elephants that can read minds) and actively believing in the non-existence of a God (so-called strong atheism). So your accusation of "belief of blindness" would be erroneous even if the general comparison between atheists and the blind did apply.
(P. 8) I can declare what I know is true. Now, this has made me curious. Pray tell, where did you obtain your knowledge of the truth? Divine revelation? I guess that's one of the perks in being a believer, eh? I mean, why subject yourself to murking around in this vast sea of relative thoughts and subjective experience, when you've got direct access to the latest scoop on the objective nature of the universe, straight from the head of the Creator?
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
First, it is significant that this comes near the end of the book. In other words, this is a conclusion that has been reached by examination of the questions at hand. Thus, the implication that this cannot be rational because of its barest interpretation is lazy and misplaced.
Okay, maybe you're right - I must admit I haven't read this book. However, as said sentence seems to stand alone and, by the way it's presented, seems to represent the entirety of the author's feelings on the subject, I'd say that, if my analysis was in fact lacking, JonKatz' poor quoting certainly would deserve some of the blame...
Second, the burden of proof does NOT lie upon the party making the affirmative claim. It lies upon the party making the claim, regardless of its being affirmative or negative.
Again, my fault.
In this case, Davies is making an ontological claim that he must support. If he fails, then that is all that has happened!! It does not show that his case is unsalvagable, nor does it automatically lend support to whatever position you believe. Failure to prove a case means just that; trying to extend the implications beyond that is tricky and requires additional work.
Did I say otherwise? Quite frankly, I think I'd be glad to find that there is a purpose to us being here, and I'm always willing to hear on it, even though to my knowledge previous attempts at proving such claims have always failed.
In other words, folks, THERE IS NO DEFAULT POSITION!
Whoa. That's a non-sequitur! I'm sorry, I may be missing something, but how does that assertion follow from the previous paragraph? I'd have to say that, in this case, the default position is established by Occam's Razor.
Kaufmann may "believe otherwise", and he may tell us what that position is as a matter of sharing information about his current mental states. Once he makes statements about the way the world is as opposed to what's in his head, HE has to prove his case. Whether or not Davies can prove his case makes no difference as to whether Kaufmann is justified or unjustified in his position. That becomes important only when Davies' position is analyzed and its premises, true or false, can be used in a separate argument attacking or defending Kaufmann's position, whatever it may be.
That's all nice and fine, but - here's the rub - I don't remember actually making any statements. I only said I believed otherwise, and as you said, my position and Davies' are independent until either are analysed. My position, personally, is that we do exist by chance; I believe that this position is well funded. However, my position could be entirely different - I might as well be a solipsist, or a Randroid, or merely believe in the "chance" position by faith, as it seems that Davies does for the "purpose" position. That makes no difference regarding my attack of Davies' position.
Considering that above I merely restated the second paragraph of your message, where I think we differ is that you assert that there is no default position, while I consider that Occam's Razor applies (as it does in my ongoing discussion with On Lawn (?) re. the existence of God). However, although I stand by what I consider to be the default position (and although I think it is a well-fundamented position), I'm not inflexible.
As for "actual evidence", I suspect that demand is spurious. I rather suspect Kaufmann would submit any such evidence to a Procrustean bed. I'll go ahead and read his responses and see if my hunch plays out.
Not true. I like to consider myself very open-minded on all-matters - not in that I'm gullible, but in that I'm willing to change my mind if suitable motivation for doing so is presented.
Finally, I'd like to thank you for presenting a good counterpoint to my post.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Sorry to disappoint you but, no, there isn't any hidden spirituality in physics.
Agreed. However, two points:
(1) The new (relativity + quantum) physics allows many more interesting things to happen as compared to old Newtonian physics. The world "became" more complex, more interesting, and in a sense more open. This has implications for spirituality.
(2) The famous one-electron-two-paths (or Schrodinger's cat) problem. If you pick the Copenhagen interpretation, there is that "observer" figure and the consciousness of that observer seems to mean something. If you pick the multiple-worlds interpretation, the fact that we live in a contiuously forking universe with billions of almost-the-same copies of everybody is a major statement for spirituality that it has to deal with.
