Via 3quarksdaily, here is Richard Skinner (“poet, writer, qualified therapist and performer”) elaborating on Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously. I would argue that they should take him seriously because much of what he says is true, but that’s not Skinner’s take.
Skinner suggests that Dawkins is arguing against a straw-man notion of God (stop me if you’ve heard this before). According to the straw man, God is some thing, or some person, or some something, of an essentially supernatural character, with a lot of influence over what happens in the universe, and in particular the ability to sidestep the laws of nature to which the rest of us are beholden. That’s a hopelessly simplistic and unsophisticated notion, apparently; not at all what careful theologians actually have in mind.
Nevertheless, Dawkins and his defenders typically reply, it’s precisely the notion of God that nearly all non-theologians — that is to say, the overwhelming majority of religious believers, at least in the Western world — actually believe in. Not just the most fanatic fundamentalists; that’s the God that the average person is worshipping in Church on Sunday. And, to his credit, Skinner grants this point. That, apparently, is why Christians should take Dawkins seriously — because all too often even thoughtful Christians take the easy way out, and conceptualize God as something much more tangible than He really is.
At this point, an optimist would hope to be informed, in precise language, exactly what “God” really does mean to the sophisticated believer. Something better than Terry Eagleton’s “the condition of possibility.” But no! We more or less get exactly that:
Philosophers and theologians over the centuries, grappling with what is meant by ‘God’, have resorted to a different type of language, making statements such as “God is ultimate reality”; or “God is the ground of our being”, or “God is the precondition that anything at all could exist”, and so forth. In theological discourse, they can be very helpful concepts, but the trouble with them is that if you’re not a philosopher or theologian, you feel your eyes glazing over – God has become a philosophical concept rather than a living presence.
The trouble is not that such sophisticated formulations make our eyes glaze over; the trouble is that they don’t mean anything. And I will tell you precisely what I mean by that. Consider two possible views of reality. One view, “atheism,” is completely materialistic — it describes reality as just a bunch of stuff obeying some equations, for as long as the universe exists, and that’s absolutely all there is. In the other view, God exists. What I would like to know is: what is the difference? What is the meaningful, operational, this-is-why-I-should-care difference between being a sophisticated believer and just being an atheist?
I can imagine two possibilities. One is that you sincerely can’t imagine a universe without the existence of God; that God is a logical necessity. But I have no trouble imagining a universe that exists all by itself, just obeying the laws of nature. So I would have to conclude, in that case, that you were simply attaching the meaningless label “God” to some other aspect of the universe, such as the fact that it exists. The other possibility is that there is actually some difference between the universe-with-God and the materialist universe. So what is it? How could I tell? What is it about the existence of God that has some effect on the universe? I’m not trying to spring some sort of logical trap; I sincerely want to know. Phrases like “God is ultimate reality” are either tautological or meaningless; I would like to have a specific, clear understanding of what it means to believe in God in the sophisticated non-straw-man sense.
Richard Skinner doesn’t give us that. In fact, he takes precisely the opposite lesson from these considerations: the correct tack for believers is to refuse to say what they mean by “God”!
So, if our understanding of God can be encapsulated in a nice, neat definition; a nice, neat God hypothesis; a nice, neat image; a nice, neat set of instructions – if, in other words, our understanding of God does approximate to a Dawkins version, then we are in danger of creating another golden calf. The alternative, the non-golden-calf route, is to sit light to definitions, hypotheses and images, and allow God to be God.
It’s a strategy, I suppose. Not an intellectually honest one, but one that can help you wriggle out of a lot of uncomfortable debates.
I’m a big believer that good-faith disagreements focus on the strong arguments of the opposite side, rather than setting up straw men. So please let me in on the non-straw-man position. If anyone can tell me once and for all what the correct and precise and sophisticated and non-vacuous meaning of “God” is, I promise to stick to disbelieving in that rather than any straw men.
Update: This discussion has done an even better job than I had anticipated in confirming my belief that the “sophisticated” notion of God is simply a category mistake. Some people clearly think of God in a way perfectly consistent with the supposed Dawkinsian straw man, which is fine on its own terms. Others take refuge in the Skinneresque stance that we can’t say what we mean when we talk about God, which I continue to think is simply intellectually dishonest.
