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.
CarlN (#196),
and when your “iron logic” (“eternal” = “does not exist”)
has started to exist ? (or is it “eternal” ?)
“Hullo ! God is absent. Please leave your message after
the beep.” (A joke from KVN-show)
Ivan, I did not say that is ” iron logic”, I said it was too easy, only happens to be correct. I was not finished.
But let’s go back to the beginning then. We cannot use something existing to explain that something at all exists. That is circular logic. We can only “use” nothing to explain why something exist.
So existence must come from nothing. That is “iron logic”.
Nothingness takes precedence over existence. Nothingness does not need an explanation or a cause. Existence on the other hand, can’t be explained by existence. Trying to do that is circular logic. The explanation for existence cannot involve anything that exist. So existence has to come from nothing.
But that is easy to understand:
1. “When” nothing exists there are no hinders for something (universes) to start to exist. Any such hinders don’t exist “when” nothing exist.
2. There are no conditions the need to be fulfilled for something to start to exist
“when” nothing exist. Any such conditions don’t exist “when” nothing exists.
3. No causation is needed for something to start to exist “when” nothing exits. Such need for causation does not exist “when” nothing exists.
Something eternal cannot explain why there is existence on the other hand (instead of nothing). So something eternal cannot exist. The self-consistency of reality requires that there is an explanation for everything, including existence.
Ivan, I forgot to add:
There is no logic, no math “when” nothing exists. Logic is “born” when something self-consistent starts to exist. Only self-consistent “things” can start to exist else its existence will conflict with itself. Reality is automatically “born” as something logical.
Its iron clad logic all the way 🙂
‘Only self-consistent “things” can exist. So only realities that are logical and “mathematical” can exist. That’s why “forces” and matter are the way it is.’
UJtter nonsense. You can’t mathematically describe consciousness nor its contents, such as the the smell of coffee or the taste of bananas or redness or beauty or moral values. So according to this reckoning they don’t exist.
Also, you can’t mathematically describe the cause of quantum entanglement. But this is not to say there does not need a cause that that acts so as to maintain the effects of entanglement.
Andrew, of course consciousness and everything else can be described mathematically. But some things are more difficult and will take some more time. That is all.
Go on then describe consciousness or any of its contents mathematically or any conceivable means they might be so described. Its just the absurdity of the mathematician’s pretentions that can coceive of such a thing. Nor even can the property of the attraction of a force be described mathematically either. Nor has any mathematical formulae, just as such, ever explained anything.
I noted before that for example, the collapse of the wave function can’t be described mathematically. It has various oddities, such as no reasonable way to be integrated into relativity of simultaneity, as well as problems under negative or unreliable measurements. (I saw an answer in the post about Higgs bump attempting to characterize the latter: an unreliable detector produces a mixture of collapsed and uncollapsed waves. But I thought “mixture” only applies to ensembles like a mixture of RH and LH photons: a given single photon wave function is always a coherent superposition (unless entangled and requiring further description) with a given phase difference, even if we don’t know what it is.)
Neil, the wavefunction doesn’t really collapse. After a measurement the observer ends up in a superposition of the different possible experimental outcomes.
Andrew, religion has never explained anything. It has only confused people very much. It seems you are a prime example. There you are, typing away on a computer and say that mathematics (physics) has never explained anything!
Count, many worlds?
Neil, there are a lot of collapse theories out there as well, Penrose, GRW etc.
Check ’em out.
But we must be prepared to accept that reality is sometimes counter-intuitive (but never illogical or inconsistent). Remember, creation “from” nothing is very counter-intuitive but fully logical.
Ali,
You’re more then welcome. It looked like a good fit.
Plato,
Absolute is both everything and nothing, so sometimes the middle path is just a flat line on the heart monitor. The dualisms are inescapable. The circle is actually a spiral.
Carl,
The question of eternity confuses form with process. Existence is form, but time is process. Forms come and go as a function of change. If there was no change, there would be no process and no form, so finiteness is necessary for existence. Limits define and definition limits.
God as absolute is both everything and nothing. So is God absolute, or is the absolute God? That is the real question.
To each of you I woud just say :
Pax tecum
Peace be with you .
John, no of what you say is coherent. It cannot be discussed at all actually. But that is what religion do to people. It is all fog, no logic.
Carl
We are after the Truth?
SeanI am not looking for reasons why people do or do not believe in God. I want to know what it means. What is the difference between “God exists” and “God does not exist”? To the world, not just to my belief.