Spirituality may not apply to physics, but physics certainly gives philosophers things (or non-things) to think about.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
"Our existence is pointless" is not the default position in the absence of evidence for or against whether or not we have a purpose here in the universe!
The only rational position is "I'll reserve judgement until I see proof, seeing as both sides have none at the moment."
-brian (a weak atheist)
Yes there is, later on in the book (at the point where the Babel fish is mentioned): ``Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book Well That About Wraps It Up For God.''
Granted, if you choose to define ``God'' as the laws of physics (resp. the Universe as a whole, resp. pure luck, resp. something of the kind), then I believe in the existence of God. But we already have words for those, so I do not think adding ``God'' as a new one is appropriate or wise.
It probably offends religious people even more if I say ``God is merely a term for the laws of physics'' than if I say ``I do not believe in God''. And I have no desire to anger people, it is a pointless activity.
But perhaps a more important and useful alternate definition of God would be, not whatever created us, but whatever we should use as the basis of our ethics. It is an error to think that the basis for ethics should be sought in science. Nor do I wish to appeal to a Higher Consciousness to do so. One of my favorite lines is from Molière's Dom Juan, when Dom Juan gives the pauper a coin and says ``I give it to you for the love of humanity'': maybe now this seems flat and unremarkable, but at the time it was written, that Molière should have dared write something else than ``for the love of God'' is wholly remarkable.
I have to disagree strongly here. It seems to me human culture started with religion(philosophy) as a way to explain the universe. This didn't work real well when you get to the gory details and so now many put their faith in science, since it has "proved" many things.
Now we are seeing more and more philosophers BASING their ideas on what our scientists have discovered. I think this is the better approach to reach a "Theory of Everything" and even explain consiousness (which as Godel showed, we can never "prove" since we are stuck within the system)
Much like how the human being consists both of mind (philosophy) and body (science), I believe this is the correct approach to explain how it all works together to create the reality we all swim in each and every day.
--
+&x
The physical species Homo may count for nothing, but the existence of mind in some organism on some planet in the universe is surely a fact of fundamental significance. Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here
how about this.
I think therefore I am. I am therefore I'm special. That's all he's really saying.
so until this guy can produce actual evidence that we are "meant" to be here
We ARE here, that's enough for me. (yes, it's a circular argument, but that seems to be the only way to play when trying to explain your own existence)
--
+&x
When a so-called scientist starts speculating about mystical things, he is no longer acting as a scientist, and may be demonstrating that he never was.
The universe follows rules, and by observation, and experimentation, we can discover those rules. That's science.
You can speculate about mystical explanations for things like the purpose of the universe, and it may serve as entertainment, but to take such thoughts seriously is unjustified, and a waste of time.
It's true that a scientist should keep an open mind. That means always being ready to consider any credible evidence that an accepted explanation might be in error. It doesn't mean giving credence to every wild speculation that might be proposed.
Anyone can say that we are all walking around with gremlins on our heads, but if you want me to consider the idea seriously, you must first demonstrate a contradiction, i.e. some situation or event that cannot adequately be explained by current scientific laws, that would be better explained by your Gremlin-Kopf theory.
Meanwhile, I will continue to rely on the laws of momentum and friction when I drive my car, the laws of chemistry when I brew my coffee, and the laws of electronics and logic when I write my programs. And, I will continue to look both ways before crossing the street, confident that my eyes are providing me with mostly correct information about the world around me.
The modern university teaching that "every idea has equal value", and "science is just another form of faith" are crap. When you can prove what you say through observable events, and logic, then let's talk, otherwise, don't waste my time.
This book would be a waste of my time.