The only on-topic replies I can see that don’t fall into either of those camps are ones that point to some feature of the world which would exist just as well in a purely materialistic conception, and say “I call that `God.'” To which I can only reply, you’re welcome to call it whatever you like, but it makes no difference whatsoever. Might as well just admit that you’re an atheist.
Which some people do, of course. I once invited as a guest speaker Father William Buckley, a Jesuit priest who is one of the world’s experts in the history of atheism. After giving an interesting talk on the spirituality of contemplation, he said to me “You don’t think I believe in G-O-D `God,’ do you?” I confessed that I had, but now I know better.
For people in this camp, I think their real mistake is to take a stance or feeling they have toward the world and interpret in conventionally religious language. Letting all that go is both more philosophically precise and ultimately more liberating.
John – it’s an Ouroboros thing. The absolute is basis, but also apex because it is the “plenum”, the opposite of nothing. All that can be advanced is latent within it. People who can believe (with good reason, of course) that “space” itself is spontaneously a field of every kind of particle shouldn’t find the idea of God so difficult to at least entertain (and that’s all I’m asking them to do, not have it “proven” to them.) I think God is like the ultimate generalization of what the virtual sea is in more particular and limited form. It has intelligence, not as process, since all that can be thought is wrapped up in that omnifarious superspace. (That includes all grounds for evaluation and the rules for validity of same, so God is not even-handed in attribute towards good and evil etc. if one is following this line of thought.)
Greg Egan wrote:
Really? Any sensible definition? I think it’s better to discuss thoughtful people’s ideas on a case-by-case basis, instead of trying to quantify over all possible things they might sensibly mean. But never mind: you’re right that lots of them mean something more… different things in each case.
If someone starts talking about god, you’re certainly entitled to press them on what exactly they mean – and it’s actually a good thing for you to do if they’re using vague talk to confuse or coerce people, as is so often the case.
What I said – just to clarify – is that for me to say either “I believe in god” or “I don’t believe in god” would only lead myself away from what I’m interested in, into the realm of petty squabbles. They’re great ways to start an argument, but terrible ways for me to express how I feel.
Jason, I don’t see why you think the program is the machine. Most thinkers, either AI or traditionalists, would not agree. Why can’t it happen somewhere else?
Finally, as Sean argues quite well, talking about God as the “grounding of existence” or the “why of the world” is completely meaningless. Might as just drop the word entirely.
No, neither he nor anyone I know of argues that quite well or explains why I should consider it “meaningless” (which itself means, defensibly: ?) If you can reason abstractly at highest level and challenge whether it is sensible for a given particular like our universe to be the/an uncaused “given” that’s just here etc, then it is a game point and quite sensible to at least suspect that something fundamental and quite different from all this (even if not easy to define or imagine) is instead that which is “necessary”, and is a contingent necessity for the particular things like those of our world and its properties. You don’t have to care about that or think it “matters” (whether it does is, I say, a choice to make and not a fact anyway), but that doesn’t mean those of us who are interested should give up or follow your lead in what should be considered relevant.
PS: Please read The Mind of God by physicist Paul Davies on this question in like vein (not per religious tradition.) It is indeed the modern classic.
Greg Egan wrote:
Jason wrote:
Greg Egan wrote:
I don’t think you’re going to find a word that means what you want but doesn’t attract a swarm of silly people to it like moths to a candle flame. Unless, of course, you make up the word and don’t tell anyone what it means!
Hmmm, Sean is getting money from…
See the Google adds below “Paying the Bills” 🙂
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Neil B. wrote:
There’s only one pile of schlock more embarrassing than The Mind of God, and that’s The Physics of Immortality. (Well, OK, there’s also the sequel, The Physics of Christianity which is apparently even worse.) Davies spends hundreds of pages assuring us that the universe “has a purpose” and we were “truly meant to be here”, while simultaneously laughing at silly, unsophisticated people who imagine that “meaning” and “purpose” imply the existence of some kind of divine being with thoughts and intentions. He fully deserved to win the Templeton prize for the corruption of science with gibberish.
Another example of why it can’t happen somewhere else is a look at what happens when a person has their corpus callosum severed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_hand_syndrome
If it’s just a hardware issue, why is it that when certain areas of the brain are damaged, one person becomes two?
…. did we already tackle the “Who/what created God” or “chicken/egg” question? It seems to me that this argument always boils down to the inability of the mind to suspend the notion of cause and effect or beginning and end in the analysis of the God question.
