Stephen Hawking has a new book coming out (The Grand Design, with Leonard Mlodinow). Among other things, he points out that modern physics has progressed to the point where we don’t need to invoke God to explain the existence of the universe. This is not exactly a hot flash — I remember writing an essay making the same point for a philosophy class my sophomore year in college — but it makes news because it’s Hawking who says it. And that’s absolutely fine — Hawking has a track record of making substantial intellectual contributions, there’s every reason to listen to him more than random undergraduates waxing profound.
This issue is, of course, totally up my alley, and I should certainly blog about it. But I can’t, because I’m on hiatus! (Right?) So, as an experiment, I made a video of myself talking rather than simply typing my words into the computer. Radical! Not sure the amount of information conveyed is anywhere near as large in this format, and obviously I didn’t sweat the production values. I fear that some subtleties of the argument may be lost. But if we’re lucky, other people elsewhere on the internet will also talk about these questions, and we’ll get it all sorted out.
Let me know if the Grand Video Experiment is worth repeating and improving, or whether it’s just a waste of time.
Something that I should have said, but didn’t: there doesn’t need to be some sophisticated modern-physics answer to the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” The universe can simply exist, end of story. But it’s still fun to think carefully about all the possibilities, existence and non-existence both included.
“I still want to know where your explanatory myth came from.”
Did you try re-reading the original comment again, and still not notice the word “story”?
My story came from the same place that the Egyptian myths, Norse myths, Hebrew myths, and tales of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox came from: a mixture of known facts (various primitive tribes did have Rain Gods and Fire Gods), previous legends, and the speculations formed by billions of neurons firing at random. Imagination is a good thing (a tool for survival). It produces the hypotheses which we use to explain the mechanisms of natural processes, but it needs to be used in conjunction with a checking method (the scientific method), so that it doesn’t fly off in unfruitful directions.
As to Sean’s title, I suspect he succumbed to the temptation of hyperbole, but I believe his basic point, and Hawking’s, is the same as that of my original comment. Both have previously disclaimed any ability to prove or disprove mathematically the existence of a god, and of course no scientific principle is “proved” (only supported by evidence), so they would consider that a red herring.
Here’s another story I have used to illustrate this point: a man was prosecuted for murder (my story goes) because he was found standing over the body with a smoking gun in his hand, and a bullet from that gun killed the victim. The defense attorney rises to address the jury: “Ladies and gentlemen, the prosecutor has not proved his case. We contend that space aliens killed the victim, then teleported my client to the scene and teleported the gun into his hand! The prosecutor cannot disprove this!”
(This story comes from the same place the previous one did, to forestall the question.)
Any claim of science could turn out to be wrong (and will usually turn out to be incomplete); it’s not perfect, it just beats the heck out of whatever is in second place, because it is based on evidence and reasoning which holds up under peer review, and would be admissible in a court of law – unlike religion, which is based largely on hearsay.
Well there is such a thing as scientific speculation which has explanatory power, but little evidence.
Science is not just positivist results of measurements. The purpose is to rationally explain the way things are. It is not, like religion, faith-based, incapable of modification when new facts are uncovered, based on tribal dogma from a millenium ago–etc. The multiverse helps to explain features of quantum mechanics, which has incredibly precise evidence. Once again, religion has none and relies on dogma and authority. The multiverse interpretation has not been universally accepted (David Gross) but that is fine—science is a process, unlike religion, which is immutable.
This is enough for me on this topic. It is clear that religious apologists never quit.
Katherine, you do know who invented memes don’t you? If you don’t you should really find out before you dismiss my point. And you might want to note who some of their greatest promoters are as well.
As I never am when encountering new atheists, I’m not surprised to have all kinds of things attributed to what I said when I not only have never said them but don’t happen to hold with them. I have noticed that thinking by stereotype instead of the recorded evidence is also a widespread habit of the new atheism. Let me just say I’ve also learned that correcting each and every one of their unfounded attributions takes too much time.
Given who’s blog your on and the video that gave rise to this thread, the remark about “presupposing worlds” is more than ironic. If you don’t know that, go look at the video and look up multiuniverse and M-theory and, for example, Peter Woit’s critique of it and you’ll get what I mean.
Jim V. you mean you didn’t mean your story to actually have some kind of relevance to the topic of religious belief? I wonder why you bothered.
“Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là.” –Pierre-Simon Laplace, c.1806.
Hawking is brilliant and all, but his recent comments on E.T. were absurd. The only solution is thinking critically about all information—regardless of how bright the source is that the information emanates from—and testing said information against other known information to “proof” its truth value, and rate its validity in proportion to the supporting evidence, ratio-nally. (I.e., science!)