As one might expect, the conversation got a bit out of hand. Before I knew it, I was having to lower my voice on a regular basis. In a particularly impassioned moment, she grabbed me by my shoulders and said, "Ryan, see that out there? All that water, might and majesty? It could destroy both of us in a second and be damned if I understand it. I can't even wrap my mind around the idea of it's bredth. It litertally exerts God-like control over us, and you know what? That's good enough for me. That's my God, right there."
I reflected on this for a few moments and considered mentioning to her that my microwave is something which I personally don't have a real firm understanding of, and my cat is capable of physical feats which I have a difficult time fathoming. I decided against doing so.
In any event, I hear a whole lotta people talking about how stupid everyone else is, and bashing one another over the head with semantics and frankly I can't help but find comfort in her perfectly lucid understanding of the world around her.
-rt
======
Now, I think it would be GOOD to buy FIVE or SIX STUDEBAKERS
and CRUISE for ARTIFICIAL FLAVORING!!
I've basically given in to the fact that Godel's incompleteness theorem allows for "unprovable" truths, which may give some room for the conception of something "greater" than the sum of physically measurable parts.
I think it is humankind's hubris, though, that we are some special thing and that the universe revolves around is. The universe doesn't give a damn about us, and our own stupidity could very well get us all exterminated. I think we should humble ourselves and realize we are really but a few specks of dust in the global scheme of things.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
the truth may be hard to accept.
And the truth is..?
You are making the same mistake that many others are. You say that those who believe in God are blind to the "truth." But you have nothing to substantiate your truth. All you have are countless unproven theories.
I haven't read the book, but I think I understand where this guy is coming from. When you first delve into science, you are confronted with a lot of "proofs" against certain religious beliefs. You come to accept that if something can't be proven scientifically, it must not be. Either it doesn't exist, or a previous belief in it was wrong. But when you go farther than just basic scientific findings, you start seeing an order to things that doesn't make sense. You are then confronted with a huge array of odds. 'What are the chances that this thing I'm researching could come about without help?' If you are really honest with yourself, you realize that the odds are actually in favor of a consiousness being behind the universe.
Science has the basics down. But scientists are far from knowing everything. Just be careful not to go down the same road that you are busy condemning.
A blind belief in science is just as bad as a blind belief in religion.
OTOH how much can you really learn through rational and reasoned discourse on the subject of pink fluffy elephants?
:) (God == a bigger Santa Clause for adults.
This is one of the real keys! If it looks like a Santa Clause, smalls like a Santa Clause, quacks like a Santa Clause, then it's probable not real.
Seriously, we can draw some conclusions from "reproducibility," i.e. velcro works every time I use it, so I may as well start trusting it, but prayer works about as well as any placebo (in the same situation), so it's pretty safe to assume that vecro is real and prayer is a placebo.
Now this comparison gets a little sticky when we start talking about things with less evidence, like evolution, the big bang, quantum mechanics, etc., but we attempt to verify these things by maing verifiable predictions. Notice that religious predictins have tended to be a load of shit.
Now, I would like to make some comments about the book's topic (which I have not read). Why do scientific people want to call the universe a "mind?" This seems highly anthropomorphic. The universe may share some interesting properties with out minds, like an entropy driven system which produces effect which are roughly analogous to biological evolution (our thoughs process vs. universe's possible "evolution" of the laws of physics), but the diffrences seem to far far out weight the simillarities. You know little things, like the the fact that the speed of light would limit anything like "thoughs" which were spread accrost the universe.
I think we need to quit pandering to the religiious people with this "conshious universe" bullshit.. and get down to talking about the same stuff in a less anthropomorphic way. I understand that people want to make analogies, but I expect some real discussion about how entroy and boundery conmditions always leed to evolution like processes, not some vague bulshit aboutthe universe thinking (any kind of meaningful notion of thinking probably entails non-omipotence).
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Wrong! Consious has NOTHING to do with quantum mechanics! The definition of the experement IS what stops the regress. We define the experemental apparatus classically and say "the wave function collapses" when the classically described part of the system interacts with the part of the system which is described via quantum mechanics. If you describe Schrodingers cat (conshiousness and all) with quantum mechanics then the cat is alive and dead untill you open the box. I guess the cat is lucky that you can not describe it that well! :)
The point is "Quantum Mechanics talks about the results of experements!" The experemental aparatus is built into the most basic theory as the bra and ket!