More specifically, a previous commenter made the point that you could argue the existence of some feature that would not be present in a God-less universe. For example a “believer” might use the afterlife as proof that God exists. This is a poor example, but an atheist could always counter with the idea that, given the existence of the afterlife, there might also exist a scientific explanation for the afterlife. Given that the egg came first, someone could argue that there must of been a chicken to lay the egg, etc.
What I am saying is that you could apply this to God itself. Given that God exists, could a scientist or even a theist argue that there must’ve been a meta-God that created God (similar to the infinite line of meta-genies in GEB)?
It just seems like a fool’s errand to try to prove it one way or the other. I think it is beyond most people’s capability (including my own) to truly seperate this discussion from the idea of “God exists, there fore X exists.”
This seems to me to be the point of Sean’s post. Show me what it means that God exists by telling me what would be different. Short of a booming voice from the sky or a burning bush, I am yet to be convinced.
Greg Egan wrote:
Since you’ve already suffered through this book, and I don’t plan to, maybe you can tell me: does he make any attempt to explain what he means by saying the universe “has a purpose”, or that we’re “truly meant to be here”? While some people may think they know what such phrases mean, it’s actually very hard to make them precise in any useful way.
Davies doesn’t seem to bother with this over here. Instead, he merely asserts:
Of course what’s really “fiendishly clever piece of trickery” is this sort of argument, which is designed to manipulate our emotions rather than clarify anything.
What is it about the existence of God that has some effect on the universe? … Some people clearly think of God in a way perfectly consistent with the supposed Dawkinsian straw man, which is fine on its own terms. Others take refuge in the Skinneresque stance that we can’t say what we mean when we talk about God, which I continue to think is simply intellectually dishonest.
Sean,
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. At this point in the argument, it is no longer an intellectual debate. I think using the analogy of asking a mitochondrion or cell to provide a precise definition of a human being (per James McGrath) to conclude that one should throw up one’s hands at the prospect of describing measureable effects of god’s existence is a perfectly valid response. It reflects the awe inspiring, transcendent quality that many people see and intuit in the universe. However, in saying that the human intellect is currently, or perhaps forever, not up to the task, the stance is non-rational and non-scientific.
Scientific thinking provides a way to stand awestruck before the majesty of the universe (per John Baez, Joel Primack, and many others). However, psychologically and socially, science leaves people cold. There is a huge unmet task of translating between science and culture.
Sean,
As illustrated by Max Tegmark, physics itself often pretends to give answers that are hardly satisfying. In my personal view, there is not much difference between a “level IV multiverse” and a simplistic representation of God. Both lack predictive power, both require one hypothesis or two per answer, and both claim to be “the ultimate truth”. But I think we can do better.
So here are my two cents about God:
1) The existence of God is a testimony. In other words, God talks to people in the Bible, saying “I am”. Jesus talks to people saying “I am the Son of God”. Now, you may decide to believe that or not, of course. But be honest: why do you believe I exist? Because I talk to you. Or… “the Verb”, in Bible-speak.
Let me tell you a little story here. When I was about 14, with a group of kids, trying to answer some difficult religious question, one of the kids said “God told me…” and gave an answer that was quite amazing. And that guy was not the brightest in the class. So that same day, I decided there was no reason this guy could talk to God and not me, and I tried. I would say that I prayed for the first time. Well… it worked. For me, now, God is a personal presence. Of course, I know that this may be an illusion of my brain, but I know that on the exact same level as I know you may be an illusion of my brain. I cannot prove you exist, I cannot prove God exists, I still believe both of you exist.
2) Describing is not explaining. If I open my hand, and the apple I was holding falls, “why does the apple fall”. The physicist’s answer would be “because of gravity”. But that really describes how the apple falls, not why it fell. A better reason why it fell is because I decided to open my hand. If you are a hard core materialist, you can then find another root cause: “yes, but then the reason you open your hand is because some chemical reaction in your brain caused a nerve influx…” OK, but why were things organized in such a way that my brain could take such a decision? “Carbon atoms were formed in stars eons ago,…” and so on.
Such a dialogue has three logical ends: either there is some explanation (God, anthropic principle, whatever), or finite recursion will allow me to go to a point where no explanation is needed, or the recursion is infinite and we can keep arguing. Some “materialists” pretend that we have reached the point where no further explanation is needed. I personally find this intellectually dishonest.