Woit as an authority….hmmm what a concept.
Gordon, maybe you’ll want to let the folks at Columbia U. know what you do.
They can look it up on Spires.
Sorry to butt in, but, I can’t seem to help myself…
“There is no evidence for multiverses” [agree; highly speculative at best, though “evidenced” by the mathematics and our inability to interpret the math in an intuitively consistent way.]
“there is no evidence of memes” [disagree; what is fashion?]
“there is no evidence of a specific favorably adaptive behavior in our Paleolithic ancestors which was widely practiced, conferring a reproductive advantage, which is the expression of a specific genetic complex producing, for example “religion proteins” which result in what is so popularly talked about among new atheists as “religion”. [eh… the evidence is the high prevalence of religious belief, indicating that it was either selected for, or at least not selected against…]
“since there is no definable ‘thing’ that is meant by ‘religion’.” [if you can’t agree on a definition for a word, it makes little sense to debate anything related to the word, because no one knows what you’re debating. As a “Gnu Atheist” myself, I mostly mean the dogmatic, ancient beliefs in a personal god that are the traditional basis of the Abrahamic religions; I tend to exclude all the abstract new-age beliefs, deism and pantheism because they tend to make up a very small portion of what I consider to be “the problem” with religion. You might very well call me an anti-dogmatist. If you’d agree, I’d love to focus on the gnu atheists’ intolerance of dogmatism.]
“You know, if it was so adaptively favorable in the past, getting rid of its expression just might lead to our extinction.” [Likewise, keeping it might lead to our extinction. Technology so heavily alters our environments that you can’t rely on our naturally-selected bodies to even regulate our food intake in a healthy manor, let alone our social habits/policies/behaviors/interactions. We’ve shed many religious beliefs (sacrifices, gods for each phenomena, blaming god(s) for natural disasters (most of us have), etc.), I tend to be of the opinion that shedding the rest would be beneficial (though obviously that point is open to debate).
“Good grief. I’m supposed to take you guys seriously as the keepers of the little candle in the dark that used to be science, even as you turn it into an evidence free game?” [Wait, the theist is demanding evidence? If you’re criticizing people for not providing evidence in a blog-based-discussion of religious ideas, you should note that they don’t represent the real workings of science. In reality, we all debate and criticize one another, and over much comparison and effort and criticism and debate, emerges a consensus of what the best explanation for the evidence is. Science has no authorities, only people who give better advice about where to look or how to test for given kinds of evidence. The truth that emerges from the scientific process however is indisputable. As Oppenheimer said, “for what is true today cannot be found false tomorrow.]
For a good understanding of “what is science?” I recommend reading R. Feynman’s speech, “What is Science?”. And for a better understanding of why we say “Newton was wrong, Einstein is wrong, and science is often found to be wrong”, read I. Asimov’s essay, “The Relativity of Wrong”. As Ike says,
Just one more thing: the basis of the Abrahamic religions is a manuscript which makes little sense when read as non-fiction but makes tons of sense when interpreted as the work of a bunch of ancient goat-herders who knew little to nothing about the harsh world they found themselves in. No memes, no genes, no science. And yet half(!) of the planet believes that this book (& its two main derivatives) are inspired by something beyond physical reality! (Extraordinary claim!) What I don’t understand is, why do they believe this is a work of non-fiction written through the hands of men guided by some supreme being, but they don’t believe me when I put a sandwich board on and go down to the corner to warn people that god has told me the end is near? Why is that so clearly crazy, but the “good book” so confidently sane? And (sorry to rant) but it’s considered a sane book in the face of Abraham, ready to murder his son! If god told me to murder someone, I’d check myself into an asylum (assuming I still had the cognitive capacity to do so).
JimV: “As to Sean’s title, I suspect he succumbed to the temptation of hyperbole, but I believe his basic point, and Hawking’s, is the same as that of my original comment. Both have previously disclaimed any ability to prove or disprove mathematically the existence of a god”
Oh…I see. You (and Sean, and Hawking) are agnostics. Sorry, I thought you were atheists. I wonder how I could have made that mistake.
[eh… the evidence is the high prevalence of religious belief, indicating that it was either selected for, or at least not selected against…] Cody
The evidence that there is a “thing” that constitutes “religion” which can constitute a adaptation of any kind, isn’t there.
The evidence that if there was such a “thing” that it would be the result of a genetic expression, isn’t there.