The real problem that some educated people (einstein) have with Quantum Mechanics always that they think Realitivity dose "more" then describe the results of experements and they want Quantum Mechanics to do "more." The real question is "Are our ideas about physics doing more then predicting experements a load of crap?" The smartest physicists I've known say yes, i.e. we should not expect physics to do mroe then predict experements as predicting experements is the hart of the scientific method.
Now, people claim that Bomian Mechanics (when you pretend that there really is a phase space particl there) dose do "more" then what Quantum Mechanics dose, but I think you can prove that Bomian Mechnaics predicts nothing which Quantum Mechanics dose not predict, so people who are sticklers for the scientific method claim that they are no diffrent as theories.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
The first sentence in the article has now been changed to read, "In the new paperback edition of his book, ...", but from what I can tell from the ThinkGeek site, this still isn't right. The book is apparently still in the first edition from 1993, and the picture of the cover looks exactly like the book I've had all this time.
Forgive me, but I even checked the Boycotted Patent Abuser to confirm this. It appears to me that there has only ever been one edition, in paperback, published in 1993.
I hate to beat a dead horse, but why is Jon insisting on calling this book new?
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
I cannot believe
But nevertheless it is true.
I don't envy those poor scientists that have for centuries tried to demonstrate rationally something that is simply emotional. They often lose credibility when they try to mix up reasonning with vague opinions and become mistrusted by the scientific communauty as a result. It's a bit as if Linus was a Microsoft employee. Would you trust him?
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
The duality of our universe, in so many ways, is accepted by people. We have the Ying and the Yang, chaos and structure, etc. Wouldn't it make sense then that the meaning of life is that there is no meaning?
It is human nature to believe we are here for some other purpose. Arrogance plays a large role in keeping the human species from giving up. If we think we're here for a purpose then we'll continue to exist. What happens if we all thought it was meaningless?
-- taking over the world, we are.
I am not attacking your beliefs, but as an athiest I do not see how calling an elegant set of equations "god", or calling an improbable medical scenario, or a sunset, or a warm fuzzy feeling "god" helps us to understand the universe any better. Monotheists try to connect all these things by virtue of their all being part of "god". I say they are all part of "the universe". Is that different? Is "the universe" my "god"? This is unclear. The danger comes when religious thought prevents us from learning more about the universe. At best, it distorts ideas by holding us to unproven, irrational beliefs which are incompatible with physical evidence. This can paralyze people who try to believe in physical reality and god at the same time; those who say they understand both usually have done so by distorting the facts and ideas until they become internally inconsistent and useless. At worst, religion actively impedes scientific progress because of stubbornness and adherence to outdated modes of thought (I need not point out the numerous crimes against humanity committed by the catholic church.)
In short, I believe that when religion and science are at odds, science must win (because, while both methods of thought attempt to reveal truth, only science does so provably,) and that when there is NO outright contradiction, (For example, "God brought the universe into existance" vs. "The universe came into existance",) science will again win because the theist view explains nothing more; the difference is, in fact, irrelevant. "God did it" is nothing more than an easy way out--it tells us nothing we need to know--and implies that no further study is required.
Up until now I have discussed a relatively harmless kind of theism. Perhaps "god" created everything, but what about the devil? One way of looking at the world is to see some things as "godly", and some things as less godly, not godly, or even evil. This dualistic view is dangerous because it leads to divisiveness, prejudice, and hate. Even if two such dualistic-minded religious groups agree on something, they will always find a third to demonize and persecute. Often religious value judgements are based on old, outdated writings, which are, (among other things,) often sexist and anti-homosexual, and in my personal opinion contain little wisdom whatsoever. Something someone wrote a long time ago does not justify making value judgements today; in fact, it justifies nothing. No reasonable human being would actually believe that those words came direct from god--we just want someone or something to tell us what to believe because we are too lazy or stupid to think for ourselves, and many of us simply want to hate and to feel justified in doing so. I hope that science maintains a safe distance from religion, because dogmatism could spell the end of science, and indeed of the individual. I am not being overly melodramatic--what are we if we cannot think for ourselves anymore?