Hope this helps,
Andrew, I think that the cell analogy is completely beside the point, in fact. I am not asking for the perfectly accurate Final Theory of God. Nor am I insisting that the ineffable be put in some overly constraining physicalist box. I am simply asking people who call themselves religious to explain what they mean. Even the poor mitochondrion, who might not be able to explain what it is to be human, should be able to explain what they mean when they say they believe in the existence of something called a human being.
Then I would go on to say, to those who feel that our sense of awe and wonder at the universe should be sensibly identified with “God,” that that’s an incredibly bad strategy. It’s a move that blurs the distinction between metaphysical materialism and honest spirituality, in a way that is both philosophically backwards and pragmatically dangerous. These are important questions, and ones that are worth taking seriously and rigorously, rather than pretending that some human feelings in the face of a pretty impressive but ultimately purely physical universe can be lazily confused with sincere (even if misguided) beliefs in a higher non-physical power.
Hi Sean,
My point about why people end up believing in God was meant to illustrate that an honest religious person will agree with you that you can’t say just what He is. (But that person will go on believing Him having no idea what He is, because he knows He exists from scripture and personal experiences.) But as for the question “how would the world be different if there were no God,” I think you can get answers for this. No morality would be an obvious one. I would probably say no free will. I’m not sure what the spectrum looks like for actually religious people.
-Sam
A friend of mine from graduate school reads cosmicvariance, and he suggested that I check out this thread. Coming in after more than 80 comments against the original post, I must say that you do have an interesting thread going here.
From the original post:
Because I am a Catholic, “the other view” has a particular set of meanings for me, regardless of whether I fit the description of the “sophisticated believer”. Still, I was trained as a physicist, and not only do I not see any real conflict between my religious view and modern science per se, but my religious view has “meaningful, operational” value, at least to me. By writing the following, I don’t mean to make assertions that I expect anyone here to believe; I merely hope that someone might find in them more than the passing interest that one has for an embarrassing display of foolishness.
From my point of view, there are several this-is-why-I-should-care differences, but it’s hard to predict what someone else will actually care about.
(0) God is the truth. There are several concepts X usually written as, “God is X.” God is the grand unification of certain things that appear to the human mind to be distinct. But I list X=truth zeroth because it has a special place. Anyone who believes in objective truth and seeks the truth believes in God and seeks God. Falsehood and deception are the enemies of God and of God’s followers. Logic and honesty are the friends of God and of God’s followers. One who worships God worships the truth, and vice-versa. Believing in this alone amounts merely to the assertions that objective truth exists and that honesty and logic are of the highest value. Although this by itself would seem insufficient to justify use of the word “God”, such an explicitly stated (though limited) expression of “God” could be useful as common ground for discussion with religious persons who attach more ideas to the word “God”.
(1) God is existence itself. The very principle of being underlying everything that is, so that it can be. It is evident (at least to me) that there is a deep consistency between (0) above and the view of God as existence itself. But there is more in this particular view, in which the absence of God is the absence of existence itself and therefore the absence of everything. Nothing would exist without God.
(2) God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. These attributes of God reflect the association of a Mind with God, and here is the root of the notion of creation. The Mind of God unifies everything in existence so that we may properly speak of it as “the universe”. The Mind of God organizes all of existence so that a created mind may comprehend the universe. Everything that exists is held in being by God’s thinking about it.
(3) A human person is like God in a way that a chimpanzee or a tomato or a rock is not. This likeness gives the human person a dignity on which human rights can be firmly established. Of course, the obligation to protect the dignity of every human person from conception to natural death can be inconvenient, and so one might care to oppose the idea of God if it means that there might be some real obligation involved.
(4) God has established true authority among men in history. The idea here is that some knowledge has been communicated to humanity in history by God. The content of the communication includes knowledge about the relationship between God and the universe, the relationship between humanity and the rest of the universe, relationship between God and humanity, and the relationship between a human and his neighbor. In order for this revealed information to be communicated reliably in every age, an authoritative and living institution has been established in the Catholic Church, which God imbues with a certain infallibility.
(5) One way in which a human is unlike a mere animal is that the human being has an infinitely extended subjective awareness, part of which is experienced in the universe as we now see it. That part ends with the death of the imperfect body that lives in this imperfect world. After the death of the body, each human will be judged by God, and there are essentially two possible judgments, friend of God or enemy of God. Friend of the truth or enemy of the truth. Respecter of reason or distorter of the truth. Good or evil. Living one’s life amounts to choosing sides, and the choice has an infinite subjective value, for it is tied to whether the resurrected body will have eternal life or suffer eternal death.