John Baez:In my work I often experience this sense of awesomeness, of depths that pass beyond my understanding – in fact, that’s what I live for. But I don’t find it helpful to package it into a “thing”. After all, this strange “thing” can’t be a normal sort of thing in the universe, so it’s easy to conclude it’s either in some other universe (say, “heaven”), or doesn’t exist at all, or exists in some very tricky sense. But all these alternatives are just distractions, as far as I’m concerned.
AliEven perception requires proof, he thought, because it involves an inference from the ideas we have to the putative causes ‘outside’ us that must have brought the ideas about. This confidence in method is part of the rationalism of modernity. […] Such trust in method and proof is an attempt to master truth. It is an attempt to get disclosure under control and to subject it to our wills. If we can get the right method in place, and if our methodical procedures can be helped by computers, we will be able to solve many important problems.
So it how we arrive at the truth that is important?
CarlN tries to produce a logic that fails immediately by “contrasting nothing” in his argument. I think by doing this he cannot even begin to formulate any logic that would speaks to the truth?
Could some one give some clarification here then as to the truth of my statement. If none given then his method to discern the validity of his approach “is wrong.”
I then postulate that all things have existed forever. It is only our ignorance of what actually exists in reality that prevents us from understanding the full scope of our understanding of God within context of this reality.
Carl,
Sorry about that. Sometimes impressionism is just meaningless abstraction when one makes too many assumptions about the audience. It’s like trying for a Van Gogh and ending up with a Jackson Pollack. I’ll try clarifying…
The absolute is both everything and nothing in that the universal state would be the equilibrium of all things. Such that if you add everything together, all the matter and anti-matter, all the particles and anti-particles, all the actions and reactions, al the yin and yang, it cancels out and you just have the void, the flat line on the heart monitor.
To understand what I’m trying to say about the concept of eternity, you’d have to make some effort to think through my point about time being a function of motion, rather then the basis for it, because in that case time isn’t a line appearing out of the past and disappearing into the future, but the relationship between process and the finite units produced and which define it. Basically the relationship between the eco-system and the organism. In that sense, the very notion of beginning and end is a function of the definition of the units. The paradigm of definition, not a defining paradigm. Process is continually building them up and when it breaks them down again, using the energy, momentum, information, etc. to build the next generation of units, even if it is the next universe out of the crunch of the previous one. There are two directions of time, energy proceeding from one event to the next, while information goes from being future potential to past order.
The question of whether God is absolute, or the absolute is god, is the distinction between monotheism, ie. God is of such monumental enormity that it is the universal state. As Pope John Paul ll put it, “The all-knowing absolute.” On the other hand, the absolute as god is pantheism, atheism, etc. That of all the things, frames, ideas, ideals, axioms, communities, mountains, pink unicorns, etc. that one might consider as representative of the larger reality, the absolute, that universal state, the fluctuating vacuum of energy in space, the void out of which the singularity arises, whatever, is the most basic.
If I may be able to triangulate this somewhat, is there anyone reading this who might be able to offer some more insightful commentary, either in agreement or disagreement, other then it’s just too foggy, so that we might be able to pull Carl along in one direction or another?
Plato, it seems you have found some logical contradiction in my arguments, but it seems I’m too stupid to understand this. Can you explain this clearly?
So you postulate the eternity? Well, I say you are postulating the impossible.
Santa like God (Santa is eternal, mind you), has never started to exist. Santa like God, therefore does not exist. God is anyway the grown-up peoples Santa. 😉
Carl
I’ve gotten rather lost in this conversation because I’ve only been checking back periodically and scanning the most recent comments, but I wanted to clarify that the passage I’m quoted as citing above (by Plato in #213) is from a discussion by Sokolowski about how phenomenology, as a philosophy, diverges from the more familiar Cartesian dualism in which “truth” is “out there” and our minds (which are trapped “inside,” as Sokolowski describes in the introduction: “the mind taken as this large, hollow sphere, light-filled but shading off into darkness, closed off from both the body and the world”) have no way of “knowing” anything about truth except through the methodology of reason. Phenomenology, instead, says that we can experience the truth of things, truth can be disclosed to us, that “the mind is a public thing,” not isolated from the world, but a “moment” of the world and the things in it (a “moment,” as a phenomenological term, is “a part that cannot subsist or be presented apart from the whole to which it belongs”).
In short, I was trying to point out that there is more than one way to discover “truth,” and that, if ‘God’ exists, the truth of that existence can disclose itself through the mental and/or spiritual experiences of the individual human being, even if it cannot be “proven” through abstract reasoning. But of course, accepting the possibility that truth can disclose itself through experience as well as through logic means we have to get over the modern insistence that theory and ideas are more “real” than our actual immediate, everyday experiences of reality.
We’d have to begin taking people–atheists and believers alike–at their word and asking them open-ended clarifying questions, instead of always assuming their ignorance or insincerity and asking questions merely to force them to fit their experiences into our preconceived notions as what counts as “real.” It seems to me that Sean started with a post that did, indeed, ask an open-ended clarifying question, but since then the conversation has taken a slightly more negative turn.
John, I’ve tried to get my head around this:
“The absolute is both everything and nothing in that the universal state would be the equilibrium of all things. Such that if you add everything together, all the matter and anti-matter, all the particles and anti-particles, all the actions and reactions, al the yin and yang, it cancels out and you just have the void, the flat line on the heart monitor.”
What absolute? What universal state? Are these “things” the result of some theory or is it imagination? Does not look like anti-matter balances for that
matter either..
Also what you about time and absolute God, you need to explain how you reach
your conclusions, and I must say I’m not sure what the conclusions actually are.
But I might be stupid..
Consider this: (this is logic by the way, find the errors) Only two situations are possible
1. There exits nothing
2. There exists something
Clearly situation 2 corresponds to reality, otherwise there would be noting to discuss. Why situation 2 instead of situation 1? Note that you cannot use anything existing to explain this. A situation, where for example a god exists, cannot be explained by anything exsisting, that god included.
So only nothing can be used to explain existence (even the existence of any gods) since nothing does not require an explanation. Nothing does not exist. So existence must come from nothing. There are no other explanations possible.
We cannot use anything existing to explain existence since that is circular logic.
Carl
Carl,
Granted. I don’t assume that a frame exists which can explain everything. There is the point of reference that is my own awareness. I am, therefore I think. While thinking may be an attempt to make sense of the world, it doesn’t mean the world makes sense.
Because the ground I stand on is unstable in many ways, I don’t have beliefs, I have suppositions. To the extent I’ve read physics and philosophy, one of the primary concepts seems to be that some form of equilibrium exists. This is not necessarily borne out by our experience, at least at the local level, or we would not exist, as everything would be cancelled out.
But, as you point out, to explain existence without preconditions, we must start with nothing and build from there. So that means that there must be some universal state of equilibrium and existence is local fluctuations, possible because in infinity there is infinite potential.
Now if you go back and consider my observation about time, you will see that by explaining it as a function of motion, rather then the basis for it, it removes the need to explain where the dimension of time came from and where it is going to.
While this doesn’t explain the vacuum fluctuations of motion in space, it is one big step in the direction of putting everything back in the box of nothing.
Ali,
We experience life from past to future, but our comprehension of it is first as potential, then experience, then fades into the past.
Our minds go from past to future. Our thoughts go from future to past.
We live our lives from past to future, but our lives are first in the future and then in the past.
John,
The assumption of equilibrium I think is false. Current data show that matter far exceed anti-matter in the observable universe.
Also existence itself cannot be balanced by an “anti-existence”, which is logically impossible. Non-existence (nothing) is the logical opposite to existence, but “nothing” can obviously not balance out existence.
There is an irreversibility here. “Something” can logically start to exist “from” nothing, but not the other way. There is at least no logical requirement that “something” that exist, should be able to be reduced back to nothing.
There is a logical requirement that something comes from nothing but not the other way around. There is no need to explain “nothing” in terms of “something”, but the existence of “something” must be “explained by” nothing in order to avoid circular logic.
Regarding time, what you say is similar to Leibnitz, and I think it is about right.
Change cause time not the other way. This is what I wrote in “why something rather than nothing a few weeks back:
——
Personally I think Leibnitz was basically right. Time is “generated” by motion or change. I think it should be like this:
Forces (bosons)–>change–>time
There is no time in a universe where nothing (careful with that word!) moves. So time is generated when things are forced to move. If the laws of physics could be recast to reflect this, some additional insights might be found. But maybe not.
It might be completely equivalent.
——
Carl
Ali,
Ali, I believe this discussion can still be salvaged and referenced back to the post of Sean’s #20. Is this not a good starting point?
While I am far from being the expert(logic and reason) you have supplied a framework with which to continue this discussion.
Ali writes:Phenomenology, instead, says that we can experience the truth of things, truth can be disclosed to us, that “the mind is a public thing,” not isolated from the world, but a “moment” of the world and the things in it (a “moment,” as a phenomenological term, is “a part that cannot subsist or be presented apart from the whole to which it belongs”).
I postulate, “that all things have existed forever. ” There had to be a way in which to include “all possibilities.” That they only indeed “await to be discovered.”
Ali:But of course, accepting the possibility that truth can disclose itself through experience as well as through logic means we have to get over the modern insistence that theory and ideas are more “real” than our actual immediate, everyday experiences of reality.
From a spiritual basis, these would be just as tangible “as experience,” because these “could be” the basis of expression “distilled from experience.”
Ali:We’d have to begin taking people–atheists and believers alike–at their word and asking them open-ended clarifying questions, instead of always assuming their ignorance or insincerity and asking questions merely to force them to fit their experiences into our preconceived notions as what counts as “real.”
For each of us “personally” it is always trying to accomplish growth. Recognizing this statement of yours , people to me, are generally asking sincere questions about what they are proposing. As scientists “the ideals here about methodology and the procedures of science are commonly understood at this “junction of time.”
So as a “atheist or non atheist” Sean is I believe asking a sincere question.
While John Baez gave us some indication about “the mystery,” I would allude to the understanding, that one would have had to come to “some point” to make this statement.
You then arrive at “universality and possibilities” and yet, you have invited a solution in.
So it is clear, as Arthur Koestler states, “True creativity often starts where language ends.”
By defining “logic and reason,” as a starting point, It can never be “in nothing” for nothing “is” nothing. It has to be “always” some “thing.”
So yes, people like Lee Smolin might take a stance against what Platonism stands for. “Against symmetry?” and then builds accordingly. Yet what said the spiritual basis does not “pervade the understanding of all reality?”
Plato, I’m not sure whether the last one is for me.
Consider: Reality must be self-consistent. Anything not self-consistent simply cannot exist because it would be in conflict with itself. So anything different from nothing (something that exists), must be logical anyway. Only logical “stuff” can start to exist anyway. No surprise our laws of nature looks like math. We know of nothing(!) else that could make the universe self-consistent.
Nothing is nothing, but is it logical also? I suppose “nothing” can be viewed as logical since there is literally nothing that needs to be explained about it. And “it” needs of course not any causation either.
But logic can only really exist when something starts to exist. And any universe that starts to exist (Big Bang!) must be logical and mathematical.
This explains everything! 🙂
Carl
Carl,
You observed something as coming from nothing. That requires some initial equilibrium out of which balanced elements rise. The absolute zero of motionlessness. To break that equilibrium, there must be opposite forces separating. That we are not in contact with the opposite forces is another question, since if we were, the result would annihilate this reality.
Force can be balanced by its opposite. If not actively opposed, as in action causes reaction. The opposite of this existence isn’t non-existence, but the opposing forces which arise as a consequence of this existence.
Entropy would seem to be “something” dissolving back into the larger equilibrium.
As I pointed out, if time is a fundamental dimension, then physical reality travels along it from past events to future ones, but if time is a consequence of motion, then the direction of the passage of time actually goes the other direction, as events go from being future potential to past circumstance. What these two directions do is to distinguish the actual physical reality that goes from past events to future ones, from the information of the events created, which go from future to past. If physics was to consider this, it might explain some of the current anomalies. Such as the problem of quantum uncertainties, where potentialities seem to cause multiple realities, as with Schrodinger’s cat being both dead and alive. As Ali points out, the modern insistence is on theory being more real then “reality,” yet these mathematical models are information, which goes from future to past, so it is simply the wave of future potential collapsing into the order of past circumstance.
CarlN:But logic can only really exist when something starts to exist. And any universe that starts to exist (Big Bang!) must be logical and mathematical.
I was speaking to Ali in context of his post. I just had to include the logic in that assessment so he did not think this was separate from experience. But to your point.
The mistake here as I see it, is the assumption about the start of this universe.
Also, your statement should read,”something does exist” because your recognition of logic has to have already existed before you implemented it. I do not want to dwell much more on that point.
This exercise for me is about what God means. This has been my effort is to try and explain this. When I talk about universality and possibilities, I am talking about where language/math ends.
As pointed out John Baez recognized this already and called it a mystery, but he does not want to dwell on that beyond this. I do, and am saying that what that mystery is, is God, the universality, and the possibilities.
While people concentrate and focus, they had to come to some “end” and “some point” that they throw themself to what next? Call tis the intuitive leap and the “work in progress” leads you to the “topic of intuition.”