-- Religion is a major weapon in the war against reality.
I just finished going throuh his Arrow of Time. It's as good as The Mind of God, but on a more practical physics level. Great stuff for a chemist to read, while trying to understand the True Science while we muck around stamp collecting (/sarcasm)
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
I'm always amused by math/physics people who think they've "fathomed the mind of God". I'm not particularly religious, but it's quite obvious that if--according to the Bible/Torah/whathaveyou--God is an omnipresent being, then, by definition, an omnipresent being doesn't use human math or physics. Why not? Well, if you're simultaneously all nodes and each node, you don't need to add, subtract, multiply etc. nodes. You simply "know"--in a simultaneous way. There is no "here and there" for God, and "here and there" is the logical bedrock upon which all human senses and theories lie. When math and physics get beyond this primitive stage of generalizing and remote sensing vis-a-vis here and there, and begin to create a "simultaneous math", then I'll listen. There obviously must be "Eselbruecken" (crutches, crib sheets) to simultaneous math as it would undoubtedly be virtually incomprehensible to normal thinking. I'm fairly sure it exists, since many things beg it, such as Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. So does meaningful progress on gravity theory, as well as many quantum phenomena that seem to defy point-to-point communication with simultaneousness. Wake me up when we get there....
--- WWSD? What Would Strider Do?
"I cannot believe," writes Davies near the end of the book, "that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama. Our involvement is too intimate. The physical species Homo may count for nothing, but the existence of mind in some organism on some planet in the universe is surely a fact of fundamental significance. Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here."
This one paragraph turned me off the rest of this book. There is no meaning to life, no greater purpose, and no great answer to "Life the Universe and Everything". I dont understand how he finds it so hard to believe that the mind is the culmination of trillions of random events since the begining of the universe. Given a universe so vast it's incomprehensible, and a time span that could just as well be infinite, it would be rediculous not to believe that self consciousness would evolve by chance. 1,000,000 monkeys at 1,000,000 keyboards will eventually write the greatest book ever writen, but they still wont understand a work of english (or latin for that matter).
If I back up a minute and assume there is some purpose to the universe,that still doesn't mean it has anything to do with consious beings! Maybe "God" had a thing for big rocks and the purpose of the universe is to see what happens to all the rocks.
Come to find out, it was all about the mice!
------
www.chowda.net -- Student seeking summer intership. Chea... inexpensive programmer!
------
YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
> Science has the basics down. But scientists are far from knowing everything.
Certainly, and one of the wonders of science is that the more you know, the more you realise you don't know. Scientists are usually the first to admit that they know very little, in terms of all that could be known. I am astounded and frightened by the number of theists who profess to know the absolute truth.
> Just be careful not to go down the same road that you are busy condemning.
Here I have to disagree with you. Science and Religion are profoundly different things. Fundamentally, a religion is a particular belief system (e.g. I believe in one God, whose only begotten son, etc. etc.)
In contrast, Science is a methodology for obtaining particular beliefs. Its a sort of meta belief system. In other words, science tells you how to go about obtaining beliefs, but it doesn't actually have a specific set of beliefs it demands you believe in.
In particular, the beliefs generated by following the scientific methodology are theories that can be changed or even completely thrown away. A fundamental tenet of Science is that you must constantly test, refine and change the particular things you believe in. Hypothesis and the gathering of counter-evidence is the heart of science.
This seems a much more robust approach to gathering (useful) knowledge about the world, than hewing to some particular dogma. The ability to refine your beliefs in the face of new and challenging data is a huge strength and has enabled science to hugely improve the lot of people everywhere in the face of often murderous religions who would drag us back into the dark ages of witchcraft and spirit realms.