The evidence that “religion” was practiced by our ancestors in the Paleolithic, isn’t there.
The evidence that if there was a “religion” practiced by them that it would have conferred a reproductive advantage, isn’t there. — Especially interesting given the many and frequent assertions that our swinging and hardly faithful ancestors had a reproductive advantage. Though I often wonder if that idea isn’t an adaptation originating in way too many evo-psy faculty who are surrounded by too many young students.
There is no evidence that anything they might have regarded as a religion would be recognizable to us as a religion.
One could go on. I would like them to at least identify a “religion protein” or two before I’d begin to take any of it seriously. Though actually finding a definition of “religion” that wasn’t more than a convenient fiction might be a nicer place to start.
I generally think of science as an attempt to find more reliable information about the physical universe, as I asserted earlier in this thread.
I could keep this up indefinitely but I do have other things to do.
Gordon, you might find this interesting if it doesn’t give you a headache.
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=2778
Why are you so bent on there needing to be a genetic origin of religion? Science doesn’t demand that. There are many, easily conceivable explanations for why religion is so ubiquitous. But what is hard to argue against, is that given it’s ubiquity, that the underlying causes/origins (whatever they may be), were not selected for.
Personally, I imagine it has more to do with our brains making causal connections in inappropriate circumstances than it has to do with genetic predisposition for faith or believing authority. This is born out by experiments such as B.F. Skinner’s superstitious pigeons, or the way baseball players are often superstitious about batting (where signal to noise ratio is terrible), and not fielding (where S/N is good). There is plenty of evidence that we (as well as many other species) are predisposed to believe our caretakers (think imprinting in birds), even when those caretakers are lying to us. Furthermore there are good (and simple) arguments as to why this is beneficial to a species, and why it would be selected for over adaptations that allowed for say, skepticism, or exploration. (Adults that survive ought to have better advice as to how to survive than randomly sampling behavior, much of which would lead to certain doom.)
But why do you need a scientific explanation for the origin of religion? To me that’s as silly as asking for a scientific explanation of the origin of the bee-hive hairdo; some aspects of human behavior emerge from odd places, like one-upping one another. And it gets really stupid sometimes. Ergo, the pope’s hat.
You might wonder what motivates me to be so vocal and vehement about atheism, and it’s because I see so many problems caused by theists. As Hitchens said, “the suicide bomber community, is entirely religious; the genital mutilation community, is entirely religious; the pedophilia community isn’t entirely, but they’re bidding for it.” As Weinberg said, “with or without religion, you have good people doing good things, and evil people doing bad things. But for good people to do bad things, that takes religion.”
Let’s muddle the mess some more, since it seems that some of the above have taken the muck to the extremes.
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2010/09/deeply_confused_essay_on_relig.php
Also, eat some mushrooms…
— Why are you so bent on there needing to be a genetic origin of religion? Cody
Given my skepticism that there is a specific entity that constitutes “religion” which natural selection could act on, I don’t understand how you could miss my complete skepticism about that assertion of many new atheists, Dawkins and Dennett chief among them. I doubt it, I don’t think there is any way to find out if it’s true for the reasons I stated above and many more. A better question is why two of the lions of the new atheism, the “we’re all about evidence, you’re all about authority” people, want to remove the requirement to produce evidence from science, substituting explanatory myths for the tacit evidence? And why they are so seldom called on that discrepancy.
I hope that there are some people still reading this thread who can see the problem here. The guys who slam religious people for believing that God made the word flesh want to make their words flesh. Is there some weird quantum seeming phenomenon that makes contradictions like those OK for the new atheists or is it just your good old fashioned fundamentalism cutting itself slack?
I wonder how the evo-psy guys might like having B. F. Skinner brought up sort of in their defense.
I won’t begin to touch the irony of you quoting that old saw by Steve Weinberg in the context of this thread because it would take another hundred comments to go through it. Though the irony abounds in the NA world.
I will say that quoting Hitchens, ex trot, ex Bushie, the advocate of the invasion of Iraq that has killed well, well over a hundred thousand people is pretty disgusting.
Oh, and I just remembered, suicide bombing actually originated among Marxists in Sri Lanka, a campaign that is ongoing, I think you could find. Though I doubt Karl Marx would have approved of the idea at all.
Until very recently, most suicide bombers were secular in origin. The techniques of suicide bombing were first developed by the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist-Leninist group operating in Sri Lanka that recruits mainly from the island’s Hindu population, but which – like Marxist-Leninist parties everywhere – has always been intensely hostile to religion.
http://www.newstatesman.com/200509120042
See also:
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2005/07/suicide-bombing-dossier.html
So Hitchens’ statement is a lie. Hardly his first.
“Jim V. you mean you didn’t mean your story to actually have some kind of relevance to the topic of religious belief?”
No, that is not what I mean. You asked where it came from. It has the same relevance as my story about the murder trial: it illustrates a relevant point, without necessarily being literally true (although it could be – you can’t disprove it, as a religionist would say). I’m not sure where your antagonism to it comes from. Surely you agree there were primitive tribes who erroneously considered wind, rain, and fire to be controlled by capricious gods? If not, we disagree on that. If so, the analogy to the creation of universes seems apt and relevant, to me.
“Oh…I see. You (and Sean, and Hawking) are agnostics.”
Here is how I see the semantics: asymmetry is the lack of symmetry; a theist is one who believes in a personal god; an atheist is one who lacks that belief, as do I, Dr. Carroll, and Dr. Hawking; a gnostic is one who believes the existence or non-existence of a god or gods can be known for certain; an agnostic is one who does not have this belief. Accordingly, I, Sean, Hawking, and Dawkins are all agnostic atheists. (There are also agnostic theists, by the way.) I know that Dawkins is self-described as such, and while I can’t speak for Sean and Hawking, would bet what’s left of my 401k that they would agree with this position. I would also bet (although not as much) that you yourself lack a belief in Zeus and therefore are atheistic as far as Zeus is concerned. We simply applied our reason to the Abrahamic gods the same way you did to Zeus, and found them wanting in believability – as well as all the other theistic gods we have heard of so far (Ra, Odin, etc.).
I didn’t finish my story about the murder trial. The jurists examined all the evidence, conferred, and settled the question: guilty (although the convicted person still correctly says there is no disproof of his alternate explanation).
Why would I find that interesting? AdS/CFT and M theory are the best thing going right now, so it is not surprising that they are cited the most. And suicide bombing originated in that instance with the Tamils, who are Hindus mostly. You Americans think that everyone with a brain is a Marxist. Hitchens just tells it like it is. BTW, Brian Greene is an authority at Columbia who is actually a member of the physics department….
Gordon @ 190
Now if you check out the SPR website (the Society for Psychical Research is, I believe, one of the oldest academic societies):
http://www.spr.ac.uk/main/page/trustees-and-officers-psychical-research
You will find Prof. Deborah Delanoy Ph.D, Mary Rose Barrington M.A., Prof. Bernard Carr MA, Ph.D, Prof. David Fontana BA, MEd, Ph.D, Alan Gauld MA, PhD, DLitt, Prof. John Poynton M.Sc., Ph.D, Prof. Archie Roy B.Sc, FRAS and the list goes on. Some very senior scientists who are on to something.
So you should dig a little better than that, to put it mildly.
Also Prof. Carr was the Editor of the quite recent Universe or Multiverse? (2007), which I believe included scientific luminaries quite bigger than yourself, AND of course was one of Stephen Hawking’s research Ph.D’s. He studied the first second of the universe I believe.
Prof. Carr has written a paper “Can psychical research bridge the gap between matter and mind? at http://www.esalenctr.org/display/sbd09.htm where he develops ideas which are based on the multiverse.
I would also check out the renowned quantum physicist Henry Stapp’s site at:
http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html where these issues are addressed quite powerfully at the theoretical level.
So you see you must look a little deeper and catch up on your reading!
You should not put things you seem to have no knowledge of in your own personal mental asylum, as you say. I too am a physics postgrad. but I have looked at this information. You could try too!
As I said above, there seems to be a subjective element in reality that needs to be addressed in science, not ignored. Can the multiverse do this?
Hmmm, I was right—-just below the surface, psychic crap.
Wow, that was a complete data free statement!
1. The scientists at 217 actually outgun you but you don’t realize it.
2. You also read (?) the comment but read nothing of the content.
3. You seem to have a serious denial problem or you are pursuing “issue deflection tactics”. Either is psychologically interesting…
Alan, it’s not exactly my area of interest but I think you might find page 202, right before the references, interesting. Considering the role that Richard Feynman plays in new atheist culture.
http://www.tricksterbook.com/ArticlesOnline/HymanReview.htm
Nature of GOD :The understanding of God is not something which is to be understood apart from His nature. The understanding of God includes His formless existence and all the forms created by Him. God is not something apart from forms. He is not something outside from physics and gravity rather all these laws and their effects are within God.