John Baez wrote (#85):
Not that I could discern. The book is a catalogue of the usual stuff: we should be impressed that there are physical laws at all, that various constants appear fine-tuned for life, that mathematics is “unreasonably effective” (aargh!), that we are capable of understanding cosmology and asking Big Questions. Because it’s easy to imagine universes in which none of these things are true, they must have been “meant” to happen. He ridicules the idea that this invites the question “Er, meant by whom?”, and assures us endlessly that there are no men with white beards involved, but offers no explanation whatsoever as to what he (as opposed to virtually every other English speaker in the world) means by the word “meant”.
Sean ,
Please excuse my limited Latin :
Opus est mihi Deo ;
Opus est Deo me .
I need God ; God needs me .
Sean,
I realize that I forgot to answer the question “What is the meaningful, operational, this-is-why-I-should-care difference between being a sophisticated believer and just being an atheist?” Or, as you reformulated it: “how would things be different if God didn’t exist”
My answer is about the same as if you asked me how would things be different if my wife didn’t exist…
In other words, it’s all about love. I’m not the only one saying that. Pope Benedict’s first encyclical is called “Deus caritas est”, “God is love”. I thought it was worth another comment, because surprisingly, nobody else wrote it here, I’m afraid. God’s first name is “I am”, his last name is “Love”.
BTW, since Blake Stacey was the only one arguing about love, let me answer him:
Neil,
The absolute is both everything and nothing, but that doesn’t make it an “ideal form,”
There is no program that is perfect. What makes a successful program is how effectively it copies itself. To do this it becomes more complex until such a point that the complexity becomes counterproductive and then it resets back to an equilibrium point. It is a bottom up process, not top down structure. A good social example is between North and South Korea. In North Korea, it’s all about apex, the Dear Leader at the top, but in South Korea, it’s about whatever works. The structure serves the process, not the other way around.
Structure is subject to entropy. It is constantly degrading and needs maintenance. This requires constant application of fresh energy and information, which also keeps structure from settling into equilibrium.
Corporations are the structure in the process of capitalism. Individual companies come and go, as the process moves on.
What religions have done is to provide a structural concept for the organic community in a world that is transitioning between tribal groupings and a world community.
Hello Sean and everybody,
Why is God needed for the universe? well, the cheapest answer is that, he is the cause of the fundamental laws of nature, their origin (wether it is string theory or something deeper)
You might say well, our universe is not unique in the multiverse picture,
I would say God would be still necessary for that picture as well, He is the cause of the existance of that multiverse. Frankly the multiverse is a beautiful idea and very profound and logical and i tend to beleive it, if it is the right picture (regardless of how we might be able to show that) I will be still beleiving in God, God caused the multiverse which evolved naturally and one of the universes happened to be suitable for life
Of course you do not need assuming God’s existance when explaining data from some experiment in cosmology or particle physics or science generally
It always amazes me when people argue about God’s existance, because I always wonder what kind of a proof would one need to beleive in God!
One might want to see a miracle to beleive, If God exists let him make me fly, well, even if he made him fly or even made him talk to the dead and he beleived today the next day he would wake up saying I must have been dreaming, or was drunk or something, and so on. So Asking for a proof is eventually like saying I will never be convinced that God exists
“And even if We had sent down unto them angels, and the dead had spoken unto them, and We had gathered together all things before them, they would not have believed, unless Allah willed, but most of them behave ignorantly”
verse 111, sura 6, the holy quraan.
May be if particle physicists discovered a mechanism or an underlying theory which would spit out yukawa couplings uniquely, they would beleive in God. But i guess later they would come up with something to avoide the necessity of God
The reason why people try to avoide God’s existance, the way i see it (which has nothing to do with physics or science generally), is because once one assumes God exists then there are serious consequences for that, and one has to answer lots of other questions about religions and what God wants from us and salvation…etc, so it seems to me that people subconciously avoide assuming existance of God just to avoide all those bothering questions.
So how does beleiving in god affect the universe around you? what does praying do for you ?
Since atheists do not beleive in devine intervention, let me say the following
we do not know what can heppen in the future, there are many possibilities, and life “now” can evolve into “many possible” lives in the future, may be in one possibility one is supposed to die in 3 days in an accident, but praying to God generally, might prevent that event from taking place by gettig sick for example, so it is devine intervention in that sense
the reason people usually pray regardless of what religion they practice is that they want to obey their God, it gives them inner peace (it is nothing but meditation!) and that they will be rewarded, if not in this life, then in the hereafter
One might say , God can’t exist otherwise why leaving all this miserly and evil taking place on earth without doing anything?
well, earth is not supposed to be heavens, earth is earth, it is supposed to be this way full of hopes, losses, misery, sadness, happiness, death, birth, goods and evils
For those who beleive in God, he is an absolute just, so no evil will be escaped unpunished, if not i this life then definitely not in the hereafter
we all beleive in beauty, in good, in peace, in morals and justice etc, we all are afraid of death and of what happens to us after death, we share alot whether we beleive in God or not, things are built in in us, things can’t be explained by science, or the seen world, things can’t be explained by the multiverse.
Things which mean that one should think more about God and his existance, just the same way one thinks about new physics from hints from the standard model!
anyway
sorry for the long post
and may God guide us all
Why should the mitochondrian “worship” the human being, and how would the human know, and what would he do if he did know? Perhaps things would be best for everyone if the little mitochondrian just minded it’s own business.
Sean:
I haven’t read all the comments so this response may have already been made. I will explain to you God( god) if you can expalin to me how our knowable universe came into existance.. I mean from the very beginning if there was one. And if there wasn’t one why not? Thanks for any reply.
Imagine there was once a common folk belief that people fall in love because little cherubs shoot them in the butt with invisible arrows. They believed this so strongly that most average people thought that the feeling of love was really the same thing as having an invisible arrow in your butt. Then the scientific revolution happens, and some people start saying that there is no reason to assume invisible arrows exist and that there is even no need to assume love exists, and hence that these things don’t exist. Lots of average people say, hold on, their beloveds light up their hearts and therefore love exists and hence invisible arrows exist. Other people, called theologists, are embarrassed by the what the average people say and so they say of course invisible arrows don’t exist but love certainly exists, just look into your heart. Then some of the more reflective science types say they don’t even understand the question of what it means for love to exist and that they’ll just keep singing and singing that Foreigner song and not even attempt to give an answer until someone can give them a clear question.
Is this an accurate analogue of the discussion here?
I’ve always been one of the Foreigner-singing types myself, but after writing this, I can’t help but wonder if I could do better.
ps I didn’t read most of the comments above, so apologies if this adds nothing new.
And the Universe created (or gave birth to) humans, so that they in awe and wonder should attempt to unravel the mistery & majesty of the Universe.
These humans endowed with ‘intellect’ built optics to gaze at the remotest and most distant parts of the universe, and machines (colliders) to measure the component parts of said universe.
“Then I would go on to say, to those who feel that our sense of awe and wonder at the universe should be sensibly identified with “God,” that that’s an incredibly bad strategy. It’s a move that blurs the distinction between metaphysical materialism and honest spirituality, in a way that is both philosophically backwards and pragmatically dangerous.”
“These are important questions, and ones that are worth taking seriously and rigorously, rather than pretending that some human feelings in the face of a pretty impressive but ultimately purely physical universe can be lazily confused with sincere (even if misguided) beliefs in a higher non-physical power.”
And of course there is much we still don’t know of the visible or observable universe. However, I repeat: If there is life after death, then there is clearly much we ‘cannot’ measure in the universe.
If there is no life (existence, consciouness, awareness or call it what you will) then perhaps there is no ‘higher’ or non-physical existence. And yet oddly enough those who would have no time for things such as angels or demons (fallen angels) have no problem envisioning alternate lifeforms or ‘alien’ life in other galaxies or even from parallel worlds.
We know science fiction & hollywood movies are not real, but they have physical existence – you’ll soon be able to watch the latest star trk movie with your own eyes. Do not believe that all your eyes (or rather your mind thru the eyes) see, nor disbelieve that anything you cannot see with your physical eyes (even aided by powerful telescopes or electron microscopes) cannot or does not exist.
So what is Dark Energy, and does the observable universe as we know it, need dark energy to exist. Does it matter whether I believe or disbelieve whether dark energy exists.
God is the thing all the athletes praise when they’ve won a game or a championship or some contest.