All IMHO, of course
Sailing over the event horizon
Davies attacks people for their tendency to fall to "unreasoned belief" but when makes his own decleration he says "I believe".
Reasoned or not without any conclusive evidence on any side it is not possible to hold a truly rational discussion. There is a very similar thread(s) in the anti-gravity article.
There are a great many forces at work in the universe that we do not fully understand or are not truly aware of. But just because we do not know them, or can not prove them, does not mean they do not exist.
There is nothing to prove or disprove an overriding cosmic consciousness. It is a fascinating discussion though, which this boook would appear to evidence.
OTOH how much can you really learn through rational and reasoned discourse on the subject of pink fluffy elephants?
chris
-- I need more coffee. It's Monday. There is no such thing as enough coffee on a Monday.
This is related to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. There's a very unsatisfying philosophical problem in quantum mechanics, related to the observer paradox. The Copenhagen interpretation is the classic "the multiple probababilities collapse when viewed by an observer", which works but seems bogus. The many-worlds interpretation (which Hawking says is "trivially true") is consistent with theory and observation, but disturbing to some people, since it involves each universe forking into all possible universes at some rate well below the femtosecond scale.
Physics has been thrashing around on this problem since the 1930s, and not much progress has been made, due to lack of experimental testability.
Science is prediction, not explaination - Fred Hoyle.
Davies is a decent pop-science writer and probably a decent scientist too - but mixing up philosophy (religion is just a subset) and physics doesn't make sense. The difference between science and philosophy is, that physical models can be empirically falsified, philosophical musings cannot (per definition). Occam's razor still applies: "If you can't explain it, don't explain it by means you still cannot explain..."
I read this and I have no idea what any of it means. I'm going to wait until The Mind of God for Dummies comes out. :o(
------------
a funny comment: 1 karma
an insightful comment: 1 karma
a good old-fashioned flame: priceless
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
"I cannot believe," writes Davies near the end of the book, "that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate ...
Aye, there's the rub. I too find many things difficult to believe. It is hard to believe that two clocks placed at different distances from the center of a graviational source will run at different rates. I find it hard to believe that a stream of electrons, one electron wide, aimed at a metal plate with two slits in it will produce an interference pattern on the other side of the plate. Pre-Renaissance Europeans had difficulty believing that the Sun was the center of the Solar system. Yet all of these things are true.
How do I know they are true? Have I seen these things for myself? Well, I have observed the motion of the Sun, Moon, planets and stars through the sky and they seem to strongly support Copernicus' theory. The others I have not observed for myself, but I have read the accounts of many others who have seen these things. I have, of course, also read many religious writings - including the Bible and Qu'ran (or Koran, if you prefer) - where people claim to have observed remarkable effects of God's existance.
The difference is that the scientists have given me experiments that I could (I have faith), given time and funding, duplicate to observe the same results they saw and reproduce those results consistently. No religious scholar that I am familiar with has given us an experiment that anyone with the time and funding could duplicate that would either allow one to observe the existance of God directly or observe effects that could only logically be attributed to the existance of a Supreme Being, at least not reproducably. (Besides, Peyote gives me a terrible hangover).
For example, a recent study of "healing" among cancer suffers at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe showed that the rate of "healing" was somewhat lower than the rate of spontanious cancer remissions in the general population (including those who do not pray or do not believe in God). Now, absence of proof is not proof of absence, so I will withhold final judgment. It is certainly conforting to think that death is not the end and that evil doers will be punished for eternity. I still like to follow the advise of that old Russian proverb that Ronald Reagan used to paraphase, "Trust, but verify".
I've read a lot of books on religion that all use the above argument to stake their claim about the existence of "God". They all sound as if it's not possible that humans may exist simply due to one of the infinite number of experiments of the universe gone mad. We all want to believe that there's more to us than what meets the eye...the truth may be hard to accept.