Guru Nanak (The first teacher of Sikhism) says:
“We can only express a sense of wonder about the beginning. The absolute void (Nothingness) abided endlessly deep within Himself then. From His state of absolute existence, He assumed the immaculate form; from formless, He assumed the supreme form.” (Page 940 Guru Granth Sahib, holy scripture)
Having said that,Guru Nanak identifies the God in following words
“O Nanak, the True One is the Giver of all; He is to be identified through creative nature we see. ||8||” (Page 141 Holy Scripture Guru Granth Sahib)
The creative nature has the power to create, sustain and destruct the life. Can Stephen Hawkins reject this identification of God given by a saint born in 1469?
Surely you agree there were primitive tribes who erroneously considered wind, rain, and fire to be controlled by capricious gods? Jim V
How condescending of you. I generally look at who is destroying the biosphere and what they’re doing it with and it’s not “primative tribes” with animistic beliefs but those with access to science and technology and who practice the real state religion of America and most other developed countries, mammonism.
I’d rather deal with things that are at least asserted by people to be real instead of fiction in this case. If it’s fiction you’re aiming for, two words, continuity, narrative.
I’m sorry if I’m beginning to get sarcastic but this is getting really absurd.
JimV: I suspected this was going to come down to semantics (honestly, how many real philosophy debates don’t come down to semantics?)
Here’s my take: Asymmetry and symmetry are diametrically opposed; there is no middle ground. You either have symmetry, or you don’t. The analogy doesn’t quite translate to the theist/atheist argument for that reason alone, since there is a middle ground (agnostic).
A theist believes God exists. An atheist believes that God does not exist. But “belief that God does not exist” is NOT the same as “lack of belief in God’s existence”. Those that “lack belief of God’s existence” (and, lack belief of God’s non-existence, for that matter) are called agnostics.
I am agnostic about Zeus, Odin, and any others on the current roster of gods.
[speculation] The difference between us is I am ok with being agnostic. But the atheist will not admit that deep down he is agnostic because he is so proud of his stance, and so afraid of seeming weak in front of the rest of his atheist tribe. Instead, he redefines atheism to include agnostics, and chooses to take all true meaning from the word “agnostic”. [/speculation]
Why not just accept commonly held definitions, call yourself an agnostic, and be done with it?
Gordon, since I’m a socialist who has some regard for Karl Marx, which I indicated, I think you need to read more of what you comment on. And I think you’ll find the New Statesman isn’t an American publication, nor is John Gray American, which you would know, so I know you didn’t try the link. And I’m fairly confident that you could find any number of other reputable sources for that information. So, Hitchens’ statement, was, as I’m sure he knows as a journalist, untrue.
Oh, and I think you will find that Hitchens was a Trot who has a fleeting familiarity with the truth but not a deep one.
“Here’s my take: Asymmetry and symmetry are diametrically opposed; there is no middle ground. You either have symmetry, or you don’t.”
Yet one can lack symmetry without claiming that the existence of symmetry can be disproved, which seems to be what you think atheists are saying about the existence of gods. Name a god, or a pink unicorn: I don’t believe in it. I lack that symmetry. When I see convincing evidence that gods or pink unicorns exist, I will gain that symmetry (belief).
In any case, I have defined what I mean by the term “atheist” and how it applies to me. This same definition is used by Richard Dawkins and Bertand Russell, and all the atheists whom I admire (and many, but not all, whom I don’t).
“How condescending of you. I generally look at who is destroying the biosphere and what they’re doing it with and it’s not “primitive tribes” with animistic beliefs but those with access to science and technology…”
I’m quite happy to compare my carbon footprint with yours, if that’s your phallic substitute of choice, but you seem to have strayed from the subject of this thread:
I have never owned a car. I walk to work, to the library, to super markets, and to shopping centers, within a 5-mile radius.
My apartment has central air-conditioning but I have never turned it on. For most of my life I have not had an air-conditioner.
I got along without a TV for my first six years out of college, but then broke down and got a small portable to watch a Giants football game. In the small town I currently live in there is no reception without cable, but prior to three years ago I did not have cable TV.
I don’t have a microwave or a coffee-maker. I do have a small toaster. I don’t have a stereo or a DVR. Okay, I do have a VCR, and a small collection of classic VHS tapes, such as “Gorky Park”, “Aliens”, “Blade Runner”, and “Broadcast News”.
I like walking. I can do it mostly on autopilot, giving me a chance to ponder the questions of life.
I still use more than my fair share of the world’s resources, but let him who is without sin cast the first stone, I always say. (I have a story about that – but some people don’t like stories, so I’ll skip it.)