---------------
---------------
JavaScript tutorials scripts
"I cannot believe," writes Davies near the end of the book, "that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama. Our involvement is too intimate. The physical species Homo may count for nothing, but the existence of mind in some organism on some planet in the universe is surely a fact of fundamental significance. Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here."
Um, I'm sorry, but coming from an alleged supporter of rational thought, this sounds very out of place. "This can be no trivial detail" - says who, exactly? The burden of proof lies upon the one who makes the affirmative claim, so until this guy can produce actual evidence that we are "meant" to be here (aside from his nigh-religious clinging to this somehow mysterious and supernatural "meaning of existence"), I shall continue to believe otherwise.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
...don't try to pass a few books being written on the frontiers of science (pardon the euphemism) as a new trend of any kind. The hayday of the epistemological enquiries on the meaning of physical reality and the mind of God and all that, came with quantum mechanics (a subject which, need I remind, Einstein never believed in, and some will say, probably with some justice, never understood; you know, the ``der gute Gott würfelt nicht'' (``God does not play dice'') story). These glorious days are gone. The day you see Ed Witten (the current ``pope'' of fundamental physics) or some such person writing something about Life, the Universe, God and Everything, maybe that will mean something. But I don't think that will come.
Sorry to disappoint you but, no, there isn't any hidden spirituality in physics. Spirituality is an attribute of the human mind, not one of the world around us. I don't call a book crackpot when I haven't read it, but I would simply like to remind how Sokal made a point by publishing a paper on the hermeneutics of quantum gravity. Spirituality, hermeneutics, whatever, just do not apply to physics, any more than the color ``green'' does.
I am an atheist myself. I do not think science and religion are incompatible, however. In the same way that art is not incompatible with science. But trying to write a book about both seems to me very much like trying to explain Michelangelo's paintings in terms of quantum physics, or vice versa.
--
...more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway? (Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
Mr. Katz is not trained in a technical field where saying things precisely is both norm and necessity, but rather he is a journalist. To many journalists precision is secondary to seemingly more lofty goals such as "style" or "sensationalism." Admittedly, Mr. Katz is worse than most in this regard. (Witness all the fuss over his loose use of the word "interactive" in his Oscars aricle). Then again, I would wager that anyone who has read /. for more than a week has divined this already about Mr. Katz and has set his User Preferences accordingly.
/. headlining. He would do much towards increasing his signal-to-noise ratio if he were to write rather than ramble--if he put more effort into the rudaments of communication, e.g. researching elements of his essays and paying some attention to the audience to which he his writing, it would save him from bathing in chagrin as frequently as he does. Journalism is very seldom profound, and in his haste to publish his essays here take on a slapdash, imprecise character that I (and probably most other /.ers) find tiring in articles that promise so much more. I'd love to see Mr. Katz spend 5x as much time on a single essay, put his heart into it, and publish here 0.2x as often. Even the most jaded among us has to admit that sometimes he does have something valuable to say--the difficulty is that these gems are so infrequent.
My impression is that Mr. Katz believes every jot and tittle he scribes is worthy of
It would be refreshing and an excellent exercise for Mr. Katz if he were to devote some effort to deconstructing the nature of verbal communication in this increasingly technical society. (That sounds like the name of a Katz article right there...). His essays typify the dichotomy between the technical and the non-technical, the analytic and the artistic, the realist and the impressionist. His writing has the pretense of profound knowledge but the attitude of an outsider, and as a consequence he often conveys to his reader an arrogance typical of those who believe that the non-technically oriented have somehow cornered the market on philosophy. He provokes ire primarily because, at a fundamental level, he underestimates the capaibilities of his audience, and his sloppiness costs him credibility in the long run.
It's sad: in trying to wear the two hats of journalist and philosopher he succeeds at neither, and he really does have some interesting ideas once in awhile.
I've had this in paperback on my shelf for years now! The publication information says copyright 1992, first Touchstone edition 1993.
It's a fine book, and I really have nothing against a review that appears seven years after publication. But Jon, this is a too important detail to get so badly wrong.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind